An inconvenient train service may compel H.M.Inspector to be present when religious instruction is being given; but though he may find much to deplore in what he sees and hears, he must abstain from criticism, and be content to play the _role_ of the man who looks over a hedge while a horse is being stolen.
In most elementary schools religion is taught on an elaborate syllabus which is imposed on the teacher by an external authority, and which therefore tends to destroy his freedom and his interest in the work.

It is not his business to take thought for the religious training of his pupils, to consider how the religious instinct may best be awakened in them, how their latent knowledge of God may best be evolved.

His business is to prepare them for their yearly examination, to cram them with catechisms, hymns, texts, and collects, and with stories of various kinds,--stories from the folk-lore of Israel, from the history of the Jews, from the Gospel narratives.

To appeal to the reasoning powers of his pupils would be foreign to his aim, and foreign, let me say in passing, to the whole tradition of religious teaching in the West.

The burden of preparing for an examination, whatever the examination may be, falls mainly on the faculty of memory.