SANTA CLARA COUNTY THED LIBRATORS L PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL JOURNAL. VOLUME XXXVI. That which makes a good Constitution must keep it, viz.: Men of wisdom and virtue; E. E. HIGBEE, EDITOR. LANCASTER, PA.: INQUIRER PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY. 1887. HE truth that music is for religion is equally evident in the fact that nothing. calls for it like religion. Men fight better under the stir of music but they can fight well without it. Business does not require it. Pleasure craves it, but the voice and the zest of young life supply its lack. It is not needed in the enacting of laws, nor in the pleadings of courts. It might be left out in every department of life save one, and nothing would be radically altered; there would be lack, but not loss of function. But religion as an organized thing and as worship could not exist without it. When song dies out where men assemble for worship, the doors are soon closed. When praise is repressed and crowded aside for the sermon, the service sinks into a hard intellectual process, for which men do not long care. Eloquence and logic will not take its place-why, it is difficult to say until it is recognized that music is the main factor of worship—a fact capable of philosophical statement, namely: Worship being a moral act of expression, it depends upon the rhythm and harmony of art for its materials; they are the substances-so to speak -ordained by God and provided in nature out of which worship is made. And so the Church in all ages has flowered into song. It takes for itself the noblest instrument and refuses none. It draws to itself the great composers whom is first attunes to its temper and then sets to its tasks which invariably prove to be their greatest works. In no other field do they work so willingly and with so full exercise of genius. There is a freedom, a fulness and perfection in sacred composition to be found in no other field. In all other music there is a call for more or for something different, but the music of adoration leaves the spirit in restful satisfaction. Dryden, the most tuneful of poets, divided the crown between old Timotheus and the divine Cecilia, but surely it is greater to "draw an angel down" than "lift a mortal to the skies." The fact that all religious conviction and feeling universally run to music for their full and final expression certainly must have some philosophical explanation. In rough and crude form it may be stated thus; music is the art-path to God in whom we live and move and have our being. We may get to God by many ways-by the silent communion of spirit with Spirit, by aspiration, by fidelity of service, but there is no path of expression so open and direct as that of music. The common remark that music takes us away from ourselves, is philosophically true. When under its spell we transcend our ordinary thought and feeling and are carried—as it were—into another world; and if it be sacred music, that world is the world of the Spirit. When the spell ends and we come back to this present world, we do not cease to believe in that into which we were lifted. While there, lapped in its harmonies and soaring in its adorations, we felt how real that world is and how surely it must at last be eternally realized. Towards that age of adoring harmony humanity is struggling, and into that upper world where the discords of time and earth are resolved into tune, every earnest soul is steadily pressing. Rev. Dr. T. T. Munger. 259913 H JULY, 1887. No. 1. DR. E. E. HIGBEE, SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION. OSTS of friends were outraged in the break the line of the enemy where it was reckoned strongest, and spike a half-dozen of their noisiest guns so that these have not since fired an effective shot. fury of persecution to which, for many months, Dr. E. E. Higbee was subjected because of his proper but as the sequel showed-impolitic method of administering the civil service in the office of the Department of Soldiers' Orphan Schools. They knew what a trifling matter had thrown wide open the flood-gates of calumny, namely, unwillingness to appoint an unskilled man as chief clerk, in the vain hope that Gov. Pattison would consent to his appointment as financial clerk. They saw with amazement a well-organized and patriotic charity represented in such odious coloring, by a newspaper expert in the work of defamation specially adapted to the task, that what had been the pride was made to appear the shame of Pennsylvania. They knew, beyond all doubt or question, that it was done not to redress wrong, but to wreak vengeance upon an upright man by wrecking his repu-. tation and driving him from office humiliated and disgraced. With the keenest interest, as though themselves beset by a relentless foe, they watched the progress of this campaign of vilification and falsehood, unexampled in the educational or humanitarian history of the State. They then saw an ex parte investigation, conducted wholly in the interest of the enemy, with slanderous reports emanating almost daily from the hostile camp, and spread far and wide by the telegraph and through the columns of scores of the newspaper press, by many of whose editors they were innocently accepted and published as the truth. They saw the sentiment of the great mass of the reading public harden cruelly upon the side of wrong, and awaited with some degree of apprehension the final assault. They saw this man endure with heroic fortitude, for months, when struggle would have been of no avail; but also fight gallantly for the truth with all the courage and skill of the trained soldier when the hour was come for battle. They saw him, at his first onset, As the Merrimac bore down upon the little Monitor so came the Record craft, with John Norris in command-confident of victory. His guns were very noisy; they filled the air with the smoke and thunder of battle; and they hammered hard. But the sturdy Monitor got in a heavy solid shot through the port-hole of "Clothing Accounts," which so damaged the machinery of the Record's arithmetic and book-keeping-to say nothing of some other effective shots in the way of Col. Paul's retention in office fully explained, minute inspection of the schools carefully reported, and their generally excellent condition clearly presented, challenging contradiction or replythat the Record aforesaid, though clad like its compeer, the Merrimac, in panoply of |