, but
all-pervading and intelligent religious tone to the life, the aims, and
the ideal of the school, and where the Council and parents value this
influence, there the influence of girls' High Schools may be more
conducive to strong morality and true religion in England than even that
of our great public schools. For the High Schools are training more and
more of the most influential class among the women of England, as the
public schools are training the men, and the influence of women must of
necessity be of the first importance; for it is they who determine the
religious training and the atmosphere of the home, and thus profoundly
affect the national character. Let us all alike try to keep before
ourselves from day to day and from year to year these high ideals of
education which can nowhere be so well attained, both by mistresses and
girls, as in a High School.

And in particular let me appeal to you, the inhabitants of Bath, to be
proud of this school, to foster it, to assist it in every way, and be
assured that in so doing you are conferring a lasting benefit on your
famous city.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: An Address delivered at the High School, Bath, and the High
School, Clifton, Dec. 1889.]

III.

RELIGION.

RELIGION.[3]

I am not going to preach you a sermon of quite the usual type, but
intend rather to offer a few detached remarks without attempting to
weave them into any unity of plan, or to connect them with any
particular text from the Bible. Such unity as these remarks may possess
will result not from design but from the nature of the subject. For I am
going to speak about religion.

Now as I write this word I almost fancy I hear the rustle of an audience
composing itself to endure what it foresees must be a dull and
uninteresting address. "Religion! he can't make that interesting." Now,
why is this? What is religion, that in the eyes of so many clever and
intelligent and well-educated young people it should be thought dull?

Of this one point I am quite sure, that it is the fault of our
misunderstanding and misrepresentation, in the past and the present,
that religion seems dull.

Religion is, in its essence, the opening to the young mind of all the
higher regions of thought and aspiration and imagination and
spirituality. When you are quite young you are occupied of course with
the visible things and people round you; each hour brings its
amusements, its occupations and its