regarded as a real initiation into the privileges and the responsibilities of a religious communion, of an active fellowship for the realization of a divine life on earth, it has become a mere mechanical corollary of the precedent rite of baptism, a formal condition of participation in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The splendid and many-sided discipline by which the child of the savage was initiated into the secrets of his own emotional nature and the sacred tradition of his people has been degraded into the learning of a catechism and a few hours' perfunctory instruction in the schoolroom or in the parlour of the curate's lodgings. The vital kernel of the rite is decayed and only the dead shell is left, while some of the Christian Churches have lost even the shell.
It is extremely probable that in no remote future the State in England will reject as insoluble the problem of imparting religious instruction to the young in its schools, in accordance with a movement of opinion which is taking place in all civilized countries.
14 The support which the Secular Education League has found in the most various quarters is without doubt a fact of impressive significance.
15 It is well known also that the working classes—the people chiefly concerned in the matter—are distinctly opposed to religious teaching in State schools. There can be little doubt that before many years have passed, in England as elsewhere, the Churches will have to face the question of the best methods of themselves undertaking that task of religious training which they have sought to foist upon the State.
If they are to fulfil this duty in a wise and effectual manner they must follow the guidance of biological psychology at the point where it is at one with the teaching of their own most ancient traditions, and develop the merely formal rite of confirmation into a true initiation of the new-born soul at puberty into the deepest secrets of life and the highest mysteries of religion.