who would say
that one could not be regarded by a physicist in the largest variety of
its aspects apart from the other? Yet the physicist comes back again
to consider with respect to each its relations to all the rest! The
separate study has rather prepared him for more profound insight into
those relations. Thus it is with the body of truth. In spite of Mr.
Verity I affirm that there are truths that have not in themselves any
element of religion whatever. The forty-seventh proposition of Euclid
will be taught by a Jesuit precisely as it is taught in the London
University; geography will affirm certain principles and designate
places, rivers, mountains--that no faith can remove and cast into
unknown seas. These subjects and others are taught in our most bigoted
schools in separate hours and relations from religion. What then do
you mean by affirming that there can be no secular education of this
child--apart from religious teaching? We are not likely to agree, if
I may judge from what I have seen, on any one method of religious
instruction for it, therefore I wish first to fix common bounds within
which our common benevolence may work. Well, we all go to the Bible.
We agree that between its covers lies religious truth somewhere. If you
like let him have that--and let him have some kindly and holy influences
about him in the way of practice and example, such as many of our sects
can supply many instances of. Give him no catechism--let him read a
creed in our daily life. The articles of faith strongest in his soul
will be those which have crystallized there from the combined action
of truth and experience, and not as it were been pasted on its walls by
ecclesiastical bill-posters. 'What is truth?' he must ask and answer for
himself, as we all must do before God. Don't mistake me; I hope I am not
more indifferent to religion than any here present--but I differ from
them on the best method of imbuing the mind and heart with it. Surely
we need not, we cannot--it would be an exquisite absurdity--pass a
resolution in this committee that the child is to be a Calvinist! Who
then would agree to secure him from any taint of Arminian heresy in
years to come? Dare you even resolve that he shall be a Christian and a
Protestant! I would not insure the risk. But, with so many of Christ's
followers about me, surely, surely without providing any ecclesiastical
mechanism, there will be testified to him simply how he may be saved.
Your pray