love.

At school our religious teaching was chiefly historical and moral.
There was no difficulty in finding proper teachers for that, and there
were no attempts on the part of parents to interfere with religious
instruction or to demand separate teaching for each sect. It is true
that religious sects are not so numerous in Germany as they are in
England. Some, though by no means all, children of Roman Catholic and
Jewish parents were allowed to be absent from religious lessons. But
most parents knew that the history of the Jewish religion would be
taught at school in so impartial and truly historical a spirit as
never to offend Jewish children. Respect for historical truth, and an
implanted sense of the reverence due to children, would keep any
teacher from making the history of the Christian Church, whether
before or after the Reformation, an excuse for offending one of the
little ones committed to his care. If Jews or Roman Catholics wished
for any special religious instruction it was given by their own
priests or Rabbis, and was given without any interference on the part
of the Government. But such was at my time the state of public feeling
that I hardly knew at school who among my young friends were Roman
Catholics, or Lutherans, or Reformed. I must admit, however, that the
very name of Luther might have offended Roman Catholics. He was
represented to us as a perfect saint, almost as inspired and
infallible. His hymns sung in church seemed to us little different
from the Psalms of David, and I well remember what a shock it gave me
when at Oxford, much later in life, I heard Luther spoken of like any
other mortal, nay, as a heretic, and a most dangerous heretic too.
When I was a boy I remember that in some places the same building had
to be used for Protestant and Roman Catholic services. All that, I am
afraid, is now changed, and the old liberal and tolerant feeling then
prevailing on all sides is now often stigmatized as indifference, and
by other ugly names. It should really be called the golden age of
Christianity, and this so-called indifference should be classed among
the highest Christian virtues, and as the fullest realization of the
spirit of Christ.

Thus we grew up from our earliest youth, being taught to look upon
Christianity as an historical fact, on Christ and His disciples as
historical characters, on the Old and New Testaments as real
historical books. Though we did not understand as yet the deep