Teacher. Silence, boys, the lesson cannot go on if you talk and quarrel. (Struck by a bright idea.) You know that a great many people believe that he was God; but some do not; but we must not quarrel because we do not all think alike.
First Boy (disagreeably curious). Well, but what do you think, master?
[Terrible dilemma! Teacher hesitates. At length, desperately]—
I think he was God.
Boy. Don’t yer know it?
Teacher (aside). [Perverse youth. Pest take his questions and him too! If I’d known what “unsectarian” teaching involved, I’d sooner have swept a crossing. What will the Board say? Why, the very essence of our principle is to know nothing and think anything. But you can’t make the boys reason.] (Aloud.) My dear boy, it is very difficult to say what we know. I can only teach you what I think, and teach you how to be good and do what is right, and obey all that God tells you to do in this Holy Book.
A Boy (interrupting, sans cérémonie). Did God write that there book?
Teacher. Yes; and he tells us what we are to do to get to heaven; and his son came, as you see, as a little child, and when he grew up, he preached and told us how we ought to love one another, and all we ought to do to lead a good life.
Boy (interested). And was he a very good chap?
Teacher (a little shocked). Yes, of course; you know he was—[pauses; his haste had almost betrayed him into a dogmatic explanation, and the forbidden word “know” had actually passed his lips].