Ideally, as an experiment, I should like to tell a boy nothing about religion--teach him merely his moral duty--till he is of age; then put the Bible into his hands.

There would be, of course, a great deal--the 'purely mythological or Herodotean element,' as Strauss calls it--and the miraculous element generally, that he would probably at first reject; but if he was of an appreciative nature--and I am presupposing that, because I don't think the theory of education is for the apathetic and unsensitive--he would see, I believe, not only the extraordinary sublimity of language and expression, but the unparalleled audacity and magnificence of thought and aspiration.

That he would realize the points in which these conceptions were wild, deficient, or childish, would not blind him, I think, to the grandeur of the other side.
"As a matter of fact, we mix up moral duty with intellectual and spiritual so clumsily, and force it so inopportunely and immaturely upon our children, that if in later years questionings begin to arise, or complications in any part of life, the smash that follows is terrific: the whole thing goes by the board.
"For instance: many a man who undergoes a moral conversion will reject his whole intellectual growth angrily and contemptuously as savoring of the times of vanity.

In my scheme such a waste would be impossible; the two would be on different planes and not inextricably intertwined.
"Besides, I think that young men suffer terribly from the shock inflicted on their affection and traditional sentiment.
"They grow up with certain stereotyped conceptions on religious subjects, certain dogmas imperfectly understood but crudely imagined and gradually crystallized into some uncouth shape.
"The prejudices of children, and ideas that have grown with them, are, I think, ineradicable in many cases.
"Let us take three instances of such ordinary conceptions--'Grace,' 'the Resurrection of the Body,' 'The Holy Spirit.' "Here are three vast conceptions.

The anxious parent endeavours to explain them to the child: who, in his turn, receives three grotesque and whimsical ideas which represent themselves to him something in the following shape: "_Grace_.