techism and a few hours' perfunctory instruction in the schoolroom or
in the parlour of the curate's lodgings. The vital kernel of the rite is
decayed and only the dead shell is left, while some of the Christian
Churches have lost even the shell.

It is extremely probable that in no remote future the State in England
will reject as insoluble the problem of imparting religious instruction
to the young in its schools, in accordance with a movement of opinion
which is taking place in all civilized countries.[176] The support which
the Secular Education League has found in the most various quarters is
without doubt a fact of impressive significance.[177] It is well known
also that the working classes--the people chiefly concerned in the
matter--are distinctly opposed to religious teaching in State schools.
There can be little doubt that before many years have passed, in England
as elsewhere, the Churches will have to face the question of the best
methods of themselves undertaking that task of religious training which
they have sought to foist upon the State. If they are to fulfil this
duty in a wise and effectual manner they must follow the guidance of
biological psychology at the point where it is at one with the teaching
of their own most ancient traditions, and develop the merely formal rite
of confirmation into a true initiation of the new-born soul at puberty
into the deepest secrets of life and the highest mysteries of religion.

It must, of course, be remembered that, so far as England is concerned,
we live in an empire in which there are 337 millions of people who are
not even nominally Christians,[178] and that even among the comparatively
small proportion (about 14 per cent) who call themselves "Christians," a
very large proportion are practically Secularists, and a considerable
number avowedly so. If, however, we assume the Secularist's position,
the considerations here brought forward still retain their validity. In
the first place, the undoubtedly frequent hostility of the Freethinker
to Christianity is not so much directed against vital religion as
against a dead Church. The Freethinker is prepared to respect the
Christian who by free choice and the exercise of thought has attained
the position of a Christian, but he resents the so-called Christian who
is merely in the Church because he finds himself there, without any
effort of his will or his intelligence. The convinced secularist feels
respect for the since