FUNCTIONS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 277 



completely without some realization of eternity in his temporal exist- 

 ence. Education is the transfer to each new generation of the ac- 

 cumulated products of race-experience; but religion is the supreme 

 and most commanding product of that experience. Education, 

 finally, is society's method of self -purification and progress; but 

 social existence has ever had one of its chief roots in a common 

 worship; society has ever included not only fellowship of men with 

 one another, but also with superior beings. It is a precarious hypo- 

 thesis that the social sense, apart from the religious sense, can ever 

 be self-sustaining, much more self-purifying. 



The reason for religious education, then, is precisely the same as 

 the reason for education, and also the same as the reason for religion. 

 Religious education is religion taken in earnest, and it is education 

 taken in earnest. It is education in the complete and proper sense. 

 It develops the whole man, adjusts him to his real environment, 

 transfers to him all the values of race-experience, prepares him for 

 living a complete life, and transfigures the social sense with the ideal 

 feelings and faiths whence perennially may spring new and ever 

 purer social aspiration. 



To give the reason for anything is also, by implication at least, 

 to indicate its functions. Instead, therefore, of trying to show in 

 detail how education fulfills the notion of it that has just been de- 

 scribed, it will be sufficient to call attention to one or two possible 

 misunderstandings of what is its essential process, and finally to 

 its relation to certain characteristic needs of modern life. 



In respect to the individual, the function of religious education 

 is the gradual development of a realization of God. God in nature, 

 in history; God in all truth and beauty and goodness; God in the 

 depths of one's own personality -- growingly to realize this Presence, 

 and to order one's life in the light of it, is to be educated in religion. 



This proposition is not to be understood in any merely mystical, 

 or merely dogmatic, or merely ritualistic sense. Learning a system 

 of dogmas, or performing set acts of worship, may enter into religious 

 education as parts or agencies of it, but they are not identical with 

 it. True education is not merely instruction, or learning about things, 

 but rather living increasingly in the reality as opposed to the mere 

 shows of life. It is not merely the performance of this or that act, 

 or even the formation of certain habits; it is also the growing self- 

 control and self-guidance of a soul that is achieving its freedom. 

 Religion, too, is not identical with any of these, or with the joys of 

 mystical contemplation. Rather, as " God fulfills himself in many 

 ways," so religion has many aspects. It is as many-sided as our 

 nature, and hence education therein must be as broad as the whole 

 man. 



The function of religious education, moreover, is not to effect a 



