with surprise or indignation, that discovering themselves arrived, they discover familiar strangers and dear antagonists, assembled like themselves at that elusive and unique and common goal. The chapters which make up this book are intended to illustrate this theme. LIVERPOOL March 1916 E. T. C. Τῷ Δ ̓ ἐν ἡΜΙ͂Ν θείῳ ΣΥΓΓΕΝΕΣ €ἰεὶ κινήσεις αἱ ΤΟΥ͂ παντὸς ΔιΑΝοήσεις καὶ περιφοραί. ταύταις ΔΗ ΣΥΝΕΠΟΜΕΝΟΝ ἐκACTON Δεῖ . . .. τῷ ΚΑΤΑΝΟΟΥΜένῳ τὸ ΚΑΤΑΝΟΟΥ͂Ν ἐΞΟΜΟΙὣςαι κατὰ τὴν ἀρχαίας ΦYCIN, ὁμοιώCANTA δὲ τελος ἔχειν τοῦ προτεθέντος ἀνθρώποις ὑπὸ θεῶν ἀρίστου βίου πρός τε τὸν παρόντα καὶ τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον. PLATO, Timaeus, 9o D. Εἰ καὶ σοὶ ἑδραῖος ἀεὶ Βίος, οὐδὲ θάλαςςAN Anth. Ρal. xi. 42. The necessities of the present and the ideals of the future are both related to the past. An ideal shaped by present necessity alone is always untrue to permanent relations. An attempt to meet present necessities shaped only by an ideal is always untrue to fact and baseless. The past is at once the cause of the present and the womb of the possibilities of the future. F. J. A. HORT, The Way, the Truth, the Life, Macmillan, 1894, p. 201. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION If we are to discuss Religious Instruction with any advantage, we must attempt some definitions. We must determine what we mean by Instruction and by Religion: the first is a hard word, the second harder. By religion I shall here intend the sense of mystery; the search for the heart of mystery and the discovery for ourselves of relationships, personal, intimate, with mystery, which still eludes us as our knowledge advances; the government of conduct and the ordering of affairs in the light of these relationships, coloured by experience and hardened by commerce with the world; and finally the emerging harmony of the mysterious with the actual, the constructive destruction of the barriers between two realms. Much as men differ from their fellows in experience, and in the account which they give of experience, in this at least they are at one. They all make a distinction between the region of knowledge and the region, variously named, of whatever lies beyond knowledge. The distinction is important; for it C. E. I affords the most common, and indeed the universal, mode of a great affirmation, namely, that there are two regions: that of knowledge, and another; and that of both we are in some sort aware. If the horizon is drawn with a vast compass, its encircling boundaries, wide as they may be, do not limit the range of the spirit which is urged by fearful adventure or hazardous hope beyond their confines; or if a man's life seems to be spent within a clear, bright circle of illumination, the vividness of the light makes sharp the edges of an unknown and invisible region, with which he claims the beginnings of acquaintance by saying that he does not know it. Or, if instructed by our climate, and set in half lights and transparent mists, we can claim neither the broad spreading horizon upon the verge of which the eye falls in weariness to dreams, nor the vivid contrast of light with darkness, we may yet find in the demesne of our thought what at all seasons an English landscape offers: a certain shy clearness revealing itself fitfully, and as fitfully withdrawing behind a veil of romantic obscurity; like the bloom blurring and enriching outlines upon which eye and imagination rest; like the warm breath of cold October fields; the cold vapour which drapes and designs the form of summer meadows; the netted shadows of leaves still or tremulous, rent by a sudden gust, and settling once more upon the ground; the other element, neither water nor air, which lies upon the surface of water and supports the air, dividing, uniting, hiding, interpreting both. |