If the children could combine the result of their observations and bring out a manual of “Teacher Study” we should have strange revelations as to how it looks from the other side.  We should be astonished at the shrewdness of the small juries that deliberate, and the insight of the judges that pronounce sentence upon us, and we should be convinced that to obtain a favourable verdict we needed very little subtlety, and not too much theory, but as much as possible of the very things we look for as the result and crown of our work.  We labour to produce character, we must have it.  We look for courage and uprightness, we must bring them with us.  We want honest work, we have to give proof of it ourselves.  And so with the Christian qualities which we hope to build on these foundations.  We care for the faith of the children, it must abound in us.  We care for the innocence of their life, we must ourselves be heavenly minded, we want them to be unworldly and ready to make sacrifices for their religion, they must understand that it is more than all the world to us.  We want to secure them as they grow up against the spirit of pessimism, our own imperturbable hope in God and confidence in the Church will be more convincing than our arguments.  We want them to grow into the fulness of charity, we must make charity the most lovable and lovely thing in the world to them.

The Church possesses the secrets of these things; she is the great teacher of all nations and brings out of her treasury things new and old for the training of her children.  A succession of teaching orders of religious, representing different patterns of education, has gone forth with her blessing to supply the needs of succeeding generations in each class of the Christian community.  When children cannot be brought up in their own homes, religious seem to be designated as their natural guardians, independent as they are by their profession from the claims of personal interest and self-advancement, and therefore free to give their full sympathy and devotion to the children under their charge.  They have also the independence of their corporate life, a great power behind the service of the schoolroom in which they find mutual support, an “Upper Boom” to which they can withdraw and build up again in prayer and intercourse with one another their ideals of life and duty in an atmosphere which gives a more spiritual re-renewal of energy than a holiday of entire forgetfulness.

It is striking to observe that while the so-called Catholic countries are banishing religious from their schools, there is more and more inclination among non-Catholic parents who have had experience of other systems to place their children under the care of religious.  And it was strange to hear one of His Majesty’s Inspectors express his conviction that “it would be ideal if all England could be taught by nuns!” Thus indirect testimony comes from friendly or hostile sources to the fact that the Church holds the secret of education, and every Catholic teacher may gain courage from the knowledge of having that which is beyond all price in the education of children, that which all the world is seeking for, and which the Church alone knows that she possesses in its fulness.