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nize that the basis of moral character is religious experience. The State, as State, will therefore, for its own purposes, not tolerate, but most earnestly desire, the religious training of all its citizens. But the State will recognize that, as State, it cannot provide religious conviction or experience. Religion can only be taught, with real effect, by those to whom it is a definite reality. For religious training the State must look, in the nature of things, to the bodies which are animated by religious conviction. The State is not, and cannot make itself, a Church. The State can, of course, if it pleases, select any form of Church, and confer upon it exclusive privileges. Even so, for the religious impulse, it would have to look wholly to that Church. The State might support, but could not be, that Church.
But in point of fact, in respect of education, at least, we have reached a point in England at which this exclusive choice of any one denomination has become inconceivable. The State must remain impartial amongst denominations. And yet it must look to the denominations for the religion which for itself it intensely needs, but which it cannot, save through them, supply. The State desires religious citizens. The purpose of the State would therefore be served best of all if schools avowedly denominational, and educating on the basis of religious conviction, could cover the whole ground. The State does not decide whether Anglicanism is better than Wesleyanism, or Wesleyanism better than Agnosticism. But the State does realize that religious conviction is better than indifference. It would be served best if all the Anglicans in it were convinced and religious Anglicans, and the Romans religious Romans, and the Wesleyans religious Wesleyans, and the Congregationalists religious Congregationalists, and so on to the end; the Agnostics conscientious Agnostics, the Mahommetans scrupulously true as Mahommetans, the Buddhists thoroughly sincere and aspiring Buddhists.
