“Oh, as to that, it was only Villars. Besides, you are a clergyman’s daughter, and your views have a different colouring from mine. Modern research has introduced so many variations of thought, that no good work would be done at all if we required of our fellow-labourers perfect similarity of speculative belief.”
“Yet suppose he undertook to teach others?”
“The simple outlines of universal doctrine and morality which are required by poor children are not affected by the variations to which investigation conducts minds of more scope.”
“I am afraid such variations may often reach the foundation.”
“Now, Miss Williams, I am sure you must often have heard it observed how when it comes to real practical simple teaching of uninstructed people, villagers or may be heathens, the details of party difference melt away, and people find themselves in accordance.”
“True, but there I think party differences in the Church, and even the variations between Christian sects are concerned, both being different ways of viewing the same truth. These may, like the knights in the old fable, find that both were right about the shield, both have the same foundation. But where the foundation is not the same, the results of the teaching will not agree.”
“Every one agrees as to morality.”
“Yes, but do all give a motive sufficient to enforce the self-denial that morality entails? Nay, do they show the way to the spiritual strength needful to the very power of being moral?”
“That is begging the question. The full argument is whether the full church, say Christian system, exactly as you, as we hold it, is needful to the perfection of moral observance. I don’t say whether I assent, but the present question is whether the child’s present belief and practice need be affected by its teacher’s dogmatic or undogmatic system.”
“The system for life is generally formed in childhood. Harvest depends on seed time.”