‘ ... And now what is the main issue before us? When the Secondary Schools are absorbed into the national system, and orders are issued to us from the Education Department, shall we be told that we also are to give only secular instruction, and forbidden to give definite teaching regarding the creeds and ritual which express the truths by which we live;—shall we be forbidden to ask any questions about the fitness of the teachers whom we wish to appoint? These are matters which seem to press for answers. ‘Only a few thoughts can I throw out to-day on this subject. First, it seems inconceivable that there should be any such limitations of the realms of knowledge as is implied in the word “secular.” Man’s thoughts cannot be shut in by space or time, he must seek the real beneath the phenomenal, he must search for the ultimate; more than any earthly or secular good he desires to know and live for the things which belong to an eternal world,—the true, the beautiful, the good. All literature, all history, attests this. Whence then the discordant cries, some demanding secular teaching only, others fearing it? ‘I think we are confused sometimes, because we do not remember or recognise sufficiently that there are two ways of approaching the subject of religious teaching and of all subjects of thought. Take for an illustration the subject now occupying the scientific world. Can we retain the conception of the atom as formulated in the last century? Is matter an aggregate of impenetrable, indivisible nodules, or is an atom merely a centre of force? Have we nothing that we should call solid, only vortices? Is solidity a flux of ions? These are all matters on which the wisest may differ, but there are certain fundamental facts on which all are agreed—the fact that there must be one all-embracing medium through which relations are realised. So in the world of spirit, the fact is indisputable that we are conscious of forces affecting us and on which we individually react, indisputable that we can interpret facts of sensation, and this necessitates a belief in the correspondence of our mind with one all-embracing spirit; it seems impossible to doubt that in interpreting the universe we are corresponding with and holding communion with an infinite mind revealed in Nature, and we repeat with inner conviction the first article of our Creed—“God created,”—we pass on to the second half—“God created man in His own image,” and so we go on to speak of other articles of faith. Philosophy, which has so large a place in the Bible teaching and which is always based on the facts of our inner consciousness and our moral sense, ought, I believe, to have a larger space in our teaching, but we should endeavour more to build on foundations which cannot be shaken. The mystery of