and worshiped with equal freedom from molestation, Chicago now is, by virtue of the concourse to the great exposition, a microcosm, a compendium of the world's civilization.

The supreme development of that civilization is manifest in the recognition which the unprecedented parliament gives to the good, and to the God that inspires all religious sentiment. "In him we live and move and have our being," as St. Paul, quoting Cleon, said nearly nineteen hundred years ago. Strange that it has taken the world so long to discover the full meaning of this superb sentiment.

Shall we not learn from this parliament that in religion, as in matter, there is a

affirmative answer to the question, first inspired by the evil one, "Am I my brother's keeper ?"

It was Cardinal Gibbons who directly brought the question and answer before the parliament, but they are expressed or implied in the addresses of all the speakers. This great lesson of the responsibilities of all men, as the creatures of one God and as the brothers of all men, is being illustrated and emphasized by the Parliament of Religions as it never before has been.-Inter-Ocean.

LEAD THEM TO THINK.

that we shall learn that the cardinal ideas of Christianity, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, have counterparts in all religions that have endured the stress of centuries? May we not, after reading Vivekananda's reproduction of the Zoroastrian hymn

As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, O Lord, so the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to thee

remember Robert Browning's verse:

So many roads lead up to God, 'Twere strange if any soul should miss the mall; and remember also that he who had vision in Patmos beheld besides and more numerous than the 144,000 of each of the tribes of Israel "an exceeding great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues," worshiping in Heaven?

From the archbishop of the Catholic church in Chicago, from the cardinal of the Catholic church in America, from archbishops and princes of the Greek church in Russia and in the Morea, from representatives of Lutheran Germany, of the English State church in British colonies, from the teachers of the Confucian doctrine in China, from reverend expounders of the Puritanism of New England, from Protestant bishops in Africa, from disciples of Mohammed, from Hindoos learned in the Vedas and Shastras, from Japanese exponents of Shintoism, from men gathered-as in St. John's vision—from all kindreds and nations and peoples and tongues, the world is receiving one lesson, taught by divers methods, that the end and aim of all religions is an

ECENTLY a teacher said to me: My

standing of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, but I can't teach them to solve a problem combining two of these rules, let alone all four of them." "What effort have you made?" I asked. "Well, I have worked them over and over for the children. I have kept them in and made them study, and I don't know what to do next."

"But have you taught them how to study? I asked.

"I have told them to study."

"Let's try showing them how to stndy," I suggested. Then I put this problem on the board:

"John Jones sold 5,625 bushels of wheat at $2 a bushel, and received in payment 132 acres of land at $50 an acre, 45 head of horses at $65 a head, and 5 town lots at $125 each. With money received he bought sheep at $3 each; how many sheep did he get?"

"They will never do that, for it's twice as difficult as any they have ever failed on," said the teacher.

"Now, children," said I, "here is an example that I want you to work for me from your seats. But first I want to tell you that it is bristling with question marks. Let's read it over carefully, and then we will go hunting for question marks." In a few moments I was greeted with a score of uplifted hands.

John-"What did Mr. Jones get for his wheat?"

Mary-"What did he pay for the

land?"

Sarah-"What did he pay for the horses?"

William "What did he pay for the lots?"

money?"

Samuel "How many sheep did he get for the money he received?”

'Very good. We have found that there are eight question marks hidden in this example, and here we have eight questions. Now I think we can answer all those questions in fifteen minutes."

Before fifteen minutes had passed several hands were up, and at the end of that time nineteen of the thirty-five had done the work neatly and correctly, and the failure of a majority of the others was due to mistakes in multiplication and division. The teacher was apt and willing, and, after a week's drill in this way, she informed me that they could not only solve an ordinary example combining four fundamentals, but that they had learned to look out for question marks in their other lessons, and also in the actions of themselves and their associates.

Teachers, who are at all worthy to be classed as such, are more and more agreed that good work in the schoolroom does not consist in cramming the child with facts, but in teaching how to think.-Educational News.

EDWARD THRING.

BY G. W. BROOKS.

DWARD THRING was an educa

first to note the contrast between culture and cramming. In his great work as Headmaster of Uppingham School (England), he demonstrated that the mind is an intellectual power to be trained, not a truck to be loaded.

As he entered upon his work as an educator, he was eager to perform the experiment of managing boys by wooing rather than by whipping, and to illustrate before the world the idea that juvenile minds are not knowledge-shops, to be stuffed with mental furniture, ready made by their instructors. Thring was also aglow with enthusiasm to prove that the chief object of a great school is "strength of mind and character, and that any process that contributes to give this kind of strength is true, even though little knowledge is gained by it."

Thus he emphasized training as the

edge was made tributary to that end. "Education," says Thring, "means training for life; life, not lessons, is what has to be dealt with, or lessons only so far as they inspirit life, enrich it and give it new powers. Nothing can be said before the distinction between the strong mind and the stuffed mind, between training and cram, is thoroughly recognized. Ă teacher is not a parrot-master, not a truckloader at a goods station. A teacher's object is not to load up his pupil with facts, but to train him how to get facts for himself. The teacher's aim is to create producing power." One of the highest functions of an instructor is to impart himself to his pupils; to enkindle in their minds his enthusiasm, and to make contagious his own scholarly habits. In the Uppingham school, every student was enthused with the burning desire of their master to illustrate the idea that education is not cramming for an examination, but training for life.

In the execution of his high design, Thring employed model methods. He was determined that the boys should do their own thinking. Sometimes he would startle a dull lad with Socratic queries, beginning thus,—

"What have you got sticking up between your shoulders?"

"My head."

"Quite sure it is not a turnip?" "Oh, yes; quite."

"Why, what is the difference?"

"Oh, a head thinks and a turnip does not."

And so the pupil would be led into an independent mental process.

People are ever ready to shirk thinking; they will buy manuals, read “Review of Reviews," attend lectures, consult editorials, reject weighty books, and in every other possible manner dodge the necessity of mental effort, and pay others. to do their thinking for them. This same indolence of mind characterizes youth; they will not think except under pressure or when stimulated by a quickening spirit. The educator who is a genius has a creative soul. He touches the inner springs of being and starts the thoughtproducing powers. His pupils will acquire the art of accurate observation, and will possess the power of communicating to others their impressions in clear-cut English. As one object with Thring was to stimulate independent mental effort, he

to lectures in modern educational methods. The object of the lecturer is to communicate knowledge; he has stuffed himself with facts, and his aim is to stuff his students. The true teacher deals not so much with books as with minds. "He is a trainer, not a truck-loader," says Thring. "The lecturer is like a ready-made clothes shop. His knowledge must be cut into the most acceptable manner. This requires much command of the book to be communicated and an effective delivery, but when done it is done. The lecturer leaves his audience and they leave him. It is in this that the difference lies between teacher and lecturer, between taught and belectured. The teacher makes the taught do the work, and occupies himself in showing them how to do it. His work is to direct, suggest, inspirit. The lecture is clearcut, beautifully connected, yet avoiding all close and laborious exactness. Teaching takes any shape, is fragmentary, disregards all precise plan, provided that a close, laborious, and exact exercise of mind is the result. The lecturer does the work and goes. The teacher makes his pupils work, and stands or falls by what they do. One thing is certain, the teacher and the lecturer represent two opposite poles; there is an antagonism in principle between a subject put forth attractively, when the master does the work and the disciple listens, and the problem of a dull mind solved and dormant faculties roused to efficient powers, when the disciple does the work and the disciple's mind is the subject, and the teacher is a practitioner on mind."

Entertaining such views, Thring rejected the current dictum that knowledge is power, and he believed that true force resided in the culture of the mind. That which he sought to produce was power in one's self. Often the minds of pupils are so crammed as to render impossible any independent intellectual effort.

his pupil strong and skilful in himself. Pumping and being pumped on, is not teaching and being taught. The shut mind defies all such attempts to reach it. Nothing can be done so long as the lid remains on. But why do the kettles keep the lid on? Because they do not believe in the deluge. No skill can reach a boy who does not believe in the value of what he is doing. What then is teaching? If teaching means calling out dormant faculties and strengthening minds, it is obvious that pumping indiscriminately on a class, though the veritable waters of Helicon be pumped, is not teaching. Mind is the teacher's subject. He must be able to deal with mind. The first thought of a teacher must be that he has to teach." Thring entertained the idea that if an instructor had no more than twenty-five students, he could have a personal interest in each. He knew that boys are not deficient in ability but are usually lacking the willingness to learn, and like every genius he had a quickening spirit and could thrill with life dormant faculties. A mere pedant pedagogue could teach rules; he could arouse the whole inner being.

Thring was a thorough believer in what Chalmers called, "the expulsive power of a new affection." He emphasized the vast difference between a prison and a school. It is safer to trust boys too much than too little. The prison system of education may produce big blockheads, all of the same dull uniformity; but when lads are loved, and trusted and won, they 'can be relied on to do right in sight and out of sight, from having right in themselves." There is only one way to make people lovely, and that is to love them. The teacher who is perfectly just can at times be severe, yet retain the affection of his students. The public opinion prevalent in a school can be utilized as a great power in discipline. When there was some misdemeanor, Thring would say, "Now, I am not going to waste words upon A and B. I hold the WHOLE SCHOOL responsible for these wrong things. Any society can put down offences, if it chooses. offences, if it chooses." Sometimes when an offence was known to have occurred among the boys of a particular department, all in that section were for a week excluded from the cricket field, and compelled to take their exercise walking two and two attended by a master. When

anything wrong occurred Thring did not ask "Who did it?" but "Who were there?" The punishment was distributed over the whole section as guilty. He would say, "I don't know who the offenders are, and I don't want to know. They would not have done it, if the rest of you disliked it enough." And thus this model master believed in collective punishment for individual offences.

Thus all the boys were anxious to prevent misdemeanors, or all would be punished if evil occurred. Public opinion in the school thus became healthy and helpful. With all the force of his being, Thring would denounce every form of cheating, such as the use of a "crib." When anything of the kind was discovered he would say, "A very disgraceful thing has been brought to my notice; two of you have been cheating at work. I mean the school to know what I think of this thing. I hold that to cheat a master is inexpressibly base. I know the mean things you say to yourselves, some of you, in your mean hearts, about its being natural to boys, and 'they all do it at other schools,' and the rest of that pitiful talk. But we are not 'other schools.' There have been times when schools were like prisons, and there was some wretched kind of excuse for cheating your jailors. But you don't live in a prison here. We make your life free and pleasant. We trust you. We make it easy to live a true life, and then you turn traitors to truth. Now, which you will! The prison, or the free life of true society." Thus Thring put moral ozone into the atmosphere of the school. To raise individuals he raised the tone of the whole school. He was an athlete and often entered into the sports of the boys. He had a gift of wit. Once when addressing the lads on education he remarked that he would teach them some lessons in matters of discipline illustrated by WOOD CUTS. When some one remarked to him that a certain preacher was dry, "Dry!" exclaimed Thring, "why, my good fellow, brick-dust is butter to him.” Such a master and the boys did not constitute two parties, they were one. His great distinction was that he instituted self-government; by a healthy growth his boys became thoughtful, upright men. Their education prepared them for actual life.

He made men seers, young dreamers to desire The one thing good-to do the one thing right;

He cast truth's heart into the fiercest fight,
And bade us battle and never tire;
He kindled hope, he set dead faith afire,
Gave workers will, filled eyes with love and
sight,

And, by the lamp of service, thro' the night
Led learning from the ruts and from the mire.
Not praise nor scorn, not riches, honor, fame,
Could tempt his hand a moment from the
plough,

Nor the world-deafening clamor of the daws Pecking about the ploughshare harm his cause; Let others reap-he claimed to serve and sowAnd as he toiled, the Lord of Harvest came. -Education.

WHERE EXAMINATIONS FAIL.

BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
HE visible and certain nuisance of

examinations an evil which

is present, before a community as civilized as ours, all the time, excepting the summer vacation of the schools and colleges. It involves an absurdity equal to the absurdities of the decline of chivalry. It waits for some Cervantes, who shall ridicule it so thoroughly as to drive it from the public mind, so that the twentieth century may know of it only as most peo ple know of the squires of chivalry by Sancho Panza, or of knights-errant by Don Quixote. But, as the schools of the larger towns of Massachusetts open for the autumn, this month is perhaps the best month for bringing forward, with however little courage, a statement of the misery inflicted upon scholars, upon parents, and upon teachers by this rigmarole, if it were only that one should discharge an annual duty, and at the bar of any judge be able to say "I sounded my little trumpet, but the world was making such a noise that it did not hear." Jules Simon, now better known as a statesman than as a distinguished professor of the University of France, used to say, "When I was young, we prepared students for life; now we prepare them for examinations." The bitter satire of this statement could be repeated by ten thousand teachers in Massachusetts to-day. must be that a good many of the committeemen and supervisors, who have to do at least with the outside machinery of the thing, will sympathize with the teachers. We shall have a half dozen letters, before the week is over, to explain to us that, unless there is a system of mechanical examination in the Boston

It

schools, nobody can tell which school is "up to the mark" and which school is not. Nobody can tell, for instance, whether half-a-dozen Italian boys, eleven years old, who are at work in the Hancock School, with the difficulties of a new language before them, and with national peculiarities of early training, can answer on paper, with ink, the same questions which a set of boys, of Boston parentage and training, who are in the Dwight School or in the Dudley School, can answer. It is perfectly true that, without a fixed examination from printed papers emanated from the central office, nobody can tell this in such a way as pleases the statistical people. But, without any knowledge of one individual of either class in the Hancock School, the Dwight School, or the Dudley School, I can tell, without having seen one of the examination papers.

What earthly or heavenly reason can there be for driving all these boys, in these three classes, through such a series of questions, merely for the purpose of giving the statistical answer in a supposed inquiry, where everybody knows the real answer before the inquiry is made, and where the answer is of no importance when it is attained? Do you really want the Hancock School, for instance, to be the exact counterpart of the Dwight School, or the Dwight School to be the precise counterpart of the Dudley School? Do we not really want that the genius of the teacher in one shall show itself in his way, and the genius of the teacher in another shall show itself in his way? Are we really trying to turn out fitty thousand clothes-pins, of precisely the same pattern, in the Boston schools, are we trying to make of each boy and girl the best that can be made, and to encourage as we can the particular genius of each separate child? In some transfer of children from one building to another, last summer, there were examinations of unusual strictness, and the pupils were drilled for days in advance, by what might be called mock examinations. A careful and conscientious teacher, worn out by a day spent in this drill lamented to a friend, "Oh, it is so hard. They think so much of their writing-for they'll be marked on their writing-that they forgot their spelling; or else they think so much about the spelling that they forget to put in the quotation marks. And some of the boys are so thoughtless and

or

indifferent!" Upon inquiry, it appeared that the average age of these boys, who were "indifferent" to the niceties of quotation marks, was eight years and a half! Is it possible to conceive of rigmarole more absurd than that involved in a system which produces such results? -Boston Commonwealth.

LESSONS IN COURTESY.

POLITENESS Costs nothing and buys everything." Such is the quotation one often uses, and yet some teachers forget all about the lessons in courtesy. They are so easy to each, and often so enthusiastically received that the results surprise one. For instance, if the teacher always smiles a "Good-morning," and "I thank you," or "You're welcome;" if she says "Excuse me," when she jostles a seat, or "I beg your pardon," when she speaks the wrong name, the children have more dignity and pride in themselves. She may even insist upon like behavior from her scholars. A little attention and perseverance will make the children very careful towards the teacher, and even towards each other.

Many teachers give little talks on courtesy after the opening exercises. If they are informal and the school is interested, many little things can be taught before they know it. Many children have no idea of clothes brush, blacking brush, and, in many homes, the tooth brush. Praise nicely combed hair, neatly washed hands, and neatness in general. The road to improvement is always easier when you find something good to speak of first.

Many children assume very awkward attitudes, both when sitting and standing; Isn't it better to insist upon a good straight carriage, an easy, upright position, than to find boys with their hands in their pockets, shoulders humped, and heels scuffing, or girls with their legs crossed, elbows akimbo, or one hip supporting the body? Yet these failings are very common, and perhaps if children were watched in school they would make men and women who were more erect, better formed, and healthier. Insist upon the boys lifting their hats. This subject can be presented in a very pleasant way, and made so attractive that they forget their bashfulness. A great deal depends upon the ways of the teacher. If she is careful always to be courteous, even