of organized religion we are bound to admit that in thousands of rural parishes, and in many towns too, it is still possible to grow from infancy to old age as a member of church or chapel without once receiving any first-hand teaching on the powers and needs of the soul or the technique of prayer; or obtaining any more help in the great religious difficulties of adolescence than a general invitation to believe, and trust God.  Morality—­that is to say correctness of response to our neighbour and our temporal surroundings—­is often well taught.  Spirituality—­correctness of response to God and our eternal surroundings—­is most often ignored.  A peculiar British bashfulness seems to stand in the way of it.  It is felt that we show better taste in leaving the essentials of the soul’s development to chance, even that such development is not wholly desirable or manly:  that the atrophy of one aspect of “man’s made-trinity” is best.  I have heard one eminent ecclesiastic maintain that regular and punctual attendance at morning service in a mood of non-comprehending loyalty was the best sort of spiritual experience for the average Englishman.  Is not that a statement which should make the Christian teachers who are responsible for the average Englishman, feel a little bit uncomfortable about the type which they have produced?  I do not suggest that education should encourage a feverish religiosity; but that it ought to produce balanced men and women, whose faculties are fully alert and responsive to all levels of life.  As it is, we train Boy Scouts and Girl Guides in the principles of honour and chivalry.  Our Bible-classes minister to the hungry spirit much information about the journeys of St. Paul (with maps).  But the pupils are seldom invited or assisted to taste, and see that the Lord is sweet.

Now this indifference means, of course, that we do not as educators, as controllers of the racial future, really believe in the spiritual foundations of our personality as thoroughly and practically we believe in its mental and physical manifestations.  Whatever the philosophy or religion we profess may be, it remains for us in the realm of idea, not in the realm of fact.  In practice, we do not aim at the achievement of a spiritual type of consciousness as the crown of human culture.  The best that most education does for our children is only what the devil did for Christ.  It takes them up to the top of a high mountain and shows them all the kingdoms of this world; the kingdom of history, the kingdom of letters, the kingdom of beauty, the kingdom of science.  It is a splendid vision, but unfortunately fugitive:  and since the spirit is not fugitive, it demands an objective that is permanent.  If we do not give it such an objective, one of two things must happen to it.  Either it will be restless and dissatisfied, and throw the whole life out of key; or it will become dormant for lack of use, and so the whole life will be impoverished, its best promise unfulfilled.  One line leads to the neurotic, the other to the average sensual man, and I think it will be agreed that modern life produces a good crop of both these kind of defectives.