The School Difficulty

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 08, 8 October 1908, Page 9

The School Difficulty

Ruskin once said that the man who clothes a useful thought in happy phrase does more real service to his kind than he, that makes two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before. The London Spectator has earned this guerdon of praise by the singularly happy and epigrammatic turn that it recently gave to one of the truths that underlie the whole difficulty of religious education in countries of mixed faiths. ' Protestants and Catholics,' said the Spectator, ' who differ so widely in religion can only be educated together when both are agreed to keep religion so much out of sight that it is in danger of being out of mind.' Which moves the Catholic Standard to remark : ' The epigram quoted above is worthy of Sir Richard Steele, the Irish "fighting partner. It cuts in twain at one blow the whole web of sophistry on which the system of " Birreligion " is woven, and leaves it just a mere ridiculous wreck of a scarecrow in a corn field after an electric storm.'