c is based on a very positive
belief. As for me, I feel that the churchman goes one step beyond him: he
even doubts Doubt. Said Socrates: "I know nothing except this one thing,
that I know nothing. The rest of you are ignorant even of this." Socrates
was a great man. If he had been greater still, he might have said
something like this: "I freely acknowledge that a mathematical formula can
not satisfy all the cases that we discuss. But neither can it be stated
mathematically that they are all unknowable. I am not even sure that I
know nothing." Surely, under these circumstances, we may give over looking
for mathematical demonstrations and believe a few things on our own
account--that our children love us--that our eyes do not deceive us; that
the soul lives on; that God rules all. We may put our faith in what our
own church teaches us, even as a child trusts his father though he can not
construct a single syllogism that will increase that trust.

This does not mean that we shall not benefit by examining the articles of
our faith; by learning what they are, what they mean and what others have
thought of them. The churchman must combine, in his mental habits, all
that is best of the Conservative and the Radical. While holding fast that
which is good he must keep an open mind toward every change that may serve
to bring him nearer to the truth or give him a clearer vision of it.

How we can insure this better than by such an institution as the Church
School for Religious Instruction I am sure I do not see. May God guide it
and aid it in its work!

INDEX

Abraham, Story of, 335

Action, test of belief, 332

Ade, George, 110, 170;
fables in picture plays, 319

Adults and children, compared, 14

Advertisement of ideas, 127

Aldrich, T.B., 322

Alger, Horatio, 16, 174

America, Fluid customs in, 224

"America", hymn, 191

American Academy of Sciences, 57

American ancestry, 179;
architecture, 218;
art, 217;
music, 218;
philosophy, 220;
religion, 219;
thought, tendencies of, 213

American Association for the Advancement of Science, 50

American Library Association, 51

American Library Institute, 52

American readers, 42

Americanization, 17, 73

Americanization of England, 225

Ancestry, American, 179

Anglo-Saxon ancestry, 181

Architecture, American, 218

Archives, family, 184

Army, international, 159

Art, American, 217;
effect of, 163

Art, Early forms of,