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With the object of preparing the way to this religion, schools have been improved, houses have been built and open spaces secured. Holidays have been made more healthy, and the best in art has been made more common. But, viewing all these efforts of many reformers, I am prepared to say that the most pressing need is for higher education. Where such education is to begin, what is the meaning of religious education in elementary schools, and how it is to be extended, is part of another subject. It is enough now if, having as my subject the religion of the people, I state my opinion that there is no activity which more surely advances religion than the teaching which gives insight, far sight, and wide sight. The people, for want of religion, are unstable in their policy, joyless in their amusements, and uninspired by any sure and certain hope. They have not the sense of sin—in modern language, none of that consciousness of unreached ideals which makes men humble and earnest. They have not the grace of humility nor the force of a faith stronger than death. It may seem a far cry from a teacher’s class-room to the peace and power of a Psalmist or of a St. Paul; but, as Archbishop Benson said, “Christ is a present Christ, and all of us are His contemporaries”. And my own belief is that the eye opened by higher education is on the way to find in the present the form of the Christ who will satisfy the human longing for the Higher-than-self.

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