312 THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



becomes most pernicious of all when it is associated 

 with the political aims of a modern state, and is 

 enforced as " religious instruction" in our schools. 

 The child's mind is thus early diverted from the 

 pursuit of the truth and impregnated with super- 

 stition. Every friend of humanity should do all in 

 his power to promote unsectarian schools as one of 

 the most valuable institutions of the modern state. 



The great value which is, nonetheless, still very 

 widely attached to sectarian instruction is not only 

 due to the compulsion of a reactionary state and its 

 dependence on a dominant clericalism, but also to the 

 weight of old traditions and " emotional cravings " 

 of various kinds. One of the strongest of these is 

 the devout reverence which is extended everywhere to 

 sectarian tradition, to the " faith of our fathers." In 

 thousands of stories and poems fidelity to it is extolled 

 as a spiritual treasure and a sacred duty. Yet a little 

 impartial study of the history of faith suffices to 

 show the absurdity of the notion. The dominant 

 evangelical faith of the second half of the nineteenth 

 century is essentially different from that of the first 

 half, and this again from that of the eighteenth 

 century. The faith of the eighteenth century diverges 

 considerably from the " faith of our fathers" of the 

 seventeenth, and still more from that of the sixteenth, 

 century. The Eeformation, releasing enslaved reason 

 from the tyranny of the popes, is naturally regarded 

 by them as darkest heresy ; but even the faith of the 

 papacy itself had been completely transformed in the 

 course of a century. And how different is the faith 

 of the Christian from that of his heathen ancestors. 

 Every man with some degree of independent thought 

 frames a more or less personal religion for himself, 



