Sometimes nations and individuals covet character without being ready to pay the whole price for it. They give admirable facilities for the development of certain phases of training essential to character, but exclude that deciding factor which determines whether or not they may be woven into character. Influences from other sources may come in to repair wilful neglect, but, if not, the training goes for nothing so far as character is concerned. Public schools can never give character its best opportunity without a practical recognition of religion. Purely secular education, the imparting of learning including the science of ethics, without religion in church and home to supplement it, is a doubtful blessing at best. The current idea of secular education is not new. During the French Revolution its leaders mapped out what appeared to be a satisfactory programme of instruction. It was desired to have moral training, first without religion or with the “Worship of Reason,” then with a minimum of religion. The priests were suffered to continue as being at any rate moral policemen, but Danton planned to supplant them by _officiers de morale_. All experiments were of no avail. “_La morale populaire ... cherche encore_,” it was pathetically complained, “_un point d’appui solide_.” Then came freedom to worship, and later the Concordat reintroduced the old religious order, partially, it is true, because the people could or would not live without it, but largely for the sake of morals. If religion without morality becomes superstitious sentiment, morality without religion becomes for the average man inoperative ethics and ultimately a pitiless judge. There is no more oppressive tyrant than a high ethical code with a will, untrained, uninspired, and helpless to respond. It becomes a mocking and cruel Nemesis viewing with indifference its writhing victims. The Chinese Classics are preserved by the wonderful nation who produced them, as a literary treasure instead of as a practical code of conduct—the sure fate of the Bible apart from the Christian Church. It is too late in the day to pretend that morality and religion are synonymous, however intimate their relationship, or that the end of religion is to make men good. Righteousness, which is the Christian term for morality, is to be had only in part by the practice of embracing the excellent and bathing our mystic self in the fountain of ideals. The type of righteousness thus created can never be aught than self-conscious, like an overdressed woman, or a gaudy painting. The Mystic Sense must occupy itself in still higher altitudes. Having come from God and being partaker of His nature, it must aspire to Him. The end of life is religion, and the end of religion is to know God. The purest type of righteousness, experienced or conceivable, is created by our having as our dominant ambition to know the only God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. The net result is Christian Character. CHAPTER V