_Teacher._ Silence, boys, the lesson cannot go on if you talk and quarrel. (Struck by a bright idea.) You know that a great many people believe that he was God; but some do not; but we must not quarrel because we do not all think alike. _First Boy_ (disagreeably curious). Well, but what do _you_ think, master? [Terrible dilemma! Teacher hesitates. At length, desperately]— _I_ think he was God. _Boy._ Don’t yer _know_ it? _Teacher_ (aside). [Perverse youth. Pest take his questions and him too! If I’d known what “unsectarian” teaching involved, I’d sooner have swept a crossing. What _will_ the Board say? Why, the very essence of our principle is to _know_ nothing and think anything. But you can’t make the boys reason.] (Aloud.) My dear boy, it is very difficult to say what we know. I can only teach you what I think, and teach you how to be good and do what is right, and obey all that God tells you to do in this Holy Book. _A Boy_ (interrupting, _sans cérémonie_). Did God write that there book? _Teacher._ Yes; and he tells us what we are to do to get to heaven; and his son came, as you see, as a little child, and when he grew up, he preached and told us how we ought to love one another, and all we ought to do to lead a good life. _Boy_ (interested). And was he a _very_ good chap? _Teacher_ (a little shocked). Yes, of course; you know he was—[pauses; his haste had almost betrayed him into a dogmatic explanation, and the forbidden word “know” had actually passed his lips]. _Another Boy_ (with vexatiously retentive memory). You said afore, master, that he was God, and the gentlemen wusshupped him—was he _reelly_ God? _Teacher_ (boldly, taking the bull by the horns). Yes. _Boy._ And did God’s mother wusshup him too, master? _Teacher._ You must not call her the mother of—[interrupts himself; recollects that it is as sectarian to deny to the Blessed Virgin the title of Mother of God as to bestow it upon her; continues]: yes, she worshipped him too; but I want you to learn about the things that he told us to do. _Another Boy_ (doggedly). But we wants to know fust who he be, ‘cause we ain’t to do jist what a nobody tells us; only, if that there gentlemen be God, there’s somethin’ in it, ‘cause I’ve ‘eard parson say, at old school, where I was once, that what God said was all right. _Teacher_ (aside). [Certainly that poor Arab has got the root of denominational education. It is, I begin to think, a failure to attempt the teaching of morality without first making manifest what that morality is based upon, and the moment you come to _that_ you are in for denominationalism at once. (Wipes his brow and continues)— Of course, my boy, you must know why it is right to tell the truth and do what is right, but then if I tell you God commanded all this and read to you what his Son said about it, there is no need for troubling so much about—about—