The child who attends school regularly and punctually, as many children do, will have been the victim of upwards of two thousand "Scripture lessons" by the time he leaves school.
The question of religious education in elementary schools has long been the centre of a perfect whirlpool of controversial talk.

The greater part of this talk is, to speak plainly, blatant cant.

Every candidate for a seat in the House of Commons thinks it incumbent upon him to say something about religious education, but not one in a hundred of them has ever been present in an elementary school while religious instruction was being given.

The Bishops of the Established Church wax eloquent in the House of Lords over the wickedness of a "godless education" and the virtue of "definite dogmatic teaching," but it may be doubted if there is a Bishop in the House who has in recent years sat out a Scripture lesson in a Church of England school.

It would be well if all who talked publicly about religious education could be sentenced to devote a month to the personal study of religious instruction as it is ordinarily given in elementary schools.