irreverence, is the glib confidence of the ignorant or the cynical
concealment of one who knows but dare not tell. What idea of the New
Testament does the average boy who leaves, say in the fifth form,
carry away with him from his public school? He may know that certain
facts are told in one Gospel and not in another; that there are
certain inconsistencies in the accounts given by the different
Synoptic Gospels of the same miracle, or what is apparently the same
miracle. He may be able to explain the parables more fully than their
author ever meant them to be explained; he may have at his fingers'
ends St Paul's journeys and even have been thrilled by St Paul's
shipwreck, but he will probably have missed the meaning of the good
news for himself and the power to treasure it for his life's strength.

This failure to appreciate and to accept the challenge of religion--a
failure shown later on in life in a certain diffidence about foreign
missions, and in the toleration of social conditions that deny Christ
as flatly as ever Peter did--is not the fault of the schools alone.
The schools only reflect the world outside and the homes from which
they are recruited. In neither is there as much light as there should
be. The difficulty of the vicious circle dominates this as so many
other problems. School reacts on the world, the world on the home[1]
and the home on school, the blame cannot be apportioned, need not be
apportioned; how the circle can be broken it is much more important to
determine. From time to time it has been broken, so decisively too
that for a while the riddle seems solved, at all events the old way is
abandoned for ever. Arnold's work at Rugby must have involved such a
breach. His work has never had to be done all over again and there
have been many to keep it in repair, but it needs to be extended now
in the light of new problems, scientific, social and international.
For this, as for all other extensions, courage is needed. The courage