The Rev. Theodoret Verity, M.A., rose in anger.
“Surely, sir, you cannot seriously propound such a scheme! Would you leave this precious waif to be buffeted between the contending waves of truth and error, in the vague hope that by some lucky wind he might finally be cast upon a rock of safety? I protest against all these educational heresies—they are redolent of brimstone. Truth is truth, or there is none at all. If there be any, it is our duty to impart it to this immortal at the outset of his existence. Secular education! What do you mean by it? Who shall sever one question from another, and call one secular and the other religious? Is not every relation and every truth in some way or other connected with religion?” &c. &c. Mr. Verity has been saying the same thing any time these forty years.
“Forgive me,” replied Mr. Ogle, “if I say that this is very vague talking. I have not proposed to sever one question from another. I only propose to do in a different way that which is being done now by the most rigid of Mr. Verity's friends. It is impossible to comprehend what is meant by such a statement as that every truth is somehow connected with religion. It may be that the notion—if it really is not, as I suspect it to be, mere verbiage and clap-trap, used by certain fools to mislead others—means that there is some such coherency between all truths as there is, for instance, between the elements of the body. I would admit that, but is not blood a different and perfectly severable thing from bone? Each has its place, office, relation. But who would say that one could not be regarded by a physicist in the largest variety of its aspects apart from the other? Yet the physicist comes back again to consider with respect to each its relations to all the rest! The separate study has rather prepared him for more profound insight into those relations. Thus it is with the body of truth. In spite of Mr. Verity I affirm that there are truths that have not in themselves any element of religion whatever. The forty-seventh proposition of Euclid will be taught by a Jesuit precisely as it is taught in the London University; geography will affirm certain principles and designate places, rivers, mountains—that no faith can remove and cast into unknown seas. These subjects and others are taught in our most bigoted schools in separate hours and relations from religion. What then do you mean by affirming that there can be no secular education of this child—apart from religious teaching? We are not likely to agree, if I may judge from what I have seen, on any one method of religious instruction for it, therefore I wish first to fix common bounds within which our common benevolence may work. Well, we all go to the Bible. We agree that between its covers lies religious truth somewhere. If you like let him have that—and let him have some kindly and holy influences about him in the way of practice and example, such as many of our sects can supply many instances of. Give him no catechism—let him read a creed in our daily life. The articles of faith strongest in his soul will be those which have crystallized there from the combined action of truth and experience, and not as it were been pasted on its walls by ecclesiastical bill-posters. 'What is truth?' he must ask and answer for himself, as we all must do before God. Don't mistake me; I hope I am not more indifferent to religion than any here present—but I differ from them on the best method of imbuing the mind and heart with it. Surely we need not, we cannot—it would be an exquisite absurdity—pass a resolution in this committee that the child is to be a Calvinist! Who then would agree to secure him from any taint of Arminian heresy in years to come? Dare you even resolve that he shall be a Christian and a Protestant! I would not insure the risk. But, with so many of Christ's followers about me, surely, surely without providing any ecclesiastical mechanism, there will be testified to him simply how he may be saved. Your prayers, your visits, your kindly moral influence and talk, your living example of a goodness derived not from dogmas but from affectionate following of a holy pattern and trust in revealed mercies, your pointing to that pattern and showing the daily passage of these mercies will prompt his search after the truth that has made you what you are. Let some good woman do for him a mother's part, but choose her for her general goodness and not for the dogmas of her church. The simpler her piety the better for him I should say!”
This straightforward speech fell like a new apple of discord in the midst of the committee. Angry knots were formed, and the noble chairman found that he could not restore order. An adjournment was agreed to. Luckily for the body of Ginx's Baby, he had been meanwhile sent to a home where Protestant money secured to him for the time good living, while his benefactors were discussing what to do with his soul.
Surely, it were no impertinence to interrupt this history and advert to the fact, that, in the discussion just related, every one was to some extent right and to some extent agreed.
That religious teaching was due to an immortal spirit—some notion and evidence of the Divine and the Great Hereafter to be conveyed to it—scarce was disputed. Nor was there collision over the necessity of what is called intellectual cultivation. The boy must be taught something of the world in which he was to live; nay, this latter knowledge seemed to be most immediately practical. As each disputant fixed his eye on one or the other aim that end appeared to him to be the most important. Hence, by a natural lapse, they came to treat subjects as antagonistic which were, in fact, parallel and quite consistent. The one called the others godless—the others threw back the aspersion of bigotry. Then came complication. What was “religion?” Intellectual culture they could agree about—it embraced well-known areas; but this religion divided itself into many disputable fields. These brother Protestants were like country neighbors who must encounter each other at fairs, markets, meets, and balls, and smile and greet, though each, at heart, is looking savagely at the other's landmarks, and most are very likely fighting bitter lawsuits all the while. It was because religion meant CREED to most members of the committee, and because it so implies to the vast bodies they represented, that they could not come to terms about Ginx's Baby or any other infantile immortal. Not always, perhaps, but often, they fought for futile distinctions. Had Mahomet's creed consisted of but one article, There is one God, the blood of many nations might never have given testimony against the creed they resented when to it he tacked and Mahomet is His prophet. Could Protestants but consent to agree in their agreement and peacefully differ in their petty differences, how would the aggregated impulse of a simple faith roll down before it all the impediments of error!
When Ginx's Baby had grown to a discretionary age, and was at all able to know truth from error—supposing that to be knowable—there were in the country fifty thousand reverend gentlemen of every tincture of religious opinion who might ply him with their various theories, yet few of these would be contented unless they could seize him while his young nature was plastic, and try to imprint on immortal clay the trade-mark of some human invention.