gh his head may be stuffed with
arithmetical information, has no knowledge of arithmetic.

The gulf between memorised information and real knowledge becomes
deep and wide in proportion as the subject matter is one which
demands for its effective apprehension either intellectual effort or
emotional insight. When both these variables are demanded, the gulf
widens and deepens at a ratio which is "geometrical" rather than
"arithmetical"; and when a high degree of each is demanded, the
separation between knowledge and information is complete.

The Art Master who should try to train the aesthetic sense of his
pupils by making them learn by heart a string of propositions in
which he had set out the artistic merits of sundry masterpieces of
painting and sculpture, would expose himself to well-merited
ridicule. So would the teacher who should try to train the scientific
sense of his pupils by no other method than that of making them
learn scientific formulae by heart. What shall we say, then, of the
teacher who tries to train the religious sense of his pupils by
supplying them with rations of theological and theologico-historical
information? Whatever else we may mean by the word God, we mean what
is infinitely great, and therefore beyond the reach of human thought,
and we mean what is "most high," and therefore beyond the reach of
the heart's desire. It follows that for knowledge of God the maximum
of intellectual effort is needed, in conjunction with the maximum of
emotional insight; and it follows further that the gulf between
knowledge of God and information about God is unimaginably wide and
deep,--so wide and so deep that out of our very attempts to span or
fathom it the doubt at last arises whether the idea of acquiring
information about God may not, after all, be the idlest of dreams.

Nevertheless the pastors and masters of our elementary schools are,
with few exceptions, engaged, _sancta simplicitate_, in trying to
make the children of England religious by cramming them with
theological and theologico-historical information,--information as to
the nature and attributes of God, as to the inner constitution of
his being, as to his relations to Man and the Universe, as to his
reported doings in the past. And in order that the giving, receiving,
and retaining of this unverifiable information may be regarded by
all concerned as the central feature of the Scripture lesson, to
the neglect of all the other aspects of religi