Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/194

 parental indolence by States which profess to relieve it of the duty of religious as well as the expense of other teaching, cannot tend to promote religious education. To take our own country for an example, fathers, who would make it a duty to instil as well as they were able the principles of their own faith into the minds of their children if the board schools were not supposed to teach Christianity, doubtless neglect that task in the existing conditions, a fact which makes it quite easy to understand why congregations are so largely made up of elderly people, while boys and girls, not young enough to be haled unwillingly to the parental pew, and young men and maidens, young wives and husbands "educated" on the prevailing system, tend more and more to amuse themselves, not in irreligion but in indifference. The squabbles of the sects have made it impossible to invest Christianity in board schools, unless the law be flagrantly violated, with any of the importance necessary to the foundation of a genuinely religious spirit; and the very children find that religion is treated as a thing of much less importance than sums or a good handwriting. No one struggles and wrangles about the right way to do long division. Long division, therefore, is a settled thing and important. But everybody quarrels and snarls as to who shall teach his particular kind of religion. Religion, therefore, is a doubtful sort of thing,