might know the way by which they must go, _for they had not passed
this way before_. Once again a river of decision has to be crossed, a
road has to be trodden along which men have not passed before. Whether
we speak of reconstruction or a new start or use any other metaphor to
show our conviction that war has changed all things, the idea is the
same. We must see to it that the ark of the covenant is borne before
our nation and our schools, along the way that is new and still full
of stones of stumbling.

Either the old landmarks have disappeared or a new land has to be
explored. Somehow, all things have to be made new, for even the
spiritual things have been destroyed or are found wanting. It is to
the schools, to the homes, to the mothers of England that the richest
opportunity comes. If they can solve the difficulty of making the
Christian education and the Christian life react upon one another the
partition walls between religion and conduct will be broken down for
every age. Intentionally or unintentionally, these walls have been
built up, perhaps by the teachers and parents, certainly by the
conventions of life. The result is that though there is more true
religion in the schools than is acknowledged by those outside and than
those within care to boast of, and though the standard of conduct is
not ignoble, there is too little fusion; both components are brittle,
they cannot stand the strain of sudden temptation, they lack enduring
power. No one will forget how in those first months of war,
consolation was offered even from pulpits for all the horrors and the
sadness and the waste of conflict in the thought that as a nation we
should be purged of selfishness, of luxury, of sensuality, of all the
vices that peace engenders. That is surely a shameful confession, that
our religion had been in vain. We had to wait for, and partake in, a
three years' orgy of cruelty and violence to learn what our Lord had