ucation. "We are now, more
or less, in the middle of a crisis. We are always in the middle
of a crisis. This crisis is about the religious question in our
day-schools. I would ask you, then, to get at the root of our
difficulty. What is it? The heart of our difficulty is partly that
we have _shifted on to the wrong shoulders_ the central function
of teaching children; secondly, that we have so lost the idea of
what the teaching of the Church is, and _the meaning of religious
education_, that we are considered by the public to be unreasonable
and uncompromising people if we are not disposed to admit that the
County Councils can settle the standard of sufficient religious
knowledge for everybody."

The difficulty as to means might be overcome if the Church would
mind its own business, and leave to the State what the State can
do so much more effectively. Let me quote the words of a great
Christian and a great Churchman--Mr. Gladstone--written in 1894:
"Foul fall the day when the persons of this world shall, on whatever
pretext, take into their uncommissioned hands the manipulation of
the religion of our Lord and Saviour."

Surely Churchmen will best serve the religion which they profess by
joining with other "men of goodwill," though of different faiths,
who desire the secular solution. In that way only, as far as I can
see, can the interests of Education be reconciled with the higher
interests of Justice.

V

_THE STATE AND THE BOY_

When Mr. A. J. Balfour was a very young man he published _A Defence
of Philosophic Doubt_. Nobody read it, but a great many talked
about it; and serious people went about with long faces, murmuring,
"How sad that Lord Salisbury's nephew should be an Agnostic!" When
Mr. Balfour had become a conspicuous figure in politics, the serious
people began to read the book which, so far, they had only denounced,
and then they found, to their surprise and joy, that it was an
essay in orthodox apologetic. Thenceforward Mr. Balfour ranked
in their eyes as a "Defender of the Faith" second only to Henry
VIII.

To compare small things with great, I have had a similar experience.
Not long ago I wrote a paper designed to set forth the pretty obvious
truth that increase in knowledge is not in itself a good. It evoked
much criticism, and the critics once again exemplified our truly
English habit of denouncing what we have not read. If these quaint
people were to be believed, I was an enemy of edu