I do not wish to suggest that the religious instruction given in our elementary schools is always formal and mechanical. There are teachers who can break through the toils of any system, however deadly, and give life to their teaching in defiance of conditions which would paralyse the energies of lesser men. As I write, I recall two teachers of elementary schools, who, in spite of having to prepare their pupils for diocesan inspection, succeeded in quickening their religious instincts into vital activity. The first was a schoolmaster,--a "strong Churchman," and a sincerely religious man. The second was a woman of genius, whose extraordinary sympathy with and insight into the soul of the child, enabled her to give free play to all his expansive instincts, and in and through the evolution of these to foster the growth of his religious sense. I can never feel quite sure that this teacher fully realised how deeply, and yet healthily, religious her children were. If she did not, I can but apply to her what Diderot said to David the painter, when the latter confessed that he had not intended to produce some artistic effect which the former had discovered in one of his pictures: "Quoi! c'est a votre insu? C'est encore mieux." To make children religious without intending to do so is a profoundly significant achievement, for it means that the fatal distinction between religious and secular education has been "utterly abolished and destroyed." Both these teachers fell, as it happened, under the ban of the Diocesan Inspector's displeasure. The schoolmaster took over a school which was not only inefficient in the eyes of the Education Department, in respect of instruction and discipline, but was also tainted in its upper classes with moral depravity. He speedily restored it to efficiency, and reformed its moral tone. In accomplishing these salutary changes, he relied mainly on an appeal which he made, in all manly sincerity, to the religious sense of the older boys. The faith in human nature which prompted him to make this appeal was justified by the response which it evoked. In less than a year the school was transformed beyond recognition. In less than two years it was one of the best in its county; indeed in respect of moral tone and religious atmosphere it was perhaps _the_ best. Meanwhile the work of cramming the children for the yearly diocesan examination must have fallen into arrears; for the school, which under my friend's incompetent predecessor had always been classed as "Excellent," sank to the level of "Good" in the year after he left, and in the following year to the level of "Fair." Any one who has any acquaintance with the reports of the Diocesan Inspector knows that the summary mark "Fair," when employed by him, is equivalent to utter damnation.