RELIGION IN THE SCHOOLS
SIR,—Since Lord David Cecil accepts the view as to the teachers which I expressed m the closing paragraph of my letter, but for which I had not written, it is needless to argue questions of morals and their sanctions. We should not convert each other. There was nothing in my letter to indi- cate that I did not recognise the influence of religion on morals,—both good and bad. There are no dogmas in Job's defence of himself except that of the prophets: There is a God and a just God, no intellectual problems such as the Trinity and the Atonement, to say nothing of effectual calling or imputed righteousness. And speaking of the prophets is it true that Christ in the words cited is laying down a new and unheard- of law? He does not, as in His law about marriage, indicate that He is diverging from Moses' teaching, nor, as when He forbids the hatred of our enemies (which Job too recognises) say: "Ye have heard, &c, but I say unto you, &c." What He says is accepted by His questioner as though it was already his belief; and is it not just a concise, and for Christians authoritative, statement (whence its use in our services), of what nad been the burthen of prophetic teaching throughout? In theit writings God at once threatens rnd entreats, desiring an obedience different from that which an Assyrian tyrant might exact because based upon gratitude and love. Job knows that God is just. His social instincts and human experience teach him in what ways he must deal justly and mercifully in his conduct. When men in war or in mine accidents come to the help of each other they do so without always considering the bearing of their conduct on an afterlife.
If Lord David agrees with me as to the rights and liberty of the teacher, I agree with him as to the vanity of teaching by those who do not accept what they teach. But might not many teachers be willing to give ethical teaching which the Christians can for their purposes otherwise complete? Moral laws have a social significance which can be taught, and too often is not. Looking back on my own religious education in school (and I was sent away to distant boarding schools when I was nine years old) I remember chiefly two things: the necessity for belief, con- version, without which no good deeds were of any avail, and secondly, an endless reading of the doings of the tedious kings of Israel and Judah with their oriental cruelties. We might have been taken over Job's defence of himself or even the Sermon on the Mount and shown that, if the latter especially points towards another life, yet all the commands have not only a social but, I venture to think, a personal individual value, —can strengthen the altruistic as against the potent egoistic impulses. But things taught in school often work out wrongly. A very fine young man came to study medicine in Aberdeen and brought an introduction to us. We met him one Sunday morning and asked him was he not going to church : "No, no," he replied, "I had too much of it at L—g." If the command to "love intensely" refer to our feelings then it is for most people an impossible command, for over our feelings we have a very limited control. Even the love of God, Dean Goulbum taught, must for most Christians be a principie of action rather than an emotion. The last is reserved for saints those who, in Scottish phrase, have got "far ben." I do not believe that Mr. Gladstone, good Christian as he was, loved Mr. Disraeli intensely.—Yours truly, H. J. C. GRIERSON.
P.S.—I have omitted to point out that in the Gospel of St. Luke the words Lord David cites are not put into the mouth of Christ but are the lawyer's reply to the question : "What is written in the law? How readest thou?" which suggests that they were a recognised summary of the law. The reference to the Law is a little difficult. The only reference my Bible gives is to Leviticus xix 18 where the neighbour is confined to "the children of Thy people," which is, I suppose, why the parable of the Good Samaritan follows in order to widen the application.
[This correspondence is now closed.—En., The Spectator.]
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