Manhater English

"It is not prudent to be in the right too soon, nor to be in

the right against everybody else. And yet it sometimes

happens that after a certain lapse of time, greater or

lesser, you will find that one of those truths which you had

kept to yourself as premature, but which has got abroad in

spite of your teeth, has become the most commonplace thing

imaginable."

-Alphonse Karr.

ONE purpose of these chapters is to explain how unfounded are the objections of many excellent Christians to Secular instruction in State, public, or board schools. The Secular is distinct from theology, which it neither ignores, assails, nor denies. Things Secular are as separate from the Church as land from the ocean. And what nobody seems to discern is that things Secular are in themselves quite distinct from Secularism. The Secular is a mode of instruction; Secularism is a code of conduct. Secularism does conflict with theology; Secularist teaching would, but Secular instruction does not.