Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/196

 not assumed the duty of teaching children Christianity, parents would have attended to the matter, and probably done it a great deal better than the boards could possibly have done it, even in the best conditions. And if anyone says that you can't teach Christianity, the reply is, that in the sort of conditions which exist in England at the present time, the religious spirit is not favoured unless religion is taught. I said at the beginning that the sort of life we lead now, and that we are likely to go on living during the next hundred years, is probably more unfavourable to the spirit than any directly irreligious influence of science or discovery. People who are crowded into towns, where they are out of constant touch with Nature and the immensities of space, and lead a hurried, busy existence unfavourable to deep thought and mysticism, are much less liable to yearn for some explanation of the vast incomprehensible universe, the profound misgivings of the soul, than people who have other opportunities, who know the massive face of solitude and have lain under the inscrutable stars. The very frequency of terrible experience, when death stalks in the streets and a funeral procession is so common a sight that men hardly turn their unbared heads to look upon it, blunts the sense of awe; and in the cheap Press the alleged humorist finds it a choice subject for joking. A hundred years hence,