Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/321

 Marie Corelli is a great friend of children, loving them and beloved of them. It may be regarded as probable that the children of those who form the ideal unions which the novelist so eloquently describes will be sure to train their own offspring on good and intelligent lines. But there are others—so many of them. There is much in the writings of Marie Corelli that bears upon the question, and her text is the dedication of the "Mighty Atom"—"To those self-styled 'Progressivists' who by precept and example assist the infamous cause of education without religion, and who, by promoting the idea, borrowed from French atheism, of denying to the children in Board schools and elsewhere, the knowledge and love of God, as the true foundation of noble living, are guilty of a worse crime than murder." That is her view. She regards the teaching of simple Christian truths—the love of God, and the instruction which is the basis of all Christian creeds, i. e., to do unto others as you would be done by—as an essential element in the education of children. She would regard it as the most heinous of crimes to take from our English elementary schools that religious instruction which was agreed to in the 1870 Compromise, the Compromise which happily has survived a violent attack made upon it not long since in the elemen