the very rare teacher can succeed in this. Punishment through the sense of honor has therefore superseded for the most part in our best schools the use of the rod. It is now easy to find the school admirably disciplined and its pupils enthusiastic and law-abiding,-governed entirely without the use of corporal punishment.

The school possesses very great advantages over the family in this matter of teaching respect for law. The parent is too near the child, too personal to teach him this lesson.

9. Religious duties. Higher than the properly moral duties, or at least higher than the secular or "cardinal" virtues, are certain ones called “celestial" virtues by the theologians. These are faith, hope, charity, and their special modifications. The question may arise, whether any instruction in these duties can be given which is not at the same time sectarian? An affirmative answer will have to show only that each of these virtues has a secular meaning more fundamental than the so-called cardinal virtues.

(1) Faith in a theologic sense means the true knowledge of the first principle of the universe. Everybody presupposes some theory or view of the world, its origin and destiny, in all his practical and theoretical dealing with it. Christendom assumes a personal Creator of divine-human nature, who admits man to Grace in such a way that he is not destroyed by the results of his essential imperfection, but is redeemed in some special way. The Buddhist and Brahmin thinks that finitude and imperfection are utterly incompatible with the divine being, and hence that the things of the world cannot be permitted to have real existence. They exist only in our fancy. Here is no grace, no redemption. Nature being not a revelation of the Deity, there can be no natural science.

In Christian countries the prevailing institutions and confessions of faith recognize this belief in a divine-human God. Natural science may be said to presuppose this doctrine, inasmuch as it is based on the deep-lying assumption that the world is a manifestation of Reason. This view of the world is very properly called Faith, inasmuch as it is not pieced together from the experience of the senses nor a product of individual reflection unaided by the deep intuitions of the spiritual seers of the race.

Faith is a secular virtue as well as a theological virtue, and whoever teaches another view of the world,—that is to say, he who teaches that man is not immortal and that Nature does not reveal the Divine Reason,-teaches a doctrine subversive of faith in this peculiar sense, and also subversive of man's life in all that makes it worth living.

(2) Hope. The second theological virtue is the practical side of

faith. Faith is not properly the belief in some theory of the world, but in the particular theory of the world that Christianity teaches. So hope is not a mere anticipation of some future event, but the firm expectation that the destiny of the world is in accordance with the scheme of faith, no matter now much any present appearances may be against it. Thus the individual acts upon this conviction. It is the basis of the highest practical doing in this world. A teacher may teach faith and hope in the views of the world which he expresses, and in his dealings with his school, in his teaching of history, in his comments on the reading-lessons, in his treatment of the aspirations of his pupils. Although none of these things may be consciously traced to their source by the pupils, yet their instinct will discover genuine faith and hope whenever it exists. Nothing is so difficult to conceal as one's conviction in regard to the origin and destiny of the world and of man.

(3) Finally, Charity is the highest of these virtues, in the sense that it is the concrete embodiment and application of that view of the world which Faith and Hope establish. The world is made and governed by Divine Grace, and that grace will triumph in the world. Hence, says the individual, "Let me be filled with this principle and hold within myself this divine feeling of grace toward all fellowcreatures." Charity is, therefore, not alms-giving, but a devotion to others: "Sell all thou hast . and follow me." Faith perit where it is not yet visible; There might be conceived

ceives the principle; Hope acts upon Charity sets it up in the soul and lives it. a faith or insight into this principle of divine grace that should trust it theoretically, and yet its possessor live a life of selfishness. In that case the individual would acknowledge the principle, but would not admit it into himself. With Charity all other virtues are implied, even justice.

While Courtesy acts toward men as if they were ideally perfect and had no defects; while Justice holds each man responsible for the perfect accordance of his deed with his ideally perfect nature and makes no allowance for immaturity, Charity sees both the ideal perfection and the real imperfection, and does not condemn, but offers to help the other, and is willing and glad to sacrifice itself to assist the imperfect in its struggle toward perfection.

10. The highest virtue, Charity, has, of all the virtues, the largest family of synonyms: humility, considerateness, heroism, gratitude, friendliness, and various shades of love in the family (parental, filial, fraternal, and conjugal), sympathy, pity, benevolence, kindness, toleration, patriotism, generosity, public-spirit, philanthropy,

beneficence, concord, harmony, peacableness, tenderness, forgiveness, mercy, grace, long-suffering, etc. The typical form of this virtue as it may be cultivated in school may be known under the name of kindness. A spirit of true kindness, if it can be made to pervade a school, becomes a fountain of virtues. That such a spirit can exist in a school as the effect of the labors of a teacher, we know from the history of Arnold of Rugby, not to mention other illustrious examples. From the definition of this principle it is easy to deduce a verdict against all those systems of rivalry and emulation in school which stimulate ambition beyond the limits of generous competition and cause it to become selfishness. Selfishness is the root of mortal sin, as theologians tell us, and its most. deadly forms are envy and cold, unfeeling pride.

II. In a State which has no established church, and in a system of public schools that is not permitted to be under the control of sects or denominations, what shall be the fate of dogmatic instruction in morals, especially instruction in that part of morals which rests upon the celestial virtues? The problem would seem to be a simple one in parochial schools and denominational schools. But the more strict the denominational control, the less likely is there. to pervade the school that spirit of tolerance and charity toward others which is the acknowledged deepest tap-root of the virtues. Were the community homogeneous in its confession of faith, dogmatic religious instruction could still properly remain in the school. The progress of American society is not, however, in that direction, and it is not impossible that the Church may yet see formal religious instruction, even to the ceremony of reading the Bible, leave the common schools altogether. Whenever the reading of the Bible "without note or comment," or the formal prayer on opening school, is merely perfunctory, it is surely not moral instruction, nor even religious instruction, in any efficient sense.

12. For the reason that the State must confine its cognizance to overt acts, and forbear to penetrate the sacred circle of personal conviction lest it violate justice, it has been separated from the Church in our time. Justice returns his deed upon the individual and bids him take its consequences, but it cannot say, "Receive back the consequences of your private, unuttered conviction"; for conviction, opinion, thought, so long as not externalized in deeds, do not belong to the secular world, and cannot be arraigned without a confusion that would destroy the secular world altogether. The State may return only his deed on the doer. What has not yet become a deed but remains only a thought is not uttered, or externalized, and therefore cannot be returned.

Religion, on the contrary, looks at once to the heart, the innermost conviction, and passes by the overt act as something which may be done for the sake of ulterior, selfish reasons. On these grounds the laws of the State have generally the prohibitory form, while the requirements of religion are positive. Morality, like the statute-laws, concerns overt acts, but its prescriptions are generally of a positive character, like those of religion. The distinction between sin and crime marks the essential difference between civil and religious legality. For the purposes of justice, law-breaking must be punished; and before this can be done there must be a measure established. The statute defines this measure, as nearly as possible it is the equivalent of the deed, or the deed itself sym bolically expressed. A sin is regarded as infinite in its nature, and nothing is more fatal to religion than the admission of a measure for sin in the form of a finite penance. Only absolute repentance may be met by an infinite mercy, but there can be no purchase of forgiveness nor atonement by deeds for the act of sin. This is the root of the great difficulty which your committee have encountered in the practical disposition of the many questions that arise in the provinces common to morality and religion, or common to religion and secular statutes. The same deed may be both a sin and a crime, although many deeds that are not sins of themselves may be crimes, and there are an indefinite number of sins that are not punished by the law as crimes. To meet any crime with forgiveness and remission of penalty, undermines the respect for all law. But religion finds itself unable to deal with breaches of law otherwise than in the category of sin; and if it attempts to punish crime as sin it makes unjustly-severe penalties in some cases, and remits all penalty in others, and thus confounds the standards of justice.

This distinction of methods appears also in the school. Religion. demands implicit submission to authority, and the limitation of the exercise of free criticism; individual opinion is not permitted to have validity in the presence of religious dogmas. The individual must submit in humility and not question, because religious utterances express the wisdom of the race. On the other hand, in the studies of the school, such as mathematics, natural science, history, and grammar, the pupil is encouraged by all means to exercise a critical alertness, and to summon all conclusions before the tribunal of his individual reason. The analytic studies of the school are a preparation for an intelligent insight into those parts of religion or theology which imply erudition and criticism. But for the most part, religious truth is revealed in allegoric and symbolic form.

On account of this difference in spirit we find often that the attempt to unite religious instruction with secular tends to cultivate habits of flippant and shallow reasoning on sacred themes, thus sapping the foundations of piety; or that, on the other hand, the influence of the dogmatic tone of the religious lessons creeps into the secular recitations and drives out critical acuteness and independent thinking from the mind of the pupil. Too much authority leaves too little room for original, independent thinking. Accordingly, the days of the closest union of the school with the Church were the days of almost exclusive culture of the memory, a tendency which has cost the educators of this day much trouble to check.

In religious lessons, wherein the divine is taught as revealed to the human race, the raw, immature intellect of youth is not to be permitted to attempt to construct for itself theoretically the contents. This can be done safely only by maturest minds, who have not only thought deeply, but have attained a rich experience in life.

These views of the question leave us in doubt as to the wisdom of those who advocate the retention in all cases of formal religious instruction in schools. Perhaps religion has suffered in our day from too much reliance on the inefficient remnant of religious instruction. which still lingers in the schools. If this be true, the sooner the Church arouses to a sense of its duty in the matter of furnishing religious instruction independently of the secular school, the safer will it be for the all-important interests which it bears. Dr. Vincent and the Chautauqua enterprise furnish practical lessons as to methods and measures which the Church may use.

13. In conclusion your committee would call attention to the points already discussed, viz:

(1) That in the mechanical virtues so important for making good citizens, the training in the schools is already admirable. Human freedom is realized not by the unaided efforts of the individual, but by his concerted or combined effort in organized institutions like the State and Civil Society, Those mechanical virtues make possible the help of the individual in this combination, and fit him for the modern world now bent on the conquest of Nature.

(2) The social virtues, Justice, Politeness, and respect for law, may be provided for equally well, although in fact they are not successfully taught in all schools.

(3) The celestial virtues can be taught by teachers inspired by those virtues, and by no other teachers. The empty profession of such virtues without the devotion of the life to them is likely in the schoolroom even more than elsewhere to produce the well-known practical result of atheism.