Of course, whenever we found ourselves in forms of society not in harmony with our religious views, we were accustomed, in various ways, to meet with a similar predisposition. As a psychological study this has always interested me, just as one is interested in the attitude of mind exhibited by the Old School physician towards the Homoeopathist with whom he graduated at the Harvard Medical School. Possibly that graduate may have distinguished himself with the honors of the school; but as soon as he prescribes on the principles of Hahnemann, he is not to be adjudged capable of setting a collar-bone. By virtue of his therapeutic views he has become disqualified for professional recognition. So, by virtue of one's religious views, the man or woman of orthodox convictions, whatever one's proportion of personal culture, is regarded with a gentle superiority, as being of a class still enslaved in superstition, and therefore _per se_ barbaric. Put in undecorated language, this is about the sum and substance of a state of feeling which all intelligent evangelical Christians recognize perfectly in those who have preempted for themselves the claims belonging to what are called the liberal faiths. On the other hand, one who is regarded as a little of a heretic from the sterner sects, may make the warmest friendships of a lifetime among "the world's people"--whom far be it from me to seem to dispossess of any of their manifold charms. This brings me closely to a question which I am so often asked, either directly or indirectly, that I cannot easily pass this Andover chapter by without some recognition of it. What was, in very truth, the effect of such a religious training as Andover gave her children? Curious impressions used to be afloat about us among people of easier faiths; often, I think, we were supposed to spend our youth paddling about in a lake of blue fire, or in committing the genealogies to memory, or in gasping beneath the agonies of religious revivals. To be quite honest, I should say that I have not retained _all_ the beliefs which I was taught--who does? But I have retained the profoundest respect for the way in which I was taught them; and I would rather have been taught what I was, _as_ I was, and run whatever risks were involved in the process, than to have been taught much less, little, or nothing. An excess of religious education may have its unfortunate aspects. But a deficiency of it has worse.