It is a hurt alike to children and to truth, to say nothing of the institutions of religion, to command faith the essence and beauty of which lies in its voluntariness. But if parents are not free to coerce the minds of their children touching articles of faith, it is for children to remember what was said of Emerson,--that "he was an iconoclast without a hammer, removing our idols so gently it seemed like an act of worship." The dissenter need not be a vandal and the filial dissenter ought to be farthest from the vandal in manner touching the religious beliefs of parents. I would not carry the reverent manner to the point of outward conformity, but it may go far without doing hurt to the soul of a child, provided the spiritual reservations are kept clear. CHAPTER VIII CONFLICTING STANDARDS The conflict of today is oftenest one between parental orthodoxy and filial liberalism or heresy. My own experience has led to the conviction that the clashing does not ordinarily arise between two varying faiths but rather between faith on the one hand and unfaith or unconcern with faith on the other. As for the Jewish home, the problem is complicated by reason of the truth, somehow ignored by Jew and non-Jew, that the religious conversion of a Jew usually leads to racial desertion as far as such a thing can be save in intent. In the Jewish home, racial loyalty and religious assent are so inextricably interwoven,--with ethical integrity in many cases in the balance,--that it is not to be wondered at that conflict oft obtains when the loyalty of the elders is met by the dissidence of the younger and such dissidence is usually the first step on the way that leads to a break with the Jewish past.