truest wisdom, but it has often unhappily had to
be cloaked and hampered either by spiritual superstition, prejudice,
or ignorance. So that when a flagrant case which corrupts a whole
neighbourhood cries aloud to common sense to remove it by divorce,
there are found hundreds of good and worthy people to oppose this on
the ground that the Church does not sanction such proceeding! If the
State religion administered by the Church cannot inculcate higher
principles in its members, so as to prevent them from sinning, it
would obviously seem to be more fair to allow the statesmen and
sociologists to have a free hand in their attempt to better the
morality of England than for the Church to use the vast influence it
still possesses to the stultifying of these plans. The homely proverb
of the proof of the pudding being in the eating seems to be plainly
shown here. The religious teaching has failed to influence the people
to refrain from sin and to discountenance divorce, proving that its
method of imparting knowledge and obtaining influence over the modern
mind is no longer effectual, and common sense would suggest changing
the method to ensure the desired end. There is a story told of a
French regiment in the early days of conscription. A certain size of
boots had been decided upon for recruits, and this decision had worked
very well when the young men were drawn from the town, where the feet
were comparatively small, but when countryside youths became the
majority, the boots they were given were an agony to them, and
constant complaints were the result, with, however, no redress.
Omnipotent head-quarters had decided the size! And that was the end of
it! And it was not until nearly the whole regiment was in hospital
with sore feet that it entered the brain of the officials that it
might be wiser for France to regulate the size of the boots of the
regiment to the feet of the wearers. Why, then, cannot the Church
devote all its brain and force to evolving some new form of teaching
which will, so to speak, "fit the feet of the wearers"? Then all
questions of divorce could be settled by noble and exalted feeling and
desire to do right and elevate the nation. But meanwhile, with the
growth and encouragement of individualism, every little unit is giving
forth his personal view (as I am doing in this paper!), perhaps many
of them without the slightest faculty for looking ahead, or knowledge
of how to make deductions from past events,