to reconcile with the ideals that are upheld in the New Testament.  Yet at school, quite as much as in the World, competition and self-assertion are tempered by abundant friendliness and generosity; and at school if not in the world, there are an increasing number of individuals who have so much spiritual power that they never need to exercise the more worldly power that clashes with the Beatitudes.  Of this power boys seldom talk, except to some specially sympathetic ear at some specially heart-opening moment, but many are dumbly aware of it and they cultivate it, often unconsciously but to the great gain of those around them, by prayer and faithful worship.  But even these richer natures are uncomfortably conscious that there is a conflict between what Christ commands and what the world advises.  That conflict will not cease until faith has more power over our lives.  It cannot grow naturally at school among boys, when it does not live in the nation among men; but it would indeed be faithless to miss, through fear of the world’s withering power, any opportunity of quickening pure religion among the young.  Though these opportunities vary very much in the day and the boarding school, they may be said to occur: 

(1) In the scripture lesson;

(2) In the services whether held in chapel or, as is often the case especially in day schools, in the hall;

(3) In the preparation for confirmation;

(4) In all lessons in and out of school.

There is a great difference of opinion as to what should be taught in the scripture lesson, and who should teach it.  It is easy enough to quote instances of extraordinary ignorance, to argue that, because a man who is in the trenches shocks his chaplain by his real or affected neglect of the facts of Bible history or the dogmas of the Church, therefore he has never had an opportunity of learning them; that same man would probably not give a much more impressive account of the profane subjects in the school curriculum.  There is, too, the fact that a man may have forgotten everything of a subject and yet may have learnt much from it.  Every teacher knows this, if every schoolboy does not.  No one shrinks so much from revealing what he knows as the boy who is conscious that he has learnt a thing and is not sure that he can show his knowledge accurately.  No subject has been left so free from what is supposed to be the sterilising influence of examinations as divinity.  In many schools there have been one or two inspiring teachers of this subject who justify this system, but on the whole the result does not confirm the opinion that all would be well if we could have complete freedom from examinations.  If in the future the harvest in religion is to be more worthy of the seed that is sown and the trouble of cultivation, we must face with more frankness, especially in the later years of a boy’s life, all the difficulties that are presented by the problems of the Bible and Church History.  We must have more courage in going beyond the syllabuses that are drawn up by universities and ecclesiastical societies.  Both have to play for safety, but they are dull cards that this stake requires.