Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/606

586 sectarian tenets." The writer then asks: "Can we now teach religion and morals by means of the Bible without at the same time teaching sectarian ideas? The Bible is not sectarian; Roman Catholics and all Protestant denominations equally claim it. The formal creeds and the systems of government and worship which have grown up in the centuries of Christian history are post-biblical; they are a superstructure, built upon the fundamentals of Christianity as recorded in the Bible. Can we get beneath ecclesiastical formulations, regulations, and liturgies to a fundamental religious belief and moral practice upon which all Christians can agree, and which they can unite to promote? ... We believe that sectarianism is fast disappearing, that an era of unity in essentials is near at hand. ... In order to restore the Bible to the schools it must be taught in the right way – the way which accords with the best modern knowledge of the Bible, the best modern science of religion and ethical teaching, and the best Christian spirit which recognizes true Christianity wherever it exists, and is able to distinguish between essentials and non-essentials."

We do not want to comment on all the latitudinarian statements contained in this quotation, but confine ourselves to the following remarks. First, that religion consisting of merely the "fundamentals of Christianity without formal creeds," is no true religion. It is a distillation or a dilution of Christianity which deserves all the castigation inflicted by English writers on the "moral monster of undenominational religion." Secondly, it is said that "the Bible is not sectarian, and that Roman Catholics and