One line leads to the neurotic, the other to the average sensual man, and I think it will be agreed that modern life produces a good crop of both these kind of defectives.
But if we believe that the permanent objective of the spirit is God--if He be indeed for us the Fountain of Life and the sum of Reality--can we acquiesce in these forms of loss?
Surely it ought to be our first aim, to make the sense of His universal presence and transcendent worth, and of the self's responsibility to Him, dominant for the plastic youthful consciousness confided to our care: to introduce that consciousness into a world which is really a theocracy and encourage its aptitude for generous love?
If educationists do not view such a proposal with favour, this shows how miserable and distorted our common conception of God has become; and how small a part it really plays in our practical life.

Most of us scramble through that practical life, and are prepared to let our children scramble too, without any clear notions of that hygiene of the soul which has been studied for centuries by experts; and few look upon this branch of self-knowledge as something that all men may possess who will submit to education and work for its achievement.
Thus we have degenerated from the mediaeval standpoint; for then at least the necessity of spiritual education was understood and accepted, and the current psychology was in harmony with it.

But now there is little attempt to deepen and enlarge the spiritual faculties, none to encourage their free and natural development in the young, or their application to any richer world of experience than the circle of pious images with which "religious education" generally deals.

The result of this is seen in the rawness, shallowness and ignorance which characterize the attitude of many young adults to religion.

Their beliefs and their scepticism alike are often the acceptance or rejection of the obsolete.
If they be agnostics, the dogmas which they reject are frequently theological caricatures.