One or two words should perhaps be said in this place as to conformity to common religious belief in the education of children.  Where the parents differ, the one being an unbeliever, the other a believer, it is almost impossible for anybody to lay down a general rule.  The present writer certainly has no ambition to attempt the thorny task of compiling a manual for mixed marriages.  It is perhaps enough to say that all would depend upon the nature of the beliefs which the religious person wished to inculcate.  Considering that the woman has an absolutely equal moral right with the man to decide in what faith the child shall be brought up, and considering how important it is that the mother should take an active part in the development of the child’s affections and impulses, the most resolute of deniers may perhaps think that the advantages of leaving the matter to her, outweigh the disadvantages of having a superstitious bias given to the young mind.  In these complex cases an honest and fair-minded man’s own instincts are more likely to lead him right than any hard and fast rule.  Two reserves in assenting to the wife’s control of early teaching will probably suggest themselves to everybody who is in earnest about religion.  First, if the theology which the woman desires to instill contains any of those wicked and depraving doctrines which neither Catholicism nor Calvinism is without, in the hands of some professors, the husband is as much justified in pressing his legal rights over the child to the uttermost, as he would be if the proposed religion demanded physical mutilation.  Secondly, he will not himself take part in baptismal or other ceremonies which are to him no better than mere mummeries, nor will he ever do anything to lead his children at any age to suppose that he believes what he does not believe.  Such limitations as these are commanded by all considerations alike of morality and good sense.

To turn to the more normal case where either the man has had the wise forethought not to yoke himself unequally with a person of ardent belief which he does not share, or where both parents dissent from the popular creed.  Here, whatever difficulties may attend its application, the principle is surely as clear as the sun at noonday.  There can be no good plea for the deliberate and formal inculcation upon the young of a number of propositions which you believe to be false.  To do this is to sow tares not in your enemy’s field, but in the very ground which is most precious of all others to you and most full of hope for the future.  To allow it to be done merely that children may grow up in the stereotyped mould, is simply to perpetuate in new generations the present thick-sighted and dead-heavy state of our spirits.  It is to do one’s best to keep society for an indefinite time sapped by hollow and void professions, instead of being nourished by sincerity and whole-heartedness.[25]