"Children, in matters of this sort, do not really stand on a different level from adults; do not imagine that they do so. They can, it is true, be very easily led, but they can be brought with even more ease and more completely to forget one thing and take up another. It takes very little to make them believe, but it takes still less to make them doubt, so that the ratio between belief and unbelief remains the same. Those whose religious belief forms a lasting restraint on their moral character are, among children as among adults, but few.
"There are four clergymen present. I ask them if they can rise and contradict me? I do not believe that they feel any inclination to do so."
[A short pause. All eyes were fixed upon such of the clergymen as they could see. The four reverend gentlemen sat as unmovable as graven images.]
"Do I hold then, you ask, that religion is of no importance in a school? Much the contrary? But there should be no class of religious instruction which does not partake of the thorough earnestness of a religious lecture. Let it as often as possible be given by the person who will have the preparation of the child for confirmation--that is to say, generally by the clergyman. I would say entirely by him, if that could be arranged. Thus the relation of the clergyman to the teacher would be that of a support to the latter.
"I cannot go further into this question: I will only add that this is the arrangement adopted for our school. The friend of my youth, my brother, Pastor Karl Vangen, will take the children between six and sixteen every morning for religions instruction and edification, and the intention is that he shall conduct their whole religious training until their confirmation. But it follows from what I have said that he can only hope to make the relationship of deep and lasting value for a very few. It is only right that this fact should be realised in schools."
"Lately," continued the speaker after another very short pause, "an attempt has been made to set up the study of history and of general literature as branches of knowledge which have an influence in the formation of character. When these studies have been more fully adapted as subjects of instruction than they have yet been, they will have more importance in this respect.
"Undoubted assistance was, of course," he went on, "always to be gained from these studies. The child learned to know of good, great, and noble thoughts, and obtained a grasp, if only a slight one, of the course of human history, as well as the history of single peoples or great men. But it can never be a matter of the first importance to hear about others."
[The audience now became curious. Where would he get to at last? They felt that something important was coming.]
He leaned forward over the tribune and said slowly:
"'The most important form of knowledge which a man can acquire, is the knowledge how to regulate his own life; the next, how to regulate the lives of those who come after him.'