ness, can never be borne unless we learn ourselves, and teach
each generation as it grows up, to face the fierce light that shines
from heaven. All sorts of devices, ecclesiastical and political have
been adopted to break up that light and make it tolerable for our weak
eyes. Men have been so afraid of children being blinded by it that
they have allowed them to sit, some in darkness, and others in the
twilight of compromise.

It has been said that for the average man in the ancient world there
existed two main guides and sanctions for his conduct of life, namely
the welfare of his city, and the laws and traditions of his ancestors.
Has the average man much wiser guides or stronger sanctions now? Is a
much nobler appeal made to the children of England than was made to
the children of Athens? Just before Joshua led his people over the
Jordan, he instructed them how the ark of the covenant was to go
before them and a space to be left between them and it, so that they
might know the way by which they must go, _for they had not passed
this way before_. Once again a river of decision has to be crossed, a
road has to be trodden along which men have not passed before. Whether
we speak of reconstruction or a new start or use any other metaphor to
show our conviction that war has changed all things, the idea is the
same. We must see to it that the ark of the covenant is borne before
our nation and our schools, along the way that is new and still full
of stones of stumbling.

Either the old landmarks have disappeared or a new land has to be
explored. Somehow, all things have to be made new, for even the
spiritual things have been destroyed or are found wanting. It is to
the schools, to the homes, to the mothers of England that the richest
opportunity comes. If they can solve the difficulty of making the
Christian education and the Christian life react upon one another the
partition walls between religion and conduct will be broken down for
every age. Intentionally or unintentionally, these walls have been
built up, perhaps by the teachers and parents, certainly by the
conventions of life. The result is that though there is more true
religion in the schools than is acknowledged by those outside and than
those within care to boast of, and though the standard of conduct is
not ignoble, there is too little fusion; both components are brittle,
they cannot stand the strain of sudden temptation, they lack enduring
power. No one will fo