Note 42 — Chapter VIII · CONCLUSION

Worse still, the untruth is perpetuated by permitting our children to be brought up in the false beliefs of our believing friends. This, at least, should make us pause and reflect. Are we justified in keeping silence? Are we justified in making no effort to save the future generation from mental distress, or from what is far worse, a demoralising indifference? The dilemma is great, but that is no reason for shirking it. It must be faced, and the pros and cons carefully weighed. Is there, haply, no middle course that we may steer? We should not unnecessarily cause distress to the aged who have, all their days, cherished this belief, who have arrived at a time of life when ideas are not easily changed, and who feel that that life is now drawing to a close, and that they now more than ever require the consolation they have built their hopes upon. We should spare their feelings all we can; but we must, so it seems to me, put both them and ourselves to such distress as may arise from telling them plainly, when absolutely necessary, that we do not believe in the truth of Christianity, and do not think it right to bring up our children to what we consider is a false belief. We have seen that religious tolerance is the growing spirit of the age, that some of our greatest divines extol42 the virtues of the Agnostic, and condemn43 obscurantism and the odium theologicum. Shall we then, after all, in these days, cause so very much distress by our confessions of unbelief? As a rule, I think we shall not.