Either the old landmarks have disappeared or a new land has to be explored. Somehow, all things have to be made new, for even the spiritual things have been destroyed or are found wanting. It is to the schools, to the homes, to the mothers of England that the richest opportunity comes. If they can solve the difficulty of making the Christian education and the Christian life react upon one another the partition walls between religion and conduct will be broken down for every age. Intentionally or unintentionally, these walls have been built up, perhaps by the teachers and parents, certainly by the conventions of life. The result is that though there is more true religion in the schools than is acknowledged by those outside and than those within care to boast of, and though the standard of conduct is not ignoble, there is too little fusion; both components are brittle, they cannot stand the strain of sudden temptation, they lack enduring power. No one will forget how in those first months of war, consolation was offered even from pulpits for all the horrors and the sadness and the waste of conflict in the thought that as a nation we should be purged of selfishness, of luxury, of sensuality, of all the vices that peace engenders. That is surely a shameful confession, that our religion had been in vain. We had to wait for, and partake in, a three years' orgy of cruelty and violence to learn what our Lord had taught us in three years of gentleness. If we are going to teach the same lessons about war when peace is made, to keep alive the fires of hate, and to keep smouldering the embers of suspicion, we shall be confessing that a Christian education cannot teach us anything about Christianity.
The student in arms would not have had us despair. Peace when it comes will make demands on our fortitude. There will be many lying in the no-man's land between vice and virtue who will need to be rescued at great risk. There will be many forlorn hopes to be led against disease, the foster child of vice, that has gained strength under the cover of war. The disappointing days of peace will give an opportunity for the development of Christian qualities fully as great as the bracing days of battle. Teachers will need to gird up their loins for the task of giving a wise welcome to the thousands that an awakened State will send to sit at their feet, and unless they can give spiritual food as well as worldly wisdom and paying knowledge, the souls of the new-comers will be starved beyond the remedy of any free meals. How to spiritualise education is the real problem, for it is only by a spiritualised education that we can escape from the avalanche of materialism that is hanging over the European world just now. No syllabus, no act of Parliament can do this. There is no royal road which all can travel. It has been done, to some extent, in the past, and it will have to be done, to a much greater extent, in the future by the layman and the laywoman, by the teachers of all denominations, by some even whom inspectors may consider inefficient and whom children may tolerate as queer. It will be done best by the best teachers, but all teachers can share in the work on the one condition that they have consciously or unconsciously dedicated themselves to the task. For a teacher to write much about it is impossible, he must know how greatly he has failed. And he has not the recompense that comes to many who fail, in the shape of certain knowledge why success has been withheld.
That his failure is shared by those who strive to make religion move the world of men is no consolation. Indeed, that thought might make him hopeless did it not suggest that the aims and methods of both may be wrong. It is possible to have hoped too much from the school chapels being full, it is possible to fear too much from the churches being empty. Piety is no doubt fostered by attendance at a religious service, but there is some distance between piety and true religion. It would probably not be untrue to say that Christian education has seemed more concerned with the ceremonial duties of religion than with its spiritual enthusiasm, more eager about faith in some particular explanation of the past than about faith in a re-creation of the future, more attentive to the machinery of the organisation of the Church than to the words and commands of its Founder. As the Church has become more powerful in the world, it has lost its power over men's hearts. To some it has seemed an institution for the relief of poverty, to others the support of the "haves" against the "have-nots," but to too few has it been the home of spiritual adventures, the maintainer of spiritual values. Men have escaped from the relentless simplicity of the Master's commands by attention to the complicated machinery which disregard of them has made necessary. This may not have been consciously marked by the young, but the atmosphere of religion that they have had to breathe has been the tired atmosphere of the ecclesiastical workshop, and not the bracing air of free service. Some restoration of the hopefulness of the early Christians is needed; hopefulness is not now the note of what is taught, though with it is sometimes confused the boisterous cheerfulness that is wrongly supposed to attract the young. The appeal of the Church must be based on looking forward, not backward, on hope, rather than on repentance.
The Church will have less to do with the world than it had in the past, because it will have shaken off the fetters of the world: it will not be always explaining to the young how they can enjoy the world and yet deny the world: it will not need to explain itself so often, to insist so pathetically on the superiority of its own channels of influence, but it will attract to itself, or rather to the work that it is trying to do—for it will have forgotten self—all the adventurous spirits who are prepared to risk pain and failure as fellow-workers in fulfilling the purposes of God in the world. What is worth knowing about Christianity is surely first and foremost that it is a leaven that might leaven the whole world; and that until that leaven works in each individual heart, in each society, where two or three are gathered together, Christ's presence cannot be claimed. As this knowledge is gained, it will be possible for the learner to know in his heart, and not merely by heart, what is meant by the great mysterious terms Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection; as this knowledge is tested and proved true by experience of life, the meaning and power of prayer will become clearer. A clue will have been put into the hand of each as he travels along the way which he has not passed heretofore. It will not lead all by the same path but it will lead all towards that "great and high mountain," whence "that great city, the Holy Jerusalem" may be seen. If the teacher is wise, when the mountain top is nigh and before that vision breaks upon his fellow-traveller's sight, he will stand aside with thankful heart, and close his task with the prayer that the Glory of God may shine more brightly and more continuously on the newcomer, than it has shone on him.
Nothing is said here about the co-operation of the home with the school. In religion as in all other matters it is assumed. The influence of the home cannot be exaggerated but schoolmasters must resist the temptation to shift the burden of responsibility for any failure on to other shoulders.