^^^SS^'of™;^ MAY 23 1918 /^ %P61CM Sl^V ^"^ BV 1460 .R56 A4 1905 The Aims of religious education THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION BOSTON, 1905 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ^Vi OF p/i;jicf= MAY 23 1911 A THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION y OF THE Religious Education Association BOSTON FEBRUARY 12-16, 1905 % C5ICAL Sl^^ CHICAGO EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE ASSOCIATION 153 LA SALLE STREET 1905 COPYRIGHT, 190S BY THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO MRS. CYRUS H. McCORMICK, SENIOR, THROUGH WHOSE GENEROSITY ITS PUBLICATION WAS MADE POSSIBLE CONTENTS ADDRESSES AND DISCUSSIONS General Theme: THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ADDRESSES AT GENERAL SESSIONS PAGE The President's Annual Address ---------3 President Charles Cuthbert Hall The Annual Survey of Progress in Religious and Moral Education - - 9 President William Herbert P. Faunce Subject: How Can we Bring the Individual into Conscious Relation with God? The Direct Influence of God upon One's Life ------ 20 Bishop William Eraser McDowell The Bible as an Aid to Self-discovery - - -25 President Henry Churchill King The Church as a Factor in Personal Religious Development - - - 29 Bishop William Lawrence Religious Education as an Aid to Conscious Relation with God - - - 33 Mr. Loring Wilbur Messer Subject: How Can We Develop in the Individual a Social Conscience? Literature as an Expression of Social Ideals ----•' 2)7 Professor Arthur S. Hoyt Science as a Teacher of Morality --------40 Professor John Merle Coulter The Ethical Education of Public Opinion -------47 President Henry Smith Pritchett Discussion — - Professor Henry S. Nash - - - - - - -52 Professor William E. B. Du Bois - - - - - Si Dr. Samuel M. Crothers 55 Subject: Hoiv Can We Quicken in the Individual a Sense of National and Universal Brotherhood? The Sacredness of Citizenship ---------56 President William J. Tucker The Mission of Christianity to the World -------60 President Charles Cuthbert Hall V vi CONTENTS ADDRESSES AT DEPARTMENTAL SESSIONS THE JOINT SESSION OF DEPARTMENTS PAGE Subject: The Place of Formal Instruction in Religious and Moral Education In the Home --.-..-....67 President G. Stanley Hall In the Sunday School -..-____. .71 Dr. Everett D. Burr In the Young Men's Christian Associations ------ 76 Professor George Albert Coe In the Public School 80 Mr. George H. Martin In the Preparatory School - - - - - - - - -82 Rev. Endicott Peabody In the College ------------84 President George Harris /. THE COUNCIL OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION President's Address on the Work of the Department for the Year - - - 86 Dean Frank Knight Sanders The Field of Religious Education in America ------ go Professor Clyde W. Votaw The Co-ordination of Agencies within a Religious Community - - - 96 Dr. William C. Bitting What Co-operation is now Possible in Religious Education between Roman Catholics and Protestants? -_..--.. 102 Professor Thomas J. Shahan The Bible and Government Schools in the Philippines _ - - _ 107 Dr. Simeon Gilbert II. UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES What can Universities and Colleges do for the Religious Life of their Stu- dents? - - - - - - - - - - - -no President William R. Harper Mr. Roy Smith Wallace Discussion — President Henry Churchill King - - - - - 115 An Experiment in Religious Instruction in a College - - - - -117 President William De Witt Hyde What can Music do for the Religious Life of Students? - - - - 121 Professor H. C Macdougall CONTENTS vii ///. THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES PAGE The Annual Survey of the Work of Theological Seminaries _ . _ 124 President William Douglas Mackenzie Discussion— Professor George E. Horr Professor Alfred W. Anthony The Decline in the Number of Students for the Ministry - - - - 135 President Alfred T. Perry Discussion — Professor Williston Walker Shall a Committee be Appointed to Report on the Curricula of Theological Seminaries, with a View to Establishing Larger Uniformity ? 143 Professor Melancthon W. Jacobus IV. CHURCHES AND PASTORS Subject: Educational Aitns 0} the Church Christ as a Teacher ----------- 147 Bishop D. A. Goodsell The Church as an Educator ----- - _ . 148 Rev. Albert W. Hitchcock Culture Courses in Churches - - -- - - - - - 152 Dr. E. E. Chi vers Discussion — Rev. Edward Cummings Rev. John R. Gow Subject: The Educational Aims of the Pastor The Pastor as Teacher ----.._._. ijg Dr. Everett D. Burr The Pastor as an Educator ---------- 163 Dr. Cornelius H. Patton Adequate Intellectual Expression, by the Pastor, of the People's Spiritual Experience - - - - - - - - - - - -165 Dr. Charles S. Macfarland Discussion — Rev. W. a. Wood 168 V. SUNDAY SCHOOLS The Annual Survey of Sunday School Progress - - - - - -171 Rev. Pascal Harrower viii CONTENTS PAGE The Church's Problem of the Religious Education of Its People - - - 177 Professor Irving F. Wood Dr. J. T. McFarland President William Douglas Mackenzie Discussion — Dr. Lemuel Call Barnes ..----- 183 Mrs. Clara B. Beatley .-.-.-- 185 Principles Underlying the Sunday School Curriculum ----- 188 Mr. Patterson Du Bois Dr. F. N. Peloubet The Cultivation of Worship in and through the Sunday School. Report of the Committee ----------- 194 Professor Waldo S. Pratt Discussion — ----_--_.--- 197 Rev. George F. Nason Miss Lucy Wheelock Popular Bible-study by Coirmiunities -------- 202 Rev. C. a. Brand BibUography of Books and Lessons for the Sunday School. Report of the Committee ------------ 207 Dr. George W. Mead Rev. William W. Smith The Scope and Purpose of the Sunday School Exhibit - - - - 216 Dr. Richard Morse Hodge VI. SECONDARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS What Changes Should be Made in Public High Schools to Make Them More Efl&cient in Moral Training? - - - - - - -219 President G. Stanley Hall Discussion — Head Master Frederic Allison Tupper Has the Reading of Greek and Latin Literature any Effect, Favorable or Unfa- vorable, upon the Morals of Pupils? - - - - - - -225 Prlncipal William T. Peck Discussion — Principal Eugene D. Russell The Study of English Literature as a Means of Implanting High Moral Ideals 232 Mr. D. O. S. Lowell CONTENTS Discussion — Mr. a. J. George The Aims and Processes of Moral Development - - . - - 239 Head Master Frank H. Robson VII. ELEMENTARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS Subject: The Foundations of Religion and Morality How Far, and How, Can the Foundations of Religion be Laid in the Common Schools? - - - - 245 Professor Edwin D. Starbuck Dean Sarah L. Arnold What Moral Equipment May the Community Reasonably Demand of the Graduates of the Common Schools? ...--- 253 Mr. Walter H. Small The Indirect Education of the Will 258 Professor Herman H. Horne Subject: Tested Methods of Inculcatifig Religion and Morality Religionsunterricht and Its Results - - - - - - - -261 Mr. Edward O. Sisson Oriental Customs with Respect to the Inculcation of Religion and Morality 1. In China 267 Hon. Chester Holcombe 2. In India ....------- 271 Dr. Robert A. Hume IX. TEACHER-TRAINING Subject: The Training of Sunday School Teachers The Sunday School Teacher- training Accomplished by the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy - - - - - - - - -276 Dean Edward H. Knight The Sunday School Teacher-training Accomplished by the Secretarial Insti- tute and Training School of Chicago - - - - - - -279 President John W. Hansel The Sunday School Teacher-training Accomplished by the Alberta Sunday School Association - - - - - - - - - -281 Rev. Charles H. Heustis The Sunday School Teacher-training Accomplished by the Sunday School Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church ------ 283 Dr. Jesse L. Hurlbut Dr. J. T. McFarland X CONTENTS PAGE Subject: The Education Required for Sunday School Teaching The Nature and Extent of the Pedagogical Training Necessary for Sunday School Teachers ----------- 285 Professor J. S. Street The Character and Scope of the BibUcal Knowledge to be Expected of Sun- day School Teachers - - - - - - - - - -289 Professor William G. Ballantine X. CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS Annual Survey of the Progress of Religious Education in Young Men's Chris- tian Associations and Young Women's Christian Associations - - 293 Mr. Walter M. Wood Bible-study in Young Women's Christian Associations - - - - 298 Mrs. J. S. Griffith Mrs. Charles N. Judson The Religious Education, of Boys -------- 302 Mr. Edward P. Kaighn Outlines of a Course of Study in Philanthropies ----- 305 Professor H. M. Burr XI. YOUNG PEOPLES SOCIETIES A More Comprehensive Basis for the Union of Young People in their Socie- ties ------------- 309 Dr. Spenser B. Meeser Discussion ------------ 315 Mr. William Shaw What the Missionary Societies are Doing to Interest the Young People in Missions - - - - - - - - - - - -318 Mr. S. Earl Taylor Missionary Literature and Young People - - - - - - -321 Mr. W. Henry Grant XII. THE HOME The Part of the Home in Religious Education ------ 324 Professor Charles R. Henderson How can We Develop a Growing Consciousness of God in Cliildren and Youth? 330 Miss Alice E. Fitts The Continuity of Rehgious Education ...---- 335 Mrs. William D. MacClintock CONTENTS xi PACE The Growth of the Larger Sense of Social and Civic Responsibility in Youth 339 Professor Edwin D. Starbuck Plans for the Work of the Home Department for the Coming Year - - 344 Mrs. A^rDREW MacLeish XIII. LIBRARIES Annual Survey of the Religious and Ethical Work of Libraries - - - 345 Librarian Drew B. Hall The Moral Value of Reading - - - 348 Librarian William I. Fletcher Principles Governing the Choice of Religious and Theological Books for Pub- lic Libraries - - - -- - - - - - - 352 Librarian George F. Bowerman The Public Library and the Sunday School - - - - - -356 Librarian Sam Walter Foss Librarian Hiller C. Wellman The Need of Professional Libraries to Maintain the Standards of Our Ministry 361 Librarian George A. Jackson XIV. THE PRESS How can the Press Educate the Public Respecting the Progress and Meaning of the Missionary Movement? - - - - - - - -365 Mr. Silas McBee The Sunday Press as Related to Moral and Religious Education - - - 367 Mr. J. L. Sewall The Relation of the Religious Press to the Popularization of Bible-study - 371 Rev. F. a. Bisbee XV. CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION The Place and Possibilities of Correspondence Instruction in Religious Educa- tion ------------- 374 President Frank W. Gunsaulus A Survey of the Correspondence Courses at Present Available for Religious Education --- 379 Rev. Jesse L. Cuninggim The Classification of Correspondence Courses - - - - - -385 Miss Georgia L. Chamberlin XVI. SUMMER ASSEMBLIES Summer Sunday School Institutes -------- 390 Rev. E. Morris Fergusson xii CONTENTS PAGE Biblical Instruction at the Summer Assembly ------ 395 Professor Herbert C. Willett The Summer Assembly and the Moral Instruction of Children - - - ' 399 Dr. William Byron Forbush XVII. RELIGIOUS ART The Treatment of Church Interiors -------- 403 Mr. Ralph Adams Cram The Treatment of Church Exteriors -------- 407 Mr. James Sturgis Pray The Educative Power of Organ Music ------- 412 Mr. George A. Burdett The Educative Value of the Art of the Great Painters 41S Rev. Henry G. Spaulding Artistic Studies in Theological Seminaries ------- 418 Professor Waldo S. Pratt THE GENERAL ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS Subject: The Boy in the Country The Problem of the Country Boy -------- 429 Rev. Herbert A. Jump The Chivalric Idea in Work with Boys - - - - - - -433 Rev. Frank L. Masseck The Civic Idea in Work with Boys -------- 436 Principal Myron T. Scudder Subject: The Boy in the City A Country School and Camp for City Boys ------- 439 Principal Edward A. Benner The Juvenile City League of New York ------- 442 Mr. William C. Langdon Federating Church Boys' Clubs in Cities ------- 445 Dr. Edward J. Houston The Brooklyn Church Athletic League ------- 449 Mr. George J. Fisher Discussion — Mr. E. Stagg Whitin Ten Years of Work with Boys: A Retrospect and Forecast - . - 454 Dr. William Byron Forbush CONTENTS xiii PAGE The Minutes of the Convention -------- 461 The Officers of the Association - 483 The Members of the Association ------- 495 Subject Index 519 \ THE THIRD CONVENTION ADDRESSES AND DISCUSSIONS THEME THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ADDRESSES AT GENERAL SESSIONS THE PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS PRESIDENT CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL, D. D. UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY The Dean of Yale Divinity School, my honored predecessor in the Presidency of the Rehgious Education Association, said, in the address with which he opened the Second Convention, " The opportunity be- fore the Rehgious Education Association is boundless. The year to come is the critical year of the organization." The year of which Dean Sanders prophesied is ended. We have passed the crisis — and we live. There are crises which men pass unconsciously, swept over them on the high tide of destiny, knowing but in retrospect or in theory the peril of the way. There are also moments and years of critical testing through which men go, open-eyed, measuring well the risks they take, feehng every ounce of the burdens they bear, yet enduring as seeing Him who is invisible. If the year just ended has been, as the former President predicted, the critical year of the organization, those to whom was intrusted the management of its affairs were not unconscious of risks and burdens. There were places in the year where to move for- ward was an act of faith in the value of a principle. Many hopes were centered in the General Secretary, both in the oflfice and in the man. The office of General Secretary is the natural medium of communication between the Association and the country. Of the incumbent of that office it was hoped that, joining excellence of character with devotion to an ideal, he would become the incarnate expression of the principle for which the Association stands. But it was otherwise ordered. Reasons of conscience caused him to recon- sider his purpose to make this his life work, and in November the first General Secretary resigned, to enter another field of labor. We are grateful for what he did in his brief term of service; we are sure of his loyalty to the cause of Religious Education; we bid him Godspeed. For months the office of General Secretary stood vacant. It is now filled by one who enters it attended by many hopes and desires that, having clear vision of the goal, with courage and strength for the way, he may live to see the glorious result of a movement that has been begun in prayer, chastened by misunderstanding, sustained by self-sacrifice, 3 4 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION animated by love. The circumstances just related nullified for the past year the field-work which had been planned. The General Secretary for a work Hke this must be an apostle in labor, a statesman in vision. His field is the country; Ms parish the mind of the American people. He must penetrate into states; discover and co-ordinate the purposes of like-minded citizens; arouse the local press; turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. He must make friends in every city for the cause we have at heart. He must preach the gospel of re- Hgious education until that preaching is reahzed by the high-minded and the patriotic as a career opening before men of culture and feehng, who would protect the country from perils born of its own prosperity, and rescue from the overlay of a ponderous materiahsm the spiritual ideals of the founders of the Republic. Of this we have been, deprived during our year of crisis. From our appeal to the country the chief voice has been lacking, as it shall not be lacking, please God, in the year to come. No wonder, then, that our results, in some things, are less than we hoped. The past year has not witnessed the solution of our financial prob- lem. The solving of that problem could not be expected to occur in advance of settled conditions in the office of General Secretary, and this for obvious reasons. Large popular membership is our natural source of income. The ReHgious Education Association is an affair of the people. Behind it are no wealthy promoters. It has access to no secret channel of supply. It sprang from the patriotic convictions of educators, and educators are not blessed with great riches. They are men of the people, and on the people they must depend. But, in the absence of a General Secretary, it has been impossible to approach the people, and to secure the adequate co-operation of that powerful and generous interpreter of popular movements, the newspaper press. The people have not known, and to-day they do not know, the moral excel- lence, and the practical reasonableness, of our principle. Had they known, their patriotism and good citizenship could absolutely have been depended upon to provide, through popular member- ships, our modest income. When the people understand, they will respond, not grudgingly nor of necessity, but with the cheerfulness that God loves. It might well be that such conditions of disadvan- tage and delay would shake an enterprise standing upon weak and shallow foundations, or would dissipate energy enhsted on the side of umeality. In the hot fires of our modern life, the wood, the hay, the stubble of irrational dreams soon perish. Nor were the men by whom this movement was conceived of a temper to tolerate the THE PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS 5 burdens that it has entailed, were those burdens not esteemed to be imposed by God. Their lives were full of other cares, and com- mitted to other interests. From this movement they had nothing to gain for themselves but further weariness and the probability of being misjudged by some. Yet disadvantage and delay brought them no sense of insecure purpose, no suggestion of doubt. The year of testing disclosed the impregnable foundations of the idea itself, and the moral commit- ment of its apologists. It knit them together in oneness of purpose, in the sweet communion of a true and good intention. They reflected that, in the hardships of its earlier years, the Reli- gious Education Association follows the experience 'of other movements now advanced to prosperity and intrenched in the public confidence. When, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, men Uke Wilberforce and Charles Grant were advocating the duty of EngUsh Christians to estabUsh missions in the Orient, that the leading ideas of the faith of Jesus Christ might be planted as an incorruptible seed in the religious consciousness of the East, their proposals were ignored by some, resented by others, laughed to scorn by many. When the National Education Association arose in this country, its founders endured with patience a baptismal period of popular indifiference and financial dearth. It may be doubted whether any of the greater causes by which content and balance have been added to civilized life have reached the stage of efficiency unchastened by the discipline of delay. Furthermore, it is to be remembered that delay is a relative term, formidable in one set of relations, inconsiderable in another. The delay of a moment in acute illness may mean death. The delay of a year in the Ufe of a man may mean heartbreak, irreparable loss. But moments and years count for little, relatively, in the lives of great institutions, in the evolution of great ideas. Men are impatient; God is patient. Men who are filled with an idea want to see its full fruition, its universal adoption, in their lifetime; God "buries His workers, and carries on His work." Unmoved, therefore, by secondary disadvantages and delays, prob- able, if not wisely desirable, in the incipient stage of an important undertaking, the ofl&cers and departmental workers of the Religious Education Association have come up to this Convention in joy and hope born of results so profound in themselves, and so prophetic, that our superficial delays and drawbacks are for the moment forgotten. During the year we have witnessed two results : The growth of the 6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION influence of our idea upon the public mind, and our own advance tow- ard the better definition of it. These results have appeared simulta- neously; yet, in the order of thought, the first has antedated, and must have antedated, the second. The idea must lay hold of men before the definition of it is possible. By this token we believe in the great- ness, the divineness, of our undertaking. The details of small and transitory movements may be grasped at the outset. Those to whom God gives the vision of great movements must have time to think themselves clear. Initial exactness of definition belongs to the small utilities of life. Vague sublimity is the first stage in the manifesta- tion of great conceptions of living. Men feel that ideas are true before they can define wherein that truth resides. The fundamental idea of the Religious Education Association has increased in influence upon the public mind during the last twelve- month. Upon those who have stood nearest to the idea, and have been working toward its clearer definition, the increase of its influence over themselves has been very striking. Not infrequently it happens that men think they see land, to find, on drawing nearer, that it was mirage flickering on an empty ocean. But they who thought they saw the uprising of substantial duty in a call to bring rehgion into right relation with every form and channel of popular education know to-day that this was not ethical mirage, but plain reahty. They see that the intellectual development of this country is advancing rapidly and upon an enormous scale. They see that the mand of the Ameri- can people lends itself to education as the outcome of hberty. They see that all educational avenues, from those leading to the state and private universities to those leading to the public schools, are thronged with armies of the finest and most promising youth that the world has ever seen; youth unfettered by political and military despotism; un- weighted with the pessimism of Oriental traditions; intuitively con- scious of its own rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; keen and quick to learn. They see that libraries, magazines, news- papers are as bread to the body, the natural food of these happy, hope- ful generations. They see that flliteracy, superstition, cruelty, abomi- nable habits of ignorance, anarchy, the devils that possess backward and unlettered races, are exorcised from national life by the amazing potency of education, and that our sons and daughters are growing up in intellectual sanity, prepared to build a broader civilization than the founders dreamed of, and to count for a positive force in the life of the world. This educational development manifestly is of God. We are reap- THE PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS 7 ing from the good seed that the fathers sowed; and the fathers were men of God. They believed in the value and in the liberty of the in- dividual. They believed in the right of a man to become what God intended him to be. They believed that government exists for the good of all, and that the conception of a democratic state is in accord with the genius of humanity and the intention of the Almighty Mind. But God-given liberty and God-given education carry with them no guaranties of public welfare, save those vested in God. The gift with- out the Giver might be more than barren; even power without respon- sibility, freedom without principle, knowledge without reverence. The liberalizing influence of education cannot be depended upon, apart from religion, to protect a populous nation from debasement of ideals and from aberration of ethical judgment. Knowledge, absolved from the fear of God, may, by sharpening the senses, promote selfishness, not less brutal because outwardly refined. Great prosperity may become barbaric materialism in a land where men teach their youths everything except to worship God. The defense of a nation from such a doom is furnished by no external authority, civil or ecclesiastical. It emerges out of the enlightened conscience of the people, which, as if intuitively, bears witness that the time has come when public morality and public interest demand stronger accent on the religious aspects of education. For this does our Association exist. This is its fundamental idea; the vision that for three years has attended us, continually growing more distinct, continually extending its sphere of influence over other minds. The sublimity of an idea, while it may work for inspiration, lacks practical effectiveness so long as it lacks definition. Men may be con- vinced that religion in education is vital, and that the cultivation of the religious sense in youth is indispensable; but to translate that convic- tion into wise and fruitful methods of action demands the broad study of conditions. The situation takes on apparent simplicity in lands where Church and State are united, and the propagation of religion is guaranteed under a royal establishment. In a land like ours, where religious Hberty, tolerance, and individualism are universal, where the estabhshment principle is unknown, where every man may worship God or refrain from worshiping Him, according to the dictates of his conscience, the problem of Religious Education takes on majestic reality. It challenges the attention of all lovers of the coun- try and lovers of the world. It invites the co-operation not only of all who stand on the side of religion as against secularism, but also of those high-minded secularists who, dissenting from the form of reHgion, yet show themselves not uninfluenced by its spirit. Step by 8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION step, year by year, this Association realizes more clearly and defines more intelligently the end in view and the ways to that end. As it advances on the path of definition, its thinking becomes more, and not less, individualistic. Not that it fails to see the results of modern social thinking, not that it is slow of heart to beUeve the divine significance of the social philosophy and the social message of Jesus Christ, but that it knows that the root of the matter involves the relation of the individual to God. So long as the hfe of the individual is ahenated from the life of God, whether by wicked works or by ignorance, so long must there remain in all our schemes for social redemption and social progress an element of ominous unreaHty. We must interpret God to men and bring men to God, or dream of building a house without a foundation. " The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom." The main lines of thought projected in this Convention spring from this root — the relation of the individual to God. Those who shall take part in these deliberations have come, with unparalleled gener- osity, every man at his own charges, asking and receiving no other compensation than the joy of service in a noble cause. They beheve, and in their utterances will seek to show, that from the right relation of the individual to God, from the root of vital religion, spring moral forces which, taken up into the system of education, are competent to regulate the whole field of Uving. Personal righteousness, social re- sponsibility, pubhc service in the nation and in the world, follow, as effect from cause, the ennobling influence of an educational system transfused with the sense of God. Long ago, in the seat of Grecian culture, he who was apostle, philosopher, and statesman declared: "We are His offspring. In Him we Hve and move and have our being." To reaUze this and to make provision for it on behalf of our own children and our children's children is the first requisite and the final aim of Religious Education. THE ANNUAL SURVEY OF PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION PRESIDENT WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE, D. D. BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND No one can attempt a general survey of the condition of moral and religious education in America without becoming acutely conscious of the inherent difficulties of the task. The age in which we live, taught by many failures, has learned to distrust swift and easy generalizations. It prefers the microscope to the telescope. It has insisted on division of labor in the intellectual as in the industrial realm, and, absorbed in the investigation of individual objects, events, or movements, is quite wiUing to leave to the future those great co-ordinations and syntheses for which the present day feels so keenly its incompetence. We have also to remember that statistics and formal reports can never adequately record moral and religious conditions. The report of a superintendent of the public schools can be made fairly concrete and exact. The number of pupils enrolled, the number of periods spent in recitation per week, the number who successfully pass exami- nations, the amount invested in laboratories and Hbraries — these facts, properly tabulated for a series of years, and reduced to percentages, may give a fairly accurate idea of the growth and efficiency of the school. But a report on moral and religious development cannot thus be reduced to diagrams and tables. It deals with forces peculiarly intan- gible, subtle, and elusive. There is somewhat involved of which we cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. Such a report must be, on the whole ,'quaUtative rather than quantitative. It has to do with ideals and atmosphere rather than with certificates and diplomas. It must be a series of impressions, rather than a statement of per- centages, since it deals with "thoughts hardly to be packed into a narrow act." The essential facts of religious growth usually escape the census taker, and must be felt in order to be known. I. The most cursory review of the past year makes it clear that these twelve months have been, in the field we are studjdng, a time of unprecedented agitation and activity. In the correspondence which I have had with leaders of rehgious thought and action in all parts of the country, the unanimous report is one of stir, fermentation, and incessant debate. The slumbers of years have been broken. Com- placency is abolished. The disciples of the status'quo no longer dominate 9 lo THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the entire situation. A "divine discontent" has spread throughout the land. I. The Sunday school has been heard asking in many places the old question, "What lack I yet?" and our generation has been smitten with a general conviction of educational sin. Religious denominations have constantly discussed the true function of their academies and private schools, and have reorganized their societies for ministerial aid. Churches have been led to exalt the teaching function of the ministry, and pastors have in many regions been led to experiment with classes for pastoral instruction and training. The publishing-houses have teemed with all kinds of "helps," manuals, primers, studies, com- mentaries, and histories, of all grades of efficiency or deficiency. Theo- logical seminaries have felt the quickening, and yielded, in some cases, to new ideals. New organizations have been formed for Bible study. One of these, the American Bible League, held its second public convention in Bos- ton in December. During the sessions of three days, about twenty addresses were delivered on Biblical subjects, and great interest was manifested both by the speakers and the public. Membership in the League is limited to persons signing a statement as to certain con- clusions already reached regarding the Scriptures, and a series of text- books is to be issued explaining and defending such conclusions. Certainly, all sincere and genuine investigation is to be welcomed. We have learned to tolerate various types of study and to rejoice in all sincere endeavor to interpret the sacred writings. It is impossible that the needs of the eighty millions in the Republic should be met by any one type of study or student. If men and women are induced by any method whatever to expose their minds day after day to the message of apostles and prophets, therein we rejoice and will rejoice. The spirit of contempt is as unpedagogical as it is un-Christian. Any attempts are better than indifference and inertia. But indilTerence has been steadily vanishing. The past year has been marked by unusual evangelistic effort on the part of many churches, both in America and in Great Britain. Spiritual awakenings of peculiar power have been witnessed in various cities, and great multitudes have become conscious of the unseen and eternal. If we may judge from the past, such movements are sure to be followed by zeal in education. In the white heat of religious con- viction were born most of the educational institutions of the Church. We cannot forget that three of the greatest evangelists of tlie nineteenth century — Charles G. Finney, Charles H. Spurgeon, and Dwight L. PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION ii Moody — gave their closing years largely to the founding of Christian schools which are still their enduring monuments. Out of those who have felt the breath of religious aspiration this past year, we may expect many to become educational leaders and founders. One of our great needs is to achieve in America what has long been seen in Great Britain, the union of candid, patient scholarship with genuine fervor in religious and philanthropic endeavor. 2. A second noteworthy tendency of the past year is the growing sense of the underlying unity of all agencies aiming at moral and religious development. To quote words applied by President McKinley to another subject: "The era of reciprocity has come." For men to stand apart forever in religious education simply because by inheritance or by preference they differ in liturgical forms or philosophical explana- tions or theological formulas, while their fundamental aims are one, is to entail upon our generation enormous educational loss as well as moral enfeeblement. We are coming every year more deeply to realize that we must be broad enough to make room for broad men, and toler- ant enough to tolerate the intolerant. Differences in definition or mode of approach to common problems must not be allowed to erect insuper- able barriers between men whose objects and aspirations are identical. 3. A third characteristic of the past year is the growing demand for contact with reaUty in religious, as in intellectual, education. In the intellectual realm the change in this direction has been the most noteworthy advance of the last quarter-century. In all elementary and secondary education, and in all college and university courses, the ten- dency has been steadily away from words to things, from symbol to object, from text-book to laboratory, from learning by rote to learning by doing. It is impossible that this change in the method of education should not be felt in the religious realm. It is now believed that "the whole duty of man" cannot be learned merely from the catechism, but that "if any man will do, ... he shall know." There is a growing distrust of the a priori and dogmatic method, and a willingness to examine candidly and patiently the ultimate facts. There is a generally increasing desire to face all facts in psychology, in literary criticism, in historical research, in natural science, with the conviction that no truth, adequately tested and fearlessly proclaimed, can ultimately dam- age either morality or faith. The conviction is everywhere growing that, in the words of James Russell Lowell, "the universe of God is fire-proof , and it is quite safe to strike a match." If this passion for reality has led in some instances to unconventional expressions of religious faith, 12 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION and to movements which it is difficuk to understand and classify, yet on the whole we have come to see that any kind of expression and aspira- tion is better than the sleek apathy and stagnation which is content with outer correctness and is destitute of moral dynamic. 4. There is a general acknowledgment on the part of educators that the children and young people of our time are deficient in the sense of the imperativeness of both morality and religion. Our children are more alert, sensitive, and observant in realms of nature and art than ever before; their senses are trained at an early age; their interests are many and diversified; their powers are awakened and stimulated by novel and striking methods of teaching; the contact of the school with society is closer than ever. But the sense of duty is not so profound as formerly, and the moral law seems less majestic and commanding than to a former generation. "Our greatest weakness," writes one New England college president, "is a lack of decision and strength in the assertion of rightful authority, and a consequent lack of training in the fundamental duty of obedience. . . . The voice of command, based upon the eternal distinction between right and wrong, addressed to the conscience and the will, is seldom heard." Many writers echo the opinion that the great defect of childhood to-day is the lack of the spirit of acknowledgment of rightful author- ity. The children of the submerged]tenth vie with the children of the nou- veaux riches in ignoring law, both human and divine. The awe which former generations of children felt in the presence of superior wisdom, age, and experience has given place to the mental attitude of the children who mocked the prophet EUsha. The general neglect of home-training, combined with the absence of ethical instruction in many schools, is having its inevitable result. The sanctions of the moral law are not defied, they simply are not felt or even perceived. Things are done if they are attractive; otherwise they are passed and forgotten. The fading in the modern world of a vivid sense of the imminence of future reward or punishment, the lessening at the same time of restraint in home and school, and the constant consultation of the pupil's tastes and choices, demanded by the extension of the elective system downwards, and the kindergarten upwards — all this is apparent in growing disrespect for law, in impatience of social control, and in an egoistic type of morality. "The sacrificial ideal of life is almost wholly out of view," writes a most thoughtful rehgious leader. It deserves to be considered whether the kindergarten, with all its beautiful tenderness, its care for the individual, its rightful exaltation of play, may not often retain children too long, and so prevent their en- PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION 13 trance into a discipline which exalts obligation, distinguishes sharply between work and play, and produces a harder moral fiber. It may well be considered whether the doctrine of interest, which has wrought so beneficent changes in modern education, has not in some quarters been totally misunderstood, and led to the idea that duty is binding only so long as it is attractive. It may be considered whether the elective system, which has done so much for the emancipation of the in- dividual and development of diverse talents and callings, may not have been so abused as to lead to the virtual inference that religious life is optional, to be sought by those who can afford the time and efTort, rather than essential to the very existence of a complete humanity. Certainly many college men of to-day tend to the position that religious convic- tion and emotion are very suitable for some temperaments, but not to be expected by others. The idea of specialization seems to be carried in some cases into the moral and religious realm, and it is held that, while some men have the gift of religious possibility, or are called to a sacrificial life, others are incapable of such ideals, and may well be content with industrial or financial success. The consciousness of defect in these lines is so widespread that the letters recently received read like reports from some great confessional. I quote only two, one from a college president, the other from the president of a theological seminary. The president of one of our largest women's colleges writes: "We sugar-coat all our pills of learning. Is there not a wholesome tonic in the old-fashioned method of learning the disagreeable thing, of being sure that two and two do make four and can by no possibility be twisted into anything else ? The hard places of life must be faced sooner or later, and though one wants to shield children and young people as far as possible, yet it is no true education which does not give them a certain hardness of intellectual and moral fiber, which will enable them to face their own difficulties, and to accept even defeat always with a strong purpose of turning it into victory. Is there not such a thing as carrying the doctrine of vi^orking in the line of least resistance too far, both in intellectual and moral matters?" The president of one of our most influential theological seminaries makes the same analysis in other words: "If I may venture to hazard an opinion as to the chief moral weak- ness in American education, I would say that it consists in emphasis upon the idea that the way to educate children is to interest them. This descends to amusement; and I have found many parents, both east and west in this country, complain that their children were not trained to habits of study. That is to say, the great principle, that education 14 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION has to do more with the will than with any other function of conscious- ness, is neglected to an alarming extent. This must exert an adverse influence upon the whole moral development of the child. It gives rise not only to the thirst for amusement, but also to the inclination to move in the line of least resistance, and to a sentimental view of life as a whole. Sentimentalism is, perhaps, the chief danger in the atmos- phere of contemporary religion." When a general defect in the educational process of a nation thus rises into the consciousness of intellectual leaders, and is frankly analyzed and expressed, we are justified in recording real educational progress. 5. Closely connected with this defect is another — the lack of thoroughness in thought and action. The superficiality in Bible study, which has often prevailed in the past, is simply part of a general contentment with the surface of things. Everywhere there is alert- ness, eagerness, and movement; but there is a demand for swift results which allows little time for the ripening of knowledge into wisdom. It is the general conviction of college teachers that, while the freshmen of to-day , know more than their fathers knew at the same age, they are inferior to their fathers in logical strength, in power of concentration, and in the faculty of sustained thought. "They all lack continuity of thinking," writes one university professor. Out of such conditions we can see how easily may arise the flippancy, irreverence, and irresponsibility which are not unknown in any public or private school. The haste to be wise may be as fatal as the haste to be rich. But a consciousness of this deficiency, instead of being cause for discouragement, must be regarded as the first step in its abolition. A sign of genuine progress is that teachers and leaders are everywhere declining to join in the demand for immediate results, and are seeking a permanent deposit in the character and life of the pupil. • II. If, then, our general survey shows decided progress in unprece- dented activity, in increasing solidarity of educational forces, in a growing demand for reality, in a growing consciousness of the lack of imperativeness in motive and thoroughness in method, we are prepared to examine certain specific agencies through which our generation is seeking to supply its deficiencies and reahze its aspirations. I. The year has been notable for its pubUcations dealing with the principles and methods of religious education. These publications are marked by a broader outlook and a more philosophical treatment than any previously put forth. The merely homiletic has given place to the genuinely educational, and the life of the spirit has at last appeared as worthy of serious study as the purely cognitive or the logical process. PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION 15 The real "helps" needed by our Sunday school teachers are not minia- ture sermons, or moralizings, or illustrations; rather do they need under- standing of the child-nature, knowledge of the principles of teaching, and the elementary facts in religious psychology. The report of the last meeting of the Religious Education Association, published in one volume, constitutes in itself a contribution to this subject of permanent value, remarkable for the unity of aim exhibited by men of various churches, temperaments, schools of thought, and sections of the country. The founding during the year of "The American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education" is most significant. It is a sign of the times that psychologists are at last convinced that the study of the phenomena of conversion and religious development is not a realm of mist and illusion, but is worthy of the best scientific method and the most patient investigation that trained students can give. President G. Stanley Hall's monumental work on "Adolescence" includes sections dealing with the growth of the moral personality, and contains a wealth of material which can never be neglected by any subsequent student. Professor George A. Coe's work on "Education in Religion and Morals" will probably become a text-book for a multitude of earnest teachers. "Personal and Ideal Elements in Education," by President Henry Churchill King, expresses ideals and convictions which are rapidly becoming potent forces in the life of our most thoughtful religious leaders. "Moral Education," by Edward Howard Griggs, deals with the same problems from a wholly different standpoint. "The Philosophy of Education," by Professor H. H. Home, sets forth principles which have direct application in the field we are now discuss- ing. The fact that these books should appear in the same year, and that the methods they advocate are now being explained and enforced in scores of periodicals and from a multitude of platforms and pulpits, is a fact of far-reaching importance. 2. The discussion of the objects and methods of the Sunday school has been incessant during the last twelve months. No subject can be deemed more important. If the Sunday school is the church at study, if there are by a conservative estimate more than thirteen million per- sons enrolled in these schools, and if over eighty-five per cent of our church members come from these schools, we have in this vast undertaking a most potent force for the development of the national character. The "searchings of heart" which mark all education to- day are especially insistent in this field. On the whole, the situation is distinctly encouraging. If most of us would agree with the university professor who writes, "Neither the aim nor the method of the Sunday i6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION school has been modified during the century of its existence to the extent that the conditions warrant," yet, on the other hand, we must agree with the Southern editor who affirms, "More has been done since Feb- ruary, 1903, to put the Sunday school on an educational basis than during the score of years immediately preceding." The meeting of the Religious Education Association two years ago sent a thrill of hope and expectation throughout the Sunday schools of America, while the meet- ing of last year transmuted this hope into an organized endeavor. It was felt by the most thoughtful leaders in the education of the young that at last the scattered aspirations of hundreds of people were being crystallized into action, that the emancipation, long hindered by inveterate habit and timorous counsels and vested interests, was at hand, and that, not by defiance and revolution, but by the quiet emergence of better ideals and deeper understanding and a more catholic spirit, the new day had dawned. From all sections of the country now come reports of noteworthy, and in some cases remarkable, progress. The Episcopal Church has, perhaps, in this work taken a position of leader- ship. It has published during the year thirty-five text-books and twelve manuals of instruction. At its General Convention, held at Boston in the month of October, a new Sunday School Commission was appointed, consisting of seven bishops, seven clergymen, and seven laymen. At the same time a Federation of Sunday-school Associations was formed, and the entire Convention felt itself on the verge of a great forward movement. The work of the Sunday School Commission of the Diocese of New York, as recorded in its quarterly Bulletin, is a work of statesmanship and devotion, the results of which are being studied throughout the country. The Congregational churches, at their recent triennial conference in Des Moines, put upon a working basis a Sunday School Commission created three years ago for the purpose of developing rehgious educa- tion throughout the denomination. The Southern Presbyterians have revolutionized their work within two years. In the last year they have placed several competent men in the field, whose business it is to help the churches to better things in religious education. The same thing may be said of the Southern Baptists, who have during the year divided their territory into districts, and put experienced men in charge of the work of Bible study and general religious training. The Meth- odist Church, both in the North and in the South, is aroused on this subject, and is scattering its literature far and wide, filled with sugges- tion, stimulus, and outlines of method. The Unitarians have published a series of graded lessons of a thoughtful and scholarly character. PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION 17 Both religion and education are setting "the child in the midst," and joining hands in training him for a life of mental and moral effi- ciency. 3. The young people's societies connected with the various religious denominations are obviously in a transitional period. They are suffer- ing at present from a conflict of ideals, but in this very conflict there is encouragement. The older ideal laid emphasis chiefly on self-expression in reUgious assemblies, and found its culminating success in vast con- ventions where the boundless enthusiasm of youth overflowed in dramatic and memorable scenes. It is stiU true that the great gather- ings of the summer are potent forces, and the oral expression of rehgious feeling has its rightful place. But the emphasis is now being quietly transferred, in many societies, to the attainment rather than the expression of experience, and the societies are becoming groups of students. The Young People's Society of Christian En- deavor, the Epworth League, the Baptist Young People's Union, the Christian Union of United Brethren, the Young People's Union of the United Presbyterian Church, and the Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip, include altogether about five million members, and the ideals of these societies are a shaping power in the whole nation. The Baptist Young People's Union conducts four courses of study. The studies are published in the form of a monthly magazine, which now has a circulation of twenty-seven thousand copies. Ten thousand ex- amination papers were sent in by students in these courses last year, and through the stimulus of such study many young people have been led to seek a college education. The Epworth League has courses of Bible study in which the whole Bible is covered in three years. About twenty-three thousand students are enrolled in these courses. In the Junior League a simpler course is offered, with an enrollment of over nine thousand students. 4. The moral and religious life of our colleges must be a matter of concern to every American citizen. In the last thirty years our colleges have swung away from the EngUsh ideals of their founders, and have come under the influence of the German university. We have imported from Germany more than laboratories and seminaries; we have imported the university attitude toward students. We have discarded the paternal idea, and have introduced a large measure of self-gov- ernment. We have treated the students, not as boys, but as men, and have cultivated responsibility, self-direction, election, not only of studies, but of modes of hfe, and have allowed the religious effort to proceed chiefly, not from the faculty, but from organizations within i8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the student body. So far as this change means a diminished moral leadership on the part of the teaching staff, as it often does, it is to be deeply regretted. But so far as it means a more manly and efficient type of religious character on the part of the students, the result of self- control and deliberate choice, it is to be welcomed. The Young Men's Christian Association continues to do a potent work through its branches in the various colleges. That work, in spite of what some may consider limitations, is constantly growing in wisdom and power, and is to-day a source of gratification to all who understand it. In general it may be said that the religious forces in college life are, if not stronger better adjusted to the conditions about them than ever before. Undoubtedly the devotional element in the average chapel service does not appeal to the students as it once did. This is espe- cially true in colleges for men only. Religion is interpreted in terms of action and life rather than in terms of formal worship. It is trans- lated into ethics rather than the practice of devotion. Thus, if the student prayer meeting has waned, the interest of the student in mis- sions, and philanthropy, and the service of his generation has steadily increased. There is less interest in subjective states, less "testimony," but far deeper interest in doing good to one's fellow-men, far greater admiration for a genuinely unselfish Hfe, and a decidedly higher standard of student honor. The reHgion of college men is more healthy, stable, and intelligent, and, if it is less emotional, is more pervasive than twenty years ago. Whatever religion the college student has is more fully co-ordinated with all his intellectual possessions. No longer kept in a separate compartment, it influences all his thinking and doing. 5. The theological seminaries, if not so responsive to educational movements as are the institutions which deal with younger pupils and appeal to a larger constituency, are in some cases making earnest efforts toward co-operation with the great educational forces of our time. Some of them are entering into alliances, more or less formal, with universities. In the study of missions the best seminaries are seeking not simply to give a swift sketch of events in missionary history, but an intensive study of missions as social facts and powers, their relation to the de- velopment of nations and races, and their proved place in the Kingdom of God. A few seminaries are teaching the literary languages of the larger mission fields, and offering courses in comparative religion. In pedagogy, the attempt is made to present not only abstract principles of teaching, but to introduce drill in methods of procedure, and to give training by actual experience in the work. PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION 19 The question of the supply of men for the ministry has engaged the attention of all the seminaries. There is a general conviction, which can hardly be either supported or refuted by an array of statistics, that the ministerial calling is not securing its fair proportion, in respect of numbers or ability, of the educated manhood of our time. The student volunteer movement has given our missionary societies more men than they can send forth, men who are glad to face priva- tion and danger and death, because they have been made familiar with this opportunity for service. If a fraction of the same effort were devoted to the education of our young men in knowledge of the oppor- tunities for influencing America through the functions exercised by the Hebrew prophets, by the reformers of the sixteenth century, and by the prophetic founders of New England, thousands of our ablest young men would eagerly respond. We need for the service of the church just such representative young men as Cecil Rhodes sought to gather at Oxford by means of his great bequest — men of intellectual and moral grasp, and power of leadership among their fellows. Our civilization cannot endure without leaders of spiritual vision and prophetic power. [ HOW CAN WE BRING THE INDIVIDUAL INTO CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD? THE DIRECT INFLUENCE OF GOD UPON ONE'S LIFE REV. WILLIAM FRASER McDOWELL, D.D., LL.D. BISHOP OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Our definitions and doctrines should always emerge at the highest levels, not at the lowest, nor even at the lower. Our conception of life must be based upon the best specimens of life available for our study or observation. What God may be in human life is to be determined by His own thought of it, illustrated and exemplified by the most per- fect cases on record. The question is neither speculative nor academic; it is vital and immediate. Of this we all have knowledge. " That which we have seen and heard declare we." The visible center of our association is a literature. The invisible center is a Person. The book is related to Him as to its source, as to its substance, and as to its purpose. Without Him it would neither have been, nor would it have been worth while. " The Bible is the expression of an experience." It would not have been a Bible if it had not been an experience. The literature is shot through with the sense of God's direct relation to human life. Every figure of speech is used to make that clear. But the literature is thus full of the sense of God's direct presence because Hebrew life and early Christian life was thus full of it. They wrote it all down thus because it had thus happened to them. God is so supreme a figure in the book because he was so large a figure in personal life. It is the expression of an experience of God. And this is the outstanding note of those Scriptures themselves. All that the Bible means by such words as, " and the word of the Lord came," " and God said," " and the Lord appeared"; all that we mean at last by the noble term " revelation," when we are at its heart; and all that we mean by such terms as incarnation and Immanuel are woven inextricably into personal life. There was no doubt of God's direct influence in the Old Testament days. In a thousand ways He was shaping men, nations, and events. Individual lives, as Abraham's, Jacob's, and Moses's, changed character and relations under His direct touch. There was the immediate consciousness of God. He pervaded life. He was immanent everywhere. He spoke immediately THE INDIVIDUAL'S CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD 21 to the soul of man. To the highest souls of the race, as Professor Seth has put it, " God was an experience, not simply an object." Or as another has said: " ' The Spirit ' has always been an expression for some form of the divine immanence. The writer who used it has al- ways represented God as immediately present in human life and the world of common affairs, imparting skill to the workman's fingers, wisdom to the statesman's judgment, or eloquence and cogency to the prophet's plea." One might add that He was chiefly imparting life and character, health and righteousness, goodness and true lioliness to men and women. " I never doubt for a moment the real presence of God " — we find the late Burne- Jones, the artist, quoted as saying. " I never could de- bate about it, any more than I could argue about beauty and the things I most love," he added. More than a quarter of a century ago I came to this city to study theology. Almost the very first voice I heard was the voice of Phillips Brooks. And no lesson did he teach either by his preaching or his Hfe more clearly than the great lesson in these words: " He is the effectively present deity. He is God continually in the midst of men and touching their daily lives. He is the God of perennial and daily aspiration, the Comforter to whom we look in the most pressing needs of comfort which fill our common life. He is the God of continual contact with mankind. The doctrine of the Holy Ghost is a continual protest against every recurring tendency to separate God from the current world." So indeed it always seemed while Brooks was here. Another minister in this very city recently stated his dominant conviction to be that of an " increasing awareness of the presence of God in the world, in every part of the world, and in the life of man." We shall hear this note more frequently and more clearly in our time. We shall recall our generation to this majestic truth, " written large across the pages of Scripture and in every land and time, that God dwells in the heart of men." We shall tell our children that as God was with our fathers to make them good and wise, so He is with us. In certain atmospheres and conditions it is easy both to believe and understand the_ fact of God's direct influence upon the life of man. It seems to have been easier when the world was younger, and the race nearer its childhood. It is not hard at all to understand it as we see it in the brief years of the incarnation. We see how men went into the school of Christ, with Christ, and were influenced by Him in all those splendid ways that make for the transformation of character. 22 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION He loved them; but many teachers have done that. He taught them His truth; but many have done that. They watched and studied and possibly tried to imitate Him; but many pupils have done that with their teachers since the days of Socrates. But somehow He imparted Himself to them, and did it in such fashion as to leave the impression that this was what men might expect! The thing is a living pano- rama going on there, going on here, going on everywhere, one per- sonality directly influencing other personalities. Its pedagogical and religious significance has not yet been fully worked out by us. And we cannot work it out except in life. If one really wants to know how and how far the life of Jesus is imitable, let him try it. Certainly, modern Christendom is nowhere near the border of fanaticism yet in its imitation of its Master, If any one really wants to know how and how far God can and will exert direct influence upon one's life, let him rationally, resolutely, and obediently submit himself to God. He will find out. The doctrine is most easily understood and believed in the presence of the best types of life, ancient and modern. Abstractly, one feels that God ought to be in direct touch with human life. In the large view of life which history and biography afford, one easily feels that He is and has been. We are not confined to those fascinating chapters known as the history of mysticism for this conviction. The mystics are not the only ones who have practised the presence of God. They have been conscious of " God's most intimate presence in the soul." They knew what St. Paul meant by the words: "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." They knew also the significance of the other words: God is " not far from every one of us." But this has not been and is not the exclusive possession of one type of Christian. Nothing is more remarkable than the immense variety in the men who in all ages have become subject to Christ. God has touched with power every kind of man. His influence is no pitiable force limited to one type. It is the one royal fact, outstanding in human history, giving sanctity and hope to every type of life. The consideration of God's direct influence upon one's life leads inevitably to a study of ^the place of the Holy Spirit in life. It was not unnatural to desire that the direct influence of Jesus might continue. But it was Jesus who said those strange words, still not quite believed, that it was expedient for the others that he should go away. His own withdrawal from their sight carried the pledge of God's continued, enlarged, wider, and richer presence in life. There was nothing that God was then doing or trying to do for men that He THE INDIVIDUAL'S CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD 23 was not pledged to continue. And He has kept His pledge to men and the church. The Spirit is God exerting power in human life. " Where the Spirit dwells and works, God dwells and works." Thus He is immanent in men. Our tendency is rather to exaggerate the achievements of the disciples during Jesus's earthly life. Manifestly he expected us to do better than they. It is of the essence of infidelity to deny His words. We may speak modestly and still believe that un- der the Spirit we have done quite as well in comprehending truth, in the conduct of life, and in Christian activity as they did. God has been not less immediate, but more. He has been, not a guest of human life, but a resident in human life. All those things that we would like to have God do for us, in us, and with us, the Spirit — God exerting power — does. It is one of the misfortunes of modern Christianity that it imagines itself to be deprived of some advantages in these days of the Spirit that it would have had in the days of the incarnation. The cry " back to Christ " was not a sign of unmixed wisdom or of the most rational and luminous faith. The fanatic has sometimes misused the doctrine of the Spirit, and driven men away from reality. The remedy for a fanatical use of truth is a sane and rational use of truth. And if our generation shall recover for men's lives t^e truth of the Spirit, as the truth of the divine Fatherhood and the truth of Christ have largely been recovered, then we shall deserve well of those who come after us. Finally, how shall the sense of God's direct influence be begotten in men? How can we make universal what is certainly frequent? How can we make constant what is surely occasional? We easily be- lieve in the direct influence of God at life's best moments and in the presence of the best men. Here is the test of faith; that it shall believe in the possibility of His influence everywhere and always. No other unbelief is more subtle and deadly than this which doubts His direct and immediate touch upon the life of man. How does one man influence another? By living with him, by teaching him his truth, by revealing his character, by setting before him his plans and purposes, by giving him help and asking help of him in return, by giving him love and asking his love in return, by being strength and comfort to him in life's daily struggle — by all that one life can be to another. No man can tell the story or put it down in words. We cannot say it, try as we may. Even the Bible itself does not fully say it. By every figure of speech and by every kind of utterance, it tries,- but at last the secret of the Lord is only with them that fear Him. 24 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION How can God's direct influence be increased and maintained? By the practice of His presence, by fellowship with Him in prayer, by companionship with Him in labor, by the study of His word and His works, by the doing of His work; by dwelling in the secret of His presence and being His servants in the world. Once it was said of a group that others took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus and learned of Him. Do you see? Need I go on? Forty-four years ago, almost on this very date, Abraham Lincoln's neighbors in Illinois gathered about him to say good by as he started to take up his life's heroic task. Among other things, he said: "Trust- ing in Him who can go with me and remain with you and be every- where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well." May the Lord of hosts be with us as He was with our fathers! THE BIBLE AS AN AID TO SELF-DISCOVERY PRESIDENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING, D. D. OBERLIN COLLEGE, OBERLIN, OHIO Has the Bible any pre-eminent place in bringing the man of the twentieth century to self-discovery? Especially, can it help him to that highest self-knowledge that implies conscious relation with God? If so, it must be because in pre-eminent degree it makes available a wealth of complex experience, puts us in direct contact with the most significant personal life, and challenges our every power even more by the depth than by the breadth of its appeal. It is worth noting, that the question has been already tested for us in history. It was the Christianity of the Bible that awakened men to real self-consciousness, made forever impossible the simple, satisfied attitude of antiquity toward life and the world, and compelled the bringing in of the modern romantic spirit. In the words of a great philosopher, " Christianity had demolished this calm self-sufficingness of the secular world " in which the ancient rested. " There began then to be developed, for the first time, that personal consciousness which thenceforward, with all its problems, — freedom of the will and pre- destination, guilt and responsibihty, resurrection and immortahty, — has given a totally different coloring to the whole background of man's mental life." Paulsen makes " the longing for the transcendent " one of the truths which " Christianity has engraven upon the hearts of men." " Antiquity," he adds, " was satisfied with the earth; the modern era has never been wholly free from the feeling that the given reality is inadequate." Now, the Book whose influence has been thus sufficiently powerful to draw the decisive line of demarkation between the ancient and the modern worlds, and to awaken the modern man to that which is most characteristic in his consciousness, can hardly fail of pre-emi- nent power in bringing the individual to the discovery of himself. No man, certainly, is likely to come to full self-knowledge inde- pendently of those influences which have streamed forth from the Bible. It suggests the laws of our life and it tests our powers in too concrete and telhng a fashion to be wisely ignored. The Bible is a most deeply and broadly human hook; and so fur- nishes that appeal of complex experience so necessary to full self- consciousness. It touches unerringly the whole gamut of the deeper human emotions and aspirations, and embodies them in figures that 25 26 THE .\rMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION mankind will not wHlingly let die. The expereince of the race in- creasingly confirms the testimony of Lotze, who says even of the Old Testament, that " for the most faithful delineation of the ever-recur- ring fundamental characteristics 0} human life, . . . the Hebrew histories and hymns are imperishable models." And he adds, con- cerning this miiversal human appeal of the Scripture: *' The treasures of classic cultture are open to but few, but from that Eastern foimtain cotmtless multitudes of men have for centuries gone on dra^ving en- nobling consolation La misery, judicious doctrines of practical wisdom, and warm enthusiasm for all that is exalted." A book with such breadth of appeal cannot fail to stir to larger self-consciousness any man who will face its phenomena with attention. Moreover, it is of critical importance as an aid to self-discovery, that the Bible should be in such rare degree a personal hook; for per- sons are chiefly stirred by persons. And the Bible is so instinct with life, that it is hardly possible to put the point of a needle into it any- where without drawing blood. It brings us face to face with what must be counted the most significant line of personaUties which his- tory an}'where presents. -\nd it is the great glory of the historical study of these later years that it enables us to see these prophetic men as h\-ing personahties, facing precise problems. Nothing so stirs and fructifies our own life, nothing so brings tis to glad sense of our owm higher possibilities, as this appreciative and responsive sharing of the \-isions of the higher man. Like children, we grow best by tr}dng to measi:re up to things beyond our present capacity. And tins .=plendid vision haunts as perpetually, until we have tr:ed to make it our owr in deed as weU as in thought. We come to a new splf-consciousnes=. For It is only true to say. on the one hand, even of the Old Testa- ment ; that it is the one ^reai moral book of antiquity. It is net a mere o Uection cf mora^ aphorisms, but shows the cevelop'ng moral sense everywhere, in e\er}-thing. Character is leally the supieme interest in this bock. Among all the ancient peoples in truth, only the Jews haVw the modem sense of sin. and the Bible is, in this particular, the only ancient book with a really mrdem tone. Compared with these s.>Ler Jews, ewn the sifted Gretks are but placing children in their sense of sin and character. This clear and coristantly deveiopijig euhical tore matk^ ut the Bibie distil rlly irom all other ancient books. And when one passes to the New Testament, ihis powerfiu ethical impression is only increased. One may well say with Sabatier: 'What other bcok like this can awaken dumb or sleeping consciences, reveal the secret needs of the soul, sharpen the thr^-n of sin and pre;= its cruel THE BIBLE AS AN AID TO SELF-DISCOVERY 27 point upon uS; tear away our delusions, humiliate our pride and dis- turb our false stren'ty ? WTi it sudden ligntnmgs it shoots in to the ab3sseF'. cf our hea'-tal Wha.*^ searchings of conscience are like those which we make by this light •'" And a 1 this means that in sober fact we must cone de to the Bible unrivaled power in brmging a man to moral sel f-coi isciousncss . Even the Old Testament is the one great religious book of antiquity. For the actual life of the civihzation of this twentieth century, amongst all the ancient world's rehgious books, only the Bible is of prime sig- nificance. These Old Testament wTiters have been, as a matter of fact, among all the ancient writers, the world's great spiritual and religious seers. And if this can be said even of the Old Testament, how much more is it true of the New, with its vision of the supreme personality of Christ. For self -disco very, this is most significant. Just so siirely as religious interest is deeply laid in the very foundations of man's nature, just so surely as reUgion is the supreme factor " in the organizing and regxilating of our personal and collective Hfe," just so surely as it brings us into the highest personal relation of which we are capable, just so surely as reHgion is thus the deepest e.xperience into which a man may enter, — even so surely must that Book, which is the transcendent religious Book of the world, stir our whole natures as nothing else can stir them. For the unity of our natures makes it impossible that this highest appeal should be responded to -^dthout profound influence upon all the rest of our Hfe. As does no other book, therefore, the Bible brings to consciousness the whole man. As the record of the progressive seeking of men after God, and of the progressive revelation of God to men, moreover, the Bible offers peculiar help in the development of our own highest consciousness; for it enables us to relive, as it were, in our own personal experience this whole religious life of the world, to apply thus to our o'oti deepest life-problems a real historical method. And hardly any procedure could be more helpful in bringing us to intelligent consciousness of our- selves than this retracing of the most important steps in the working out of character and faith in the world. But the Bible is all this, finally, because it is, above all else, a hook of honest testimony to experience. Its supreme value lies just here. For the testimony of another is our chief road to enlargement of life. Most of all, it is through such simple, honest witness that the New Testament puts us face to face with the redeeming personaHty of Jesus Christ. \Vhatever our theories about the Bible, it is not as compelUng 28 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION authority, but as simple, honest witness, that the New Testament brings us emancipating power. Now, this is the priceless and indispensable service of the Bible. And it is the more indispensable to the modern man, the more deeply he has entered into the modern spirit. For the deeper our moral con- sciousness, the greater our sense of moral need. For the modern man who has awakened to full moral consciousness, many an ancient way of approach to God is decisively closed; and if he is to come into com- munion with God at all, it must be by a manifestation of God great enough to make certain both the hoHness and the forgiveness of God. Now, it is just through this witness of the New Testament writers, that we find in Christ for ourselves a fact so great, so transcendent, that we come back to it again and again with calm assurance, to find in its simple presence the indubitable conviction of the spiritual world, of our own intended destiny, of God, and of His hohness and His love. Christ does not merely tell us these things : He does much more — He makes us able to beheve them. He — and no other as He — searches us, humbles us, assures us, and exahs us at the same time. Only through Him do we come with assurance into the great convictions, the great hopes, and the great aspirations; and these measure us as does nothing else. Only through Him do we come thus to real consciousness of our- selves, in our sin and in our weakness, and yet in our majestic possi- bilities as children of the living, loving God. Only through Him are we brought into living communion with the living God. To have sounded thus the depths of the Bible, is to have sounded, at the same time, the depths of our own nature. Here indeed " deep calleth unto deep." THE CHURCH AS A FACTOR IN PERSONAL RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT RT. REV. WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D. D., S. T. D. BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS Given a child in whom is developing a personal religious life through the consciousness of God and the study of the Bible, what place has the Church in filling out the character? I shall mention six points of influence. 1. The discovery that there is a Church, a Congregation of the faith- ful, gives practical reahty to the child's religious faith. We may lead a child through prayer and experience; through a study of the heroes of the faith in the Testaments, Old and New, to a consciousness of God; but the kingdom of God is still far away; something more is needed. Then on a Sunday morning, perhaps through a martial hymn, or the presence of a great congregation of friends and neighbors, or the ser- vice of baptism, there sweeps over the boy the conception of the Church as a great company of men, women, and children, loyal to the cause of Christ. The cross, the symbol of sacrifice ^and leadership, stands be- fore him and them. Now faith becomes real, practical, and present; the mystic consciousness of God melts into action; the ancient heroes of the faith, Joshua, David, and Peter, take on the lineaments of the men of the boy's own day and country. His whole conception of re- ligion expands, character develops, and into its texture is woven the strong and living fiber of social duty. 2. I said "the ancient heroes of the faith," and "the men of the boy's own day and country." These emphasize only the beginnings of the Church, and its present day. But the Christian Church has been a liv- ing thing throughout the nineteen centuries. The historic Church looms before the thought of the maturing boy; and he gains a conception of the solidarity of the Church, the communion of the saints of all the ages. Why is it that typical New Englanders like James Russell Lowell were almost overwhelmed with the glory of the great cathedrals of Eu- rope ? Partly, I believe, because through their religious traditions and ecclesiastical horizon, limited to the Bible and New England, they had, though unconsciously, been yearning for the inspiration of the historic Church of the ages; and in Westminster, Canterbury, Chartres, or St. Mark's, there flashed before them the glory of the ages of chivalry and romance, the traditions of the monk and the cavalier. In their medi- 29 30 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION tations and worship there swept in upon them, at all events there has swept in upon tens of thousands, a conception of the organic life of the Church, satisfying and uplifting. Such a revelation gradually opens itself to the boy maturing in the faith. He knows the Bible heroes, he has known a few saints about him in his home. Reading and thought open up the vistas of the past. He discovers that the parish church wherein he worships has an ancient lineage, vital and noble. Some story sends his thoughts back through the days of the Pilgrims and the Reformation to the times of the mon- astery, of chivalry, and the martyrs thrown to the lions. He lives in them; his faith was their faith; his Christ, the Christ for whom they died. There is pride in his Church, buoyancy in his religious life, a firm confidence in the strength of his cause. Through the historic Church, art, literature, and poetry have been saturated with the finest sentiments of sage and seer. As, therefore, the boy reads, thinks, and matures, his faith is shot through and through with the finest threads of wisdom, beauty, and song. His character gains proportion, refine- ment, and grace. 3. Thus far, however, the boy has not really had the confident as- surance that he is as yet in and of the Church. His parents are in the Church, the minister is, qlder people who go to the Lord's Supper are; but where is he? Is he looking upon the Church from without, or is he really a part of its very life ? Here I may emphasize a point with which you may not all agree. I believe that only by that ancient form and sacrament of Baptism in earlier childhood can the child be incorporated into the Church and made to reahze, as he grows older, that he is in fact a child of the Church. I do not speak of baptism as the dedication of a child to Christ by his parents. I speak of it as a sacrament whereby the child is received and incorporated into the very organic life of the Church; whereby he is declared a child of God, and by a service, founded upon a concep- tion of the ideal, made an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven. Hence- forth he is not outside the Church. He is not within it by the courtesy or sufferance of his elders; but he is within it by his own right, a living member of the body; and upon him is thrown the responsibility, or rather to him is given the privilege, of living as becomes a child of the Church. Thus the constant appeal through boyhood is to his honor. 4. In the Church a boy finds a definite statement of faith — a creed. I know that a definite creed is the last thing that some people feel should be taught a child. He should, it is said, be led up to the faith by influence, hero-worship, imitation, and by happy, pure associations. THE CHURCH IN PERSONAL RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 31 Of course he should; nevertheless, he should, I believe, be given, by the authority of his elders and of the Church, a definite statement of faith. Authority is an essential element in child development. By authority, as well as by example, he first learns of right, truth, and justice; later he reasons out their relations and adjusts their proportions. Our great mistake has come in the next step of development — a mis- take which, I believe, has been at the bottom of much of the distrust of the creeds and of authoritative teaching in childhood. The teacher or parent, having given the child some definite foundation to build on, has not trusted the boy, as he matures, to do the building, but has done the building for him. Thus the youth have been driven to live and think in the dogmatic houses of their elders, and religion and faith have be- come unreal and insincere. The form into which each boy builds his faith is as different as is the character of each boy from his comrade. Who knows what that ex- pression, "I believe in God the Father Almighty," means to a child? Who knows what it means to the wisest theologian? Neither can express himself adequately. Both will mature in their conception as years pass. Children are deeper and wiser than we think. Give them some definite spiritual facts to start from; that is, give them a real creed; then guide, talk, and reason with them on to maturer faith. Do not compel them, but trust and lead them. Without the Church, how long would the teaching and preaching of Christian truth endure? Through the Church's teaching and preaching the child is led step by step to a fuller conception of the faith, a higher ideal of life and a larger sense of duty to others. I believe that much of our preaching to children is unworthy of their consideration, and they know it. Chil- dren's intelligence, discrimination, and intuition are worthy of respect. The language should be simple and clear as was Christ's in the fields of Galilee, but the thoughts must be deep. A child does not respect the speaker who leaves him where he found him; he wants to be led up. The habit and desire of his school life is promotion by some hard work. The grouping of work and grading of lessons in Sunday school is, of course, necessary and wise, but I believe that this modern popular clas- sification of ages, so common in parish life and worship — infants, chil- dren, young people, middle-aged people, old people (soon we may col- lect those in their dotage) — has its grave perils. It is bringing into the Church the evils of classified institutionalism, of orphan asylums, and homes for old men. The family is the ideal; the common worship of old and young; the sermon so clear and simple that from it the youth 32 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION catches some suggestions of inspiration, perhaps by a story, some fire of enthusiasm; while the older people beside him are kindled with a deeper love for God and a fuller sense of duty toward the youth. 6. Great as is the influence of worthy preaching to children, I am not sure that the influence of worthy forms of worship is not greater, for there is a strong appeal to that most potent of factors, the child's imagination. We children of the Reformation, in our reaction against the abuses of teaching by the rites and ceremonies of the Church, do not begin to realize the worth and power of these rites and ceremonies in kindling the imagination of children and teaching them the truths of the Gospel. What conception of the beauty of holiness, the heroes of the faith and the joy of Christian discipleship can a child have who associates these truths with the dreary basement of the church, a dusty floor, ungainly benches, bad air, pictures of terrifying men, upon the bare white walls, called heroes of faith, and the sound of a melodeon droning in quick time weak tunes, unworthy of children's voices and intelligences? It is no wonder that as they grow older they protest that they will find God, or pleasure at all events, in the woods and fields where are sunlight and beauty. The fact that noble faiths and lovely sainthood have been nur- tured in bare, ugly churches is a testimony to the power of Christian truth. Now that the children of the Reformation have protested for some four or five hundred years against the dangerous evils of some things associated with the historic Church, is it not time to take up some of the once discarded beauties ? Children will appreciate them if their elders do not ; the restrained use of symbols and sacraments, the adop- tion of architecture fitted to the system of worship within the Church. A Puritan service in a Gothic church with a deep chancel is as unfitting as an Anglican service in an honest, dignified meeting-house. Why not make the best use of the suggestion of Christian truth in glass, orna- ment, and mural painting; the glorious voice of organ, with uplifting an- them and massive hymn; the response of minister and people; the Com- mon Prayer, and even the Litany, for child nature has its minor as well as its major key? Thus through action, words, and impression, the child's imagination is kindled, as through preaching and teaching the reason is roused, and thought and sentiment combine to create the fiber of Christian character Thus through the open door the youths go forth to meet life, to real- ize the brotherhood of man, and in social relations to apply the spirit- ual power caught within the Church. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS AN AID TO CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD MR. L. WILBUR MESSER GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE YOXJNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Many religious leaders believe that the Church of God, the Holy Cath- olic Church, has entered upon the greatest spiritual awakening in its history; a revival more widespread and permanent than the reforma- tion of Luther, the awakening of Finney, or the evangeHsm of Moody; a revival decreasingly characterized by the periodical revival meetings, the emphasis on sudden emotional experience, dogmatic and fragmen- tary Bible instruction, on well-intended but unorganized and unspecial- ized missionary endeavor. The great religious awakening which is marking the first decade of the twentieth century, the new evangelism, will place not less but more emphasis on the fundamental religious truths of Jesus and His apostles now held in common by all true believers. ReHgious education has shown that there is a common consciousness of the continual presence of a supreme being, or God. " In the begin- ning God — ." These are the primal words of the oldest book in use. The immanence of God is experienced in every human soul. The uni- versal fear of or devotion to an overruling spirit, or aggregation of spirits, is significant. The idolatry, sacrifices, penances, and devotions of peoples of all races and ages testify most strongly to their inherent consciousness that, over and working upon the human life, are control- ling influences that have their center outside of one's self. In the sober moments of life every man instinctively appeals to or leans upon the larger and stronger spirit whom he, perhaps vaguely, regards as the original and final authority over the affairs of men. Most men are conscious of a competition going on for the mastery of Ufe or the struggle between the higher and lower tendencies. Many consider this high nature, or set of tendencies, as the voice and presence of God. Religious education has shown that there is a consciousness of fall- ing short of the expectation of God or of direct violation of His will. This is consciousness of sin. A most patent experience in the life of every man is his feehng of insufficiency or shortcoming. The great un- rest of the human race finds its origin in the inbred feeling that it has 33 34 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION not attained or has blundered. The sense of forgiveness and of appro- bation, when one turns from the lower to the higher tendencies within him, is a real and personal experience, but no more so than the depress- ing sense of guilt and overhanging penalty when one yields to the lower tendencies at the sacrifice of the higher. The commonly recognized distance between our real selves and our ideals and the general sense of lack of complete harmony with the " best," marks the failure that constitutes sin. The self-willed life that breaks from a conscious harmony with the supreme will finds itself ill at ease and in hazard, and usually recognizes, even if it will not admit,, that the trouble lies essentially in this lack of harmony. Religious education emphasizes the fact that there is a realization that God is concerned about us. The fact that we are His handiwork that He has created us, is a fundamental indication of His concern for us. It is impossible for us to conceive of God as having no interest in the highest type of His creation; nor can we believe that the divine law of economy would permit the persistence of forms with which He is not concerned. An evidence of God's concern is found in our instinct of kinship with Him, constantly urging us to seek a closer relation with Him. The hu- man heart craves for a deeper and more sustaining love than any earthly relationship can supply, and this craving is fairly interpreted as the at- tractive power of His love for us. Dr. Frank Crane says: " God has been, in every age and race, brooding over His human children, slowly lifting them by the influence of His personality into a higher life." God must certainly care for those whom He thus develops into His own image. Religious education makes clear the fundamental truth that the cor- rect view of life depends upon a recognition of Christ as the most potent and concrete manifestation of God. We have the record of God's di- rect recognition of Christ at the time of His baptism: " This is My be- loved Son, in whom I am well pleased," and at the time of His trans- figuration, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him." Christ Himself said : " Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me"; "He that seeth Me seeth the Father"; " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life : no man cometh unto the Father but by Me." Testimony written later by a contemporary of Christ affirms that " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God." " In Him was Hfe; and the life was the light of men." " And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." AN AID TO CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD 35 True religious education makes emphatic the great truth that recon- ciliation with God and a fully successful life depend upon individual adoption of the principles of Jesus Christ as determining one's attitude, development, and service. The principles of Jesus Christ find their per- fect exempUfication in His own personality. To become a Christian is to become a student of Christ's life, to pledge allegiance to Him and to incorporate in the hfe the principles of His kingdom. The principles of Christ are concisely stated in what He called the two great commandments: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment ; and the second is like, namely, this : thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these." In the fulfillment of the fundamental principle of love to God and love to men, we find Christ's development into a symmetrical perfec- tion. "Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and man." One's adoption of these principles makes for the salvation of the whole man, body, mind, and spirit, harmonized with the will of God and prepared for service to one's fellows. The face of the Christian behever is toward the goal " Of the measure of the stature of Christ." " Citizenship in the Kingdom of God is not a set of negations; it does not consists of long fasts, nor the absence of innocent pleasures; it is not to worship a set of opinions. It is a well-rounded character; it is health of the whole man; it is living in true fellowship with the spirit of the manliest man that ever lived." One of the most mischievous fal- lacies disproven by Christ is the attempt to separate the physical and mental sides of our being from the immortal soul, for one cannot fully love God or men with only part of his nature. Christ's exemplification of His second great principle, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," is found in the fulfillment of His mission as he described it, " For even the Son of man came not to be minis- tered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many." Our adoption of this principle makes service to our fellows a dominant characteristic of life. Conspicuous among the forms of Christ-inspired service are mighty educational, philanthropic, and social betterment movements, making for the broader estabhshment of " the kingdom of God on earth." The adoption of Christ's principles, by yielding to the Holy Spirit, the pervading presence of God, makes us at one with Christ, and hence. 36 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION through His at-one-ment (atonement) gives us reconcihation with God, for He and the Father are one. These fundamental rehgious truths are finding a large acceptance among men of various types, through the introduction and develop- ment of the sociological method in reUgious education and of adjust- ments in harmony with certain conclusions of religious psychology. The recognition of the rehgious value of ethical, physical, educational, and social agencies has made possible the development of a symmetri- cal Christian life. The appreciation of the forces of environment, he- redity and development, has made Christian teachers and workers less dogmatic, more patient, sympathetic and tactful. The scientific study of rehgious phenomena, the accommodation to temperamental varie- ties, the apphcation of the divine law of development, the effort to meet adolescent conditions and difl&culties, has resulted in an increase of adaptability which has overcome the prejudices of large classes of men who have failed to understand the fundamental truths and value of the Christian religion. For nearly twenty-five years it has been my privilege to be closely associated with young men of widely different types and conditions, with exceptional opportunities for ascertaining their rehgious convic- tions and needs. I have found that the men of varied nationaUties and occupations are largely and increasingly responsive to these principles of Jesus. The benefit of the apphcation of these truths is manifest in the great constructive power of the Christian home, the Christian school, and the Christian church. It is also seen in the increasing respect for, and use of, the Bible as a divine revelation of the nature and will of God, and the proper relations of man both to his Creator and to his fellows. The new evangehsm, the revival of the twentieth century, will lead men to accept the Christian hfe by yielding to the Holy Spirit, through faith in Christ and by the adoption of His principles. This evangel- ism will lead men to build the Christian hfe by the constant and intel- hgent appropriation of divine forces which make for righteousness. This evangehsm will lead the disciples of Jesus to the larger ministry of service. The Rehgious Education Association, through one comprehensive organization of leaders and workers of all organizations which seek the extension of the kingdom of God, has become a great force in the pro- motion of a type of rehgious education which includes all that is vital in the evangelism of the past with added emphasis on truths and meth- ods which will make religion a more pervasive power for personal and social goodness. HOW CAN WE DEVELOP IN THE INDIVIDUAL A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE? LITERATURE AS THE EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL FORCES PROFESSOR ARTHUR S. HOYT, D.D. AUBURN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, AUBURN, NEW YORK Literature is the best interpretation of a people's life. The writ- ers are the men who know their age best. They have not come from a favored class, but from the people. They are ideahsts, and see more truly than those who look on the form and fashion of life. They are universal in their sympathies, and touch truths that make men feel their oneness in nature, and need, and destiny. They feel with " men the workers, men my brothers." Social forces slowly gather. The truth is first whispered in the closet. New ideals are cherished in the heart, they pass from lip to lip, long before they crystallize into laws and institutions of society. The men of imagination and feeling understand these deep and silent cur- rents of life. They interpret the age to itself. They give body to the unnoticed and even intangible motions of common life. Our American literature has been the mirror of our life. The greater freedom of thought here, a more widespread education, and so the greater influence of books, the closer identification of our liter- ary men with popular interests, all unite to make our literature thor- oughly expressive of American life. What have been the distinctive social forces of American life ? Love of home and family, belief in the dignity of labor, sympathy for the weak and oppressed, and faith in the Democratic ideal. These truths may be called the very substance of our literature. The sacredness of the family has been the mark of our life from the beginning, and that sacredness has never been seriously questioned by our writers. They have been tenacious of our domestic ideals. Put Gibbon beside Mot- ley, or Parkman, or Fiske, and we feel the purity of American thought, compared even with that of the mother country. Few of our writers deal with morbid sexuality. Not one has thought to consider marriage an open question, in the spirit of the " Woman Who Did," or " The South African Farm." Contrast the delicacy of Hawthorne's treat- ment of sin, with the bald realism of a great artist Hke Tolstoy; or the hot, passionate scenes of temptation in " Lady Rose's Daughter," 37 38 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION with the cleansing humor over the weakness of American society in " The People of the Whirlpool." What a glory rests upon home, its simple joys and common duties, in the pages of poet and novelist alike ! We find the spirit of brotherhood in our literature as it has been in our life. It is no lordly pleasure-house for the few, while the multi- tudes that toil and suffer roam the distant plains like droves of swine. And our elder poets are the voices of freedom, calling for the breaking of whatever fetter lies upon body or soul. The constant theme is the worth of the common man, stripped of all the accidents of life. From the spirit of humanity and brotherhood have come the sense of social and political unity, the growth of national consciousness, and the conviction of purpose and mission in the national life. The dominant element of our national life has been religious. Chris- tian faith has given to home its simplicity and purity, to labor its honor, to the humblest man his worth, and to the national life its divine sig- nificance. And these social forces have been properly interpreted and put in shining form, because our writers have been men of faith. A genuinely religious spirit pervades our literature. Our literary men may depart from the stern and austere worship of the fathers, but they have never lost " the tender and gracious fear which made the glory of Puritan faith, and gave visible force to Puritan character." They may declare their independence of human creeds, but never their independence of God. We have no city of " Dreadful Night," where " All the oracles are dumb or cheat, Because they have no secret to express." Behind the darkest shadow standeth God, " keeping watch above His own." It is a cause for profound gratitude that the men and women who often search an age to the depth of its consciousness are so often con- scious of the presence of God, and see His kingdom growing through the lives and institutions of men We have not measured the power of literature in training the social conscience when we have thought of it simply as the expression of life. It is prophetic as well as expressive. Who has put the social passion into so many young English hearts to-day ? Why are men working for the poor, identifying themselves with the toilers, living in the midst of sodden and hopeless masses, giving life to save the heart of the empire ? It is because Christ's ideal of brother- hood and service has been made beautiful and glorious in verse and LITERATURE AS EXPRESSING SOCIAL FORCES 39 story. John Ruskin made art speak the message of social service, and Arthur Toynbee made culture minister to the lowly. It is wonderfully significant that on each birthday of Robert Browning a company of boys and girls from the most crowded and wretched part of South London lay their tribute of flowers on his grave in Westminster Abbey. American literature has been no less faithful in giving the social message of democracy. The social conscience was educated until property in human lives seemed a sin against God. That conscience was trained by the fearless and prophetic teachers of our literature, by Whittier's voices of freedom, and Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the Biglow Papers of Lowell. I have discussed the subject in the light of history rather than in that of present social forces and their expression in the literature of the day. Judgments may thus be saner and lessons more unmistak- able. Yet the truth has a present interest that is urgent and must be heard. We must feel the transitional and critical condition of our age. Immeasurable social forces have been loosed among us. Yet, through the confusion of these contending forces, we must believe, as Christian men, holding to the fact of the present kingdom of God, and His living Spirit, that a new age is coming, of purer faith and truer social right- eousness. And we may see something of its gleaming ideals before us. How shall these social forces, working in the lives of so many, be interpreted and expressed so that the mind and conscience of the Church shall be devoted to these high ends? Where shall we look for our in- spired prophets and leaders? Shall not our literary men, as in the past, share in this sacred ministry? Thank God, some men are speaking. Here and there a novelist has the social passion. There are sweet voices for a simple life. Here and there a poet has the nobler vision, an essayist puts in living words the truth of society. We have a multitude of writers; we have infinite skill, and taste, and form. But the coal from the altar is often wanting. Only that deep sense of the sacredness of life, of God in His world, the breath of the Divine spirit, can make our literature cleansing and life-giving. The writer is brother of the teacher and the preacher in sustaining the higher forces of society. The novelist may be the best teacher. He certainly is reaching the greatest number. The poet may be the best preacher. He certainly sounds deepest into the hearts of tlie chosen ones. Together we must work for the kingdom of God. SCIENCE AS A TEACHER OF MORALITY PROFESSOR JOHN M. COULTER, Ph.D. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS The subject does not imply that science is professedly a teacher of morality, but that incidentally it makes for righteousness. It would be comparatively simple to select from its contributions to knowledge many that have strongly enforced the necessity of moraHty; or to point out that its conception of the inevitable consequences of acts has shown that results are a matter of course rather than of chance. To my mind, however, valuable as these contributions may be, they are but superficial indications of an attitude, of mind which represents the chief contribution of science to morality. To give a clear conception of the relation of this attitude of mind to moraHty is difficult, for it is some- what intangible, and to a certain extent prophetic; but to me it seems to be the most important phase of the subject. It should be understood further that the subject does not imply that science can replace religion as a teacher of morality; but that in so far as it contributes anything to morality it reinforces religion. "Science" is a term of convenience rather than of exactness, and hence I must state at once that in this paper it means what is called "the scientific spirit," which is a certain attitude of mind. Before attempting to state its relations to morality, I wish to indicate what it is by noting some of its characteristics. I. It is a spirit of inquiry. In our experience we encounter a vast body of estabhshed belief in reference to all important subjects. Nothing seems more evident than that this body of belief belongs to two categories: (i) The priceless results of generations of experience; and (2) heirloom rubbish. Towards this whole body of established be- lief the scientific attitude is one of unprejudiced inquiry. It is not the spirit of iconoclasm, as some would believe, but an examination of the foundations of belief. It must be evident that this spirit is directly op- posed to intolerance, and that it can find no common ground with those who confidently, and perhaps somewhat violently, affirm that the present organization of society is as good as it can be; or that the past has discovered all that is best in education; or that the mission of re- ligion is to conserve the past rather than to grow into the future. This is not the spirit of unrest, of discomfort, but the evidence of a mind whose every avenue is open to the approach of truth from 40 SCIENCE AS A TEACHER OF MORALITY 41 every direction. I hasten to say that this beneficent result of scientific training does not come to all those who cultivate it, any more than is the Christlike character developed in all those who profess Christianity. I regret to say that even some who bear great names in science have been as dogmatic as the most rampant theologian. But the dogmatic scientist and theologian are not to be taken as examples of the "peace- able fruits of righteousness," for the general ameliorating influence of rehgion and of science is none the less apparent. It is not the speech of the conspicuous few that is leavening the lump of human thought, but the quiet work of thousands of teachers. Scorn and ridicule of things that others hold in respect is not the attitude of science. Its function is to search for truth and to present it supported by such a convincing body of evidence that error will disappear without being attacked. It is the expulsive power of new knowledge that the teacher of science must rely upon to unsettle ignorant opinion. 2. // demands that there shall be no hiatus between an effect and its claimed cause, and that the cause clahned shall be adequate. It is in the laboratory that one first really appreciates how many factors must be taken into the count in considering any result, and what an element of uncertainty an unknown factor introduces. In the very simplest cases, where we have approximated certainty in the manipulation of factors to produce results, there is still lurking an element of chance, which simply means an unknown, and hence uncontrolled, factor. Even when the factors are well in hand, and we can combine them with reason- able certainty that the result will appear, we may be entirely wrong in our conclusion as to what in the combination has produced the result. For example, we have been changing the forms of certain plants at will, by exposing them to varying combinations of certain substances. It was perhaps natural to conclude that the chemical structure of these substances is responsible for the result, and our pre- scription was narrowed to certain substances. Now, however, it is discovered that the results are not due to the chemical nature of the substances, but to a particular physical condition that is developed by their combination, a condition that may be developed by the combi- nation of other substances as well, or even by things that are not substances; so that our prescription is much enlarged. There is a broad application here. For example, in education we are in danger of slavery to subjects. Having observed that certain ones may be used to produce certain results, we prescribe them as essential to the process, without taking into account the possibihty that other subjects may produce similar results. In religion we are in 42 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION danger of formulating some specific line of conduct as essential to the result, and of condemning those who do not adhere to it. That there may be many lines of approach to a given result, if that result be a general condition, is a hard lesson for mankind to learn. If it is so difficult to get at the real factors of a simple result in the laboratory, and still more difficult to interpret the significance of factors when found, in what condition must we be in reference to the im- mensely more difficult and subtle problems which confront us in social organization, government, education, and religion ! The habit of considering only one factor, when perhaps scores are involved, indicates a very primitive and untrained condition of mind. It is fortunate when the leaders of opinion have gotten hold of one real factor. They may overdo it, and work damage by insisting upon some special form of action on account of it, but so far as it goes it is the truth. It is more apt to be the case, however, that the factor claimed holds no relation whatsoever to the result, and then the noxious weeds of demagogism and charlatanism flourish. It is to such blindness that scientific training is slowly bringing a little glimmer of light, and when the world one day opens its eyes, and it will be well for it to open them very gradually, the old things will have passed away. 3. // keeps one close to the facts. There seems to be abroad a notion that one may start with a single well-attested fact, and by some logical machinery construct an elaborate system and reach an authentic con- clusion; much as the world has imagined that Cuvier could do if a single bone were furnished him. The result is bad, even though the fact may have an unclouded title. But it too often happens that great superstructures have been reared upon a fact that is claimed rather than demonstrated. Facts are like stepping-stones; so long as one can get a reasonably close series of them he can make some progress in a given direction, but when he steps beyond them he flounders. As one travels away from a fact, its significance in any con- clusion becomes'more and more attenuated, until presently the vanish- ing point is reached, like the rays of light from a candle. A fact is really only influential in its own immediate vicinity; but the whole structure of many a system lies in the region beyond the vanishing point. Such "vain imaginings" are delightfully seductive to many people, whose life and conduct are even shaped by them. I have been amazed at the large development of this phase of emotional insanity, commonly masquerading under the name of "subtle thinking." Science teaches that it is dangerous to stray away very far from SCIENCE AS A TEACHER OF MOLALITY 43 the facts; and that the farther one strays away, the more dangerous it becomes, and almost inevitably leads to self-deception. The attitude of mind which training in science tends to cultivate has been illustrated sufficiently for our purpose. The moral aspects of it seem to me to be quite evident even in this partial analysis. It is open to the truth; it seeks for trustworthy evidence in reference to it; if necessary, it strives to strip off the husks of human opinion that it may get at the kernel; and when found it accepts it with ardor. It may be well, however, to carry the subject forward to a more definite stage. Without pretending any knowledge of the philosophy of morality, and still more ignorant of its terminology, I wish to indicate the attitude of the scientific mind towards those questions that affect personal and social conduct. The problem is to develop an effective man and an effective social order. From the standpoint of science, the various moral codes that have been formulated do not have any suggestion of commands. They are attempted statements of truth, which, therefore, must be tested. To take an extreme illustration, the set of moral principles contained in the Ten Commandments or in the Sermon on the Mount are not authoritative because they are com- manded, but because they are true. Science would never raise the question whether the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount are "binding" upon this nation or upon that, or upon this generation or upon some other; but simply whether they contain principles essential to a well-ordered individual or society; if so, they are true and always apply everywhere, just as does what we call the "law of gravitation." Newton has the reputation of having announced the law of gravita- tion, which science prefers to call a mode of operation rather than a "law"; but I presume that no one would say that this law is binding upon us because Newton announced it. The world, like the individual, grows in knowledge; and the childhood of the race received as com- mands what maturity recognizes as statements of eternal truth, infi- nitely more binding than any commands could be. There is no resent- ing truth or no quibbling about it; and obedience is imperative. Moral truth, therefore, has the eternal and binding qualities of the truths of nature, which we call laws. I count this scientific attitude towards morality to be a distinct contribution towards its enforcement. I recognize freely that when this compelling power of knowledge is rein- forced by the attraction of a noble emotion there is a tremendous gain, but such a reinforcement is the peculiar function of the Christian re- ligion. As a further illustration, showing how science reinforces religion as 44 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION a teacher of morality, it may not be out of place to outline a scientific approach to the fundamentals of morality and even of Christianity, an approach that has proved satisfactory to many students trained in science. If a plant is to develop to the fullest possible vigor, it must estab- lish effective relationships with its surroundings, otherwise it will be a failure. A green leaf, to be strong and useful, must establish relations with the air and the sunshine. If a root seeks to estabHsh the same relations, it will be a failure, but relations with the soil will make it strong and useful. This very well-known biological law furnishes a clue to the problem of a strong and effective human life. It must establish effective relationships with its necessary environment. The first step is to discover what are the dominating factors in the environment of a human life. At least two conspicuous factors are one's self and one's fellow-men. The problem, then, is to discover the most effective adjustment to these factors, an adjustment that means growth and the highest expression of the human powers; in other words, mak- ing the most of one's self. The next step is to discover illustrations of the most effective lives, and at this point the perspective of the investigator comes into play. Compelled to consider the things that really make life worth the living, the things that are to give a quiet mind in the retrospect, it is rare that the most desirable lives are not chosen. Pressing the search for the completed exempHfication of the most effective life, the lines all focus in the person of Jesus Christ, and this quite apart from any peculiar claim made for him by Christians. I have found absolute unanimity in the judgment that no life, in all that makes for strength and effectiveness, has approached that of Jesus Christ. It seems to be a human life at the limit of its capacity. The next step in the investigation is to discover the solution offered by such a life to the problem of effective adjustment of one's self and to one's fellow-men. No questions of authenticity enter into such an investigation; for even if such a person never existed, the character is clearly drawn, and it stands as a definite conception of the finest pos- sible man. The investigator recognizes that he himself is a bundle of contra- dictory impulses, all of which cannot dominate, and some of which must. The grosser ones he recognizes offhand as dangerous, and they are eliminated from the investigation. But among the finer ones, to choose that one to dominate which will make the most effective life is not so easy. An investigation of the personal character of Christ reveals the fact that He selected unselfishness to dominate, a selection SCIENCE AS A TEACHER OF MORALITY 45 that squarely holds in check the strongest natural impulses. The difficulty of this adjustment is unquestionable; no more difficult one could be suggested; but it means the difference between the sun pulling everything to itself, and the sun radiating light and energy in every direction. Testing the conclusion by the lives that have actually touched his own, the investigator finds abundant confirmation, for tlie effective lives are essentially radiating centers of energy. The problem of one's effective adjustment to his fellow-men is even more perplexing; but the model studied says clearly that the answer is service, not service that seeks a return, but service prompted by love. And again, personal observation says that this is true. Perhaps you are not aware of the strong appeal that love as a stimulus to right conduct makes to the scientific mind. The scientific man is accustomed to stimuH and their responses, and he is fully alive to the fact that all that is finest in human conduct is a response to the stimulus of love. Therefore, in a religion whose basic principle is love, and whose God is the personification of infinite love, he recognizes an influence on personal character and on social order that must regener- ate both when fully applied. Thus the effective adjustments are found, and the life that seeks to develop by selecting unselfishness and service as dominant principles is well started on its way towards religion. I wish to remind you again that this is no fancy sketch of what might occur and probably never has occurred, but a very brief state- ment of the successive steps that have often been taken by men whose training demands an approach of this kind or none at all. It is not clear to me that you will regard such results as of very large value, especially if you are not familiar with the scientific attitude of mind and the steps it must take to reach a conclusion that brings con- viction and self-application. And yet it means to me that the scientific mind is open to moral truth, is incapable of being diverted from it by prejudice or second-hand opinion, and is compelled to accept and apply it when recognized. It is an attitude of mind peculiarly intolerant of sham or of cant, and likely to brush aside unessentials that do not seem such to all; but this comes not only from its training, but is also one of the things it has learned to admire in the life of Jesus Christ. I am afraid that it is little interested in theologies, for their data, methods, and conclusions are to it hke a foreign tongue; but I make bold to say that it is immensely interested in moraHty and religion, and none appeals to it so strongly as does the morality and religion .of Jesus Christ. 46 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION It is impossible to overestimate the effect of the scientific spirit, which dominates modern scholarship, upon that general attitude of mind that is making the world at large more sane and better able to repress unbalanced thinking. From this point of view, it would seem as though scholarship had at last entered upon its serious mission of curbing the irrelevant emotions of mankind, and of introducing that intellectual domination which must analyze problems to their ultimate factors and construct general systems of belief that are rational and effective. THE ETHICAL EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION PRESIDENT HENRY S. PRITCHETT, Ph.D., LL.D. MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS In a sense, this question includes all other questions of education, for in our day public opinion has come to be the supreme intellectual and moral force of civilization. In a state of religious and civil free- dom such as we enjoy in America, public opinion is nothing other than the gradually forming, gradually advancing conscience of the na- tion and of the race. It is worth noting that we give to this universal conscience some- times one name, sometimes another. When men speak to-day of Christianity, they sometimes mean nothing other than this race con- science, for in its wider sense Christianity to-day is no longer a matter of church or of dogma; it is an expression of the spiritual life of a race, as determined by the gradually growing conscience of humanity. The question is. How shall this public opinion, this race conscience, af- fected by a thousand influences of our complex modern life, — how shall this conscience of a nation be educated so that it may grow steadily toward strong and true ethical standards? Men have been trying to answer this question for two thousand years; but in the last quarter of a century they have been trying to answer it under conditions so vastly different from those of the centuries before, that a very brief reference to them seems necessary for any consideration whatsoever of the question itself. The essential difference between those con- ditions is this: we men of to-day — and again I speak to college men — have entered into a state of intellectual and religious freedom which the world never before knew. Up to the middle of the last century men's thinking and men's consciences, were, in great measure, limited by considerations of authority and of organization. There are still men, and men of the highest intelligence, who are wilHng to submit their thinking and their conscience to the limits of rehgious authority or of religious dogma, and are happy in it. With such men the scholar who strives toward a larger religious life can have no quarrel. But for the great body of college men, for the great mass of scholars, the day of authority in religious thinking has gone by. We stand in a world of complete intellectual and religious freedom, in which each man acknowledges no higher authority than the standard of his own 47 48 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION conscience and his own thinking present to him. And yet, nothing is more clear than the fact that this freedom does not necessarily mean peace or contentment, or a higher spiritual life. In America, not only in intellectual and religious matters, but in political matters as well, we are constantly tempted to regard freedom as an end, not a means; to consider it happiness in itself, not the road to happiness; to think of it as a release from responsibility, not to realize that freedom brings greater responsibihty; to enter into it carelessly and lightly as if our service were at an end, not reverently and in the knowledge that it is the beginning of a higher, a larger, a deeper service. Shall our children of God ever learn that freedom brings service? God led the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, into freedom. But, brethren, that freedom was not Sinai, nor yet the promised land; it was the wilderness. Let us rejoice in the complete freedom of our generation and of our coun- try, for the way of Freedom is God's way; but let us not think we are at Sinai or in the promised land when we are only in the wilder- ness. Men have no more adjusted themselves to the new conditions of this freedom than they have adjusted themselves to the new condi- tions of transportation, and to the enormous industrial changes which have come through it. We are out of the house of bondage, both as men and as organizations, — political, civil, religious, — but we have only entered into the wilderness of political, intellectual, and religious freedom. Taking into account these conditions, thanking God for the freedom into which the world has come, but looking with clear eyes at the fact that this freedom has brought us only into the wilderness, the question we ask ourselves is. What is, then, to be done, and, more particularly, what is there for college men to do, to educate the conscience of men to right ethical standards? So far as I can see my way to answer this question, the answer is this: The education of the conscience of mankind is not a matter of ethics, but of religion; not a matter of moral distinctions and of rules of life, but a matter of spiritual development in a new environment; not a mat- ter of high ethical appreciation, but a matter of the divine life in the individual human soul. If men are to be led through the wilderness of freedom into the promised land of a higher religious conscience and a deeper service, it will come only through religious leadership, — but one capable of dealing with the conditions of the day and of the age, — the age of reason and of freedom. If there is any one service above THE ETHICAL EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION 49 all others which the college men of to-day may render to their race, it lies in the training of leaders who have in their hearts the simple religion of Jesus Christ without the theology of the Church which calls itself by His name. A rehgious leadership, intelligent, scholarly, de- voted, spiritual, — but divorced from theology, — is the greatest agency which college men can bring to the education of public opinion. Men will no longer accept authority outside of their own consciences, but leadership plays as great a part as it ever did; and religious leader- ship, just as political leadership, must take hold, not only of the mind, but of the emotional nature, that deep endowment of our being in which lies, for the most part, our loves and our hates, our hopes and our fears, our aspirations and our ideals. A man to-day, whether in the Church or out of it, must have the quality of leadership if he is to influence public opinion. I am aware, that in making such an answer, we only push back the difficulty one step. The question still confronts us, how to pre- pare men for religious leadership; and this is as difficult a problem to answer as the original question, but it has the advantage of at least greater definiteness. I may do nothing more than make a few state- ments concerning it. And, first, I will say that any man who has to do with a great stu- dent body, under whose eyes pass year by year the great stream of energy and devotion and power contained in the lives of young men, must feel keenly the tremendous preponderance of material influences which bear upon those men in the education of to-day. Somehow, in the rush of their lives, in the sharp competition to get a living, in the national readiness of Americans for a trial of strength with one an- other, the spiritual forces of the student Hfe seem to have less chance at a man then they did twenty-five years ago. Even when one admits the narrowness of the rehgious teaching, the barrenness of the tradi- tions which went as truths, the constant tendency for mistaking the letter for the spirit which characterized religious instruction in the last generation, he nevertheless reahzes that through all this ran a deeper significance which did turn the thoughts of men continually away from the daily treadmill of that which is material. No man can have at heart the welfare of his country, and of his race, without a deep desire for a stronger spiritual influence in the lives of those armies of students, for something adequate to deal with the ever-growing tide of material- ism which sweeps over them. On the other hand, the more experience one has with this question, and the closer contact he gains with the student life, the less sure he is 50 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION as to the specific means to bring about this end; the more he comes to distrust specifics in education in any direction, rehgious education included. Of this much only he feels certain, that he who seeks to deal with the men of our colleges, — men who are intellectually alert, in the main earnest, ambitious, — he who seeks to deal with these men in religious matters must do so upon a plane of intellectual sin- cerity far above that which satisfied the men of a generation ago. No hiding behind authority, no quibble about words, no sanctity of in- spired page, will avail. The unconscious traditions of religious life, the store of memorized verses of the Scripture, the inbred respect for the preacher and his profession with which you and I grew up, do not exist for them. We scarcely realize how great these forces were in our lives until we feel their absence in this man of a new generation of freedom. He looks, clear-eyed and unblinkingly, at the questions of religious observance and of religious life, and he will face your theological statement in exactly the same mental attitude in which he deals with a formula in chemistry. And yet, deep down in his breast the same spiritual possibilities lie, and when you touch him on the great fundamental questions of our human life, its mean- ing, its outcome, its greater possibilities, you find him responsive, and thoughtful, and eager. What agency can be invoked to stir this latent critical spirit of free- dom into the earnestness of religious leadership ? In seeking to answer such a question, one turns naturally to the Christian Church. Is the Church, in its various denominational efforts, able to furnish a re- ligious leadership which shall be efficient in the education of the Pub- lic Conscience? This is a serious question for the Church and for those out of its formal relationship. The outlook to-day is not the most hopeful. The Church suffers under certain great disadvantages. It is an or- ganization, and shows the inertia of all human organizations. Or- ganizations, for this reason, never lead; men lead. To-day the Church is trying to hold on with one hand to a traditional theology and with the other to reach out to the fast changing forces of science and the new industrial life. Any organization is, in one sense, curiously unfitted to undertake the promotion and the care of religion. For what is religion, after all, but the divine life in the individual human soul, a divine flower growing up in its natural soil from the ever-present energy of the Father himself? It was of the very essence of Christ's leadership that it lent itself to the inspiration of the individual religious life, so that each man led his own life with God. Inevitably, no organization' can'^deal THE ETHICAL EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION 51 with this problem as such; this is one reason why the better the organ- ization, the more difficult the production of leaders of this type, and the greater the tendency for the organization and those in it to be diverted to the advancement of the organization or to the science of religion, which is theology, and which has the same relation to religion which botany has to the flowers, or which astronomy has to the stars, or which chemistry has to the chemical reactions. Now, in the freedom of our twentieth-century wilderness there is a demand, not for leaders who can perfect the organization, or who can defend the science of religion, but for leaders who may show men how to grow in their own hearts the flowers of true religion; how to see in their own skies the stars of everlasting hope and truth; how to keep alive in their own hearts the chemistry of love and devotion and unselfishness, and commune with Him who is the Father of all. That a great undercurrent of religious influence and of religious thought is beginning to stir in human aflfairs which has no connection with Church organization, is evident to every man. Through the world there is striving a deep, sincere reaching after God. In many ways this spirit is crude, indefinite, and sometimes wavering. Will there come out of this movement religious leaders able to influence public opinion, and to lead the consciences of men to the thought of their individual religious life? The political, not less than the religious, future of the nation hangs upon such leadership, for right government of the people, for the people, and by the people will come, not out of political organization or out of drastic municipal regulations: it will come, if it come at all, out of the growth of a true religious life in the hearts of all men. To plan for such a leadership, and to bring forth such leaders, is the noblest work to which college men may give themselves, and in such leadership lies the most powerful influence to affect at once the conscience of the individual, and of the nation, and of the race. Give us from the college life religious leaders able to deal with to-day's prob- lems and the ethical and religious education of public opinion will follow. ^ ^ 1 DISCUSSION PROFESSOR HENRY S. NASH, D. D. EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS I assume, first, that the pith of the question we are handling con- cerns the younger generation. The training of the young- is our su- preme problem. If we can solve that problem well, the question of the older generation will take care of itself. Second, that effective moral teaching cannot be abstract. It must be vivid and concrete. The ideal method of moral teaching would be one that took great con- ceptions and visualized them, embodying them in high imagination. With this much taken for granted, it follows of itself that we must implant the social conscience in the young by keeping our great con- ceptions close to the ground. Not very long ago, all our teaching was bookish; now, it aims at concreteness. Thus, in teaching geology to the children of Boston, the good teacher starts with the immediate lo- cality. So in the " training of the social conscience." It is only our ingrained individualism that prevents our seeing that the substantive and the adjective in this phrase were joined together by God, and that man cannot put them asunder. If we take the young in the natural order of their thought, our task is easy. Boys run as naturally to groups, and teams, and gangs as they run to a swimming-pool in the dog-days. So, the moral education of the young should work in this natural and instinctive direction. It should find children at home and teach them there. But morality is enfeebled if it be detached from high imagination. The morality of the young, therefore, must be steeped in imagination, in noble and compelling forms. Now, no form of thought is both noble and compelling unless it takes a great conception and endues it with a more or less visible body. And here it is that the laws of teaching, as we are beginning to apply them, find in the ripe results of the criti- cal study of the Bible the best means of training the social conscience. All the more is this true if we can teach the Bible as we have seen it grow, without spending our time in explaining or explaining away the old conceptions of the Bible. The aim is to train the conscience so that it shall be a social conscience, so that every thought of duty shall have a social side. How can that be better done, or so well as by teaching the Scriptures in an historical 52 DISCUSSION 53 way? So studied and taught, they tell us how a nation, starting on the foundations of primitive tribaUsm, grows up into the supreme con- ception,— the kingdom of God. The prophets come before us as the piercing, penetrating critics of the social and political life of their na- tion. They clear the ground in thought, as they cleared the ground in history, for the supreme Person — the Christ — who took the national hope of His people, and by perfect self-sacrifice and self-assertion purified it so that it became the hope of the race. Thus, Bible-teaching, allied to the natural and instinctive lines of growth in childhood and youth, may breed up in the young a kind of conscience wherein the individual and the social elements are indis- solubly blended. From the Book of Deuteronomy to the First Epistle of John, by way of the Person of Christ, is there any other way for conscience to travel ? One of the topics yesterday evening was. The Bible as an Aid to Self -discovery. The thought of to-night which supplements it is that he who knows his Bible knows that there is but one place where he can hope to have a clear knowledge of himself. That place is deep and widening human fellowship. There alone can one know the God and Father of Jesus Christ. There alone, through the knowledge of the one true God, can one attain to a clear and saving knowledge of one's self. PROFESSOR WILLIAM E. B. DU BOIS, Ph. D. ATLANTA UNIVERSITY, ATLANTA, GEORGIA It is impossible for the individual to reach the larger social con- science by sheer expansion, by a benevolent endeavor to be interested in all men. This leads inevitably to a tenuous filmy consciousness, a loss of grip on the realities of human beings — on the concrete man. It becomes easily a theoretical rather than a practical humanitarianism, and has often been illustrated in the world's history by the wavering and doubting of the philanthropic mind. We can only be interested in men by knowing them — knowing them directly, thoroughly, intimately; and this knowing leads ever to the greatest of human discoveries ,^he recognization of one's self in the image of one's neighbor; the sudden, startling revelation, " This is another Me, that thinks as I think, feels as I feel, suffers even as I suffer." This is the beginning, and the only true beginning, of the social conscience. But it is the beginning, and not the end. If followed up with real interest and determination, it must lead, next, to the discovery and 54 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION realization of the stranger, to something at first subtle and fleeting, then shadowing into strength and reality, that tells us, Here in this my neigh- bor stand things I do not know, experiences I have never felt, depths whose darkness is beyond /^me, and heights hidden by the clouds; or, perhaps, rather, differences in ways of thinking, and dreaming, and feeling which I guess at rather than know; strange twistings of soul that curve between the grotesque and the awful. But to them that persevere, to them that say, " I do not just com- prehend why a working-man loves to get drunk, or why a housemaid buys curious hats, or why a negro basks lazily in the sun, these, and yet greater things, I do not understand, and yet I will, in God's truth, seek to know all this and more," — to such hearts and minds will come in time the glimpse of a larger answer, the faint yet growing compre- hension of human likenesses that both transcend and explain the dif- ferences, and that reveal, in the realization, the essential humanity of all men, — that strange kernel of life, which, hidden though it be, and in body, thought, and surrounding far removed from us, is yet for us and in us, the greatest fact in the world. Once this is recognized, then comes the only practical synthesis in this world of self-sacrifice and self -development : the recognition of myself as one of a world of selves, not as all, but as one; not as nothing, but as one. Hither the social conscience must come, without wavering, with- out compromise. In a world of men, even of differing and different men, we cannot, on account of cowardice, treat any of these men as less than men; we cannot slink back of Darwinism, to discover excuses, or whiten our lies by laying them on the Lord. If you have aspira- tions above the dirt, why may not your coachman? If you, in the choking narrowness, stretch groping arms for air, why may not the hod-carrier be dissatisfied too? If you count yourselves as something more than your money, why may not I ? To induce, then, in men a consciousness of the humanity of all men, of the sacred unity in all the diversity, is not merely to lay down a pious postulate, but it is the active and animate heart-to-heart knowl- edge of your neighbors, high and low, black and white, employer and employed; it means a firm planting of human ideals; the training of children to be through their doing, and not simply to do through their being; the setting of our faces like flint against the modern heresy that money makes the man, and a revere.it listening, not simply to the first line but to the last line of Emerson's quatrain: DISCUSSION 55 'There is no great, no small, To the Soul that maketh all; Where it cometh, all things are— And it Cometh everywhere." REV. SAMUEL M. CROTHERS, D.D. MINISTER OF THE FIRST PARISH, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS Let me emphasize what President Pritchett has said about the difficulty which besets the Church in this matter of moral leadership. The Church is a great historical institution. It has a life running through centuries. It draws inspiration from a glorious past. One of the great articles of the historic creed is, " I beHeve in the Holy Cath- olic Church." This means more than a belief in the present-day Church. It is the expression of loyalty to a great historic movement. I believe not only in what good men are doing to-day, but in what they have done through all these ages. " Like a mighty army moves the Church of God." It is a military maxim that "an army must be dis- tributed widely in order to subsist; it must unite in order to fight." So the Church must seek for its suppHes over a wide territory. It must be ever seeking the best in literature, in science, in art, in daily ex- perience. Then all these things must be united, and all its varied force be brought to bear upon the besetting sin of the day. What is the beset- ting sin of society ? There have been times when it was superstition, slavery, or intemperance. To-day the gravest danger is the greed for gain. Our American communities are ill governed because men who will not lie in a personal transaction will allow a lie for their own party to go unrebuked. Men who will not themselves steal will tamely submit to corporate stealing. There needs to be a revivial of simple honesty and civic courage. If the Church is to do its part in this reformation, it must first purify itself. And then the Church must be united. It must present a solid front. HOW CAN WE QUICKEN IN THE INDIVIDUAL A SENSE OF NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD? The Sacredness of Citizenship PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. TUCKER, D. D, LL. D. DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE We must be sure that we advance our ideals as the facts for which they stand are filled with power. Every powerful thing must be capa- ble of being invested with sacredness, else it is an evil thing. It is the chief business of righteousness to follow after power and after powerful men. Whenever this work is ignored or evaded, all minor tasks are futile. The account with righteousness is not kept by attention to incidentals. As some one has recently said, " There is something grander than benevolence, more august than charity: it is justice." Citizenship, as it advances to its new and enlarging functions, must become more and more sacred in the eyes of men, if it is to fulfill these functions. It must concern itself, according to our judgment of its business, with " the weightier matters of the law." We must learn to be impatient of all easy and spectacular, if not questionable, sub- stitutes for citizenship in downright earnest. So much lies in our subject without further saying. But how shall we compass so great an end, which is nothing less than to raise the moral estimate of citizenship? How shall we who beheve in the value of education contribute to this end? How shall we come out of the academic into the practical, and say the things we have to say, and do the things we have to do, effectively? So far as the masses are con- cerned, we must work, I think, in and through the concrete. Citizen- ship is a matter of principles and ideals; but it is no abstraction. It is a matter of details, which, in their ceaseless and monotonous re- turn, teach " line upon line and precept upon precept." Citizens are made by doing the things for which, at any given time, citizenship stands. There is no other way of making the ordinary citizen. Prin- ciples are established, standards are set, ideals are made clear and abiding through persistent, or as in some cases through aroused and impassioned, action. A campaign like that of District Attorney Jerome on the East Side of New York is first educational, secondarily political. We can educate somewhat through the schools; but, for the most part, we must be ready to take the field, and deal with men who do not think much in our way, but who are capable of thinking earnestly. 56 NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 57 But the immediate question before us, and as it seems to me the most serious poHtical question before the country, is, not how shall we educate, in the ordinary sense, those whom we call the masses? but how shall we raise in those already educated the moral estimate oj citi- zenship? The greatest political danger of our time does not come di- rectly from ignorance, but from the use made of ignorance by the in- telligence of organized power, with the tacit consent of the intelligence of culture. Ignorance may be the condition; it is not the inciting cause of political corruption. That cause lies within the region of intelligent dishonesty. It is our bounden duty, for every reason, to educate the ignorant; but it is a shame that we are obliged to educate them for the sake of protecting ourselves from our own trained and often edu- cated leaders, who have become adepts in corruption. It is as true to-day as when Carlyle said it, " It is the knowing ones who rule." WTiat do our " knowing ones " think about citizenship? What is the moral estimate which they put upon it ? What is the moral estimate which we, as a consenting, if not an active, political part of the knowing and ruling ones, put upon it? Let us test very briefly this moral sense of citizenship as it comes within our observation or experience. Citizenship, we shall agree, requires the faithful use of political rights. Rights, once established, instantly become duties; otherwise we must speak of them as unoccupied rights. An unoccupied political right always represents so much indifferentism, — moral as well as physical absenteeism. The percentage of unused rights has become a calculable factor in political manipulation. It can be pretty definitely located in any given community, for it usually follows the lines of intell- igence. We familiarly say that the quahty of the vote in New England, not its size, depends upon the weather. No man can faithfully use his political rights without a good deal of inconvenience, personal ef- fort, and sometimes personal courage. The result is an increasing disuse of political rights among those who are unwilling to pay the price of the right. It is for this reason that a great many question the extension of political rights, as through woman suffrage. Will the rights, if established, be occupied ? Citizenship is cheapened by un- used, as it is demoralized by misused', privileges. Citizenship, we shall emphatically agree, requires that its po- litical purity be kept inviolate. Bribery is to suffrage what forgery is to business, or treason to the service. But bribery is a recog- nized, not exactly authorized, but recognized, method of transacting poUtical business. Neither party claims to be free from it. The gen- 58 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION eral facts in regard to political bribery are part of the public knowledge, though it may be difEcult to individualize them. Aside from the dull- ness of the party conscience at this point, the most disheartening feature of this whole business has been the failure to put the emphasis upon the wrong in the fit place. ^ We have held in public contempt the men who take bribes, instead of holding under public condemnation the men who give bribes. Not until the exposure in Missouri were we ready to view this matter in the right proportion. Of course there is a vast difference in degree between the selling of one's vote, and the sale of one's official power or influence as a legislator or judge; still, it is the men or the corporations who are taking the initiative in this kind of corruption with whom we are chiefly concerned. We cannot expend our wrath or our contempt upon their victims and allow them to maintain their respectability. Certainly, as regards the purchase of votes it is the purchaser who is the greater sinner in the light of the sacredness of citizenship. It is he who conceives the mischief, and works the temptation, and secures the result. Upon him should fall the heavier condemnation. We are just awakening to the enormity of the offense of bribery on its active as well as on its receptive side. Let us learn to discriminate in respect to bribery in the purchase of votes among the more ignorant voters, so that the penalty shall fall where it belongs, at a second remove upon ignorance, at first hand upon intelligence. Citizenship, we shall further agree, requires the subordination of private interests to the public good. I would not affirm that men are more selfish or less patriotic than formerly, it is entirely evident that there are greater opportunities for, and greater incentives to, self- aggrandizement at the public cost than formerly. Organization has become a powerful influence in stimulating private interests. It re- tires personal responsibility; it awakens, in its place, ambition and pride in large adventures; it develops great rivalries; it creates powers which must be recognized, and which may demand to be fostered by the state. Unconsciously, it may be, the private citizen finds himself carried on, step by step, by the way of organized power, to a position where he seeks to utilize the government, or where he is forced to an- tagonize it. The process is evident, and we are becoming familiar with the result. Hence the growing fear, in the public mind, of or- ganized power, as such, — a fear which is beginning to include organ- ized labor as well as organized capital. It requires no prophetic vision to foresee the nature of the next political struggle, — if there is to be a struggle rather than a campaign, — that it must be between the organ- NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 59 ized and the unorganized power of the country; in which event organ- ized capital and organized labor will be found, of necessity, upon the same side. Who can doubt, in the present circumstance, the duty of all enlightened and patriotic citizenship of trying to avert the pos- sibility of such a struggle. Now, if ever, is the time to consider, and to consider diligently, the public good, if for no other reason than that lasting security may be given to all private interests which are compati- ble with the public good. And yet, again, I am sure that you will agree with me as I say that citizenship cannot exist without sentiment. The state is not a cor- poration. It has a soul. It has its essential greatness in its humanity. Citizenship amongst us must conform to the political aims which we profess and to the political ideals which we cherish. It is the ruling passion of a people which fixes its destiny. That ancient and forma- tive passion for liberty, that respect for man as man, that sense of jus- tice which was not satisfied till it had set the bondman free, that hos- pitality which has- held the doors of the nation open to all who aspire after freedom, that tolerance which has kept the realm of opinion as free as the realm of action, that almost impracticable sentiment which has been struggling, and is struggling still, to realize the equality of opportunity, — all these are our inheritances of the spirit, the endow- ment of our citizenship. These are the things for which we stand. Realized politically, they make a democracy. Realized spiritually, they make a brotherhood. Let us realize them through citizenship. Let us keep the path of the democracy of toil and struggle open to the last material rewards to which it is entitled. Let us keep the path for the democracy of the mind open through every grade of education to the last training of the university. Let us keep the path for the democ- I'acy of the soul open to every spiritual privilege, even if in so doing we must needs reconstruct our churches. Nothing less than these things can satisfy the deep and abiding sentiment of citizenship. Judged by the tests which I have recalled, we cannot say that citi- zenship, as it exists within our knowledge, is clothed with those sanc- tities which can alone give it saving and redeeming power. And yet I firmly believe that there has begun a revival of the political conscience of the nation which is to make its moral power commensurate with its intelligence. We are certainly growing more sensitive to political wrong- doing, if in the nation, if in the state, even in the city, we are growing steadier and more determined in movements for reform. We are not afraid to invoke the law of the land for all legitimate ends which are revealed by public necessities. We are growing less narrow, less 6o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION captious, less partisan in our criticism of public men, and more dis- criminating in our support of those whom we believe deserve well of the republic. Approval of the right, and of right men, is just as much a sign of moral advance as criticism of the wrong and of wrong men. And we are also coming to believe, as a nation, that greatness is not incompatible with righteousness, but rather that if greatness be ordered by God, righteousness must come forth out of it in the divine sequence. If God be in His world at the present time, this must be so, ^OT all things which belong to the nations are taking on the dimen- sions of greatness. The spirit of nationality, of which I spoke at the beginning, of which we are beginning to be really conscious, is, I be- lieve, related to the spirit of God. In His name it is summoning na- tion after nation to show itself at its best. There is a call of God to nations, as to men, to be great. It is not wise for a nation, any more than it is for a man, when that call comes, " to hide amongst the stuff." May God in His infinite grace deliver this nation from the weakness and the cowardice of mere material prosperity, into that " liberty where- with He makes His people free." The Mission of Christianity to the World PRESIDENT CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL, D. D. UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY To bring the individual into conscious relation with God, and to develop in him a social conscience, are not the only aims of Religious Education. There is a third aim, which includes the others, and ad- vances beyond them. The question before us, at this time is, How can we Quicken in the Individual a Sense of National and Universal Brotherhood ? This is but another way of asking. How can we pro- mote in man a Godlike attitude and spirit toward the world? It is the world-view of a man, and the world-view of a people, that makes man and people small or great. We shall not preserve the religious spirit of our nation by external efforts of instruction alone. These will fail unless within the hearts of our youth is conserved and cultivated that Godlike attitude and spirit toward the world which is the sense of National and Universal Brotherhood. God is love; and he that loveth not knoweth not God. Religion is not only consciousness of God, not only a social conscience toward our neighbor; it is a Godlike attitude, a Godlike temper of the mind toward the whole world of men. How shall we quicken this among the millions of our younger citizens ? The wise counselor, the President of Dartmouth College, has. NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 6i in part, answered this question by his address on the Sacredness of Citizenship. There is nothing new in the proposal to connect rehgion with citizenship. It is a thought that has haunted the world from time immemorial. The East is full of it. The civ- ilization of the West has arisen out of the successive attempts of men and nations to promote, to modify, or to banish this thought. It has taken on the form of ecclesiastical autocracy, dominating the state and the members of society with the rod of spiritual despotism. It has appeared in the modified form of a constitutional union of Church and State, with a religious establishment and a prescribed liturgy em- anating from the throne as the head of the Church. It has been re- pudiated altogether in secularist reactions, wherein citizens, goaded to the denial of God by the tyranny of clericalism, have proved the im- mortality of the idea of religious education by their futile efforts to extirpate it from the public mind. To-day, in the United States, where ecclesiastical autocracy is impossible, where constitutional union of Church and State is equally impossible, where no provocation to secu- larist reaction arises, because no interference with religious liberty is attempted, an opportunity exists, perhaps unparalleled in the history of the world, to show the normal relation of religion to citizenship in national life. That opportunity is an educational one. It is found wherever children and youth are found. It consists in whatever deep- ens the impressionable nature of the young, a spirit of reverence, a sense of national brotherhood, a belief in the sacredness of public duty. Already this spirit is widespread; promoted, thank God! by the contagion of good example on the part of some in the highest sta- tions of government in the land. It will be strange if the American genius for surmounting difficulties, joined with the American concep- tion of rational patriotism, be not adequate ultimately to deal with that highest civic problem of religious education, in which citizens of all faiths have equal interest, the cultivation, in institutions maintained by the public funds, of that sacred attitude of mind toward citizenship which springs from the training of the religious instincts, and only from that. But the correct training of the religious instincts leads to results wider than patriotism. There is a brotherhood that reaches beyond national lines; a citizenship of the world, in the view of which there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but only manhood, with its rights and its wrongs. To qualify for that larger citi- zenship in the world; to quickeo in the individual the sense of univer- sal brotherhood, the Godlike attitude toward other races and other 62 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION faiths; the respect for man as man, — is the supreme end of Religious Education. It is possible that all may not be in sympathy with this aim. Some may consider it visionary, a matter of phrases rather than an affair of reality, deeming that it is impossible to look on races unlike our own with those feelings of homogeneity and affection that are associated with the idea of brotherhood. Some may call it a revo- lutionary aim, tending to subvert the providential order of superior and inferior races; a leveling doctrine, at variance with the Anglo- Saxon tradition. But for those who have discounted artificial dis- tinctions born of time and caste and unequal opportunity, who have construed the Christian religion in the terms of the cosmopolitanism of Jesus Christ, nothing is more sure than that the cultivation of the sense of universal brotherhood is in accord with the spirit of Christ, with the best educational principles, with a rational philosophy, and with the tendencies that shall advance the peace of the world. It is a tremen- dous thought, that with the growth of the democratic spirit in the twen- tieth century, which is the growth of the right valuation of personality, individual personality and national personality, there may be at hand a rediscovery of the mission of Christianity to the world, which would mean a return to the cosmopolitanism of Jesus Christ. How simple, and how majestic in its simplicity, is Christ's attitude and spirit toward the world. His mind is disburdened of all questions of sectarianism and race prejudice. He has incarnated Himself in the life of the race, and every interest of the race is dear to Him. He is unhampered by autocratic tradition; He is incapable of the luSt of conquest. His heart beats in unison with every upward impulse of hu- manity, and bows in sympathy over each futile effort. The griefs of the world weigh upon Him. He weeps for its sins. He loves the world with an eternal passion, as of an only-begotten from a Father. He gives His life for the world in atoning sacrifice with joy that despises the shame of the cross, saying: " If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself." What simplicity of intention! what cosmopolitanism of spirit! Far away from it has moved the Christian civilization of the West, caught in the strenuous complications of its historical devel- opment. Every force that is alien to the cosmopolitanism of Christ has wrought upon it, to obscure from the eyes of the world, the real mission of Christianity. Ecclesiastical despotism has, more than once, claimed a monopoly of knowledge, in order that, through fear, born of ignorance, it might promote submission to authority. Sectarian strife has dismembered the Church, witli fury that, at times, has rivaled the ferocity of pagan wars. The spirit of feudalism, which is the sub- NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 63 ordination of the many to the will of the few, has dominated Chris- tian states and shaped the foreign policies of Christian empires. The slavery of men has been sanctioned by Christian opinion. Race hatreds, deep and implacable as those of Islam, have flourished in the soil of Christendom and wafted their influence to the Far East. The pro- vincialism of proud nations, glorying in the name of Christian, has nourished morbid beliefs in destiny, which have made them destroyers, and, to the Oriental mind, have identified Christianity and armed im- perialism as synonymous terms. Not with rash and shallow condemnation does one speak of these historic aspects which have arisen in the evolution of the Western world. However regrettable they may appear from the standpoint of an ideal- ist, doubtless they have been part of the travail of creation, without which mighty products of good could not have been born. Doubtless they shall be overruled, both in their direct and indirect influences of evil, through the great providence of God, who makes the wrath and the error and the vain pride of man to praise Him. And we must not forget that with these regrettable things have come also many things of priceless value, that are of the essence of our religion and in harmony with the mind of Christ ; truths that have been purged of dross in the alembic of controversy; institutions, domestic, social, political, sacra- mental, that have survived, as if immortal; moral ideas that must re- main, though heaven and earth should pass away. It is true that the West dare not point to its historical development as an example of ideal Christian evolution. But it is also true that the West, ascending through strife, and sin, and sorrow to its present greatness, bears wit- ness to the imperishable essence of the Revelation of Christ. To all who observe the passage of events, and who reflect on what they observe, the present state of the world speaks of impending changes, the meaning and extent of which are not to be predicted. The acute crisis in the Far East suggests immeasurable possibilities in the re- distribution of controlling interests. Beyond this obvious portent of change are other signs which, though obscured for the moment by the clouds of war, strike the practised eye, and shall in their succession appear before the public mind. The familiarity of intercourse be- tween the most remote part of the world is the more impressive because it excites comment no longer. We go to the Far East to-day with less difficulty of preparation and less sense of remoteness than our fathers who went from Boston to the valley of the Mississippi. We expect the presence of Orientals in our seats of learning; at BerHn, at Stras- burg, at Oxford, at Harvard, at Princeton. Nor are there lacking, 64 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION in the East, seats of learning rivaling our own, where science and lit- erature and politics of the West are taught. Academic interchanges within the East are habitual. India and China are dispatching the flower of their youth to Japan to study European biology and phi- losophy in the imperial universities of Kyoto and Tokyo. Numerous local movements of spiritual reform are taking place in Hindu, Mohammedan, and Buddhist circles; movements that appear to be sporadic, but reveal, on closer scrutiny, one common term, the assimilation of portions of the Christian truth; and, like the returning of a Nova Scotian tide from its long ebb, there is rolling in upon the educated life of the Orient the pressure of mysterious impulses making for a new social order; the flood of fresh suggestion, bespeaking hope and energy to cover the wreckage of long passivity and philosophical despair; the mysterious appreciation of Christ and of the esoteric as- pects of Christianity. As one ponders the present state of the world, noting these phenom- ena of the East, with others, ominous, yet not less evident, darkening the sky of northern Europe, and as one reflects that God's plan moves on- ward, whatever else be stayed, the question presses. Is there shortly to be a new interpretation of the mission of Christianity to the world? After the long ages of the historical evolution of the West, during which ecclesiastical despotism and sectarian strife, and the spirit of feudalism, and race-hatred, and the provincial pride of destiny have drawn the thick veil of Western civilization between the face of Christ and the waiting East, is there to be a new Epiphany, a fresh manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles through some nation that has come out of the blind evolutionary struggle into the simplicity that is in Christ? If so, can we be that nation ? There are conditions present in our life that suggest the possibiHty of our election for this benign service. In the heart of our people is the spirit of civil liberty. That spirit has so incarnated itself in our life that it determines, more or less, our world-view. We judge of the blessedness or misery of nations by the measure of their freedom and their self-sufiiciency. Therefore, what- ever may exist in the thinking of individuals, there exists not, in the thinking of the American people, the desire to enslave, the lust to con- quer. If, lately, we have appeared to the East as a military power, it was because honest men deemed, whether rightly or wrongly, that this was a step toward the ultimate liberty of enslaved peoples, not a barrier against it, and I believe that this desirable view of our motive prevails throughout the East up to this time. Nor is the American view of religious liberty less pronounced. Our NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 65 most holy traditions are the voluntary principle and the unfettered right of conscience. To scorn the faith of any man is to surrender what our fathers won and held through suffering. But, if it be God's pleasure to use this nation, so wondrously seg- regated from the comphcations of European pohtics, to make to the bewildered world a new demonstration of the essential spirit of Chris- tianity, there must come a great deepening in the nation's heart of the sense of universal brotherhood, which is (to use the venerated language of our authorized version) " good will toward men." Peace on earth comes not, abides not, returns not, save where there there is good will toward men; a deep sohcitude for the world's good, a growing tradi- tion of world-wide love in a nation's heart, supplanting that unchas- tened selfishness which is the first tendency of a prosperous and pro- gressive people. From that tendency we are by no means exempt. At present its expression in the terms of militarism is held in check by the traditional love of Uberty for ourselves and for all mankind; but in the more sub- tle forms of commercial ambition it may steal upon us unawares. Sir Wilham Humber, in his history of British India, affirms that Great Britain entered the East with no thought of mihtary empire. Her mo- tive was a commercial motive. The subjugation of the peoples of India was a dream born of her mercantile successes. There is no guaranty, save one, and that is the pervading influence of the spirit of Jesus Christ in our people, that commercial eagerness shall not lead us on to aggression, and aggression issue in conquest. Conquest may bring wealth, and conquest may bring glory, but the price of it shall be to forfeit the chance of interpreting the mission of Christianity to the Eastern world. It is certain that the representatives of Western nations never can reinterpret the mission of Christianity to the Orient, in part enraged, in part jaded and dispirited, by sword-thrusts from the West, unless there be shown in the nations they represent a purpose to temper selfish ambition by that first law of Christ's Ufe, " good will toward men." In these proud days of the repubhc we hear much spoken of our mighty destiny among the nations. God save us from being inebriated with the sense of destiny, and from losing the sense of justice to remote nations and respect for Asiatic rights and aspirations. It is also certain that the representatives of Western nations must relatively fail to interpret Christianity to the scholarly minds of the East, if they insist that Christianity necessarily implies ecclesiastical institutions and dogmatic definitions identical with those of the Occi- 66 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION dental worshipers of Christ. To say this is in no sense an undervalua- tion of our Christian theology. So far from undervaluing theology as a hindrance upon life, I should esteem life as not worth living, were it not for those apostolic beliefs concerning God and the person and work of Christ which, because I hold them, and in the way in which I see them, are my theology, upon which my life is founded. But I cannot demand of men whose institutional conceptions are the fruit of Oriental inheritancy, and whose points of contact with the revelation of God in Christ are determined by the canons of Oriental thinking, that they shall adopt all the intellectual terms in which I, of another inheritance, formulate my belief in these great primary beliefs of Christianity, or else be understood to have no share in an essence of truth which, on Christ's own word, is of universal application and for universal posses- sion. Let me rather so believe in the Holy Ghost, so trust that Light which lighteth every man coming into the world, so honor the attempts of all nations and kindreds and peoples to attain unto God, so wait for the East to lift herself from her long bewilderment and for God to complete what He Himself has begun, so dismiss that inherent scorn of the East which has been the stumbling-block cast by Anglo-Saxon pride in the path of Christ's world conquest, that in my heart there shall be but a Godlike yearning for the souls of all men, and in my life a Christlike mark of sacrifice. There is but one way to preserve and to propagate this spirit in the American nation, with our genius for commercialism, our love for progress, our perilous pride of destiny. It is to promote the influence of this large view of the mission of Christianity to the world upon the millions of our younger citizens in their school and college days. In- tensify this by wise and well-considered methods, and they shall de- velop a sense of the brotherhood of the world, a zeal for the advance- ment of the world, a deference for the rights of the world, a respect for the aspirations of the world that shall make our national spirit an in- terpretation of the mission of Christianity to the non-Christian races. Permit these younger citizens, on the other hand, in the most impres- sionable years of life, to drink only the heating wine of secular ambi- tion, to acquire only the hunger for control of the world's resources, to foster race prejudice and crude Occidentalism, and each generation, moving further away from the ancestral heritages of the Christian re- ligion, shall postpone the coming of the kingdom of God on earth. Men, judging in haste, may call the deliberations of this Convention academic, but time will show that, among the voices that have pleaded from this platform for a greater emphasis upon religion throughout our whole educational system, all have spoken as patriots, some as prophets. ADDRESSES AT DEPARTMENTAL SESSIONS The Joint Sessions of Departments THE PLACE OF FORMAL INSTRUCTION IN RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION In the Home president G. STANLEY HALL, Ph.D., LL.D. CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS From a biological standpoint, good parenthood, in all that that noble and pregnant term involves, is the supreme end of man. This means that that man and woman is the best who produces and rears to fullest bodily, mental, and moral maturity the most and the best children. No other service equals this. God's covenant with Abraham, that if he did His will his children should be as the stars, only expresses a uni- versal law of life. Nature's one penalty for every kind of violation of the fundamental laws of our being is progressive extinction. No mat- ter what the sin, its punishment is some form of lessened vitality, per- version or arrest. The ultimate test of every question of personal or social virtue is its effect on the child in our midst, and yet more its effect on the unborn, with the fate of countless generations of whom every fruitful life is freighted. All the culture and institutions of every race are sound and abiding, or false and transient, according as they favor or hinder the transmission of the sacred torch of Ufe undimmed to posterity. This is the standpoint of the new movement in eugenics or practical heredity, a factor in every life far more important than en- vironment and education combined. In this large sense let us not forget that paternity is as much the culmination of man's education as maternity is of woman's, and Mr, Galton's proposed certification and endowment of those fittest for each is only recognizing the fact that these are exactly the diplomas and these the highest degrees, summa cum laude, which nature has always conferred on those who finish their course in her great university. How do we stand in the Hght of this great and awful bionomic law that makes our very Hfe its sport ? Statistics show that among both the oldest American stirps, and also among the educated classes, marriages, in both sexes, are later and fewer, that children of those who do marry are less numerous and less often nursed, and more often and 67 68 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION earlier committed to the care of nurses, governesses, teachers, and that all four of these evils have grown steadily for at least two generations, while among the children of the more prolific lower classes crime, as meas- ured by the age of first committment, is every decade more precocious, both in city and country, and also that the growing diffusion of school- learning does not bring proportionate immunity from either vice or crime, although it does give greater ability to conceal both. Other studies, nearly half a score in number, made in various parts of the country and on various classes, show a rapidly progressive ignorance of the Bible, despite home, church, and Sunday school, so that for an increasing percentage of our high-school pupils its best passages and most salient incidents are so unknown that the commonest literary allu- sions to its contents are not understood. Ancient German and Greek religions are often better known. The problems are too vast and vital to be solved by any quick devices, by resolutions, committees, or ad- dresses. In view of the magnitude of the danger, I feel profoundly that my, or perhaps any one's, program of how to meet it will seem either radical or impractical, or both; but I could not be an optimist if I did not beheve myself in its soundness and efficiency. I. First of all, I would have worked out two concrete courses in morals, — one for high school and one for early college classes, — de- tailed and practical, rather than abstract and theoretical. This work should begin in personal hygiene and regimen, and comprise diet, ex- ercise, body keeping and training, and should enlist the strong and legitimate passion of every young man to be. strong and every girl to be beautiful and attractive. It should include dress, adornment, eti- quette, and manners; should treat the seven deadly sins of the Cath- olic Church, — pride, avarice, luxury, envy, anger, appetite, sloth, — and the cardinal" virtues, — wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, faith, hope, and love, — should involve something of temperament, habit, character, livelihood, citizenship, example, self-respect and con- trol, selfishness and honesty, patriotism, companionship and friend- ship, obedience, usefulness, fun, ambition, methods of study, duties to self and to relations and acquaintances, to state and church, and should culminate in a few wholesome principles concerning purity, marriage, home-making, fatherhood and motherhood, and duties to the unborn. These latter topics should be taught in a condensed way by hints, and without causing self-consciousness. All should be copi- ously illustrated by examples drawn from history, literature, and life, and while I would not have the religious motives omitted, the chief appeal should be to prudence of a common-sense kind, and to the INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 69 sentiment of honor, meant to be the chief advocate of the interests of the race in the soul of the individual. We still lack a manual or cur- riculum of this kind, but experience has proven the practicability of it, and it is sure to come. II. For some children the mother is literally in the place of God, and all the sentiments that underlie both virtue and religion — viz., helplessness, dependence, reverence, devotion, loyalty, gratitude, love, service — must in the child first be directed to her, and only later are they transferred to deity, nature, and society. Every failure on her part to supply food, care, love, authority, or to evoke any of the sen- timents involves defect in the child's moral and religious nature. Hence the mother who does most for herself does most for her child. So sub- tle is this early rapport that nothing in her soul or body fails to register its effect on the body and soul of the infant, who knows no other god but its mother. For her, therefore, religious and moral nurture means not only to crave motherhood for her own good, but to want the whole of it, pain, joy, and all. The more we know of early childhood, the clearer we see that it is what motherhood makes it; that motherhood is therefore the most creative and divine thing in the world. Formal instruction avails little without this work of preformation to prepare the soil. Every kind and degree of maternal ministration of this kind increases receptivity for teaching when its time comes. III. Formal moral and religious instruction at home should, of course, begin with stories, very simple, brief, and oft-repeated at first, and rapidly increasing in number, kind, and complexity, as the child's intelligence expands. Stories are the oldest form of transmitted cul- ture and the most formative. All should have a moral more and more disguised and implicit as the child advances in years, but the moral should be ever present for sentiments, will, or both. I suspect and challenge the word " formal " in my topic if it involves, as it does with too many pedagogues, anything methodic. It should at first be as free as possible from every element of didacticism, systematic sequence, or the drill factors of the precisian. Form should be utterly subordi- nated to content, and the tales should be of the greatest possible num- ber and variety. Young children need elemental story-roots picturing all the elemental good and evil in the world; — all these, of which the kindergarten has a very precious kit, though far too few, too elaborated and selected from too narrow a range, the child needs, and for these its moral appetite is voracious. Every mother should be a story-teller, and her repertory should be large, well-chosen, and ever replenished, and the father should take his turn. What else was the twilight hour. 70 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the fireplace, where that still survives, made for? Tales are the natural soul-food of children, their native breath and vital air; but our children are too often either story-starved or charged with ill-chosen or ill-adapted twaddle tales. Good tales, well told, preform the moral choices of adult life aright. Many Bible stories are among the best, but these are not enough, and there are not enough adapted to any age, so we should go outside, and draw on other sources. Here our need is a canon of well-chosen ones from a very wide field, cast into the right form for each age. IV. The religion of nature should not be omitted in the home. Everything has been worshiped by primitive man, and here, too, the child tends to repeat the history of the race. Moon, sun, stars, the boundless sky and its great void, wind, stars, lightning, wind, cloud, shadow, sea, mountains, fire, trees, flowers, animals, and, lastly, man himself, the crown and epitome of all, — all these have been supreme objects of worship somewhere and at some time, and the vestiges of these old nature-religions are many and potent in the childish heart and soul, and all need some development, for how shall the soul adore the unseen till it has first felt the power of the visible things that declare the glory of God? What kind of a father is he who has never taken his children on a walk in the country, where they could be at least ex- posed to these influences? What more hallowed way of spending Sunday afternoon in every season? And in what environment does parenthood stand forth in more dignity and majesty than on such a background of nature, the mighty parent of us all ? V. As to prayers at the mother knee, in the family, grace at table, Bible reading and memorizing, these are just as precious home influ- ences as they ever were, or perhaps as any one has ever claimed them to be; but they are all rapidly declining, even in Christian homes. They ought to be maintained for their influence on the children, even if there were no other reason. This aspect of the decadence of the home is to me peculiarly pathetic. Must this daily consecration of the household to heaven lapse to a mere vanishing remainder? Is a psychologist or pedagogue old-fashioned to plead for these, when even the clergy say so little for it ? Many can at least have sacred songs and hymns in the home on fit occasions, and these sink deep and bear rich fruitage later. VI. If formal instruction means catechism of either the Westminster or more modern and trivialized form, I cannot plead for it, if for no other reason than that there are better uses of the scanty time, and dogma is everywhere giving way to life. Moral and religious training INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 71 for children is, in the home, essentially informal, and non-examinable. It is seed cast on the waters, which will never again be seen as seed, but only as the harvest of later years. Finally, and above all, instruction is the atmosphere of the home. The child's intellect is very small and feeble, but there is nothing in the domestic environment to which its soul is not responsive. Every cloud in the heaven of the parents' love for each other, every moment of suspicion, every word of censure, every act of indifference, wilts the child's moral nature. The home must be first, and not second to busi- ness or to society. It must be happy, for young souls expand and grow only where quiet joy reigns. • It must be pervaded by a high sense of duty, which is best imparted, not by conscious and methodic incul- cations, but by the infection of example. There must be high ideals and standards in all matters, order, system, regularity, and therefore there must be discipline and no overindulgence. The rod must not be absolutely impossible, but the requirements must not be fitful or changeable. Happily, we live in a day of rapidly increasing knowledge of chil- dren, and the more we know of them, the more they are desired, and the more clearly it is seen that their bodies and souls are worthier than anything else in the world of love, reverence, and service, and that noth- ing supplies parents with such potent motives to become and to do the best they can as the desire to be the better able to bring their children to the fullest possible maturity of all their powers. In the Sunday School REV. EVERETT D. BURR, D.D. PASTOR FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, NEWTON CENTER, MASSACHUSETTS When God gave the Bible to mankind he had thought of the kind of man to whom He gave it. Its adaptation to human need is hke the light which adjusts itself to the eye of the minutest insect and the ex- tended vision of man. This adaptability of the Scripture is not hmited to the varied needs of humanity in the large, but to the changing needs of the individual hfe in its varied developmental periods. Paul knew one Hfe at least that from his point of view illustrated what the Scripture could do in the culture of the soul. Of Timothy he said," From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through the faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture, God-breathed, is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the 72 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." From childhood to manhood, from the early years of immaturity to the perfecting of character, the Scripture can be both instructor and curriculum. In methods of secular education the child is no longer a problem, but an opportunity. Time was when the child was thought to be a volume to be read, a riddle to be solved, a block to be chis'eled into form : but now we are abandoning the artificial methods and are deaUng with soul Hfe as the scientific horticulturist would deal with the plant, by a method in harmony with nature, which recognizes the four seasons, and dares allow that this new expression of the life of God, a child, shall not be forced to fit a man's idea of what he should be, but rather fulfill the divine intention. The new education understands its first duty to be to free a soul from physical limitations; to open a child's eyes and teach him to see, to unstop the ears and bid him to hear, to guide the untrained muscles in their first adventures — in a word, to set free the entempled soul in self-expression. The modern teacher does not seek to instruct, but to educate, not to inform the child, but to form a new life in the child, not to leave a thought, but to find one, not to project himself upon the pupil, but to enable the pupil to project himself as a new force into the world. One cannot define the ultimate aims of the true education ■ with- out discovering that they are coincident with the subHme purposes of Christian religion. Education is the emancipation of soul. The salvation of the soul, as implied by the traditional teaching of the Church, is something independent of time, something which can be accomplished in a day. But this implies that rehgion is only a medi- cine to cure a disease. The great Teacher defined the salvation which He came to give in terms of life. In His view, religion is a diet to nour- ish the spirit. The method of soul-saving is conversion. The method of soul- culture is education. The former seeks excitement; the latter, delib- eration. The former has a definite end in view, and when the end is reached, is satisfied; its task is finished and the evangelist is triumph- ant. The latter has no end in view; the work is never finished, the process is endless. In the former method, formal instruction prevails, of necessity; in the latter, vital processes must have sway. In the light of the new education the older religious conception of conversion of soul and the modern conception of culture of soul meet and mingle. They are not contradictory and mutually exclusive; they are interpenetrating and complemental. INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 73 Froebel presents a child in his threefold relationship: he is a child, of nature by his physical inheritances, a child of humanity by his social inheritances, a child of God by his religious inheritances. The child has relations by virtue of his inheritances of body, soul, and spirit with these three worlds. The education of a child consists in bringing him to understand this threefold relationship. Our experience as Christian teachers has been meager, or our eyes blinded, if we have not seen the souls of children expand, as well as the souls of those who taught them, as they have walked these plain paths into the larger truths of the divine revelation. In what is distinctly known as secular education, formal instruction, or what might be called the library method, is being displaced by what might be called the laboratory method, for in the light of modern psychol- ogy it is seen that the soul makes its larger acquisitions by indirections. ' If you will do, ye shall know." This is the Christian law of mind. Activity opens all the channels of approach for truth to the soul. How can one know God? By formal instruction in Biblical liter- ature and history, by a mastery of the manuscripts or a memorizing of the catechism ? Does a child know God when he can recite the books of the Bible or tell the Ten Commandments ? The knowledge of God must come by experience and activity. Even formal instruction in the Scriptures will not induce a religious life. The Bible is not religion, nor does it contain religion. It is a description of religion. Formal instruction has a small place in religious experience, if that experience consists in the knowledge and love of God and the conse- quent joy. There must be a larger method. The culture of soul re- sults from or consists in its reactions. No impression without ex- pression can ever be healthy or helpful. An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes and ears and in no way modifies his active life is an impression really lost. It is psychologically incomplete. As a mere impression, an impression is a failure. It must produce some motor consequence to be of worth; the only durable impressions are those in the light of which we speak or act. Learning must be transformed into life. One would not expect to find the yeast if he made a cross-section of a loaf of bread. A cow eats grass all day, but we do not expect the cow to give grass. She is expected to give milk. A boy may study arithmetic and learn to do a few examples correctly. He can tell if each shoe is to have five nails, how many it will take to shoe a^ horse. But suppose the horse's shoes needed six nails? He is baffled because he has found a case which was not met by his example; but when he masters the principle of which 74 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION his sum is but an illustration, he can address himself to the problems of life as they come. The larger method is satisfied with no education unless it organize in the resources of the human soul those powers of conduct which shall fit him to live in the world of men and things. This, too, ought to tbe the ultimate aim of the teaching in the Sunday school, to organize capacities for conduct, and what he learns on the Lord's Day to be so related to what he learns every day that he will see that his every-day life affords a laboratory for conduct ; the activities and relations of the home, the school, and the play-ground become a part of the one great life which he is to hve in the apphcation of rehgious principle to action. Religion is a hfe to be lived, and the world demands of the educa- tional work of the Church that those who are instructed in its Sunday schools shall be equipped for Hving the life of God in His large world. The world demands that the science of psychology shall claim its whole field and no longer consider the knowledge of religious truth as the one exception to the great laws of mind. The Bible is the great text-book for the Sunday school, but does not the Bible adjust itself to these larger demands of modern education ? It may well form the curriculum of study, may well be made the basis of the rehgious education. We go to botany to learn what men have proved to be the laws which govern the flowers; we go to grammar to learn what men have proved to be the laws of expression; we go to na- ture to learn what the ages have proved to be the great laws of Hfe; we go to the Bible for the principles of religion, for the Bible is a record of religious experience, an expression of the religious life. The adaptabihty of the Scripture to the varied needs of the grow- ing hfe is apparent. In early childhood the prevaihng mental Hfe is through sense-perceptions. The world of things is first, and the Bible meets the child at the threshold of his temple of learning with a revelation of God in His works. The heavens and the earth are the first elements which appeal to him. Through these he gets the first gHmpses of the glory of God. The sense of God's power. His wisdom and His law wiU induce reverence, trust, love, and obedience in the child soul. The interests of the growing boy are largely personal. He loves people and is interested in what they do. Just here the Bible offers the attractive narrative, the movements and achievements of heroes, and one by one the boy may become familiar with the great characters, the great movements, the great epochs, and the great Life, and through these gain a knowledge of God's care, His providence, His INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 75 protection, and, as by a revelation, find it easy thinking from spelling father with a little " f " to spelling it with a big " F." In like manner, as the abihties, the interests, and needs of the dis- tinct stages of development of soul-life appear, the Bible seems to melt and pour itself into the waiting matrix, making possible a selection of lesson material adapted to the mental powers, the fundamental in- terests, and the spiritual needs of the expanding soul. At every point of his progress in the knowledge of rehgious truth, the Bible will com- mand the intellectual respect of the student and awaken his enthusi- astic interest ; his rehgious and moral needs will be supplied by truth suitable to them, even as these needs widen and become more com- plex, and his expanding life will steadily acquire strength, breadth, and symmetry. By such a method no truth will be unassimilated, for each will enter into the character, the new will be related to the old, and his rehgious education in the knowledge of God will be co-ordi- nated with his culture in other fields. How pitiably inadequate our present Sunday-school methods seem when the greatness of the text-book and the sacredness of the human soul are considered. The farther from the shore, the deeper the sea; the higher the hill, the wider the prospect; the deeper the shaft, the more precious the metal. For the larger culture of mind let there be the profounder and more scientific study of the Bible. Through the training in the Scripture one may gain the sensitive conscience. The full sensitizing of conscience cannot be reahzed without an inteUigent mastery of the great ethical principles underlying the institutions of Israel. The Old Testament writers seem to have planted their feet immovably upon the one great fact, viz. ; that this world was built on righteousness and administered on principles of justice. The Prophecy of Habakkuk is the aegis of municipal reform; the Prophecy of Amos the hand-book of social ethics; the prophet Isaiah, the ideal statesman. Why do our young men leave the Sunday school? Because we have not been wise enough to present to them opportunities for the study of such rich fives as Isaiah, Josiah, and Samuel. Young men with studious minds crave sharp distinctions; they draw rigid fines of demarkation. They accept no compromise. Conscience is dom- inant in youth and needs the splendid girding which such a training in the great moral struggles of the leading characters in the Bible can alone afford. Again to the training in the Scripture must one look for the power of a well-girded will. The kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of divine 76 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION intention. The sublime secret of the greatest hfe is that He came " to do the will of God." The most dramatic picture in all the revealed word of God is the waiting Deity looking with silent scrutiny upon the sons of men to see if there was one who did His will, when the silence is broken by the voice of the eternal Son of God dedicating Himself to obedience in the words, " Lo, I come to do thy will, in the volume of the book it is written of me." Again, training in the Scripture alone can give a pure heart. " I have hid thy word in my heart, that I shall not sin agaist thee " ; "Al- ready ye are clean, through the word which I have spoken unto you." Here, then, is the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work. To make such a man is the supreme function of the Sunday school. To the realization of this purpose the Church of God in the world to-day is summoned by a clarion note from the skies, and to this she is urged by the enthusiasm for education which is thrilUng the thoughtful world; to this she must be drawn by the pathetic appeal of lives imperfect, imprisoned, and imperiled, lives stunted and starved, hves ignorant and indolent, Hves prejudiced and palsied, lives that might. have been strong, brave, hopeful, tolerant, symmetrical, and use- ful if the Church had done her duty by them. Let the Church school in the new century be the center of her power. As she has commanded the service of the best architects in building her houses of worship and demands the trained and equipped musicians to lead in her service of song, let her command, for the in- struction of the youth, the trained teachers who, beUeving their work to be the highest on earth, will bring to their tasks intelligence and devotion, science and consecration, and make full use of the Book of God in building the noble structure of the man of God who shall be perfect and thoroughly furnished unto all good works. In the Young Men's Christian Associations GEORGE ALBERT COE, Ph.D. JOHN EVANS PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY IN NORTH- WESTERN UNIVERSITY I. The Associations have Become Teaching Bodies. The Young Men's Christian Associations constitute a movement in practical re- ligion. They have endowed no chairs for inyestigating rehgious theo- ries; they have formulated no confession of faith; they entertain no purpose of taking the place of the churches as teachers of doctrine. The evangelical formula contained in the definition of active member- INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 77 ship is not applied to individuals, but to churches. It is not a creed or a program of teaching, but rather a means of securing and holding a definite constituency. In the future, as in the past, the chief work of the associations will consist in supplying to young men and boys cer- tain incentives and privileges that the churches, as a rule, do not provide. Nevertheless, the teaching function is growing. First, the coming of the student association brings in the idea of spirit- ual growth or education through study. Second, the establishment of boys' departments means essentially the reHgious education of boys. Third, the growth of association Bible-study directly involves formal instruction. Within the last seven or eight years the associations, federated under the International Committee, have become a great teaching body. In their classes are enrolled 11,000 boys, 26,000 students, and 25,000 other men — over 60,000 in all. Nearly 1,200 employed officers, and nearly 700 other men, besides some thousands of student leaders, have charge of classes. More than twoscore different courses are provided; writ- ten examinations are now offered, and a beginning has been made in the gradation of pupils and of courses. The educational idea is so fully adopted by association leaders that psychology, the study of ado- lescence, and the principles of teaching have a place in the curriculum of training for secretaries. II. The Theory of Association Teaching. What is formally taught to these 60,000 pupils ? An answer is not easy, for there is no absolute dividing line between formal and informal instruction. Any belief that is constantly assumed by a teacher, though it be never formally stated, acquires the force of positive instruction. Theoretically, how- ever, the associations have a definite poUcy. If we divide Biblical material into theories (including doctrine, philosophy, and hypotheses of criticism), facts (including ascertained knowledge of the Biblical history and Uterature), and duties (including all insight into the uni- versal laws of spiritual life), then we may say that all Association study is intended to focus upon duties rather than facts or theories. The aim is to bring out the truths that are vital for the pupil's character and growth, and for society's well-being. This is called devotional and practical study. The courses vary with the pupils. For boys, stories are provided that enrich the imagination and purify the ideals; for working-men, railroad men, soldiers, sailors, salesmen, and accountants, more or less detached topics that bear directly upon personal religion; for col- legians, courses more detailed and more systematic. 78 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Courses for students include more of fact and of theory than courses for other groups. It is assumed that the student has opportunity for historical and critical study in the college curriculum, and there is no intention to duplicate such study. The aim is rather to secure the daily use of the Scriptures for the purpose of personal growth. III. The Results. This is the theory of all Association teaching. In practice it has contributed materially to the renaissance of popular Bible-study. The contents of the Bible are being learned by scores of thousands of persons whom no other teaching body would be able to influence in similar measure. No doubt this study is somewhat super- ficial; there is some admixture of historical error; yet a mass of mental images and of notions of unquestionable value is actually being fixed in the minds of the pupils. Of the quickening effect upon spiritual life there can be no question. I have witnessed the influence of devo- tional study upon college students for too many years to have any doubt on his point. These good results have been attained in spite of the fact that much of Association teaching has been managed in the interest of a particular theory of the Scriptures. The text-books decline, it is true, to enter upon critical questions, yet some of them are built upon extreme, though generally unexpressed, theories concerning points of critical scholarship. Whether such theories are radical or conservative mat- ters not; the objection is the same. Further, the devotional method encovirages the teaching of dogmas, but discourages the application of rational tests thereto. An inter- national secretary recommends that college students spend a month each on such doctrines as sin, faith, regeneration, the atonement, the divinity of Christ, etc., and that the leaders in such study be students. It is easy to see whither this advice tends. A student leader of strong personality will be filled with zeal for such doctrinal ideas as have hap- pened to stick to him, while the average leader will humbly follow the hints that come from international headquarters. In the latter case, some international secretary, whose notions may be either ancient, medieval, or modern, becomes the doctrinal teacher of indefinite thou- sands of young men. I believe that, for pupils of proper age and prepa- ration, more rather than less doctrinal instruction should be given than at present, but, obviously, the associations have not solved the problem of how to attain this end. IV. The Associations are Advancing in Methods and Point of View. There is in the associations a healthy and growing sentiment in favor of better methods and a clearer understanding of the practical point of INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 79 view in Bible study. It is coming to be seen that the once dominant distinction between devotional and intellectual study confuses the pur- pose of study with the method of it. All real study is intellectual, what- ever the purpose. Inferior intellectual material can never be the best food for spiritual life. The unity of the mind is axiomatic in education, whether the pupil be a factory operative or a collegian. We must there- fore re-interpret our classification of BibUcal material. Theories, facts, and duties are clearly not so much separable kinds of material as points of possible emphasis. Any attempt to teach duties without reference to facts and theories is pretty sure to result in somebody's teaching his own particular view under some other name. The duties inculcated in the Scriptures come to us, not in abstract form, but incarnated in historical personages and events, and some degree of correct appre- hension of this historical element is essential to any safe teaching of the practical aspects of the Bible. Nevertheless, the associations rightly places the emphasis upon the practical. Their function is not to investigate theoretical questions, or to teach theories as such, but only to use for practical purposes what- soever is reasonably certain. While, therefore, in some respects they may lead, in others they must follow. As in the past, so in the future, the glory of the association movement will consist in zeal in good works, and in a peculiarly ready adaptability to the practical needs of special classes. This is different from either radicalism or conservatism in matters of theological dispute. All that the modern movement in Biblical learning can reasonably demand of the associations is that they shall respect sound methods of ascertaining facts, and recognize facts that have been reasonably ascertained. The last Bible-study prospectus announces a course that will com- prise a study of " the main facts touching the history and composition of the Bible." Such a task is one of exceeding deUcacy, and it is doubt- ful whether it can be so discharged as to satisfy all wings of evangelical sentiment. Perhaps this of itself is not a too serious matter; what is really serious is our responsibihty for reaching and teaching the actual truth. What attitude, then, should we who are Association workers adopt toward the historical movement in the investigation of the Scrip- tures? Should our position be conservative or progressive? or should we dodge the issue? " When in doubt," says an American humorist, "tell the truth!" The more one practises this advice, the more its wisdom appears. Shall we dodge the issues ? No, let us acknowledge that there are issues. Shall we take the conservative or the progress- ive attitude? The answer is, let us tell the truth; let us tell all the truth 8o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION that we know, failing not to distinguish between what we know and what we are merely accustomed to assume. But we are uncertain about many points, and we are not competent to settle them. Well, then, let us tell the truth about our own uncertainty and incompetence! But will not this policy unsettle our pupils and endanger the spiritual im- pressions that we desire to make? Still the humorist is right. Let us tell to ourselves the truth- that the spiritual power of the Scriptures is at its highest only when the sacred writings are apprehended in their genuine historical actuality. In the Public School GEORGE H. MARTIN SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS. I shall use the time allotted to me in presenting the result of a recent experiment. It occurred to me to inquire whether the pupils in our schools, with- out formal instruction, having learned no precepts, had from the in- formal, occasional teaching in the schools, from their own thinking and under the influence of their homes, acquired any conception of moral obligations which they could express in words if occasion arose for them to do so. Accordingly, I asked the principals of several grammar schools to obtain for me papers, from the^ members of their highest class, written impromptu on the topics: Our duties to our famihes; Our duties to our city; — half of the class writing upon each. This was done, and they were sent to me. The papers treating of the family affirm moral obligations not only in a broad way, but in specific applications of general principles. They specify obedience to parents, — honor and respect for parents; respect for the older brothers and sisters; care, guidance, and example for the younger ones. They, without exception, declare the duty of helpful service for all the members of the family, and they specify a great variety of ways in which that service may be rendered. They speak of present obliga- tions, but many of them speak of their duty to assist as becoming later a duty to support when their parents are old. The papers from one school dwelt with special emphasis upon the duty to be cheerful in the home, to carry sunshine, and to be kind in speech. These papers are not cold statements of obligation. They are warm with filial regard and love. They dwell at length upon the INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 8i love of their parents for them, the sacrifices in their behalf in their in- fancy and later Hfe, and they see their own obligations in the nature of recognition and return for what they have received. The other papers, treating of civic duties, deal with the subject in a similar way. The children dwell at length upon what the city has done for them in its protection and care. They would, by their orderly conduct on the street, by their scrupulous care of public property, by their efforts to keep the streets and sidewalks clean, and their own home premises neat, try to show their appreciation of what they have received. They are proud of their city, and would do nothing to dishonor it. They would speak well of it. They think that when the time comes they should vote, and vote for good men, and should meet their share of the pubUc expense. Such, in brief, is the result of my experiment. It satisfied me that our American children, in the process of being educated in schools, said by some to be devoid of moral instruction, schools affirmed by some to be breeding places for unmoral or immoral character, are ac- quiring ideas of moral obHgation sufficient, if put into practice in daily living, to make them safe, useful, and honorable members of society. We have no right to ask for more, and I have never seen any scheme of formal instruction which'seemed to me likely to accomplish so much. Papers on Moral Duties, Prepared by High School Students A. our duties to our families I am the eldest daughter. In the family there are four children younger, and it seems to me now, and I think it will always seem, that I owe more to my family than any of the younger children. I was born in Russia, and came to America when I was about two years old. My first and greatest duty is to serve them as they have served me, to have the same feelings concerning the bringing up of the younger children, and that of making as cheerful a home as I have had.- The great aim in my life is to repay my parents by every possible kindness. I can now appreciate the trouble that they had in bringing me up and in putting me on my feet and in sending me to school. After I gradu- ate from school it is my duty to help make a living so that my parents need not struggle so hard to keep us in a comfortable condition. Their sending me to school has taught me things I shall never forget. I cannot tell anybody what the teacher and school has done for me. I can certainly say that the teachers come next to my parents. Besides book knowledge, I have learned in school to be good, to be honest, to obey, in fact, to do many things that help build a noble character. This is the ninth year I have been to school, and every day I learn more and more. I simply cannot express my gratitude for my school opportunities. 82 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Every man has a duty to his family, and that is to repay them as they have served him. A man's life depends wholly on how he was brought up by his parents and famihes. I think the most ignorant people want their sons and daughters to be good, to do good. Above all we should be helpful in every way when our parents are old and feeble and depend on their children for all they need as their children have depended on them in childhood. B. OUR DUTIES TO OUR CITY Our duties to our city are to do. what we know is right, and to do all that we can to beautify it and make it better. We should not walk on the lawns of our private houses or on the grass in our parks and pub- lic gardens which were laid for our benefit. We should not kill or annoy in any way the little gray squirrels of which there are so many in our city, and we should do all that we can to tame them and feed them so that they will stay with us. A most important duty is to abide by the laws of the city, not to ride our wheels on the sidewalks, nor to drive the automobiles and motor cars above the speed limit, and this last is a most important law and one that is violated very often. A great many people run their automo- biles faster than the law allows, and many accidents happen because of their recklessness. We should ' be careful not to annoy our citizens by our playing ; we should try not to break any windows with our balls, although now and then a ball badly thrown will go through a pane of glass. Then, too, with winter coming, we must be careful not to hit any one with a snowball, and we must keep the snow off of our sidewalks, and the ice well covered with ashes or gravel so that people can walk about more easily and safely. If every one did that, there would be fewer accidents. There are a great many more duties to our city than I have time or space to write about, and am sure that if everyone took pains to find out what they were and did them, that we should have a model city. In the Preparatory School REV. ENDICOTT PEABODY, D. D. HEAD MASTER GROTON SCHOOL, GROTON, MASSACHUSETTS What are the formal things in a rehgious school to which a person of another religion might perhaps take exception, or what might be considered the characteristic features of such a school? In the first place, there are the morning and evening prayers, which all, masters and boys, and anybody else who is connected with that institution, attend. Second, there is the attendance, once a week at least, at a recitation or a lecture'upon a religious subject, what are called often- times " sacred studies," where there is a regular curriculum. Third, the opportunity that comes at confirmation time, when boys are pre- paring for confirmation, or in the other churches for what is called INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 83 " joining the church." Fourth, the chapel, with the services arranged especially with a view to interesting the boys. Fifth, the school sermon, preached, not by one man after another coming along from outside because he is a famous person, but preached, as a rule, by the man or men who are working in the school. These are the formal features in the reUgious education of a school. Now, how shall they be connected with the lives of the boys themselves ? In some schools there are prayer-meetings. No doubt the prayer- meetings among boys have been productive of much good, but I think that there are great dangers connected with them. In the first place, the best boys, on the whole, at any rate the most sincere, and perhaps the strongest boys, don't know how to describe their rehgious feeHngs. And then when you get a boy who is fluent in his description of his rehgious emotions, the danger is. that the emotion won't hitch on to conduct. The danger is, that bis expression may run far beyond his experience, and after a year or two there comes a reaction; he looks back upon it, and finds himself utterly ashamed of what he said, and he hasn't much sympathy with the rehgion which prompted him to say it. I believe that a boy's religious life should be expressed in active service. Near every school, there are a certain number of people who are not ministered unto; there your superfluous energy may find vent. Your masters and your boys may establish missions there, and boys may teach in the Sunday schools. In preparatory schools the boys are usually well-to-do, and they can do something for the brethren who are less fortunate. They can have clubs and summer camps for them; and as they try to guide these summer camps, and try to help the boys who come to the clubs or come to the camp, they have got to live the right kind of lives them- selves. That is, I think, the particular point. But those are outside things. There is the private life of each boy that is touching the lives of all the boys. If you care for them, believe in them, trust them, and make them your fellow-workers, they will respond, and the older boys will look after the younger boys. And gradually that idea will permeate through the school among the younger boys, and you can be perfectly sure that your school is rid of the im- morality, and the dishonesty, and minor offenses against morality, which are often the curses of boys' schools. Then there is the influence of the masters. Of course it is perfectly clear that in the universities you cannot require that your teacherr should be religious men, but in the school they ought to be positively Christian men. 84 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION These are the forces; the spirit of the masters, the co-operation of the boys, the missionary idea permeating the school. Those are the inside spiritual grace, and the Bible, sacred studies, and morning and evening prayer are the outward and visible forms. When a schoolmaster has such opportunities, and when he can get such fellow-workers, I do not see why he cares to change his posi- tion for that of any other man in the world. In the College PRESIDENT GEORGE HARRIS, D.D., LL.D. AMHERST COLLEGE, AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS. There are three kinds of formal instruction in religion and morals possible to the college. The first is instruction by regular courses in religion. In college the Bible can be studied from the historical and critical points of view. The teacher of to-day need not be cautious about modifying precon- ceived theories of inerrancy and infallibility, because students, for the most part, have no cherished theory of any sort. His work is construc- tive, to show the history of an ancient people, the growth of its litera- ture, the development and significance of its ritual, the value of its con- tribution to true religion. It is important that educated men know the Bible for what it is: the greatest force in civilization. A curriculum is deficient which does not include the English Bible as a course of study, to be mastered as any history or literature is mastered, in scientific and spiritual apprehension. This course should be elective. The fact that every college has students who are not Protestants, that it has Jews, Catholics, even Japanese and Chinese, precludes a require- ment of studying Christianity. The history of the church and the history of Christian thought are suitable courses for colleges, although I should not be strenuous to provide them. The study of European history necessarily includes the history of the Church and the history of doctrine. The history of Oriental religions may be offered as a course of study. The best approach to the history of Asiatic peoples is through their religions. Indeed, their customs, civilization, and government cannot well be understood without such knowledge. Now that relations with the great nations of the East are becoming more intimate, there is a practical value in the study of their religions, even if there were less truth in them than there is. The second kind of formal instruction is the part which the Bible INSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AND MORALS 85 and its religion have in other studies, or, at least, may have and should have. The Hterature of our own tongue is imbued with the thought and even the language of the English Bible. Some of the best htera- ture is partly unintelHgible to those who are ignorant of the Bible. Shakespeare, Milton, Browning, Emerson, Arnold, are fehcitous in their allusions to Scripture. The classical allusions in L'AUegro and Comus are traced to their sources; why not the Biblical allusions in Paradise Lost and the Hymn on the Nativity? With Browning's Saul the story itself should be read; with the Death on the Desert, the story of John and of the Gnostic heresy. The nearest book of reference, constantly consulted in the study of literature, should be the Bible. Why should not portions of the Bible be included directly in Hterature courses? Why should not the subhme prophecies of Isaiah, the de- votional and nature-poetry of the psalms, the meditations of John, the theology of Paul, the parables and precepts of Jesus, be as carefully studied as the poems of Homer and Horace, the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes? The Bible is not so sacred as religion that it may not be investigated as literature. Another study includes moral instruction, — philosophy, — insep- arable from ethics. Every problem of philosophy has a bearing on life. What is philosophy but the theory of life ? Nor can ethics be separated from religion. How natural that such courses as the fol- lowing, taken from college catalogues, should be announced: The Philosophy of Nature, with Especial Reference to Man's Place in Nature; Fundamental Conceptions of Natural Science and their Re- lation to Ethical and Religious Truth; the Theory of Morals, consid- ered constructively; Ethics of the Social Question; the Problems of Poor-reHef; the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the labor question in the light of ethical theory. And these, from another cata- logue, also under Philosophy; Metaphysics of Ethics; Objective Ethics; Philosophy and Evolution of Rehgion; Christian Apologetics; History and Exposition of Christian Doctrine. The third kind of instruction is the religious services which are maintained. Religion should have a home and should be at home in the college. The college pulpit is a throne of power. The great preacher comes gladly to the college with the message of truth and righteousness. The student responds with all his heart, for the in- tellectual man is the spiritual man. If you should sit Sunday after Sunday in a college congregation, as I do, you would find students lis- tening eagerly to preaching on the real, human Christ and on the service of man to man. Every college and university should, if possible, 86 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION have its own pulpit. Daily services of Scripture reading, singing, and prayer make their impression. Students, at least, become familiar with the Bible read responsively or listened to. Voluntary associations of students for religious culture, for Bible study, and for Christian service are, when rightly conducted, of great moral and religious power. There is more practical religion in the colleges to-day than in any period of their history. Cant and pretense are not tolerated; irrational doctrine is discarded; but faith, hope, love, character, are exalted. The university and college should and may encourage, by teaching and by influence, sane, healthy, God-loving and man-saving religion. /. THE COUNCIL OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS ON THE WORK OF THE DEPART- MENT FOR THE YEAR PROFESSOR FRANK K. SANDERS, Ph.D.,D.D. DEAN YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT This is the third nominal gathering of the Council of Religious Ed- ucation, but the first one which really aims to execute the functions in- trusted to it at the organization of the Association. There have been many hindrances to the proper adjustment of its work to that of the departments of the Association, all of which have, in the main, been surmounted. It is with a hopeful spirit that we assemble to-day for participation in the session. Much lack of certainty has been expressed in regard to the legitimate functions of this Council of Religious Education. Its objective is thus described in the constitution of the Association: " The Council shall have for its object to reach and to disseminate correct thinking on all general subjects relating to religious and moral education. Also, in co-operation with the other departments of the Association, it shall initiate, conduct, and guide the thorough investiga- tion and consideration of important educational questions within the scope of the Association. On the basis of its investigations and consid- erations the Council shall make to the Association, or to the Board of Directors, such recommendations as it deems expedient relating to the work of the Association. " In accordance with the constitution, we are to exercise the impor- tant functions of determining the problems of real importance in the field of religious education, of organizing the forces of the Association for their thorough investigation, and of the formulation of the results of these investigations for effective use. The Association stands for the declaration of ideals, of true working standards in religious education. Such standards may be attained only through the most careful and comprehensive study of conditions, re- sources, existing methods, suggested advances. To formulate such working standards requires the co-operation of men already accustomed to scientific investigation, whose judgments will be uninfluenced by the pressing demands of production. In the actual work of any depart- ment of rehgious and moral education — such as those which deal with 87 88 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the interests of the Sunday school, the church, or the schools — many methods must be adopted which fall far short of the ideal, which are merely practicable; but there is all the greater need for a study of ideal conditions, for the erection of a standard with which all may compare their actual achievment. It is common enough to hear sneers at the- orists, yet a sound theory or a wise working standard is the strongest assurance of a rapidly progressing growth in effectiveness. While we of the Council, therefore, seem to be restricted to the op- portunity of talking or writing, rather than of doing things, our work will be of supreme and fundamental importance in the proper develop- ment of the Association. Many obstacles have delayed the proper organization of our own work. The membership was not placed on a working basis until September last. Our history has been as follows: while the Council was clearly projected at the Chicago convention of February, 1903, it was not un- til nearly a year later that twenty-six men, a little over one third of the contemplated membership of the Council, were elected by the Exec- utive Board. To these, seven were added by the Council at its meeting of March 4, 1904, at Philadelphia. On July 20, 1904, the Executive Board increased the existing membership of thirty-three by adding fourteen others, bringing the total membership to forty-seven, which is the present nurnber. In connection with the meetings of the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at St. Louis in September, in which so large a propor- tion of our membership participated, and at the time of the semi-annual meeting of the Board of Directors, it was hoped that a good opportu- nity would be given to the Council to hold a session for the initiation of its work. Such a session was held, but the attendance was not repre- sentative enough to warrant the officers of the Council in inaugurating an active campaign. Many helpful views were interchanged, however, and an impetus given to the work of the Council. Since September the Executive Committee has come to the conclu- sion that it would refer to this meeting in Boston the responsibility for the inauguration of our important work. We have taken pains to se- cure from the membership, by correspondence, an expression of opinion in regard to the problems of religious education, to which we must first of all give our attention. The suggestions we have partly formu- lated in the list of themes for discussion submitted to the Council at its preceding session, and partly presented in the formal program of this hour. It is for the Council to select from these the problems to which we shall immediately give our attention, or to formulate others which shalllbe more useful. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS ON WORK OF THE COUNCIL 89 Of our membership of forty-seven we may truly say that it repre- sents all sections of the country, all types of scholarly mind, all helpful points of view. It follows neither denominational nor sectarian lines. Its one purpose is the attainment of religious truth and its effective presentation to men. During the year, the Executive Board has classified the greater part of our membership into six groups, the term of the first group expiring in 1905. When our membership is full, the term of each member elected will be for six years, and ten will be elected each year. In these and other details the proper working of the Council begins with this gathering. THE FIELD OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN AMERICA PROFESSOR CLYDE W. VOTAW. Ph.D. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Education is that process of nurture, instruction, and discipline which seeks to develop the character of the individual, and to fit him for social service. In this larger conception of education, which is be- coming standard through the thought and activities of educational leaders, there is no difference between education and religious educa- tion. The purpose of religious education is exactly that of education. The phrase " rehgious education " is in use for the reason that we have tolerated a conception of education which limited it to the area of in- tellectual furnishing and discipline. The phrase is a protest against this limitation. Education must include the religious and the moral elements which are involved in any true development of character and preparation for social service. When the word " education " comes to be commonly understood as thus inclusive, the phrase " rehgious edu- cation " will have served its purpose and become obsolete. For education is a unit. The education of the moral nature and the education of the spiritual nature are not separable from the education of the intellectual nature and the education of the physical nature. We have recently come to see that the storing of the mind with useful information should not be isolated from the training of the moral and spiritual nature of the individual, and from the training of the body. It is not only in religious circles, in churches, Sunday schools, and theological seminaries, that this better idea must establish itself; in all the schools of the land it is quite as important that it should prevail. The fact seems to be that this idea of education has been recently illuminated and pressed by educational rather than by rehgious leaders. We certainly do not forget that the impulse to education came originally from the church, and that the purpose of this intellectual furnishing and training was to increase the abihty of the individual to promote religious thought and life. The schools of America were originally estabhshed as auxiUaries to the churches. The separation of the schools from the churches has arisen within the past fifty years, partly because of the divisions and controversies among the ecclesiastical or- ganizations as to how the rehgious element should be presented in con- nection with the common school work, and partly because many people 90 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN AMERICA 91 outside the churches were dissatisfied to have the particular theological dogmas of the churches taught to their children. After a period of fifty years, in which this separation has become more definite and widespread, we are now called upon to consider whether we really approve it. Do we wish to see this separation con- tinue and grow until there is a complete divorce between the churches and the schools ? Or has it already gone too far, so that we ought to find a way to restore the original union of the intellectual with moral and religious training? The present situation is easy to describe. The sixteen million children who are attending our public schools, and in them are receiving their intellectual equipment and discipline for life, are, many of them, failing to receive the religious and moral equip- ment and discipline to which they are quite as much entitled, and without which they will become abnormal men and women. It is true, our Sunday schools have a nominal attendance of some eleven million pupils. If this large attendance were real instead of nominal, if the work of the Sunday school were continued through as many years of the child's life as the work qf the day school, if the time given to the religious and moral instruction and discipline in the Sunday school were equal in proportion to the time given to that of intellectual furnishing and discipline, and if the quality of the Sunday-school work were as good as the quality of the day school-work, eleven million children out of sixteen million would be fairly well developed religiously and morally. It is a fact known to all, that there is no such equation in work between the Sunday school and the day school. The eleven million children who are enrolled in the Sunday schools of America attend irregularly, and for a fewer number of years than in the day schools; the instruction which they receive is largely by voluntary and untrained teachers; the period of instruction is not more than an hour each week at best; the methods of instruction often lack pedagogical wisdom and fullness of knowledge; and the studies pursued are often conducted upon a desultory, defective plan. The religious and moral education which the children of America receive is therefore inadequate in quality and amount, entirely inadequate. The present agencies for religion and morality, even if their ideal were the best, their vision of the opportunity perfectly clear, their energy unlimited, and their methods perfect, could not accomplish the work which now requires to be done. The'^question arises. Can any larger part of this essential religious and moral education be accomplished in the day schools ? Our public schools are not indifferent to religion and morality. While no pro- 92 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION vision is made in them for specific religious instruction, and almost no provision is made for specific moral instruction, the spirit and the at- mosphere of our schools are generally dominated by true religion and morality. The teachers in the schools are nearly always persons of religious spirit and moral character; their influence upon the children in the schools is religious and moral to a high degree. In the great majority of schools of our country the Bible is regularly read; in a number of states it is required to be read, and in only a few states by recent legal action has its use in the schoolroom been forbidden. But the Biblical history and the Biblical literature should find a place in the regular instruction of our public schools, at the proper stages in the elementary, secondary, and college grades, side by side with the history, literature, and ideas of the Greeks, the Romans, and the English. Competent teachers to give this instruction should be provided. It is now assumed that this knowledge will be gained in the home, in the Sunday school, and in the church. To be sure, children who have homes where the Bible is taught, and who attend Sunday school and church regularly and attentively for years, will acquire some knowledge of the Bible. What proportion of the children grow up under such conditions ? The Sunday school strives to give a knowl- edge of the Biblical history and literature, for this task is specifically assigned to it. But its real work is to develop the religious and moral character of the child. The Sunday school rightly makes use of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures in its teaching of religion and morality. But Sunday-school teachers seldom discriminate between facts of the past and the religious teaching associated in the Bible with them. It is the religious and moral training which the Sunday school seeks, not the exact facts of antiquity. To have the Bible taught in the public schools as history and litera- ture would be to give the Book its rightful place from an intellectual and academic standpoint. Indirectly, also, it would allow the Bible to exert to some extent its strong religious and moral influence upon the student. But is that enough ? Or should we have that strong religious and moral influence brought directly and intentionally to bear upon the children in our schools ? They need the assistance of its ideas and its inspiration; are they not entitled to them? Shall we not provide in our schools specific religious and moral training to make our children true, capable men and women? In the schools of Greater New York wise provision has been made for moral training, not by way of text- book instruction, but by way of moral ideal, influence and discipline. In other places, specific moral instruction is made a regular part of the RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN AMERICA 93 course. In the Chicago schools, and elsewhere generally, careful instruction is given the children regarding the bad physical and moral effects of alcoholic liquors and tobacco. There is no objection offered to ethical training, scarce any to concrete ethical instruction, in the public schools. One of the most important steps forward in general education is this present movement to make the schools an ethical force. The way is not quite so clear, nor the steps so easy, by which our schools shall also become a religious force, founding this ethical training where alone it can stand, on the religious instincts of man. But this should be done. Morality finds its only adequate imperative in religion. The sense of duty to be and to do right, the supreme aim of life, the motive to live, the emotions to love and self-sacrifice, the enthusiasm for brotherliness, the faith one has in the universe, the hope for the fu- ture — all these things constitute the religious elements in men. Life gets its meaning, its impulse, and its joy from them. Now, these vital elements of being cannot be ignored and left undeveloped in the edu- cation of the child without producing abnormality; he will lack that foundation for character, and impulse to social service, which are essential to true manhood and useful citizenship. Religious instruction and training must also be adequately provided in our public schools, as an integral part of general education. For (i) if this is not done, millions of children will be continually passing through our schools, who, because they receive it neither in the home nor in the Sunday school, will obtain no religious and moral training from the beginning to the end of their course of education. It is a serious thing for us to graduate each year from our public schools a million children who have little or no religious and moral foundation to their lives. Many think that we are witnessing the inevitable result of this neglect in the prevalence of disregard for law, crime, the pas- sion for material wealth, lack of self-restraint, the violation of human rights. And (2) adequate religious and moral training should be given in the public schools because the educational process is a unit. The several elements of it cannot be effectively given in isolation. Even if the home and the Sunday school did their part perfectly, it would still remain true that the religious and moral elements must be interwoven daily with the intellectual elements, or, to use a different figure, the whole intellectual furnishing and discipline should be transfused with religious and moral meaning, aim, and power. Now, what should be done can be done. Certainly, misconceptions and prejudices almost without number would have to be overcome; 94 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION but is it anything other than misconception and prejudice which stands in the way of doing this? So long as the view prevailed that religion consists in theological dogmas and in formidable creeds of intellectual beliefs, religion has been properly regarded as foreign to the work of the public schools. But we have passed through that stage and reached the better one, where we see religion and morality to be vital forces in our lives, essential to true character and social service, an integral part of education, and unobjectionable to all except those who are without a high and serious view of life. Few would wish to see a theological catechism introduced into the schools. Few would wish to see the particular denominational tenets, over which the churches have fought, introduced into the public schools. Few would wish to see the controversies between Roman Catholics and Protestants re- vived in our schools. It is not controversial and speculative theology that one has in mind in advocating a religious and moral element in the public schools, but the genuine spirit of religion which gives a real purpose to life, which points to a high mission for the individual, which inculcates brotherly love and service, which develops high moral ideals and standards of conduct, and which prepares the children to become intelligent, sincere, and effective citizens of America. A danger exists that religion shall come to be generally thought of as an antiquated survival from the past, as an extravagant emotional- ism, helpful only to the few who appreciate it; that the churches shall be classified as social organizations of the wealthy or the educated; and that morality shall come to be widely regarded as a matter of ex- pedience, or a matter of business, regulated only by legal statutes. The situation needs attention. Any fair reflection upon the way men think and act reveals the tendency toward these views of religion and morality. The secularist views, the commercial standards, the pursuit of material wealth, and the devotion to temporal things, are indeed characteristic of our age. It is an actual condition of things we face. The task is a real one before us who believe in reHgion and morality, and who be- lieve that religion and morality should furnish the standards of life in all its aspects. The radical change which during the past fifty years has come over American life has brought in new conditions, with new moral problems to solve. We have recently passed from the agricultural stage into the industrial stage of national development. Fifty years ago cities were few and small, communities lived in comparative isolation from each other, country life was typical, agricultural pursuits were dominant, people read little. Life was simple under these conditions. The simple kind of religious and moral education which had been devel- RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN AMERICA 95 oped to meet these conditions was fairly effective. Now a transition has taken place. We have become a manufacturing and commercial nation. Our many great cities are crowded with people. Agriculture is left to people from foreign countries, who have come to this land of opportunity. Business is dominant, and on a vast, complex scale, due to the rapid development of railway intercommunication, mail, tele- graph, and telephone. Great national wealth has been developed, and money is used with prodigality in every direction. The enormous power of capital has been learned. The reign of bribery and graft in national, state, and municipal politics show how far we have drifted into commercialism; and still, people are scarcely aware of the actual conditions of things. Have not business morals and business ideals almost unconsciously become standard among the majority? Many highly respectable business men conform only to the legal test of what is right in business. The Golden Rule, the spiritual reahties, the sacred rights of humanity, the moral ends of life, are acknowledged (it may be) on Sunday, but are found to be impracticable on week days. Many a man who would like to act on strictly Christian principles seven days in the week suc- cumbs to the way of the business world. One man alone, or even a few men together, cannot change this current. We must face squarely the present facts, and discover why things are as they are. We must decide vv^hat our ideals should be, and then set ourselves to the attainment of them. We do not, in America, lack ■for distinct and lofty religious and moral ideals; they are our heritage from the past. But we do lack a real devotion, a real self-committal, to them. We preach and proclaim them, but we do not achieve them. We, too, like the Pharisees of the first century, and like the men of every century, " leave justice, mercy, and faith undone " — not abso- lutely, of course, but relatively. Our ideals are high, but practically they seem unattainable. Therefore we need such religious and moral education as shall give strength to our purpose, and guidance to our efforts, for the ideal. The training of the young (which we call edu- cation) must embody these ideals, must implant and nurture them, that our children may become exponents of our best thought, and illus- trations of our best conduct. What we ourselves are, America will be. The citizens are the nation. Bribery, graft, economic slavery, luxu- rious living, crime, professional dishonesty, can only exist where men either practice these things themselves or tolerate them in others. There is no way to efifect righteousness except for you, and me, and the next man to be rigliteous. This is our work. We acknowledge it. Will we do it ? THE CO-ORDINATION OF AGENCIES WITHIN A RELI- GIOUS COMMUNION REV. WILLIAM C. BITTING, D.D. PASTOR MT. MORRIS BAPTIST CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY Among the more important problems of religious and moral edu- cation is that of co-ordinating the agenies within a religious commu- nion. Of its larger dimensions, affecting entire denominations on national or sectional scales, we may not here treat. We confine ourselves to a discussion of the problem as it relates to a local church, whether in village or city. In spite of these narrow limits the wider aspects of our topic will intrude, as will appear later. Even when so confined, the task proposed is by no means simple. A double co-ordination is necessary: (i) that of all the agencies within a local church; and (2) the co-ordination of these with educational agencies outside the church — those acting upon its growing constituency. I. The co-ordination of the agencies within a local church, (i) A Need. The experience of intelligent pastors confirms the verdict of careful students of the present situation. All affirm in the strongest way that there is a need for this co-ordination. In a local communion there are available for religious education, homes, the public worship, the Sunday school, societies for young people of different ages, clubs for both sexes, and various other organizations. So soon as we seek the purpose of these, we discover that most of them are designed for a specific end, and a few, perhaps, have only some vague reason for existence. The noticeable absence of children from public worship; the great difficulty felt by pastors in providing a church service that shall be helpful alike to adults and children; the apparent indifference in homes to the work of church agencies in the training of the young, or the vagueness of ideal and weakness of method even where the sympathetic spirit exists; the unconsciousness of any co-operative relation between church organizations in those who are members of several of them, and the tell-tale silence in public and private concerning complemental functions for these agencies — are some of the irrefutable evidences of the need of some close co-ordination of all energies that come under church control. Independence in activity has produced not only duplication of aim, with its inevitable confusion, but often the widest difference of purpose. If the constituencies of these separate insti- 96 THE CO-ORDINATION OF RELIGIOUS AGENCIES 97 tutions, or their leaders, or even the pastors of most of the churches in which they exist, were asked for a definite statement of the inter- relations of these agencies, or of their specific and unique contributions to a clean-cut ideal of rehgious education for the young, the very question itself would be a surprise. The call for co-ordination comes not only from this situation, but also from the faith that believes that it ought not to be, and that it is possible to improve it. (2) A Basis. We must strive to clarify this cloudy sense of rela- tion between these agencies. Experience proves that the Sunday school in recent times has been the chief contributor to the membership of the church. We are not able to say that such contributions are wholly the result of Sunday-school work, and we are now able to say that our modern idea of its work is far from making such contributions its highest function. The movements in this department are such as to invite its co-ordination with other agencies. Hospitality to the thought of such co-ordination is evident in the rapidly growing sen- timent in favor of the grading of both scholars and lessons, so that there shall be co-ordination of the truths to be taught with methods of teaching them, on the one hand, and of these with the stage of the pupil's development, on the other. For a long time it has been recognized that organizations for young people have provided both for impressions b}' qualified leaders, and for self-expression by members. The newer visions of what qualifies a leader, and of appropriate forms of self- expression for different periods of life, make present conventionalities obsolete, and open the way for genuine co-ordination of leader with members, and of members with their activities. Honesty compels due recognition of these evolutions in Sunday school and society life. Even undefined desire for co-ordination is part of the opportunity for any effort that may be made to improve conditions, and we shall find far more receptivity to intelligent suggestion than some of us anticipate. A few pastors have brooded over the problem and attempted to bring order out of chaos. Their work is yet in the experimental stage. No one claims a solution. The number of these is not now so large as to attract general attention, and we have no time for grateful allusion to exceptional churches. (3) Possibilities. The possibilities are attractive, but each is at- tended by its corresponding limitation. (a) A true idea of religious education may be made the inspiration of every local church. Unfaithfulness to ideals has not been the fault of those who have been most active in the agencies of which we are thinking. Their zeal has ever been the chief capital of Christendom. 98 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Religion is what it is to-day, because of their earnestness. A truer ideal is the chief need. Our workers will sustain a fresh and more accurate conception with an enthusiasm even greater than they have hitherto shovvm. This is the very first step toward co-ordination. The conception for which this Council stands is now the possession of com- paratively few. Popular ignorance of an adequate idea of religious education is the call for its clear definition and aggressive proclamation which we should answer with all our might. The general theme of this convention, " The Aims of Religious Education," sharply outlined and brought to every church, will help every agency within it to find its special place, and, therefore, its relation to every other. (b) It is possible to bring the local church to feel that, without prejudice to other functions in a community, it is a school for religious education. It ought to be easy to show that religious education, as we conceive it, includes evangelism, and that the great purpose of life's multiform activities is to bring every human being to self-realization according to the norm in the mind of God. Church energy is con- tributory to this, and every agency takes its appropriate place when this idea is received. To quote from Professor Coe, " The Church as a school needs to be systematized. All its work on behalf of the imma- ture is, or should be, educational: it should proceed from the develop- mental point of view. There should be a definite plan for the child from his infancy to the close of adolescence. This implies, finally, the organization of the church and the family into educational unity." With such a conception dominating church activity no agency within it will be permitted to travel the path of a wandering comet. Such co- ordination would lead the child-life from its earliest beginnings in the home, through a series of impressions and normal self-expressions in church and other agencies, all the way to maturity. Steady advance from one stage to another could be made without a break. The king- dom of God would be within the soul what every realm of God without is seen to be, a progress from blade to ear, and to the full grain in the ear. Confession of religious Hfe would be not so much a formal as a vital process. It would be the developing expression of the inborn religious capacity in ways appropriate to each period of its growth. (c) An inteUigent pastor will bend his efforts to this co-ordination. The training of ministers in the conception and principles of religious education ought to be required in every theological seminary. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. How can agencies within a church be co-ordinated if the pastor is unequal to the task? ' Education in Religion and Morak. By Professor George A. Coe. Page 288. THE CO-ORDINATIOi\ OF RELIGIOUS AGENCIES 99 If the course in the seminary cannot be lengthened to do this, let it be so altered that the study of some of the antiquities can give way to preparation for meeting existing conditions. Is it right to require a knowledge of all the minute sects and insects of the past until students can name every parasite that has grown upon the vine and its branches, and leave the future pastors unprepared to cope with problems that they will face immediately upon leaving the seminary? Let the dead bury the dead, but let us be ready for to-day's battle. Such a training would save our coming leaders from the embarrassments of ignorance and experiment that now confuse us who are working out our own pas- toral salvation. Yet we can study these conditions. What excuse is there for absolute failure by any of us when we have so much literature upon this subject, and our laboratories already prepared? If any pastor would gather the parents of his parish, his Sunday-school officers and teachers, the heads of the societies in his church, and his workers into a class for the study of this problem of co-ordination, and with the book from which I have quoted, or some such text-book, as a basis, study the problem of co-ordination, he would at once make ex- perimental realization, besides ennobling his work in many other respects. These three possibilities are immediately practicable: the spreading of the conception of religious education, the awakening of the church nto the consciousness that it is a school for religious education, and the efiforts of pastors qualified to lead in the work. (4) Limitations. The limitations correspond to the possibilities, and are of two kinds, the permanent and the transient. To the perma- nent belong all those factors in the problem over which we have no con- trol, such as the unique work of God, and the personal freedom of hu- man beings. We turn to some limitations that can be removed, but not without wise and persistent effort. And here the connection, of a local church with denominational and interdenominational enterprises must be taken into account. How is such co-ordination as is here con- templated to be realized in the local church when powers outside of it determine the activities of its agencies ? For instance, the lessons used by most of our Sunday-schools are fixed by an interdenominational committee, whose work is not controlled by the conception of religious education assumed in this paper. Again, the topics for the meetings of our young people's societies, both senior and junior, are selected for them by general committees that foster the vmited societies. If we were to introduce other illustrations of local church agencies controlled by movements of a general character, the situation would appear still more complicated. How far can these general interdenominational loo THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION enterprises be enlisted in the effort to co-ordinate the local church agen- cies? How near can denominations that control the activities of local churches be brought to such a step as is here advocated? In highly centralized forms of denominational government, ought it to be impos- sible to secure a study of the problem here stated? And in loosely organized congregational polities, should not the local churches feel per- fectly free to co-ordinate their agencies without reference to outside general movements? These questions need careful study. My pur- pose is accomplished by indicating that some of the limitations of co- ordination lie in the relation of the agencies within the local church to . general denominational or interdenominational movements. Here, also, let me repeat, the solution of our difficulties seems to lie in the direction already indicated, the diffusion of the true idea of religious education. II. The co-ordination of agencies within a church with those in the same community outside of it. Among these may be named the public school, the library, the various clubs for boys and girls. All these shape young life. If we may not bring the private and state schools to our idea of religious education, we can adjust the agencies within the church to these energies that lie outside. We can do this by pointing out to the boys and girls the essentially moral value of their training in other schools. We should make them see and feel that the use of opportunity, neatness, promptness, honor, sincerity, and all the other traits of charac- ter developed by the state school, are essentially religious. We must bring them to see that the exercise of these in specifically religious realms will yield even nobler results than they produce in the sphere of pure intellectuality. We should make our methods in church agencies as rational and self-commending to the boy and girl as are those of the state school. The personality of the teacher, the genuineness of the methods of study, ought to match those in the day school. The fact of the unity of education makes our problem severe. All education has a religious value, and all religion should have an educational value. Now what happens to the student who belongs to both the week-day and Sunday schools ? He compares equipment, the competence of teachers, the methods of study, the results of methods, and grades them, indeed degrades one or the other. We cannot expect him to co-ordinate the two agencies. We must articulate them for him. We are bound by every consideration that affects maturity to prevent impressions which, though vague in the beginning, grow into clearness as the child grows, and at last find expression in the false opinion, spoken or acted, that religious education is one thing and general education is another and a THE CO-ORDINATION OF RELIGIOUS AGENCIES loi far superior thing. True educational methods in the use of our church agencies will go far towards preventing this harmful mistake. The neglect of such methods is largely responsible for the disparity of re- sults in the two realms which the boy only feels at first, but at last clearly defines to himself. Let us not neglect any opportunity com- patible with the rights of all citizens to influence the instruction and methods of the state schools. Surely, Christians have some rights which they did not surrender when they made and guaranteed the re- ligious freedom of their state institutions. Nevertheless, the chief direction in which we must now look for the co-ordination here advo- cated must be in the uplifting of the educational value of our church agencies so that in this respect they will be recognized as not a whit be- hind those of the state schools. That was a tremendous question lately put to the writer by a college sophomore, who is thinking of entering the ministry: " Can I take the whole of my selfhood with me into the min- istry?" He was urged not to enter it otherwise. Investigation into the origin of his question took us back into this very lack of co-ordination of his church training with his other educational experiences. Said an- other, a freshman, from a high-class preparatory school, with his first conscious shock from the disparity of methods and results in these two spheres: " I stand for the thing for which the church stands, but not for all the methods by which the church stands for it." Is there no way of saving our young men and women from such questions and con- clusions? If there is, let us find it. III. In conclusion, I would suggest that the Council of the Reli- gious Education Association appoint a committee to investigate this en- tire matter. A scientific study of the situation, an accurate description of it, would surely arouse a widespread interest in improving it. No more practical work could be undertaken at this time, none which would more plainly justify the existence of the Association. Out of such a study would grow suggestions of the most practical kind. Hun- dreds of our most intelligent ministerial and lay workers face the prob- lem daily, and long for some light upon it. Even where the problem is not so sorely pressing there are dim misgivings as to the efficiency of present prevailing methods. And yet more loud is the call to awaken those who see no problem at all, whose satisfaction with present con- ditions is the complaisance of folly. WHAT CO-OPERATION IS NOW POSSIBLE IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION BETWEEN ROMAN CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS? VERY REV. PROFESSOR THOMAS J. SHAHAN, D.D., J.U.L. CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C. I think I may say at once that some co-operation is possible in the matter of rehgious education between Roman Catholics and Protestants. The general sympathy which the proceedings of this Association awaken among the former is a fair sign that we hold something in common, ideally at least. A common aim presupposes and calls for some meas- ure of co-operation, however circumscribed it may be, when we reach the stage of execution. Co-operation, however, is a very broad term, and it may be well to state at once, clearly and frankly, the field in which it seems impossible to look for any mutual helpfulness between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Religious education with Catho- lics is something positive, systematic, and exclusive, in accordance always with the doctrines and precepts of the church. For this reason, it is impossible to establish any system of immediate co-operation in religious education with those who cannot accept these doctrines and precepts, or the authority of the Church by which they are maintained. Experience has shown the futility of intermediate combinations made up of concessions, or based on mutual minimizing and sacrifices. In the matter of rehgious doctrine, everything is in one way or another essential, or may be easily made to take on that character. We should find it, therefore, impossible to construct manuals of religious doc- trine that would satisfy both Catholic and Protestant parents and authorities. It does look, at first thought, as if we ought to be able to produce a manual of morality that would express certain principles and criteria of conduct that have long been looked on as our common inheritance, either from the Jewish law or from immemorial Christian experience. But right here we are confronted by some preliminary questions that are vital, and that must be frankly answered before we can say what ideas are to go into such a manual. What is the basis of morality? What are its nature, scope, sources, sanction? Shall it be treated as purely natural, or with reference to the supernatural character impressed upon it by the Founder of Christianity? Is it something absolute, or is it something temporary and shifting, adapted always to the actual WHAT CO-OPERATION IS NOW POSSIBLE? 103 conditions of humanity ? Has it any reference to a hereafter, or shall its imperative norms be based on the present life only, and on the dic- tates of the philosophers of the day? Roman CathoHcs, of course, be- lieve firmly that there is no viable morality without religion, i. e., with- out doctrinal convictions and apart from the sanction and co-operation of the Church. They could not accept as final and authoritative hand-books of morality constructed in the sense and temper of Theism or of an artificial and colorless Christianity, without a foundation in facts, and therefore without influence over the hearts of man. I may add that the large proportion of Hebrews in the public schools of our great cities is making it daily more difficult to provide any manual of religion and moraUty that shall satisfy the general Christian con- science and not offend a people which does not accept, as such, any principles of Christian belief or life. The impossibility, of an immediate co-operation seems still greater when we come to consider the Teacher. The teacher is the necessary interpreter of all things taught, the very pivot of the school. Whatever formulae of religion or moraUty we might, hypothetically, agree on, would have to be explained and illustrated by the living voice of the teacher. The differences of beUef would surely manifest themselves here, and all the more plainly in proportion to the measure in which the teacher lived out in his person the doctrines he had accepted. The religion of the Catholic teacher is a highly authoritative religion, whereas the Protestant teacher would be free to assert an absolute right of individual assent to or dissent from any and all doctrinal elements in the rehgious or moral teaching that was before him. The Catholic teachers would practically interpret in a like sense the doctrines of religion and morality, for they accept them from the visible and author- itative Church, but there can be imagined no way by which Protestant teachers would surely teach at all times an identical system of religion and morality. There is one other reason, perhaps not quite so insuperable, why an immediate co-operation in religious education is impossible between Catholics and Protestants. I refer to what may be called the school- atmosphere. In our modern life, for many reasons, the school has come to stand in loco parentis. For this and other reasons, we believe that the entire school, in all its elements and workings, should exercise a continuous influence of a religious and moral character. In the school the child should imbibe, at all the pores of its spiritual being, the essen- tials of religious conviction and moral strength. It should live in a kind of aura that would subtly and unconsciously permeate all its faculties I04 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION and impress upon them a certain bent and coloring that would pre- dispose the child habitually toward the influences of religion and the moral law. In a word, everything about the school should be calcu- lated to evoke and confirm those natural but weak germs of religiosity and ethical sentiments that are in the heart of every child, but only too easily get crushed or crippled amid ruder contending forces. We find in the public schools too marked and exclusive an attention to the material and the temporal interests of life, the purely transitory and inferior elements of education. We are still very un-Rousseau-like in our views of early mental formation, and believe yet that the child cannot be trained like the lower animals, that it has predispositions of many kinds, and that inherited traditions, ancestral religious fidelity, the venerable Zucht und Sitte of centuries, are valuable helps in the positive and negative manipulation of the child-mind. I might add that as the religious sense and the moral temperament grow gradually in the child, and as we hold both intimately connected with the positive teachings and the historical experience of Catholicism, we deem it of utmost importance to familiarize the child from infancy with the in- stitutions and life of the Church, with her models of conduct and faith and with her wise views and appreciations of many things that have a bearing on religion and morality. II. But if an immediate co-operation be impossible in the matter of religious education between Catholics and Protestants, is there no form of mediate or less close co-operation that would be acceptable? As a matter of fact, such a co-operation does exist in Germany and Austria, in Ireland, and elsewhere. The schools are national and com- mon, the pupils, Catholic and Protestant, attend the same scholastic courses, and are taught by the same teachers, who are legally appointed without regard to religious preference, and after fulfilment of all civil requirements. But the religious instruction is furnished according to the expressed wishes of the parents, by ministers of their faith, at fixed hours, and all children are required to attend the instructions of their own religious denomination. In some places, as at Frankfort, there are occasionally two professors of history, so that in this important matter the delicacy of the child's conscience need not be violated. I mention these facts to show that in places where the political and social contact of Catholics and Protestants has been and is very close, ways have been found of co-operation for the common welfare in the matter of religious and moral education. I know that our political conditions differ profoundly from those of the Old World, and that compromises can be offered and accepted and worked out there in good faith which WHAT CO-OPERATION IS NOW POSSIBLE ' 105 would here meet with great difficulties. In all those delicate questions that belong to the borderland between the Roman Catholic Church and civil society, her supreme authority will always be found quite moderate and conciliatory, bent on saving the essentials of Catholic interests, but willing to go a long way in order to encourage and confirm national and municipal concord and amity in all temporal matters. III. I take it for granted, however, that in the present temper of the great majority of our American people, we shall all have to go on as we are going, thankful that there is nothing in our written constitutions nor in the habits of our people to interfere with the natural and right- ful liberty of the parent-citizen to educate his children as he sees fit, without any interference from a doctrinaire bureaucracy. But even amid these conditions I believe that much can be done in the sense of co-operation in rehgious education, though it must necessarily be of a remote and preparatory character. We can all help, within our own lines, to bring about the universal recognition that religion and morality are necessary elements of a proper education; that they must be taught from early childhood, and that both represent something positive and permanent, indispensable to the wel- fare of individuals and states. We can emphasize our many points of agreement among the broad and fundamental considerations that confirm this general thesis of the great need of scholastic reform in the sense of religious and moral edu- cation. We can habituate ourselves to recognize a common peril in a de- Christianized American soul equipped, as man never was before, with all the powers and opportunities that our mighty state has called forth and developed, or rather has only begun to call forth and develop. The eyes of humanity are fixed with a certain awe upon the American citizen as upon one who in a certain sense holds the secret of the world's future. Will he accept and teach the philosophy of Christ, or will he follow after the refurbished secularism of the past, and prove unequal to the splendid call that is ringing in his ears? We can teach with more earnestness the common and traditional Christian doctrines concerning God, the soul, the moral law, sin, moral responsibiHty, prayer, divine providence, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the traditional character of the Scriptures. We can insist upon the worth of a Christian discipline of character, even for the affairs of this world, on the sacredness and seriousness of human life, on the Christian constitution of the family, on the duties of parents, in general and in detail, on the obhgation of a public worship and the Sunday rest. io6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION We can instruct ourselves first, and then instruct others, on the true and solid reasons why abortion, suicide, divorce, corrupt conduct in busi- ness and politics, inordinate greed of wealth and distinction, personal arrogance, and contempt of the poor and lowly, are wrong, and con- ducive to the detriment of the state and society. Finally, we can beseech the Holy Spirit to enlighten us all more and more, to bring home to the multitude the evils of an education that tends to forget or exclude God from His world, and to confirm human pride in the false persuasion that man is himself the sole measure and end of all things, that good and evil are really indifferent, and that the only law of religion and morahty is an opportunism that borrows its criteria and its motives from the actual phenomena of society, without any concern for a future, a judgment, or a retribution. THE BIBLE AND GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS IN THE PHILIPPINES REV. SIMEON GILBERT, D.D. FORMER EDITOR THE ADVANCE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Is the Bible, in some form, either as a whole, or in some appropriately chosen body of Bible Selections, taken from both Old Testament and New, needed in the new system of pubUc schools in the Philippines, in order to the creation of a duly intelligent, moral, freedom-loving, law- abiding, trustworthy native citizenship? In considering this question, it is necessary to note carefully and put together a number of facts, among which are the following: There is, of course, no one who does not feel that in our vast new possessions in the Philippines we face a tremendous proposition, and no easy task; the definite aim being nothing less than to make over and to make, among the millions of native peoples there, under the one American flag, a new nation. The meaning of the "white man's burden " we are certain to realize more and more. Clearly enough, there will be necessity for bringing into use the most elemental and potential means and agencies that can make for personal character and civic manhood. The political experi- mentation and exploitation, the past four hundred years, ought to prove convincingly instructive, showing not more what to do, than what not to do. To begin with, there is, of course, no question about the principle of the entire separation of church and state. That, happily, is fundamental to the American government. And we shall stand by it wherever the flag goes. This means freedom, protection, no special privilege, and equal chance for all. But this distinctive American principle is not a bugbear to frighten us out of our common sense, or a bugaboo to make us silly. The German state poUcy, that whatever we would have appear in the state must first be put into the school, is exactly as pertment in the Philippines as it has been in Germany itself, or in America. But as to the school, — of what sort must it be ? To build the hope of any real regeneration of such a people on a basis of mere intellectual sharpening, ignoring the higher relationships of the human soul, and the moral imperative of spiritual ideals, would be equally short-sighted and futile. 107 io8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Then, children, over there exactly the same as here, have, as children and youth, certain natural and inalienable rights 0} their own; rights which ought to command respect. Primarily, there is the right to be educated, and, in order to do this, the right to have the fittest and best educational means and appliances that are, in the circumstances, possi- ble, and especially so just at that period in life when their whole nature is peculiarly open and responsive. In this, if not new, yet newly acknowledged, " bill of rights " for childhood, there lie the best hopes for the future. Now, there is one Book, which is the common book of all the Chris- tian nations; confessedly the world's supreme classic; the master-light of all our advancing civilization. It cannot, therefore, be otherwise than that such a book must possess an altogether imique educational value. It must be that childhood and youth, in the matter of their elementary discipline and training for life and for citizenship, have a clear right to freedom in the use of such a book. And just now, as it seems to me, this natural right of childhood is one that needs to be more adequately enforced. Moreover, the appropriate use of it, in some form or other, by the agencies of the national government in its comprehen- sive educational enterprise, for its own sake, is also a right too plain to need argument. Nor would this imply any " establishment of a religion," any more than did the immortal ordinance of 1787, which put "hberty, religion, and education " at the basis forever of the Northwest Territory; or than does the fact that the President of the United States takes his oath of ofl&ce with his hand, if not also his lips, on the Bible; or that Congress is each day opened with prayer; or that Thanksgiving Proclamations are each year issued by the President and by the governors of the several states. For the civil authorities to do anything toward the establishment of "a" religion is not at all the same thing that it is for the state to favor and foster that which lies at the common basis of all forms of religion. In this newly acknowledged " hill of rights " for childhood, every- where, the Bible should have its own place as the world's supreme classic, the one book that is common to all Christendom, and has hitherto been found to be the most vital and dynamic agency, the most illuminating guide, in respect to whatever is best in our modern, especially our Ameri- can, civilization. For the government, in this enormous educational undertaking, to neglect and ignore this supremely efficient educational force, having the plain right to use it, would be like leaving some strategic point of national THE BIBLE AND GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS 109 defense in war-time unprotected and exposed to the enemy. So, also, for a modem Christian nation to appear to be either afraid of, or afraid to use, the common book of all the Christian world, would not be to the credit either of its wisdom or its dignity. To exclude such a book, the common book of all Christian nations, from the scheme of popular education, because deemed too high and fine and good a book for childhood and youth, in the bright and formative heyday of their educational development, would seem to be little better than cruel trifling. As Horace Bushnell used to say, " The Heavenly Father knew how to make a book for His own children." If so, his children have a right to freedom in its use; and, for just the same reason, the government of a Christian nation has a right to authorize the use of it, in some form, in its public schools. Then, too, it is to be remembered that in this case, if the children among these people do not get some acquaintance with this book in the school, it is doubtful if they will get it anywhere. Wherefore, the Bible — at any rate some suitably chosen body of selections — is wanted in the schools, not as mere ancient history, nor as mere moral teaching, nor as mere philosophy or science, nor as mere literature, nor alone for its unique spiritual and ethical force in character- making, but exactly for what it is, as the common and supreme book of all Christian nations, and which has shown itself to have a power that no other book, to anything like tbe same degree, possesses. The proposition, then, which I very respectfully suggest to this Council of the Religious Education Association is, whether it may not be practicable, by proper conference and correspondence with certain most eminent representatives in all the great church organizations, including, of course, the Roman Catholic, to secure the appointment of some highly and widely representative committee by whom some book of selections from the Bible, Old Testament and New, may be made, against which no reasonable objections could be urged, and which may have provided for it, by the proper authorities, its own place as an authorized school-reader in those schools. Rightly undertaken, in a spirit of the broadest Christian fellowship and American patriotism, would not reasonable men and women in all parts of the country applaud such a movement? And would they not instantly recognize the eminent fitness on the part of this-great Religious Education Association in taking the initiative in a movement of such far-reaching educational beneficence? WHAT CAN UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES DO FOR THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THEIR STUDENTS? PRESIDENT WILLIAM R. HARPER, Ph. D., D. D., LL. D. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Some propositions concerning the university and its responsibility for religious education. 1. Just as in more recent years institutions of higher learning have been willing to assume a larger responsibility for the physical education of their students, so there seems to be a distinct awakening to the fact that a responsibility exists also for the religious education, in some form or other, of the students. This statement does not ignore the fact that through all the years certain formal practices, like the chapel exercise, have existed ostensibly for the purpose of rehgious education; but it still remains true that in a new and larger sense institutions seem to be recognizing their responsibility for rehgious education, whatever that may represent. 2. This change of attitude is due in some measure (i) to the eleva- tion of the study of Bibhcal hterature and history to the level, scientifi- cally considered, of that of other history and literature; (2) to the work which has in recent years been accomplished by eminent psychologists along lines relating to rehgious life; (3) to the fact that in the more recent development of the college curriculum many subjects relating to all phases of modern life have been introduced, and that this has made possible the introduction of subjects that have to do with the religious phase of life. 3. It is strictly in accordance with the general purpose of the univer- sity to take part in work that has to do with rehgious education, in- asmuch as the departments of philology and literature, history and sociology in the university, likewise the departments of science and philosophy, ethics and psychology, cannot ignore the consideration of those questions with which a sound religious education is concerned. 4. The university is confessedly the leader in the community which it represents, in all hnes of intellectual inquiry. This must include the subject of religious education, inasmuch as this particular subject be- longs definitely and confessedly within this field. 5. The need of such intelligent consideration of subjects relating to the religious hfe as a university or college only can furnish is clearly seen (i) in the abnormal and distorted forms of religious life and THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF STUDENTS iii thought which seem to attract large numbers; (2) in the ignorance or disregard of the laws of religious life, which results in the giving up, for all practical purposes, of a religious life by many persons; (3) in the apparent contempt in which many people of the more intelligent class hold the lower manifestations of the religious life because of ignorance of the relations of this lower hfe to the higher; and (4) in the narrow conceptions of religious subjects which prevail, even where men and women in other matters of life and thought exhibit the highest intel- ligence. 6. Inasmuch as the theological seminaries of the country have not been intended to serve as laboratories for the working out of problems, but as training schools for the instruction of skilful propagandists, it devolves upon the university to undertake work of this kind. The problems of life in general are worked out more largely in the university or college than anywhere else, and institutions of higher learning have come to be regarded as leaders in the work of solving problems in the various realms of life. 7. The university should offer facihties for investigation of the many phases of the religious life and of the many questions which form a part of the rehgious education, (i) because, as a matter of fact, a large part of the fundamental work necessary for these investigations is already established in the university, and it is a question whether such investi- gations can be made to any considerable advantage outside of the uni- versity; (2) moreover, there exists in the university the spirit of research without which any efifort of this kind will be unsuccessful. It is only in the friendly environment that an investigation is likely to be prosecuted. It is for the best interests of religious education, therefore, that the university should undertake those pieces of investigation which will place in a newer and truer light the fundamental principles of education as they are applied to the religious field. 8. For the sake of the university itself, such work should be under- taken, since the questions of this field are inseparably connected with those of philosophy and psychology, history and sociology, English and modem literature, while the problems of the great fields of science in every case resolve themselves finally into questions which are more or less closely connected with this all-comprehensive subject. It is im- practicable to separate religious thought and religious life from these various fields of inquiry. 9. The study of these problems by the university will lead to three practical results: (i) The subject of religious education, and indeed the subject of religion itself, will be elevated and dignified in the minds of 112 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the great body of people by whom perhaps the claims of religion have not hitherto been strongly felt; (2) a larger respect and appreciation will be accorded these subjects by students as well as by people at large, be- cause the problems are problems on which learned and scientific men are at work. An influence will be set at work to counteract the marked tendency toward degradation of that which religion represents, on the ground that the religious feeling is something peculiar to women and weak men. The need of such a counteracting influence cannot be denied. 10. The university may likewise offer instruction in those subjects which shall contribute to a better conception of religious education. Following out this policy, (i) it may encourage schools preparing stu- dents for college to provide the opportunity of making preparation in the subject of Biblical Hterature and history; (2) it may introduce into the curriculum courses of instruction adapted to the different classes of students, — courses, for example, for undergraduates who would choose this subject as they would any other subject, for the sake of a liberal education; courses for graduate students who are preparing themselves to teach in one or another of the departments concerned. It is worth while to consider, also, whether the German educational usage in the matter of religion, while not successful in all particulars, has in it an element of value, for no one can doubt that great good has been accom- plished by this plan, and, that the sturdiness and strength of German character to-day are in some measure to be attributed to this important factor in the education of the German youth. 11. The duty of the university will not be performed unless it make provision for religious education on the practical side. To this end, the university should constitute itself a laboratory in which there should be a working place for every member of the institution. Religion is a life, an atmosphere, and the test of the theory propounded in the various courses of instruction will be made only in case such a laboratory is rec- ognized as in existence, and the facilities for work in that laboratory are properly provided. The university is itself a life and an atmosphere, and this life, if it is a full and complete one, must include the religious ..element. In this proposed laboratory, practical work should be con- ducted — work which in itself will give occupation of the kind required by those who take advantage of its facilities; work, also, from which, perhaps, new truth, or new relations of old truth, may be discovered. 12. In connection with this laboratory, the university should fur- nish opportunity for continuing the religious life begun at home by those who have changed their residence to the university community. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF STUDENTS 113 It is a dangerous mistake for men and women entering upon univer- sity life to feel that they may for a period throw aside the restraints and the duties of their former life. With the intellectual growth and maturity which the college life brings, there should be a corresponding religious growth, but this will not be obtained if one deliberately re- moves himself from all the agencies of religious influence. It must be remembered that the religious thought and spirit of the earlier stage of intellectual development will not suit a later stage, and, being in- sufficient, will be altogether discarded. The responsibility of the uni- versity in this particular is all the more grave because the home is far away, while the church no longer exerts its influence as before. 13. The university in its laboratory of practical religion should en- courage the development of the altruistic spirit, for this is an essential part of the religious spirit. The life of the student, as also of the in- structor, is confessedly a selfish life. The best corrective is to do some- thing for others. The opportunity presents itself in settlement work and in a thousand other ways. 14. The university should take definite steps to protect its con- stituency against those common forms of vice and demoralization which prevail. The dangers of temptation in a large institution and in the city are, upon the whole, no greater than'in the small institutions and in the country. The counteracting influences are stronger and more nu- merous. The university must hold up true ideals of life. It can point out the consequences of the violation of nature's laws. It can provide proper forms of recreation and a proper atmosphere for recreation. It can exercise, through its staff of officers, a strong personal influence upon those who have intrusted themselves to its care. It can purge its membership, whether in the case of students or of officers, of that element which, by example, or by direct influence, is deteriorating and inferior. It can place itself uncompromisingly on the side of all that is good, and just as uncompromisingly against all that is bad and debasing. All this it must do, and more, if it is to serve conscientiously the interests of those who are within its walls. MR. ROY SMITH WALLACE GRADUATE SECRETARY OF THE PHILLIPS BROOKS HOUSE ASSOCIATION HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS The Phillips Brooks House at Harvard University, Cambridge, is the headquarters of four distinctively religious societies, one co-operative executive Social Service Committee, and one large, all-inclusive holding corporation. 114 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The Phillips Brooks House Association was organized " to unite members of Harvard University, who are interested in the religious, philanthropic, or other activities which center in the Phillips Brooks House. Its work is so ordered that the work of the individual organi- zations now active in the Phillips Brooks House are not in any way restricted or interfered with." The membership of this society is com- posed of the memberships of the various constituent religious societies and of other men, who, while they are willing to stand for the activities of the Phillips Brooks House, are not willing to commit themselves to the point of view of any one of the local societies. This Phillips Brooks House Association carries on all the activities, the results of which are of equal service to all the societies. For in- stance, it maintains the Freshman Information Bureau, holds the fresh- man reception, and conducts the Fall Conference. Besides this, as soon as college opens, the Association canvasses actively the freshman class in the interest of all the societies and of all the activities which center in the Phillips Brooks House. The Association itself carries on directly all the general activities. It stimulates the other societies to carry on their work efficiently, by holding them definitely responsible for conducting those enterprises which they set for themselves as to the work of these local constituent so- cieties. First, we have a Catholic Club, which exists to care for the in- terests of the Roman Catholic members of the University, and to increase the good will which already exists between Catholics and non-Catholic members of the University. This society holds fortnightly doctrinal conferences, which are for Catholic and non-Catholics alike, and social smokers addressed by prominent lay Catholics for the benefit of the members of the society. Second, we have a religious union, the pur- pose of which is to bring together men of liberal religious thought for the discussion and expression of the religious life. This organization holds meetings fortnightly, alternate meetings being addressed by out- side speakers. Third, an Episcopalian Society, the St. Paul's Society, the purpose of which is to bring Churchmen of the University into ac- quaintance with each other, and afford them opportunities for work and worship agreeable to the spirit and forms of the Protestant Episco- pal Church. This society provides corporate communion for its mem- bers, weekly evening prayer, interests itself in the foreign missions of the Church and endeavors to provide workers in neighboring Episco- palian parishes. The Harvard Christian Association is affiliated with the International Y.^M.'^C. A., and carries on most of the work which this organization lays down for its college associations. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF STUDENTS 115 The religious meetings are arranged by classes and have a very small attendance. Several times during the year, however, the Asso- ciation arranges for outside speakers for Sunday afternoons. It also send college men to various preparatory schools and city Christian associations to make addresses. The City Work Committee charges itself with supplying workers for a number of philanthropic institu- tions. In its philanthropic work the Association provides a course for the study and discussion of city problems, conducted by the resident workers of the South End House, Boston. Discussion PRESroENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING, DD. OBERLIN COLLEGE, OBERLIN, OHIO The first requisite of all, which, if fulfilled, will take the place of al- most all else, is genuinely religious men and women in the entire teach- ing and official force of the college or university. Nothing will take the place of this essential. Such men are sure to determine the atmos- phere and spirit of the institution. The unconscious influence of their association is always at work. And, on the other hand, the most elab- orate arrangements for religious instruction, without the backing of such lives, will count for very little. Nothing so certainly brings about the deterioration of an institution as carelessness in the selection of its teachers. A few compromising appointments may easily make im- possible the maintenance of the institution's highest ideals or best tra- ditions. The spirit of a college or university cannot go down in its buildings or grounds or forms of organization. Hardly less important is the prevailing spirit of the students them- selves. The democratic spirit of a true college or university itself goes far toward moral and religious training. The power of the college life to bring out unselfish friendships, too, is invaluable. And the per- sonal association with fellow -students of high faith and character is of the greatest moment. The presence of such a student body depends upon the general traditions and constituency and atmosphere of an institution and the moral and religious strength and efficiency of its faculty. It takes time to build up the most powerful influence in this matter of the general spirit of a college or university. Much will depend, in the first place, on the spirit and determination of the president alone. The moral and religious life requires, too, some active expression. To this end, student activities in this direction should be heartily en- ii6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION couraged and co-operated with. The reHgious Hfe cannot be simply laid on from above. Every bit of initiative on the part of the students is, therefore, clear gain. The college life, in the nature of the case, is likely to suffer from some degree of self -absorption, and any line of activity that tends to thoughtfulness and work for others deserves to be earnestly furthered. There must be, also, the most careful respect for their own moral initiative and individuality, for the inviolability of their own inner life. We cannot ruthlessly interfere or compel. We succeed only so far as we bring them into the right spirit of their own choice. Direct instruction has also a real contribution to make, though it cannot be the main dependence. There is no reason why the Bible should not be studied frankly as a moral and religious book, and not merely as literature. It is literature; but its importance does not lie primarily here; and there is only loss in pretending it does. Objective historical study there should be, no doubt; but indirection is no gain. It ought also to be made much more plain than is usually the case that the ordinary philosophical courses in our colleges and universities restrict themselves (legitimately enough) in their data — quite setting aside the facts of revealed religion, of such a line of personalities, for ex- ample, as the prophets, culminating in Christ. Their resulting infer- ences, consequently, are of limited appHcation. The results of the phil- osophical inquiry as usually conducted, therefore, will come con- siderably short of inferences that might be rationally drawn, if all the data were taken into accont, including these greatest personalities of history. It should also be noted that it is always difficult for philoso- phy, as prevailingly intellectual, to do full justice to those aspects of Hfe which do not lend themselves easily to intellectual formulation. AN EXPERIMENT IN RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN A COLLEGE PRESIDENT W. D. HYDE, D.D., LL.D. BOWDOIN COLLEGE, BRUNSWICK, MAINE By religious instruction I mean the direct presentation of religious truth; not any one of the many approaches to it, or substitutes for it, or evasions of it, like the Bible considered as literature, or church his- tory as an aspect of universal history, or Christian ethics as a phase of ethics in general. Obviously, thei-e are difficulties in the way. It cannot be dogmatic. An average class — for example, my own this year — includes the Congre- gationalist and the Universalist, the Baptist and the Methodist, the Episcopalian and the Unitarian, the Catholic and the Hebrew. All come with views that deserve to be respected; principles which it is the professor's duty not to destroy but to fulfil. What shall we do? In place of theory, I will give you the result of an experiment I have been trying, in one form or another, for some twenty years; a descrip- tion of what my class has been doing for the past month. First, I drew up a syllabus of twenty topics, covering the vital truths of religion, as follows: i. The facts of the world, and the possible principles of their interpretation. 2. The conception of God. 3. The historic representations of God. 4. The presence of God in humanity. 5. The literary expression of religion. 6. The institutional embodiment of religion. 7. Religious aspiration and depression. 8. Justification by aspiration. 9. The answer to prayer. 10. The authority of duty. II. The inevitableness of sacrifice. 12. The nature of sin. 13. The opportunity of repentance. 14. The assurance of forgiveness. 15. Rewards and penalties. 16. The future of the world and the hope of immortality. 17. Love as the universal solvent of social problems. 18. Evangelism. 19. The mission and the settlement. 20. Religious education. One or two of these topics were discussed informally in the class each day. All sorts of objections, all kinds of questions, were invited and considered. There was no disposition to dogmatize; no attempt to be orthodox; no dragging in of extraneous considerations to give a semblance of proof to otherwise incredible propositions. At the conclusion of the course, each member of the class was re- quired to write a thesis covering these twenty topics; expressing his own "7 ii8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION views. The test of excellence was to be, not the orthodoxy or heter- odoxy of the views presented; but the rational unity, the logical co- herence, with which the views, whatever they might be, were shown to spring from and develop out of a central principle common to them all. The only theological difficulty I have ever encountered was three or four years ago ; and that was entirely my own fault. In reply to a question which involved a certain article, incorporated into the great creeds of the church, and based on passages bound up in the New Testament, which modern critical scholarship is finding it increasingly hard to believe, I gave a negative answer in dogmatic and rhetorical form. The Episcopal bishop of the diocese very properly protested against such treatment of an article of the faith of his church. I promptly presented my apology; and while I said that I could not either change, or if questioned conceal, my view, I promised not to introduce the sub- ject of my own accord; and in case it was brought up by others to state both sides of the matter dispassionately and reverently; as, indeed, I ought to have done in the first instance. As a matter of fact, the ques- tion has not arisen since: and if it should, I am confident it could be treated without giving offense to the most conservative. The deeper grasp we gain on essentials, the more tolerant we become in both direc- tions, toward those more conservative and those more Hberal than ourselves, with respect to what they deem important and we do not. What are the results of this experiment ? What may we reasonably expect to be the outcome ? First, we shall get the greatest diversity on non-essentials. The Catholic will be a Catholic still; the Unitarian will be a Unitarian still. I doubt whether in twenty years of such in- struction, any person has consciously and deliberately changed his ecclesiastical relationships as the result of instruction and discussion in the class-room. If they did, it would be evidence that as a public institution we were not dealing fairly by the pupils intrusted to us. From those communions which are most in earnest about religion, we should receive no more students, if we were suspected of the attempt to proselyte. For example, this year I received the following state- ments of beUef in an essay on the Ideal Religion. " I believe that there is a material and spiritual world created and ruled by God. He is the Creator and all-powerful Ruler of the earth, and is one God in three persons, known as the blessed Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God is represented on earth by a visible head called the Pope, and is present in the form of bread and wine, which represents his body and blood in the sacrifice of the Mass" " If one dies in mortal sin, he is AN EXPERIMENT IN RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 119 condemned to eternal punishment in hell. If one has lived a good life in the eyes of God, he is rewarded by being admitted to the joys of Heaven for eternity. Between the two is purgatory, where the soul which is not yet worthy of Heaven must suffer until repentance enough has been shown, when he is admitted to Heaven." Inasmuch as the majority of our students come from evangelical Protestant homes, the greater part of the theses took a middle ground between these two extremes. The following extracts give the view of the majority of the class. " God is the one great purpose who stands under the facts of the world, and gives them the reality they have: the common ground of unity between nature and the mind of man; the bond and basis of in- telligibihty between different minds; the supreme source and standard or truth which has a ruling power over our minds. He is the unity of the whole, the purpose which works in humanity for righteousness and truth. His position is to the universe what the nation is to the citi- zens. He includes all the thoughts and acts of finite persons in the unity of his larger thought and will. He is the assertion of the common well-being. He is the spirit which gives the ideal of conduct. He is the unity and purpose which binds all things and thoughts together, and makes them the object of our love. " It is perfectly natural that our conception of God should have some finite symbol or representation. Let us put into this conception all we can conceive of righteousness, love, and truth, let us put into it every trait of moral character, every quality of spiritual grace, and .then search for the man whose life and principle has revealed these human ideals. We find no other but Christ. No other character has lived whose teaching and Kfe could stand such a test. He met all temptation with the consciousness of the Father whose commandment he was to obey as a filial duty in the assurance that it was right. He accepted every duty and relationship of hfe as an apportunity to do the will of the Father, and to bring men to the consciousness of their relationship to God and their brotherhood with each other. Christ is all of the divine nature and spirit that can be manifested in human form, and therefore has the perfect right to be called the representative or Son of God. By virtue of his moral and spiritual excellence he becomes the Mediator between God and man; and if we are unable to see God in Christ, we are not able to see him at all." Some one may ask, " What is the use of spending three or four weeks on these topics, if men come out with the same views as those with which they started? " They are the same in verbal statement and ecclesi- I20 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION astical label. But they are different in depth, and breadth, in scope and charity. The Universalist is a deeper Universalist; the Episcopalian is a more tolerant Episcopalian; the Methodist is a more rational Meth- odist; the Congregationalist is a more spiritual Congregationalist, the Hebrew is a more sympathetic Hebrew; the Catholic is a more ethical Catholic for having discussed these great themes in an atmosphere of earnestness and candor and reverence. Underneath these diversities of view, they all partake of a common spirit. That two radically different faiths should altogether fuse was not to be expected. But all the Christians, widely as they differed on many points, were practically united in the main spirit of our common American Christianity. Any one of them who should live up to his pro- fessed ideal of religion would be at once a worker with Christ for the spiritual welfare of the world, and a partaker with him in the divine life. Two years ago we reduced these common points of spiritual affinity to formal expression in a creed to which the entire class of sixty gave assent; and while the creed thus composed was not as comprehensive and explicit at certain points as one might wish, yet, if universally ac- adopted and lived out, it would make this earth a heaven within a single generation; which is perhaps as good a test of orthodoxy as any. Man is by nature rehgious. Truth has an affinity for the human mind. Whoever will trust implicitly in the intrinsic persuasiveness of the truth and the inherent honesty of youth, and strive in candor and reverence to bring together the truth of God and the mind and heart of young men, will find that religious instruction is not only possible and practicable in the midst of the greatest diversity of views; but also the most interesting and profitable portion of the college curriculum. Some of his students will believe more than he; some will believe less; all will believe differently. But they are all sure to gain the great ends at which religious instruction really aims : more reverence for their comrnon Heav- enly Father, and more respect for each other, more loyalty to the Spirit of Christ, more readiness to live pure lives and do good work in the world. WHAT CAN MUSIC DO FOR THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF STUDENTS ? PROFESSOR H. C. MACDOUGALL, Mus.D. WELLESLEY COLLEGE, WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS That music may have a substantial part in the enrichment of the re- ligious life may seem an absurdity to some, a beautiful but impractica- ble dream to others. Our ordinary notion of the art is that it is, to use Spencer's phrase, " a striking constituent of the efflorescence of civiliza- tion "; in certain strictly utilitarian aspects, the handmaid of religion; or, more popularly, the language of the emotions. This last characterization of music has been responsible for a re- gretted misconception of its scope and usefulness. If music be the lan- guage of the emotions, how is it that beyond simple exhilaration or depression, music has no direct power? It cannot call forth anger, love, hate, contempt, derision, care: these are outside music's realm. A large part of the standard musical literature, particularly the classical and pre-classical masterpieces, arouses no emotional excitement; on the contrary, the mind is absorbed by pure contemplation, as if one were looking at the Parthenon. Speaking philosophically, when moods or emotions accompany music they seem to be accidental rather than es- sential. Music is a self-subsistent art, working in its own material and governed by its own laws; its relation to life should be estimated only after a consideration of its essential nature and of the results of its work. What, then, may we say as to music's contribution to the full life? Music tells us of Law and inferentially of the Lawgiver. Deep in math- ematics lie its foundations. The mathematical, acoustical, and mu- sical primacy of the octave and the perfect fifth are absolute. Na- ture in the harmonic dlan, gives her orders as to chords, keys, and modulations, and the composer disobeys them at his peril. Here is the foundation of our whole tonal system , and on it rest, too, the laws of musical form. Man is never nearer God than when, out of the im- palpable things we call sound-waves, and in accordance with God's laws, written in Nature, he makes an enduring overture or symphony. The musician is not a creator. He is God's man, achieving only as he is law-abiding. If Gllick exceeded Monteverde, and Wagner, Gliick, it was only because law in the artist's vision was unfolded and, being unfolded, obeyed. " Music ministers to the larger life by revealing in 122 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION fresh and entrancing forms some of the great laws of God; by conform- ing ourselves unto law we attain unto liberty." But music makes a contribution to the abundant life even more striking, if not more significant, than the one just referred to: it gives opportunity for self-expression. If law be thought of as repressive, op- portunity is expressive. Of what is music expressive ? Happily, music has not a word-definite message; it accepts oz^r interpretation and car- ries our word, our hope, our prayer. Whether we take part in a hymn or in an oratorio, or are some Ysaye or Melba, or only a humble listener, still we can pour out our soul, can give voice to heart-hunger or to praise. Because music deals with material dissociated with everything suggest- ing the earth or that which is earthy, we may draw from it so much that gives satisfaction to the soul. To the vast majority of His children, God has mercifully given this opportunity of self-expression. Hand in hand with self-expression goes self-development, and self-develop- ment means the abundant life. If we consider music's physiological power chiefly, it is pre-eminently the art for youth, just as, if we consider it in its formal and reflective aspects, it is the art for maturity. The music exemplifying the highest artistic impulses, the sanest, wholesomest artistic life, is the only music that will minister to the religious life of students; for it is that music, above all other music, which is based on law, which carries with it ad- miration and love for law, and is the best vehicle for self-expression. The proper presentation by college students of the best music, or " the full appreciation of the best music by them, involves,first, a serious altitude towards the art, and second, a serious study of it. We are, I am sure, impressed with the claims of music to thoughtful consideration as an art having vital relations with the mental and spiritual life of a great majority of our college students. In the educational world, signs point to a careful study of the value of music in the highest education; and this comes about, not simply because music is interesting or enjoy- able, or because of its emotional power, but because of its ideal and sug- gestive beauty, and because of its close relation with the intelligence and with the fife of the soul. What direct steps may be taken towards securing the helpful co- operation of music in the religious life of the students ? I take it that the center of the outward religious life of the student is the college chapel. Granted the existence of the religious spirit, it must be continued and nourished. If the college chapel be bare, unattractive; if the organ be inadequate; if the organ be adequate and the organist not alive to the privileges of his position, or incompetent for them; if the choir WHAT CAN MUSIC DO FOR RELIGION? 123 serve perfunctorily; if the service, as a w^hole, or is dead or uninteresting falls short of the highest excellence in any degree, — by so much are the college authorities missing their privileges. To the chapel service should the students confidently come for help. They should receive what they need, and no pains are too great for architect, trustees, presi- dent, organist, choir, and congregation to take. Two of themost important elements of service-enrichment are the organ and the choir. In the consideration of music's help in the stu- dent's religious life, music must be subordinated to the end in view. After the service has been mapped out, its unification accomplished , and the part lo be allotted to music determined, the manner in which the latter is to be carried out becomes of much importance. The mod- ern organ has become an expressive, flexible instrument, capable of an immense range in power and color. The organist has a great oppor- tunity. He must not abuse his opportunity by attracting attention to himself, by obtruding his instrument, or by indulging in sentimentalism. Discreetly used, his position is of great usefulness. But while in the organ the student finds vicarious expression, in the choir he may offer up directly to God his prayer and praise and adora- tion. If the choir be devout in manner and musically effective, it cannot fail, either, to carry with it the religious feeling of the congregation. Let the college find a choir-master who can train a choir so that it shall be reverent, flexible in its response to service needs, and joyous in its work. This is a very difficult thing to manage, but if managed, it pays a hundred-fold. A congregation can be led, melted, encouraged, by a choir made up from the student body, when the finest professional choir would leave them untouched. To^put all this in a somewhat different way, the most gracious ser- vice that music can render to the religious life in worship is the service of carrying the climax reached in sermon, address, or prayer on and higher. This music can do through hymn or anthem or organ. To render this service with the least loss of power, there must be absolute co-ordination in every respect between minister, choir, congregation, and organist. An ideal? Yes, an ideal; a wise ideal; a practicable ideal. Whatever the theme, however adequately or wisely presented, music, if allowed to try, will take it up and carry it higher. In this sense music begins where words leave off. Whether we consider the direct liturgical bearings of music or its e^sent'al nature, may we not conclude that it may help the religious life of the student by aiding him in the expression of his aspirations and by giving him a beautiful and forcible illustration of divine immanence and divine law? III. THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES THE ANNUAL SURVEY OF WORK OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES PRESIDENT WILLIAM DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, D.D. HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT One is glad to find that several seminaries, which hitherto have not insisted upon the college degree for entrance, have begun to do so. Several report additions to their faculty. At Union Theological Semi- nary they are adding a graduate chair of Theological Encyclopsedics and Symbolics for men pursuing advance courses, a graduate chair of preaching for " ministers who desire further training in this depart- ment," an assistant has been added to the work of the Homiletic De- partment, and a chair of AppHed Christianity has also been established. New Brunswick Theological Seminary has added the teaching of cog- nate languages in the Old Testament field, is making arrangements with New York University with regard to studies for the doctor's de- gree, and is also " steadily increasing facilities for the study of com- parative religion." At Auburn a new chair has been established in Apologetics and Theism, and the President wishes to arrange for the teaching of religious pedagogy. Andover has added an instructor in the History of Religion. At Oberlin the college degree is demanded for entrance and " genuinely post-graduate work of a severe order is now being done, involving the abandonment of the lecture system, and the adoption of something like seminar work." Rochester has in- troduced new requirements for admission, and now demands the college degree, or ability to do the work of degree of B. D. Two new pro- fessorships have been added, one for English Bible and one for assist- ance in the work of New Testament interpretation. Rochester has, moreover, adopted the elective system, adding the number of courses under this head to the fixed curriculum. General Theological Semin- ary of New York has also adopted the elective system in an experi- mental manner, and is extending the seminar system of class-work. An instructor in Ethics has been added to the faculty, and the Dean reports that the library has been " substantially remade." The Elective System. One cannot look over the catalogues of theo- logical seminaries and the letters which have come from them without remarking the steady spread of the elective system. Even seminaries 124 WORK OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 125 whose equipment is small are yet trying, by imposing additional class- room labor upon their staff, to meet with the demand for this feature in a theological curriculum. The old system recognized five main de- partments of study: Old Testament, New Testament, Systematic The- ology, Church History, and Homiletics. The characteristic of that system was that the students could concentrate for prolonged periods upon each discipline, > giving it full justice. The result was that men went out masters in some real measure of the great instruments with which investigation in every direction could afterwards be carried on. This modern demand has arisen everywhere from two main sources. First, through the growth of investigation in the nineteenth century there has been a great increase of departments and sub-departments in the vast field of Christian scholarship. Subjects which seemed to be unified in a simple fashion, fifty years ago, have been broken up and their several portions have grown into independent fields of research and systematic thought. Let me merely name to you the rise of the science of comparative religion out of the extraordinary labors of in- numerable scholars upon all the religions of the world. Out of this science there has arisen a wider demand for a study of the philosophy of religion, and the latter has brought problems in metaphysics in a fresh way, and from a new quarter, into the field of theological investi- gation. Christian ethics during the last fifty years became detached definitely from d-ogmatics, and demands separate treatment, both in method and in end. Closely connected with this there has arisen the science of sociology. Yet again, out of the modern methods of psy- chological investigation have arisen various efforts to understand the nature and laws of religious experience. This threatens, under our very eyes, to become a new department. On the practical side, we are now familiar with the phrase " religious pedagogy," and are aware that not only do many seminaries try to give it a subordinate place in their scheme, but separate institutions have been created to give full train- ing in the science and art of Christian education. One must only refer to the greater breadth and depth which has been given to the older fields of Old and New Testament scholarship by modern discoverers in the field of Semitic languages and literature, and by the great exten- sion of knowledge in the already vast field of early Christian history and literature. Second. We must note the more frank recognition which we all give to the diversities of interests and gifts among students. Enthusiastic teachers desire to help men to find out what they can do best, and in 126 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION what department they can work with most hope of making it a life inter- est. The dangers of the Elective System may be put in the following manner: First, the danger of superficial work all round. This must arise if the student goes forth with no one subject mastered, and there- fore with no real mental discipline. Second, a danger of the opposite kind, which arises when a student specializes too soon and confines his hard work to a field which is too narrow. He may lay there the founda- tion of a real life interest and within it become a scholar; but he will find later that his favorite and only department is organically connected with all others, and that he is unfitted to pass into them or receive their aid from the fact that he neglected those classes which are necessary for scholarship in these related portions of the whole system. - If these be the dangers, by what methods can we obviate them ? I will try to answer this question by referring to the plans adopted by sev- eral of our best-known theological schools. (i) In the first place, let me refer to the plan adopted by the Divinity School of Harvard University. Here the utmost freedom of election is allowed to all, excepting those who enter for the degree of B.D. From these a total of fourteen courses in three years is demanded. Two of these may be chosen from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. As to the remainder, it is said, " Candidates for the degree are not allowed to neglect entirely any one of the following departments : Old Testament, New Testament, Church History, Theology, Homiletics." (2) Another plan may be called the " Grouping System." Under this the whole number of courses offered in the institution is divided up under various heads, some being generally classed as required or prescribed, and others as elective. Under each group, which practically becomes a curriculum for the student choosing it, it is sought to secure three ends. First, each student is compelled to do some work in all of the main departments. Second, under each group subject a list of courses is given, which belong to it or are most nearly connected with it. These become prescribed for the particular student. Third, a margin of hours is usually left, which each student can fill up from all the other electives offered, with absolute freedom. In working out this plan, each student must consider the professor in whose group he en- rolls himself as his personal adviser in all matters concerning his course. The professor is bound to take the special oversight over all students in his group, keep as close to them as he can from one term to another, and report on their progress to the faculty as a whole. (3) Another and most interesting plan is that which is being carried WORK 01 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 127 out by Princeton Theological Seminary. First, Princeton offers a fixed regular curriculum on the old lines, without electives, which leads to a certificate of graduation at the end of three years. Second, a number of what are called extra-curriculum courses are offered in each depart- ment, and in certain fields outside the regular curriculum. From these courses no student may choose more than four hours during each of his three years of undergraduate study. These four hours do not seem to count in any way towards his grade on graduation. It is most inter- esting, and for the friends of the elective system most encouraging to find that last year at Princeton there were no fewer than 157 entries (counting the repetition of names) made by undergraduates for these elective courses. Third, Princeton adds a fourth year of work, all of which must be done to the extent of no less than twelve hours in the extra curriculum courses. These courses are in the five regular depart- ments, with Semitic philology added as a sixth department. The stu- dent who comes up for a fourth year chooses one of these groups, and in it he must spend at least two thirds of his time, the remaining one third being left as elective. In addition, he has a thesis, and when the thesis and examinations on his year's work are through, he receives the degree of B. D. Under this arrangement last year, no fewer than nine- teen men received their degree. The Fourth Year. — The pressure of the elective system has thus brought us face to face with the question whether the time has come or theological seminaries to insist on a fourth year of study. The great extension of the field of theological learning to which we have alluded, as well as the example of medical schools which have pro- longed their courses to four and even five years, have combined to raise this question in many minds. Within the last five years another movement has emphasized the problem for us. I refer to the tendency of colleges and universities to admit studies preparative to a theological course into the curriculum for the B.A. degree. Students who have included in their arts course classes in Hebrew, Christian Ethics, Apologetics, New Testament, Greek, Sociology, and perhaps Church History, expect to receive credit for this work when they come to a seminary, and sometimes wish to finish their theological course in two instead of three years. The value of a fourth year need not be dis- cussed. Undoubtedly any seminary which took this step would have to be content for a con^derable time with a small enrollment in its fourth year. And yet here the experience of Princeton is most encouraging. I find that this seminary, last year, had altogether 34 graduate students. 128 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Of these, no less than 23 had graduated from their respective seminaries within the last five years. Another important experiment is being made toward the establish- ment of a fourth year by Union Theological Seminary, New York. In this institution, also, the degree of B. D. is granted under two sepa- rate conditions, (a) A man of exceptionally high standing may add to his already very heavy classroom work additional courses, which must include sixty in the Old Testament department, and thirty in the New Testament department. In that department which a student elects as his major, and in which his thesis must fall, he must do no less than 180 hours of classroom work' besides that required for the diploma, (b) A man who has, during the three years' course either at Union, " or in some other approved institution," attained an average grade of not less than 80 per cent, may enter upon a course some- what similar to that of Princeton. He must do twelve hours of class- room work a week, but he may take one sixth of his session's work at Columbia or New York University. From him, also, a thesis is, of course, required. In the catalogue for 1902-1903, Union reported 22 graduates students, some of whom were working practically on the fourth year for the degree. The Influence 0} Comparative Religion. — We are all aware of the fierce controversy which has been raging in Germany over the influence of the study of religion as a whole upon the theological departments in uni- versities. On the one hand, we have men, with Troeltsch, perhaps, as their protagonist, who maintain that all theological work must be recast in the light of our modern view of the religions of the world and of their relations to Christianity. For it is urged that we are now com- pelled to study the Old Testament in all its aspects in direct connection with Semitic religions, and to trace the influence upon Hebrew thought of the religions of the peoples with whom they came in contact through- out their history. Similarly, the New Testament is, we are told, being re-read. The rise of its doctrines and its worship is explained in the light, not only of Judaism, but of the thought and worship of the Hellenic world. The idea of canonicity, it is urged, must have no place in the construction of the curriculum for a theological school, any more than in the individual scholar's investigation of primitive Christianity and the religion of Israel. Old Testament introduction ought to widen out into the religion of Israel. The Biblical theology of the Old Testament dis- appears into the religion of the Hebrews and of the Jews. New Testa- ment introduction gives place to the larger term, the literature of primi- tive Christianity, and its theology passes into th^ dnrtrines of the several WORK OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 129 teachers and circles of the first two centuries; and so on with the rest of the departments. Even in Germany, however, the advocates of this plan do not have it all their own way. Redoubtable champions have appeared in Harnack, Reichle, and others. Reichle especially has written with great intelligence and fervor on the subject. In America we have not gone so far, but the question in this survey is whether our theological schools have been at all profoundly moved by interest in the science and history of religion. Dr. Warren, late president of Boston University, taught Compara- tive Religion in the Divinity School for thirty-five years. Chicago Theological Seminary, I am inclined to believe, was the first seminary in this country to make comparative religion a required subject for all students; and it did this some seven or eight years ago. No less than 40 hours in the junior year were demanded of every student. A large number of seminaries have given some small place to comparative religion without having made it a compulsory study. But some have gone further than that. At the Divinity School of Harvard the Phi- losophy and History of Religion are dealt with mainly by a Professor of the Old Testament Department. The students are invited to elect from courses offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the fol- lowing are among the topics named: Science of Religion, The Reli- gions of India, The Philosophical Systems of India, Germanic and Celtic Religions, History of Babylonia and Assyria. Attention is also directed to certain courses in Philosophy including Ethics, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy of Nature. In the Divinity School of the University of Chicago a reorganization of the department of Systematic Theology is now being made, which, it is quite evident, has been profoundly influenced by the religious- history method. The department is to be worked under four main divisions which are described as follows: i. Philosophical Theol- ogy; 2. Scriptural Theology, " Systematic Theology drawing its data exclusively from the Scriptures"; 3. Historical Theology, divided be- tween the departments of Systematic Theology and Church History; 4. Comparative Theology, " in which the theological teachings of the ethnic faiths will be compared with those of the Christian system." This sub-department is to be divided iijto three sections, the first treating of the Philosophy of Religion, the second of the Psychology of Religion, and the third of the History and Theology of Religions. At Hartford Theological Seminary, within the Department of Sys- tematic Theology there are courses on the Philosophy of Religion and on Introduction to the History of Religions, as well as a reading I30 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION course in that history. In the Department of Philology and Exegesis a place is found for the reading of Arabic, the study of the theology of Islam, the history and methods of Mohammedanism, the history of the attitude of Moslems towards the Christian and Jewish religions, and for Christian missions in Egypt and Arabia. Work is also done, of course, in Assyriology, and, in the history of Semitic religion in general, especially in its relations to the history of Israel and early Christianity. In the Mission Courses, instruction is offered in a large number of languages. At Union Theological Seminary there now exists a department en- titled the " Philosophy and History of Religion," which is under the charge of one professor. He offers courses in the Philosophy of Re- ligion, Survey of the Ethnic Faiths, Introduction to the Study of the Philosophy of Religion, Origin and Development of Religion, and Christianity in the Light of the Development of Religion. In addi- tion, many important courses are named in the catalogue which are offered by Columbia University and New York University, respectively. On the whole matter, perhaps you will allow me to make the fol- lowing general observations : First, the only point at which, excepting the case of th& University of Chicago, comparative religion has come thoroughly into the theological curriculum, is through the study of the Philosophy of Religion. Second, the only school which has attempted to reorganize the substance of its course under the influence of re- ligious history is the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, and even there it is limited at present to the systematic department, and has not extended so far as to obliterate the distinction between Old Testa- ment and new Testament literature and the non-canonical literature of those periods. Third, the influence of the religious-historical method on the Biblical and historical departments of a divinity school can, as yet, only appear in the classroom method of individual professors. Fourth, it may be worth pointing out that at Hartford Theological Seminary the inclusion of subjects connected with the History of Re- ligions in the curriculum is associated, not exclusively, but largely, with the effort to train men more thoroughly for the foreign mission field. The aim is to give them some knowledge of the language with which they must be employed in the future, and of the nature and the history of the religion of that people among whom they hope to preach the gospel of Christ. Fifth, — and that leads me to hazard the prophecy that, in years to come, in this country, we may find two types of a theological curriculum arising. Under the first we shall find the cours.' oi study reorganized from a purely intellectu;; stand- WORK OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 131 point. The History of Religions, including Christianity, will be treated as in some sense co-ordinate. An effort will be made to de- velop the philosophy underlying the whole vast religious life of man, and the various departments will tend to rest upon an investigation of the history of each religion and of its interrelations with the others. It is not impossible that in America the first programme may be adopted by some great school, which reflects the opinion of the group of agitators in Germany, to whom I referred above. Under the other type, theological schools will continue to be organized, not in relation primarily to the universal fact of religion, but in relation to the life and purpose of the Christian Church, not on the basis of the ideal unity of all religious life, but on the basis of the abso- lute nature of one religion, Christianity. Discussion PROFESSOR GEORGE E. HORR, D.D. NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION, NEWTON CENTER, MASSACHUSETTS It may be pertinent to call attention to a fact which has not been mentioned in this discussion. The reformed churches, which received their impulse from Calvin — the Churches of France, of the Rhineland, of Switzerland, Holland, and Scotland — almost without exception, had a pastor and a teacher, or a ruling elder. The meeting-house of the Salem (Massachusetts) Church, which is still standing, holds about thirty persons, but the congregation that worshiped there had a pastor and a teacher. In modern times we have departed from this wholesome prac- tice. Our churches put all the burdens of preaching, teaching, and administration upon one person. The differentiation of function is the mark of evolutionary process, but we do not follow out that sound principle in the ministry. The result is, that our churches are seeking for the rare men who can do the most diverse things equally well, and when they have found him, they proceed to kill him. We need both classes of men in the ministry — the teaching or preaching pastor, and the ruling or administrative pastor. The two classes of officers need very different kinds of training. But the theo- logical seminary is geared to the training of the preaching pastor. The most necessary reform in the theological discipline of to-day is that the seminaries train both sorts of men, and the most necessary reform in the churches is that churches of any considerable size shall have at least two pastors. 132 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Looking now at the work of theological seminaries, as at present adjusted, tliree facts are worth noting. I. The need of a spiritual quickening throughout our country. Various causes are adduced to account for the fact that the young men in our colleges are not making a choice of the ministry. But the under- lying cause of the situation is that since 1858 America has not been spiritually moved, so that the spiritual consciousness of the nation has been aroused. I am not arguing for any revival that wastes itself in emotionalism, but I do not see how any religious man can deny that we need a profound reawakening of the spiritual consciousness of the American people to eternal things. Most of the problems that confront the religious world would be largely settled by a deep and general re- awakening of the spiritual consciousness of the American people. There would be no Sunday-evening-service problem, no vacant-seat problem in the morning service, no city-evangelization problem, no theological- seminary-support problem, no lack-of-students-for-the-ministry prob- lem, if we could have such a spiritual quickening as that of which I am speaking. II. A second fact deserves attention. During this period of spiritual dearth we have been passing through the most prodigious intellectual revolution that the world has ever known. We can fix the date of it. The decade 1870-1880 was momentous in the history of thought, in the attitude of the civilized mind toward the universe. The Weltanschauung was revolutionized. In affirming this I do not mean to insinuate, in the slightest degree, whether or not I think that what is vaguely called " the evolutionary hypothesis," can be verified or not. I simply point out that in the period designated we came into a new psychological climate, and the influence of that climate was felt not only in biology, but in philosophy, history, sociology, pedagogy, Bibhcal interpretation, and theology. It is impossible for men to look at things just as they did previous to 1870, no matter what their individual convictions. At the very least, they have to take account of fresh considerations and answer new objections. III. There is, however, one aspect in the situation that is bright with light and full of promise, and that is the increasing intellectual appreciation everywhere of the moral and spiritual content of the Per- sonality of Jesus Christ. Probably no life of Jesus written before 1830 is worth reading, and few of the multitudes of biographies of Jesus that have teemed from the press since i860 are destitute of worthy spiritual suggestion. When we come to think of it, the just implications of such facts are astounding. There is seen to be a wealth and a power of WORK OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 133 spiritual life in Jesus that we have not begun to exhaust. Theology is surely coming to its own again as the queen of the sciences, because she is discovering her true center and inspiration — the sovereign fact which reconciles the old conviction and the new outlook. The moral and spiritual awakening for which we all long, which will fill our semi- naries with eager and heroic spirits, will surely come as the intellectual convictions of the best modern thought set on fire the emotions and will of multitudes of men. And the breath of the Spirit may accomp- lish that at any moment. PROFESSOR ALFRED WILLIAMS ANTHONY, D.D. COBB DIVINITY SCHOOL, LEWISTON, MAINE The seminaries may be known and the value of their work tested in four ways: (i) Through their published catalogues; (2) by descriptive statements made by president, dean, or professor; (3) through the per- sonnel of the teaching staff; and (4) by the students who graduate. Ministers may be classified under four types: the scholar, the preacher, the pastor, and the administrator. The scholarly type has been the product aimed at in the seminary course, until within a quarter of a century; the aim has been gradually shifting to the fourth, or the the administrative, type. The combination of the four into one is a rare creation, and consequently truly great men in the ministry are few, as are such men everywhere. Recognizing that seminaries have the distinctive function of pre- paring men for the ministry, acknowledging that they have made great advances in variety of subjects taught, in the methods of instruction, and in their spirit and readiness of adaptation to changed conditions, yet there appear certain respects in which the curriculum of the semi- naries falls short, in which their work proves defective. Cultivation of the emotional nature should be provided. Even so cold and intellectual a philosopher as Herbert Spencer insisted that education, to be complete, must include the emotions. No psychology to-day leaves out the feelings, no school of pedagogy forgets the appeal to the imagination. Beyond the curriculum laid down in the catalogue, there should be a depth of devotion, fervency of feeling, and warmth of love surcharging all the exercises of a seminary, else its instruction becomes cold and formal. It is the crying need of the theological semi- nary, of the waiting Church, and of the heavily laden world, that, in addition to all their scholarship, and there is none too much, in ad- dition to their oratory and eloquence, and the Gospel needs it all, in addition to their fidelity and patience with wandering sinners, in addition 134 [THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION to their large grasp of affairs, their attention to detail and energy in action, that men who preach be filled with this glow of enthusiasm and fervency of devotion that will carry them through hardship and let them halt at no service and sacrifice. The seminaries need passion, a- thing that cannot be taught, and can be imparted, if at all, only by contagion. Preaching is, after all, the distinctive function of the minister. But the pulpit is not the only herald calling to be heard. The urgency and the din of competition are great. Preaching, then, must have a message worth the hearing. To-day it is not the manner so much as the matter that counts. Mere oratory and rhetoric have vanished from before the bar, from the public platform and political stump; it has a lessened acceptance in the pulpit. Matter need not embrace, nor need it totally avoid, politics, eco- nomics education, art, philanthropy, nor any of the interests vital to human life and progress, but the matter of the pulpit discourse, more than of any other utterance, must be what can ever and always and everywhere be called " the gospel." The gospel, as I understand it, is a recital of the way in which man can come into fellowship with his God; it is the appeal of the divine to the human and of the human to the divine; it must always be a disclosure of the unseen to the hitherto unseeing; it must have in it something of revelation, no matter what the special theme nor the frequency of utterance. We scarcely can teach men to pray; but all that is signified in the ministry of public prayer should in some way be cultivated in young men who hope to lead their fellow-men into communion with the un- seen. If we, who are teachers, belong to a church which does not employ liturgical forms, then is our task the more difficult, and the more delicate in its difficulty. Yet, weary men, who have been pressed six days in the week with sordid, worldly cares, are better ministered to by the man who, human like themselves, can step sanely, yet surely, out of these merely earthly scenes into the presence of the Holy One, than by the man who merely preaches learned discourses or popular homilies. Busy men — I venture to say, business men — appreciate the uplift of prayer which, in phrase, in comprehensiveness, in point of departure, in atmosphere, and in controlled, yet sustained, feeling, goes itself and carries others into the presence of the Invisible. Prayer is a blessed ministry. Too few pray as ministering spirits. Those who do have a holy function. THE DECLINE IN THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS FOR THE MINISTRY PRESIDENT ALFRED T. PERRY, D. D. MARIETTA COLLEGE, MARIETTA, OHIO The things we really want to know are: I. Just what is the truth regarding the decline in numbers ? II. Wliat has led young men to shun this profession in recent years ? III. What is the remedy for this state of things ? How can we regain the devotion of young men ? . The first question is purely a statistical one, to be answered through the intelligent use of statistics. The answer to the second has been made for us by the young men of to day who are looking forward to the ministry. The answer to the third will represent only the opinion of one interested student of this subject. I have sought to gather my information widely and collate it care- fully. Limiting my inquiry to the period since i8go, I have issued circulars to 382 colleges and universities, to the Y. M. C. A. presidents in 327 of them, to 120 theological seminaries, to the leaders and officers in 21 denominations, as well as to numerous friends and representatives. Out of the 382 colleges I have received replies, either through a college officer or the Y. M. C. A. president, from 263. These reports supplemented by those of the United States Commissioner of Educa- tion, have furnished my answer to the first two questions. Coming directly to our questions: I. What is the truth in regard to the decline in number of students ? Here are the figures of the United States Commissioner of Education : THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS IN ALL SEMINARIES REPORTING, AND NUMBER IN PROTESTANT SEMINARIES. Year Total Number Protestant Year Total Number Protestant 1870 3254 1893 7836 6541 1875 5234 1894 7658 6340 1880 5242 1895 8050 6ji6 1885 5775 1896 8017 65S7 1886 6370 5418 1897 8173 6514 1887 6306 5343 1898 8371 6491 1888 6512 5515 1899 8261 6155 1889 6989 5933 1900 8009 5975 1890 7013 6029 19OI 7567 5632 189I 7328 6006 1902 734? 5410 1892 7729 6360 1903 7372 5628 135 136 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION These figures are confessedly incomplete. Probably the Roman Catholic figures of the early years are the most defective, so that the actual increase in that denomination is less than appears. The net figures, however, give probably a correct impression. It will be seen that in 1895 the maximum was reached, since which time there has been a rapid decline to the figures of the earlier years. Fluctuation in numbers need not surprise us. This we find in other professions. Medical students declined from 12,739 in 1882 to 11,059 in 1885; law students, from 3237 in 1881 to 2744 in 1885. Such re- fluent waves of the oncoming tide are to be expected, and they are frequently seen in the earlier years in the theological students. Still this gives us little little comfort, when we contemplate the complete ebb in the roll of Protestant students of theology. Subtract the 166 women in the Protestant seminaries in 1903, and the 108 in 1902, and the situation is still worse: 1890, net 6029. 1902, net 5302. 1903, net 5462. The population of the country has been growing, the number of churches and church members has increased greatly, and yet the number of male students in the Protestant seminaries of the country in 1903 was less by 567 than in 1890, and less than any year since 1887, except 1902, when there were were 727 fewer students than in 1890, and less than any year since 1885. A study of the statistics of different denominations gives the following result : Baptists. A fairly steady increase, notwithstanding a slight drop in 1900 and 1902; from 658 in 1890 to 1095 in 1904. Free-will Baptists. Great fluctuation; 54 in 1890, 43 in 1893, 106 in 1895, 47 in 1900. and 54 in 1903. Congregationalists A great decline; from 588 in 1890, and a maximum of 596 in 1892 to 378 in 1901, with slight recovery to 393 in 1904 Disciples. A steady and large increase; from 468 in 1890 to 807 in 1900 and 997 in 1904. Lutherans (General Council). Fluctuation from 730 in 1890 to a maximum of 1202 in 1890, and a drop to 905 in 1903, with a recovery o 102 1 in 1904. Methodists (North). Rise from 498 in 1890 to 676 in 1900, falling to 612 in 1903. Methodists (South). Have but one seminary, which trains only a small per cent, of the ministers. This seminary shows an increase in students, but ordinations have fallen off slightly since 1898. DECLINE IN STUDENTS FOR THE MINISTRY 137 Methodist Protestant. Show decline to 1897, then a rise. Presbyterians (North). Including Union Seminary in the statistics, a steady increase from 786 in 1890 to a maximum of iioi in 1895, then an equally steady decline to a minimum of 726 in 1902, with a slight recovery since. Presbyterians (South). A somewhat narrow fluctuation ; from 103 in 1890 to 194 in 1894, to 156 in 1900 and 158 in 1903. Cnmberland Presbyterian. With only one Seminary, a wave-like in- crease from 36 in 1890 to 65 in 1898, and 56 in 1903. United Presbyterian. From 85 in 1890 to a maximum of 160 in 1897, caused in part by increase in women students, to a minimum of 84 in 1903. Protestant Episcopal. A wave-like increase from 346 in 1890 to a maximum of 467 in 1898, then a falling off to 406 in 1900, and a recovery to 437 in 1903. Reformed Church in America (Dutch). From 45 in 1890 to a max- imum of 65 in 1898, then to a minimum of 42 in 1903. United Brethren. 48 in 1890. Two high points, — 60 in 1893 and 59 in 1901; two low points, — 36 in 1898 and 37 in 1903. Universalists. A rise from 68 in 1890 to 100 in 1893, then a large decline to 41 in 1900 and 44 in 1903. It thus appears that there is no uniformity of decline. The main- tenance of some denominations, like the Disciples or the Northern Meth- odists, may be in part accounted for by the raising of the standard of the ministry, which has sent a larger proportion of ministerial candi- dates to the seminaries. As confirmatory of this, it may be noted that the state universities report very few ministerial students, Virginia, with 18 out of 280; having the largest proportion. The explanation given is that those planning to enter the ministry go, as a rule, to denominational colleges. The large universities make a very unfavorable showing; Princeton, with over 40 out of 1286, being the best. President Harper states that out of nearly 1200 men graduating from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton in 1904, less than 30 were planning to enter the ministry. The New England colleges afford a striking example of decline. Bates reports seven ministerial students out of 250; Colby, seven out of 135; Dartmouth, nine out of 830; Williams, five out of 434. Institutions with fewer students, and those in the West, are the only ones whose reports are at all encouraging. We may conclude, then, that there has been an absolute decline in the number of students for the ministry in our Protestant churches, a 138 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION decline chiefly in college students and among these chiefly from the older, larger, and richer Eastern institutions. II. In answering our second inquiry as to the causes for this de- cline, the endeavor has been to get at the motives now influencing young men in their decision as to the ministry. Instead of giving you a sta- tistical result, I desire to reproduce the mind of the college student of to-day as he faces the ministry, as I have learned it from the study of the more than 400 replies received. Bred in an atmosphere where everything is brought to the test of dollars, the young man looks out upon life. The great prizes of the business world, and the abundant opportunities for success, stand out in sharp contrast with the inadequate provision for the ministry, — its small, pinching salaries, the uncertain chance for advance, early super- annuation, with no provision for old age. The financial basis of the ministry is entirely different from that of other professions. In business a fixed service brings a fixed salary, — fidelity and hard work are rewarded, and one feels that he is responsible for the size of his salary. In the ministry the duties are indefinite, pro- motion does not at all depend upon faithful work, but upon certain personal and popular qualities, the essential value of which is at least questionable. In medicine and law, a given service receives a recognized compensation. In the ministry, a man is called to give all his time and thought and then to have his salary raised with difficulty, paid irregu- larly and with grudging, giving him the sense of being an object of charity. He has to beg for his pay, and get little at that. As one tersely puts it; he is to be a pauper all his life. Another group of deterrent reasons is based upon the attitude of the church toward the minister, its lack of cordial support, its unchari- table criticism, its hampering restrictions, both to thought and activity, the isolation and moral seclusion which comes to the minister. Only a few speak of the doctrinal disturbances, the break-up of old faiths, so that the student is uncertain as to all belief, and feels that he has nothing to preach. And combined with this is a fear lest one shall lose his independence and freedom of thought. No class of deterring reasons appears more frequently than that which concerns the general popular estimate of ministers. The average student attitude toward the minister is one of utter disregard, if not of contempt. The ministry is of no reputation in the university. It is said that the ministerials are not manly men; that ministers don't live up to their own preaching; that the ministry is full of cheap, unprepared material; and that it emphasizes its small men as other professions do not. DECLINE IN STUDENTS FOR THE MINISTRY 139 May we ask now, How is it that the young man has come to have these views of the ministry? We shall have to admit that there is a great deal of truth in what is charged regarding churches and mini- sters. The young man sees part of the situation accurately. The trouble is he has a one-sided view. He does not see clearly the great compensations that balance criticism and hardship and self-denial. There has been a decline in those agencies most potent in the past in leading men to the ministry: home influence, the consecration of sons to this holy calling, the old-time academy with its constant pressure toward this end, the pastors urging the claims of the ministry, the col- lege presenting the same to its students. These all have largely ceased their activity in this direction, and no other agencies have taken their place. Hundreds of young men now in other callings might have been turned to the ministry if the matter had only been presented to them. Some blame — and more, I fear, than we dare to charge — must lie at the doors of our good friends of the Y.M.C.A. Much as I honor this organization, I must speak this word here among its friends. The growth of this movement has been remarkable in the last twenty years, and there has been a great demand for men to fill the places of secre- taries, etc. With a perfected organization and a large number of field secretaries, they have been appealing to college men, setting forth the opportunities in that field. Wherever they have found a man of es- pecial strength, they have laid siege to him until they have won him to their cause. This is, of course, perfectly legitimate, only it is to be greatly regretted that in many cases it has seemed necessary, in order to exalt their own calling, to discredit the ministry. It needs to be said, also, in kindness, but in frankness, that a potent cause of this decline is the attitude and expressed opinion of some now in the ministry. The lazy minister complains of his hard work; the speculative minister rants about creeds and liberty of thought; the sensationalist assails the churches, the ministers, and the seminaries; the dyspeptic bewails the degeneracy of the times; some who have suffered criticism retail their woes in the press; and the unworthy man parades himself before the world. Now, there undoubtedly is room for criticism of creeds, churches, and seminaries, but the spice added to make a readable article and gain a hearing has surely given a wrong impression. III. What is the remedy for this decline ? How may the ministry be made again attractive to the best men in our colleges ? First, some encouraging signs: i. The past year or two shows a turning of the tide from the extreme low point. In many denominations there is I40 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION again an increase in students for the ministry. 2. Some of the semi- naries have inaugurated a systematic visitation of the colleges in the interest of the ministry. 3. The Y. M. C. A. leaders have turned their attention to this problem. The conferences on the subject recently held under the leadership of Mr. Mott are sure to be helpful. 4. The attention of the churches and religious leaders is thoroughly fixed upon the problem ; out of so much thinking and discussion some good ought surely to come. The real remedy that must in some way be found is to make the ministry again respectable and attractive in the eyes of the college stu- dent. How much may be done to remove the real evils in the case, the small compensation, the uncertain tenure, the excessive criticism, the restraint of freedom, is not altogether clear, and will vary in amount and method in different denominations. But that something ought to be done in this direction is evident, and something is surely possible. More important is it, to correct the false impressions that are abroad, and to make the real difficulties seem small by a positive presentation of the great place to be filled, and the large work to be accomplished in the present age by the well-equipped consecrated Christian minister. In securing this result I am convinced that the college department of the Y. M. C. A. will be by far the most effective agency. It has a thorough organization; it has the ear of the college man, and its ex- perience will enable it at once to bring the claims of the ministry effect- ively to bear upon the students. Let this be done year after year, and we shall see notable results. The distinct effort made to have the claims of the foreign field pressed home upon the consciences of students has produced the strik- ing result that in many institutions the number of student volunteers exceeds that of those looking forward to the ministry. (Harvard, 9 min- isters, 12 volunteers; University of IlHnois, 4 ministers, 25 volunteers; Ohio State University, 2 ministers, 7 volunteers.) Let a similar effort be made to recruit the ministry, and similar results may be looked for. If decisions for the foreign work are expected from college men and secured in large numbers, there is no reason why the college period should not be fruitful in many decisions for the ministry. We must create a new sentiment regarding the ministry. Laymen must learn to treat the pastor with more reasonable regard. Ministers must learn to estimate in due proportion the real privilege and the more superficial difficulty. We must all pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers, while those who are set as overseers in the field must see to it that no laborers wait in the market-place till the day declines be- cause no one has summoned them to the work. DECLINE IN STUDENTS FOR THE MINISTRY 141 Discussion PROFESSOR WILLISTON WALKER, Ph.D., D.D. YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT An observation of more than twenty years convinces me that there has been an improvement in the quality of students seeking the ministry, and that they average, in mental ability, fully the equals of any body of students preparing for any profession. In character, now as always, their rank is, save in the rarest instances, unexceptionable. So far as there has been any change affecting the quahty of students, the causes which have led to the diminution of the number of theological candi- dates have probably worked towards improvement. The most con- spicuous of the causes of the relative decrease in the number of theo- logical students is the rise to significance of other scholarly professions besides that of the ministry. Teaching and journalism are essentially new professions in the extent of the appeal which they now make, and the call, particularly of the teaching profession, is one of exceeding at- tractiveness to that very class which would, most naturally, turn towards the ministry. The appeal of medicine and of law is undoubtedly much greater than it was forty years ago. The revolutionary discoveries in surgery, the almost universal recognition of the need of a highly edu- cated body of physicians, the increasing business of the country and the consequent augmentation of the opportunities of the legal pro- fession, have rendered the incentives to enter these life-callings much greater than was the case half, or even a quarter, of a century since. In- stead of being, as it once was, the profession which appealed to most men of scholarly tastes, ethical purpose, and Christian character in our colleges and universities, the ministry has become only one among sev- eral. Another cause, one that is certainly remediable, is the short pastorate. Investigation of lists of graduates of our theological schools shows that very many have changed their pastorates once, at least, within the last three years, some twice, and a few even three times. It is a natural and justifiable demand that one who gives his life to a particular pro- fession should expect from that profession reasonable compensation and support. That is not at present the uniform prospect of the min- istry. It may be questioned whether it is even the average prospect of the ministry. But no small part of this restlessness leading to fre- quent ministerial changes is chargeable to the ministry itself. The minister can move more readily than the physician or the lawyer, and with less loss, and therefore allows himself to entertain the hope of bettering his position, or at least avoiding existing discomforts by a change. 142 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION A fourth cause is the change in what is required of a minister by the average congregation. In some respects this akeration is greatly to his advantage. The minister is now expected to touch common in- terests at many points, to be an organizer of aggressive church work, a teacher of the young, a man broadly interested in all that makes for the betterment of the community. Nowadays, owing partly to the great diffusion of entertaining periodical literature and the relative ces- sation of interest in doctrinal exposition, the demand made of the pul- pit is one which few men can supply. Ethical and religious truths must be made interesting; they must be put in such form as to attract a jaded attention. The multiplicity of labors now expected of a pas- tor may doubtless be remedied in larger churches by the increased subdivision of ministerial work. It is evident that the relative decline in the number of ministerial students is a phenomenon in some measure to be expected in our transi- tional age. But some of its most conspicuous causes are remediable. We need a deeper appreciation on the part of the churches of the dignity and importance of the ministerial profession. And this increased appre- ciation of the dignity and significance of the ministry may best be wrought out by the ministry itself. It is to be feared that if a lower estimate of the ministry now widely obtains, it is the ministry itself which is in considerable measure responsible. We need to insist, in our own thought, upon the dignity and honor of the caUing which is ours. We need to urge it upon young men, especially upon young men of wealth, as a service of joy, usefulness, and sacrifice, beyond any other calling. Its claims are far too infrequently presented to the young men of our schools and colleges. Its usefulness and honorableness is too seldom impressed upon our congregations. These defects may be reme- died and they should be as far as hes in our power, for His sake who honors men by calling them into His service in the noblest of all pro- fessions,— the Christian minister. SHALL A COMMITTEE BE APPOINTED TO REPORT ON THE CURRICULA OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES, WITH A VIEW TO ESTABLISHING LARGER UNIFORM- ITY? PROFESSOR MELANCTHON W. JACOBUS, D.D. HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT. The discussion is not as to whether there is lack of uniformity in the curricula of our theological schools. The catalogues, registers, and year-books published by these schools are evidence enough of the wide difference in the selection of studies pursued, and the yet wider difference in the arrangement of their pursuing. It is a silent comment on the unfortunate separation among the schools in the work, which, after all, is common to them, and it is an explanation, to a certain extent, of the differentiation in the product which these schools turn out — a differentiation the effect of which is unfortunate in the work accomplished by the student, and the process of which is unfortunate in the work carried on by the seminary, while it is an expla- nation, also, to a certain extent, of the restlessness among the students, that sends them drifting among the seminaries for combinations of courses, the cost of which is large to the seminary in the effort at study- adjustment, and to the students themselves in the demoralization which always comes from scattered and unclassified work. Confessedly, it is only a partial explanation; for both differentiation and restlessness are due to many causes, some of them in the student as well as in the school, and some lying much deeper in both school and student than mere content and arrangement of studies. At this point of curriculum, however, there does lie a very definite cause for both evils, so that we are justified in saying that our question is one which concerns both student and seminary, and merits, on our part, not only a careful consideration, but also as hearty an attempt as is possible to bring it to its best answer. This best answer, I am convinced, lies in the direction of the appoint- ment of such a committee as is proposed. The reasons for my convic- tion are: I. The fact, already noted and patent to us all, of the sweeping differences which now exist among the curricula of the seminaries, and the inevitable separation which these differences cause. Years ago, doubtless, such separation would have been considered the proper 143 144 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION denominational thing. It would not have been thought possible that credal dogmatics could be taught, and a sectarian ministry prepared for, without a relative institutional isolation. In fact, it is largely because of what obtained ecclesiastically a generation ago that we have the present pedagogical situation. But not only has denominationalism lost to a large extent its separating power, we are coming upon an era of widespread thoughtful evangelism in which the common service of the kingdom will emphasize the need, I do not say of an identical prep- aration for this service, since this would be impracticable and most unwise but of a preparation which shall carry with it as large a sense as possible of community of purpose, and as large a fact as possible of fellowship of process; for these things make the strength of a common service to a common cause. II. The fact of the student restlessness among the seminaries, and its inevitable annoyance to the institution and demoralization to the man. I am well aware that there are not a few educators who hold the student to be best prepared who has carried through his preparation on the eclectic principle — a study here and a study there, a teacher here and a teacher there, a seminary here and a seminary there — and many things everywhere, and some things nowhere. I am not disposed to deny the value of this method, especially as I have seen some excellent results which have issued from it — men taken out of a narrow en- vironment in which all education had been carried on up to college graduation, and put into a broader contact with men and minds, in order that their preparation might be one which would fit them for a living service in a life work. This is not a bad thing, if it be not carried to a frittering extreme. It is a thing to be encouraged if it can be safe- guarded and controlled. But the case must be an urgent one which would justify the study cost to the student and the teaching cost to the seminary which this process now involves. A relative uniformity of curricula would reduce the cost to both parties concerned, would make the process possible in many cases where now it cannot be enjoyed, and would reduce to a minimum the student restlessness which now exists because a seminary rivalry, by strange devices of encylcopsedia and stranger arts of schedule, seems to throw discredit on all curricula which are not measured to one local line. III. The fact, not yet mentioned, and perhaps not wholly manifest to all even when mentioned, but true nevertheless, that what would be aimed at in such a uniformity would be simply a common background on which necessary modifications might be placed without disturbing effect. CURRICULA OF THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 145 To one who gives careful study to the curricula which now exist, it must be clear that the largest evil in them is not the mere fact of their comprehensive variations, but the fact that these variations involve to a great extent an unscientific encyclopaedia. Obviously, in the student's preparation for the ministry there is a sequence of studies which is pedagogically right. If he is to study his Bible at first-hand, languages must be given him at the start, as his tools of work. If he is to study his Bible historically, criticism must be given him before his exegesis. If he is to make his theology the product of his Bible study, there must be a certain arrangement in which exegesis. Biblical theology, and Biblical dogmatics will furnish him, in their order, the interpretative materials from which he is to formulate his theological conclusions. Any other arrangement will result, for example, in giving him a poor exegesis because of an imperfect language, or in confusing him with placing the historical foundation of his exegesis on top of it instead of underneath it, or in imposing his theology upon his interpretation in- stead of drawing it from his interpretation. Unfortunately, the curricula of our schools present no such uniform arrangement. With some, the lan- guage work is not completed in the first year, but drags itself along with grammar and lexicon into the later parts of the course. With many, criticism does not come until exegesis is well on its way — in one instance being reserved, in its Old Testament department, until senior year, when it is made a required study. With not a few, theology is begun at once, and, save when delayed, is not prepared for with any- thing more than a hurried exegesis, the object of which seems to be rather the covering of ground than the drill in interpretative method. Evidently, if nothing more were to be accomplished by the proposed com- mittee than a uniformity of encyclopaedia, enough benefit would accrue to the seminaries and their students to more than justify the committee's labor; for it would not only help the work which the indi- vidual seminary is trying to do with its own students, but, in case of student transfer from one seminary to another, it would remove the greatest cause of institutional annoyance in adjustment of schedule, and the largest source of student irritation in demoralization of work. But, on this basis of uniform encyclopaedia there would lie before the committee the possibility of proposing an outline content of study, which might be a valuable suggestion to many of the smaller schools and a not altogether unnecessary correction to some of the larger schools. For it is quite evident that the year-books before us show not only that the smaller school curricula could be greatly enriched without cost to the management, or much effort on the part of the faculty, but that the 146 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION larger school curricula are, in not a few cases, tending in the direction of such over-speciaUzation of work as threatens that very interrelation of studies which encyclopaedia designs to secure. There are such things as fads, even in theological education, and the temptation to develop a passing popular course of study into disproportionate size is great, while the yielding to it is certain to work harm to that cultural spirit of education which should obtain in the preparation of men for the min- istry, if it obtains anywhere at all. The chance which the proposed committee would have to suggest ways for the correcting of the above evils, and the consequent strength- ening of the seminaries at the points where they are best doing their work, seems to me to be good reason why the committee should be appointed. IV CHURCHES AND PASTORS EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH Christ as a Teacher REV. D. A. GOODSELL, D.D., S.T. D., LL. D., RESIDENT METHODIST EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF NEW ENGLAND Christ as a teacher antedated Christ as the Redeemer. The Sermon on the Mount to the multitude, the doctrine of the new birth to Nicodemus, of the spirituaHty of God and of true worship to the woman at the well, came before the " It is finished " of the cross. Be- cause they came before the death of our Lord they are not separated from it. They lead up to it as nerves to the brain; they are illuminated by it as the path is which leads to the light. Sin has burrowed so deeply into humanity; has so completely infected it, and is so much the great obstacle to the incoming of the Truth, that it is no wonder that the Church has given so much emphasis to the changing of moral con- ditions, rather than emphasizing the founding of a school by our Lord and pressing reUgious education as a preparation for regeneration. There is no division among us as to- the necessity of education in religion, or as to the teaching duty of the Church or that the Church must be the school of Christ. Because this has been faultily measured, we have such misconceptions of the church among some Christians and among some of those who yield no allegiance to the Church. It seems certain that the Holy Spirit in many cases, both in Chris- tian and non-Christian lands, anticipates Christian teaching by a vision of personal need and of the relations of the essential, if not the historical, Christ to the soul. In this way were and are built up the souls of whom Peter said: " In every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him." That this is God's way for all is not to be believed. Our Master was a tireless teacher. It is a question whether he gave his greatest truths in his sermon, to the mul- titude or to the single soul. He gave a body of truth to men. He connected it with all things great and small in his material kingdom. The lantern of the virgin, the broom of the sweeper, the search for the penny, the yeast of the housewife, the seed of the sower, the lost sheep, the wayside grain, the lovely flower, the wayward wind, were all allied and all explained. He was the first Christian author on nature and the supernatural, and on natural law in the spiritual world. 147 148 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION I have thought that as teachers we have lost power by neglecting the Master's method. Our Fathers in all the churches feared lest they humbled the spiritual in making it seem natural. So they harked away to history and to difficult philosophizing, to schoolmen's subtle- ties of logic and casuistry, gathering illustrations from what the masses do not and cannot know; obtaining much repute for learning and profundity; preaching to the twentieth man while the nineteen slept, " enduring hardness " with a patience they thought to be a means of grace. A proof of the divinity of Christianity is that it has survived some of the teaching of its modern teachers. Further, the condition of our modern life take the priest of the family from his home before the children wake; mothers in such families have as little time for being a Lois or a Eunice as the fathers have for being family priests. So much of that sweet and noble religious work of father and mother which some of us recall a half-century and more ago has ceased; has been put into the hands of the secular and the Sunday school teacher, who is often without knowledge of life, and sometimes without religious depth or experience. Yet I must believe that the cases of gross ignorance of Christian history and doctrine in well-grown boys and college students are chiefly from those homes that are not Christian in any other sense than that they exist in a Chris- tian community. That the moral bond which holds society together must be forged by some stronger force than convenience or natural ethics, I fully be- lieve. " Thou God seest me " is a nobler restraint than " My neigh- bor or the police will see me." The man who is really good is the one whose heart is toward good because of his obligation to the Good One, God. This obligation does not vary. It does not yield to weakness — to business trickery, to the example of others. It would not vary if the state passed from individualism to socialism. It is as firm in the night as in the day, as lofty alone as in the multitude. This obli- gation cannot be truly perceived or be effectively binding without the " washing of regeneration." To the soul thus changed^ the ethical is the important, the all-important. The Church as an Educator REV. ALBERT W. HITCHCOCK PASTOR CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS After the father of the family, the priest was the first teacher of mankind. Every great religion has been an educator of the people. A thousand years before our era, the Parashade for training Brahman EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 149 youth were scattered over India. Excavation'^in^the^Euphrates val- ley reveals the Babylonian libraries annexed to their temples. Bud- dha was called the " Teacher," and his temples are still the only schools for multitudes. The mosque has been for centuries the college and the library of Islam, and Mohammedan scholars once preserved for us the learning of the East, through a crisis in the Christian Church. The Hebrews made education a religious duty, and religion the cHmax of education. Jesus Christ was pre-eminently a teacher. He gathered his school of twelve about him, and with his last commandment sent them forth to teach all nations in His name. That commission they delivered to all who came after them. Not only has the Church main- tained her own inner culture, but by force of her truest genius she has made the cause of general intelligence her charge out of a deep neces- sity. A recognized order of teachers appeared in the earliest of the churches. Within a century catechetical schools grew up to fit ap- plicants for membership in the Church. Schools of more elaborate culture developed from these training classes, as at Alexandria, to prepare teachers and preachers for the rapidly extending propagan- da. A religion with a book was of necessity an educational force wherever it went. For centuries, whatever of education Europe offered was admin- istered by the Church. Ulfilas, Martin of Tours, Nestorius, and Patrick stand among the earliest champions of education. From the council of Constantinople in 680, when it was decreed that bishops and priests every- where should provide schools free of cost for the poor, and at proper charges for those better endowed, education was the acknowledged duty of the Church, although these decrees were expressions of an ideal rather than the assurance of actual facts. Charlemagne provided public schools, grammar schools, and semi- naries, and required that these be sustained by cathedral and mon- astery. He gathered about him wise men like Alcuin of York and Ansgar, and scores of others caught the contagion of high resolve and devotion. The torch was handed from man to man across the Conti- nent and down the centuries. The cathedrals and monasteries were the solitary seats of culture until the universities and the New Learn- ing appeared, and these also found a welcome and their early nuture in the Church. All the professions were wholly in the hands of the clergy until the sixteenth century. The first layman to be seated in a professor's chair at any university won the right in 1482, after a severe struggle. Indeed, the formative purpose of the European uni- I50 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION versities was the same that gave birth to our American colleges, — pro- vision for an educated clergy. What the Renaissance began the Reformation carried out, and education broadened in its purpose to provide for all who cared to study. The note of universality was given to the universities. Wher- ever the Reformed faith prevailed, sciences were freely studied and a broader range was given to thought. If direct control by the clergy was less evident, the spirit of the Church still ruled in the centers of learning under patronage of the state or of laymen, as truly as where the hierarchy dominated classroom and faculty. Under the impulse of a counter-reformation, the Jesuits organized a teaching body, the like of which the world has never seen, and for a century controlled the education of Roman Catholics, and largely also of Protestant youth. The Bible appeared in the tongue of the common people, and free learning always follows the Bible among the people. Popular education became as much the duty of the Prot- estant churches as preaching or worship. If the care of the school and university was handed over to the state, so was the care of reli- gion, in Germany and England, in Holland and the northern countries. But it was done with the understanding that the State was Christian, and would safeguard the interests of the Church in school and con- gregation alike. In our own country, Massachusetts Bay Colony had hardly estab- lished itself before those wise, foreseeing Puritans planned their com- mon schools. The pastors were their first teachers, and when John Harvard endowed the college lest there should arise " an ilHterate ministry to the churches when our present minister shall lie in the dust," the entire Church spoke through him. It has been speaking ever since, through Yale, Bowdoin, Trinity, Wesleyan, Amherst, and Williams, and Dartmouth, every one of them the product of its spirit and self- sacrificing bounty; through Oberlin and Marietta, Beloit and Grin- nell, Fargo and Drury, Colorado Springs, and the Christian colleges of the western slope. What power has cared for negro education at Fiske and Hampton, Atlanta and Tuskegee, Howard and Tougaloo, and Straight? The Indian has been uplifted, not by the government agent, but by the Christian teacher. Surely, the Church is still the educator of the nation. This educational impulse is deep and strong in Christianity. It is a part of its very life. Dealing with religious natures, the Church has carried on an inner training of emotion, intellect, and will through her ritual and preaching. The forms of her worship that were gradually wrought out, sensuous. EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 151 mystical, appealing, had their reason in their educational value. Wor- ship became a school for the emotions and a stimulus to the imagina- tion. When it ended there, this partial training gave an arrested de- velopment that left its pupils children still. When the pulpit has been silent, men have fallen away from the Church, and its influence has waned. Preaching has an intimate and essential part to play in the instruction of the Church. The great preachers have been teachers of the people, from St. Paul to Phillips Brooks. It is too late now to insist upon the duty of parents to teach their own children in religious things. Not all children have religious parents. Christian people have become so accustomed to assign the function of teaching to others, that they are too ignorant and unwilling to attempt the task. It is safer to hand the average child over to such teachers as the Church can muster, than to leave him to the indifference and neglect of his home. To ask the state to do this work of religious educa- tion is to ask the impossible at present. For many years to come, this essential part of education must be administered by the Church out- side the schools, as a sacred trust imposed upon it by the state. Re- ligious teaching we must have, and at least upon a par with that given to our children in other branches of culture. Our equipment for it, desultory and incomplete, should be made as excellent as that pro- vided by the state. We are the state, and we are not doing all of our duty if we fail to provide the best facilities for the religious education of our children. Much has been done to meet the demand for better religious in- struction. I have recently made investigation of present conditions throughout the Northern states. Out of 1,200 inquiries equally divided among Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, it is significant that responses came from one-half. 190 Congrega- tional, 150 Presbyterian, 123 Methodist, and 121 Baptist answers were of use. In reply to the first question, " In preaching, do you seek definitely to teach, or rather to inspire ?" The usual answer was "Both,"' but the emphasis was clearly placed upon teaching. I learned that 63 per cent, of the Baptists sending data, 55 per cent of the Congrega- tionalists, 51 per cent of the Methodists, and 52 per cent of the Presby- terians teach regular classes in Sunday school, while enough more serve as substitute teachers to increase the ratio to 70 per cent for the first, and 60 per cent for the other three denominations. Of them all, only 21 teach in junior or primary grades. The International Lessons are in use by 68 per cent of Baptists, 49 per cent of Congregationalists, 80 per cent of Methodists, and 67 per cent of Presbyterians who sent in replies. IS2 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Pastor's classes outside of Sunday School are reported by 35 per cent, of Baptists, 63 per cent, of Congregationalists, 25 per cent, of Methodists, and 30 per cent, of Presbyterians; but very few of the Bap- tist classes are the catechumen classes covered in the question. Con- gregationalists report 47 original courses and many published lessons and catechisrhs. Three Baptists, 42 Congregationalists, 31 Methodists, and 50 Presbyterians use catechisms, but the last two sects teach them in Sunday school, and Congregationalists generally make the catechism an outline rather than a task for the memory. Fifteen different cat- echisms are named. A large number of pastors engage in various sorts of teaching out- side of Sunday school and the catechumen's class. Some make the mid- week service their opportunity, others employ the young people's meet- ing for teaching, fewer hold teachers' meetings, more than twice as many hold week-day Bible classes, and 26 report mission study classes, equally divided between Congregationalists and all the rest. New Testament Greek, literature, music, philosophy, history, and sociology are also taught. While few report thoroughgoing plans for a distinctly educational ministry, the influence of so much teaching and of the definite intention to make their preaching educational rather than sim- ply inspirational must be of value in strengthening the influence of the Church in the community. Culture Courses in Churches REV. E. E. CHIVERS, D.D. FIELD SECRETARY AMERICAN BAPTIST HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY, NEW YORK CITY About twelve years ago the Baptist Young People's Union of Amer- ica inaugurated a comprehensive series of Biblical and missionary studies, in four-year periods, for the young people of that denomination. The Biblical studies, in thirty lessons a year, treated such topics as " Preparations for the Messiah," " The Life and Teachings of Jesus," " The Labors and Letters of the Apostles," " Struggles for Distinc- tive Principles," " Doctrines of our Faith," " The Christian Life." These studies were prepared by men of recognized scholarship, and were taken by thousands- of young people — by many, it is true, in a very superficial way, by others with earnest purpose. The benefit of these studies to multitudes of young people, and to the churches of which they were members, is beyond question. To many they came as a revelation, broadening the horizon, giving men vision of the one increasing purpose of divine salvation, confirming faith, enriching experience, and stimulating to intelligent service. Pastors found men EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 153 and efficient helpers, and received for themselves intellectual stimulus. The topic of study for the current year is " Great Christian Truths," the lessons being prepared by Edward Judson, D. D., with " Sugges- tions for Collateral Study " by Spencer B. Meeser, D. D. It is grati- fying to know that six thousand of the pamphlets containing instal- ments of these lessons are being sent out monthly. Lessons on the same topics in simplified forms are issued for juniors. This represents a kind of work which may be pursued in the churches at large. Wliile this great organization, the Religious Education As- sociation, is bringing forth and proclaiming its lofty ideals, formulat- ing its comprehensive plans, and seeking to co-ordinate the agencies for religious education, there are some practical forms in which the work of education may be carried on now in our churches. We can inauguarate — 1 . A New Method of Bible Study There are multitudes of people in our churches whose treatment of the Bible is strangely out of harmony with their professions concerning it. They profess to regard it as the authoritative and supreme revela- tion of God; yet they are content with a fragmentary and superficial knowledge of it, which they would be ashamed to confess in regard to any text-book that they need in the school. The progress of historical criticism has made it possible for us to read and interpret the book along these lines to an extent and with a certainty never before pos- sible. In the light of historical criticism the messages of the old prophets stand out with new significance; we have a new vision of the historical Christ and of the meaning of his teachings and of those of the Apostles; we can read the book with new discrimination as to its values. Here is a door of opportunity through which, surely, a pastor should seek to lead his people — as many as will, and especially the young. Such a culture course would quicken new interest in Bible study; it would invest the old book with a new charm; it would furnish a broader base for religious experience and put underneath faith a deeper, stronger foundation; it would meet the scientific temper and intellectual de- mands of our times; it would be in harmony with the methods to which our young people are accustomed in the schools, but which they so often miss in the church, and might thus help to check the ten- dency to alienation from the church. There is need of — 2. A Course in Christian Ethics Religion aims at right living. It is more than creed; it is more than a ritual; it is more than a rapture; it is more than a round of activities. 154 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION It is essentially a life. Christian truth is not a tinted but vaporous cloud to be gazed at and speculated about as an apocalypse in the air; it is an inspiration that expresses itself in right living and impels to hon- orable conduct in all life's relations. The trend of thought in our time is distinctly towards the more ethical conception of Christianity. Less value is attached to emotional frames of mind or to dogmatic statements of belief, and more to right- eousness in life. Here, again, is a wide field and an open door of opportunity. The true ethical life has been defined as " the fulfillment of all personal rela- tions." These relations are not only manifold, but also in many cases delicate and perplexing, calling for keen discernment and discrimina- tion. There is need of clearness of vision, sanity of judgment, strength of principle, sensitiveness of conscience, and, above all, of supreme loyalty to God. The pastor who leads his people — as many as will, and especially the young — in an orderly and comprehensive way, to 'b clear vision of their personal relations and duties, and to an application of Christian principles to those relations, is performing an invaluable service, which will bear fruit in attainment in " the pure art of living." There is room and need, also, of — 3. A Course of Training in Forms and Methods of Christian Work There are multitudes of people in the churches who would willingly engage in some form of active, beneficent ministry — and this is espe- cially true of our young people — if they only knew what, and where, and how. They listen to exhortations to service; the feeling and the will are stirred by the appeal; they are ready to engage in active ser- vice; but in the absence of definite statement they do not know how to act intelligently. They need to be taught the breadth and many- sidedness of Christian work; the religious value of any really useful work, special forms of service in the church and in the community which offer scope for religious activity, with wise methods for the expression of activity. No pastor who seeks to secure an all-round religious culture for his people will fail to provide some method for — 4. A Study of Missions This will broaden the horizon, enlarge the sympathies, bring into closer fellowship with the thought and purpose and mission of Christ, and lead to a new interest in and a new interpretation of ciurent events and world-movements, as being related to the progress of the kingdom of God upon earth. EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 155 But I can not further particularize. I have indicated simply some of the lines along which it is quite practicable for the pastor to lead his people, and in so doing to contribute to the development of Chris- tian character and efficiency. Difficulties will, of course, suggest themselves, but none that are insurmountable. Not all pastors, in- deed, are qualified, either temperamentally or mentally, for the specific work of teaching; but in many who seem to possess no special aptitude there is latent faculty that might be developed by doing. WTiere pas- tors lack the gift, the services of others may often be enlisted. It may be said that the time and strength of busy pastors are already over- taxed with multitudinous duties and cares. A revision of plans of work may be necessary, and some things of lesser moment and value be set aside in order that the larger claims of religious culture may be met. It may be said further, that comparatively few of the people will enter upon any such courses as have been outlined. Granting that, the investment of time and strength and personality in the training of the few may in the long run yield larger returns in the kingdom than any other that can be made. Discussion REV. EDWARD CUMMINGS PASTOR SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH (UNITARIAN) OF BOSTON CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS What is needed more than anything else is the kind of instruction which teaches us to write History with a large H and Nature with a large N. Write your history that way, and immediately the unhappy distinction between sacred history and profane history, between things sacred and things secular, disappears — just as the unhappy conflict between religion and science vanishes when we learn to write Nature with a large N. There is no reason why this proposition should seem strange or new to you. There is plenty of good precedent for it. Why is it that this story of Jewish life and thought is called the Bible, the Book of books ? Why is it that for thousands of years, generation after generation has found strength and comfort and inspiration in these naive records ? It is simply because the v^riters wrote their history and their stories and their poems with the large H. It was God's story which they recorded; it was the story of the way in which God had created the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that in them is: of the way in which He had revealed his laws of life and prosperity to great patriots and leaders, like Abraham, Isaac, and Moses. This Bible owes its perennial power largely to the fact that in it History is 156 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION written with a large H and Nature with a large N. There is absolutely no precedent in the Old Testament for our modern habit of distinguish- ing between religious truth and scientific truth. Think of the inspiration which would come to us and our children if the writers of history and the teachers of history realized that our history is just as sacred as ever Jewish history was; that our people are a chosen people as truly as ever the Hebrews were. Think what an inspiration it would be, if we should gather our children about us and repeat to them the sacred history of our own beloved country — the true and miraculous story of how God brought our Pilgrim Fathers and Puritan ancestors out of the house of bondage and the land of Egypt. How God brought our pious forefathers, with their wives and little ones, safely across wintry seas more formidable than any Red Sea. How God led our fathers and mothers in their wanderings in the vast unex- plored wilderness of this new world. How He delivered them from pestilence, and famine, and sword, from savage beasts, and still more savage men. How He made of this little handful of chosen people a great nation. How He gave them leaders, statesmen, prophets and teachers, inventors and discoverers, like Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, Agassiz, Emerson, who were greater than the patriarchs of old, and saw God more clearly than Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, or Luther, or Calvin could see Him. How God has punished us and our forefathers for the sin of slavery, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. How He has taught us and our fathers in the name of trade, commerce, factory legislation, conflicts of labor and capital, the impossibility of successful self-seeking, and the absolute necessity of seeking first the welfare of God's kingdom of the social family. Most inspiring of all, how God, after sifting the nations of the earth to get this nation, has intrusted this chosen people with the lofty mission of making the family kingdom of democracy come on earth as it is in heaven. This is the inspiring history which I would I might engrave upon the heart and mind of every boy and girl, every man and woman in this beloved country. It is this story, His story, God's story, and not the mere dates and details and raw materials of history, that every child in our public schools ought to learn by heart. It is His story, and not mere history, that the historian should write and the teachers and professors in colleges and universities should teach. If the schools do not teach this, then is their teaching vain. If the universities do not teach this, then is their wisdom foolishness and their light darkness. If education does not center about this, then it is but a blind leader of the blind. EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE CHURCH 157 But when we have leared to write Nature with a large N, and History with a large H, we shall find the real beauty and inspiration of life in this reunion of science and religion, of sacred and secular. Then education will teach us how the world is God's world. Then astronomy and the music of the spheres will tell of the glory and grandeur and rationality of it. Then psychology will teach us how to will and do God's infinitely rational and good pleasure. REV. JOHN R. GOW PASTOR PERKINS STREET BAPTIST CHURCH, SOMERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS I can offer but a single suggestion toward this discussion. Perhaps it will be best stated in the familiar words with which the writer of the Fourth Gospel declares his purpose in writing the Gospel: " That ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, ye may have life in His name." For me, the educational aims of the Church are summed in the word " life " ; that life is to be reached through believing; and that believing is nothing short of sur- render in full to what is conceived to be the supreme disclosure of the Divine Presence in the forms of humanity. The vision of an ideal social order under the name of the Kingdom, the setting forth of the principles controlling spiritual existence in time and in eternity, all the truths discovered, revealed, and articulated, by which the thought of man is brought into harmony with the great realities, and even the exhibition of the highest human personalities as embodiments of the Divine Personality, are in the New Testament only means to an end. Whatever the subject-matter of its teaching may be, its aim is life for the believer. Pre-eminently do the conditions which surround the educational work of the church at the present time demand that this aim of " life by faith " be kept clearly and steadfastly in view. The Church is, per- force, sharing its honored positions as teacher with many other insti- tutions seeking human welfare. Even her specialty of fostering the religious life has been successfully invaded. The temper of the com- mon-thinking denies her exclusive claims. Neither cloistered nor scholastic instruction falls on very attentive ears. The men in the stirring arenas of the modern world have neither time nor patience for what does not plainly concern the struggle for life. Make it evi- dent that the Church has found the motives to the noblest and suc- cessful living, and that her servants and teachers know how to bring these motives to bear on the average man so as to put life into him, and the modern man is ready to respond. 158 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Such life can never escape from God, its source. It may be that rationalism is the foster child of reformation, but in due season a spiritual faith is born of rationalism itself. The power men seek in the religion and education of the churches is ever the mighty power of an endlessly enlarging life. This, then, is my single contention, that the aim of religious edu- cation, in our day, is to deal with all the material that comes to hand from all the universe of knowledge and revelation, and so to present and interpret it, according to the wisest pedagogical methods, as to produce life in individuals by bringing them into conscious and believing action as in the presence of Him " in whom we live and move and have our being." THE EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR The Pastor as Teacher REV. EVERETT D. BURR, D.D. PASTOR FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, NEWTON CENTER, MASSACHUSETTS I venture to suggest some definite ways in which the pastor may render valuable service as a teacher. First of all, as the teacher 0} teachers. It is easier to criticise the inefficiency of modern Sunday school teachers than it is to provide those who can do any better. The young men and women of our churches who are enrolled in the teaching force of our Sunday schools are doing the best they know how to do. They are to be congratulated, not criticised; praised, not ridiculed. They cannot go to a school of peda- gogy; they cannot master the treatises upon the subject. To offer them a recent volume on psychology would be to dishearten them, yet they are being told by ardent and eloquent speakers at Sunday school conventions that unless their teaching accords with modern pedagogical and psychological methods they are really doing harm to the souls of their children. They become discouraged, grieve over their lack of preparedness for so serious responsibilties, and not infrequently give up their tasks. The more conscientious, earnest, and intelligent of the teachers are the most sensitive to their own inadequacy. A pastor's class for teacher-training will meet such a condition and supply the need. Here the simple, fundamental laws of mind may be explained in a friendly, informal way. The more effective methods of presenting truth may be talked over, the thought method and the teaching method of Jesus and Paul may be learned by a new and interesting study of the New Testament. The literary and historical method of Bible-study may be explained and the illumining discoveries of recent research presented. Into such a class may be gathered not only those who are already teaching, but those also who might be available for such service. Call it a Biblical Research Club, call it a Normal Class, call it a Teachers' Training Class, call it what you will, only let the result be gained that a group of people bent on understanding the Word of God and knowing how to teach it, shall meet under the competent leadership of their minister and engage in the endeavor. The mechanics of such a class meeting may be easily disposed of. A small contribution from each member of the group will provide a sufficient fund to make available the best periodicals in the varied 159 i6o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION departments of Bible-study. The members may be detailed for special work, or the class divided into smaller groups, who will look up matters of interest in exposition, excavation, in history or geography, criticism and interpretation respectively, or work away in the field of child-study, or teaching methods, and at each meeting new light will be brought, new interest awakened, new enthusiasm engendered, and the whole group enriched by the gifts of each. The meeting of such a class as this may well displace an ineffectual Sunday night service, or find a new place for itself in the midweek services, even at the sacrifice of some meeting of the older type, for such a class will generate power and make the teaching force of the church available and efficient. A second field for pastoral leadership is in missionary study. In the great majority of our churches the missionary work is relegated to the women of the church. And yet the great enterprise of missions expects to succeed by the offerings which prosperous, intelligent men will give through the church treasuries. It has been found perfectly practicable in one church to induce a large number of men to read missionary biography. In one single season three dozen men were pledged to read some thrilling life-story of a great missionary, and report his in- spiration and impressions at a missionary concert. This is not a diffi- cult task in any church. Let a missionary committee under the direction of the pastor, in laying out a series of missionary meetings for the church, plan to have half of them, at least, the presentation of the lives of as many noted missionaries. Each biography may be divided among five men, asked to read a few chapters and present a certain period of the life. Few men will refuse such a request. By such a simple and practical method the men of the church may be made enthusiastic for missions, new and hitherto unheard voices will bring new power to the public meetings, the whole church receive the impulse and the missionary treasuries a marked increase in offerings. A third field, even more promising than the other two, is among the children. It will readily be granted that our modern secondary schools do not impart a strong ethical impulse, nor give to our boys and girls the instruction in morals which they deeply need. The intellectual culture is ethically colorless. There is not time in the ordinary Sunday school session for such instruction, except as it may be incidental to the regular lesson. The homes are rare in which definite instruction in the great Christian principles of conduct is given. Where, then, shall our young mariners learn a true nautical code before they venture upon perilous seas, unless their ministers, whom they know and love, come totheir^aid ? EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR i6i As to manifest results: (a) The opportunity such a class affords for personal, immediate, and friendly intercourse with the children. The hand of a friend most easily can lead another into the larger life. Such conversational hours naturally induce an understanding and frankness which the remote touch of the pulpit, or an occasional visit to the Sunday-school, can never accomplish, (b) The opportunity for co-operation with the home in influencing the spirit and temper of the children. How can ministers and parents get together any more readily than when their hearts are fused in the fires of a single inter- est ? (c) The opportunity of really determining the moral code of a life and settling his standards of conduct. When a minister faces his congre- gation he is compelled to realize that his hearers are for the most part so mature that their mode of life is settled, their standards fixed, their principles and prejudices almost unalterable. He wonders whether anything he can say will effectively transform their lives. But he has no misgivings whatever when he teaches a class of children between the ages of ten and fifteen, (d) Such teaching will be more than ethical, because it is so Biblical and Christie. Confining the lessons to the very words of Jesus awakens a personal interest in Him. He seems so interested in child-life, to understand their needs so intimately, that the conviction arises that Jesus Christ is a child's best friend, and they come gradually to love Him, trust Him, and obey Him. The children grow in grace as they increase in wisdom, and so by a natural process of soul-culture under the influence of a present Christ they are saved from the necessity of a cataclysmic experience. Religion is seen to be a life, and its beginning and growth wrought in vital processes. May I add a brief word of explanation about the mechanics of such class-work? I have made and printed a lesson-slip each week, and given this to the members of the class, with a blank book and two five- cent Testaments, with the suggestion that they paste the lesson -slip upon a left-hand page, and after cutting the verses of the lesson from the Testaments, paste them on the opposite page, so that the children acquire a method of study and produce by their own labor a hand-book of Christie teaching which will be of lasting value to them. It is a gratifying incident in such simple devices that an appropriate employment is given to the Sunday afternoon hour and the " Pastor's Class-book" has proved a help to the solution of the problem of Sunday occupation for children. i62 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Some of the Lesson-slips used by the Rev. Everett D. Burr, D.D., IN His " Pastor's Class " WHAT JESUS TEACHES ABOUT SPEECH 1. What did jesus say about the dignity and worth of conversation ? Matt. 5 : 34-37 5 : 21, 22 12 : 35-37 2. What did jesus talk about? Luke 11:37-40 John 8 : 28, 38 12:49,50 7:46 3. Why and when did jesus refuse to speak? John 19:7-9 Matt. 26:62,63 Mark 15 : 3-5 Luke 23 : 8-11 John 7 : 18 4. Did jesus give any definite standard of speech? Matt 10 : 27 10: 19, 20 Luke 12:3 6 : 45 John 7 : 18 5. Would you feel comfortable if jesus should overhear ALL you say? 6. What are some of the sins of speech? Eph.4:3i I Peter 2 : I James4:ii Titus 3 : 21 Timothy 5:13 THE TEACHING OF JESUS ABOUT PLEASURE Is there danger in pleasure ? Luke 8 : 14 Did jesus condemn pleasure? John 2 : I, 2 Luke 5: 29 John 12 : 2 Matt. 9:11 Luke 13:26 What did jesus condemn? Matt. 6 : 19,23,25,28,31 What did jesus commend? Matt. 18 : 1-3 6 : 16 Romans 15:3 Matt. 6 : 33 What is the greatest pleasure? Phil. 2 : 13 John 3 : 17 John 8 : 29 THE TEACHING OF JESUS ABOUT DUTY How did jesus define duty for himself? Luke 2 : 49 John 9 : 4 Luke 24 : 26 How DID jesus define duty for us? John 14 : 15 14 : 21-24 17 : 18 Are there many duties? John 4 : 24 Luke 18 : i Matt. 23 : 23 25 : 14, 30 John 13 : 14 Matt 25 : 37-40 What is the impulse to duty? Matt. 22 : 36-40 John 13 : 34 Is duty the measure of faithfulness? Luke 17 : 10 ' EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR 163 The Pastor as an Educator REV. CORNELIUS H. PATTON, D.D. SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS The faithful pastor is one of the greatest, if not the greatest educa- tional force in the community. But what is it to be faithful in this matter ? This is an attempt to answer that question in respect to the one work of preaching. In order to be educational in the high sense of the word, preaching must be thorough, systematic, instructive, and saving. (i) First, — as to thoroughness. I refer to the intellectual process by which a man thinks through his subject to the end. Once a week, at least, the minister should lead his people to the fountains of knowledge and persuade them to drink deep and full. If he cannot sound all the depths of philosophy and science, he can at least trace his separate theme to some fundamental conception, some accepted spiritual reality, which will give his hearers the sense of solidity and strength, and send them into the unstable world with a firm grip upon some great truth. For a congregation once a week to be brought face to face with the mysteries and problems of life, and to have their minds led to some underlying principle of existence, is a process of great educational value, — considered purely on its intellectual side. But when in this process the preacher unfailingly links thought to revelation, and leads the mind to rest in God and the divine realities as the ultimate solution of all that vexes and perplexes us, it is an educational factor too great to allow comparison. It is, par excellence, the educational influence in any community. The preacher must, then, be thorough. (2) He must also relate each truth he. presents to other truths; and hence the preacher should be systematic. There must be progress and system, if there is to be education. In this contention, however, we run counter to the theory of many, and possibly to the tendency of the age. The spirit of the age does not take to systematic thinking as kindly as it does to the setting forth of detached truths. The great theological works of past generations are laid on the shelf, not merely because they are old, but also because they are systematic. Many hold that to be systematic is to be dull; and hence arises the essay style of sermon, the touch-and-go method on the one side, and the special doctrinal ap- peal or the fad sermon on the other. Both methods are fatal to the best educational effect. (3) Kindred to the above is the demand for instructive preaching. By this I mean informing preaching — preaching, which, by direction and i64 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION indirection, by application and illustration, seeks to impart knowledge as such. It has been said of the theory of evolution, that, without re- gard to the essential truth or falseness of the theory, it has amply justi- fied itself on the ground of the immense body of new facts in the natural world it has served to bring to light. Similarly, the pulpit should justify itself as an imparter of information. This is a more important function than might at first be supposed. There are those who re- mind us that the preacher no longer is the best educated man in the community; that books, newspapers, magazines, and lectures have taken the place of pulpit instruction; and hence the minister has lost an important title to pre-eminence. It is not asserted, however, that people to-day are particularly learned in religious things; that they read theology or church history, or even study the Bible with new zeal because of the increase of general intelligence and the opening of new avenues for information. On the contrary, we are assured that people have no time for these things. It would seem, then, that the minister still has a function as an informer in religious matters. The reading of the lesson from the pulpit Bible once a week; the exposition of the more important parts of Scripture in courses of sermons (which may well be the basis of every minister's preaching); the recital of Scripture incidents; the quoting of passages, or allusions to well-known truths of revelation, — these all have special value for the information they convey. There are many men, and women too, who never hear the Bible read except at church, who never know the power of religious truth except as it is taught from the sacred desk. Nor need the infor- mation be restricted to the Bible. A wise use, on the part of the preacher, of church history, in the course of the years will acquaint the congrega- tion with the leading scenes and facts in the record of God's spirit in the world since the days of the apostles. The claims of Christ to universahty, and the success of world-wide missions, would not be met by doubt and unbelief in our churches if the ministers in their ser- mons should draw liberally from that homiletical mine of wealth, missionary history, and literature. (4) Finally, preaching, to be truly educational, must be saving. When a certain professor applied for a position in another institution, the question was asked by a shrewd trustee, " Does he teach his subjects, or his pupils ? " The same inquiry might well be made as to a minister's method in preaching. Is his interest primarily in the truth, or in the people who hear it? The evangelist may come in for an important work, to arouse feeling and induce decision ; but this will be of little value, and may even be a EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR 165 positive injury, unless the wider work of instruction has prepared the way. Unless in the act of conversion the whole man is brought into right relations to God, the experience is of questionable value. A professor in one of our leading theological seminaries, upon my asking as to what extent the students succeeded in adjusting themselves to the newer historical attitude toward the Bible, replied that they had no trouble with those students who had grown into the religious life by a ripening experience. These, he found, held religion as a basic principle, covering all parts of their nature, intellect, feeling, and will: But those students whose religious experience was bounded by the emotions which gave it birth at some instant in time, found it extremely diffi- cult, if not impossible, to change their intellectual conceptions. This observation is instructive, and suggests the value of a wider range for investigation among our theological institutions. In the same direction points an investigation the writer has recently made as to the foreign missionaries who have gone out under the Amer- ican Board. Among the questions we ask of appointees are these: When and where were you hopefully converted ? Was it in a revival of religion ? Between 1885 and 1895, 103 missionaries stated they were con- verted in revivals, while 210 — more than double the number — stated that their Christian life began unconsciously. In the next decade — 1895 to 1905 — 67 confessed a revival origin of their religious life, while 187 said otherwise. For the past twenty years, out of 567 appointments, 170 were converted in revivals, and 397 not in revivals. We have come almost to expect that candidates to-day will say, "I do not know when I became a Christian. " The contrast of these figures with those for the first twenty years of the Board is instructive. Up to 1836, of the 97 missionaries whose life-memoranda we have, 59 were converted in a revival, and 38 not in a revival. These figures, limited as they are, plainly indicate that the nurture idea of the Christian life is gaining ground steadily in our midst. Adequate Intellectual Expression of the People's Spiritual Experience by the Pastor REV. CHARLES S. MACFARLAND, Ph.D. PASTOR MAPLEWOOD CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, MALDEN, MASSACHUSETTS I believe my theme itself states the real w^ork of the pastor as a teacher. The soul and its experiences are central, and the pastor's finest work, as a teacher, is to provide for his people a fitting and adequate intellectual expression of this experience. Changes in thought have come in the classrooms of our seminaries 1 66 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION and in the thought of our preachers. But the intellectual result has not yet been adequately given to the people in the churches. Clement of Alexandria sets forth with clearness and explicitness the two dif- ferent stages of truth which must be kept distinct — one for the priest, the other for the people. Clement's not too honest advice has obtained too much following down to our own day. The real work of the preacher is to impart his own spiritual expe- rience to his people by expressing it for them. It will not do for him to arouse a spiritual experience in them and then leave them to speak it in the unknown tongue of an inadequate formula. The new wine calls for new bottles. Through the continuation of the Holy Spirit in the Christian experience, Christ has been pouring out new wine upon us. But we have left our people with the old wine-skins, and the skins, have burst; intellectual confusion has resulted because of our failure to provide new bottles for the new wine. Does this mean that it is the function of the preacher to become an iconoclast? To some extent, perhaps. Generally, however, the new wine will of itself burst the old bottles. Our chief task is to provide the new. Here is the point at which our younger men have wrought confusion. They have broken the old bottles before they had pro- vided the new ones. Again it is not always the form of expression that needs to be changed, but a reinterpretation that is needed. The religious expe- rience goes on, but deepening from age to age, and its main forms re- main the same. But every deepening in experience calls for a new interpretation of the form. Thus, the preacher comes not to destroy law and prophets, but to fulfill them. Such forms of expression as Salvation, Conversion, Regeneration, Election, Inspiration, call to- day, not for their burial, but for a reinterpretation. This is the method with essential forms. When, however, persis- tence of form is incompatible with the truer intellectual expression, the delicate but peremptory duty of the preacher is to modify, or gen- erally to expand, and sometimes to repudiate, the form. This conser- vative, yet to some extent iconoclastic, method was Jesus's way with regard to Jewish law. For all this adjustment the people are dependent on the preacher. The day of his note of authority must not be allowed to pass. They must always, in large measure, have their thinking done for them, or perhaps it is better to say, have their thoughts and experiences expressed for them. The day of such " religious authority " is not gone. " Science EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR 167 stands for truth." So docs the Holy Spirit, acting on and through the reason. And it is true, ever has been true, and ever will be true, worlds without end, that the effort of the human reason to know God and the moral universe, to apprehend the moral magnitude and contem- plate the spiritual force of Jesus Christ, is the supreme endeavor of the human mind. And this is " theology." Religion without it is like an ipfant crying in the night, and with no language but an inco- herent cry. A great body of our people need to be relieved of timorous tremblings by being shown clearly on what true faith depends and where the spir- itual life finds its sustenance; that the power of the Fourth Gospel does not depend on the name or the date of its writer; that the power of Christ in their lives to-day does not depend on miracles performed 2000 years ago; and that the naturalness of the spiritual order does not take away the sweet comfort and the uplifting atmosphere of the holy hour of prayer. That is to say, they need to see that faith rests on the spiritual experience of which it is the expression and that the reality of the experience does not depend on any given attempt at an expression of it in intellectual forms. The superlative need is to bring out in bold relief the essential articles of faith which are deter- mined by the experience. I am expressing to-day the feelings of the great body of the younger men who are coming out of our seminaries. They are often placed in trying situations. They find themselves speaking in an unknown tongue. In the name of the Master I beg the older men to give them, not cold and disdainful disparagement, but kindly^ caution and tender advice. Some of them have lost their spiritual self-consciousness be- cause they have been taught and made to believe that their newer thinking unfits them for evangelization and deeply spiritual leadership. Those who would be adequate to the situation are hampered by their inefficient and self-sufficient brethren, who have a nondescript avalanche of undigested truth and have by it wrought confusion in some near-by parish. I am dismayed by some of our ordaining and installing councils. In the very age when clear thinking and deep study are thus demanded, we are growing careless of these very things. Men are passed through because of their amiable spirit and their good intent It is becoming fashionable to report the absence of any theological paper or discussion at such councils. We ought to demand a strong, comprehensive scheme of doctrine, an ability to clothe the religious experience in worthy intellectual garments. i68 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The light in the true preacher's soul is straight from heaven; his is an immediate divine revelation to men; he is a man in whom his uttered truth is realized; he leads men to a higher world; he pleads with men. His medium is the spoken word, the intellectual expression of these spiritual things. His preaching is the mind translating the spirit into the language of reason. My brethren in the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ, called to convey the eternal counsels of God which determine the moral des- tinies of men, how great is our intellectual task: to search out the unsearchable; to bring to men, through the mind, the vision of the invisible; to express, in the language of reason, the inexpressible! We need, more than aught else, ever and ever to pray the prayer of Richard Baxter of Kidderminster: " Lord, do in our own souls that which thou dost use us to do upon the souls of other men." Discussion REV. W. A. WOOD, A.M. PASTOR METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SPENCER, MASSACHUSETTS The educational aim of the pastor is the inspiration of life — the highest possible ethical life. This was the aim of the Master of men. Jesus said: " I have come that you may have life, and that you may have it in abundance." Life is the main interest of the pastor in his educational aims. Life is free. To promote life, the pastor must fall in line with the trend of religious thinking in our time. One marked element in that trend is the refusal to admit a purely external authority in religion anywhere, and in the assertion that authority in religion is internal, spiritual, ethical, moral, a matter of conscience, a matter of experience. We are called into the presence of the spiritual. Fundamentally, it is a contest of methods — the method of purely external authority and the method of experience. The method of external authority bases all judgment of truth upon the exte rnal marks of its origin and the trustworthiness of those who promulgated it. The method of experience puts us in immediate contact with reality, and teaches us to judge of truth only according to its intrinsic value, directly manifested to the mind in the degree of its evidence. The experimental method destroyed the astrology and physics of ancient days, but it created a new astronomy and a new physics. Why should not the same method adopted by the pastor in his educational aims have the same fecundating and rejuvenating effect? Purely external authority is the right of the species over the individual. Self- EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THE PASTOR 169 direction is the right of the individual with regard to the species. The moral consciousness does not appear at the beginning of evolution, nor does it at any moment burst suddenly into being all luminous and perfect. " It emerges slowly and laboriously from the night of nature." The education of mankind is the passage from faith in purely ex- ternal authority to personal conviction. Here, and here only, in per- sonal conviction, is final authority. Authority which is purely exter- nal tends to become neither reasonable nor disinterested. It ought to be a guide, but it becomes blind. Tutelage becomes tyranny. The past is continually struggUng for self -perpetuation against the future which is sure to dawn. All history is a moral pedagogy, whose vitality lives in this perpetual struggle between the autonomy of the conscience and collective authority. Of this struggle are born all the problems which civilized people to-day face. In the educational aims of the pastor the Bible is his chief instru- ment. For this it is admirably adapted, since it is a record of the self-expression of God in human life, — a book of Hfe, — a great spir- itual biology. The demonstration of the divinity of Scripture is an inward revelation taking place in the consciousness at the moment of reading and making the truth appear as the sunlight. We know that light is light by the fact that it gives us light. Scripture must be left to justify itself to the consciousness, for it has in itself the faculty of showing its truth as things white or black show their color, as things bitter or sweet show their flavor. There is nothing to oppose this appeal to experience. The Bible will ever be the book of power, the marvelous book, the book above all others. It will ever be the light of the mind and the bread of the soul. Neither the superstition of some nor the irreli- gious negations of others will ever be able to do it harm. " If there is anything certain in the world, it is that the destinies of the Bible are linked with the destinies of holiness on the earth." That which we must absolutely repudiate is an external authority. The time has come for those who have broken with authority in their inner life to break with it in their educational aims. The gospel, in its very principle, implies the abrogation of external authority, and inaugurates as a fact the religion of the spirit. The only ultimate authority is the experience of God in the human soul. Jesus taught as " One who had authority," just because in his soul and in the souls of those who heard there was that special sanction which the human conscience gives to truth, which the truth must have if it is to appear divine and take possession of us. I70 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION " If any man wills to do the will of the Father, he shall know of My teaching whether it is from God." " It is before all else the vir- tue, the efficacy of His Word, which gives him authority." His teach- ing forces itself upon souls because it takes hold of them and sub- jugates them as the truth itself does when it shows itself in its own luminous evidence; as holiness and love do when, mingling in one, they reveal themselves by the power of their own radiance. Every sentence of Jesus has revealing power; is a ray from heaven just be- cause the conscience welcomes it as a light essentially its own. His words so incorporate themselves in the human conscience that it can neither forget nor repudiate them without repudiating itself. V. SUNDAY SCHOOLS THE ANNUAL SURVEY OF SUNDAY SCHOOL PROGRESS REV. PASCAL HARROWER, CHAIRMAN SUNDAY SCHOOL COMMISSION DIOCESE OF NEW YORK, RECTOR CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION, WEST NEW BRIGHTON, NEW YORK Let me ask your attention to two lines of observation: I. The Present Condition. II. The Outlook. I. The question of education is one of critical interest. In the bud- get of any state or city or town, this item calls for the largest appropria- tion. It is based on the fact that modern life cannot build itself upon an ignorant proletariat. Increase your percentage of intelligence, and you put the larger percentage of brain and thought into your life. De- press it, and Russia with her tens of millions becomes the victim of fate. 1. Deeper Regard for the Sunday School. — The conviction is steadily deepening " that religious training is an integral part of education, that in this country the state school does not and cannot include religious training in its program." This is forcing the Sunday school " into a position of great responsibility and importance, for it is in fact," as President Nicholas Murray Butler has said, " a necessary part of the machinery of our time." It may seem to some that this statement is simply a description of the estimate placed upon the Sunday school during the last twenty-five years. On the contrary, it has all the force and value of a new estimate. The most encouraging fact in the present condition is the seriousness with which men are discussing the problem of religious education as education. And to-day there exists through- out the educational world a new, and to many of us until recently an unlooked-for, respect for the Sunday school. 2. A New Literature. The effect of this new regard has been seen in the contributions to the problem of religious education of a large and rapidly growing literature. Out of a list of 375 books bearing particu- larly on moral education, nearly one third have been published since the beginning of this century.' And besides these there is a large bibli- ography dealing vdth other sides of the problem. The influence of this literature is placing the Sunday school upon the same high ground with ' Griggs's Moral Education. 171 172 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the university and the elementary schools. The same men are deal- ing with both. And the inevitable result is, that the Church finds herself in possession of an institution greatly elevated in its essential claims. 3. Effect of This on Teacher-training. An important impetus has thus been given to the work of teacher-training. One of the diffi- culties in the way of raising the standard of teaching has been the in- different value set upon the work. It grew out of the actual conditions as they existed. There is much truth in what B. F. Jacobs said: that " God had skimmed the cream of the Church and put it into the Sunday school." Possibly there are to-day in the United States three thousand teacher- training classes. Now, it is right here that the influence of this increas- ing literature is to greatly benefit the Sunday school. It is the most hopeful element in the situation. It is creating an atmosphere favor- able to the teacher. It is setting a high value on his work. This value, furthermore, is set by men who bring to bear upon it the experience and association of higher education. And we cannot overestimate this fact. The Sunday school of the last generation was divorced from all other schools. It moved in its own narrow sphere. It was limited, therefore, in its range of thought. The teacher went to his class with- out any conception of that larger fellowship which he may have to-day. The present condition makes for the creation of higher ideals, and is a distinct help to those in the Church who are working for better stand- ards. 4. The Sex Factor in Teaching. A recent writer has called atten- tion to the overwhelming proportion of female teachers in our public schools. The same holds true of our Sunday schools. There can be no doubt that for certain ages woman is the natural teacher of the child. But it is equally certain that the child loses, who does not somewhere in his educational course feel the touch of the man. It is well to re- member that Christianity has from the first been the religion of the world's strongest manhood. We must keep the boy of 17, through the man of 30. 5. Lessons and Grading. There has no doubt been a distinct move- ment towards the enlargement of the curriculum to include subjects lying, strictly speaking, outside the Bible. This does not imply a lowered estimate of the Bible, but it does imply the higher estimate of that human life and history out of which the Bible was born, and to which it bears perpetual witness. Certain tendencies are therefore to be observed. ANNUAL SURVEY OF SUNDAY SCHOOL PROGRESS 173 (i.) The Bible is being studied with a profounder sense of its utter reality. (2.) There is a growing feeling that the Bible must be studied less in fragments and more as a whole. (3.) In some churches there has been a definite effort towards some system or course of study and the construction of manuals. The Pres- byterian Church (South) has adopted a complete course of study for its schools, by formal action of its General Assembly. The Lutheran Church, while holding, in the main, to the Interna- tional System, as does the Methodist, is finding itself obliged to modify this in the interest of a more careful grading in the primary and advanced departments. Many of the leading denominations report an effort to grade their schools, but in only two' or three cases does this grading go beyond the adaptation of the uniform system by means of graded lesson-treatment. The Episcopal Church has never used the International System, but the Joint Diocesan Lessons, modeled on the International, but recognizing the Christian year, have been used in the large majority of parishes. Besides this system, there have been used a great variety of manuals, so that the condition of instruction is most unsettled. In I goo the idea of a subject-graded curriculum was advocated as a nat- ural sequence of child-study, and the adaptation of the subject-matter of religious education to the child's development. Suggested curricula were put forth. A study of over thirty subject-graded schemea used in various schools showed a remarkably general agreement, indicat- ing that the main outline hit upon was psychologically and pedagog- ically sound. The manuals set forth by this commission are at least valuable a«; a beginning. Certainly, it cannot be supposed that they represent an ideal, but they may point the way towards text-books that shall more worthily meet the requirements of religious education. Much is involved in any radical and sweeping changes. The Inter- national or Uniform Lessons are too strongly intrenched in the tradi- tions and honest preferences of a vast majority of our Sunday schools, and have played too important a part in the last generation , to be easily set aside. But even in this great system, under its earnest and inspir- ing leaders, there has been an effort made to adjust and harmonize its uniformity with the best educational principles. Meanwhile, existing systems, like the International, the Blakeslee, and the Joint Diocesan, are steadily seeking to improve the quality of their work. 6. Large Organization. There is a marked tendency towards 174 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION more careful organization of the school and the church. The individual school here and there may be highly organized, and it is probably true that every successful school is managed v^ith thoroughness. But this is not the common condition, and this tendency to bring every school into closer corporate union with all other schools is a most important feature. I desire to call attention to the practical importance of organization within each denomination. An interesting movement is now starting in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Every presiding elder is urged " to make himself familiar with the modern Sunday school, and so be able to inspire his pastors with enthusiasm, to hold frequently Sunday school institutes in his district, grouping several churches, and bringing together pastors, and superintendents, and teachers for the discussion of practical problems concerning their work." Lists of subjects are given for such conferences, and a carefully selected list of helpful and inspiring books. Every school is urged to provide itself with a full library of the best books covering all phases of the subject. At the last General Convention of the Episcopal Church, a joint- commission on Sunday school Instruction was appointed with a view to a thorough investigation of the matter. Some forty diocesan com- missions or organizations already exist. This movement is developing the more elaborate organization of each diocese, through its archdea- conin and deanerin. This same demand for more detailed organiza- tion is being felt in other communions also. The effort to knit together in firm, corporate life the schools of each denomination is highly important. One of the greatest contributions made by the International Lesson Committee to the religious life of our time has been this bringing to- gether of those churches using their lessons. 7. Sunday School Exhibits. The exhibit, as presented during this convention, contains full specimens of Sunday-school apparatus, liter- ature, and methods of teaching as used by Protestants, Romanists and Jews. The value of such exhibits is at once conceded. One great exhibit' already embraces over 10,000 individual helps, including almost every article demanded in Sunday school equipment. It is hoped that this special exhibit can be enlarged into a complete museum, rep- resenting the evolution of Sunday school methods for the last fifty years. Meanwhile, other exhibits have been started elsewhere. Every great center of Sunday school influence should possess some such collection. It is of the greatest educational value and helpfulness. 'New York Sunday School Commission Exhibit, 2q Lafayette Place. ANNUAL SURVEY OF SUNDAY SCHOOL PROGRESS 175 The development of manual work in the Sunday school, as seen in map-modeling, map-drawing, and models of Oriental utensils, houses, etc., is of great importance. And the large exhibit, or the model, or exhibit-room of the individual school, is destined to play an important part in the religious education of the future. II. In closing, I desire to call attention to several things which bear more particularly on the future. 1. The Home. The religious life of the past quarter of a century has seen a distinct decline in the religious life of the home. The pres- ent indication seems to point to better things. Two immediately pro- ductive causes for this improvement are the Cradle-roll and the Home Department. These work upon the finer sentiments of parents and children. They produce their results less by direct exhortation than by the creation of interest and appeals to the spiritual imagination. 2. Week-day Lessons. It is a question already asked, and destined to come more to the front in future, whether an effort should not be made to secure a week-day session of the Sunday school. Some ar- rangement may be found by which the children can be assembled in grades, on different days, and so brought under more careful instruction. In most parishes the pastor is to-day too little in touch with his chil- dren. Some such departmental work on week-days might lead to a real enrichment of the Sunday worship in behalf of children. 3. Finally, the Spiritual Life of the Child. I am not here speaking of the evangelizing work of the school. The period of personal religious interest, the espousal of Christ, whether we associate it with Decision Day, or with Confirmation and First Communion, is never to be for- gotten. Granted this, I have in mind something that this only empha- sizes — and that is worship. The Sunday school has sometimes been called the children's church. And in a vast number of cases it has been practically the only church the child knew, and the teacher the only preacher. But that this de- scribes the Sunday school in any true sense cannot be allowed. The school is not the church. School prayers are not worship in any other sense than private devotion may be called worship. The Sunday school prayer should lead to and train for the service of the church. Much has been written on the child at study. We must turn our attention to the child at worship. The two things are distinct operations of the soul. If our school lessons are to be made pedago- gically sound, our hymns and prayers and ceremonies of worship must be made equally true to the child. Religion must not miss the ministry of beauty and form, and the 176 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION reverent play and expression of rich and holy ceremonies of worship belong by right to the child. My plea is for the child and his right to the richest heritage our Christian faith can bring into his life. For human nature is older than any one church or any one point of view, and let us remember that though each child passes on, yet the child is ever with us. We may well take up, therefore, this comparatively untrodden field of in- vestigation, and ask how we can best lead the child, through worship, into the presence of his Father, and, if necessary, how we can adjust our older and fixed formulas of worship to the needs of that earlier age. THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF THE RELIGIOUS EDUCA- TION OF ITS PEOPLE PROFESSOR IRVING F. WOOD, Ph.D. SMITH COLLEGE, NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS The Church has two duties. One is the duty of instruction. Chris- tianity and Judaism both rest upon an intelligent grasp of certain prin- ciples which make their appeal to the intellect. These are embodied, not only in lives, but in books, and especially in The Book. They must be studied. The second duty is that of inspiration. The Church must inspire men so to relate these principles to their lives that they shall no longer lie without, but within, — a part of life itself. It is essentially the evangelistic, the spiritual. The problem is, How is the church to fulfill these two functions under the present conditions? The recognition of the function of inspiration is old and familiar. Never, perhaps, was it more emphasized than in this country for the past 150 years. A vast congeries of agencies sprang up to fulfill it; in the non-liturgical churches the continuous ministrations of the pulpit and the prayer-meeting were supplemented by the intermittent ministry of the revival. In the liturgical churches the continuous influence of the ritual was and is relied upon. Then came in the Sunday school, and the religious instinct seized upon it as still another means of religious inspiration. Its instructional character was made distinctly secondary to its religious. Here lies the problem. For us, inspiration is the old and familiar function of the Church. Instruction is the new. The old has its chan- nels well worn, but the stream in them is sometimes narrower than one could wish. The new will soon be a full flood, with few well-worn channels in which it can flow. How can we turn this new flood into the old channels ? How can we so use the instruction upon which the Church will, we believe, lay great stress in the near future, so that it shall increase rather than diminish the power of the Church for in- spiration? How shall we absorb the new partial truth, and not let the old partial truth go? Let us recognize, in the first place, how very far apart these two func- tions of the Church are. Inspiration cannot be gained by instruction, nor can instruction be gained by inspiration. To try to mingle the two in one operation is to invite the faflure of both. Probably the funda- mental difficulty with the Sunday school has lain at this point. The 177 178 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION same half-hour has been expected to yield results in two entirely different fields, and naturally the actual issue has been too little result in either. The method of the jumble of the two has had a fair trial, and has failed, as one might have expected it would. We cannot find the solution of the problem in this direction. The first step toward the solution of the problem, then, is the clear recognition of the analysis of its elements. Religion cannot be taught. There are things which can be taught, and which the church must teach. Stories about the men of the Bible can be taught in such a way as to illustrate moral and religious truths. The Hfe of Jesus can be taught in such a way as to bring the pupil into contact with the divine power of that hfe. The thoughts and feelings of religious men can be taught as they have expressed themselves in the Bible. But when we turn to religion itself, the instructional function disappears and the function of inspiration takes its place. A second step toward the solution of our problem lies in the recog- nition of the fact that the human mind is not made up of water-tight compartments. These two functions of which I have been speaking are totally and radically different. Different methods must be em- ployed for the fulfillment of each, and yet one influences the other. In- struction, rightly done, yields results which inspiration may take up and use. From this a third step follows. It is the Church's business so to in- struct that such results may be available for inspiration. It ought to do this, no matter what the subject of teaching. If the church teaches reading to a Chinese, or sanitation to a mothers' club, it ought to regard that work, so far as it is church work, as absolute failure unless it yields, not religious inspiration itself, but seme result which religious inspira- ation may take hold of and use. The Sunday school is, on the whole, however, most advantageously placed in regard to this matter. Its subject of study is the Bible. Now, it is impossible to study the Bible from any point of view — lower criti- cism, higher criticism, literary, historical, or any other — without finding one's self at some time in the course of the study in the presence of great, inspiring, spiritual truths. The keenest, most intellectual study leads up to that, as well as the devout reading of the humblest disciple. But now we face the heart of the problem. It is not theoretical, but practical. How shall we translate instruction into inspiration ? Where is our transformer, to change the current from one potential to another? There are no means in full operation at present that are at all adequate to do it. To use the clerical term we want a good transformer. THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 179 There are, however, several means in germ which may perhaps later develop into something of real use. One is the present insistence on continuity and proportion in the Sunday school study of the Bible. It is plain to see that the future will insist more than the past has done on the larger divisions, rather than the smaller, in Bible study, on books and periods of history and groups of literature. This will reduce the tendency to make every lesson convey a separate and distinct religious teaching. Often one must work through a book or a period, the labor perhaps of a long series of lessons, before the results which religion can use become available. Then they appear naturally, and take their proper place in the structure of Biblical religion. If all the present discussion of method and curriculum will result in this, it will be a great gain. Another element in the possible solution of the problem is the use of special seasons for — let me use the old-fashioned word — spiritual ingathering. Decision day is such a season. The occasional pastor's class during Lent, or at any other time in the year, is another. Of course there is need of wisdom in arranging and carrying out such plans. The particular advantage of their connection with the Sunday school is that thus they naturally invite a recognized relation between instruction and inspiration. In general, the pastor's place in the Sunday school has not been used to its full value. All the traditions of the pastorate, and, usually, the experience of his work, make him the person, above all others, who might be able to translate instruction into inspiration. How it may be done each pastor must work out for himself. He, at least, has a free field, and is not hampered by traditional methods. Possibly, the opening and closing exercises of the school can, in some cases, be made to have a definite religious value. At present, it is doubtful whether they commonly have any value at all. They seem to be held because it is customary to hold them. They ought to have a value for the instruction, if for nothing else. But they can never be relied upon to supply the entire means of reHgious inspiration. They are too short, too much dominated by the spirit of instruction, which should rule the Sunday school lesson itself. Can the Sunday school be so managed as to inculcate a spirit of reverence? It deals with a religious subject. There seems to be no reason why it should not be conducted as reverently as 'the church service. I ask in all seriousness. Can you expect a confused, undignified hubbub to yield results which religious reverence can use ? i8o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION REV. J. T. McFARLAND, D. D. EDITOR SUNDAY SCHOOL PUBLICATIONS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY The church's problem of the religious education of its people con- sists of two factors: First, furnishing the people with adequate instruc- tion in the facts and principles of morality and religion; and second, giving them needed guidance in the moral and religious activities of their lives; and both of these to the end that moral and religious devel- opment may be effected and Christian character formed. Upon this problem, in both of its phases, the Church has always been engaged, and has done and is doing much. But the Sunday school is at great disadvantage as respects the pos- sibility of securing high efficiency on the part of its teachers, because of the short time to which its work is confined. The majority of the public school teachers never had any direct normal training; by ex- perience in the schoolroom and by association with more experienced teachers, they have learned how to teach. But the teacher in the public school has an opportunity for practice in teaching far beyond the teacher in the Sunday school, for his work covers six hours a day for five days in the week, while the Sunday school teacher has really but about thirty minutes a week. Thirty hours against thirty minutes is a wide differ- ence. If we will consider the literature of the Sunday school for the teaching of the current Bible lessons, we are impressed with its redun- dancy rather than its poverty. An excellent guidance has been provided in methods of teaching also. The Bible teacher at least has put within his easy reach the means for acquiring a knowledge of the principles of pedagogy as applied to his work. So that we may safely affirm, in spite of all imperfections and deficiencies, that the great defect of the Church does not lie in a lack of properly prepared material for religious instruction, nor chiefly in an inefficient, because untrained, teaching force. The great defect in our whole system of religious education lies in a radical oversight or omission; namely, the failure to perceive that moral and religious education must include moral and religious action, and that it is the duty of the Church not simply to give direction to the work of instruction, but to give direction to the activities of those under its care as well. In entering, some nine months ago, upon my office as editor of the Sunday school literature of my church, I deter- mined to do something towards strengthening the work of the Sunday school at what I consider its weakest point. That point of weakness is almost a break in the chain, so almost entirely has it been overlooked THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION i8i so far as any systematic provision for the need is concerned — the mis- sing hnk, namely, that should connect instruction and activity in the process of education. The very thought of the necessity of this link has been almost wholly overlooked. I therefore introduced into our Sunday school Journal and Bible Student's Magazine, as a regular part of the lesson helps, a department which I call " The School of Practice." In explanation I quote from my editorial introduction of this depart- ment. " Our purpose in ' The School of Practice ' is to help the teachers in our Sunday schools to give some current guidance to the moral and religious activities of the members of their classes. It raises the question, ' In view of the truth of the lesson, what practical things ought we to do during the coming week in fulfillment of that truth ?' It enables the teacher at the close of each lesson to say to the class, ' Well, now, we have learned such and such truths from the lesson to-day; now, what immediate use can we make of these truths ? How can we carry them out during the week? What shall we do?' And then, having raised these questions, not to leave the whole matter indefinite, but to go for- ward and put the members of the class upon specific lines of moral and religious practice. The constant word should be, ' We have learned; now let us do.' For, otherwise our knowledge will condemn us. " The recognition of the fact that " That which is not expressed dies," should startle us when we consider what for the most part we are doing in our Sunday schools. We have been absorbed in the task of instruction. We have considered that we have fulfilled our mission when we have conveyed moral and religious knowledge to the children and youth of our schools. We have used the best obtainable helps for teaching and have done our utmost to rightly guide the thinking of our scholars. But we have not made any systematic attempt to guide their activities. Sabbath after Sabbath we have brought forward some of the great truths of the Bible, and we have not taken pains to in- quire whether those truths have been carried out into the activities of the days lying between the Sabbaths. The result has been that thou- sands of our young people have become over-loaded with a surfeit of unemployed knowledge, and have acquired a habit of regarding truth indifferently as a thing to be given passive attention and forgotten. We should bring ourselves up to the recognition of this — that it is not a pious thing to come together and talk about truth and duty without any purpose or plan to obey the truth and perform the duty that may be presented to us. So far from this being pious and relig- ious, it may be, and I think often is, impious and irreligious. i82 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION PRESIDENT WILLIAM DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, D. D. HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT Self-criticism is one of the conditions of spiritual growth, alike in the individual and in the community. It is a law of our nature that we attain our ideals only through dissatisfaction with our present spiritual possessions. The Church, to-day, in facing the problem of the educa- tion of its people, is exercising afresh its duty of self-criticism. It has been made to feel that its work is not as thoroughly done as it ought to be, and that weakness results on various sides of its life through this failure. There are those who occupy a peculiar position to-day by at once urging rehgious education and yet affecting to despise the teaching of religious truth. It is true that they mask the latter under the term of doctrine, or throw scorn upon it by the use of the epithet " dogma"; but we must face the fact that there is no teaching of religion that does not imply the inculcation of certain conceptions of God and of Christ and of the way of salvation. We are not able to live our life without laying hold of truth. We are rational beings, and it is through the exer- cise of our reason that we discover at once our task, our relations, and our destiny. In our day the attempt to get people to be religious will utterly fail unless we tell them what it is to be religious; and that can only be done by winning their belief in certain great facts and their place in the history of the race and of the individual man. Over against a skepticism that sweeps away the truth of the Scriptures we present the reality of that sublime revelation which God has made through them to the whole race. Over against materialism which infests our social life and penetrates like a deadly miasma into our churches, and even paralyzes some good men in the pulpit, the Church must set the reality and glory of the spiritual. Now, to do all this implies that people must use their intellects in order to be Christian, and that other people must use a great deal more intellect in order to instruct them. As a matter of fact, we find that wherever there is a teaching ministry which knows what to teach and how to teach, there we find a solid faith among the people, and a fervent response to every true religious appeal. This work must begin among the children. They are being taught, in many parts of the country, in the pubhc schools that they must be " good," and there a great deal of very useful moral instruction is given, and some valuable influences by earnest teachers are exercised. But it is curious that intelligent people do not see that exactly in this way they have not only not avoided sectarian teaching, but have actually adopted THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 183 the teaching of the meanest and poorest sect in the country. The people who call themselves Secularists, who send to us ministers stupid tracts, printed badly, on poor paper, in bad grammar, are those who have as loudly as any shouted against sectarian teaching in the public schools. Now, their doctrine is that it is possible for men to be good without God; and it is their doctrine which, by the avoidance of the name of God, is being taught in a good many public schools. There is here a loud call of the Church to exercise every endeavor to bring home, even to little children, the fundamental message of Jesus, that " there is none good save one; that is God only." But this means that the Religious Edu- cation Association is charged, through its Sunday School Department with the task of rousing everywhere a passionate determination that this Secularist poison shall spread no further, and that somehow chil- dren shall receive the great message that God must be known and loved if men would be good. I believe that in relation to the children the churches ought, in larger number and with more efl&ciency, to attempt the giving of religious in- struction in connection with the Bible schools on week-days. I know that some denominations already succeed in a very creditable measure in doing this. A large number of Lutheran ministers find it possible, during the holiday season as well as at other times, to gather their children for parts of one or two week days and give them sound con- secutive teaching in Christian history, Christian doctrine, and the life and meaning of the Church. If this is done still more than at present, it will enable our churches to emphasize the religious side in their Sunday work. They will gather the children distinctively for worship. It will be felt, that if a child is being well taught in the history of Israel, or in the details of the life of Paul, during the week, on Sunday his attention must be fastened upon the great spiritual lessons ; that his heart may worship the livinff God. Discussion REV. LEMUEL CALL BARNES, D.D. PASTOR FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS First, the only problem which we ought to be discussing at this particular hour is " The Church's Problem of the Religious Education of Its People " through the agency of the Sunday school. This involves, however, at the outset, the fact that the Sunday school is utterly inadequate to the religious education of the people, even the church people, to say nothing of the community as'a whole. The Sunday school is not only inadequate as it is now constituted; it i84 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION will be hopelessly inadequate when it has been brought to that state of perfection toward which this Sunday School Department of the Religious Education Association is to help it to come. The live church has already at least five well-developed organs of religious education; first of all, the Christian Home; second, the Pulpit; third, the Woman's Association; fourth, the Men's League; and fifth, the Young People's Society. A number of other functions of healthy life are evolving organs for their expression. We have boys' work, girls' work, lecture- course work, and many more kinds of religious educational work. In the second place, therefore, our problem is so to specialize the work of the Sunday school that it shall have the clearness and sharp- ness of purpose, the intensity of interest, and the incisiveness of impact which belong to a specialty. What shall be its one aim? Shall it be to impart a knowledge of the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures? The tendency to call it a Bible school perhaps points in this direction. If it tried to do nothing else, might not its religious outcome be great- est? Could we not trust that unrivaled and supernal literature to do its best work when left to itself? Is it not possible that we blunder educationally in putting many things in our one hour a week between the Holy Spirit's matchless work and the pupil's spirit? Whether all evangelistic, indoctrinating, and inspirational work, as well as all other educational work, might well be left to other organs of the church, is a real question. At any rate, even if not exclusive of other things, the one dominating specialty of the Sunday school must ultimately be the study, the actual study, of the Sacred Writings. Third, when the purpose of the Sunday school has been clarified, the next factor in the solution of our problem will be the method of teaching. The method which has prevailed for the most part is the sermonette method. In the average Sunday school class self-activity on the part of the pupil has been at a minimum, oftener at zero. In all other educational institutions, from the kindergarten to post- graduate fellowships, the principle now mainly depended upon is " learning by doing." Instead of coming into the Sunday school last, it ought to have come into it first, because it is pre-eminently the method of Christian education, as the great Teacher himself said. The Sunday school teachers who have been most effective have always been those who got the pupils to doing something about the lessons themselves. The simple written answers of the Bible Study Union lessons have been an immeasurable good to hundreds of pupils. Fourth, having obtained a clear purpose and a right method, we THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 185 should be ready for the most important factor of all in the solution of our problem namely, the training of teachers. Then should come a fifth factor; i. e., Sunday school equipment. Not one Sunday school in ten thousand at the present time has the rooms and appliances which are desirable, if the very best work is to be done. Whatever we may think of these five factors, or of any other way of analyzing the problem, the one inspiring thing about the whole matter at the present time is the fact that we have discovered that there is a problem, a tremendous problem, awaiting solution. We have the joy of working in a situation where the best things are all in front of us, to be growingly discovered, growingly appropriated, and grow- ingly put into fruitful service. CLARA BANCROFT BEATLEY PRINCIPAL OF DISCIPLES SCHOOL, CHURCH OF DISCIPLES, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS The problem of the education of the religious sentiment of the people of the Church will be solved as the Church succeeds in providing for the growing life within its care, a continuity of high spiritual influence and instruction. The children of the Church are its most important care. In the solv- ing of no other problem may it more truly be said, " A little child shall lead them." A forward step has been taken by churches in establishing kinder- gartens during the hour of church-service. The home is thus strength- ened at the time of its greatest need. The formation of the stay-at-home habit, the self-centering of family life, the gradual lowering of spiritual ideals — these insidious dangers are all averted by the foresight of the Church. While the children are happily cared for in the kindergarten, parents may be constant in church attendance and be helped from week to week into a growing appreciation of the home ideal. A nursery, in some instances, accompanies the kindergarten. One may well believe that hymn and prayer, and every spoken word, will glow with new significance as the thought of the sleeping child and the happily playful child, intelligently cared for in the church nursery, sug- gests in quiet undertone the gospel message. A church that secures the constant attendance of the parents of young children implants its message in willing minds and receptive hearts, — minds and hearts recently elevated and chastened by the near- ness of mystery and the joy of life's richest experience. No church can afford to lose the opportunity to touch the homes thus quickened i86 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION to new consciousness of duty. The old custom of taking very young children to the church has given way to its deplorable opposite. The child is brought to the church to be christened, and may not again appear until he enters the primary department. The parents, mean- while, unconsciously lower their standard of church attendance, appear- ing for service only at Christmas and at Easter, or at other convenient intervals. The school which the church establishes should provide, through carefully chosen services, an atmosphere of reverence in which all lovely quahties take root. A graded system of instruction, presided over by trained teachers, leads the child step by step into a knowledge of his spiritual inheritance. He catches the enthusiasm for truth and service. He reaches out in loyalty to the church that has shown him the blessed way; he rejoices in the crowning experience of acknowledging his re- lationship. Through the growing vision of the past, the ideal of a school asso- ciated with every church, has been constantly unfolding. Many have consecrated their lives to this ideal. There have been periods of emi- nent leadership and glowing attainment. It remains for the Church to provide the conditions of sustained leadership and attainment. A volunteer service becomes daily more di£&cult. The Church itself has created the philanthropic agencies that increase the call for volunteer workers at every hand. Continuity of guidance, trained teachers, an established school curric- ulum that provides for recognition of the child's progress, — these are the great needs in the church to-day. To fulfill these needs is to inspire the confidence and loyalty of parents and secure the elements of stability and permanence essential to a successful school. In planning for the establishment of a graded school, certain truths are evident : 1. The choice of a trained service and a graded system does not imply the failure of other methods. It recognizes the good already attained, while it seeks a higher good. 2. A trained service may be a volunteer service. 3. A trained service may be the service of such day-school teachers as have special aptitude for religious teaching — teachers whose po- sitions are reasonably secure, through successful experience, and who welcome the Sunday class as a joy. To such teachers the compensation may give means of vacation travel, or other recreation, so that the re- pair of nervous energy may be equal to the demand. 4. Teachers who are insecure in their daily work, who are over- THE CHURCH'S PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 187 whelmed by unfavorable school conditions, who have not acquired the serenity of conscious power, or who have heavy responsibilities out of school hours, should not be urged to Sunday teaching. I infer that President Hyde has this class of teachers in mind, when he so reason- ably points out the wrong of pressing day-school teachers into Sunday service. 5. Trained service, again, may be that of a mother whose contact with child-life in the home, added to a successful experience as a teacher, makes her pre-eminently a leader of the young. 6. A graded system may be introduced so gradually that the transition may occasion no disturbance. 7. Day-school methods should only be introduced as they har- monize with the spirit of the Church and clearly make for efficiency. 8. The minister, freed from the disappointments of an uncertain teaching service, touches the school at his highest spiritual power, and becomes, above all, the true preacher and prophet, ministering to the souls^of his'people. PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CURRICULUM MR. PATTERSON DU BOIS PHILADELPHIA Time being short, I took such a luncheon to-day as I thought would most quickly serve me best. It was an oyster stew. When the bowl was set before me, an initial taste revealed the need of salt. I raised my eyes, saw the salt in the distance, but gave no other sign. A stranger had the instinct to see my necessity, reached the needed article and set it before me. To myself I said, " I like your curriculum." It was only a second or two long, but it taught me to discern, to feel, and to act in response to my neighbor's needs. Scripture texts came to mind as a Christly sanction. We complain that our time is too short in Sunday school to teach much. This stranger gave me a life lesson in two seconds. It is our business to do the most possible in the time that we have. Here is a point for teacher-training as well as Sunday school teaching. Last summer I visited the old village of Brading, in the Isle of Wight. Here is the -ancient church where Leigh Richmond ministered a cen- tury and more ago. Here is the churchyard where, under a spreading tree, he held his class of little girls, to whom he taught the theology of those days, as well as Bible passages, catechisms, and hymns for mem- orizing. Death was a more important consideration to the Christian then than life. was. The tombstones by which this class was surrounded served to create the desired atmosphere and to point the gloomy ideal. The children were actually made to memorize epitaphs. Little Jane's parents were irreligious and wicked. The tract which Leigh Richmond wrote, describing the child's progress toward a beautiful, unselfish Chris- tian character, was famous in the past century. The last sickness and death of Jane at the age of about fourteen is touchingly told. It pictures her concern for her parents and associates, her serene faith, her supreme comfort in her hymns, her Bible, and the theological interpretations as she had taken them from her teacher's lips. I asked myself whether the pendulum of our day had swung too far away from these almost hysterical manifestations of a past era. Have we pursued the rational and the so-called " practical " too hotly to the neglect of the emotional? Again, suppose Jane had been born in a similar poverty in a great THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CURRICULUM 189 twentieth-century city. She would be compelled to seek self-support, minghng with many persons of doubtful conduct, possibly serving em- ployers with whom she would become tributary to or even principal in sharp practices in the struggle for existence. Would the purely theo- logico-sentimental curriculum of the old graveyard have so cultivated her moral discernment as to keep her as straight and serenely beautiful in character as she was in that remote village ? Is not the stress of our industrial, commercial, and poHtical life of to-day dulhng what moral discrimination we think we have? I believe that the dishonorable de- fections of Christians who suppose that their ideals are high are due largely to want of training from childhood in concrete ethical discrim- ination. There is a larger place for this in the Sunday school curricu- lum than the mere casual side issues of the average teacher. And this means an important item in the teacher's training also. But that Jane's intimacy with Bible texts and sacred songs was an infinite solace and delight to her in her last days cannot be doubted. Have we not in this also swung too far away from the memory treasures of our fathers? Notwithstanding the austerities of the indoctrination of that day, it is noteworthy that the Brading class was held in a beau- tiful spot outdoors, and that the surroundings were valued as accessory suggestion. Richmond himself claimed that there was value in the sweetness of nature, as well as in the solemnity of gravestones. If for these melancholy reminders of death we substitute the agencies and ideals of life, we have restored something of that effective method and applied it to a more Christlike purpose. We have made for life abun- dantly, instead of death superabundantly. Therefore let us have more of what might, by a kind of courtesy or liberal use of the term, be called a laboratory method. Let us not stop with the Bible, but, as Paul has said that all things are ours, draw on all resources — books, nature, and hu- man life in its manifold social complexity. Suppose your boys or girls were to report on incidents or cases involving ethical discrimination or religious attitude which they had witnessed or to which they were a party. Suppose, also, that the rights and wrongs, the advantages and disadvantages, growing out of such deeds and situations were referred back to Biblical cases or precepts, somewhat as a physician or lawyer goes to his library for precedents and authorities. We might then have a closer connection between the school and life. Even though without " apparatus," we should have the laboratory idea. Then, too, we should have more of the missionary element. But we must not confine this to the contribution of money to Church " boards." If there are grave disclosures of vice in the city, and an I90 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION effort is making to root it out in spite of political protection, your boy and girl should see that the Church, as an institution, is taking a hand in the process of purification. He or she should not think missionary effort is confined to the distant and the invisible, or that the Church has no interest in the near and the immediate. " Forward movements" should concern our back alleys as well as Corea. Lastly, let the curriculum be large, proceeding by wholes, offering as little temptation as possible to the teacher for petty homily or for breaking up a good story into insipid bits. Let it include the exemplary fascination of biography — of human character in the concrete. This desultory discussion makes no pretense to the form of a cur- riculum. I have said nothing about the Bible as the supreme text-book, as the book of life and of lives, because I assume that we are already agreed upon that. I simply remind the curriculum-maker of five motifs — a proper affection, a moral discrimination, a memoriter treasury, a missionary conscience, and a broad view. REV. F. N. PELOUBET, D.D. AUTHOR PELOUBET'S SELECT NOTES ON THE INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSONS, AUBURNDALE, MASSACHUSETTS In the light of as wide a study of published curricula, and of books on child-study, as broad an observation and experience, and as full a conference with educators as have come within my limits, I would lay down as scientifically correct the following principles: First. It is an axiom that the curriaihim must he adapted in both ma- terial and method to the varying stages of mental development and religious growth of the pupils. It was well said at our Philadelphia meeting, that " No one who has studied both the Bible and the child can believe that all parts of the Bible have an equally high culture value at every stage of development." Second. A really scientific curriculum must take into account all the factors of the problem, and refuse to overemphasize any one factor at the expense of the others. There are several factors which are frequently ignored, or allowed too meager an influence; so that while the curricula are scientific in some directions, as in the psychology of the child, they are unscientific in not giving due weight to other essential elements in the actual working out of the problem. Some neglected factors. The limit of time in the Sunday school, one half hour a week. It is absolutely impossible within that limit of time to utilize a curriculum for the entire religious education of the child, THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CURRICULUM 191 without a miracle. Such a curriculum would be a wise educational measure, but not a wise Sunday school curriculum. The kind of studies to which a Sunday school curriculum is limited. Literature, in some of its forms, and not the wider range of the day- school curricula. The changing nature of the Simday school clientele. Only a small proportion of the pupils — not one fourth — remain in the same school for a long period — say 10 to 15 years. The great variation in the times and the rapidity of child development. Prof. Search finds that the progress of the brightest scholars is three and a half times as rapid as that of the duller ones. The co-ordination of the Sunday school curriculum with the other means for the religious education of the child. In view of these and other neglected factors, certain great underlying principles emerge: Third. The Sunday school curriculum cannot scientifically he mod- eled closely after the day school curriculum, nor draw its illustrations from it, except so far as literature in its broadest sense is concerned. To grade the Sunday school closely after the grammar school grades is pedagogically wrong; while the broader grades of primary, grammar, high, and collegiate may be right. Fourth. The basis of the Sunday school curricidum should be confined to the Bible in all except some adult classes. A large proportion of the children will find in the short Sunday school half-hour their chief or their only opportunity of becoming acquainted with the greatest, richest, most life-giving literature in the world, which will open doors to many of the best things in life, that otherwise would be shut forever. For other things necessary to the religious education, other agencies must be found; while at the same time it must be remembered that true Bible study is not like the Nile, which flows two thousand miles through a desert without a tributary, but like the Amazon it drains the whole continent of literature, history, nature, and life, for light and " point of contact." Fifth. The Sunday school curricidum must be very flexible, or it will contravene the trend of educational science, and the efforts of educational experts in modifying the systems of our graded schools. Sixth. The Sunday school curriculum will he most scientific, embody in the fullest degree all the factors involved, and accomplish its best work, hy means of three or at most jour departments, each of which may be sub- divided into as many grades as numbers require and opportunity permits. I. Special short courses for the primary, up to about eight years of age. 192 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION II. For the rest of the school, including all ages (with the excep- tions noted below) Scripture selections, in broad sections, from story, biography, history, and literature, with the choicest spiritual master- pieces, in the general order of the Bible. III. Provision must be made for the study of other parts of the Bible, church history, the great modern crusades of missions, and other subjects, by means of electives for the older classes. The reasons are: 1. The selections for the main period include the larger part of the Bible, and emphasize those parts which have most points of contact with the children's daily life in home and school. 2. They furnish the most flexible of all curricula. 3. Belonging to literature and life, they are best adapted to the needs of all ages, to the apperception of the younger, and to the intel- lectual and spiritual depths of the older. 4. The peculiarity of life and literature is that each scholar, old or young, dull or bright, gets out of the same passage exactly as much as he has ability to receive, and the brightest loses nothing, whether he develops three and a half times or one and a half times as rapidly as his duller brother. 5. If the movement through the Bible is repeated two or three times in the course of the school life, very few need fail to gain some general knowledge of the whole Bible. That this principle sets forth the true scientific and pedagogical direction of progress is confirmed by the cur- ricula prepared for the junior scholars by practical experts in child- study; by the trend of the far-seeing and skillful Dr. Blakeslee in his later curricula; and by the persistent hold on the people and the pro- gressive movement of the International Lesson System. Those who confound the present International System as a synonym with an unmixed " Uniform Lesson " system for even the youngest, or as giving disconnected lessons without continuity, or as confining the lessons to the verses selected for printing, have simply failed to notice its actual working in the past or its present development. It is hoped and believed that in addition to what has already been accomplished, electives for special advanced classes, for years in actual use as a part of the system, favored by two successive lesson commit- tees, and unanimously by the Editorial Association, will be formally adopted at Toronto next June. This will permit a somewhat more perfect selection of the general lessons used by the vast majority of all Sunday schools, and their restriction to those Scripture portions adapted to all, without being subjected to the criticism of neglecting any portion THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CURRICULUM 193 of the Bible, and thus, while rejoicing in and indebted to the many fruitful experiments of others, render that curriculum in its present form the most scientific and pedagogical yet proposed; and ahnost every progressive method and new appliance becomes a part of its working scheme as naturally as peaches grow on peach trees. Seventh. No curriculum of any kind can be complete without special provision for general reviews and for supplemental lessons, including catechisms, condensed summaries of Bible history and Bible facts, and memorizing of the masterpieces of Biblical literature. Nor can any scheme of religious education for the young be complete without training and study outside of the Sunday school, — at home, in pastor's classes, in young people's societies and various other means, bringing into closest contact the Sunday school with the home, and the day school; the Bible with other literature; Sundays with week- days; spiritual impressions with daily life. „: i^-t^ REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON WORSHIP IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL PROFESSOR WALDO S. PRATT, Mus. D. HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT The special committee appointed to report on the subject of wor- ship in the Sunday-school has been unable to hold a meeting, but a strenuous effort has been made to consult by correspondence, and the following report represents, in some measure, our collective thought. Two main lines of inquiry present themselves. The first relates to the general place and dignity of worship exercises taken together. The second relates to the details of such exercises. We would offer remarks upon both of these. First, as to worship exercises in general. We feel the need of plead- ing urgently for special attention to this element in Sunday school services. A hasty, heedless, and even irreverent treatment of it is far too common. The very name " Introductory Exercises " is apt to sug- gest a perfunctory attitu-de of mind in superintendents, teachers, and scholars, and in many schools these exercises have come to be mechan- ical, tasteless, spiritless, and therefore positively harmful. Any exer- cise of social devotion that is so handled must be dangerous, both because of its immediate reaction on all participants at the moment, and because it creates a false standard for similar exercises elsewhere. It may be seriously queried whether the general poverty of public worship in some churches is not due in large measure to the deteriorating influence of the Sunday school in the past, under which successive generations of children have been unintentionally misled as to the dignity, reaHty, and utility of social prayer and praise.. Probably, too, these careless habits have contributed to the low estimate of the Sunday school itself in many cases and to a diffused spirit of unreaHty and lifelessness in the whole institution. No church can afford to allow this degenerating tendency to set in, since in the long run it is destructive both of the best value of the Sunday school and even of the health of the Church in general. Happily, there is an increasing number of pastors and super- intendents that are alive to the danger, and the instinct of all earnest workers can always be trusted to respond to efforts to avoid it. We offer these suggestions. Whatever time is set apart in the Sun- day school for common exercises should be jealously guarded against abbreviation, interruption, or distraction. The intrusion of extended 194 WORSHIP IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 195 notices and of mechanical operations should be prevented. Noise and confusion should be suppressed, and haste and triviality should be eliminated. For the leadership of worship exercises, due preparation should be made beforehand. The signs of listlessness and unreadiness on the leader's part in the substance of his prayers, in the choice of hymns, in the handling of Scripture -reading, are sure to be noted, and they either annoy or entrap the whole school. On the other hand, nothing is more contagious than a spirit of genuine enthusiasm and devoutness on the leader's part. Real study should be expended by him upon the plan and execution of all general exercises, so that they shall not be monotonous or repetitious, or without a rememberable point and climax. The accent may fall now on the Bible-reading, now on the prayer, now on the singing, but something in each service should be emphatically valuable, so that it may leave a definite im- pression alongside of the further impression made by the lesson study. Success must, of course, come through the dextrous handling of many details. With a view to the reclamation of general exercises from misuse, we further raise the question whether in some schools it may not be wise, at least sometimes, to invert the usual plan of the Sunday school service, beginning the lesson study almost at the opening of the session, and then closing with a series of general exercises of a worshipful sort. We believe that in many cases this would be a decided gain for both parts of the service. This might be managed so that the whole should culminate, as it ought, in a spirit of prayer and praise, and send the scholars forth with the warmth of devotion, zeal, and enthusiasm in their hearts, in addition to the impress of the lesson on their heads and their consciences. The kindling of feelings and sentiments is really the finest result of any service, and a strong accent on common and united worship as the crowning experience of the hour would have a value greater than any other that can be named. Yet, it is needless to say, this change of plan should not be attempted in any school where the devotional atmosphere is cold or stagnant, and surely not unless both the superintendent and the teachers are ready to put their minds and souls into making the last section of the service a true climax. Second, as to some details. The exercises commonly used are Bible-reading (in concert or responsively) , prayer (often including the Lord's prayer in concert), and more or less singing. Some schools add various antiphonal sentences (at the opening or the close), recitations of a psalm, the beatitudes, the creed, the commandments, etc. We re- mark briefly on several of these in turn. 196 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION We doubt the wisdom of the common reading of the lesson as a general exercise, except in schools where the average intelligence as to the text is low. But we hold that there is great use in reading many of the Psalms responsively, if they are chosen with some relation to the lesson topic, and we wonder why more schools do not bring into such use large quantities of other material from all parts of the Bible. By judicious selection, the range of Biblical passages in common knowledge might be vastly broadened, especially where the lessons themselves are very limited in extent. The question of Sunday-school singing is in dispute. Many seem to hold that the great aim should be to find melodies that children will sing with vocal zest, regardless of the sense or the inherent value of the words — thus making the singing mainly useful as a physical diversion. Others seem anxious to strike as many different keys in the singing as possible, heaping together scraps of many hymns of widely different character and turning restlessly from one to another. Some superintendents make no preparation for this part of the service, and either fall back helplessly on threadbare " favorites " or indulge in ec- centric experiments on the spur of the moment. It is to be feared that a majority of schools choose cheap and poor hymn-books, with the notion either that " anything will do for children " or that children are all babies. There is no doubt, too, that the incompetence of play- ers and leaders is often an unavoidable hindrance to what otherwise would be attempted. We feel that deliverance from many difficulties and from much poverty of spiritual value is to be sought in a more general, hearty, and intelligent emphasis on the hymns as such. They should be chosen primarily for their words, should not be cut up into too small morsels, and should often be introduced by a remark or two to make them more worth while. We wonder that the memorizing of fine hymns is so uncommon, both in classes and for common recitation. We believe that the thoughtful and thorough use of even two hymns in a service is worth infinitely more than the heedless ejaculation of fragments of many without earnest feeling. We wonder, too, that so few experiments are tried with Sunday school chanting. We are not so much impressed with the importance of multiplying instruments or magnifying a " choir," except so far as these supply needed tonal assist- ance. The great desideratum is not volume of sound or sensuous exhilaration, but the appeal to the imagination and the heart from the beauty and the passion of those hymns that are really worthy of the name. It has been demonstrated again and again that children are susceptible to these potencies, and they should not be defrauded of WORSHIP IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 197 what may be of the highest spiritual use to them at once and in future life. Sunday school prayers should certainly not be prolix or stilted. But they ought to be real, fervent, tasteful, and broad in sympathy. Instead of trying to cover all desirable topics or to voice all the moods of adoration, thanksgiving, confession, and supplication at any one time,, an effort should be made to strike different notes at different times, so as to keep the whole gamut of thought and sentiment in mind. We believe that there is utiUty in increasing the number of memorized prayers that can be used by all in concert, and also that the custom of having a moment of silent prayer preceding that which is spoken is most desirable. Great care should be taken to stimulate the habit on the scholars' part of making the prayer their own, not something said to them. The co-operation of the teachers in dignifying this exercise and making it personal to the scholars is indispensable. The order in which worship exercises are arranged is often of great importance. We doubt the wisdom of accenting song as the opening item. Song, like prayer, grows out of sentiments awakened otherwise. Opening sentences of some sort seem to be the ideal, followed by a hymn, then by the Bible-reading, then by the prayer, then by another hymn. If the lesson study could be advanced to an earlier point, it would be enough to have the sentences and a hymn before the lesson, and all other exercises after. It is evident, however, that no one order is ne- cessary, and there may be reason for variety from time to time. Respectfully submitted. Waldo S. Pratt, Chairman. Prof. Charles M. Stuart, D. D., Garrett Biblical Institute. Rev. George F. Nason, New Rochelle, N. Y. Mrs. a. G. Lester, Chicago, 111. Mrs. J. Woodbridge Barnes, Newark, N. J. Discussion REV. GEORGE F. NASON PASTOR NORTH AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHXJRCH, NEW ROCHELLE, NEW YORK There is a tendency to count too much on the positively religious influence of the home, and also to presume too largely upon the idea that the child will come into the life of the church and will there ob- tain the worshipful spirit wanting in the life of the school. Relatively, an alarming proportion of the pupils are not attendants upon the ser- vice of the church while they are in the school, nor do they afterwards come into the life of the church. After a more or less brief stay in ipS THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the school they are lost to religious influence. This means that the sole religious impression of many lives must be made by the Sunday school, if ever made. In considering the place of the Sunday school in religious education and the place of M^orship in the school, we cannot ignore this large number to whom the school is to be the sole repre- sentative and source of religious instruction, influence, and experience. The report says: " The primary object of the Sunday school is felt to be the lesson study." We must not regard the mere increase of religious facts or truths as the supreme purpose. The facts of Bible history, biography, and geography may be forgotten, but the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Saviour and Friend is a permanent element in life's experience, and to have missed this is to have missed the purpose of God in human life. The present awakening will bring better teaching of the Bible. Will it also bring a deepening of the religious experience of the pupil ? The improvement of the lesson study in a measure depends upon the worship of the school. The character of the devotional exercises largely determines the religious atmosphere of the school and also the results of lesson study. They either prepare the child for lesson study, or in a large measure destroy the opportunity for religious impression of the truth taught in the class. The worship after the lesson study either dissipates the impressions of the truth or gathers them into a personal consecration of the life to God's service. Worship focalizes the teaching of the Word upon the personal attitude to Christ. It brings to knowledge and sentiment the eternal NOW of God. It is not sufficient that an annual attempt should be made at decision day for the deep religious impression. Every service should seek to make an abiding impression upon the religious life and add to the religious experience. The worship of the Sunday School should lead per- ceptibly and intelligently to the consciousness of the presence of God and to fellowship with him. The pastor does not generally occupy that place of importance in the Sunday school which is his by right of position and ability. In many schools he has little or no opportunity to spiritually influence the pupils. He comes into contact with many young people only as pupils in the school. They do not attend the church service and the Sunday school is the only place where he can see and influence them. The modern pastor is trained to know the possibilities of Sunday school work and the methods of obtaining the desired impression upon the child mind. The largest place of influence, reaching as it does the entire school, is in this devotional service. WORSHIP IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 199 The reading of the Scriptures in the average Sunday school is not surcharged with vital life. Much of it is not adapted to the minds of the pupils. I have failed to find a consciousness of any impression for good made by the reading of the Bible in the Sunday school. The average lesson has no point of contact with the child mind. Choice passages memorized and repeated as a part of the service have been consciously valuable. A short portion with judicious comment has also been helpful. All attempts to prepare liturgical enrichment for Sunday school use must be marked by a combination of simplicity which will appeal to the understanding of the child and that dignity whicli the subject demands. This cannot be created, but must be taken again from the rich store of past ages. In the prayers of the school the problem is to lead the children in prayer into petitions and things in which they are and should be in- terested and to furnish with prayer thoughts and vocabulary. This demands more thought and preparation than can be given by the leader. Here, again, the demand is for the rich prayers of confession, petition, and thanksgiving which are the common heritage of all Christ- endom. The more needful is this thoughtful leadership for the fact that so many have no other opportunity to learn to pray. We can see in the awakening of the church, in the increased interest of both pastors and superintendents, and in the widespread recogni- tion of weakness in our present methods every cause for optimism. Men engaged in propaganda must be optimistic, and are. The con- ditions which are deplorable cannot stand before an enlightened leader- ship, and the organization of the religious forces is becoming more effective in providing this leadership. May God hasten the day when His worship in our schools may be truly inspirational and full of in- telligent reverence and love. MISS LUCY WHEELOCK PRINCIPAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS Worship is an outward form of an inward state. It is like the flow- ering of a delicate, and not altogether common plant called reverence, whose roots strike deep into the soil of childhood. Its germ is found in that first faint sense sublime of a presence whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and the mind of man. It is a tender plant, needing careful nurture and an atmosphere 200 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION of religious feeling. It cannot be forced by precept nor by formal instruction. It thrives best in a home where a mother's daily reverent look and habitude teach her ovm simple version of the Christian faith, and where a father's religion is not a parade duty performed on Sun- day. It does not grow apace in a climate where doubt and suspicion of the good in others exists, and the faihngs of the preacher in the pulpit, and the teacher at the desk are freely discussed, nor in a country where there is no respect of age or condition; where children do not rise up before the hoary head as a crown of honor ; where the chief magistrate of the land is familiarly spoken of as "Teddy." The Sunday school has a difficult problem before it in attempting to foster the spirit of worship where it must supply the deficiencies of the home training and of community ideals. It can only furnish a favorable climate during the hour of the session, and hope for some abiding results. The atmosphere of the room and hour is more po- tent than any teaching in fostering the feeling of worship. Disorder, confusion, and hurry, and often, I fear, the pictorial and musical ac- companiments of the Sunday school lesson, are fatal to the inner col- lectedness which expresses itself in adequate forms of worship. If the service of song and praise and prayer is to be a genuine thing, it must voice, simply and reverently, the feelings and ideas which are possible to boys and girls, and must be guided by one who feels the meaning of it all. The simple faith of childhood in a God who is the giver of all good, ready to hear the cries of those who call unto Him, should be regarded as the most precious possession. It is sometimes lost through the doubt which creeps in when prayers for temporal good are encouraged. The Great Teacher taught his class how to pray in a form of prayer which expresses universal, and not particular, needs. The great forms of petition which voice the highest needs of the human soul, awaken aspiration, and give a vision of the fountain of life are those which may be appropriated by the devout soul anywhere, and the normal boy or girl responds to the fine expression of that hunger and thirst after righteousness which is a real desire of the soul. I should like to teach boys and girls of to-day to pray the prayer of Socrates of old: "Grant me to be beautiful in the inner man, and all I have of outer things to be at peace with those within. May I count the wise man only rich, and my store of gold be such as none but the good can bear. Need we anything more ? For myself, I have prayed enough." With the true prayer belongs, as body to spirit, the outer posture WORSHIP IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 201 and attitude of prayer. The folded hand and the head bowed before the Highest in Heaven react upon the consciousness and stir the ap- propriate feelings. The Guides to Goethe's Pedagogic Province be- lieve that reverence is a most difficult and- necessary thing for man to attain, and insist, among the boys of the Province, upon the atti- tude which expresses the threefold veneration for what is above us, for what is beneath us, and what is around us. The venerable guides to this Pedagogical Province explain that through assuming the atti- tude of respect and reverence the feeling becomes permanent. The highest punishment is to be declared unworthy to show reverence, to exhibit themselves as rude and uncultivated natures. The reality of the feeling in the Sunday school service is the chief thing, but it can never flourish apart from the appropriate form. Another great factor in stirring the feehng of reverence is song. It is the language of spirituality, the speech of the heart. It makes the most direct appeal to feeling. The tired soldier quickens his step to the sound of the Marseillaise. The very gates of Heaven seem to open through the singing of "Jerusalem the Golden." The restless child is soothed by the lullaby, and drops to sleep with glimpses of holy angels guarding his bed. But there are songs and songs. Songs of peace and songs of war, songs of triumph and victory, exciting and turbulent songs, gentle hymns of love and trust, and the old, ma- jestic hymns of the faith. The Sunday school may wisely limit itself to those songs and hymns which most directly arouse the spirit of worship through melody, rhythm, and word content. Intelligible to the understanding the ideas must be, and the melody appropriate to the thought. The great hymns of the Church are the blessed heritage of our Sunday schools. Does not the vision of the "noble army of men and and boys" who "trod the steep ascent to heaven, 'mid peril, toil, and pain" awaken always the desire to "follow in their train ? " The song, the service of prayer, with the devout attitude and quiet tone, create the atmosphere in which seeds of reverence may grow. So does the divinest in man spring up into eternal life. POPULAR BIBLE-STUDY BY COMMUNITIES CHARLES A. BRAND MANAGING EDITOR OF THE PILGRIM PRESS Community Bible-study is Bible-study carried on by the people of the community outside of the Sunday school, and without regard to church membership, or anything else but a desire to study the Bible. It is undenominational — a popular union movement. Hundreds of letters from almost every state in the Union, and from Canada, show that the country is full of this week-day, popular Bible-study by com- munities, by villages, neighborhoods, groups of people interested in the Bible for a hundred different reasons, and including the adherents of all denominations, and of no denomination, those who have been out-and-out disbelievers in Christianity as they have seen it, and, in some cases, Roman Catholics and Jews. It should be said that there are no full statistics. The most inter- esting are the individual classes, having no connection with any other organization, and so not reported anywhere. While this report is based on a wide investigation, it is certain that not half of the small, individual community classes have been discovered. A word must be said about the Young Men's Christian Associa- tions, which lead in promoting this work. The associations report 38,000 men and boys studying the Bible in their classes this winter — real study, too. Sixty of the associations have taken up the training of teachers for their various Bible classes. In Buffalo, for instance, there is a class the membership of which is limited to those who will lead classes of three or more men outside of the building. It has sixty members, of many denominations, who are teaching sixty out- side classes. In the Y. M. C. A. shop classes in Cleveland there are 2,500 different men attending noon and midnight shop Bible classes. There are also classes in street-car barns at all hours to accommodate the men. One is at 4:30 in the morning. Other associations have classes in roundhouses, flagmen's shanties, in the army and navy, in fire-engine houses, police headquarters, and underground in mines — 38,000 men of them studying the Bible. In the college associations there are 24,000 more in weekly Bible classes, making 62,000 in all. In Ohio one-fourth of the men in forty-one colleges and professional schools are enrolled in Y. M. C. A. Bible classes. Look next at University Extension work in Bible-study. There 202 POPULAR BIBLE-STUDY BY COMMUNITIES 203 are two conspicuous examples of what an institution can do for its own community, and by correspondence for a constituency much larger, in the work of Union Theological Seminary and in that of the University of Chicago. At twenty different centers in and around New York, Dr. Richard Morse Hodge, director of the extension work, President Charles Cuthbert Hall, and other members of the faculty of Union Seminary, are conducting community classes in Bible-study and religious education, and are directly reaching four hundred per- sons. This year they have introduced a course on "Religious Edu- cation in the Home," and a Sunday afternoon class for children on Old Testament History. This same thing is being done by other seminaries and colleges to a greater or less extent, and invariably re- sults in comniimity Bible -study. The American Institute of Sacred Literature, under the direction of President Harper of the Univer- sity of Chicago, offers forty-seven Biblical correspondence courses. These courses are inductive, and assume the soundness of the histor- ical method. There are six hundred local clubs at work on them to- day in all parts of the country. They are made up of members of all denominations. It is community Bible-study. But to speak of the clubs alone is to leave half the story untold, for a large part of the work is done with individuals. A letter received from the secre- tary, within a week, states that about 10,000 persons are connected with the institute at the present time. This is a vast force in the religious education of America. Many other kinds of extension work are being done. President Booker T. Washington writes that two nights each week the farmers and local preachers, from miles around, gather at Tuskegee to study the Bible, under the direction of Tuskegee Institute. And then, in connection with this, that the study may be taken back to the peo- ple in the region in its strength and purity, sermons are preached by the local ministers and criticised. The dining-room Bible-class work of the Bible Teachers' Train- ing School in New York is based on the principle that if the people won't come to us, we must go to them with the Bible. Take the pro- gramme for Monday evening, any Monday evening, and you will have the plan in a nutshell. The evening begins in the parlors of the Calvary Baptist Church (chosen because of its location). A great class, most of them students, gather. An early supper is served, after which Dr. Wilbert W. White teaches the Bible lesson for the day. At half-past seven the class breaks up and scatters in all directions. With- in half an hour forty Bible classes, gathered about forty different din- 204 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ing-room tables, are at work upon that same lesson. The classes often start with two or three members of one family, then the family that lives across the hall, or on the floor above or below; other neighbors come in, till the classes sometimes number- twenty-five or thirty. As to the summer institutes and assemblies, there are about one hundred and twenty-five that make Bible-study a part of their regu- lar work, but many of them are not strictly undenominational, and may not be considered. Another unusual form of community Bible-study is that being done by hundreds of the Woman's Clubs of the country. It is very popu- lar, and is being rapidly extended, though accurate statistics are not available. The facts, already given, have revealed an unusual and rapidly in- creasing interest in the study of the Bible, some of it devotional and evangelistic, more of it inductive and scholarly, but all of it bearing fruit in life and character. The most extraordinary and interesting facts, however, are those connected with individual classes and de- tached community movements that have sprung up in almost every state in the Union. These cases cannot be spoken of in detail, for they are numbered by the hundred. But while they vary in size, they show many common characteristics. Let me name a few of the larger ones. There is a great union class of five hundred in Dallas, Texas. In Providence there are two important groups , one a union of the churches of the city, in what were called "Gospel of John Conferences." These were addressed by various pastors and seminary professors, in order "To concentrate the thought of the church on the most spiritual of the gospels, and to bring churches and seminaries closer together." The other is the Providence Bibhcal Institute, with two hundred mem- bers. With this, the Rhode Island Woman's Club has come into affiliated relationship, having as its object to increase interest in the study of the Bible, particularly in its literary and historical aspects. The Bible Lectures Committee of the Twentieth Century Club is doing similar work for Greater Boston. The high-water mark this year was reached in the course of morning lectures by Professor Richard G. Moulton, which repeatedly packed the Colonial Theatre. The Club's popular classes have about three hundred members. The returns show a great increase in the number of communities with union Bible classes for Sunday school teachers. To the Inter- national Sunday School Association is largely due the credit for this POPULAR BIBLE-STUDY BY COMMUNITIES 205 work. I venture to say that it is doing more to promote broad, un- denominational co-operation in religious education to-day than any other religious organization. We do not often think of that side of its work, but we must not let its uniform lesson idea blind us to the real greatness of its work. Then last, but by no means least in significance, are the great numbers of smaller community classes that have sprung up without connection with any outside movement, sometimes originating with a pastor, who is an enthusiastic Bible student, sometimes with the super- intendent of public schools, with the men's class in one of the Sunday schools, with the teachers' meeting, with a college boy at home for vacation, and in countless other ways. The reports show that nine tenths of these community classes are enthusiastically studying the Bible as literature and the results of his- torical Bible-study. The membership is remarkable, enlisting the strongest and best people in the communities, large numbers of pub- lic school teachers, large numbers of business men, and society and club women. Now, what does it all mean ? What explains it ? Why this inter- est in Bible- study on the part of hundreds and thousands of people who have fought shy of it before? Let me suggest but a few of the many things that combine to explain the condition: (i) First may be named the emphasis that has been laid for the last ten years on the fact that, whatever else it may be, the Bible is a great literature. (2) A desire to know the results of the literary and historical study of the Bible. People have had their eyes open. They have discovered that higher criticism is not an emanation from the pit, as they were once led to believe; that it is never sneered at by the most intelligent ministers, and is taught in almost every seminary of any standing in this country. Curiosity? Perhaps, but interest is a better word, and, whatever it is, it is leading people to forget their differences and their prejudices, and study the Bible as it is. (3) Another thing that helps explain the change is, that to under- take a course of Bible study now does not mean what it once did. It used to be a pious act, and involved a certain set of beliefs about the Bible, a certain humbling of one's intellectual self before it. That, many people could not honestly do. It was a confession of faith; now it is a confession of a desire to know. The confession of faith comes after the study now, not before. This is the true order. And so, many of the more intellectually self-respecting people in these com- 2o6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION munities — not church members — are uniting with church people and others in a genuine inductive study of the Bible. (4) The faith we are showing in our own great Book makes a tre- mendous appeal, especially to young men and women. We ask no fa- vors for it. We urge the fullest and freest investigation of it. What people find to be true, that they are to beHeve. The Christian scholar's profound faith in the Bible, then, is proving contagious. (5) It is being studied in a thorough and scholarly manner. Most of the study is not called devotional, but, for all that, hfe and light and salvation are in the Book, and the people know it. They know, somehow, that in the Bible there is a revelation from God for them, and they are hungry for it. Many of the people whom we are so surprised to see in these community Bible classes have for a long time come "to Jesus by night," at least in their hearts. They are simply coming to him in the daytime now. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE REV. GEORGE W. MEAD, Ph.D. PASTOR FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND The instructions issued by the Sunday school section of the Religious Education Association to the committee for which we now report were : " To prepare a descriptive bibliography of the various lessons and books bearing upon Sunday school methods, without commendation or indorsement." We respectfully report that such publications may be classified as follows: I. Liternational Lesson Helps, by denominational pub- lishing societies and by independent pubHshers. 2. Denomina- tional Graded Lessons. 3. Manuals and Text-books for Graded Lessons, by committees and associations. 4. Books containing Suggested Courses of Study for Graded Bible Schools. 5. Book with Lessons suited to the Individual Departments of the Graded Bible School. 6. Graded Courses, by private and independent pub- lishers. 7. Books on Methods of Sunday School Work, Pedagogy, and Psychology. 8. Miscellaneous Sunday School Papers. I. The detailed features of the International Lesson Helps are tabulated in the addendum of this report. The arrangement of ma- terial in these Helps is, for the most part, in " traditional " form. But there are notable exceptions in leaflets and quarterlies for vary- ing grades, which are often provided material in addition to the Inter- national Lessons, and with Lesson Helps, which show a thorough ap- preciation of the principles and value of modern pedagogy. But such editorial attitude cannot be said to apply to any one of the pub- lications as a whole, while with some it is entirely wanting. In others, the improved methods are in name only, which emphasizes the care re- quired in the selection of a lesson system. One series on the Interna- tional has a department miscalled the " Graded System," which is nothing more than a church catechism; and the whole series of lessons gives no indication of an appreciation of the new thought and method. On the other hand, the almost universal emphasis on teacher-training, the adaptation of lessons to certain grades, and the various provisions of graded Supplemental Lessons indicates a cordial if conservative attitude toward the demand for a better pedagogy. 207 2o8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION II. Passing now to the graded courses of study offered by de- nominational publishing societies we have the following: 1. The General Council (Lutheran) Pubhcation Society, Phila- delphia. The lessons consist of Bible stories, pictures, history, geog- raphy, biography and hterature. This series represents perhaps the first thoroughgoing attempt to produce Sunday school text-books comparable to those used in the pubUc schools. 2. The American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia and Chicago, has a series called " Two Years with Jesus " for primary classes. The Intermediate Quarterly, the Advance Quarterly, the Home Department Quarterly, all contain material other than that dealing with the International Lessons. In the Home Department Quarterly and in the Senior Quarterly what are called " General Lessons " are given prominent place. These lessons are arranged in series; for example, the tenth series is called " The Old Covenant and the New," and contains four lessons: i. The Old Testament and the New; 2. Unity of the Bible as a whole; 3. National Divisions of the Bible; 4. The New Testament. The Baptist Teacher contains Teacher Training Departments and a Department of Oriental Lessons, and deals with Beginners' Course and General Lessons. It contains, also, a department called " From Missionary Fields." 3. The Sunday School Commission of the Diocese of New York has a series of paper-bound text-books on the basis of the latest knowl- edge in the psychology and pedagogy of religion. The features of the series are: Lists of books of reference; lists of pictures and other aids; suggested illustrations for each lesson; lists of maps, charts, chronological tables, poetic gems, and so forth. The lesson material is arranged according to what is called the Source Method; that is, the question followed by the Scripture reference and a blank space for the answer, thus directing the pupil to the Bible for the knowledge necessary to answer the question. Useful Me- moriter Passages, consisting of hymns, psalms, collects, and Scripture selections, are included in the system. 4. The Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society (Boston and Chicago), in " The Beginners' Lessons," take up the international uniform beginners' course. All the other quarterlies, with the exception of the abridged edition of the Junior Quarterly, contain subject-matter in addition to the lesson material of the Inter- national series. BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 209 5. The publications of the Unitarian Sunday School Society (Boston) are manuals on O. T. Narratives, Story, Great Thoughts of Israel, the Life and Teachings of Jesus, Beginning of Christianity, Beacon Lights of Christianity, and Great Passages in the Bible. The One-Topic-Three- Grade Course is what might be called a quasi-graded course; that is, the same subject forms the basis of study in all grades. III. Manuals and Text-books for Graded Lessons by Com- mittees AND Associations 1. The Presbyterian Board of Publication, Richmond, Virginia, has a " Manual of the Graded Course of Instruction in the Sunday School and Family," which provides for thirteen grades, including the Normal Department. 2. The Michigan Congregatiofial Association Committee publishes " The Graded Sunday School Course of Study for the Teacher," which has a scheme of supplemental lessons for the Primary Department, and four courses corresponding to the four Departments into which the the Sunday school is classified. Similar graded work is outlined: 3. In the Reports of the Com- mittee on Graded Bible School presented to the Association of Con- gregational Churches in Illinois, in reports Nos. i, 2, and 3, 1901-1903, inclusive; 4. In the Recommendations for Grading by the Rochester (New York) Sunday School Superintendents' Union, J. H. Gilmore, Chair- man of the Committee; 5. In the Manual for the Graded Sabbath School, Pennsylvania State Sabbath School Association; and 6. In the Unitarian Manual, published by the Western Unitarian Sunday School Society, Chicago, containing (a) A Study of Religion. Six Years' Outline. (b) A Study of Duties; The Growth of Character. Six Years' Outline. IV. Books containing suggested courses of study for Graded Bible Schools : 1. An Outline of a Bible School Curriculum. Pease. Univer- sity of Chicago Press. 2. Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School. Burton and Mathews. (University of Chicago Press.) 3. The Pedagogical School. Haslett. (Fleming H. Revell Com- pany.) 2IO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 4. Grading the Sunday School. Axtell. (The Cumberland Press.) 5. Sunday School Movements in America. Marianna C. Brown. (Fleming H. Revell Company.) 6. Modern Methods in Sunday-school Work. Mead. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) V. Books with Lessons Suited to the Individual Depart- ments OF THE Graded Bible School. I. Text-hooks jar Teachers of Children, a. Kindergarten. 1. Frederica Beard: The Kindergarten Sunday School. (Pilgrim Press, Boston and Chicago.) Detailed lessons for one year, arranged according to the months of the year, recognizing appropriate seasons. Other lessons recognizing the social relationships of children. 2. Laura Ella Cragin: Kindergarten Stories for the Sunday School and Home. (The Winona Publishing Co., Chicago.) Stories of the life of Christ, arranged as far as possible chronologically, and with appropriate lessons for special seasons, all of which are illumined by related incidents and stories. The book contains a detailed kinder- garten programme. 3. Gertrude Walker and Harriett S. Jenks: Songs and Games for Little Ones. (Oliver Ditson Company, Boston.) "Is designed to meet a need " of the kindergarten, the school, and the home, for songs and games for " little ones." h. First, Second, and Third Grades. 1. Six to Eight Years. Florence U. Palmer; One Year of Sun- day-school Lessons for Young Children. A Manual for Teachers and Parents. (Macmillan Company, New York.) Appropriate to the seasons and to the relationships of the child in his home, among his fellows and to the church and God. Illustrations, music. 2. Primary Manual. The Rainbow Series. (Rainbow Publishing Company, Manchester, N. H.) " Memory Work," " The Ten Com- mandments," " Beatitudes," " First Psalm," " Books of the Bible," "One Year of Stories from the Bible." The Miracles of the Bible. Same series as above. " Remarks upon Selection to be Studied," " Questions," " Written Answer Material." Stories of the Bible. Same series as above. " Remarks upon Selection to be Studied," " Questions," " Written Answer Material." The Parables of the Bible. " Remarks upon Selection to be Stud- ied," " Questions," " Written Answer Material." 3. George Hamilton Archibald: The Beginners' Course in Bible BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 211 Study (two years). Treatment of the Beginners' course of the Inter- national Lesson Committee. " Golden Text," " Aim," " Sugges- tions for Teaching," " Plan of Presentation of Each Lesson," " Man- ual Work for Children," " Memory Work." Published by Sunday school Times Company. 4. Mrs. Margaret J. Cushman Haven: Bible Lessons for Little Beginners. (Fleming H. Revell Company.) Two years. " Golden Text," " Passages for the Teacher's Study, with Analysis," " Outline of Lesson," " Blackboard Hints," " Presentation of the Lesson to the Class," " Suggestions for Music." 5. Mary E. Hutcheson: The Teacher's Manual. (New Educa- tion Series, Columbus, Ohio.) " Introduction," " Suggestions to Teachers," Under each lesson " Objective Helps," " Discussion with the Children," " AppHcation," " Suggestions for Teacher's Reading." 6. Walter L. Sheldon: The Old Testament Bible Stories for the Young. (W. M. Welch & Co., Chicago.) " Stories Re-told, with Suggestions to the Mother or Teacher." 7. Frederica Beard: Old Testament Manual. (Winona Publish- ing Company, Chicago.) A two years' course of lessons for children of 7 to 9 years of age, covering Old Testament history. 8. William L. Worcester: On Holy Ground. (J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.) Is a series of stories from the Old Testament and Gospels with pictures of Bible Lands, peoples, and things, illustrative of the Scripture study. 2. Text-hooks for Teachers of Children in the Junior and Intermediate Grades. 1. Nine to Fifteen Years. Georgia L. Chamberlin: An Intro- duction to the Bible for Teachers of Children. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago.) Pedagogical introduction. Forty lessons giving an introduction to each of the divisions of the Biblical material, books of history and story, poetry, law, sermons, letters, visions. Under each lesson: "Aim," "Bibliography," "Suggestions for the Preparation of the Teacher," " Suggestions for the Presentation of the Lesson," " Home Work for the Children," " Suggestions to Parents." 2. Melvin Jackson: Travels of Paul. (The International Com- mittee of the Y. M. C. A.) A course of study for boys' Bible classes. " Home Readings," " Questions for Discussion for the Boys," " Man- ual for the Teacher, Containing Outline for Study and Suggestions for Presentation." 3. W. H. Davis: Men of the Bible. (The International Com- 212 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION mittee of the Y. M. C. A.) For boys' Bible classes. " Home Read- ings," " Questions for Discussion for the Boys," " Manual for the Teacher Containing Outline for Study and Suggestions for Presenta- tion." 4. William Byron Forbush: The Illuminated Lessons on the Life of Jesus. (Underwood and Underwood, New York.) " Sugges- tions for the Use of the Lessons, with Stereographs." General pedago- gical introduction. " Home Work," " Manual Methods," " Maps." 5. Nahum Wesley Grover: Catechetical Bible Lessons. (Wi- nona Publishing Company, Chicago.) General catechism, designed to bring the great Scripture truths before children in a definite and lasting way. 6. ■ W. J. Mutch: Junior Bible Lessons. (Christian Nurture, New Haven, Conn.) The question method pursued in connection with Biblical stories, poems, hymns introduced; blanks for written-answer questions. 8. W. J. Mutch: History of the Bible. (Christian Nurture, New Haven, Conn.) " Arranged for Use as a Text-book." " Brief His- tory of the Growth of the Bible and Its Many Versions." Each chapter followed by review questions. 9. Walter L. Sheldon: Citizenship and the Duties of a Citizen. " Ethics for the Young." (W. M. Welch Company, Chicago.) (For use rather in the home and the day-school than the Sunday-school.) 10. Walter L. Sheldon: Lessons in the Study of Habits. (W. M. Welch Company, Chicago.) " A Series of Chapters on the Meaning of Habit and the Habits Themselves." " Suggested Dialogue, Ques- tion, Maxims, Poems." 11. Ernest D. Burton: Studies in the Gospel According to Mark. (The University of Chicago Press.) " Preface for the Pupil," " Pref- ace to the Teacher." Sixty-nine sections of Scripture material. 12. Frederica Beard: Wonder Stories from the Gospels. (Wi- nona Publishing Company, Chicago.) A series of lessons for children of nine and ten years of age on, the Life and Ministry of Jesus. 13. Mrs. M. G. Kennedy; Special Songs and Services, Nos i. and 2 (W. A. Wilde Company, Boston, Chicago), arranged for Primary and Intermediate Classes. Various Order of Services are given. 3. Text-hooks for Adults and Senior Classes. I. William R. Harper: The Foreshadowings of the Christ, The Work of the Old Testament Sages, The Work of the Old Testament Priests. (The American Institute of Sacred Literature, Chicago.) BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 213 Three outline studies, covering each nine months, using only Scripture material, inductive method, daily work assigned, review questions, provision for certificate, individual class- work. 2. Ernest D. Burton: The Life of Christ, The Founding of the Christian Church. (American Institute of Sacred Literature, Chi- cago.) Two outline studies covering each nine months, using only Scripture material, inductive method, daily work assigned, review c^uestions, provision for certificate, individual class-work. 3. Shailer Mathews: The Social and Ethical Teaching of Jesus. (The American Institute of Sacred Literature, Chicago.) Outline of material from the Gospels. 4. Hazard-Fowler: The Books of the Bible with Relation to Their Place in History. (Pilgrim Press, Boston, Chicago.) Fifty studies on the Biblical books. 5. Taylor and Morgan : Studies in the Life of Christ. (Eaton and Mains, and Jennings and Pye.) " Suggestions for Daily Work," " In- troductory Material," " Personal Thought." Taj'lor and Morgan: Studies in the Apostolic Age. (Eaton and Mains, and Jennings and Pye.) Same series as Taylor and Morgan: Life of Christ. 6. Ernest D. Burton: Handbook on the Life of the Apostle Paul. (The University of Chicago Press.) " An outline for class-room and private study." 7. H. M. Hamill: Practical Outline Study of the Four Gospels, Life of Christ, Acts. (Winona Publishing Company, Chicago.) " Sug- gestions for Drill." 8. Milton E. Kern: Lessons in New Testament History. (Union College Press, College View, Nebraska.) Volumes i and 2, Life of Christ; volume 3, Apostolic History. 9. Burton and Mathews: Constructive Studies in the Life of Christ. (University of Chicago Press.) " Map," " Suggestions to Teachers," " General Bibliography," "Historical Introduction," "Il- lustrations." Thirty-five chapters. 10. William R., Harper: Constructive Studies in the Priestly Element of the Old Testament. (University of Chicago Press.) " Eleven chapters; covering history of worship in the Old Testament, according to the early, the middle, and the late period. A comparative study of the laws and usages of worship." " Full Bibliography of both English and German authors," " Constructive Work," " Questions," " Sug- gestions," " Supplementary Topics." 11. Henry T. Sell: Bible Study by Books. (Fleming H. Revell 214 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Company, Chicago.) Fifty-two studies, introductions to the Books of the Bible, the author, " Analysis," " Aim," etc. 12. Henry T. Sell: Supplementary Bible Studies. (Revell Com- pany, Chicago.) Twenty-four chapters on the History of the Bible, the Land of Palestine, etc. 13. Henry Berkowitz: The Open Bible. (The Jewish Chautau- qua Society, Philadelphia.) A series of Lessons, with Required Read- ing, Suggestions, Tests, and Reviews on the Old Testament History and Literature. 14. D. C. Marquiss: Life of Christ in Seven Periods. (Winona Publishing Company, Chicago.) An outline of Scripture material, with occasional notes. VI. Graded Courses by Private and Independent Publishers. 1. The Bible Study Union, or Blakeslee, Lessons provide " Six Comprehensive and Connected Series of Lessons." These are divided into biographical and historical lessons. The biographical are: "The Patriarchs, Kings, and Prophets," " The Life of Christ," and " New Testament Heroes." The historical are: " Old Testament History," " Gospel History," and " Apostolic Church History." Uniformity in the subjects studied, together with a grading, so far as possible, of the material and treatments under this general subject, form the basis of this series. 2. Bible Studies, Elyria, Ohio, provides for four grades with the purpose of making the series a correlated and chronological study of the Bible from an historical standpoint. 3. The Rainbow Publishing Co., Manchester, New Hampshire, issues undated text-books for a graded school of five departments, with recommendation of the International Lessons for senior classes. 4. Christian Nurture, New Haven, Connecticut, provides a graded course based on the three department divisions of the Sunday school. " Junior Bible Lessons " is a cloth-bound text-book. " The History of the Bible " and " Christian Teachings " are paper bound. The books are intended to be used as text-books by the pupil, and are undated. 5. The Lutheran Book Concern, Columbus, Ohio, publishes " Bib- lical History for Primary Classes," a cloth-bound text-book, illustrated with woodcuts, 162 pages; and " Biblical History for Intermediate and Higher Classes," a board-bound text-book of 368 pages. Both contain only the words of Scripture. 6. The George W. Jacobs and Company, Philadelphia, Penn- sylvania, publishes two quarterlies of selected lessons, the one being for use in the Primary and Junior Grades; the other for the Intermediate BOOKS AND LESSONS FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 215 and Senior Grades. The features are memory verses, questions, " col- lect," and for the Intermediate and Senior Grades daily Bible Readings. 7. Illustrative of individual work of many pastors, we mention the series of graded studies prepared by H. P. De Forest, D. D., for the five departments of the Woodward Avenue Congregational Church, Detroit, Michigan. The booklets are: Course one, "Story of the Jews." Course two, " Studies of the Apostolic Age." Course three, " The Story and Teachings of Jesus." Course four, " The History of Ancient Israel." Course five, " Israel's Prophetic Age." Respectfully submitted. Geo. Whitefield Mead, Miss Georgia L. Chamberlin, Delbert S. Ullrick, Commitiee. Note. — A very full Bibliography of works for Sunday School teachers and officers, and for students of religious pedagogy, has been prepared by the Rev. William Walter Smith, M. D., under the direction of the Sunday School Department. It is so complete that it should be of value to a very large class, and it is the hope of the Religious Educa- tion Association to make it available to all by issuing it at some future date as a separate publication. THE SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL EXHIBIT REV. RICHARD MORSE HODGE, D.D. DIRECTOR EXTENSION COURSES FOR LAY STUDENTS, UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY The Sunday School Department of the Religious Education Associa- tion has arranged a Sunday school exhibit in Gilbert Hall of this build- ing (Tremont Temple), and delegates and all others interested are invited to the inspection of the exhibit during the sessiqn of the con- vention. The exhibit displays the different policies of religious education pursued by Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish Sunday Schools in the United States and Canada. The material embraces Sunday school building plans, apparatus, maps, oriental models, literature, curricula, printed forms for administration, and a more comprehensive display than has been made elsewhere of manual work executed by Sunday school pupils, in the form of maps and picture and narrative books. A printed guide has been provided, which locates the exhibits according to wall sections and tables. Members of the committee in charge will be found ready to furnish information regarding the ex- hibits and give demonstrations of manual work either immediately on application or according to appointment. A clerk has been engaged to take orders for any purchasable articles, samples of which may be on exhibition. The exhibit has been made as comprehensive as cir- cumstances would permit. The articles displayed have been reduced to as small a number as the comprehensive character of the exhibit would permit, lest the plan of arrangement should be lost in a multi- plicity of detail, and the result prove more bewildering than suggestive, especially as the time available to delegates for the inspection of what is offered is necessarily limited. The purposes of the exhibit may be summarized as follows : I. To record the present progress of religious education in the Sunday schools of the country. The maps of paper-pulp and clay, for instance, have been made during the last twelve months, and are the first work of pupils in Sunday schools which, as far as known, are the pioneers in this method of Sunday-school geography study. The best that can be said of the books shown is that they include the most im- portant recent contributions to Sunday school literature. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL EXHIBIT 217 2. To promote the co-operation of Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish Sunday school workers in the sokition of problems of re- ligious education. This is the first Sunday school exhibit at which the methods of these three bodies or of any two of them have been shown together. 3. To suggest the value of permanent Sunday school exhibits of a comparative and non-sectarian character in every city at least in the country. A permanent encyclopaedic exhibit has been developed for several years at the headquarters of the Sunday School Commission of the Diocese of New York, considerable material from which figures in the exhibit of this convention. A permanent exhibit is being collected under the auspices of the Jewish Summer School. 4. To demonstrate the value of a Sunday school museum, on how- ever modest a scale, for every Sunday school in the land. Our ex- hibit indicates what' material would prove most useful, the character and quality of the articles necessary to make such a museum up to date, and what articles could be made by Sunday-school pupils themselves, and information is offered concerning where additional equipment can be purchased. The contents of a Sunday school museum are available for classroom use; and the honor of securing a place for their best work in the museum of the school cannot fail to stimulate the efforts of pupils in all of the forms of manual exercises employed. A special room for a museum, however desirable, will be found by no means es- sential. The whole plant may be made a school and museum in one. 5. To remind theological seminaries and colleges that, without a museum of Sunday school appliances and specimens of pupil work, they lack essential equipment for Sunday school teacher training. Teachers' College, Columbia University, has started a permanent Sun- day school exhibit in its museum, and last year held the first of pro- posed special annual Sunday school exhibits. A Sunday school museum has been undertaken also at Union Theological Seminary, New York. 6. To demonstrate the value of seeing, handhng, and using Sunday school appliances and of practising manual methods in teacher-training classes conducted by normal departments of Sunday schools, Sunday school institutes, and summer schools. A very few minutes' experi- ment in our Sunday school exhibit hall will convince the most skeptical, whether spent in explaining a conclusion upon a Sunday school ques- tion to an inquirer or in seeking information of some one qualified to explain an unfamiliar principle or method of Sunday school administra- tion or teaching. 2i8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. An exhibit has an obvious function in the work of the Sunday school department of the ReHgious Education Association. This platform is the rostrum of the department. The different Sunday schools of the country are the department's numerous laboratories. And the annual exhibit is its traveling museum. The museum and rostrum alike derive inspiration from the local laboratories. If the method of ex- pression of the rostrum is more elastic, that of the museum is more concrete. Claims made upon the platform are demonstrated in the exhibit by the evidence of actual accomplishment. The exhibit is a friendly competitor of the platform. You have heard the adage, " What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say." You remember, too, the Greek who said, "You can make the laws, only let me write the people's songs." The many men, women, and children who have made contributions to your exhibit have no reason to envy those who speak from this platform. You may make the speeches, if only we can make the exhibit! An exhibit would seem to be as essential to the Young Men's Chris- tian Association and Young People's Societies departments as to the department of Sunday schools. In fact, the educational work of all of these departments is represented in the exhibit which we have pre- pared. THE CONTENTS OF THE EXHIBIT. Sunday School Plant: Plans, furniture, and apparatus. Literature: Text-books and reference works. Maps: Wall relief and print maps and atlases. Pictures: Wall prints, small prints, pictijre cards, and stereographs. Models: Oriental dwellings, furniture, implements, and other ar- ticles. Administration: Forms for records, programs, and diplomas. Curricula: The International and other one-subject courses and graded courses. Manual Methods: Biblical maps executed by pupils in relief, colors, lines, and points; their picture-books of prints, titles, texts, written descriptions, and illustrative drawings; narrative books of biblical history, illustrated by maps and drawings; and illuminated cards and folders of hymns, prayers, prints, and drawin^^s. VI. SECONDARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS WHAT CHANGES SHOULD BE MADE IN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS TO MAKE THEM MORE EFFICIENT IN MORAL TRAINING? PRESIDENT G. STANLEY HALL, Ph.D., LL.D. CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS The answer to this question that will probably first occur to most is the method long in vogue in Germany, and now adopted with some modifications in France and England. Under this system children of each confession go at certain hours, provided each week on the secondary programme, to special religious teachers, who are usually nominated by the church and examined and paid by the state. Germany recognizes Catholics, Lutherans, and Jews. England requires some religious instruction for all children, even those of free thinkers. This scheme has intricacies and many variations, but, in general, works well, and partial applications of it have been tried sporadically in this country. It is, however, hardly practicable here on a large scale, for many rea- sons which do not concern us here. What does concern us, however, is that it is very doubtful if Bible teaching, hymn, church forms, and history, especially when taught intellectually for examination, have much power for morahty, and I, for one, am coming to think that how- ever the Scriptures are taught they need to be supplemented by other agencies to entirely meet the ethical needs of our modern youth. It should be no shock to believers to find they cannot make the Bible do everything. This is a view now held by many, and so we have a number of attempts, mostly rather crude, to make selections from the facts and teachings of Confucianism and even Mohammedanism, but especially from Buddhism, and also several attempts by Protestants to select and re-edit a few of the lives of the saints, and some of the more liberal editors incorporate pertinent secular maxims and proverbs, extracts of Talmudic and patristic hterature, etc. For one I cannot abandon hope of a Bible chrestomathy like that of Moulton or the Chi- cago Woman's Club, on which Catholics and Protestants and also, for the Old Testament, Jews shall agree, and to this I personally would like to add gems from other religions. This, together with a few hymns and prayers, is incorporated in all the best authorized German readers and gives them a unique and welcome character. The time has now 219 220 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION come for another committee of ten or less to try to solve this problem. But highly susceptible as youth is to religious influences, and potent above all other agencies as these are for virtue, even the above resources are not entirely sufl&cient for adolescent nature and needs. Religions do need to be supplemented by other motives to develop juvenile morality. Thus, secondly, while using to the uttermost every religious motivation, some have sought ways and means to supplement these by other efforts, as follows: English and other classical literature and history has been searched for outcrops of great moral problems. These have been excerpted, perhaps restated with some sacrifice of classical form for the sake of content, epitomized, and condensed and used to perform the decision of conscience, to show virtue both ex- ternally rewarded and also as its own reward, to broaden moral expe- rience by depicting great struggles between good and evil in the soul, and in a word, to teach ethics by example. Mr. H. Bigg calls such an anthology an ethnic Bible, and in France an official text-book has been compiled to inspire youth to great deeds by illustrations from the na- tional history and literature, and the Germans seek this end in their many-volumed readers. Indeed, the claim is now heard that every other end in the teaching of the vernacular literature, such as style, form, historical completeness, literary criticism, philology, should be absolutely subordinated to the purpose of moral improvement. With all these ideals and endeavors, I, for one, have the most hearty sym- pathy, and beheve them pedagogically sound and full of hope. It would mean a radical reform and reconstruction of the present pre- scribed methods and ideals of high-school English, and would rescue this work from its present degradation of content in the interests of form. But even both these methods are together not entirely adequate to the present grave and growing need of moralizing high-school educa- tion. To them should be added, as a third, a systematic course of moral education of a very concise, concrete, and practical kind, an outline of which, as it has grown in my mind, is as follows: First should come health as wholeness or holiness of body, comprising plain, personal, homely talks, with perhaps sometimes brief papers and discussions by the class on diet, regimen, individual hygiene, sleep, body-keeping generally. Here the intense zest for athletics should be tapped or turned on as a motive power. Temperance comes here. There should be a little sane and scientific teaching about alcoholism, the ideals of the simple life versus luxury, regularity, dress, and this part of the course should culminate in a few very plain medical talks to boys alone about purity, sexual regimen, and heredity. HIGH SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 221 Then should come something about the life of feeling, especially anger, its place, the kinds of temper, and their vents, control, patience, with snatches of the new psychology in this field. So, too, the very delicate topic of love has aspects where wise instruction by hints and rapid suggestion can do much. Loving aright up the Platonic ladder to the good, beautiful and true, is a fruitful source and theme of wis- dom. Friendship is a helpful and related theme, and its lofty ideals in antiquity and modern instances can be adduced, showing its qualities and influences, and what companionship, cliques, and even gangs and other forms of youthful association can do. Even sympathy with animals should not be omitted. So fear and cowardice, true courage, moral and physical, the Aristotelian fearing aright as the consumma- tion of human wisdom, envy, jealousy, revenge, etc., should not be omitted. So, too, the great primal duties, based on conscience and the moral instinct, and casuistry, habit and its relation to duty, can be enforced in an unsophisticated way, and made simple and direct. Work and the strenuous life versus sloth and idleness; selfishness versus altruism; generosity and benevolence, and the duty of helpfulness; obedience, authority, conformity to custom, conventional lies, independence, and individuality; courtesy, politeness, the ideal of the gentleman in relation to society and to women, social form, magnanimity, noblesse oblige versus exiguousness and overscrupulosity and meanness; patriotism and its duties and implications, citizenship and the rudiments of civic obliga- tion; money, wealth, and poverty, their uses and abuses, display and simple tastes; — all these virtues we know, if Plato did not, can now be taught to some extent. So, too, something is needed about euphoria, the joy of living, the place of fun, having a good time, play, sports, games, the duty of happiness, the optimist and the pessimist, the con- duct of the imagination, revery, interest, curiosity, and their opposite, apathy, nil admirari, and indifference. Perhaps highest of all moral themes for youth stands honor. It can do for the modern heart some things religion cannot. It has had many a code and standard. In Bushido it is well called the soul of Japan, as it was of chivalry, and has given us our ideals of the gentleman. No human soul is so degraded that it cannot respond intensely to some form of this sentiment. It has made men who scorned religion accept disgrace and even death in silence, and fly to the wages of battle where Hfe was at stake. Like all strong instincts, it is often perverted, and sanctions many evils, and is in crying need of edification. Probably every man of spirit would prefer death to dishonor. Perhaps its psycho-genetic root is loyalty to the unborn, 222 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION but if so, it is often strangely perverted. It can probably be made the strongest of all supports of true virtue. Hovi^ can the true teacher, who is faithful to his high calling as a real shepherd of souls, view with in- difference the distortion and degeneration of this primal principle or not yearn to re-orient and utilize it for morality ? I know that many wise teachers will doubt the feasibility of such a course in practical ethics. I grant it requires consummate tact, good taste, great knowledge of youth, and not only the experience that comes with age, but a unique equipment of modern special knowledge, and also that although there have been many tentative and partial efforts in this direction, it has not yet anywhere fully demonstrated its power. The text-books in elementary ethics are, the best of them, not adequate, and the worst, by far in the majority, are those that are devoted to ethical theory, which youth abhors, and which teach a senescent morality that suggest that Plato was right that a young man should be whipped who wanted to study ethics. But it is in the vast new resources of inductive and empirical psychology, ethics and sociology, that the most of the best of this material is found, and that these are now adequate I am fully and completely convinced. It is precisely here that it is capable, when the data are properly organized, of inaugurating a most needed and salutary departure. The opponent of such a course most to be feared is the academic professor of ethics of the speculative and his- toric school, because for him ethics means the study of ultimate standards of right and wrong, and it is precisely of this that I would say with Plato it should be forbidden to youth. What is needed is not types of theory, but types of each virtue and vice, the miser, hypocrite, saint, martyr, the sot and the sage, the paragon of patience or heroism, the great patriot, the dreamer, idler, the roue, the leader, and the henchman, the rollicker and the precisian and formalist, the ideal student, the investigator, the recluse and man of affairs, the fop, cynic, the Puritan and the cavalier, the ascetic and the debauchee, the finicky and overscrupulous man, and the slattern, the virago, the naive, and sophisticated, and all the other types of human nature which stand out in letters and history more clearly and uniquely because in simpler lineaments than they are any- where found in life. These are single, elemental, moral qualities per- sonified, and so best suited for those in the elemental stage of studying man, the supreme end of all study. These put forth with strong colors, and fit incidents set in characteristic action, brought into conflict with '^ach other with the good always triumphing over the bad, teach lessons that sink deep and take root and bear fruit in youthful souls. The moral must be submerged, impressed indirectly by hint and suggestion, but must never be absent. HIGH SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 223 Now this can be done, but not ad hoc, nor by one individual, but on the basis of syllabi, wrought out by collective wisdom, and with the systematic co-operation of a few high schools that would give a little time to it — .part here, part there. With such a method we might in a few years, by bringing into fruitful union the psychologist and the practical high school teacher who could work in freedom from college domination, possess a mine of teachable moral worths that would have a value and power of which we now little dream. Discussion FREDERIC ALLISON TUPPER ' HEAD MASTER OF THE BRIGHTON HIGH SCHOOL, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS First, the material side of the school must be given vastly more attention than it has received up to this time. The generous play- ground, the ample gymnasium, the suitable equipment of baths, lunch- eons not too hygienic for " human nature's daily food," all have their places in this problem. Let the sunlight into the schoolrooms at all hazards. Spare not soap and water. If the old ventilating apparatus is bad, have it torn out. Introduce some workable system of medical inspection which, by its skilled prevention, will forestall many an ill- ness. Introduce moisture into the air of the schoolroom. Cleanliness is, indeed, next to godliness; so, furnish abundance of pure water, un- stinted soap, and altogether too many towels. Second, let that beauty which is truth characterize the school building and all of its surroundings. A noble approach has much to do with the architectural effect of a building. A noble building, nobly approached, and nobly surrounded, is a perpetual moral lesson. The interior of the building must correspond with the exterior in dignity and truth. Broad corridors, wide stairways, ample class- rooms, generous halls, waste no space, they are, as Emerson would say, " pure use." In the decoration of the building is found a most admira- ble opportunity of emphasizing the moral lessons of all time. When the time of widely extended liberal culture shall come, many of the pale casts and colorless photographs will be consigned to the museum, and in their stead beautiful original wall-paintings by native artists will fascinate with their beauty and elevate by their dignity. Such pictures, appropriate to their surroundings, might well influence the beholders forever. Our secondary schools are largely a mirror of the times, so that certain accepted elements of daily life must be eliminated before the 224 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION best results can be reasonably expected. With immoral books and papers for sale on every hand, with immoral plays at many a theater, and immoral bill-boards advertising the immoral plays, with immoral critics who term indecency " virility," whereas it is merely bestiality, the secondary schools have a problem of the most difficult nature. The teacher's greatest influence is unconscious. There is a beauti- ful winning quality called " charm," characteristic of the " brightest, most consummate flower " of our civilization. When " charm " is combined with high character and great abihty, there is a combination of matchless power. Where can that combination be so essential as in the profession of teaching? The voice of our Saviour said to the tumultuous sea, " Peace!" and it was still. To the tumultuous heart of youth, the spirit of loving-kindness, of the gentleman, of the gentle- woman, speaks with unconscious power and charm, and that stormy, impulsive heart grows calm. And so I welcome every measure that will improve the quality of our teaching force, for with them more, than with any other element in the discussion, are " the issues of life." The best men and women, no matter what the cost of their services, are the only suitable guardians of the moral training of our boys and girls. In consequence of the number of such men and women in the profession of teaching, much more progress in moral training in second- ary schools has been made than many eminent authorities suppose. Some gentlemen tell us that our public schools are Godless and utterly irreligious! I deny the statement utterly. From an experi- ence of twenty-five years in these schools I say that good progress is made in the moral and religious training of our youth in these schools. If the various communities desire more of this instruction than their children are now getting, they have every facihty for making their wishes known. It may be that a more widely extended use of text- books of moral and of mental science would be productive of good, but such books must be as unsectarian as sunlight, air, and water. Some years ago I had in my school-building two small, poorly lighted, badly ventilated recitation-rooms, and a dark passageway between them. I had the partition knocked out, and with what result? There is one broad, sunlit, airy classroom. If there is to be still more moral and religious training in the secondary schools, it must be moral and religious, with all the sectarian partitions knocked out, so that the air and sunshine of God, unrestrained by the devices of man, may per- meate the'school where his children meet on equal terms. HAS THE READING OF LATIN AND GREEK LITERATURE ANY EFFECT, FAVORABLE OR UNFAVORABLE, UPON THE MORALS OF PUPILS ? PRINCIPAL WILLIAM T. PECK, Sc.D. CLASSICAL HIGH SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND The question assigned for the hour was probably put into this form in order to arouse attention and to cause the teacher to consider his obligations in the line of moral training. The question is very narrow. The word " pupils " indicates that it limits the reading of Latin and Greek literature to that pursued under the direction of teachers. The Departmental Session of the Religious Education Association, in which we are gathered, narrows the scope of the question further and causes it to limit the reading to that pursued under the direction of teachers of secondary pubUc schools. The view of ancient life seen in the literary works of Hesiod, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, and Demosthenes, or of Plautus, Terence, Lucretius, Cicero as philosopher, Horace, the elegiac poets, Tacitus, Juvenal, and Marcus Aurelius, must be banished from our minds. The range of Latin and Greek literature read in the secondary public schools is small, and consequently its presentation of life is limited. The amount read in Greek consists of selections from the Anabasis or Hellenica of Xenophon and from the Iliad of Homer, in all about three hundred pages; in Latin-selections from Caesar's Gallic War or Civil War, selections from Ovid, the Catiline of Sallust, eight orations of Cicero, and six books of Virgil, in all about four hundred pages. The ques- tion, then, is, what effect has the reading of these seven hundred pages of Greek and Latin literature upon the morals of the pupils ? If the young person, upon entering the high school, is asked if murder, stealing, lying, cruelty, insolence, and disobedience to proper authority are right, he will at once answer, No; if he is asked if love, honesty, truthfulness, kindness, respect, and obedience are right, he will surely answer. Yes. From the very beginning the high school teacher relies upon his pupil's knowledge of right and wrong, and confidently asks if this is right and that is wrong. He feels that, if the pupil does the best that he knows, his conduct will be satisfactory, both within school and without. The teacher recognizes the difficulty of this doing of the best in accordance with knowledge, arising from indifference, stubborn- ness, and temptation to wrong. He desires to join with whatever forces 225 226 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION there are around the youth, it may be with the church, the home, and companions, in endeavoring to kindle the desire and direct the will, so that right may be followed. The greatest power in this direction is the example, character, and sympathy of the teacher. This may be shown in all his life, in set moral talks, but one of the places where it most naturally appears is in the study of literature. In the poets and the great prose writers, from the gems of thought and the lives of men, can be drawn those lessons by the believer in them and the practiser of them that will render virtue most desirable and of the greatest value, and vice most despicable and of the greatest loss. If the student is often brought into the thought of the true and the good, and if invita- tion to the nobler and the better is come and not go, it is evident, if the methods of all the great moral teachers of the ages are true, that some favorable effect will be produced upon his moral character. Can the selected portions of Latin and Greek literature afford such an oppor- tunity to the true teacher? When, years ago, Latin, Greek, and mathe- matics were the only studies of the preparatory schools, were there not teachers famous for the moral power in their teaching ? And to-day our teachers cannot fail to use for moral influence this material which is brought to their hands. The Latin read during the first year consists of fables, the Viri Romffi, and a book of Caesar. The pupil enters the high school with a receptive mind and ready sympathy. A new world of thought is opened before him, all the more eagerly grasped at because new. Then is the time to impress upon him the great lessons of right modes of thought and action, of love of home, of parents, and of country. The fable is especially valuable along this line. The work in the Viri Romae takes the pupil farther in the same direction, by creating in him an interest in the deeds and virtues of Rome's greatest men. Devoted patriotism, self-sacrifice and bravery, filial affection, courage m danger, true friendship, and a high sense of honor are illustrated in concrete form. These stories coming, down through the ages, the young student takes in with his Latin verb and his Latin vocabulary, and makes them a part of his life. Next comes Caesar. We read three books of his Commentaries on the Gallic War. I follow the programme of my school, because I know what moral teaching is given there. One of my teachers used the second and third books with her class to draw out the qualities of a great commander. The following topics from the first book show how other teachers find the opportunity for moral instruction: In chapter seventeen, the duty of a citizen, — if your companions are acting CLASSIC LITERATURE AND MORAL TEACHING 227 treacherously, ought you to tell those in authority? — in chapter nine- teen, the treachery of Dumnorix and Caesar's respect for the feelings of Divitiacus; in chapter twenty, the motives that influence Divitiacus to plead for his brother; in chapter twenty-two, the hasty and inaccurate observations of Considius that defeat Caesar's plans, while Labienus obeys orders of Caesar under trying circumstances; in chapter twenty- five, Caesar sets his men an example by removing his own horse; in chapter twenty-seven, ought the Helvetians, after surrendering, to try to escape by flight, because the opportunity seems good ? We come next to the Catiline of Sallust. It cannot be said that here there is no opportunity for moral instruction, for the work is al- most a moral treatise. It deals with such subjects as the powers of man and their proper use, the noble character of the early Romans, the introduction of luxury and vice into Rome, the causes of Roman greatness, and the characters of Csesar and Cato in comparison, the character of Catiline and his associates, and the great conspiracy. The introduction affords opportunity for moral instruction upon its every line, the main part of the work upon every page. Two teachers give me more than sixty places where they have spontaneously developed moral lessons. A view of their scope may be obtained by mentioning some of these in order : Exertion necessary for development; mind godlike, everlasting; character dependent upon the active virtues, " labore, continentia, aequitate"; Sallust's stress upon the activity of the mental powers and the subordination of the physical, which makes a deep impression upon pupils; the powerful constructive force Catiline could have been, had his tendencies been in the right direction; generous treatment of friends; respect for age and experience; valor and glory the ideal; how in- dividuals and consequently states retrograde; contrast in methods of securing ends; causes of corruption of army; evils of luxurious living. From the orations of Cicero against Catiline similar lessons can be drav^Ti. But instead of the moral criticism of Sallust we study the burning words of the leader of the forces of government in his endeavor to put down rebellion. The impassioned orator speaks in order to accomplish something; we get the moral lessons at first hand. In addi- tion, we have the works in the surpassing literary form of one of the world's greatest orators, and the attractiveness of the clothing adds to the impressiveness of the lesson. The student cannot fail to consider the real friends and foes of one's country, the character of the forces of good and of evil, the uses of mercy and of justice, the power of conscience, the interposition of divine providence, the eternal rewards of a noble 228 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION memory, and chiefly the duties of citizenship and the love of coun- try. In the oration in behalf of Archias, Cicero dwells upon the advan- tages of a liberal education, the value of poetry and literary studies, the lessons found in the lives of the noblest men whose deeds are recorded in literature, and the advantage of the employment of one's time in literary pursuits rather than in leisure and dissipation. How easy is the step in this refining and elevating discussion of the attractiveness of the intellectual life to pass to the necessity of the high moral life for the completion of the perfect character! Xenophon, the follower of Socrates, in his lucid and picturesque narration of the Anabasis, leaves no doubt of his attitude towards right and truth. Among the many passages that afford opportunity for moral training none are more suggestive than the masterly character sketches of Cyrus, Proxenus, and Men on. In less than two lines he brings out the integrity of two slain heroes. " Neither did any deride them as being cowardly in war nor blame them for faithlessness in friendship." In the fifth book, with what sarcasm and scorn does he hold up the folly of mob rule and the evils of Judge Lynch; with what pathos does he set forth the meanness of ingratitude. " But verily it is noble indeed, and just and devout, and more pleasing, to make mention of good acts rather than of evil." We come next to the poets. Here we expect that the seers will show us the real. The grace of poetic form is like a precious case for the moral thought. The selections from Ovid furnish rich gems from the. storehouse of mythological lore. It is the golden age that honors the sterling virtues: " Sine lege fidem rectumgue colebat." In the iron age, when wickedness is rampant, there is no place for them: " Fugere pudor verumgue fidesque." Deucalion and Pyrrha were saved from the flood for their righteousness: " Non illo melior quisquam nee amantior cequi vir fuit, ant ilia metnentior ulla deoruni." In the words of Apollo to Phaethon is found freedom of the wiU and responsibility in choosing: " Man the architect of his own fortune." " Placeat sibi quisque licebit." When a class was asked, why the daughters of the sun were changed to trees, the answer was given that too long grief became rebeUion against the gods. Battus sacrificed truth and fidelity for reward: " Posiqua?n est merces geminata." What is that but an early instance of " graft." In the description of envy which is portrayed with a master's hand, there is found in the phrase, Supplicumque suum est, the thought that man is his own worst enemy, and so virtue is its own reward. Medea presents an instance where the head is right and CLASSIC LITERATURK AND MORAL TEACHING 229 the heart wrong: " Video tneliora proboque, deteriora sequor." Phile- mon and Baucis illustrate frank, honest living within one's means: " Paupertatemqiie fatendo effecere lebem nee iniqua mente ferendo.'" It is not necessary to say that here is an example of " The Simple Life." The other epic poet is Homer. Scholars call him a universal poet. Broad as humanity, he covers all stages of life, presented not as criticism, but as simple, natural, real living. The Greeks regarded the Homeric writings as a great religious book, and looked upon them as authority in argument and 'practice. Some modern writers join Homer with the Bible and Shakespeare as the great expounders of life. I claim with my pupils that all the^drudgery of the study of Greek is richly rewarded in the reading of Homer's Iliad. From what has been said it is evident how this story of life can be employed by the teacher to have a favorable effect upon moral character. From the foregoing survey it is evident that there is a large field for moral instruction, of which good use is made by the classical teachers, but it is very difficult to measure the direct effect of such instruction upon the character of the pupils. These effects must consist in en- larging and strengthening the moral impulses that lead to nobler, stronger character. The test is life, its opportunities and temptations. Therefore, while the teacher may not expect to see much more than the aroused interest and the occasional advance in character-building, he will steadily continue his work, as the gardener, though he does not create, moves his plants into the sunshine, in the behef that the thinking of moral thoughts, the discussion of moral themes, the passing of moral judgments, and the awakening of sympathy with moral endeavors will give strength to the moral purpose. Discussion PRINCIPAL EUGENE D. RUSSELL LYNN CLASSICAL HIGH SCHOOL, LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS The real subject is. Has the reading of four books of Caesar's Gallic war, four books of Xenophon's Anabasis, and six or seven of Cicero's orations, with a sprinkling of Viri Romae and Nepos for ])rose, and six books of Virgil's ^neid, four books of Homer's Iliad, and a few hundred lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses for poetry, any effect on the morals of pupils? For this is as close as the average secondary school comes to dealing with classical literature first-hand. It becomes, then, a question of how far morals are affected by the story of the campaigns of a Roman general, told with an eye single 230 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION to his own glory, with no fear of reviewers and newspaper correspond- ents, and with the omission of details that might shock the sensibiHties of pagan civilization — a story in which btiUdog tenacity and organized brute force succeed in wresting freedom and territorial independence from Hberty-loving peoples — a war which might, if its lesson is grasped, serve to justify the action of England in South Africa and Russia in Finland and Manchuria. To the youthful mind, at least, success is the test of right. One of the first lessons an American boy learns from his country's history is that a successful rebellion is a revolution, whose instigators are patriots, while an unsuccessful revolution is a rebellion, whose instigators are traitors. The lesson the boy learns, then, from the Gallic war is, if you are a bully, be a bully till you beat; if you are not a bully, do not resist a bully, for he will beat you if you do — a lesson not altogether elevating. Second, how are morals affected by another personal narrative of how ten thousand hired butchers escaped being slaughtered them- selves, through the shrewdness and caution of the impersonal narrator ? This furnishes a complete code of ethics for marauders of the burglar and tramp type, showing how it is possible, through excessive greed, to get into a very tight box, but that through courage and caution it is possible to escape, where cowardice and rashness would be fatal — a lesson not without practical value. Third, how are morals affected by seven speeches of a smug, ego- tistical lawyer and orator, in which the right triumphs and the moral teaching is obviously correct, in which with Cicero we admire Archius and the power of verse, or detest Verres and the depravity of provincial graft ? But the moral teaching of the Catilinarian orations is weakened by the display of sophistry by which the prosecutor prevails upon the senate to violate the constitutional rights of his fellow-citizens, and by the nauseating egotism of the self-righteous orator, who leaves with us the impression that he was not half the man that the traitor Catiline was. These three fragments, with detached biographical scraps out of their settings, constitute the prose of secondary school classic litera- ture. In poetry, the stories of the fall of Troy, the quarrels of the Greeks, ^neas's wanderings and Dido's undoing, together with a few of the least suggestive of Ovid's Metamorphoses, complete the anthology. That nearly all the separate episodes in all these frag- ments teach lessons of fortitude, patience, and temperance is beyond dispute, but justice often appears with a weighed balance-beam in the record of real life, while in poetic fiction the will of the gods is made the all-sufficient excuse for any act of meanness or ingratitude, howeverlbase. CLASSIC LITERATURE AND MORAL TEACHING 231 But it would indeed be surprising if books written with no ethical purpose should prove satisfactory text-books of ethics, or if poems that were consistent with a mythological pagan code of morals should satisfy the demand of a twentieth-century Christian civilization. But the question calls for the actual rather than possible effects. My answer is brief. With a single exception I have discovered no effect on the morals. When we consider the infinite pains pupils take to make translations absolutely devoid of sense and the homoeopathic doses of the text at rather long intervals, resulting in only a slight comprehension of the connection, I doubt if the ethical effect of the content is a measurable quantity. The secondary school pupil — and teacher too, for that matter — is compelled by the conditions and limitations under which he works to regard the text as the vehicle for syntax and training in guessing or inference, rather than as a setting for ethical principles. The teacher who takes from his scant time any considerable part or frequently diverts the attention of his pupils from the linguistic demands in order to point a moral is just so far sacrificing the aims of classical study. There is, however, one unfavorable effect, very subtle and inevitable, which springs from the study of the mythological allusions with which classical poetry is replete. Examples of human weakness and vice are bad enough when described in their coarseness, repulsiveness, and eventual bitterness, but when vice and lasciviousness are deified and made attractive, and when, with an ingenuity that is devilish and an art that is divine, stories of wantonness are told with a beauty, sug- gestiveness, and intensity that makes the blood of youth tingle and the imagination run riot, then our boys and girls are put to a severe moral test. The sins of Noah, Lot, David, and Sampson are not ren- dered attractive in the Bible narrative, and the lesson they teach serves as a warning, but the detailed accounts of the amours of the gods with mortals are fascinating; instead of being a warning against it, they are an invitation to lust, and they magnify the carnal above the spiritual. For this reason it seems to me unfortunate that our scheme of educa- tion opens this " Pandora's box " at the most critical and excitable period of the youth's physical and emotional development. How- ever, I see no remedy for this evil and have no protest to make. In conclusion, as some geniuses can make music on the crudest instru- ments, so the essayist could undoubtedly make Mother Goose the basis for ethical instruction, but we must admit that it is the man rather than the matter that contributes to the result. As compared with English literature and history, the ancient classics offer no advantage that will warrant diverting them from their present uses to texts on ethics. THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AS A MEANS OF IMPLANTING HIGH MORAL IDEALS MR. D. O. S. LOWELL MASTER IN THE ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL, ROXBURY, MASSACHUSETTS Not much of English that may be called " literature " is immoral; a larger portion is perhaps wwmoral, being negative in its quality; but most of the English literature taught in school or college, either directly or indirectly makes for morality. Such are my premises; if they are admitted, the conclusion is obvious: the study of English literature is a means of implanting high moral ideals. But there is more to the topic, as I conceive it, than a mere agree- ment on this fundamental assertion. Is it a valuable means? What sort of literature should be taught? What method of presenting it is most effective? These are some of the questions that are suggested at the outset, and to some of these we will give our brief attention. Improvement of the body leads to enlightenment, and enlighten- ment to further improvement; and the same law holds in the region of the mind. It is a universal experience that those who eat of the tree of knowledge begin to perceive their nakedness and make haste to become respectable. The Philistine who learns to enjoy a page of Ruskin or a poem of Wordsworth finds that he has entered a new world; he no longer "With low-thoughted care Confined, and pestered in this pinfold here, Strives to keep up a frail and feverish being, Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives " ; his ideals are nobler; his horizon is broader; his hopes are brighter; his face is set toward the east, and he begins to love light rather than darkness. At last it may be that the day-star shall arise in his heart and he shall come to hate his evil deeds. Now, if the study of English literature is not only a means but a valuable means of implanting high moral ideals, a practical question that confronts us is. What authors shall we choose as being best adapted to this end? Naturally, no teacher or body of teachers will select for young minds literature that is immoral. There is such that may fairly be termed literature and that has been produced by English writers; but we need not dwell upon it. Some of it, that is not corrupt at heart, may 232 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 233 be pruned, without detriment to its force and with distinct gain to its beauty and its truth, until it becomes serviceable. But a great wealth of material lies at our hand that needs no editing. Of this sort, what shall we choose ? The first qualification that a book should possess is that of interest. It should be a work that will enlist the intelligence, the sympathies, and the imagination. The intelligence needs to be kept on the alert. There is a subtle appeal to a reader when a book assumes knowledge on his part slightly in advance of his acquisition. It stimulates his pride; and if his quickened thought does not bound forward by intuition to conclusions hitherto undreamed of, his curiosity often will be piqued so that he will explore the unknovm land and make delightful discoveries. The sympathies should be stirred; for we are creatures of passion, or at least we ought to be. To be cold and heartless, to be unemo- tional and hopelessly serene, is a calamity. A third element of interest is added by an appeal to the imagination. Ideals are confessedly imaginary, for the most part. We aim at them and do not expect to hit the white, yet are we justified in our endeavor ? A second qualification besides interest, of which I should speak, is that of style. This element adds charm to what is already inter- esting of itself, or creates an interest in things otherwise unattractive. Now, style is a term which we all understand, but which none of us can quite successfully define. One is reminded of the small boy's attempted definition of salt: "It's what makes pertaters taste bad when yer don't put none on 'em "; for literature without style cannot satisfy; it may nourish, but there is danger that it may also nauseate. Le style, c'est Vhomme, like all epigrams, must not be pressed un- duly; but it is scarcely too much to presume that the works of an author which are in his best style come nearest to exhibiting his ideals and are the most elevating of his product; and as a corollary to this, broadly speaking, the better the style the better for our purposes is the author. Finally, I submit that in the choice of literature for a liberal edu- cation, either in school or college, a certain amount should be chosen possessing positive virtues; some that is not merely eloquent, pathetic, euphonious, rhythmical, and above criticism, but that is also moral and spiritual; some that is not merely great, but ennobling. Doubt- less, if literature were chosen at random, much of it would be of this character, for, as I have said before, the largest part of our literature has a distinctly moral tone. But I believe it should be the conscious 234 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION purpose of those who determine school curricula to see that some of the literature read shall make for righteousness beyond a cavil. I believe the importance of this can scarcely be overrated because of the impressibility of youth. We come to our last consideration. What methods of implanting moral ideals in the course of our teaching are most effective ? The fact which we have just established, that books may implant their own ideals without a medium, should be a warning to all who are called to teach. We should never stand in the way of the author that is being studied. In a modern fable a window-blind is said to have cried with compla- cency, " I open the way for the sun." We can imagine with what cynic scorn a Diogenes, sitting in the darkened room, would have greeted this remark. When great books are read in class it should be with a minimum of comment. The teacher may interpret important pas- sages by a sympathetic rendering, where subtle inflection, skilfull accent, and clear enunciation may serve to rivet the attention to some significant thought that might otherwise be unnoticed; but he should beware lest he darken counsel by words without knowledge, or dilute virile truth with weak remark. All supererogatory effort at gilding gold and adding an exoteric odor to fragrant flowers is more to be de- plored than even a loud-voiced " mastery of the obvious." There is a possible danger, however, to be avoided. If we do not need constantly to explain, we need frequently to ask, Understandest thou what thou readest ? and often unexpectedly it will be found that some one does not, except some other — teacher, or preferably pupil — shall guide him. A somewhat varied experience has convinced me that truths which pupils can be induced to discover for themselves enter into their moral consciousness in a way which they will not when they are extracted, clarified, condensed, and seasoned by the professional instructor, and then stuffed into receptive but unassimilating brains. Therefore I suggest that one of the methods useful in implanting high moral ideals of any sort is to let the pupil do a good deal of the planting himself — under guidance. I have already intimated that good reading on the part of the in- structor is a most etflcacious means of fixing the attention of a class upon a noble thought. In this way such passages as — " Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself has said, 'This is my own, my native land! ' " THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 235 "It did depend on one, indeed; Behold himi — Arnold Winkelried!" "They conquered — but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein! " "Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us! With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us!" Such passages as these will make a brave boy's heart beat higher, and sow within it the undying seeds of patriotism. A simple reading of, or an apt quotation from, that great elegy which Wolfe professed he would rather have written than to be the captor of Quebec; or an introduction to Lincoln's especial favorite, " Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? " will serve without explanation, to show that life is short, and that they who design to labor must labor while it is day. Portia's exquisite plea for mercy, and her description of earthly power when it seems likest God's should be learned by heart and left like a good seed to germinate; and the same may be said of many another passage by the great masters. Let them first be studied in the context that their full force may be felt, then committed to memory and stored like a precious jewel in the head. Let me briefly summarize. I have assumed that the study of Eng- lish literature is a means of implanting high moral ideals. Next I have endeavored to show that it is a valuable means. I have examined the sort of literature required to further this object, and find it may be discussed under four heads: that which is not immoral; that which possesses interest, appealing to the intelligence, the sympathies, and the imagination; that which has style; and that which directly incul- cates moral and spiritual truths. I have expressed my conviction of the supreme importance of implanting moral ideals during the periods of childhood and adolescence. And lastly I have come to discuss, from a somewhat personal standpoint, what seems to be the most effectual means of accomplishing this purpose. I have stated some things that I believe the teacher should not do, and also a few means that it would be helpful to employ. I come, in closing, to what I shall maintain is the teacher's principal function. You look into the face of a mirror, and an image is before you — more truthful, if less flattering, than that which the photographer pro- duces. You pass on, and another comes and looks into the same mirror; but it tells no tales of you, revives no recollection. A thousand per- 236 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION sons pass before the glass, and when the day is done, it is just as bril- liant and just as vacant as when it made its first reflection. Do we desire a Hkeness that shall endure. Science must come to our aid with its camera and its chemicals; the image must be caught upon a sen- sitized plate of film and then fixed so it shall not fade. In like manner the teacher may hold up a truth before an untrained pupil. It may be beautiful and inspiring, as reflected in the mirror of the pupil's mind. He may understand it, assent to it, even enjoy it; but he may also forget it as he looks upon the next picture. To pre- vent such loss, it becomes the teacher's function to see that his pupil's mind is not a mere mirror from whose polished surface glide these bright images in swift succession, but a sensitized plate on which truths may be photographed and fixed. Rhythm, melody, harmony, choice of words, beauty of thought, felicity of expression, taste, style, proportion, emphasis, unity, ease, force, climax, simile, metaphor and alHed tropes, wit, humor, pathos, suggestion, argument, exposition, narration, description, these are some of the chemicals with which the English teacher works. With these he produces the sensitive mind-plate according to his ability. When all is ready, he exposes an object in the shape of a poem, a novel, a play, an essay, an oration, or an epigram. A picture is the result, to be fixed and developed by comparison, analysis, or some of the minor devices to which I have referred. But there are pictures and pictures; and just here is where the teacher needs to be an artist. In the photographic studio it is not enough to have a favorable light, expensive lenses, and the latest ar- rangement of shutters and slides. It is not enough to have fair women and brave men before the camera. It is not enough to have a perfect plate, ready to respond to the faintest ray of Hght: there must also be a skilled operator, who shall moderate the glare, arrange the shadows, measure the distance, adjust the instrument, calculate the exposure, pose the sitters, engage the attention, and at the psychologico-photo- graphic moment spring the shutter. In like fashion the artist-teacher deals with his carefully sensitized pupil as he prepares to take a picture worth developing. Deftly he arranges each detail and improves every condition; then he unveils before him some image of truth and beauty wrought by skillful hands and eagerly awaits the result. If he succeeds, he knows it without troublesome delay. He glances swiftly about his class, detecting here and there a pupil who responds, " his rapt soul sitting in his eyes "; and the instructor glows with the consciousness that his labors have not been in vain. THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 237 Discussion MR. A. J. GEORGE MASTER IN THE NEWTON HIGH SCHOOL, NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS What is literature? Not mere writing, but writing which has reve- lation, — revelation not of the facts (that belongs to science), but of truths, the purpose of which is to inspire. Hence, it follows that the element of time is a necessary factor in determining what is literature. " A classic is that type of writing which has enriched the human mind, increased its treasures, and caused it to advance a step; it has revealed some moral truth, some eternal passion." " Around this," says Words- worth, " with tendrils as strong as flesh and blood, our pastime and our happiness will grow." To cultivate pastime and happiness is the main business of every exercise in the English class room. The reason why literature is such a power is that it is permanent in its interest. Literature is neither ancient nor modern, but is as uni- versal as the heart of man, and the heart of man aspires in three direc- tions — in feeling, in thought, and in action. This is seen in the lyric, or song, which is full of emotion, noble as contrasted with ignoble, revealed by a singer; in the epic, full of thought and motion, revealed by a nar- rator; in the dramatic, full of action, thought, and emotion, revealed by men and women seen in typical situations. Through literature, truth is revealed in forms of beauty, compelling wonder, love, and admiration. " We live by admiration, hope, and love." Look at the heights of our own peerless English literature — from Chaucer to Arnold. They reveal the history of the race; each height shows that period when the people were moved to aspire, when the poets, the gleemen, and minstrels voiced these aspirations. Brown- ing, in the " Grammarian's Funeral," reveals one of these, when he says, "Leave now for dogs and apes, man has forever." Do you believe that students who catch the inspiration of such teach- ers can remain unmoved ? I know they cannot. Every man is judged by his ideas of conduct on the one hand, and of beauty on the other, and the source of such ideas in men and nations is the world's revela- tion in its literature. It everywhere teaches us what to love and what to hate, whom to honor and whom to despise. Its word is not knowl- edge, but power; its purpose, not that man should know more, but thait he should be better. Hence, its business is not with things, and their laws, but with persons and their thoughts. We must not read for knowl- edge, for specialized learning, but for life; our business is to create readers, — readers of this great movement of the human soul to its high- est realm of thought and action. 238 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Thus it is evident that there may be a method of dealing with this literature, which is akin to immorality. When attention of the pupil is directed to those elements which in themselves have no vitality be- cause they are devoid of any power to inspire, interest dies, and with the death of interest comes the dislike of the subject. Such a result is immoral. It follows thus that literature is but one of the forms of art through which man's aspiration, his ideals, are revealed. The soul of man takes the hues of that which environs it. It is literature which in- spires; not linguistics, rhetoric, and grammar, valuable as these may be for other purposes. It is subtle, and mysterious in its power, and it is our business as teachers to create a nation of readers, not a special class of learned commentators. We know that literature will form the child, sustain the youth, and console age, and its history is its record of power in this direction, from the psalms of David to the songs of Burns, from Job to Tennyson. Witness the tributes of Darwin and Mill to the power of imaginative literature; these men mourned the fact that other things deprived them of that great power of culture of the feelings which the love of literature brought. Barrie has said that a young man may be better employed than in going to college; but when there, he is unfortunate if he does not meet some one who sends his life ofif at a new angle. " One such professor," says he, " is the most any university may hope for in a single generation." He says, " When you looked into my mother's eyes, you knew why it was that God sent her into the world; it was to open the eyes of all who looked to beautiful thoughts, and that is the beginning and end of literature." After having opened the eyes of people to beautiful thoughts, we must be willing to wait, for moral results do not come immediately. Read our great liter- ature in such a way that the class feels the enthusiasm, nobility, and the naturalness of the men and women revealed, and then we shall never have to ask the question, " Is there any moral result from the study of literature ?" THE AIMS AND PROCESSES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT FRANK H. ROBSON HEAD MASTER BANCROFT SCHOOL, WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS To train a man in the science of numbers, and not to teach him that he is not to make false combinations; to train him in the art of writing, and not to teach him that he is not to forge his employer's name; to train him in the secrets of chemistry; and not to train him to respect his hidden and mysterious power over the life and welfare of his fellows; to give intellectual judgment only, and not to train moral judgment, — would be an abomination and a curse to the world. Mentality unleavened by the preserving power of morahty, or un- touched by the inspiration of religion, opens the door wide to the flood of materialism, immorality, and crime. Generally speaking, the child has three periods of growth — infancy, childhood, and adolescence. The home must bear the responsibilities of the first period, but the school must prepare itself in spirit and equip- ment for a share of the training of the second, the so-called period of childhood. What, then, is this creature of five to seven years of age as he is usually turned into school life? Can we make of him what we will? What elements assist and what influences hinder us in our labors ? Taking childhood to begin with the dawn of conscious power, the child in this period runs through all the phases of individualism, a crea- ture of instincts, with no moral or immoral quality at the beginning, seeking self-expression in all things. This individualism stands psychologically at the basis of such home and school complaints as stubbornness, selfishness, impertinence, quar- relsomeness, and disobedience. This is the law of the survival of the fittest; morality of action is excluded; the animal instincts are seek- ing expression and gratification. This is one of nature's efforts to break the shackles of the past, to make an advance upon heredity, to open new fields, to function new-brain centers, and unconsciously to extend individual development along the line of evolutionary possibilities. Manifold stimuli effect a development of the child, regardless of moral content as viewed by adults, and gradually the functioning of the organs is accomplished. The child learns the corresponding values which adults attach to varying actions and states only by the effects produced upon others which are directly or indirectly reflected upon himself in 239 240 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION pleasure of approval or pain of disapproval and punishment. Thus repeating those actions which bring pleasure and satisfaction and avoiding those which bring pain and disapproval, tendencies become established and laws are gradually outlined in the nervous system. John Fiske's law of the prolonged state of infancy of the human race has many moral as well as physical and mental correlations. The child is long dependent in body, mind, and moral standards. His vo- litional equipment is very meager. He does not know what is right. His capacity for discrimination is exceedingly small, and when he ap- parently exercises such precocious discriminating intelligence, it is rather an imitated state of mind, and not a developed functional capacity. In the light of these prominent traits, what is the point of attack in these earlier years ? and how can we develop effective character without a direct and disastrous conflict of will, destructive to strength, or a weakening of the imagination, fatal to future growth and initiative, and bring about a willing submission to law, parental, scholastic, and civil, an appreciation of the pure and the right in moral relations, and effect a real character, symbolized in the word ' self-control ' ? Imitation is the dominant faculty of the young. It is the school of the animal world. It is the process by which the experience of the past and the practice of the present may be brought within the absorptive radius of the child. Mentally, childhood is the period of memory power of the reproduction of previous states. Likewise in the moral world, it is the period of reproduction and imitation; and the environment supplied by teachers, parents, and playmates supphes the concrete forms of speech and action to be imitated. Not being able to reason correctly and to discriminate moral values in the adult sense, there is great danger in unselected environment. Potency of action in the child is as liable to discharge itself in imitating a bad environment as a good one. Inasmuch as a child cannot select from its environment suitable details for imitation, and has no personal standards of action, obedience to some authority becomes a necessity. Through imitation of a selected environment, aided by the exercise of a wise authority, there is repro- duced in the child life a series of activities, and through them there is developed the germ of a personal consciousness of truly moral conduct. By using the highest motive which is effective, by inducing a pleasurable mental state by the effects of emulation and appreciation, proper lines of work become chosen more and more consciously, and the habit of right performance becomes established. Right habits at the direction of another are good but they are not PROCESSES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT 241 moral. Hence the parent or teacher must gradually withdraw his in- fluence or authority and give the child the privilege of choice. Blind obedience is only for the undeveloped child; arrested moral growth must surely follow if the ability to decide personal questions is present and the opportunity is not afforded. As the powers increase, the opportu- nities of choice must increase also. As nature teaches by punishing the violator of her laws, so through making mistakes and suffering the pen- alty therefrom the individual develops the capacity of choice and wise direction of his own affairs. The true test of the effectiveness of the training in obedience, in the establishment of right habits, and the power of a moral choice, is the growing conscious intention of the child. One of the common causes of difficulty in moral training springs from the fact that the child needs interpretation as well as guidance. Physically, the automatic ganglion centers are developed first, then those of the main muscular movements, then the centers affecting sensation, and finally the ganglion centers controlling thought and will. Physical and mental processes are so definitely connected, that they follow in logical order; that the proper functioning of one stage depends upon a vigorous development of each preceding stage; that abnormal develop- ment of later stages, known as precocity, destroys later vitaUty, and un- due emphasis upon a lower process prolongs elementary stages, and thus produces " arrested development." The only logical order of moral training is to be found in a true genetic development of moral capacities. Undoubtedly, in a large and untech- nical way the successive evolutionary moral states of the race are repro- duced in the individual, but specifically the moral basis is to be found in the parallel development of his nervous and mental systems. Hence the necessity for wise interpretation on the part of parents and teachers. Fatigue, illness, hunger, depressed nervous vitaHty, physical suffering, may easily make normal mental action almost impossible for the child, and additional pressure, either personal or disciplinary, is not only blindly stupid, but is criminal. Wliat the child needs is, not the mental, moral, or physical rod, but food, sleep, medicine, sympathy and love, and restful words. Ignorance, inability, and fear are frequently wrongly interpreted as unwillingness and opposition. But the largest opportunity for the teacher is in the guidance of these changing conditions. Remembering that vigorous functioning of ele- mentary powers is necessary to later growth, we must beware how we limit later possibilities by attempts at repressing and destroying certain normal expressions of child life. Expect the child to be individualistic, to be selfish, to relate everything to himself, to be proud of his home. 242 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION his father, and his big brother. Many things that would appear ego- tistic and selfish in a man or youth who has had opportunity to learn altruism and self-control appear normal in a child. The frank acknowl- edgement of personal pride, combativeness, and open self -approbation, tend to establish an individuality and a confidence which show later in the man of executive vigor and personal initiation. Do not destroy these qualities or impede their vigorous functioning. They are the most hopeful signs of future success. Repress and destroy them, and you have the timid goody-goody, who sits with folded hands and blushing cheek, afraid to call his soul his own, and always waiting as a child and adult to do another's bidding. A strong individuality is the true starting-point; temper it gradually, show the beauty and joy of helping others, punish conscious wrong, teach justice, mercy, and forgiveness, let the playground fully show the danger of infringing on the rights of others, but let not the teacher antici- pate or infringe upon nature's laws. This is effective training of the will — this formation of the habit of right and vigorous performance after the emotions have been brought before the bar of the intellect and found worthy. If Schopenhauer is right in saying that we are two thirds will and one third intellect, then the end of education is not knowledge, but character. The end of discipline is, not to preserve order, but to develop independent men and women, and the test of any training is the increment of character gradually given. Development and discipline thus assume their proper places. Development is positive, discipline is negative; development is progressive, discipline is repres- sive; the more you have of the one, the less you need of the other; the more completely the normal needs of the growing child and youth are supplied, the less need will there be for repressive discipline. The more you fill the mind with high ideals and right performance, the less need will there be to fight against low practices; the more moral ozone you can infuse into the air, the less you will need to fight the germs of bad conduct. I must hasten to say a few closing words about the means of moral training ready at the hand of the teacher. If we remember that in pri- mary stages we are to develop clear conceptions; in grammar stages, rules of conduct and clear moral concepts; and in adolescence, altruism and social and spiritual relations and obligations, — the whole school life becomes luminous with opportunity to the inventive teacher. The proper and necessary punctuality, regularity, courtesy, and quick obe- dience of school routine form a basis for training moral habits. Com- PROCESSES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT 243 pelled labor after imperfect work, the results of failure, school punish- ments, and public opinion stimulate a proper exercise of personal effort. Social obligations, the yielding of the selfish interest, class and school organizations and interests open wide the door to altruism. Honors, influence, personal pride, and leadership may, under wise suggestion, hold out alluring arms of invitation. In the curriculum, the study of literature, expressing the struggles, hopes, ambitions, and developing sentiments of the race, furnishes a never empty spring of moral inspiration. The moral tales of fable and Biblical lore, with their definite pictures exercising and cultivating the imagination, drawn from the childhood of the race, and expressing the fundamental virtues of kindness, obedience, filial and parental love, supply both mental and moral sustenance for the younger children. The natural appreciation of the good and great men and women of polit- ical history, of commerce and science, of literature and music, their manners, habits, their successes and failures, with their mixture of theo- retical and practical standards, related to actual personal needs, may well be used with inspiring and vitalizing force in the later grades; while to the budding soul of adolescence, living again the hopes, ambitions, and sentiments of the race, when the conflicting obligations of self-de- velopment and altruism are presented with alluring attractiveness, when emotions are struggling for interpretation and utterance, the varying fields of the world's literature interpret anew the inner life, presenting to the intellect and the imagination complete pictures of the world's idealism and sober facts. History, with its examples of heroism, patriotism, and devotion, with its pictures of base, selfish, and traitorous lives, constantly demands a weighing of moral values, and shows the permanence of truth, goodness, and moral worth in aiding the progress of the individual and the race. Science, with its unending search after truth, with its conformity to known law, its emphasis of necessary cause and effect, its accuracy of thought and statement, induces not only a search for truth, but a con- scious belief in its necessity in all the relations of life. Manual training, emphasizing the dignity of labor, the value of personal effort, the consciousness of creative powers and constructive capacity; gymnastics, bringing the physical system into conscious sympathy and alliance with the mental nature; school gardens, bring- ing the children back to the heart of Mother Nature; music, touching the deepest springs of emotion and offering most delicate forms of expression; school games, inducing self-control and the necessity both 244 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION of proper initiative and subordination, — all have a large value in moral development. There is still a large field for the direct and formal presentation of moral standards, based upon the age and development of the pupils. The opening exercises of the school may well seize upon some present interest and illuminate it for the day and days to come. At proper crucial periods of school life, the round of common duties and fundamental virtues may be set forth. Under the influence of days devoted to great men and historical events, the possibilities of man- hood, and of lives devoted to humanity, country, and God, may well be exalted. France has developed a complete system of formal instruction in morals and practical ethics, winning a grand prize at the Exposition of 1900. Her effort has been to shift her entire national education from a Catholic to an ethical basis. She has divided her scholars into an infant section from 5 to 7 years; a primary section from 7 to 9 years; an intermediate section from 9 to 11 years; and a junior section from II to 13 years, with definite instruction in ethics adapted to the child in the family, the school, the country, and his relation to himself and to his God. Plato was right when he taught that the problem of education cen- tered in ethics. The greatest teachers have been men of profound moral natures. Their personality has been their greatest possession; by it they have been able not only to quicken mental power, but to give a mighty spiritual upHft. Emerson's saying, " It makes very little difference what you study, but it is in the highest degree important with whom you study," means that, after all, education is a spiritual process; that the mysterious influence of one nature on another is its major factor; and that the atmosphere surrounding the work is in the highest degree important. Text-books may supply the matter of knowledge and of ethics, but the teacher supplies the electric spark, without which all is a lifeless mass. VII. ELEMENTARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGION AND MORALITY How Far, and How, Can the Foundations of Religion be Laid in the Common Schools? PROFESSOR EDWIN D, STARBUCK, Ph.D. EARLHAM COLLEGE, RICHMOND, INDIANA The controversy has grown acute, in a few of the states and in many communities, over the teaching of religion in the common schools. There is no Httle anxiety among the friends of religious education, be- cause the law seems to be stepping between religion and the children. I do not believe the anxiety is wellfounded. While I should be the last to advocate the enactment of any measure that would limit the utmost freedom of teachers, it seems to me that the reaction against so-called religious instruction is a fortunate thing if only it disturbs us into an appreciation of some of the more fundamental considerations involved in the situation. Whether the statement is true or false, I am going to assume, for the sake of having the point at issue clearly before our minds, that such a law exists, and is general in its appHcation, by which the Bible and " religious " teaching of any kind are entirely excluded from the schools; and then ask to what extent the freedom of any devout teacher need be hampered in promoting the spiritual development of her pupils. How far could she, without hedging, or working in any surreptitious way, awaken in her pupils the spirit of religion ? My own conviction is that she could keep the spirit and the letter of the law, if she is wise in mind and heart, and still not find her deepest purposes materially curtailed. Without formal religious instruction, what could be done in the schools to arouse the religious impulses and develop the reli- gious life ? I would suggest a revision along at least four lines, one of which has reference to the teacher, the second to her methods and to the curriculum, the third to our ideals about religion, and the fourth to the child. The end in view is to hint, however imperfectly, the possibility of a school, the whole of which shall in detail and in its en- tirety contribute, either directly or indirectly, to the religious life. In these suggestions there is no originality; neither is there in them an impossible dream; for they are only the simple statement of what I have found suggested in the actual experience of good teachers. 245 246 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 1. The ordinary secular school will be primarily a religious insti- tution if the teacher is profoundly religious, cheerful, natural, livable, and busy, to be sure, but having in the midst of it all an emancipated spirit that lives behind the words, speaks through the actions, lends color and quality to the thoughts , and breathes life and health into the atmosphere of the entire school. We are coming to know, as never be- fore, that there is nothing — motive, impulse, thought, inspiration — that is not finding expression in the tone and quality of the whole person- ality. Physiologists and psychologists are showing constantly that every idea or state of feeling registers itself definitely and in an all- pervasive way, though very minutely, in pulse-beat, nerve-tension, and muscular reaction. It is coming to be demonstrably true that out of the heart are the issues of life. There is nothing more pervasive than character. Religion is as catching as wildfire. It is as contagious as disease, or as sin. We knew all this, after a fashion, but shall not have appreciated it at its full worth until the best, maturest, and largest- spirited men and women are secured and retained in the teaching pro- fession. There was a time when only the sages were teachers; we stand now at the opposite extreme, when our teachers of children range in age from sixteen years to the unspeakable age of thirty or thirty-five. It is impossible for a teacher to teach what she hasn't got deep down within her heart. This is the consideration of first importance. With the right teacher, alive in mind and pure in heart, the question of keep- ing the flame of religion burning while the necessary tasks of the school day are performed will solve itself. To secure the proper teachers is in part a matter of selection, and in part it is to be solved along the line suggested above : aspiration toward the higher life is a step in its own realization. If teachers felt their responsibility and their need, and would pray earnestly and often the prayer of Socrates, " Ye gods, make me beautiful within," the end would be much nearer. 2. The second point of revision has reference to the things to be taught, and the method of teaching them. How can a teacher keep from getting lost in the thousand petty details of school life and the countless things she is expected to teach ? She can't. Nor should she try. Part of the routine of the school or her own best life will have to be sacrificed, and in the dilemma she had better save her soul and the souls of her pupils. It is a long and sad story how we have mistaken means for ends in education, and are making a great point of master- ing the tools of knowledge, instead of concerning ourselves about wisdom. We teach how to read, instead of reading; how to draw, instead of drawing; how to cipher, instead of doing the actual thing that ciphering THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 247 will help us accomplish; and so on. It is as great folly as if a carpenter should busy himself all his life making tools, and then get an inkling at the end of his life that he might have made something worth while with them. A safe rule might be, Teach only that which has some real life -significance, both at the time it is being learned and for later life. Learning merely for the sake of learning is rarely, if ever, excusable; but of learning for the sake of appreciating and enjoying and growing, we can never get too much. Here, I am inclined to believe, the fault is as much with the teacher as with the curriculum. In following the rule suggested above, there is not so much in the school that must of necessity be excluded. The most formal, meaningless subject, under one teacher's presentation, will, in the hands of a real teacher, be suf- fused with life-significance. I have seen a class in geometry, after some weeks of interpretation of what proofs in general and geometric proofs in particular mean, what relation the subject has to the rest of our thought life and its meaning to the actual interests of men, be- come so enthused with the subject that occasionally, after some espe- cially neat, clean-cut demonstration of a difficult problem, it would break out in applause as spontaneously as if the demonstration had been the rendering of some work of art — which it really was. 3. The next consideration has to do with our interpretation of this thing we speak of so loosely as religion. It means a variety of things, interpreted in all gradations, from the most crystallized stratum of con- ventionalized religion up to the highest point in spiritual progress, and all the way from the most intellectualized notions about God and duty to the deepest springs of feeling and conduct. My appeal would be that we read it out more than we do in terms of life — life at its growing points, the life of each in relation to all, and in relation to his highest sense of reality — and in terms of the spirit one carries into these rela- tions. It is exactly this for which Christ came and lived, and it is this for which every great reformer has existed. I have been profoundly impressed, during recent months, in trying to figure out as dispas- sionately as I could, from the Sermon on the Mount and the parables and sayings of Christ, what his theology was, and what were his " doc- trines " of ethics and religion. He lives and speaks with a higher au- thority than reason. Instead of a theology, one finds an exalted sense of a divine presence, which sometimes, for want of a better name, he called " Father." Instead of a system of ethics, one finds the cup of cold water, a warm, loving heart, and a clear vision that could see the great truths of life reflected in growing seeds and plants and in working men and innocent children. Try it yourself, and I believe you will 248 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION agree with me that there is not in it all a single thing that any citizen of the United States, or any judge or jury or set of lawmakers, could put under the ban, or would care to, as being " religious " teaching. The problem of teaching religion in the schools without doctrine and dogma would be easy enough, some of you are saying to yourselves, and a very indefinite, unreal thing might be clear, if only we knew what is meant by "reHgion," "the spiritual life," and such terms. I must insist that, for the most part, they must remain indefinite. It is the ever-recurring temptation, bred of inertia, to split up and dis- sect and define and classify the things that belong primarily to our appre- ciation or spiritual apprehension that has got religion into most of its troubles. We know some things with our hearts better than we can ever know them with our minds, and the verities of religion belong under this head. I do not know why I love my friend, nor how, nor exactly what I got out of the Fifth Symphony or the Sistine Madonna, but I am not ashamed to go on drawing life from them in spite of the fail- ure of my reason to analyze them. It is time religion should be as direct and simple and fearless as is art. There are, however, a few specific characteristics of religion that we can agree upon, and that the schools may well cultivate, by way of preparing the soil and sowing the seeds of the spiritual life. (a) In the first place, there is the power to enter feelingly into some thought-interest or into some occupation. Arnold's definition, " Re- ligion is morality touched with emotion," is doubtless very faulty, but it is among the best of the angular snap-shots of the actual religious life of those who stand historically as the great spiritual leaders; and a paraphrase of it, by slipping in the word " education " instead of " religion," would be a good characterization of the ideals of the great educational reformers. In all the list of studies and occupations in the school, there are only the two bare exceptions — writing and spelling —in which I cannot recall some teacher or teachers who aroused such a happy, heartful response as to give them spiritual significance. (6) A second element of religion and of good training is the habit of responsiveness. To respond to the tasks that are set, to the teacher's wish, and to the facts that lie about, is the condition of a good student; to respond to persons and institutions and social forces is a primary requisite of morality, just as social and civic callousness is the primary root of evil and vice; responsiveness to the thoughts and sentiments of persons and books, including the Bible, to personal ideals, to instinctive promptings, and to unseen relations, is one of the primary sources of religion; and responsiveness is a habit that can be cultivated. Through THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 249 variety in its exercise, the habit may pass over into a mood. The teacher herself can widen the spirit involved in any habit or idea until it passes over into related habits and ideas, and becomes finally a per- sistent attitude. Here we have the responsibility falling back upon the teacher again as to whether the manifold habits of responsiveness, for the varied exercise of which the school is so full, shall break over in the highest reaches of religion. (c) A third element is to respond with a whole heart. This is one of the differential marks of religion. It takes in the entire person- ality. Religion is the response of the whole life to its fullest sense of reality. This attitude can be cultivated in the schools. In so far as there is good teaching, it will be. Our schools, with their choppiness and mechanization, are instilling spot knowledge. They are fixing the habit of responding to little things in a little way, instead of responding to little things (if there are any) in a great way, or to great things with a whole life. (d) A most hopeful prophecy of better things in religious educa- tion in the secular schools is a general depreciation, among psychologists and educators, of intellectualism, a heightened sense of the value of conduct, character, and social refinements, as ends of culture, and especially a regard for what might be called intellectual tastes, as op- posed to intellectual mechanics. The excessive analysis and dissecting and hair-splitting and logic chopping, into which our school life has tended to degenerate, defeats the ends of " intellectual " training itself, and of " scientific " procedure. If intellectualism defeats the ends of science, it also defeats religion. The disease of religion to-day, if it has one big disease, is that it has been over-intellectualized. Our theories about God, our beliefs formu- lated in creeds and doctrines, give us pilules of religious truth, but not exalted ideals and a warm sense of reaUty. (e) An essential condition in all learning and also in rehgion is the truth-seeking and truth-loving spirit. It is this spirit, together with an assurance that the truth outside will become one's own, that is the con- dition back of religious, scientific, or aesthetic insight and achievement. It is this which gave Bunyan, Tolstoi, Fox and Wesley their hold upon spiritual verities; it is this by which Helen Hunt Jackson, after months of striving, found the plot of Ramona; by which Sir Rowan Hamilton discovered as by a flash the quaternions; it is this attitude that Pro- fessor Huxley is describing when he confesses that he came to give him- self up to the leading of facts in a way which is best described by the Christian doctrine of the surrender of the self to God. There is no 2SO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION study in the school which cannot be used to cultivate the longing for and dehght in the thing which lies just next. With little children the thing just beyond will be a little thing; but as life widens and deepens, the pleasure and delight should ripen into a hunger and thirst, and the fact and deed should be enriched until they blossom into righteous- ness. (/) Nor must the truth be my truth simply. A decentralization of the individual — the appreciation of his life and his truth as part of a larger life and truth — are essential both in education and in religion. It is undoubtedly the message of most religions to give the individual a vivid sense of his relation to an Eternal Reality and to other persons. This is also the keynote to the most general educational doctrine of the present time, viz., the social end of school life, rather than the cultural or utilitarian. The way of approach to this decentralization is in the cultivation and right use of the imagination, by which the person can transcend his own narrow limitations and make real in thought and feeling the world of people and things outside. This analysis of the common elements of education and religion does not mean to be exhaustive. It is complete enough, however, to suggest that for the occupations and studies of the school to blossom into religion should be as natural as for a healthy tree to bear fruit. 4. The last point to consider in spiritualizing the secular schools concerns itself with our understanding of the nature of children. We are being taught nowadays that religion gets its content from the sum of the instinctive endowments with which the individual is supplied by nature; that the personal life is a spring in which there well up the brute and the human instincts, the sum of which and the particular blending of which give tone and coloring and quality and motive and con- tent to the whole life, and determine personality and character. The highest function of a teacher is to take this little germ of possibility, a little child, and play upon its complex of instinctive endowments, and bring out of them a beautiful harmony. A few instincts will have to be repressed, over-shadowed, or even uprooted; some need stimulating, while others need bringing up on to the highest levels of refine- ment. In so far as a dignified sense of God and a reverent appreciation of life shall prevail, and to the extent that we can have men and women in the teaching profession who have come into their own spiritual heritage, the common school will become a life-giving and religion- developing institution. Just to that extent will the quibbling over " religion " in the schools be a thing of the past. THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 251 SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD DEAN OF SIMMONS COLLEGE, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS We shall find the best and most natural illustrations of these truths already stated in the lives of the children we know best. I shall therefore call your attention to a few incidents of child life, which will serve as my text. I have in mind a four-year-old girl, favored in many things, but especially happy in that she spends her summers on an island in a beautiful lake, mountain-rimmed. She has always been privileged to walk with her father and mother in the fields and woods; to " go a-trudging," as she called it, has been her chief delight. " Where did the trees get their red and yellow leaves?" she asked. " Who made them red and yellow?" Her question answered, she ran to her mother with her chubby hands filled with her new treasures, saying, "See, Mamma! I have brought you some of God's beautiful leaves!" "How came the island here?" she asked. "Who brought the rocks and the trees?" She was told how the island was lifted into its place; how the soil was formed, the trees planted, and the island made ready for the birds, for the trees, for the rabbits, for the squirrels, and for her, — just as her father had built the house for her, in which she Hved. As the time for her return to her home approached, she sat one evening watching the sunset and the early evening stars, and said " Don't you hope that God will be at home when we get there, just as He has been here this summer?" So linked with her love of the beautiful in the world was her reverent thought of Him who had made it beautiful. Another child whom I knew — a country girl — received as a gift a copy of Emerson's Parnassus. When the dishes had been washed after supper, she went, with her precious book, out into the hay-field and read and reread the poems she Hked best. Among them was Bryant's " Lines to a Waterfowl." She is a woman grown, but she says that the childhood experience is still fresh in her memory, and with the lines there ever recurs to her thought the clear summer even- ing, the fragrance of the new-mown hay, the crimson sunset, and the dark figure of the distant bird, which her eye beheld as she read: " Whither midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way ? " He who from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will guide my steps aright," 252 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION And here the teaching must begin. The twenty-third Psalm brings to you and me its assurance of comfort and peace. How? " He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters." We knew in childhood the green pastures and still waters; the tenderness of father and mother and friend interpreted for us the loving Shepherd. The elements of religious education are two, the teaching of nature in childhood, and the living example of God's children — so that we know Him through the life of our friends. Both these elements should be contributed by the home. But the best of homes can be re-inforced, and the poorer ones must be aided by the teachings of the school. The best result of wisely directed nature-study is that it leads to a fuller interpretation of the teachings of the Master, and develops a reverent spirit. The next step is the study of literature, the literature of the spirit, in which nature is interpreted to us as speaking for the Father. But neither teaching avails unless the teacher herself dwell " in the secret place of the Most High." A friend tells me that one of her earliest childhood memories is of being awakened by her mother be- fore daybreak on a June morning. "Come, child," she said, — " come with me over to the pines, to hear the thrushes sing." Across the dew- wet meadows they went, in the early flush of morning, and the child, her hand clasped in her mother's, listened with her to the exquisite music of the thrush in the holy hour and place. What need of words? It is. the Spirit that giveth Hfe. The flame was kindled in the heart of the child because it burned undimmed in the mother's heart. Not by preaching, nor even by much speaking, will our teachers teach religion. But they will surely teach, whose lives abide in the shadow of the Almighty. We cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard. Striving to do His will in the schoolroom, we slowly learn of the doctrine, and the truth we have made our own we are enabled to share. WHAT MORAL EQUIPMENT MAY THE COMMUNITY REASONABLY DEMAND OF THE GRADUATES OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS? MR. WALTER H. SMALL, A.M. SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND The common schools are pubHc property; public or community rights in these schools are inherent and incontestable. It is their right to receive, for every dollar invested, a dollar's worth of return in the mental and moral development of the boys and girls whom they edu- cate. The early New England school was founded on the Bible and the catechism. Education was to be, "not only in good literature, but sound doctrine." None could be instructors "that have manifested themselves tmsound in the faith, or scandalous in their lives, and not giving due satisfaction according to the rules of Christ." They must be certified to by the minister of the town, in which the school was located, and also by the ministers of the adjoining towns. In 1717 Connecticut schools became parish schools, and in New Hampshire they were permissive. The reading-books were the Psalter, the Tes- tament, and the Bible; the church dominated the school. Examina- tion in the catechism in school on Saturday, examination in the Sun- day sermon on Monday, not to mention the Monday school flogging for the Sunday church misdemeanors, proves the close relation between the two. It was not until after these dependent colonies became free and independent states that it was thought necessary to incorporate into the law any allusion to moral training. That law in this common- wealth makes it the duty of all instructors, from the president of Har- vard University to the teacher in the lowest school, " to exert their best endeavors to impress on the minds of children and youth, com- mitted to their care and instruction, the principles of piety and jus- tice, and a sacred regard for truth; love of their country, humanity, and universal benevolence; sobriety, industry, and frugality; chastity, moderation, and temperance." Then they are to "endeavor to lead their pupils as their ages and capacities will admit." The essence of this law is to be foimd in other states. The dissolution between church and school was reluctant. The cat- echism did not fully disappear until about 1850. Since then there has been a growing impression that moral education in the schools has 253 254 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION been decadent, and the question contained in the subject of this paper has arisen periodically. In 1888, a committee of the Massachusetts Teachers' Association made an extensive report on this subject, which was hopefully optimistic, though not overconfident. Dr. Hall, in his recent book on adolescence, says, "Although pedagogues make vast claims for the moralizing effect of schooling, I cannot find a single criminologist who is satisfied with the modern school." There are all degrees of opinion between these two. The subject naturally divides itself into three considerations: I. The problem and its conditions; II. Means of treatment; and III. Reasonable results. I. The Problem. The problem of the elementary schools is to take children from the entrance age of six years to the age of graduation, fourteen or fifteen, and give them the foundations on which to build during the next ten years. Habits do not become fixed during this elemental period. They are the products of the years immediately beyond. The closing years of the elementary school period form the most dangerous in child-life. At that age there is greater tendency to crimes and immoralities than at any other future period. This is the age when dormant faculties spring into being, and primitive im- pulses rage in the blood. School truancies largely occur between eleven and fourteen. The elementary school must give such tenden- cies and initial velocities as will carry them over and beyond the dan- ger lines. The problem of the elementary school is to sharpen the moral vision to such an extent that the incorrigibihty of the two years im mediately following graduation may be lessened; that the social vir- tues may be recognized; that regularity, punctuality, obedience, rights of others, bodily cleanliness, knowledge of physical self, truthfulness, honesty, manliness, self-reliance, courtesy, — in fact, all that tend toward correct habits and correct living may be implanted. II. Means of Treatment. Moral teaching must be continuous. In elementary school work it must be largely incidental, suggestive. At this age didactic teaching is neither forceful nor fruitful. The school atmosphere should be full of good influences. It should be an en- vironment created with a distinct end in view. The tone must be moral. The school building and its equipment has much to do with this. The old-time schoolhouse invited the "jack-knife's carved ini- tials." It equally invited the immoral expressions and pictures, lim- nings of the grosser minds. They have not wholly disappeared to-day, but they are less common because, of the better buildings and better MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS 255 surroundings. The best modern sanitary conditions have reduced to the lowest terms the loss of modesty occasioned by the old-time pub- lic exposure, and lessened the opportunity of vile lessons from vile companions. Next comes the opportunity from the curriculum. Scientists main- tain that in the life of every child we have embodied all the changes which nations have passed through from savagery to present intelli- gence, and those things which have influenced national character will influence individual character. Music, drawing, reading, give abun- dant opportunities for this development. Good school music elevates the taste, tints and tinges character. For the sake of his future relations with other people, of his recog- nition that the individual must be merged into the community, school rules and their enforcement are necessary, that he may gain self-con- trol, and be obedient to law voluntarily. The enforcement of these rules has greatly changed in recent years. To-day, discipline is a training of the will, the great mainspring of human progress. It is teaching individual self-control; it is teaching recognition of individual rights, as compared with the rights of the community, the school; it is teaching obedience to those rights through force within, not with- out; it is a doctrine of leadership. The spirit is trained, not broken, until habits, the product of the will, are formed on right principles, tend towards right growth, and ripen into wholesome manhood and womanhood. Buildings, equipment, studies, and rules are of little avail, unless under the administration of a strong personality. There needs to be in the schoolroom the spirit that rejoices over the one sinner that repenteth. There needs to be the spirit of faith in the final result. This is not found in the little soul. Teachers must be broad enough, and strong enough, to imprint themselves on their pupils in a broad, strong way. Here is the great responsibility of the community. They should see that the teachers, to whom they intrust their children, are men and women of clear eye, clear brain, clean blood and clean char- acter, living examples of goodness, of truth, and of purity, but warm- blooded, warm-hearted, virile, forceful. The danger to-day is that this standard of the elementary school teacher will not be maintained. Already, other interests are drawing them away from the schools, until there is the possibility that they may fall into the hands of "young girls and feeble men." When this comes true, the product will be young and feeble, and the flow of the current is in that direction. What right has any community to expect that a young woman, 256 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION getting a weekly wage of from $3.60 to $7.70 for the fifty-two weeks of the year, shall be a mental guide, a spiritual adviser, and a moral headlight, of strong compelling personal magnetism, a guide unto their feet, and a light in the darkness? Yet, these figures represent the extremes of over twenty communities, and there are hundreds like them. Every boy, from twelve years up, should come under the influence of a vigorous, virile, whole-souled man, who has grown up through a vigorous, tempestuous boyhood. He wants guidance, counsel, fellow- ship, leadership. He has no use for sermonettes, or pleadings or tears. The average woman teacher has trouble at this point, because she does not understand the physical turmoil through which the boy is passing, and because she is emotional, unjudicial in temperament, and lacks the knowledge gained only through experience. The teachers for this period of the elementary school life cost money, and this the average community refuses to furnish. Reasonable Demands. With these means, what reasonable demands may the community make upon the elementary schools for the solution of the problem? The right of expectation depends on two points — knowledge of the physiological and psychological natures of the pu- pils of common school age,^ and the condition of the community finances in support of the schools. The community has the habit of looking for finished products from the common school. The products are still elemental, embryonic, formative. The belief in infant conversion and in infant damnation, whether it be in religion or morals, has not wholly disappeared from the land. It is this infant belief which still inclines communities to expect too much from the elementary schools. The community is inclined to judge everything from its own adult stand- point; it is inclined to believe that its yardstick is the one which it brought from the elementary school, when, in point of fact, it was only then a foot-rule, which has grown into the yardstick with ma- turer years. It is not a fair standard of measure for boys and girls. The community has the right to demand of elementary schools, if they are properly housed, properly equipped with good working tools, and a strong teaching force, a fair solution of the problem, that pu- pils shall graduate with a common moral standard, with a clear con- ception of moral obligations, and with their tendencies in right direc- tions. They have no right to demand that these pupils shall have the fixity of purpose which develops in the secondary school age, nor that all graduates shall have these conceptions and tendencies. Not all are law-abiding, either in school or in the community. Neither MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS 257 have they any right to demand that these schools shall do the work which belongs primarily to the home or church; nor have they any right to demand that poor teachers and poor equipment shall pro- duce complete results. They have the right to demand that the soil shall be prepared, the seed planted, cared for, nourished, but if the soil prove stony ground, if the tares spring up and choke in latei years, they have no right to charge this as a fault of the elementary schools. The elementary schools have none of the pleasures of the harvesters. They may see the tendencies change, asperities soften, irregularities grow toward regularities, but the full fruition is not theirs; theirs is only the hope that the fruit may not bhght in the bud. THE INDIRECT EDUCATION OF THE WILL PROFESSOR HERMAN H. HORNE, Ph.D. DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE By the direct education of the will, is usually meant teaching the will how to act, teaching morality, instilling right ideas, giving ethical instruction. By the indirect education of the will, I mean getting hold of the moral nature through action, rather than through instruction. Direct instruction must be present, but must be secondary to the con- trol of conduct. The direct education of the will, through ethical teaching, utilizes the sensory processes; the indirect education of the will, through moral action, utilizes the motor processes. From the beginning of education until now the sensory processes have been overworked by teachers. When we recognize that the intellect is the outgrowth of the sensory processes, and the will of the motor pro- cesses, we are led to affirm the superiority of cultivating the will by action to cultivating it by instruction. Wliat, then, are the principles that should guide us in cultivating the will through action ? To refer to a few of these in order: i. We must utilize the inherited racial store of natural instincts and interests. Man has all the instincts and interests of the lower animal, and some of them, like constructiveness, imitation, and cleanliness, more highly developed. In natural life these inborn instincts are overlaid by reason ; in adolescent life they are beginning to be; in young life they control. The moral problem 0} elementary education is the organization 0} these manifold natural and inherited instincts and impulses. How shall they be organized? Not by crushing them out — they cannot be crushed out; nor by leaving them alone — they will run riot; nor even by impressing ideas upon them as their governors —they do not yet acknowledge the sovereignty of ideas; — but by directing their expression toward legitimate objects. Children will imitate? Then provide worthy models for their im- itation. Children are naturally constructive? Then provide courses in manual training and domestic science. Children will play? Then provide ample recesses and good games, and recognize play as a legiti- mate educator. Children are acquisitive? Then provide shelves for natural-history specimens. Children obey the group-impulse? Then let parents and teachers join in organizing proper bands and clubs. Children are curious? Then provide legitimate difficulties to engage 258 THE INDIRECT EDUCATION OF THE WILL 259 their curiosity. Children instinctively fear? Make the consequences of wrong-doing such as justly to excite their fear. Children so easily fly into a passion ? When the fury is past, show the boy some wrong inflicted upon the innocent, and let his anger kindle as a flame to right it. Children are so secretive? Agree with them to keep all evil reports about another. Children are so emulous of each other ? Con- front each one with his own weak past self to excel. They are en- vious of another's good fortune? Point to some man of good char- acter as having the most enviable treasure. And so on through the list. Catch the instinct in the act, and direct it toward a legitimate object. To do so skillfully is actually to fashion tjie good will. 2. Aim at a specific right act, instead of at a general principle of conduct. Save the deeds, and the habits will take care of themselves. There may be a cripple in school, or one slightly deficient in some sense-organ; there are sick persons in the neighborhood; secure some particular child to share to-day the other's burden. The deed of kind- ness done gives the child a new and finer feeling, itself a motive for another deed. Not moralizing, but incidental moral practice, is our better plan. 3. Let us form in the pupil's mind an indissoluble association between pleasure and right-doing, and pain and wrong-doing. To get pleasure and avoid pain is a part of our ancestral inheritance. These are practically the only motives of animals. They are the ruling motives of our children. In adolescent and mature life they are supplemented by higher incentives, and sometimes really sup- planted, as in doing right for right's sake and in self-sacrifice. The progress to that high stage must be as rapid as possible through the pleasure-pain epoch. Let no real school offense go unpunished. "Pain is the rudder of education," said Aristotle. Let no faithful perform- ance of duty go unrewarded. To enter into the joys of right-doing is part of a moral order. For the joy that is set before them, our pu- pils may come to endure the cross, despising the shame. 4. The great habit in organizing impulses, the saving virtue of childhood, is obedience. It implies righteous authority somewhere, and power to discipline. Obedience is the surrender of the whole personality to righteous rule. Outward conformity is but the shell of it. I do not say children must be taught the virtue of obedience, but this; children must obey. To obey is not to submit; it is to let the higher nature rule. The use of the child's interest does not mean to permit him to do as he pleases, but that he should find his pleasure in doing the right. 26o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION It will help us in forming this virtue to remember that directions for young children should be definite, rather than general; uniform, rather than inconsistent; and righteous, rather than questionable. The ultimate basis is not our authority as teachers, but its righteousness. 5. Inspire a passion for right ideals. To do so, is to use the lever of feeling in moving the will. These two — feeling and will — are so closely related that many psychologists identify them. To love the right supremely is a sure means of doing it. How shall such a pas- sion be inspired? When it already animates the teacher's life; when a genuine and personal interest is taken in the best welfare of each pupil, when the school environment is made to suggest the beautiful; when the positive, rather than the negative, values in life are empha- sized, and when an humble and reverent attitude is always main- tained, when the treatment is of great themes. It is not necessary to preach the importance of virtue when we show forth a simple natural, winsome life in the midst of imitative children. We truly educate the will, not when we teach what were good to do, but when we fill little selves full of ourselves, who are Christ's, who is God's. TESTED METHODS OF INCULCATING RELIGION AND MORALS " Religionsunterright," and its Results MR. EDWARD O. SISSON, B.Sc, A.B. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS Every school programme in Germany begins with Religion. Every child must be instructed in religion. In general, it may be said that the state provides three varieties, — Protestant, Catholic, and, usually, Jewish. The parent may choose from these which he will, or he is free to seek or provide other instruction, more in accordance with his creed, provided he can satisfy the Department of Instruction as to the quantity and quality of this instruction. In actual fact, the vast majority profess one of the three prevailing faiths, and send their children to the corresponding instruction. The religious instruction is, in all cases, confessional; i.e., distinctively Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish. One must bear in mind that the school in Germany is formed and governed by the state. The people, in general, have no voice in its curriculum or methods. With respect to the religious instruction, the real control is in the hands of the church authorities, who are, of course, themselves state officials. My remarks will be conlined to the Protestant, or in German phrase, evangelical, instruction, and will refer, where nothing is said to the contrary, to Prussia, for the reason that Prussia is the acknowl- edged leader in educational as well as in other affairs. Further, by the term " school," the public elementary school will be meant, unless otherwise specified. I. The Place of Religion in the Curriculum. For the first three years of school life, from six to nine, religion has three hours a week; for the other five years, four hours a week. This makes a total of, roughly, 1,500 hours of instruction in religion in the elementary school. Religion gets a little over 13 per cent of the whole school time; only two subjects exceed it; the mother-tongue, including reading and composition, has 24 per cent, and arithmetic a trifle over 15 per cent. This long series of lessons, extending through the whole school life, and having the same thorough and exacting character as other Prussian instruction, must impress us with the largeness of the work, 261 262 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION affecting, as it does, every child of whatever birth or rank, and so becoming the heritage of every adult Prussian. II. The Subject-matter. The religious instruction includes four main constituents: i. The Bible. 2. Luther's Shorter Catechism. 3. Hymns and prayers. 4. Church knowledge. In the higher schools, the gymnasiums and realschulen, there is added a small amount of doctrinal theology and Christian ethics. 1. Bible-study. The study of the Bible forms the backbone of the instruction. In the early years, it consists of Bible stories from Old and New Testaments, narrated freely by the teacher, and learned by the pupils, so that they can recite them readily. When the pupils can read, a book of selected stories, in words suited to their years, is put into their hands. The stories are those which are commonly taught in our Sunday schools. The list usually includes all varieties, pedagogically considered, from "J^sus in the Temple" and "Abra- ham's Unselfishness to Lot " to "The Sacrifice of Isaac" and "The Slaying of the Prophets of Baal." In the last four or five years, Bible-reading takes the place of the Bible stories. Either the full Bible or an expurgated school Bible is used. There is a sharp conflict of opinion concerning the two plans; the teachers are, in general, strongly in favor of the school Bible, but the ecclesiastical authorities block its introduction to a large extent, insisting that the children must have the whole Bible in their hands, and this, in spite of the well-known fact that the boys get together and batten on the objectionable passages. The Bible-reading has the aim of giving a connected idea of the Bible, as a whole, and, in par- ticular, of the development of the plan of salvation — "History of Re- demption," as it is called in the courses of study. At this time there is a little so-called "Bible-lore," the names and sequence of the books, a little Biblical geography, some points — very conservative — concerning origin and authorship, and the like. A good deal of the Bible is learned by heart; single verses, or "say- ings," are learned and used, in a sense, as proof-texts for the cate- chism. In Berlin, where the memory-work is at a minimum, they learn fifty short passages, including about one hundred verses and five Psalms (Ps. i, 23, 90, 121, 130). The Scripture, thus learned, is called for constantly to illustrate and emphasize points of teaching. 2. Catechism. Luther's Shorter Catechism includes five parts: i. The Ten Commandments. 2. The Apostles' Creed. 3. The Lord's Prayer. 4. The Sacrament of Baptism. 5. The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. TESTED METHODS OF INCULCATING MORALS 263 The first three parts are learned by heart, — Bible, Creed, Luther, and all, — and what it means to know by heart, one can hardly imagine until one has heard a Prussian boy recite his catechism. Of the fourth and fifth parts, only the Biblical passages are usually learned by heart. This makes the total amount of the catechism memorized about eight pages. This is, as we shall see, only a small part of the total memory-work of the religious instruction, and yet the present requirement is far less than that of thirty years ago. The place of the catechism in the school amounts to this: that a work written chiefly for illiterate peasants of the sixteenth century forms the text book of morals for boys and girls of all grades of cul- ture in modern Germany. It is not surprising that the loudest com- plaints against the religious instruction are directed against the cate- chism. It is surprising that there seems, for the present, no hope of its ejection. 3. Hymns and Prayers. The study of hymns extends over the whole eight years. In the early years, single verses are learned; later, whole hymns. Here, as in all German school-work, everything is ex- plained and analyzed with great care before the pupil is required to learn it, and the pupil must be able to explain and analyze it himself. I trust that no one will think that I mean to imply that the children really tmderstand all this religious material which is so patiently and thoroughly explained to them. In Berlin, a total of one hundred twenty-four verses are learned, including fifteen whole hymns and some single stanzas. The favorite authors are Paul Gerhardt and Luther. The hymns are mostly of the type best described as pietistic. Two favorites, well known in EngHsh translation, are Luther's " Eine feste Burg" and Gerhardt's '■' O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden ! " "A Mighty Fortress is our God " ''tr. F. H. Hedge); "O Sacred Head now Wounded" (tr. J. W. Alex- ander). It need hardly be added that the pupils learn to sing these hymns as well as many others, and they sing them with inspiring power and perfection. Some of the hymns are wonderfully fine, but most contain a sentiment entirely foreign to the child's range of ideas. Prayers are learned in the first three or four years, and are used in opening and closing school at all times. Nearly all the children know two or three prayers when they first come to school, — a morning prayer, a bedtime prayer, a "grace before meat," and a "grace after meat." A few more are learned in school. All are extremely simple, and, like the hymns, of a distinctly pietistic tone. 264 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 4. Church Knowledge. The material which I inchide under this heading is as follows: In the sixth year, instruction in the Church year, and the liturgy of the Evangelical Church. In the seventh year, the last religion lesson of each week is usually given in part to an explanation of the Church lessons for the follow- ing Sunday. In the eighth year, a very brief and simple outline of Church his- tory is given, treating mainly of Luther and the Reformation, with a view to arming the good Protestant against the wiles of Catholicism, but also including such topics as: The Persecutions, Constantine the Great, Augustine, Contemporary Activities of the Church, and the like. III. Spirit and Methods. Under this head I can touch only lightly the general treatment and atmosphere of the religious instruction. Some teachers treat the religion lesson in exactly the same way as they would a lesson in geography or arithmetic, making it purely a matter of so much knowledge; others give it the air almost of a prayer-meeting. Between these extremes there are all intermediate varieties. The intel- lectual tone is prevalent in the higher schools in general, and in Prus- sia in particular. In the great majority of these schools the religion lesson has no more emotion than any other lesson, and of no other kind. The intellectual treatment is by no means confined to the higher schools, nor to Prussia. It is common, also, in the Volksschulen, especially among the younger teachers. There is much reason to be- lieve that it is on the increase. I met the devotional method in Prus- sia only among the older teachers and some women teachers. The current of public feeling and the new scientific thought that is gain- ing so rapidly among the common school teachers are against it, and seem likely to drive it out in the end. On the other hand, much as we may disapprove the purely intel- lectual treatment, there is a devotional type which is hardly less ob- jectionable,— a sort of prayer-meeting tone and phraseology, which are quite out of place in school, and with children of school age. This brings us to the vital point of the German and all other re- ligious instruction — that is, the teacher himself. Whenever I have heard good reports from a German youth about his Religionsunterricht, it has always been with some such words as "We had a fine teacher in this or that class, and I enjoyed religion, and got good from it." There are two fatal faults in the teacher of religion, indifference and insin- cerity, and two vital necessities, love and wise candor. The Prussian TESTED METHODS OF INCULCATING MORALS 265 system, unfortunately, makes these two virtues difficult; the stringent methods and discipline discourage affection between teacher and pupil, and the rigid orthodoxy required in the religious instruction destroys candor by compelling the teacher to present as sacredly true, state- ments and ideas which his conscience and judgment reject. IV. Results. What is the actual outcome of this great religious instruction? Without some sort of answer to this question, we can- not make any final estimate of its value or significance, nor any inferences as to our own problem. The Germans themselves are far from agreed on the point. Some think the religious instruction is the source of great and almost unmixed benefit; others condemn it, root and branch. And while its bitterest enemies may be the enemies of rehgion, there are not wanting earnest churchmen who declare that it works untold injury to all true piety. There is an oft-quoted saying of an eminent theologian, that the German people must have much religion in their hearts, inasmuch as the Religionsunterricht has not yet rooted it all out! It would not be far wrong to summarize German opinion thus : Instruction in religion is absolutely indispens- able, but the existing instruction is completely out of harmony with the best thought of the day and stands in need of radical re- form. I venture the following as to results: The pupils certainly get a large stock of knowledge on religious matters, of the Bible, of the great conceptions of Christian doctrine, and of the Evangelical Church. How much this is worth, and how long it is retained, are questions not easily answered. It seems quite undeniable that the religious instruction does not produce devotion to the Church, either in the sense of interest in its work, or of adherence to its tenets. The growing estrangement from the Church, especially among the laboring classes and the cul- tured, is one of the most conspicuous features of German life. In- deed, it is hard to avoid the conviction, held by many Germans, that the religious instruction, with its rigid inculcation of a body of ideas antagonistic to current thought, is one of the potent factors of this estrangement. It is conservative to say that there is no good proof that the religious instruction is any more effective in creating inward religion and morality than in producing devotion to the visible church. That in the hands of earnest and high-souled teachers, the religious in- struction can be and is the means of deep and lasting moral and spiritual good, no one can doubt. 266 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION In conclusion, a word as to the inferences for our problem. I sug- gest five: 1. The great fact of the instruction itself, and the almost unani- mous opinion among German schoolmen, that religious instruction is an indispensable part of the school, ought to incline us to weigh our own situation, and ask whether we are not robbing our school of an essential organ. 2. There is no hope that we can borrow either wholesale or in detail from the Prussian system, without searching criticism. 3. Any hope of sustaining, by means of religious instruction, any cult or dogma in opposition to the best thought of the day, is an illusion. Knowledge of religious concepts and doctrines may be in- culcated, but this by no means insures any particle of genuine re- ligion. 4. Here, as there, the person must be found; the man or woman with warm heart and clear head. His moral teaching must be in- structive and persuasive, never dictatorial nor dogmatic; he must work most by being, as a wise man has said, the imitable thing, in morals and rehgion. 5. Lastly, a word as to the Bible. The wisest German thinkers on education see in the greater prominence of the Bible the salvation of the Religionsunterricht, and are urging with much success that all other matter be made subordinate to it. The exclusion of the Bible from our schools is a staggering fact, when viewed in the light of a great system of public schools with the Bible. In some of the smaller German states and in Switzerland, the Bible is in the schools, and the teacher's conscience is free. If Prussia would learn from this example, her religious instruction might gain new power and stability. And who can estimate the uplift that could come to us from the pres- ence of the Bible in the school ? But only with the spirit of freedom. A few of the most available books on the subject are : Russell, James E. German Higher Schools, pp. 213-226. New York, 1899. Seeley, L. German School System. New York, 1896. Bolton, F. E. Secondary School System of Germany. New York, 1900. Klemm, L. R. European Schools. New York, 1889. ORIENTAL CUSTOMS WITH RESPECT TO THE INCULCA- TION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY I. In China HON. CHESTER HOLCOMBE FORMERLY SECRETARY OF LEGATION AND ACTING MINISTER, PEKIN, CHINA Chinese and American systems of education do not have a common purpose. The Oriental teacher does not seek to convey information to his pupil. Hence he needs not the text-books which give the latest discoveries, the most recent researches, the most modern methods, form- ulae, and devices in all the wide range of knowledge. Intellectual de- velopment even is not the main object of Chinese study. In point of fact, aside from learning to read and write, the cultivation of the memory, the art of versification, style in composition, in which the Chinese sur- pass the entire Western World, there is nothing in common between the American and Chinese ideas or methods of education. In the Chinese schools no mathematics and no sciences, however rudimentary, are taught, nor any language, aside from the national tongue. Such stray bits of history and geography, often inaccurate, as are found in the various text-books are there quite incidentally, and only because they serve to illustrate or enforce some other point, deemed of far higher importance to the student. The answer to the question which forms the subject of this paper, What are the Chinese Customs of Inculcating MoraHty ? can be given in a single line. The entire system and course of Chinese education is devoted to instruction in civic and social ethics. The govern- mental examinations are shaped exclusively to that end. Not to com- municate knowledge or learning, but to mold character; not to make men smart, but good; to instil right principles of action and conduct; to teach each his relations and duties to his fellow, — is the primary and final purpose of the school in China. Hence revised editions of modem text-books are hardly needed. A careful study of the ethical system taught will show that it is sound, pure, and good. It is necessary now to examine very briefly the character of the moral instruction, and in doing so, the accuracy of the assertion just made will be evident. The first book, or primer, invariably used in Chinese schools is called the San Sz Ching, or Trimetrical Classic. It was prepared by a teacher in A. D, 1050, for use in his school, and may be bought in any village in the empire for about two cents. It is in poetry, or doggerel, and 267 268 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION contains 1068 words. It has been translated into Latin, French, Ger- man, Russian, Portuguese, and Enghsh, and a paraphrase of it is used by the Protestant, Roman, and Greek Catholic missionaries, in their schools in China. Carefully translated quotations will best show its character. The first few lines run as follows: " Men at their birth, are by nature radically good. Though alike in this, in practice they widely diverge. " If not educated the natural character degenerates. " A course of education, is made valuable by close attention. " To nurture, and not educate, is a father's error. " Near the center of the little volume is found a summary of moral duties which must be given here. " Mutual affection of father and son; concord of man and wife. " The elder brothers, kindness; the younger ones, respect. " Order between seniors and juniors; friendship among associates. " On the part of the prince, regard; on that of his minister, true loyalty, " These ten moral duties are ever binding among men." This ancient text-book has been committed to memory by countless millions of Chinese children. Other text -books in the preliminary course of study resemble closely the San Sz Ching, though having a wider range. The productions of nature, virtues of the early rulers, the power and capacities of man, his social duties and mode of conduct, with many and minute instruction in the proper manner of life, — all are concisely dealt with, and illustrated with examples. Quotations from two only will be given. " Observe and imitate the conduct of the virtuous, and command your thoughts that you may be wise. Your virtue once established, your reputation will be formed; your habits once rectified, your example will be good. A cubit of jade stone is not to be valued, but an inch of time you should contend for." Another volume, called the Hsiao Ching, or Classic of Filial Piety, has had an immense and lasting influence upon the Chinese race. The last of the primary books treats of the principles of education ; the duties we owe our rulers, kindred, and fellow-men; those which we owe to ourselves in regard to study, demeanor, food, and dress; and gives many examples from the earliest times down to two and one half centuries before Christ, of the observance of the lessons taught in the book, and the good effects which have resulted therefrom. Following upon the primary course comes the academic, the body of Chinese education. And now we reach the most conspicuous figure in the history and affairs of the empire, the sage and statesman, THE INCULCATION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 269 Confucius. He represents, he was the embodiment, of a force which, more than other, probably more than all others combined, has shaped the institutions of China, controlled the policy of the government, deter- mined the character and destiny of the race. For more than two thou- sand years he has been final authority in all matters, public and private, to a nation which to-day numbers more than four hundred millions. Let any one interested in the problem determine the aggregate population of China in that long stretch of time, and he will see to what an enormous mass of humanity Confucius has been leader, guide, and master. Nor is there any sufficient indication of the decadence of his authority. He is still the moving and steadying spirit which dominates the Chinese race. The academic department of the educational course consists of nine books. These are called among the Chinese the Wu Ching Sz Shu, or Five Classics, and Four Books, and are commonly known to the Western World as the Confucius Classics. The system of instruction is identical with that pursued in the primary course. Each character or word must be thoroughly memorized, — there are at least half a million of them, — and each student must learn to read and write them, and to expound their meaning, which naturally includes the ability to prepare essays upon any passages found in them. This work completed, and the test- ing examinations passed to the satisfaction of the government, his stu- dent days are ended. He is the educated and polished gentleman, fit for the highest service and honor within the gift of the Son of Heaven. Such, for many centuries, has been the scholastic itinerary of Chinese youth, and they have labored through its clouds, and fogs, and mazes, up towards the glittering stars which have crowned their ambition. Confucius was not the founder or teacher of any religious system. He personally and emphatically repudiated any such idea. He was the author, or as he himself would have said, the compiler of a sys- tem of political and social ethics, or code of morals. His one ambition was to be chosen by some prince who would follow his instructions in the management of public affairs. He was disappointed in this, and hence to the end regarded his life as a failure. It is manifestly im- possible to give anything which approaches even a cursory review of the teachings of the Confucian ethical system. Fortunately, this is not necessary. There are three characters, or words, which occur so frequently in the teachings of this great master, upon which he laid so much of significance and stress that, taken together, they make plain the foundation and frame-work of the entire fabric. Understand them as he understood them, and you will know Confucianism as the mas- ter knew it. 270 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The first and most important of these words is "li.^' It may be termed the bedrock upon which rests the entire system of social and civic morality, as taught by the Chinese sage. It is constantly in the mouth of every Chinaman to-day, as it has been for many centuries, as the final criterion and authority discriminating between right and wrong. It is commonly mistranslated, and out of this has grown a sweeping condemnation of the entire system. It has been inferred that, with Confucius, everything depended upon form, that if the external appearance and conduct were decorous and correct, it mattered not what the internal conditions might be. Nothing could be further from the fact. This Chinese character means far more than ceremony or ritual. Probably the nearest equivalent phrase to "li" in our tongue is " The principle of correct living." It is the primary and ultimate law of right action, and implies doing the right thing at the right time, in the right way, and from the right motive. No moral training, based upon this word and enforcing the constant practice of it, can be far wrong. The second clue-word to the Confucian ethical system was given by the master in conversation. Being asked if there was any one word which would serve as a rule of action in all the relations of life, he replied, "Is not 'shu' such a word?" Then, fortunately, he added an ex- planation to his meaning by giving this interpretation of the Golden Rule, " What you do not wish that others should do unto you, do not unto them." This Chinese character has also been dwarfed in ordi- nary translations into " reciprocity," or " give and take." It includes immensely more than that, and means consideration, charity, forbear- ance, thoughtfulness for others, and mutuality of rights and interests. A third word which played a conspicuous part in the Confucian conver- sations, and which, correctly interpreted, will furnish an important key to his meaning, is " Chun Tz.'' Here again Sinologues have been much at loss for a proper translation . They have called it the " princely man , " the "superior man," the " mean" (or moderate) man, and by a variety of other phrases. It is quite evident from many descriptive remarks that by " Chun Tz" the Sage meant the ideal man, the perfected type of manhood. And while hunting far afield, and finding only a misfit phrase, these translations have overlooked one close at home, which fully conveys the idea of the master. The " gentleman," in the highest, truest, broadest meaning and practice of that word, is the modern type of the Confucian " Chun Tz." The teachings of Confucius were elevated and pure, free from word or idea which might possibly corrupt the thoughts of men. He gave THE INCULCATION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 271 the most minute and varied instructions for the nurture and education of children, laid the utmost stress upon filial duty, and prescribed de- tailed rules of courtesy and conduct for the government of all ranks and classes. The principal figure in all of his instructions was the " Chun Tz,'' or gentleman, and no higher type may be produced by any code or system of ethical teaching. Dignity, moderation, self-re- straint, fortitude, and sincerity were to be his characteristics, and the Golden Rule the law of his intercourse with his fellows. It is reasonable to believe that such moral training, if faithfully pursued and enforced, will carry humanity as high in the scale of being as it can be lifted, without an appeal to those other and higher ties of his spiritual nature, which connect each man directly with God. II. In India REV, ROBERT A. HUME, D.D. PRESIDENT AHMEDNAGAR THEOLOGICAL SEMINARy, AHMEDNAGAR, INDIA Of the two hundred and ninety-four millions of India and Burma reported in the government census of 1901, sixty-two millions were Mo- hammedans. The masses of them are iUiterate, and receive compara- tively little instruction in religion or morals, save that every social ar- rangement of Islam teaches that God is one; that idolatry is offensive to him; that Mohammed is the great prophet of God; that the Koran is the sacred book; and that certain requirements about circumcision, fasting, and the observance of certain seasons must be carefully regarded. Among the higher and educated sections of Mohammedans, well-to-do families receive a good deal of careful training through religious teachers. Strict Mohammedans are careful to send their children only to schools where the Koran is taught. Strict Mohammedan women are careful to compel the members of their households to follow ceremonial re- quirements of their faith. This paper will mainly describe the customs of inculcating religion and morals among the two hundred and seven millions who were re- turned in the census as Hindoos. The majority of these are largely uneducated as to books, yet some instruction about conduct and religion is given among them. If the word " moral " in our subject were meant to be a synonym of highly ethical, or as giving principles of right and wrong, then the statement must be made that there is very little such instruction among any class of Hindoos. In no religious community of a primitive or moderately developed character is morality, as such, much taught or emphasized. The principal matter in all such religions is ceremonial purity and correctness. 2 72 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Imitation of elders is the principal way of inculcating religion and morals in India. In hundreds of thousands of villages there is only one person who is supposed to be a religious guide and responsible for explaining and enjoining religious ideas and customs upon the people of the village. And the main thing which that holy man does is to perform with considerable exactness what are deemed religious practices, and to see that the idols and shrines are properly looked after. Hence, imitation of the religious customs of caste and community is the principal way in which the middle castes, who are mainly farmers and artisans, know anything of rehgion. There is a large number of days in the year which are specifically set apart for the observance of certain reli- gious events. These dates are given in the calendar and are usually con- nected with easily remembered astronomical occurrences. On the feast days the community as a whole, especially the women, follow certain traditional practices about bathing and feasting and fasting, and large numbers go to the shrines and temples. In connection with such small religious gatherings at sacred shrines there is often some person, who has a group of singers associated with him, who reads or sings or tells some stories from the religious books. Many people sit and hear these recitations by the hour. Also, on moonlight evenings there are often such recitations from sacred books. The masses get most of their knowl- edge of religious ideas and stories from such occasions. And when people go in crowds on great pilgrimages, then each night, as the company stops en route, and after reaching the place of pilgrimage, they listen to men who read or sing or tell the substance of the epics or Puranas and other books. At those great gatherings there are persons whose profession it is to direct the pilgrims what to do ceremonially, and to perform on them those rites which are supposed to be efficacious, and the efficacy of which depends mainly on the correctness with which everything is performed. But the pilgrims come away with injured morals, due to the extortions or immoralities which abound at all so-called sacred places. Using the word " morals " as the recognition and doing of things which are a considerable part of daily life, and which affect the character and welfare of men, the first important point to mention is that the inculcation of good habits for the life of the masses of Hindoos depends mainly on the women. The duty and practice of industry is instilled from early childhood into the very bone and fiber of thought and life by the habits of the community and the home, and by the compulsions of difficulty in making an existence. In connection with industry, the simple habits of the farmer's household require regularity of life. The THE INCULCATION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 273 minuteness and comprehensive character of caste requirements make obedience to elders and society an easy and common virtue. The division of the community into strata, each of which has its recognized grade, promotes regard for social order and reverence toward acknowl- edged superiors. Under purely Oriental civilization, criticism of the social order is useless and uncommon, and duty is taught to be quietly filling one's appointed station in life. Modesty is an ornament to the average Hindoo woman, and is developed by the social law which al- lows young and middle-aged women to have little intercourse even with the men of their own households. Economy is carefully and systemati- cally taught, because from very early childhood all girls, and to some extent Httle boys, are associated with the women who manage the house- hold affairs. There is careful estimating the exact amount of grain and of all condiments required for every meal and for every expenditure. Exactness of thought and speech, and care in making and keeping prom- ises, are not cultivated or highly appreciated. Exuberant imagination causes exuberance of speech, which often seems to Occidentals flagrant disregard of truth. But, barring testimony in litigation, the average man in India does not intentionally deceive, nor is he deemed untruth- ful by those who know what his language means. Turning now to the small but influential section of the Indian people who are Brahmans, and members of a few other of the higher castes, one finds that much pains are taken in inculcating religion and ceremonial morality in that community. Here, especially, reUgion and morality are synonymous, and they cover every detail of life. It may surprise many to know that here, too, the inculcation of religion and moraUty is mainly done by women, so far as this does not depend upon books. The united family, in which three or four generations live together and share all responsibilities and privileges, is the typical family life in India. See a picture of the home life of such a family. From earliest years children see that parents and grandparents and all the members of the household are scrupulous about what are esteemed religious duties. Even in cold weather every one carefully bathes more than once a day. Many rise before dawn and go to bathe in streams. When the women cook, they carefully change their garments. Even little children, unless ceremonially clean, are not allowed to go near or touch the cooks. When- ever the men eat food, they bathe carefully and change their dress. After every meal the floor is cleaned in the regulation way. The me- tallic dishes are scoured and placed in order. Careful restrictions are placed on the sources from which water is brought. When the boys play or go to school, they are scrupulous about not having their persons 2 74 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION or garments touched, even accidentally, by any one who is not cere- monially clean. Great conscientiousness is developed as to fasting and feasting and the observance of sacred occasions. When sickness and death enter the household , additional responsibilities are incurred . Obe- dience is a virtue which is inculcated and developed by the assumptions and atmosphere of the home and of society. As girls grow older, they are largely confined to assigned quarters of the united family, and are not expected to speak with the males except under restrictions. Modesty is effectively taught. From very early days girls are taught industry by being required to do as much as they can in the various lines of domestic economy. Thus the average Brahman woman becomes a good cook and a good housekeeper, and has careful training for her position in life. All girls and little boys go daily with their mothers to the shrines for the performance of certain religious rites. At home they share in the care of the tulasi plant and in serving the idols in the home. When the family priest visits the home, the women and girls sometimes attend and notice the rites which the priest performs. It is pre-eminently Hin- doo women who inculcate the Hindoo religion by repeating religious stories which they have heard, and by requiring all female members of the household and the younger boys to perform religious ceremonies and to observe sacred seasons in the prescribed manner. The fathers of the higher castes do something in the training of their sons in religion and morals. Boys associate with their fathers, and thus learn to imitate the various religious acts of men. Usually, between the ages of six and eight, boys of the higher castes go through a service of initiation, and are invested with a sacred cord, after which they are taught to read sacred books and are permitted to read and learn about various religious doctrines. From this time on many boys go to schools, in which they are taught a good deal about religion and conduct. In households where special care is practised, even little boys are awa- kened before davm and set to reading sacred books. They usually read these aloud. Sometimes the tufts of their hair are tied by .strings to a nail or hook in the wall to keep sleepy heads from nodding. Purely indigenous customs among Brahmans required a boy soon after being initiated to leave home and to go and live with a religious teacher for a period of years. This practice is comparatively rare nowadays. To some extent in the village schools and in higher institutions, the Hindoo religion and Hindoo morality are taught to boys. A Hindoo college has been organized at Benares, under the leadership of Mrs. Annie Besant, to teach Hindooism much on the lines of higher institutions in Christian countries. Were the characteristic institutions of learning THE INCULCATION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 275 in India succeeding in teaching the Hindoo religion to the rising gene- ration, this new effort would not have been attempted. The strong points in Indian customs of inculcating rehgion and morals are, that obedience, reverence, and conscientiousness are taught in all sections of the community by leading the individual from child- hood to do those things which are required by his religion; that the arrangement of society helps boys and girls from early childhood to form their conduct according to the requirements of the spheres in which they are to Uve; that with very limited resources in books and schools a considerable degree of success is attained in securing that which is thus aimed at. These are points in which the more intelligent people of the West might well learn something from the customs of India. In no community will adequate success be attained in religion or morals where parents and elders depend mainly on teaching through books or even oral instruction, without, first, themselves practising, at home and in all relations of society, that which their theory of religion and morals requires; and secondly, in continuously and absolutely requiring all the members of the household from early childhood to conform their conduct to the teaching which they profess to accept. •" i IX. TEACHER-TRAINING THE TRAINING OF SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS The Sunday School Teacher-training Accomplished by the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy DEAN EDWARD HOOKER KNIGHT HARTFORD SCHOOL OF RELIGIOUS PEDAGOGY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT What is the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy attempting in the training of Sunday school teachers ? Put in one sentence, the ans- wer would be, It is seeking to give a thorough preparation for the teach- ing ministry. In the position of the religious teacher, it recognizes a sacred office, no less sacred and no less important than that of the ordained ministry itself. To those who would enter upon the duties of this office it seeks to give a training which shall be adequate in its thoroughness of preparation for the duties involved. For twenty years it has been striving to fulfill this mission. During this time the work has constantly been enlarging in its scope, but has not changed in its fundamental principles. The work which is now being attempted is, therefore, the fruit of a long experience. To explain this work it is necessary to state principles as well as plans and methods. The first thing to be determined by religious educators is the su- preme end they have in view. This the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy finds in the development of the well-rounded personality, of 'which the most important element is Christian character. Not what the boys and girls know, nor what they can do, but what they become, is the one all-important question. Sunday schools exist in order to help all, both young and old, to become more like Jesus Christ. By the side of this educational principle, the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy would place another, that the chief means by which this supreme end is to be reached is, again, personality, or Christian character. Like begets like. Certainly, the most essential qualifi- cation of the Christian teacher is Christian character. He must be saying by his life, Come, let us journey toward the goal together. Tributary to this dominant power are many means which the Chris- tian teacher may use both for the development of his own personality and in his work for others. Among these are four fields of distinctive value. These four the Hartford school is seeking to develop in their 276 THE TRAINING OF SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 277 relations to the great problem of giving a thorough training to the teaching ministry. They are the Bible, as the incomparable text- book in rehgion and morals; Psychology, which shows us what the human being is and how he develops; the Home, as providing the chief environment in which the child develops and as being the most important element in the Hfe of society; and Pedagogy, which, both as a science and as an art, seeks to make the best use possible of all this material for the development of the child in his full personality. Sufficient progress has already been made in all these fields, so that material of great helpfulness is available even to the humblest teacher; so much land yet remains to be possessed as to demand the most lavish use of time and strength on the part of many in exploring the un- known fields. This school stands for the wise use of assured results, and for that patient and thorough investigation which will yield even greater results m the future. It beUeves, also, that there should be three distinguishing characteristics of study here, whether it be by the average teacher or by the most expert specialists. The study of the Bible, or of Psychology, or of the Home, or of Pedagogy, should be spiritual, scientific, and practical; spiritual, in that it should be under- taken in dependence upon divine guidance through the Holy Spirit, should have chief regard to the great essential truths in the field con- cerned, and should have its primary effect upon the student in growth of character; scientific, in that it should be conducted according to well-estabUshed principles and methods of investigation; and practical, in that it should pursue those subjects which are of the highest importance and of the greatest benefit to those concerned. In all of these fields this institution would direct the attention of the reUgious teacher to the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth, which, besides furnishmg a perfect model of what religious education desires to accomphsh, also presents the best illustration of the chief means which it must employ. In the attitude of Jesus toward the Old Testa- ment, his study of it, and use of the results of his study, is the model for the Christian teacher in his use of the Bible; in that home at Naza- reth, humble as it was, were the essential elements of the ideal home; what human nature is, both in childhood and maturity, and what it may become, we learn best from Jesus' study of human nature, and from what he was, as child and man; how to teach, one may certainly best learn from companionship with the Master Teacher. As Jesus is supreme in personality, so is he supreme in those fields which bring the most important contributions that may anywhere be found for the development of the personality. All that has thus far been said has appHcation to all workers in 2 78 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the field of religious education. But for the same reason all has most emphatic application to those who would be leaders in this field. The training of such leaders is the most distinctive feature in what the Hartford School is doing for the training of Sunday school teachers. The rank and file of the army of Sunday school workers will receive their training and their inspiration largely from the various leaders with whom they come in contact. The churches are calling more and more loudly for young men and women of high ability and thorough professional training, who shall enter this field of the Sunday school as a life-work. The demand is far greater than the supply. There is also a growing feeling on the part of churches that ministers them- selves should be thoroughly equipped along these lines of religious education. To meet both these needs the Hartford School offers an advanced course which is open only to college graduates, which gives three years of professional training, and which leads to the degree of Bachelor of Religious Pedagogy. By its own courses of study and by its afl&liation with the Hartford Theological Seminary it covers ail branches of the preparation necessary for successful professional leader- ship in this field. A training like this must be had by many if the church is to make even a beginning in meeting the opportunities open to it in religious education. There are other fields which require leaders, but where so extended a course of educational preparation is not necessary. This school therefore, offers also a three years' course, which is open to graduates of high schools and normal schools, and which aims to prepare both young men and women for the many salaried positions in the lay work of the church, where teaching is a distinctive but not the sole feature. Such are to be leaders in their respective positions, though not in so large fields as the preceding. In order also to meet directly something of its obligation toward the great body of Sunday school workers, this institution offers a one year's course for volunteer church workers to which any one may be ad- mitted who is recommended by pastor or superintendent. These various courses constitute a fully graded system, which has in view both the average Sunday school teacher, who wishes light and guidance, but who has little opportunity for special study, and also the young man or young woman, with an extended general educational preparation already, who wishes to obtain the highest and best special equipment possible. To meet the needs of both these classes, and of all between, — nothing less than this is what the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy is striving to accomplish in the training of Sun- day school teachers. THE TRAINING OF SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 279 The Sunday School Teacher-Training Accomplished by the Institute and Training School of Young Men's Christian Associations JOHN W. HANSEL PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUTE AND TRAINING SCHOOL OF YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS It is the purpose of this paper to repoft on some of the ways in which the Young Men's Christian Associations and the Association Training Schools through the Associations, are contributing toward the training of lay Bible teachers. The Institute and Training School is not a school for the training of Sunday school teachers. Its contribution to teacher-training is, therefore, an indirect one — a sort of by-product, as it were. The purpose of the Association Training School is the enlistment and training of men for the general secretaryship and the physical and other directorships of the Young Men's Christian Associations. The general secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association is not primarily a teacher, but an organizer and director of forces in a world-wide Christian movement. The aim of the movement is. the salvation and fourfold development of young men. The training of the secretary proceeds upon the principle that physical, intellectual, social, and moral instruction must be co-ordinated with spiritual develop- ment in the building of the symmetrical man. One of the most important and effective of the association activities to-day is its Bible-study department. There has been a phenomenal growth in this department of association effort during the past decade. One hundred and thirty-two associations report an increase over last year of 448 classes, enrolling 6,312 students; an increase per associa- tion of more than three classes and nearly 50 students. More than 60 associations have organized teacher-training classes. One asso- ciation conducts a class for teacher-training, with an enrollment of 40 men from as many churches. Each member of the class conducts a class for teacher-training in his respective church. Another associa- tion has two similar classes and is furnishing quite a number of teachers for the churches. Yet another, with an enrollment of more than 1,300 men in Bible classes, states that 25 to 30 per cent of the students are teaching in the Sunday schools, shops, and homes of the city. The training school and the associations, through their summer schools for college students and for volunteer workers in city, town, and railroad associations, have done valuable work in the promotion of Bible-study and in training Bible teachers. The association has been 28o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION one of the leading factors in the promotion of Bible-study among the students in our institutions of higher learning during the past twenty years. The association Bible classes in the universities and colleges are taught by students, who are in this way receiving valuable training as teachers. Many of these young men continue to teach the Bible in the home and in the Sunday school after they have entered professional or business life. One of the primary aims of the Institute and Training School is to fit its students for the organization and conduct of Bible-study depart- ments in the associations. In planning the courses of study in the Bible-study department, while the subject of teacher-training has been given an important place in the thought of the faculty, the controlling consideration has been how to make the largest possible contribution toward the development of the character and faith of the secretary. In its Bible-study the school deals entirely with the English Bible, It seeks to give the student, first of all, a mastery of the facts of the text; to make him acquainted with the history of God's dealings with men through the generations, and especially his revelation to man through Jesus Christ. The curricula, as at present planned, offer to men looking forward to managerial positions in the association the following Bible-work. (AV of this work is inductive, us'ng as largely as possible the Bible itself as a text.) First, a course of 20 hours in Bibli- cal introduction; second, a course of 60 hours in the Gospels — the life and teachings of Jesus; third, a course of 30 hours in history and literature of the early church, with an additional 10 hours in the teach- ings of the apostles; fourth, a course of 60 hours in Old Testament history and literature; fifth, a course of 20 hours in personal religious work. It is the aim of this course to give the student a clear knowledge of the essentials of the Christian faith, and to inspire and direct him in religious work for individuals; sixth, a course of 30 hours in induc- tive book studies. In addition to these courses in Bible -study, there is a course of 20 hours in Biblical pedagogy; a course of 60 hours in church history; a course of psychology and a course in sociology, each of which makes valuable contributions toward the fitting of the teacher. The training school course, as a whole, equips the student for effi- cient service as a normal teacher and coach to lay Bible teachers and leaders in Christian work. THE TRAINING OF SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 281 The Sunday School Teacher-Training Accomplished by the Alberta Sunday School Association CHARLES HERBERT HUESTIS, M.A. PASTOR MC DOUG ALL METHODIST CHURCH; EDMONTON, PRESIDENT ALBERTA SUNDAY SCHOOL ASSOCIATION The problem of religious education and its relation to education in general, the problem of the child and his nature, the problem of the subject-matter of teaching and its application to the needs of the child, and the problem of the teacher's own personality, seem to be the main things to be taken into consideration in the training of teachers. When, however, we looked abroad for something that might serve us as a model, we were able to find no course of study that seemed to be sufl&ciently broad and pedagogical to meet our needs. The following scheme was therefore formulated: Ten courses of study are offered : I. Introduction to the Bible. II. Child Study and Teaching III. Old Testament History. (Half course.) IV. Old Testament Literature. (Half course.) V. The Prophets of Israel. VI. The Life of Christ. VII. The Founding of the Christian Church. (Half course.) VIII. Modem Missions. (Half course.) IX. Paul's Life and Letters. X. Educational Method. XI. Primary and Junior Course. XII. Sunday School Methods. — Superintendent's Course. Students who desire to proceed to a diploma must take three of the above courses of study. Courses I and II are required, and form the major of every graduate course. Courses III to XII are elective, any one of which may be selected. The selected course shall be known as the student's minor. There are four books in each course, and as the study is supposed to extend over the space of two years, this means that six books are to be read each year. Of course the student may finish the reading as rapidly as he please, but it is advised that at least two years be spent in the reading. There are no regular examinations; that is to say, no papers are set. But the student is required to give two proofs of his knowledge of the nature of the subjects, and his abihty to teach: I. A review of from one to three thousand words, according to the nature of the subject, upon each book read. 282 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 2. On completing the full course of reading, a trial at teaching before a committee. The educational department of Alberta Sunday School Association, in adopting this plan of teacher-training, believes that it marks a distinct advance upon Sunday school normal courses. It is, we believe, the first serious attempt on the part of an association to provide Sunday school virorkers with a curriculum of study upon truly modern lines, that they can take up at their own homes, and which will make them, in so far as reading can do so, competent teachers of the Bible to children. The following items of excellence may be noted: It is comprehensive. The required courses cover the whole ground, while the electives enable the student to specialize on some subject of particular interest and importance. It is thorough and scholarly. Nothing short of mastery of the books so that the student can express their content in his own words will be accepted. It does not even remotely suggest that any kind of outline course of child study and the Bible will do for teachers in the Sunday school, when the most vigorous application is necessary to qualify teachers in the public school. It is stimulating. While none of the books are destructive in their nature, all are in sympathy with the historical study of the Bible and the genetic study of the child. The text-books are the best that can be obtained at a price not too great for the average teacher, and have been selected after consultation with leading Bible teachers and education- alists in the country. It is fair. No course is too hard for the average person of, say, eighteen years, while every course is strong enough to make desultory study unsatisfactory. On the completion of his graduate course, the student will have a knowledge of the Bible and the principles of educa- tion superior to most of his fellows, and a sense of fitness that will be an inspiration. THE EDUCATION REQUIRED FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS The Sunday School Teacher-Training Accomplished by the Sunday School Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT, D.D. SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH It was not until after the Civil War that the movement for the training of teachers began to assume importance. A public school principal in Buffalo, Mr. J. E. Gilbert, established in 1865 a monthly paper con- taining lessons for the training of Sunday school teachers. About the same time. Dr. John H. Vincent began holding normal classes in Chi- cago; and in the year 1866 he was called from Chicago to New York, to take part in the supervision of the Sunday school work of his own church, and in 1868 he was made secretary of the Sunday School Union. He at once formed a normal committee, and planned courses of study for Sunday school teachers, in the Bible and in the work of teaching. Under his direction, institutes and conventions were held in many places, classes of teachers were established, and a regular course of lessons was instituted, and the first Chautauqua assembly was held in 1874, under the auspices and direction of the Sunday Schoo' Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Chautauqua normal course has been recognized from the be- ginning as the regular course for the training of teachers under the di- rection of the Methodist Episcopal Church, although the assembly soon became interdenominational and independent from the office of the Sunday School Union in New York. Circulars of information are sent, written examinations are given, and diplomas are conferred, while at the same time the same course is carried on from the Chau- tauqua office. The number of those who study the courses directly under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church is not now as great as it was, for the reason that the teacher-training has of late years been taken up by the various state Sunday school associations, with all their complete machinery for organization and local supervision. The aggregate circulation of the books prepared for the Chautauqua normal courses has averaged nearly fifteen thousand every year for at least fifteen years past. The plan of this course of study is a simple one: To select only the 283 284 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION most important subjects, those that are essential to a knowledge of the Bible and the work of teaching; to prepare studies upon them that can be mastered without great difficulty, with outlines which may be placed upon the blackboard, and thereby appeal to the eye, and to arrange them in such a form as not to require a specialist or a scholar to teach them, for in the necessities of the work the instructors as well as the students in these classes must be " laymen " in every sense of the word. Only two books are assigned to each year; the first to be studied with examination if one is desired; the other to be read. J. T. McFARLAND, D.D. SECRETARY OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH As showing the present attempts and plans of the Sunday School Union in directing teacher-training, the following things may be noted: 1. A secretary for the Sunday School Union is appointed in each annual conference, representing it in all of its interests and particularly with a view to fostering Sunday school institutes and other meetings directed to teacher-training. 2. A bureau of special correspondence has been established in the home office, with a special superintendent in charge (Dr. O. S. Baketel), through which the union keeps in communication with the conference secretaries as well as with the pastors and superintendents. 3. The secretary of the Sunday School Union is issuing a booklet for the presiding elders and one also for pastors, in which he gives a list of the most valuable books belonging to the literature of teacher- training, particularly recommending nine books regarded as being of prime importance. The entire list embraces seventy-five books, and is intended to constitute a teachers' library. A strong effort is being made to introduce this library into the Sunday schools as a basis for any thoroughgoing work in the line of teacher-training. 4. In these same booklets is given an extensive list of topics re- lating to the Sunday school, adapted to use in making up programmes for Sunday school institutes and conventions, references being made, in connection with the topics, to the books of the above-named teachers' library. 5. Following these, a carefully prepared series of round table programmes will be issued, prepared distinctively for use in teachers' meetings of the local Sunday schools, such as the pastor or superin- tendent may use with the teachers of his school. These, also, will have references to the teachers' library, making it easy to find the best material on the subjects to be discussed. These programs will be EDUCATION FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 285 numbered and systematically arranged, beginning at the beginning of Simday school discussion and carrying the teachers over the whole scope of Sunday school problems. It is felt that if this series of studies is pursued in the Sunday school it will secure excellent educational results. 6. Beyond this an extensive course of advanced Bible study is to be gotten out. Agreement has now been reached with the representa- tives of the Methodist Episcopal Church South and the Methodist Church of Canada to unite with the Methodist Episcopal Church in this matter. The course will cover three years, including the study of nine text-books and two or three hand-books of reference. One book will be taken each quarter, omitting the summer quarter. The books will be written by the ablest writers who can be secured in the world, without any reference to their denominational connections, and are intended to represent the assured results of the best scholarship of our time. But they will be written with reference to the average laity of the churches. It is intended that this course shall round out the train- ing of teachers by giving them a more thorough knowledge of the Bible, and also that it shall open the way for all adults in the churches to study the Bible in a more connected and systematic way than the current weekly lessons make possible. The Nature and Extent of the Pedagogical Training Neces- sary FOR Sunday School Teachers PROFESSOR J. R. STREET, Ph.D. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY, SYRACUSE, NEW YORK The immediate problem which rehgious education must set itself is the correction of the conditions and exigencies that have curtailed its life and rendered unsatisfactory its efforts. The immediate lines along which reform must proceeed are : The creation of a more healthy educa- tional sentiment in the church itself, so that it may foster in every way possible the instructional as well as the propagandic nature of the school; the development of a curriculum or course of study which will be in harmony with educational principles and practices, and which will more adequately meet the demands of the religious nature of the learner, and satisfy the needs of the growing soul; and third, the develop- ment of a body of trained workers, who will ever move in harmony with the best principles of educational philosophy. Assuming, then, that the Sabbath school exists for the purpose of discipline as well as evangeliza- tion, I shall try to set forth, without lengthy discussion, some of the 286 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION things that may and ought to be done along the hne of the third of these possible reforms, viz, a more adequate preparation of the teacher. First, the teacher is not an independent unit of society. He must work in connection with the other social factors, and his problem is to correct the deficiencies of these other educational forces. The two factors with which the teacher of the Bible school must co-operate are the home and the church. He is not a substitute for either, but a co-partner. The three must labor for the same end, or confusion and failure may follow. There are three things that the teacher must know: First, he must know the Bible or subject of instruction. No man can teach all that he knows, try he ever so hard. Therefore he must know more thoroughly than he can teach. He must know so thoroughly that he must teach. It implies that type of knowledge that awakens the instinctive impulse to tell; that gives birth to the spirit that made St, Paul cry, "Woe is me if I preach not." The teacher's tools are his knowledge, and if these be dull, how can he hope to do efficient work ? So the professional training of the teacher must give him this com- prehensive and soul-inspiring information and lead to know and ap- preciate all subject-matter that has direct bearing upon character-pro- duction. The second thing that the teacher must know is the child, the learner. By this is not meant a speaking acquaintance, but a comprehension of human nature and its laws of development. Since the days of Comenius, pedagogy has declared that the child mind shall form the point of depart- ure. Is there, then, in the religious world a new law entering, whose presence excuses the teacher from studying the nature of the growing boy or girl ? Our function is to Hft the child to a higher level of life. How can we possibly do so without a knowledge of the needs of the individual child? and how can we determine these needs without a knowledge of the mental and moral content of the child's mind? The teacher must understand the physical basis of character and the relations existing between mind and body. In the past, we have been disposed to largely neglect the body. It has certainly not been con- sidered the handmaiden of character. To-day, however, we know that character is conditioned upon the way in which we have trained our nervous system to respond to stimuli from without, and to express the higher and nobler dictates of conscience and reason. One may go even further, and declare that our whole emotional life receives its coloring from the body. Temperaments are corporeal rather than mental. Moods are the direct product of physical activities and conditions, while our conduct as an individual and the virtues and vices of life are EDUCATION FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 287 contingent upon the relations that obtain between these two sides of our being. The hygiene of the nervous system conditions moral hygiene. Without a fair conception of the relation of mind and body, one cannot appreciate the conduct of another or become a positive agent in the production of right physical reactions. The mind is constantly exercis- ing dominion over the body, driving it to all sorts of activity, transform- ing sensations, producing delusions and hallucinations, forcing the special senses to do its bidding, goading the muscles and paralyzing inhibition. Ideo-motor is the plan of human life, and this will explain the restlessness of youth, and the violent outbreaks that come like an avalanche upon a boy or girl. The body, on the other hand, makes mental life possible, or destroys it. Through fatigue, or disease, degen- eration, or pathological conditions, it limits or largely obhterates mental action. Only as these facts are known and appreciated can the teacher put himself into sympathetic relations with others. Again, the teacher should be familiar with the laws of mental hfe, such as attention, apperception, memory, association of ideas, imagina- tion, interest, will, etc., in order that he may employ these laws in the furtherance of the child's growth. If the mind has a natural way of behaving itself, of getting at truth, then it is very patent that the teacher wall do his best work by putting himself into harmony with mind and operating with, not against, psychic laws. It does not lie within the province of this paper to work out all these facts in detail. It seems sufficient to state that the teacher who does not understand the nature of attention, its kinds, and their pedagogic significance, the agencies that tend to secure it, likewise those that destroy, or render it impossible, is very likely to do the things that are antagonistic to the end he desires to accomplish. Perhaps a word should be spoken in regard to will. We have been so accustomed to think of it as a distinct metaphysical entity, that we find it hard to realize that it is a confederacy built up in the indi- vidual life out of the instincts and the instinct feehngs, emotions, and desires, and the ideas and ideals of life. The new pyschology has thrown a flood of light upon this complex hierarchy of our being, and I know of no other study in the whole realm of mind that will do so much to put the teacher into a helpful attitude as an intelligent grasp of will, its origin, nature, diseases, and relation to character. I do not see how any one can do the child adequate and intelligent service with- out such knowledge, for it is the express duty of the parent and teacher to help the child to get a will. Again, the teacher should understand the nature and the function 288 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION and the scope of reflex action, and its tremendous importance to life and character. So, also, habit and its laws, how to render permanent reac- tions that are desirable, or to transform or eliminate undesirable ones. There should also be some comprehension of the instincts and instinct feelings, and how out of them are developed all the virtues that are pure and divine, or the vices that are base and devilish. Further, the teacher must know the stages of growth, and the laws of their unfoldment, in order to bring the right material at the right time and in the right way, or to properly aid the child to pass from stage to stage, without burdening himself with psychic rudiments, or atrophying in any of the stages. We know to-day that the child is not a miniature man, but rather one potentially, and the specific function of the educator is not so much instruction as facilitated growth. How can one accom- plish this if he does not understand these developmental periods and appreciate their significance ? or how can he bring the proper material of instruction at the right time, or how sympathize with the growing boy or girl in the midst of idiosyncrasies? Again, sympathy with childhood and a comprehension of child nature is absolutely needful in order to produce the highest type of man- hood and womanhood, so the teacher should be familiar with the results of the child-study movement, and be able to interpret the individual child in the light of such facts. The instructor should have some knowledge of pathological defects and the laws of mental and moral hygiene, the relation of degeneracy to vice and crime, and the play of heredity and of environment in deter- mining future character. In a word, the nature that he proposes to guide in its developmental experience should be thoroughly known. Knowledge of the Bible and knowledge of the child are not enough. These two must be brought together. The laws of teaching form the link. One must, therefore, familiarize himself with the philosophy of education, in order to reap the results of the experience of the race, and not spend needless years in discovering facts that he might have had as a rich legacy from"the past. A study of the great teachers is desirable, and will be found helpful. Especially is this true of Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbart,and Christ. One can afford to give considerable time to the pedagogy of Christ, for his practices incorporate all that is best in method. Teaching is more an art than a science, hence the practical side must not be neglected. Study of this will involve familiarity with the prin- ciples that underlie method, discipline, organization, and management, development of courses of study, story-telling, and illustrating, and methods of preparing and presenting the lesson, and class management. EDUCATION FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 289 You will see that teaching is no mean art. What could be higher than that of helping in the harmonious development of a human being ? And having assumed the office, shall one not pay the price of success ? The Character and Scope of the Biblical Knowledge to be Expected of Sunday School Teachers PROFESSOR WILLIAM G. BALLANTINE, D.D., LL.D. INTERNATIONAL YOtWG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION TRAINING SCHOOL, SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS Taking it for granted that the Sunday schools of the future will uUimately be graded as completely as day-schools are, and that the teachers will vary in the scope and character of their Biblical knowledge as in everything else, we reach the question whether there are some general conceptions of the Bible and the way to use it which all teachers should have in common. I believe that the time has come when the entire body of Sunday school teachers of our continent should know and should lay at the basis of their teaching those fundamental conceptions of the Bible which the prodigious efforts of devout scholarship during the last half- century have estabhshed. Never in the history of mankind has so much prayer, so much devout reflection, so much industry, so vast, prolonged, and minute examination of particulars, and so much mental acumen been concentrated upon a single subject. The work is still in progress and must go on for an indefinite time to come, like that in all realms of knowledge. But this is no reason why the results so far as already fully assured should not be generally and unequivocally accepted. Progress in Biblical knowledge, like progress always, has been partly destructive and partly constructive. The fact that it has been at all destructive is sometimes brought up as a very serious in- dictment. But a little thought will, however, show the necessity of the law. The Ptolemaic system had to be destroyed in order to give place to the Copemican. The discovery that Columbus had not discovered India destroyed his cherished theory in order to give to the world a new hemisphere. We have nothing to lose by the destruction of any mistaken notion, however vital it may have seemed to our religion; for the truth of God must certainly be better, larger, and more help- ful in all our relations both to the earth and to the heavens. If dis- aster is to be avoided, the entire body of Sunday school teachers must be speedily initiated into those general conceptions which distinguish the new Biblical scholarship from the old. Dread of an illiterate min- istry was one of the powerful motives of our Puritan forefathers. By ago THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION that term, " illiterate ministry," they, meant unscholarly guidance in religious thought. The Bible is literature, to be interpreted and used as literature, according to the general laws of grammar, rhetoric, and psychology that apply to other books. It is no occult cabala with mystic mean- ings. It is not a rebus to be guessed. If I felt justified in making any specific recommendations to-day, I should propose that every Sunday school teacher should be required to have a reasonable acquaint- ance with the works of Professor Richard G. Moulton, who has done so much to popularize the knowledge of the Bible as literature. The main modern conceptions of the Bible are so simple and com- prehensible that they can be learned from a brief course of lectures such as every Sunday school teacher can find time to attend. And who can so appropriately give such a course at the teachers' meetings as the pastor of the church? Where, for any reason, the pastor pre- fers not to undertake it, it will generally be easy to secure some col- lege or seminary professor who will gladly serve. The course should be very simple and non-technical. It should not be expressed in the jargon of the professional workshop. It should deal only with large ideas. Correct general ideas regarding the Bible are essential in those who are to form the religious thinking of the young. But is the main hope of the Sunday schools of the future in more accurate knowledge of Biblical minutiae on the part of the teachers? I greatly doubt it. Not in more intense study of the details of the book, but in broader and more thoughtful study of the subject of which the book treats, lies our hope. From the Old Testament we learn of the religious life of the ancient Jews, and from the New Testament we learn the life of Jesus and the founding of the Christian Church. One of the dangers of the lesson-help system is that the simple and practical truths of a Scripture passage may be buried under an ava- lanche of erudition. Oriental customs, the disclosures of buried cities, the zoology, botany, philology, and what not of all Biblical lands, are thrust in masses upon us. Perhaps the most serious danger now of Bible study is pedantry. If Assyria happens to be mentioned, Sargon and all of the other kings with longer and less pronounceable names must be passed in review. The parable of the good Samaritan may be the lesson. Then the word down in the statement, " A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho," is seized upon. The extraordinary topography of the Holy Land is described. The fact that Jericho lies in a great cleft in the surface of the earth much be- EDUCATION FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 291 low the level of the sea. and that the surface of the Dead Sea is 1,292 feet lower than that of the Mediterranean, are made clear by relief- nniaps and cross-sections. Then the treatment of wounds with oil and wine may be enlarged upon, and the theories of therapeutics prevalent at the Christian era. Then the incident of taking out twopence, or shillings, or denarii offers a peg whereon to hang an excursus upon Hebrew and Roman money, and the value of the precious metals in different ages. This sort of thing is not wholly to be condemned. A certain amovmt of it may make clearer some details of the picture. But its usefulness has often been vastly overestimated. I should say, curtail this kind of Bible study and save time for study in which the children shall be familiarized with the various kinds of good Samaritan work going on at present in their own city and throughout the world. And the teacher of this second class will not need to know how far down Jericho is below Jerusalem or what was the value of a denarius. But it is time for all Sunday school teachers to know that the mi- nute verbal study of the Bible, even in a sober way, is unprofitable. The comparative study even of the four gospels in the original shows how far the evangelists were from accuracy in detail. Now, when these unstudied and often inexact phrases of the Greek renderings of Ara- maic traditions come to be rendered into English according to that curious psychology of translators which is itself a realm of sacred mys- tery, it is vain indeed to put the microscope upon words. Lists of the " whosoevers " of Scripture and the " in no wise's " of Scripture are wholly delusive. Our translators put in whosoever at their own ca- price, according to no discoverable system. In no wise is inserted even more at random. And these are but specimens. The study of the history of the English versions, now happily stimulated by the generosity of Miss Helen Gould, must remove at least a part of this illusion regarding mere words. It is unfortunate that any part of the Sunday school hour should be spent in comparing the old version with the new, or in interpreting the archaic words of the English of three hundred years ago (which we will strangely regard as the only proper dialect of religion) into modern speech. It is a pity to have to stop to tell a scholar that in religion prevent means to help, and that to let means to hinder. Thank God, religious thinkers have escaped from subjection to the lexicographers and the grammarians. Many weary years have I spent upon Greek and Hebrew, thinking that in the etymologies of these languages I could know the exact mind of God, only to find that the Bible was not written by college professors and that the writers 292 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION with their Oriental rhetoric, never dreamed of the mechanical accuracy and the verbal niceties we have attributed to them. Jesus spoke generally in hyperboles, or in parables or metaphors, so that his teach- ings are for the most part clear out of the realm of the grammar and lexicon. The words do not pretend to formulate his thought; they only suggest it. Let us turn from that world of fanciful constructions with which we have so often deluded ourselves in solemn trifling over words, and study God's truth writ large in characters, in nature, and in the march of events. X. CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS ANNUAL SURVEY OF THE PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS AND YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 1904 WALTER M. WOOD SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION, THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO Religious education was recognized and increasingly used as a means of personal safeguard and character-building in the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations of North America during the year 1904. The organizations included within the range of this survey are the Young Men's Christian Associations of North America, with their 1,815 associations and 373,000 members; the Young Women's Christian Associations, affiliated under the general supervision of the American Committee, with their 733 associations and about 80,000 members, and the Women's and Young Women's Christian Associations under the general supervision of the International Board, with their 53 asso- ciations and reported regular membership approximating 20,000. The key-notes of progress in the Young Men's Christian Associations and the Young Women's Associations under the American Committee have been extension beyond the associations proper, strengthened Bible- study, and the training of leaders. In the Young Women's Christian Associations under the International Board the keynote of progress has been the intensification and internal organization of personal Christian effort. Extension Work. Unquestionably, the most significant development of the year 1904 was that in the line of extension of association religious activities, not alone beyond the associations' buildings to other natural centres of congregation, but far beyond the range of association mem- bership; whereas, previously, for some years the major portion of the association religious work has been conducted in the association build- ings. Last year witnessed the extension in larger measure than ever before of Bible classes into shops, schools, homes, on shipboard, in theaters, churches, by correspondence to men in the railway service, to boarding-houses, fraternities, offices, and even to outing and vacation 293 294 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION camps. Religious meetings have also been inaugiu-ated in larger measure in shops, and theaters, and the associations have taken a leading part in the conduct of evangelistic meetings in city evangelistic campaigns. Bible Study and Meetings. The " forward movement " in Bible-study in the Young Men's Christian Association has made the year 1904 most conspicuous in the increase of the number of associations aggressively promoting systematic Bible-study and in the number of students enrolled. There has been a growing appreciation that the most feasible and effective unit of religious effort is the Bible class, because of its great flexibiUty, permitting of adaptation to any class of people under any conditions; because of its equally valuable service in evangelization, and in strengthening the Christian life of believers; and because of its em- phasis upon personal participation of each in the co-operative work of a limited group. The experience of the past year reveals a growing sentiment favor- able to more moderate-sized and less spectacular Sunday meetings in the association buildings, regularly held, with evangelistic results care- fully followed up. Boys. As a natural sequence to the growing recognition of the period of adolescence as the one affording the largest opportunity for religious development, there has been a rapid increase in the amount of religious work among boys. True to sound pedagogical principles, this work has been done apart from the religious work for men, with a striking increase in the use of boys as the religious leaders of boys. Marked progress has been made in the free adaptation of forms and methods of Bible instruction and in the settings for religious teaching, to put them in harmony with the natural characteristics and interests of the youth. There has been less of imitation of the forms of men's classes and meet- ings, and the introduction of unconventional forms that make the dis- cussion of religious topics and the enforcement of religious principles, as applied to character-building, a natural feature in the life of a boy. Life Problems. Beside direct religious teaching in conventional forms of religious service, strong emphasis has recently been placed upon the discussion of practical life problems, generally from a Christian stand- point, but without special reference being made to this fact. Some of the former Bible class and club groups in both the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations have given this turn to their studies and discussions, seeking thereby to work out the simple and per- sonal problems of applied Christianity. In large measure, the value of the noon and midnight shop-talks, conducted on a rapidly increasing scale in both the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associa- SURVEY OF PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 295 tions, consists in the translation of fundamental Christian truths into working formulas for the every-day human life. Social and Club Forms. The year 1904, more than any previous year, has proven in Christian associations that social contact is the vehicle of personal religious influence. In the movement, therefore, away from large classes to smaller groups, taking a club form of or- ganization, and to a certain extent from large mass meetings to smaller meetings, there is an indication of real progress. More and more, es- pecially during the past year, groups for Bible-study, or the conduct of other reUgious features, have taken on, instead of the class or committee form, a club form of organization, with special emphasis upon the increase of personal fellowship and co-operation among the members of the group. In addition to the club form of organization, strong emphasis has been laid upon social gatherings and informal teas in conjunction with Bible classes and religious meetings. Training of Teachers and Leaders. Partly in explanation of the advances of Bible-study and other forms of religious work, and partly as a necessity resulting from the extension movement, a most important element of last year's progress is found in the great increase of attention given to the training of Bible teachers and leaders in Christian work. Supervision. A conspicuous advance has been made, especially in the Young Men's Christian Associations, and the Young Women's Christian Associations under the American Committee, in the delegat- ing of trained specialists to the task of discovering religious opportuni- ties, defining religious problems, suggesting methods of religious work, and personally coaching local leaders for efficient service. Reasons for Progress. In brief resume, it is interesting to note espe- cially those things which have contributed most largely to recent progress. Eight distinct reasons may be given for the growth of last year: 1. There has been, on the part of all Christian associations, a con- siderable broadening of their field of operation, having reached, especially in matters of rehgious instruction and influence, far beyond their build- ings and beyond the membership or usual past constituency of the asso- ciation. The association buildings have thus become radiatmg centers of Christian influence, and the organizations themselves have developed a projective power, enabling them to enter upon an era of service to the large constituency of young men and women of the entire community. 2. There has been a larger investment of money than in previous years. In the City and Raihroad Young Men's Christian Association alone, in the local promotion of religious effort, there was expended in 1904, $141,000 as against $127,000 in 1903. 296 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 3. There has been a larger and better organized working force. Throughout the country, in both men's and women's associations there was reported a large gain in effective organization and definite assump- tion of responsibilities by workers. 4. More reliable helps and suggestions have been available to those having religious work in charge than in any previous year. The excellent graded courses provided largely by the International Committee, the increasing volume of literature, defining experiences and valuable methods, the stimulus of the international Bible-study exami- nations; the Bible-study courses and articles on religious work in such publications as " Association Men " and " The Evangel," together with the increasing correspondence and personal counsel of state and inter- national officers, have all contributed much to inspire and guide asso- ciation workers in their religious effort. 5. More systematic and aggressive promotion has been given the Bible-study and other religious work than at any previous time. This has been supplied through the local association committeemen and executives, who have felt that the most important present duty is the establishment of a more thorough and far-reaching religious work, and through the effort of state and international specialists, who have gath- ered and distributed most valuable information, have visited large numbers of associations, counseling in the inauguration and guidance of their work, and have conducted large numbers of institutes for the special training of local leaders of religious effort. 6. The past year has shown among association workers a growing spirit of willingness to be unconventional, if the amount or value of their services might thereby be increased. As Mr. See of Brooklyn has said, " A characteristic feature of the year has been the work done at unconventional times and in unconventional places." The freeing of association workers from the shackles of traditional conventionalities in forms and methods of religious work explains much of recent progress and brings large promise of increasing future power. 7. There has been increasing emphasis on all phases of association work as influencing toward the Christian life. The present conception of religious education is not restricted to include only those activities which bear directly upon the spiritual life; but, true to the model estab- lished in the development of Christ himself, — " And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man," — it has to do with all that constitutes the normal Hfe of a human being dominated by the Christian spirit. The various Christian associations, therefore, while at this period of their development laying special stress upon the SURVEY OF PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 297 magnifying of direct religious agencies affecting the spiritual life, ex- pressed, both in statement and in the activities they conducted, their continued and growing belief in the essential religious value of the phys- ical, educational, social, and economic means employed. 8. There has been a greater fullness of the Spirit and a new vision. A great religious awakening, such as found expression in the Christian associations last year, does not have its origin in men or methods, but in the Spirit of the Living God incarnate in those who seek to know His will and to do it. In the successes of last year many had a vision of the great unoccupied field, and have felt the inspiring thrill of the power that is sufficient for all things. Conclusion. For the Christian associations of North America, in the year 1904, to have claimed by occupation a wider field; to have in- creased religious vitality by the cultivation of greater bibhcal intelligence; to have established the habit of " striking while the iron is hot " in the youth of the individual; to have practicalized spiritual truth by its larger application to the solution of current life problems; to have put religious activity on a social and fraternal, rather than a monastic and patriarchal, basis; to have trained and set to the task of Christian leadership an army of lay workers; and to have increased in amount and efficiency the forces making for organization and promotion^; — is to have made real progress — progress that is substantial, inspiring, and prophetic of a greater work, under God, in the days to come. BIBLE-STUDY IN THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS MRS. J. S. GRIFFITH CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 1. The Adaptability of Bible-Study to All Departments of Associa- tion Work. I. To Women in Universities and Colleges. The Amer- ican Committee has for several years recommended to the student asso- ciations the same courses which are used in the Young Men's Christian Associations. These courses are known as the Student Cycle. They have been prepared primarily for college students and are arranged for daily work. Fifteen to thirty minutes each day are required for personal preparation. The cycle includes: Studies in the Life of Christ; studies in Old Testament (bourses; studies in the Acts and Epistles; studies in the Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles. There are now 535 institutions of learning affihated with the Amer- ican Committee, representing nearly 40,000 students, who are members of the Young Women^s Christian Association. Last year 10,567 were registered in association Bible classes. 2. To Business Women. We realize that adapting Bible-study to business women necessitates suiting courses to all grades of intellectual abihty, to many phases of society, with great inconvenience in meeting, and with much indifference on the part of many. With these diffi- culties in mind, it will be understood why associations have introduced so many methods and have recognized the necessity of having more short-term courses in the city association than in student work. In carefully reviewing the reports that have been received recently, it is ap- parent that many of the courses recommended by the International Com- mittee of the Young Men's Christian Associations for city work are being used. These include : The Life and Works of Jesus according to St. Mark ; studies in the Life of Jesus; studies in the Life of Paul; Christ among Men; inductive studies of the Gospel of John. In addition to these, various short courses that have been taught at summer conferences are used, besides many outlines prepared by the local teachers. Much remains to be done in systematizing the Bible work in cities, and prac- tical plans for more thorough national supervision are now in operation. In several city associations there are more than 200 persons registered in the Bible classes. It has been necessary, in many cases, to introduce various means that will bring out the principles and teachings of the BIBLE-STUDY IN THE Y. W. C. A. 299 Bible without having it take the form of a Bible class. Chapel talks are given when all the pupils who desire to do so meet for a ten minutes' service before the opening of the evening classes. Drop-in classes are becoming quite popular at the noon hour, and enable the teacher to give a simple, practical Bible lesson with helpful thoughts for every-day Uving. Life problem talks are often given and heartily received in factories, when it would be impossible to bring a direct evangelistic appeal. Several associations are using the leaflet which has been prepared by Miss Helen Miller Gould for the purpose of forming circles for the memorizing of Scripture. Series of Bible lectures by eminent Bible teachers have been largely attended in several cities and have resulted in real awakening in the interest of Bible- study. 3 To Women in their Homes. The Bible work that is most popular and effective among the third group of women are the board Bible classes and the neighborhood classes. The association is an interdenominational movement, so the board members and committee workers are representative women from the different churches. There- fore, when a board of directors becomes interested in their own as- sociation Bible classes it not only deepens their own spiritual life and makes them more effective board members, but it prepares them for better service in their own churches. Neighborhood Bible classes have unlimited possibilities, and are in- creasing rapidly. If some highly respected woman opens her home one morning a week, invites her friends, and secures a good teacher, there is little difiSculty about the class being sustained. II. The Agencies Employed in the Development of Bible -study. 1. The Summer Conferences. The American Committee conducts ten days' conference for Bible study, for the consideration of approved methods in association work, and for the development of the spiritual life. At each of these gatherings, from two to five Bible classes are taught. Many young women have received their first impetus to Bible-study at these conferences, and numerous classes have been formed all over the country as a result of the enthusiasm shown by the delegates upon their return. 2. The Director of Religious Work. It has been only recently that one person has been asked to give exclusively her time to the or- ganizing and strengthening of Bible classes, gospel meetings, personal workers, and groups, and to study the means by which the young women caring only for the classes to which they belong may be brought into touch with the directly spiritual part of the work. Five cities 300 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION employ such women, and several others are planning to add a director of religious work to their staff next autumn. 3. National Supervision. It must be apparent to all that a great deal of Bible work is being done when there are 10,567 enrolled in student Bible classes, 306 separate Bible classes in the city associations, and 19 classes to be taught at the summer conferences of 1905. Yet in a very real sense this is a year of beginnings, as the National Bible-study Department is being organized, and past experience proves that rapid strides are made as soon as the National Committee can give the proper amount of supervision and can provide the right workers. III. The Principles Underlying Successful Association Bible Work. The importance of adequate courses of Bible -study is fully appreciated. Numerous interviews are being held with well-known Bible teachers on the subject, so that the courses now in print and of real value may be utilized. The Bible -study Department will serve as an index finger pointing classes to the courses best adapted to their use, and it will not assume to meet the varied needs through the preparation of entirely new courses. The importance of competent instruction is recognized also. Horace Mann says, " The problem is not the founding of the school, but the finding of the schoolmaster." In student Bible work those in the classes should study in such a way as to prepare themselves to teach others. If the 10,000 yoimg women now enrolled in student classes had this thought thoroughly instilled, and should study throughout the college course with this aim in mind, it would do much in solving the problem of finding Sunday school teachers, leaders of our young people's meetings, and Bible teachers for our city association Bible classes. MRS. CHARLES N. JUDSON PRESIDENT YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, BROOKLYN NEW YORK In all the associations connected with the International Board — and they are located in all of our larger cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific — the study of the Bible is most important. All have Bible classes on Simday, and most of them have Bible-study classes through the week. Of course, the kind of Bible -study that can be done by the overworked, unstudious working-girls must differ widely from that done in schools and colleges. The historical courses seem to be un- popular, neither do the students who attend the Sunday services care so much for the critical study, but they enjoy and talk about that which can be made practical and assimilated in every-day life. The topical BIBLE-STUDY IN THE Y. W. C. A. 301 plan meets with the largest measure of success. Biographical talks and characters from the Bible are also much enjoyed. The Bible-study classes differ from the Sunday services in having smaller numbers taking up the study as they vi^ould any other topic and doing real work. These courses of study cover a broader field and are more thorough. The enthusiasm which is developed in these classes depends largely on the teacher. The aim is to open up the beauties of the wonderful Book, to foster the love for it, and to teach the pupils how to find its spiritual help for themselves. The mid-day services at the factories are a special feature of many of our associations, and though brief and simple and practical, they are much enjoyed. Another method of reaching the young women is through the " Fa- miliar Talks " on some every-day topic which will be of interest to them. Sometimes they are announced with a fanciful title or one rather mys- terious, so that curiosity will draw them to be listeners, and talkers too, for the aim has been to draw them out, and to make them formulate their ideas by putting them into remarks or questions. Under the general topic of " What shall we talk about?" Paul's instructions to the PhiHppians was made to cover a winter's monthly talks, by taking one topic at a time, and giving it a special title; for instance, the " good repute " was called " What other people think of us." " Prisoners," " Other people's queer ways," and " The power of friction " were topics which gave opportunity, through every-day things, to touch a deeper thought. THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF BOYS EDWARD B. KAIGHN, M.D. BIBLE CLASS TEACHER, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS What are the characteristics of the adolescent boy differentiating him from the child and the adult ? To mention but a few, there are the manifest physical signs of rapidly lengthening arms and legs and broadening shoulders; the disappearing of rounded childish features for the squarer jaw and stronger lines of dawning maturity; the shifting of the voice, with many creaks and squeaks and growls to a lower clef, the rapid increase in weight, and the incipient signs of a mustache. These and many other physical characteristics are evident to the dullest observer. The psychological characteristics are probably just as great, if not so strikingly obvious. The senses, as a rule, become keener, the power to reason strongly develops, and the feelings are increasingly under better control than during childhood. It is common experience that the adolescent has spells of laziness or dullness, or great activity or crankiness. His views of right and wrong, justice and injustice, and the good and the bad are apt to be rigid, and he is willing to measure himself by the standards he sets for others. He is at once practical and very much of an idealist. He is secretive and self-conscious, and a con- firmed hero-worshiper. When in physical danger he is courageous to the point of foolhardiness, but in moral situations somewhat of a coward. A new-born social impulse impels him to associate with boys of his own age in a more or less well-organized gang. The sentiment of the gang determines many of his actions, and strongly influences his states of mind. His interest in out-door life is strong, as shown by his fondness for hunting, camping, and athletics. He finds restraints of any sort irksome, and he wants liberties denied his younger brother. It is a time of forming warm friendships with older people, as well as with those of his own age. The spirit of altruism seems to have its birth in adolescence. The unwillingness of a child to subordinate himself in his games is in marked contrast to the team play manifest in adolescent sports. That it is a time of religious impressibility all studies lead us to believe. Just to what degree this spiritual awakening may be due to an unconscious effort on the part of the adolescent to correct the faulty teaching of earlier years, or to realize those states of feeling expected to accompany the conversion of a mature sinner, we do not know. 302 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF BOYS 303 How may this knowledge guide the association worker in the re- ligious education of boys? In the first place, it may help to give the work a better aim. We see that the adolescent period is one of rapid growth and adjustment. It is the whole boy, and not only a part of him, that is growing and under- going adjustment, and we cannot concern ourselves simply with his soul and neglect all of the rest. The Young Men's Christian Associa- tion is unique among religious agencies in its recognition of man's all- round nature, but we do violence to the idea when we try to separate into distinct natures the body, the mind, and the soul. It is the whole boy that we are to help into the richest and fullest life. With that aim, the gymnasium may be more of a religious agency than the Bible class. It should be at least as much. The boy himself takes to this all-round idea. To have Christ with him in his sports, to help him have a strong mind, to help him love and serve the other fellows, is the burden of the spontaneous prayers we often hear from the lips of boys about the summer-night camp-fire or in the boys' meeting. In the next place, this knowledge gives us points of contact with the boy. For instance, there is the gang instinct. This may be made to contribute instead of being a menace to the boy's higher — that is, religious — life. To illustrate, the conventional agencies of religious culture in the Young Men's Christian Association are the Bible class and religious meeting, but instead of an unorganized meeting modeled in most respects like an adult gathering, a club may be organized of the entire membership, with officers, dues, rules, etc., — boys readily take to parliamentary law, — and the particular form of meeting or means to religious culture may be carried on by the leading boys with but little adult supervision. Bible classes may be organized in the same way. There are some so organized where the boys debate on Bible topics. The fondness for secrecy in organization has been taken advantage of for the religious good of boys in some associations in the organizing of Bible classes on a Greek-letter fraternity basis, with all that it implies of initiations, grips, signs, passwords, secret sessions, and pins of mystic significance. There is the gang idea for younger boys of red Indian organization, with braves, sagamores, and sachems. Another point of contact is the hero-worshiping tendency. All the notorious prize-fighters have an immense following among boys of all classes. The feats of our naval and military heroes during the Spanish- American war stirred boydom to the core. The most eloquent clergyman in the city will not attract boys to a religious meeting to half the extent the popular Yale or Harvard half-back will. The boy is quick to recognize that the fighter or runner or football-player must use 304 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION his brains as well as his muscles. He knows that the clever or " foxy " athlete is usually the winner. To admire mental and moral strength is the next natural step that we may help the boy to take. The material for illustration and study may not only be drawn from the Old and New Testament characters, but from the fascinating field of missionary effort, with its heroes of the Faith. All history in the past and history in the making furnish examples of men and women who fought and sacrificed for high principles. The heroes are not all dead. We can make more vivid the Josephs and Samuels, Joshuas and Daniels, of ancient times by combining with their study their modern types from industrial, professional, or political life. The point is to take every advantage of the hero-loving instinct to bring to the boy the examples of the best sort of heroism, to help him to feel that present-day living is not all pleasure-seeking or money-grubbing, and that there is a chance for him to do something heroic. Jesus Christ may be made the boys' Hero as well as the boys' Saviour. Because the boy is a hero-worshiper he is an idealist. He will overlook the faults and magnify the virtues of his ideal. Usually the ideal takes on the flesh and blood of some older person whom he thoroughly likes and whose ways of doing and ways of thinking he promptly imitates. Within a year or so a number of boys' departments have secured ex- cellent results in their Bible-class work by having popular older boys act as teachers. Judged by educational standards, the teaching does not rank very high, but it ties up a group of boys to some one whom they sincerely believe in and whom they want to be like. The older boy feels the responsibiUty of his position as most adult teachers do not, and he is being developed in usefulness, instead of being just a recipient of the privileges the association offers. We find the adolescent boy to be a realist as well as an idealist. To succeed in his rehgious education, we must keep in mind real ends. ReUgious impulses must have a practical outlet in something more than glibness in answering questions in the Bible class. In fact, too much religious work for the boy is separated from the real life of the boy. It is too external. It is a matter to the boy for a definite time and definite place and from a definite book. We must make it easy for the boy to give expression to his religious impulses in many ways of useful effort. Help him to find opportunities that are religious, in the broad sense as well as in the more restricted. Praying or talking to another boy about Christ is good; so is keeping the back alley clean. Service for the good of others counteracts a tendency for too much introspection; a tendency in some cases running into morbidness, with much attending mental suffering. THE PROBLEMS OF A TWENTIETH-CENTURY CITY Outlines of a Course in Philanthropies PROFESSOR H. M. BURR INTERNATIONAL YOUNG MEN's CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION TRAINING-SCHOOL, SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS The following outline has been prepared in response to the request of the committee of the Department of Associations for a course of twenty-five lessons in " Philanthropies. " It was the intention of the committee that the word " philanthropy " should be used in its large sense, thus allowing the treatment of the " Problems of a Twentieth- century City " under that head. Before outlining such a course, it is in order to give some reasons why such a course should have an im- portant place in a curriculum of religious education. Such a curriculum must include not merely the study of the nature and history of religion and the psychology of the religious nature, but also the activities of religion. By religious activities is meant those to which men are inspired by a religious motive, or which are the products of religious institutions or incentives. It is not necessary for us to enter into any careful analysis of the nature of the religious motive. It is enough to call attention to the fact that from the beginning Christianity has expressed itself in philanthropy. A genuine love to God has always expressed itself in the service of man. Such being the case, a study of the principles and practice of social service must be of first importance in religious education; and that, not merely for the sake of religious intelligence, but for the development of the religious nature. A study of philanthropy will naturally center in the city, since cities are the strategic points of our modern civilization. In the cities are massed, not merely the most powerful economic and political forces, but also the most powerful ethical and educational forces. In the cities all the forces which make for righteousness and against it meet in deadly conflict. We find there are not merely all the problems of the ages past, but of the age present and to come. Cities are on the firing-line of the march of civilization. The Young Men's Christian Association is itself a product of city life. It is an organized attempt on the part of the church to meet one of the most pressing needs of city life, a social center for young men, where all wholesome and educative influences shall be massed attract- ively and effectively. We have long since recognized that the effective 305 3o6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION worker must be an expert in all that pertains to the life of young men. It is evident that the men who are in the field are realizing that they must study not only the young man himself, but the great city of which he is an organic part. The secretaries and directors of the association must become experts in municipal sociology. In studying the lives of young men, they will become so of necessity. As a matter of fact, the officers of the association constitute a natural bureau of information as to all the forces and conditions of city life which affect young men. In some of our largest and most effective associations, the secretaries are becoming recognized as specialists in the problems of city life, both to the benefit of the city and their ovm work. In order to meet these conditions, it is clear that the study of municipal sociology should be a part of the training of those who are to be leaders in association work, but in addition to this there is a large group of young men in every city community who need to study intelligently and thoroughly the problems of city life and the forces which make for civic righteousness. The following is the outline of a course of twenty-five such lessons, designed to meet the needs of young men in our average associations. It is a modification of a course given to the students in the Young Men's Christian Association Training School in Springfield, where a similar course is being followed in the local Association. Owing to limitations of time and space, only the general headings of the lessons have been given, with a suggestive but not complete bibli- ography. The conduct of the course in any special field will be determined by local conditions, and the teachers, speakers, and books which are available. The following suggestions will apply, however, in most city associations: The class should be organized as a club, say a " Civic Club," or a " Social Welfare Club," with president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and at least a programme and social committee. It will help the effectiveness of the club immensely if a man of high standing in the community can be secured as president. If possible, a teacher should be chosen who is familiar with the general field to be covered, and a specialist in some part of it. To him should be given the general organization of the course of study and the assignment of special topics of investigation to members of the club. If the club or class is well officered and respectable in size and enthusiasm, it will not be difficult to get in as speakers men who are specialists in some department of philanthropy, or who are or have been in the service of the city. A large club will be able to attract speakers of more than local fame. THE PROBLEMS OF A TWENTIETH CENTURY CITY 307 Ideally, as large a number of themes as possible should be given to the members of the club for investigation. Care must be taken, however, to distribute such studies in such a way as to break up any monotony. Club suppers and occasional " ladies' nights " will add to the enthusi- asm of the organization, and so to the quality of its work. The following suggestions may be of help in carrying out such a course as the one outlined. " The City in its Relation to Civihzation " may be the theme of an inspirational and suggestive address given by the teacher or any capable man in sympathy with the aims of the club. After such an address will be a good time to organize the club. " The Growth of Modem Cities " can probably best be treated by the teacher, making use of the charts given in the last Statistical Atlas. The sub- jects of lessons 3,4, 5,6, can be divided between specialists and members of the class. The city physician, the chairman of the board of health, the city forester, and the officers of local hospital associations should be available. As to how far the problems of morals, lessons 7, 8, 9, 10, may be studied through investigations of local conditions, there will be difference of opinion. The literature of the subject is copious and well adapted to analysis by members of the club. In the study of the problems of philanthropy the representatives of local institutions can be used, but members of the club should be encouraged to visit them and report. The principal of the high school, the superintendent of schools or teachers should be enlisted in the discussion of the problems of education. To lend variety to the work, the problems of adminis- tation might be treated through club debates, while city officials may be secured to explain the nature of their work. The representatives of various welfare agencies will naturally explain the work of their or- ganizations. The last theme, " Christianity and the Social Spirit," should be presented by the very largest man available, and should be the grand summing up of the year's work. The Problems of a Twentieth Century City Introductory Lesson i. The City in its Relation to Civilization. Historical. Lesson 2. The Growth of Modern Cities. Causes and Conse- quences. Health Lesson 3. Dwellings. Tenements and Tenement-house Reform. Lesson 4. Streets — Relation to Health, Cleaning, Regulation, Use. Lesson 5. Parks, Playgrounds, Public Baths, Recreation Piers, etc. Lesson 6. Hospitals and Sanitaria, Public Hygiene, 3o8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Morals Lesson 7. The Saloon. Its Social Function, Suppression, Substitu- tion. Lesson 8. The Brothel. The Social Evil. Control of Prostitution. Lesson 9. The Theater. Wholesome and Unwholesome Amuse- ment. Lesson 10. The Gambling Den. The Gambling Habit in Business. Philanthropy Lesson 11. The Care of Dependents, Orphans, Paupers, etc. Lesson 12. The Care of Defectives, Idiots, Insane, Blind, etc. Lesson 13. The Care of Dehnquents, Jails, Reformatories, Courts, Police. Lesson 14. The Organization of Charities, Indoor and Outdoor Re- lief. Lesson 15. Welfare Work. Special Work in Store and Shop. Education Lesson 16. The Public School. Its Fimction and Administration. Lesson 17. School Extension. The Wider Utilization of Buildings. Lesson 18. Technical and Physical Education. Religious Educa- tion. * Administration Lesson 19. The Mayor, Council, Aldermen, Departments, Choice and Control. Lesson 20. Municipal Reform. " The Shame of American Cities." Welfare Agencies Lesson 21. The Church. Work of Institutional Church. Lesson 22. The Social Settlements. Neighborhood Guilds. Lesson 23. The Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations. Lesson 24. Other Welfare Agencies. Lesson 25. The Social Mission of Christianity. XI. YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETIES A MORE COMPREHENSIVE BASIS FOR THE UNION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN THEIR SOCIETIES REV. SPENSER B. MEESER, D.D. PASTOR WOODWARD AVENUE BAPTIST CHURCH, DETROIT, MICHIGAN Young people's societies ought to furnish, through organized sug- gestion, opportunity for the conversion of impressions of truth into expressions of character and service; opportunity to translate truth- impressions into action-expressions. Young people need just this organized effort for expression of im- pression, and this, because they need the guidance, the inspiriting and energizing, — the genius, in a word, for Christian living. We must in- struct them in the facts of religion, educate them in the spirit of religion, and energize them in the practice of religion, by organizing them for service and character- making. Every church, Bible school, and young people's society should have these three principles for maturing of the instruction given: (a) Educate the young people in religion; (6) evangelize them through that education; and (c) organize them for the practice of the truth learned and the life gained through the Holy Spirit. As at present constituted, young people's societies are not inclusive of all the forms of Christian service; but are organized around one form, and only indifferently acknowledge and cultivate other forms of Christian service. They are organized around the prayer-meeting idea. They are not broad enough at the base. They permit any form of Christian service; they require one form. When the requirement is met, the members may engage in many services; until the require- ment is met, no matter how many forms of, or how much of, service is done, one cannot be a member. Explicitly in a pledge, or impHcitly in a constitution, the organific principle, the basis of union, is the prayer- meeting, conducting it or taking part in it. That is sine qua non. After that, several things; equal with that, or before it, nothing. That is why in almost any church, it is true that a larger portion of young people are not in these societies. That is why these societies, as at present constituted, cannot meet this need. Thousands of young peo- ple cannot worthily, or to edification, either pray or exhort in meeting. Thousands more ought not, because of immaturity of experience, lack 309 3IO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION of knowledge, and failure of character. Thousands more should be at home when evening meetings are held, and have no advantage to Christian character in being abroad nights, when they should be at home under protection of parents. Especially is this true of junior societies. The pity of putting all young people through that test of speaking in meeting! The blunders many have made in supposing that that is the goal of Christian service, or, as some think, the essence of it! The pathos of the junior societies! with their temptation to unreality, and the attempts of the children to bear testimony concern- ing a Christian experience they never had, and never could have, nor- mally, at their age. My point is, simply, that the prayer-meeting is not all, nor is it the essential Christian service. The true and comprehensive basis for such an organization as I have in mind, and such as young people need — the true basis — is, any form oj Christian service. Any one willing to give himself to any form of Christian service should be included in the membership, come under direction of, and co-operate with, the society. The prayer- meeting service is one, and a profoundly important, form of that ser- vice; but there are others. A primary element in the final form of yoimg people's societies is, that the basis of union shall be made to be comprehensive, and the essential test oj membership, simply some kind oj service done jor Christ's sake. It is my firm and growing conviction that the young people's society in a church should be the manual-training department, the school of practice, the workshop, for the expression in deeds of the truth learned in the study of God's word, and in the preaching of the minister. The present plan of the young people's organization is artificial and mechanical, analytic and not constructive. It applies a test as the basis for a general organization, and then attempts to set at a variety of work (in so far as it departs from one idea at all) those who have first submitted to the test. The true plan appears to be to have organized groups, undertaking such things as they may wish to do, or can do, or as are appropriate for them. These groups should then be federated in a general organi- zation, the membership basis of which comprehends all those things included in the groups, and any others which may be apparent as likely to become the central idea of other groups. Such a plan is inductive, constructive, and comprehensive. I herewith submit a proposed or model constitution, suggesting the form of such an organization. A BASIS FOR THE UNION OF YOUNG PEOPLE 311 Model Constitution for Young People's Unions Preamble. In order to the unification of young people's work in those churches where there are a number of organizations composed of young people, the following model constitution is recommended: Name. This organization shall be called " + of the church." Object. Its object shall be the correlation of the various depart- ments of young people's work, and the close relation of it to the work of the church itself, under the leadership of the Pastor. Membership. The membership shall consist of all those who are members of the existing organizations of young people in the church, which have received the approval of the church; and of members of all organizations of young people which may be formed with the sanc- tion of the church hereafter; or any other young persons who will declare their purpose to engage in some one or more forms of Christian service. The Council of Conference. There shall be a Council of Con- ference, consisting of the Pastor, the President and Secretary of each young people's organization, of which Council the Pastor shall be the Chairman, which shall meet at least once a month, to consider the en- tire work of the young people of the church. The representatives, in this Council, of the different organizations, shall report, to their re- spective bodies, such plans as have been suggested by the council for the advancement of the work as a whole. This Council shall prepare by-laws for the government of the union, and present the same for adoption by members of the union. This Council shall also seek out young persons who for any reason cannot engage in any of the forms of service represented by the affiliated bodies, but who will commit themselves individually to some other definite Christian service. Relation of Union to Affiliated Societies. The different organizations, while being left free to carry out plans of their own initiation, shall be regarded as departments of the Young People's Union, and will be expected to maintain the closest afl&liation with each other, under the general direction of the Council of Conference. Meetings of the Union. The Union shall hold quarterly meet- ings for general open discussion, proposing new work, organization of new departments, etc. Relation of the Union to Existing Young People's Unions. It is advised, in case there is a young people's society already existing in the church, if this Constitution is adopted, that, to avoid confusion of names, the title of the existing body be changed to " The Devotional 312 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION League of the , " thus indicating that the existing society is a department of the new Union.' Type of the Pledge. " Relying upon Divine help, I hereby de- clare my purpose to be true to Christ in all things and at all times; to seek the New Testament standard of Christian experience and life; and to engage actively in one or more lines of Christian service." Kinds of Organizations Eligible. Among the organizations or societies such as are in mind for this affiliation are Baptist Young People's Unions, Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, Westminster Leagues, Young People's Societies, King's Daughters and Sons, Boys' Clubs, Girls' Clubs, Missionary Circles, Farther Light Circles, Young Men's Associations, Young Women's Associations, etc. All members of these and kindred societies, groups, clubs (they being approved by the church), are eligible to membership in this Union. By-Laws. To this Constitution may be added, by method described in the section on " Council of Conference," all by-laws, rules of order, etc., desired by any Union for its government. The question what lines of organization should be followed for the groups in the proposed federation or union, is of serious moment. One or two principles must undoubtedly be followed, (a) Every group should be engaged in the culture of Christian character through some educational or study work, and likewise engaged in some service for expression of character and its culture in missionary or benevo- lent or social work. That is, each group should have as its aim an inner culture and an outer service. If the method followed is to be the organization of the Bible school classes, some study additional to that undertaken in the Bible school should, if possible, be made a dis- tinct feature. (b) We should not endeavor to limit the forms of expression to such only as may be universally used, failure in most cases arising from the endeavor to find some one form equally applicable and help- ful to all. We must keep in mind the infinite variety of temperament ability, habit, and education, so that the suggested forms shall touch as many of the varied types among the young people as is possible. (c) We should not insist upon mature expression of Christian character from immature Christian young people. Therefore the kinds of service to be regarded as acceptable need not all of them pre- ' The existence of a society of any other name, having in mind chiefly the devotional aim, need not present any serious difficulty. Its members become members of the larger union on the same basis as membei-s of other organizations having other aims chiefly in mind, and will find in the new affiliation larger opportunity for making their particular work the devotional center of the whole Union, on the purely voluntary basis, instead of the pledge basis. A BASIS FOR THE UNION OF YOUNG PEOPLE 313 sent the form of mature piety; but need only have the quahties of utility, benevolence, morality, and a general helpfulness which looks toward a sane and mature piety. What can we do, what shall we do, while waiting for the possibiUty of such an organization? 1. Try to persuade your young people's society to organize on this comprehensive basis. Point out the failure to include all young people in church, and especially to save to the Bible school and church the young men and women sUpping away. Exalt to due and proper place all forms of Christian activity. 2. If you cannot persuade the young people so to organize, as to include freely all who will do something for Christ, without requiring the prayer-meeting test, then organize your Bible school classes, each class by itself, around some form of service, which they may voluntarily choose to enter upon. Here, I beheve, is one way of preserving the interest of young people in the Bible school, and of retaining the scholars at that age, when they are wont to give up the school. There is also a group of social reasons why the organized class is the best way to organize the young people in the school and church . Nowhere in the church have the yoimg people associated themselves in a group so much, or so nearly wholly, because of social affinities, as in the average Bible school class. They begin as a class in the wholly democratic spirit of little children, and are advanced in a body to the intermediate department, but differentiation soon begins. Some drop out, some seek other classes, new scholars, generally social com- rades, are brought in, and the changes of evolution continue mitil it is soon apparent that the average Bible school class is the most homo- geneous and actually acceptable company, socially, around the church. What differences have been incapable of elimination have been min- imized by constant association; and in youth the class represents, as nearly as possible under rehgious auspices, the ideal of good-fellow- ship, a " gang " if it be boys, a " set " if it be girls. The social hun- ger aids, therefore; and if this social imit be made a religious unit, a service unit, by organization for a religious purpose, another serious element of continuity in religious life is added. The longer I regard the matter, the less sure I am that, for all the needs of opportunity to convert truth-impression into action-ex- pression, the organized classes are not better than any single organiza- tion of young people, however comprehensive may be its plan and outlook. Only experience can tell. The idea is, in general, new. Time would reveal; but some experience has given assurance that it is so. 314 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Two classes of objection arise naturally: First as to the multi- plicity of organizations. Such would be the case only when there was no inspiring Christian life to keep the many organizations in action; that there is a multiplicity of services, and each idea needs a body after its kind. We need, for the full opportunity of developing each and all, the searching emphasis upon each individual, which only many small organizations can efiect. The second objection likely to arise is that such a plan institutes and perpetuates cliques among the young people. Let it be admitted at once. It does. But I raise the question, " Why not cultivate the clique?" How more effectively reach and hold the individuals? Is not this the idea of the Y. M. C. A. in their boys' departments and men's movements ? They have recognized that, in all life, boys group themselves, according to social affinities, into what are called " gangs," and that if they are effectually to win the individual boy, they must carry the " gang " with them. Their advantage is that they recog- nize no denominational group, but can take and work with the boys in the group to which their social affinities have joined them. The Young Women's Associations already recognize and work on the same principle among young women. Now, why not in the church, young people's society, and Bible school, cultivate the clique? The cHques are there, anyhow. No one, who has ever sought social imity in church or school, has been able to escape the knowledge of this; and the social unity of either has al- ways been fovmd wellnigh impossible, save in very small churches, which are, to all intents, simply a group of those socially affiliated. What young people's societies must do for young people, then, is, give largest opportunity for action-expression of truth impression, or the rationale of Bible-study is lost, and rational young people will give it up. The best way to grant this is by an organized effort that will both suggest and make ways for action-expression. The present young people's societies are organized too narrowly to give this opportunity. It is needful to reorganize them on a more comprehensive basis, inclusive of all forms of Christian activity. A BASIS FOR THE UNION OF YOUNG PEOPLE 315 Discussion MR. WILLIAM SHAW TREASURER OF THE UNITED SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS The title of the paper is, in my opinion, as misleading as the plan suggested is impracticable and unworkable in the average church. To be really comprehensive, it should provide for the needs of the average, not of the exceptional, church. Instead of a more comprehensive basis for the union of young people in their societies, it outlines a plan which, if it could be used at all, could be used only by the small minority of churches that have a large membership and a multiplicity of organiza- tions. Instead of simplifying the machinery, it makes it more complex. All it pleads for is secured now in our societies wherever there is compe- tent local leadership, and without that no plan will succeed. By its system of committee and department work, the young people's society meets the needs of the average church, and is doing an infinite variety of helpful Christian service. It also has the added advantage over the plan suggested in the paper, that, instead of one little group of young people having a monopoly of one kind of service, all the members have an equal opportunity for training along special lines, and also for development as all-round Christian workers. Provision is also made in the present plan of work by which the exceptional churches with large numbers of young people can organize their society into two or more sections, thus making a place for the training and development of every young person in the congregation. Furthermore, the Christian Endeavor method already provides a simple plan for federating clubs, classes, and organizations of various kinds, doing specific work in the local church, by which the members become affiliated members of the broader, more definitely religious, and more comprehensive organization, the Society of Christian Endeavor. The executive committee, which consists of the officers, chairmen of committees, and superintendents of departments, furnishes a cabinet through which the pastor can suggest and direct every line of work. In its reference to the junior societies and the prayer-meetings, the paper, in my opinion, utterly misstates the real condition of things. It misrepresents thousands of the most devoted and intelligent workers in our churches, who are freely giving their time to training the boys and girls in our junior societies in perfectly natural and normal ways to love and work for Christ and the church. Junior societies do not meet at night, neither do they encourage the giving of unreal religious experien- 3i6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ces. I have attended hundreds of junior meetings and conferred with thousands of superintendents, and have never yet seen the "pathetic and harmful exhibitions " referred to in the paper. But I have seen com- panies of eager Httle ones repeating their Bible verses, singing their beautiful songs, listening to the old, old story of Christ's love for the children, planning for their missionary or temperance meeting, making scrap-books for the hospitals, packing boxes for the missionaries, and carrying sunshine and cheer and flowers and fruit to the sick and infirm. Why should it be considered such an unnatural thing for a Christian to take part in a prayer-meeting? Why should the prayer-meeting be reserved for the gifted few who think they can speak ," to edification?" It is that idea that has nearly killed our prayer -meetings and relegated to the minister the expression of religious truth. We do not apply that rule in our family life. Why should we in the church family? Not even modern pedagogy has applied that rule in our schools, for still every scholar, gifted or ungifted, is required to "take part " in the classroom. Our young people's prayer-meetings and junior societies are not places where unreal experiences are related or expected. But they are places where the mature and the immature, the experienced and the inexperienced, can in appropriate ways express themselves as members in the family of God and scholars in the school of Christ. If the charac- ter of the meetings prevents the natural expression of religious truth, let us change their character. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, every man heard the message in his own language. They need to hear it to-day in the lan- guage of the mechanic and the merchant, the clerk and the cash-girl, the shipper and the stenographer, the servant and the mistress, the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated. But, having said this for the prayer-meeting, and much more could be said, I affirm that the present young people's society is a training-school for every form of Christian service, with this advantage over the plan suggested in the paper, that it has a heart at the center, keeping the hands and feet and brain supplied with rich red blood. I could weary you and fill the volume of proceedings with reports of actual work done and service rendered along every line of missionary, educational, social, and philanthropic work by our young people's societies. They stand for expression by both life and lip. Not either, but both. Here is an outline of the varied forms of service in which Christian Endeavor Societies are engaged and for which they will receive special recognition at the Baltimore convention. A BASIS FOR THE UNION OF YOUNG PEOPLE 317 I. (a) Recognition for societies that for six months have had seventy- five per cent of their active members present and participating in the meetings. (b) For societies in which five or more of their members have joined the church. (c) For societies that have fifty per cent, of their members " Com- rades of the Quiet Hour." II. (a) For conspicuously good committee-work along any line. (b) For forming and sustaining junior and intermediate societies by junior committees of the young people's society. (c) For forming affiliated groups of young people along mission- ary, literary, musical lines, boys' clubs, etc. III. For societies that have made special efforts along lines of reli- gious education, that have taken one or more courses in the correspond- ence school, formed a Christian Endeavor correspondence school class, mission-study class, a class for the study of the Bible, of church history and doctrine, or other effort of this sort. IV. For societies that show the best record of beneficence, that have given the largest sums per capita for missions, or that have the most members belonging to the Tenth Legion, or that have been successful in some other definite plan of systematic and proportionate giving. V. For societies that report conspicuously good work for the welfare of their community, social or political reforms, temperance work, and other lines of good citizenship, education, and public spirit, town and village improvement in beautifying public and private property, etc. If these things are not done in any certain society, it is not because the opportunity is wantmg, but because the society lacks the leadership or ability to grasp it. What is needed is more power, not another ma- chine. Sometimes objection is made to the wording of the pledge. Then write a better one. Sometimes additions are needed to the con- stitution. Make them; the opportunity is yours; use it. WHAT THE MISSIONARY SOCIETIES ARE DOING TO INTEREST THE YOUNG PEOPLE IN MISSIONS MR. S. EARL TAYLOR FIELD SECRETARY MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY In February, 1905, in America alone, seventeen of thel leading mis- sionary boards had special secretaries who had supervision of young people's work, and ten other societies were giving much attention to the subject under secretaries who, in addition to supervising the young peo- ple's work, had to do with other activities. In some of these boards provision has been made for a regular young people's department with a special budget. In others, provision is made under the regular appro- priation for home administration and cultivation. The great outstanding fact that seventeen of the leading missionary societies of this country have been led within recent years to give special attention to the missionary education of the young is of prime importance, whether considered as a factor in the religious education of the country, or in its relation to the establishment of the kingdom of Jesus Christ upon the earth. So far as the writer has knowledge, one of the most remarkable movements in the whole range of religious educational activities in this country is now taking place in connection with what has been characterized as " the missionary uprising of the young people." It is only comparable with the widespread movement in connection with the organization of the great young people's societies and the parallel movement which resulted in the Student Christian Associations, the Student Volunteer Movement and in the World's Student Christian Federation. One of the lirst things being attempted by the young people's departments of the missionary societies is to secure a proper organiza- tion of the forces. The work must practically be done de novo in denom- inations where there is no young people's organization, and even in cases where the great young people's societies are organized, the mis- sionary societies in some instances have found it necessary to place emphasis upon the importance of the organization of a missionary department in connection with these young people's societies. Six years ago most of the young people's societies scheduled quarterly missionary topics upon the devotional topic-card. Now, however, the leading young people's societies have monthly missionary topics upon 318 WHAT THE MISSIONARY SOCIETIES ARE DOING 319 the topic-cards, and a page or more of the official organ of the society is given to the preparation of helps for these meetings. Moreover, the missionary societies, through the young people's departments, are rendering additional help by way of the preparation of special pro- grammes, and the collection of the best leaflet literature bearing upon the particular topic under consideration. Recently, the series of Forward Mission Study Courses have been projected, and five splendid courses of study prepared especially for the young people have been issued, the latest book of the series being on home missions, and the others being on some phase of foreign mission- ary work. Of these text-books, 100,550 have been sold during the past two years, and of the text-book, " Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdom, ' ' the book on Japan which is being used by the classes this year, eleven imprint editions have been issued for as many missionary societies or denominational publishing houses of this country, and several hundred copies have been sent to the Church Missionary Society in Great Britain. Not less than 50,000 young people are stud)ang missions this year in America, and one denomination alone reports that 35,000 have been enrolled in mission-study under the direction of its young people's department since 1900. The rapid development of missionary work among young people is strikingly illustrated by what has taken place in connection with the production of missionary libraries for young people. There are now two ten-dollar missionary libraries, which are known respectively as Missionary Campaign Library No. i and Missionary Campaign Library No. 2. There are also three special five-dollar libraries, designed to be used by the classes in connection with their mission, study-work. For instance, in connection with " Simrise in the Sunrise Kingdom," the current text-book on Japan, a library of nine volumes is available. This library has been carefully chosen by an interdenominational library committee, of which Mr. Harlan P. Beach, the educational Secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement is chairman, and it undoubtedly contains nine of the very best missionary books on Japan. The libraries mentioned above are being used in most of the denom- inations in connection with their young people's work, and early in Janu- ary of this year it was reported that 8,688 of these libraries had been sold, aggregating 145,405 volumes. Attractive literature upon the subject of giving is being produced. Special programmes are prepared for use in connection with the devo- tional meetings of the young people's societies, and an increasing number 320 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION of young people are enrolling under some form of Christian steward- ship pledge or declaration of purpose. Local, group, metropolitan, district, state and provincial, denomina- tional and interdenominational, national and international conventions are the order of the day. Missionary speakers are in demand. Sugges- tions for missionary departments of programmes are eagerly sought and conferences on practical methods of missionary work are among the most popular features of convention programmes. This means that the missionary societies, through their young people's departments have a- great field of usefulness in seeking to guide the convention activities, so far as they relate to the cause of missions. Most of the young people's departments are giving this question most careful thought, and one young people's department alone last spring provided missionary speak- ers and suggested missionary topics for more than sixty conventions. It has become necessary for some of the missionary societies to provide extensive exhibits in dupHcate form, which are loaned upon occasion. Wherever these exhibits have been furnished, it has been found that they are in constant demand and therefore in constant circulation. Much of the work outlined above has been made possible by the fact that the missionary societies of America have, through their young people's departments, created what is known as the Young People's Missionary Movement, which is practically a clearing-house of ideas. Any good plan or method developed by one denomination is through this agency readily passed on to another, and not only are mission-study text-books and libraries made possible for interdenominational use, but accessory material, such as maps, charts, etc., is being made available for the young people at a minimum cost by this organization, which is able to manufacture and conduct its work on a wholesale basis. MISSIONARY LITERATURE AND YOUNG PEOPLE MR. W. HENRY GRANT HONORARY LIBRARIAN BOARD OF THE FOREIGN MISSIONS LIBRARY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY The study of missions is the study of the world and its need, and what the gospel has done and is doing in the world. If the main object of education is character and preparation for the work of life, and to fulfil one's destiny nobly, doing things at hand with far-sighted vision, and large human feeling, and to know by personal experience what it is to have the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, then missionary hterature holds a high place in Christian education. The history of missions is a /io/>e-inspiring study. It corrects the pessimistic tendency of young people when they meet the social problems and rehgious indifference of their age. Missionary literature contains incidents of the highest motive value to teacher and taught. It has an immediate effect upon the way a girl or boy does his work. It applies to every-day duty the imperative now which makes present effort and present study count. The problem of getting missionary literature used is the same as any other educational or rehgious problem. It is a personal problem, involving the personaUty of the teacher or friend. It is a problem of adaptability. It is a problem of measure and correlation. It is a problem of utiHzing the social influences of the band, the society, the Sunday school class, the family, etc. It is a problem of investment, participation, interest. Interest is bought at the price of effort. It is through the narrow gate of hard work we enter any new field of interest. Curiosity may lead up to the gate, but effort is needed before we get any further than the threshold. In acquiring a new art or in developing a dormant faculty, there is always a greater quantity of conscious effort at the beginning than there is later, when effort itself becomes a source of pleasure. Where faithful work follows, interest begets interest and goes on compounding interest at an enormous rate. It is the veteran mis- sionary, the old missionary war-horse, who is the most enthusiastic and most able to impart that enthusiasm to others. It is said that what you get people to love is more important than what you get them to learn. But the two should be closely united from the beginning. It is better to get one book well mastered, with the religious motive running through it understood, than many piecemeal references read aloud in a missionary 321 322 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION meeting without any correlation. First impulses are usually imparted by a personality. Some encouragement is needed to make the young reader feel that what is coming later is worth the output of effort. Use oj Present Literature. There are an increasing number of selected lists of books for missionary libraries. These can be had by writing to the different movements and the missionary boards. There are quite a number of new juvenile books for children under twelve. There are almost no hooks }or boys and girls over twelve. A short list for younger children would include: " Tatong," " Twelve Little Pilgrims Who Stayed at Home," " The Great Big World," A Missionary Walk in the Zoo," " The Chinese Boy and Girl," " Children in Blue and What They Do," " Gilmour and His Boys," " God's Earth, or Well Worth," " Wliat 's O'clock?" " Our Chinese Neighbors." For those from ten to sixteen, the list would include some books which, though not altogether missionary, serve the purpose of awakening interest. With a little promoting, for those who have developed the habit of reading we may add the following: " Bishop Hannington " or "Perils and Adventure in Africa," " John G. Paton," " Adoniram Judson," " John Kenneth Mackenzie," "Mackay of Uganda," " On the Oregon Trail " by Parkman. There are a few introductory books for older young people who are already interested to some degree in religious reading. For example, " The Bishop's Conversion," " Little Green God," " The Vanguard," and " Gale's " Korean Sketches." Missionary Literature Needed. With all the accumulated treasures of the past, much remains to be done. We have as yet no life of David Livingstone suitable for a boy. This may be said of most of the litera- ture published. The making of a missionary-book or the writing of a missionary article should be classed among the fine arts. Older readers value most of them for their description of special fields, rather than for their literary excellence and appeal to the imagination. They are often better fuel for a fire well started then for kindling. In writing books, in using missionary literature and books of travel, and in directing others in their readings and study, let us not become literary globe-trotters without a purpose. One of the leading Japanese Christians differentiates the Bible from all other books by this expression, " The Bible is a God-intoxicated book." Starting with the missionary story which began in the Old Testament and was continued in the New Testament, let us follow the progress of the gospel down to our own day, when almost more are brought to Christ in a year than were converted MISSIONARY LITERATURE AND YOUNG PEOPLE 323 during the first century of the Christian era. Those triumphs should inspire us to greater endeavor and more intense devotion. If, then, the young people are to recognize their high calling in Christ Jesus, and are to take their part in the great world movement of which Christ is leader, they must be brought into vital contact with the lives and work of the Judsons and Careys and Mofifats of modem missions, till each one shall joyfully cry out with Paul, the first foreign missionary since Calvary, " Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by Ufe or by death; for me to live is Christ and to die is gain "! XII. THE HOME THE PART OF THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION PROFESSOR CHARLES R. HENDERSON, Ph. D., D. D. THE UNIVERSITY OF' CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS This general subject has already been ably discussed in certain as- pects before this Association. The present contribution will come from a different field of study. I. Historical. The domestic group, or " matrimonial institution," has assumed many forms during the rise and development of civil'zation, and humanity has tried all possible kinds of experiments in order to come to the conclusion to make monogamy, with all it implies, the law of social order; and the impulses of the race tend to become innate and the customs traditional, which require this form to be perpetual. In all stages, from the earliest mother-group to the modern family, the domestic community has always been the primary association of human beings, the undifferentiated stock out of which all the specialized agencies and institutions of society have grown. It would be incredible to think that all this long, racial experience has left no trace in our physi- cal nature, our deep instincts, our traditional conceptions, our social organization, our methods of regulating conduct. While there has been no one universal order of specialization, there has been, in general, an advance from the condition in which the domestic group, or the closely knit blood-kin, did almost everything for itself without exchange of goods and services, to the present situation, in which the bread-winner of a family buys all he needs for his own by the exchange of one form of service for all that the world has to offer. Even now, and in the complicated life of a city, the family is an important industrial organization, cares for the health of its members, is alert to protect them from danger, governs them by a domestic code, judges their causes, disciplines them for faults, instructs them in arts and science, trains them in morality, and furnishes them a sanctuary for worship. Only gradually, with reluctance and pain, do the parents transfer their offspring to the larger life of the world and surrender their leadership in culture and control. There is no one " underlying idea " in the family which will account for it. The family grows naturally out of all the elementary desires of our human nature, physical, aesthetic, ethical, and spiritual. To say 324 THE PART OF THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 325 with one very interesting writer that obedience is the " underlying idea," is to make us satisfied with a partial and superficial explanation. The family is a complete community of material and mental goods, and attempted simplification of interpretation is distortion and mutilation. All later and larger forms of association merely enlarge and specialize the activities of the domestic group. It is precisely this fact which gives to the family its unique place and importance in relation to education and social progress. Religion, morality, culture, noble politics — all interests suffer if domestic conduct is defective or immoral. II. The educational function of the family is permanent. There is a quite general belief in some quarters that the educational work of the family is about to be surrendered to special social agencies of education, to the school. Some influential writers, generally of the socialistic tendency, have drawn up an argument for holding this belief. Their chief reason is that ordinary parents are incapable of instructing and training children and youth; that only the state can furnish nurses and teachers who have the scientific and professional equipment for the worthy task of preparing youth for citizenship. There is a plausible cover for this view, just enough neglected truth in it to delude the unwary and to awaken the prudent. Much of the current discussion among church leaders overlooks the body of facts which socialist agitators have in mind, and which are manifest in the crowded habitations of our huge cities. There it is unquestionably true that very many girls marry too young, without necessary physical maturity and without preparation for motherhood, and with only such education as they can acquire in a primary school and years of special- ized labor in a department store or in a factory. It would be well for our country and for the cause of religion if those who write about moral and spiritual education would take adequate pains to bring these deplor- able conditions within their mental horizon. We have able and con- vincing essays on home religion, which are quite suitable for people who have homes; but the average flat-building, occupied by low-paid, un- skilled laborers with irregular employment, presents radically different problems, and the conditions call for different methods. Persons long resident in social settlements, and patient missionaries among immi- grants, reveal another region, which the ordinary pastor or Sunday school teacher, psychologist, and seminary professor, living in snug com- fort, must regard as alien to all he knows. It is this alien world which the socialist has chiefly in his memory when he claims that parents cannot be trusted to educate the children of the land, and that expert nurses and teachers ought to be employed. The socialist also thinks. 326 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION and sometimes speaks very bitterly, of those luxurious homes of people who in the whirl of business and social frivolities accept the burdens of parenthood with regret and pass on the tasks of education of their off- spring to incompetent hirelings as quickly as possible. Thus at both extremes of society the argument for abandoning the educational func- tion of the family may seem plausible on superficial examination. But many of us think that the better way would be to correct defects; that those who are able to educate their young children should be con- strained by public opinion and law to do so; that the ignorant and untrained should be encouraged and helped to perform their social task; and that nurture is as truly a social function of the family as propagation. There is an educational function for the family which cannot be transferred to the public school, the kindergarten, or the church school. Much of the early and most important factors of education are insepara- bly connected with that care of the infant body which only mothers can give. The more formal, systematic, and specialized instruction, of com- munication of knowledge, belongs to the school; but instruction is only one element in the process of forming the character. The foundations are laid before the child can safely be sent away from the parents, and the co-operation of parental influence is necessary in every succeeding stage of development up to maturity. Just what this peculiar and essential contribution of the family is deserves profound study. We can bring out the essential aspects by briefly considering (i) the aim of education and (2) the particular contribution of the domestic life to spiritual nurture. III. The aim of religious and moral education is just the goal and purpose of life, the crown of all culture. Jesus' saying is none too often quoted: " I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." This aim is not to be attained in fragments and sections of unrelated acts. The entire body, mind, and spirit is to be sanctified. Isolation of interests is impossible. There are three aspects of this aim of education, and they must be seen stereoscopically, on all sides at once, as if character had three dimensions; and these aspects are, (i) personality, (2) devotion to our kind, and (3) consecration to God. Each involves the other. We speak of the perfection of personality as our aim ; but we do not mean a fixed limit, a fine quality of dwarfed proportions, and therefore our sage Emerson preferred the word " greatness " as the ideal of personal culture. Personality is not the equivalent of egotism. The person must be a " socius," a companion, a member of the race, of kin THE PART OF THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 327 to his kind, a neighbor to all. For selfishness is the essence of sin, and it cuts oflf all roots which might nourish the soul, and leaves it to wither. Personality is still incomplete in the human community, and demands converse with God. This divine and heavenly summit reached, the Mont Blanc of the range of spiritual mountain heights, all lower ranges of being and interests are seen radiant with the shining of God. "Virtue is the gift of God." IV. The family offers an indispensable contribution to the elementary spiritual nurture, to right life. I. Deeper and earher than clear, rational reasoning, there are expe- riences which well up from the soul of the infant in response to the stimuli of parental touch and care. Has ever any one described the very foun- tain and origin of religious consciousness better than the good, gentle, prophetic, awkward Pestalozzi? "The best way for a child to learn to fear God is to see and hear a real Christian. . . . The home is the true basis of the education of humanity. It is the home that gives the best moral training, whether for private or public life. . . .Once again I look into my ovm heart for an answer to my question, and ask myself, How does the idea of God take root in my soul? Whence comes it that I believe in God, that I abandon myself to Him, and feel happy when I love Him and trust Him, thank Him, and obey Him ? " Then I soon see that the sentiments of love, trust, gratitude, and obedience must first exist in my heart before I can feel them for God. I must love men, trust them, thank them and obey them, before I can rise to loving, thanking, trusting, and obeying God. ' For he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love his Father in heaven whom he hath not seen ? ' I next ask myself, How is it that I come to love men, to trust them, to thank them and obey them? How do these sentiments take root in my heart? And I find that it is princi- pally through the relations which exist between a mother and her infant child. " The mother must care for her child, feed it, protect it, amuse it. She cannot do otherwise; her strongest instincts impel her to this course. And so she provides for its needs, and in every possible way makes up for its powerlessness. Thus the child is cared for and made happy, and the first seed of love is soviTi within him." Then he describes with some details the rise of trust, gratitude, and obedience, the feeling and the ideas which correspond to them, and all in response to the stimulus which arises in the relation of child to mother. " These elements are also the elements of religious development, and it 328 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION is by faith in its mother that the child rises to faith in God. " The child, no sooner hears God's name from his mother's lips than he glows with gladness. " This first attempt of a loving, simple-minded mother to subordinate the child's growing feeling of independence to faith in God, by connecting faith with certain moral tendencies that are already more or less developed, furnishes education with the fundamental prin- ciples from which it must start, if it is to succeed in ennobling men." 2. Habits are the means by which actions, movements, are trans- formed into second nature, the basis of character; and habits are started at birth, continue through childhood and youth into manhood. Punctu- ality, truthfulness, order, neatness, cleanliness, kindness, usefulness, reverence, and all else that is desirable in character, are fashioned by securing the almost unthinking repetition of right actions and of sym- bolic gestures and postures. 3. The ideas of morality and religion are the late and ripe fruit of feeling and habitual conduct. There is, of course, an intellectual element in the first conscious movements, sensations, and emotions, but only with youth can there come an orderly and extended system of thoughts. Truth can be gradually formulated on the basis of previous experiences. When doctrine is made clear, articulate, distinct, rational, it reacts upon the life of feeling and volition and habit. If the doctrine, happily, is a worthy conception of God, it helps the moral life, clarifies, enlarges, exalts, refines the disposition. It is not enough to set an example of goodness before a child, nor even to cause him to do good actions himself; he must have a name for his vague experiences, must voice his aspiration, must give a rational and even aesthetic form to his devoutness. It is not a creed or a catechism which hurts the child's soul, but the monstrous and immoral dogma and the inquisitional tor- ture which stir revolt', and the unreality of verbal formulas which signify nothing, and cause insincerity at once and skepticism in after years. V. There is time for only one application of these considerations, and that shall be to family worship. Domestic religion must find some kind of suitable liturgical expression. Family worship, to be useful, or even tolerable, must grow naturally out of the ordinary course of life, be fitted into it, and reveal its real spirit. It must be for children, where there are children; and they must, during the years of education, be active in it, not merely passive victims of it. It must not frighten them away from God's altar, where even birds make their nests in security. It must be expansive and not repressive. How simple and natural was the act in which Jesus instituted the Eucharist. " And as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had THE PART OF THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 329 blessed, he brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take ye: this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them. This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many. And when they had simg a hymn, they went out." No child would desire to run away from that dramatized prayer. The story is ineffably sweet. The Master who taught little children to regard themselves as his own by taking them into his gentle and affectionate embrace, is always ready to use physical symbols to help those who live in the flesh to press their way by tangible and visible means into the mean'ng of the divine word. Why should the members of a family retire from the table to proceed in stately order to a service which is cut off from the happiness, comfort, laughter, and joy of the natural melting of all ? AVhy should they turn their backs on each other when the Giver of all good is addressed ? Why should not the children themselves seek out and bring to that place the finest expressions of adoration and gratitude which literature can furnish? Many a wise mother has learned by holy instinct that it is a sacred privilege to connect the brief phrase of hope and trust with the evening caress and the delicious revery of a child falling asleep. Too often the formal family worship is torture, and its words but vain repetitions, the tone neither of earth nor heaven. The voice is that of an actor, and reality has gone out of it. If the children are studying German at school, they might well repeat the touching sentence which reminds one of Fra Angelico's Pilgrim Christ : Komm, Herr Jesu, sei unser Gast, Und segne was Du uns bescheret hast. (Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, And bless what Thou hast given us.) The home ever remains the primary temple, and the light of worship on that altar must not go out, lest the world grow dark. Worship should be a natural, sincere, and joyous part of a great life of love, order, beauty, wisdom, and happiness; the children should be active agents in its observance; and its ritual should be symbols taken from the ordinary acts of familiar life, as Jesus made of the common meal, the lasting memorial of himself and the central mystery of the Christian Church. " In liberty of holy glee, Accept thy childhood's part, And thou shalt find, by faith enshrined, The Father in thy heart. " HOW CAN WE DEVELOP A GROWING CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD IN CHILDREN AND YOUTH? MISS ALICE E. FITTS PRATT INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK " Enlarge our capacities to understand and our hearts to receive the fulness of His life." Consciousness of God must come to each one of us in some form of experience; we know only what we have experienced of the spiritual life. To satisfy the desire of the soul, to know God, and to lead the individual through every experience to God, may be the inspiring task of those who have children to nurture. Learning about God, going to Sunday school or church, is not enough. What we must have is a preparation for this, and the preparation must come to us as children. As the blossom depends upon the growth of the plant, and this upon the germination of the seed, so later spiritual life in man depends upon the awakening and development of the spiritual germs in the soul. What is to develop must begin, and we must not look to a later stage to accomplish the work of an earlier one. Some one has asked, " When shall I begin to teach my little child to pray?" I cannot answer this question; the answer will come in its own good time. It depends upon the mother. Prayer is not some- thing separate from living; when the baby was put to sleep, he was laid down with a prayer to God; when he was taken up, awake, per- haps the mother spoke to God again. I do not know how often she prays; the time comes when the child notices that she prays and he imitates her. Then words may be given him to say. After a time he adds his own petition, or gives thanks and learns to talk to his Father in heaven. By and by he asks her why she prays, and she answers, " To thank our heavenly Father for what He has given us; to ask Him to take care of us and help us to do right." None of this he under- stands as we do, or as he will later, but this exchange of feeling within his little breast, the talking to God and expectation of an answer, form the basis for all after-relationship between himself and God. And yet, after all, the real value of this depends upon the spiritual life of the mother and her insight. During this time, when the child is learning what prayer means, he is gaining other ideas, — of mysterious things, like the wind, that he can feel but cannot see; of the light, which he can see but cannot 33° CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD IN CHILDREN AND YOUTH 331 touch; of the voice, which he can hear but cannot see or touch; and a sense of the hidden life in things comes to him. He talks to the flowers, the wind, the moon; to all things he feels akin, and it is but a step farther to this mysterious personality, God. Experience of the invisible the mother gives quite early to her child; for instance, when he begins to notice objects moved by the wind. He imitates these moving things, and, watching them, asks what makes the things go. " The wind," answers his mother; " listen, hear it talking to the trees, the clothes on the line, and to the weather-vane. It says, ' Turn,' to the little weathercock, and around goes the cock. Baby, show how the weather-cock turns," and quickly he turns his little hand. From this beginning he learns to notice all the things the invisible wind does, and many questions follow from the child, which cannot all be answered, but which lead back to the one Power behind that moves many things. In the bird's nest, children see mirrored the human relationship of the family, and here may be stirred the feelings of nurture, care, love, protection, as they watch and hear about the mother and father birds and all their efforts to protect and bring up their little ones. All the sympathy with right action comes in the early years of the child's hfe. Play and story, picture and song, all are helps to the mother, but within her heart lies the God-wisdom implanted there as an instinct, that helps her to be the artist in her work of lovingly, play- fully awakening and developing the germs of spiritual life in her child. For spiritual life is not separate from other life. It is every-day life with a different content and aim. To keep this consciousness, to deepen and enrich it, and prepare for further development and welcome, the presence of a Power " that for existence strives," — this is our life- work here. One turns instinctively to the home to find right conditions for the nurture of the spiritual life; and yet these conditions are not always there. Even where ideals and aims are right, there is sometimes a lack of insight in showing the way, and direct teaching of abstract truths is depended upon to bring about spiritual development, or else the responsibility is thrown off a'together or placed upon church or Simday school. Quoting from Froebel, " Parents should not be timid, shouM not object that they know nothing themselves, and do not know how to teach their children. Their ignorance is not the greatest evil. If they desire to know something, let them imitate the child's example, let them become children with the child, learners with the learner. Let them go to and be taught by Mother Nature and by the fatherly Spirit of God. The Spirit of God and nature will guide them." 332 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The mother indeed is the nurturer, the home-maker, and the atmos- phere of the home. But it is not upon her alone that we must depend. The father has his part to do. The united work of the two is the im- portant thing. That they unite to live, to deal with the problems of life, to nurture and train their children, is the great and important thing. No family is free until all its members are free. No individual is really happy unless the others are happy. We are constrained by the family, and there is a constant opportunity to exercise the virtues that may arise through individual coming in contact with individual. Just as the man depends upon the child, so state and church depend upon the family. Lift its roof, broaden its expanse, and the home becomes the church. The home relationships interpret our Father in heaven and the individual's nurturing power points the way for His work upon earth. Within the family lives the individual. He may be regarded as an individual, with individual rights; and he may be regarded as a member of the whole, with duties bom of the relationship. Two aspects of this life come before us, — the nurture of his feelings and right direction for his activities. The Christian mother instinc- tively helps her child to loving action. She does this unconsciously, for love fills her heart. Just in proportion as the love of God fills her heart, does she have the wisdom to lead her child aright. Happiness is one of the necessary conditions of the child's life, and this comes not alone through others but through himself and his right deeds. This he soon discovers and here we may find the basis for the individ- ual relationship to mother, father, brother and sister, and God. The struggle with the self and its final victory can only be attained through a conscious determination to do right, and a constant close relation- ship to parents and then God, to help strengthen the will and resolve. It is the old, old struggle of man with himself. At first the difficulty is referred to outside things, and the real help given by mother or fa- ther is the reference to self. Better that the discovery that the root of the trouble lies within himself should come early. Mother's help is needed first, then brothers' or sisters', and finally God's. The struggle to reconcile what the inner man says is right with his deeds must finally end in a realization of his responsibility for his own actions. To find the reason for his own action within himself, is another start- ing-point for his relationship to God. Here is not only a test for the child, but a test for parents as well. Who is willing to stand, and stand firmly, lovingly, for the law? The law, not arbitrary and for the individual, but for the right? The law which, when once obeyed by the child, will show him the way to govern himself. No kindness so CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD IN CHILDREN AND YOUTH 333 great, no love so real as that which intelligently leads the child to obe- dience of law. From this is born trust and faith, and ability to enter into the Uves and difficulties of his fellow -men. It is the open door for all wider and higher life. To will the will of God, — this is real union with God, and while, step by step, we depend upon love, the individual must make his choice, or he will not be free. The development of the individual child's feeling for God, know- ing about God and consciousness of God, begin with the mother, — the will of the individual conflicting with that of the mother. To awaken and develop the will to do right, this is her aim. To help the child to choose the right and will it, this is gain indeed. For mother first, for right, second; infinite love and patience are needed to develop this. Obedience lays the foundations for faith and many other virtues, but pre-eminently faith. We cannot always know, but we can obey and believe; the act of faith makes possible all things. The religious experiences of children differ as widely as those of grown people. When the first conscious experience comes of right conquering the wrong condition within, we do not know. What the motives are for action we cannot always tell; but recognition, on the part of parent or teacher, of right intentions goes a long way toward help- ing right to reign. Happiness should follow every step that is con- quered. The voice within the heart of the child should speak in com- mendation as well as condemnation. Conscience has not a negative voice alone but a positive one as well. And the individual should be welcomed back in to the life of the family, from which he may have been temporarily separated. From every deed in life there is a way to God. In the family circle may come times set apart by the parents to be with their children. At meals, of course, some one says; but this is one of our modem problems, with father away all day and dinner late at night. The mother may gather her children together for talks and stories or singing before supper. In the dusk, many confidences are exchanged and many little hearts are opened. The stories mother tells sink deep into the memory. The poems she recites or sings are always with us. What a golden opportunity for the father if he can reach home early enough to unite in this! He may live over again his boyhood, and thus better understand his own son. He has a chance to review some of the stories he loved, and tell of his own deeds of prowess. When will he ever have a more sympathetic audience than this one, or one that will believe him to be more of a hero ? In living with our children we are enabled to go over again our incomplete educa- tion, pick up the lost stitches, and make of it a continuous whole. Then 334 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION at bedtime, before the children sleep, the mother may say their prayers with them and hear the confessions and explanations that often come at this time. A comforting or discriminating word dropped into the mind just here sinks deep and does its work of miiting mother and child in their efforts to do right. Music is a power for good. What mother and father sing or play carries great influence. Another way for love to express itself is in giving opportunities for service; the right direction for the increasing bodily activity and strength. Hard things to do, when conquered, lead to union between parents and children. The parents should see to it that their attitude toward work is a noble one, toward the worker, a respectful one, and the child will desire to work too. This is the first step toward creative work. The feeling that father, mother, and children are united in their lives and with God gives them the basis for true spiritual living. I hesitate to touch on the one subject that is of most importance, for fear I shall be misunderstood. Christ is the great reconciling force of the world. As we exercise this reconciling activity ourselves, we become conscious of God. The child must be led to discover this as a law in nature, in stories, in literature, in the Bible, in heroes, and in the person of Jesus Christ. The conflicting elements in life must be reconciled even for little children. The harmony of nature, of the mother, of the home, all help the chi'd to find harmony within himself, but his relationship to Christ becomes a conscious one when he begins to understand his need for living the life of reconciliation. God is throughout the universe, filling, pervading it with life and love; we are His children; part of His infi- nite nature is giving us life. Our life, our happiness, is in opening our hearts for more and more of this consciousness. We are both finite and infinite, in the sense that we have both a human and a divine inheri- tance. Out of the human, we may lift the divine. Spiritual life is not a thing apart; it is possible here, if we have but a heavenly aim. What keeps us so far away from God? Is it worldly ideals mixed in with spiritual aims, that we cannot find our way from every point in life to God ? Can we not live so in the unity of life that our children may be brought in as well? Can we not keep their confidence and respect as they grow older, through together striving to live the highest life? Steps in attainment are for us all. We are all endeavoring to do right, parents, teachers, and children, and sometimes we fail. We can all, fathers, mothers, and children, know and love God, our Father, with a growing understanding and confidence, and this love must finally pass out from the home into the community and make way for a still deeper experience of God's spirit. THE CONTINUITY OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION MRS. WILLIAM D. MacCLINTOCK CHICAGO, ILLINOIS The doctrine of periods distinct and definable in a child's growth is, of course, old, and has been always practically operative in educa- tion. Indeed, nature has written it so large in the facts of his physical growth that it could not be ignored. But the modern psychology of childhood, confirming and sanctioning the doctrine, and freeing it largely from vagueness, has so deepened and widened its influence in the educational theory and practice of our day, that we feel,almost as if it were a new discovery. The full recognition in the child's whole training of this doctrine and its far-reaching implications works many most beneficent results. One of these implications is that we must seek subjects and aspects of subjects adapted to the period of growth within which we find our child; further, that in presenting to him subjects and aspects of subjects for which he has no apperception, we are either wasting our time since they fail to become reality to him at all, or if by ill luck he does grasp them, we have done the greater wrong of forcing his season of readiness, and have contributed toward producing that most tragic object — a premature child. On no side of a child's training do we need so much the light of this principle of fitness as upon the side of religion. By a combina- tion of causes not difficult to trace, it has come about that Christianity, and Protestant Christianity in especial, has developed a system of religious teaching that confronts the child with a material and a method which disregard every requirement of fitness. This system draws its whole material from books, not from the actual world, from books which record an alien ethnic experience, the experience of a peculiarly imchildlike race at a very developed stage of its existence. This system has frozen at its source every impulse toward the making of new spontaneous myth. It has used the old myth as if it were history. It has refused the aid of new concrete symbols, and has interpreted into abstractions the old symbols. It has imposed upon the child a ready-made code of adult morals, and has expected from him the response of adult emotions and mature conduct. Therefore the new light that we are getting from psychology and pedagogy which helps the religious educator to find material fit at each stage of his child's growth, and enables him to discriminate with some certainty the hour 335 336 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION of the child's ripeness, has set us immensely forward on the road tow- ard a sane and effective rehgious education. But the very fact that there is so much of truth and helpfulness in the theory of the periodic character of the child's development tempts us, as always in the case of a satisfying and solving theory, to overemphasize and overwork it. Indeed, the psychologists themselves, in their apparent pre-occupation with the explaining power of the doctrine of periods, have opened the door to mistakes on the part of those applying the theory. The first mistake to which the practical teacher and lay parent is liable is that of trusting too much to the belief that one's attitude toward the child may safely be one of complete laissez-faire; that the qualities and charac- teristics appropriate to the child at each stage of his growth appear of themselves and take care of themselves; so that there is some danger that the old meddling, nagging form of bad education may be re- placed by the other bad form of indifferentism, growing out of our confidence in the power of the child's new period to redress the balance automatically. Another danger arising out of the same doctrine comes with the point of view that these periods in a child's life are isolated, detached; that there is a sort of gap or chasm between the periods, on one side of which a child is a different sort of being from what he is on the other side. This point of view, if not encouraged by recent popular studies of certain periods of experience, such as adolescence, is at least not sufficiently guarded against. Now, to lose sight of the fact that the human personality is one thing, evolving slowly and contin- uously through all its periods and experiences, is to cut the nerve of education. It is gradually, by imperceptible degrees, that the nor- mal child passes, or should pass, from period to period in his growth; and it is the part of wise teachers and parents to see to it that his evo- lution from stage to stage is without shock or jar. It is no more impera- tive to select his educational material to fit the period he is in, than to plan that it may lead naturally and smoothly to the material he will use in his coming period. On the side of his religious training we should provide with sacred care for this safe, harmonious, continuous development. The fact that we have not hitherto done this accounts for many of the unfortu- nate conditions in the religious world. Children have been thrust prematurely into a world of objects and ideas which took on no value, no aspect of reahty for them. From such a basis the soul's progress is almost necessarily backward. Much of its future history is necessarily negative, denying what it never should have been taught, THE CONTINUITY OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 337 correcting points of view that could just as easily have been correct to begin with. Now, in attempting to provide our children against such disloca- tions in their religious experience, it is a safe principle to agree upon, that they shall have as little as possible to unlearn as they go on. This would seem to suggest these things: That we learn and take to heart the pedagogical principle applied elsewhere in education, and begin by giving our children the large, simple primitive things of rehgion, rather than the specific details of a very late stage of rehgious culture. Surely, we are all more than ready to acknowledge that religion is not a matter of a knowledge of facts, not a matter of a specific record in a given book, not a matter of worship or ceremonial, but a spirit, a vision, a way of looking at hfe and the world. What is it other than an attitude of reverence and acquiescence, and later the consciousness of a guiding immanent spirit in life and the world ? What, then, are the facts of Hfe, what are the phenomena of the world by which we can lead a child toward these things? These we will choose whether we find them in the Hebrew Bible, in the records of other races, in the seasons, the weather, the mill, the grocery, the slice of bread and butter, the ant-hill, the rose-tree. Whichever of them we use, they will all yield the lesson of reverence and acquiescence, — of a sense of the immanent guiding, interlinking Spirit, the Father of life. These are the simple but profound things of religion at which we aim in the religious training of the young child. Into this framework of the largest fundamental things, all details, and all the soul's later ex- periences, will fit. There is nothing here to unlearn. Doctrines and systems are not for the child, but the large and simple spirit underlying these and all other systems is what, for the sake of his later harmonious development, we should give him. That the child may have as Httle as possible to unlearn or correct, it is necessary that he be dealt with quite frankly in the things he is taught. Let the materia^ chosen for his training be fitted for his stage of development, so that he may safely go completely to the bottom of it. It is, of course, not wise in teaching material from the Bible, for example, to try to put the child in possession of the conclusions of modern scholarly criticism. But the teacher who knows these con- clusions is under obligation to teach in the light of them. A part of this complete frankness and honesty in teaching the child should be the teacher's endeavor (be he preacher, parent, or instructor) to get at the essence, the spirit, of the thing he is handling, and put the emphasis upon that. Who will calculate the amount of suffering the 338 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION world has known on account of dogma, doctrines, and even creeds erected upon a mere figure of speech or some unessential detail of a teaching? A little girl I know was firmly convinced that sparrows are the only birds God counts, and that robins and sea-gulls drop out quite unnoticed; and one would not be at all surprised to find some- where in the world a genuine credo built upon the market price of those same elect sparrows. Your own experience will tell you that it has been the shaking off of such accidental, and after all unessential, attachments to your faith that has cost you most sorrow and that has been at the bottom of most of your religious disturbances. If we crave for our children a harmonious, affirmatively evolving experience in religion, we will take care to lighten the weight of emphasis on the acc'dental and superficial, and lay it on the deeper essential meaning of th ngs. A plea for the quiet, unbroken continuity of religious teaching and experience should by no means lose sight of the possibility, nay, the fact, of times of acceleration and deepening. Indeed, one must provide for and expect more than one such time in a child's life, as he expects and cultivates such hours in his own later experience, if he be spirit- ually alive. But these special periods are most effective and most fruitful when they emerge from a background of steady, wise training. There is another and equally important sense in which we may conserve the continuity of the child's religious growth. His experience from period to period we may call a perpendicular continuity. There is also a horizontal continuity for which we are to care. Noth'ng more beneficent has come into modem education than the teaching that a child's experience is all one; that it is all educational and should be all unified and harmonized. We have learned to see that ideally his life in the home is as educational as his life in the school, his life in school as social and humanistic as his life in the home. So we should be prepared to see that religion and religious teaching is not- a thing apart, relegated to Sunday, the church, and the Sunday school, or even to specific hours in the home; but that it is a spirit, an atmos- phere, a point of view, an explanation of things, a motive for conduct, — all these and many more things — and that it diffuses itself through all life and all objects. Quietly and unobtrusively, joyously and en- thusiastically, the child may be led to see in his whole hfe and any detail of his life, reasons for that reverence and acquiescence which pre- pares him to see, "A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things." THE GROWTH OF THE LARGER SENSE OF SOCIAL AND CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY IN YOUTH PROFESSOR EDWIN D. STARBUCK, Ph.D. EARLHAM COLLEGE, RICHMOND, INDIANA The one point that I have to set forth is that the home should be a commvinity. The community spirit should pervade it. It should reflect, in a small way, to be sure, but in a very real way, the larger industrial, civic, and social life into which the young man and woman are later to be thrown, the preparation for which it is the highest func- tion of the home to furnish. The chances are that the full-grown man is going to be just such a person as his own childhood and youth pro- phesy. The notion is being forced in upon us in many ways now-a- days that the foundations of character and personality are being laid in the very early years of life. And to the extent to which we believe it, the idea is clear and insistent that the home life is the crucial point in society. If this department of the Religious Education Associa- tion can materially aflFect the spirit and organization of the homes of the country for the better, it will have a longer leverage upon the quality of our social and civic life than can be measured by any external stan- dards. Even when the family consists of two, the husband and wife, the community spirit should prevail. There is an old, old custom, bred in the days of strife and combat, that the husband should wield the scep- ter in the household. In these days, when the humanizing and spirit- ualizing elements of our nature are coming to count for as much as those of the strenuous life, there is little excuse for the maintenance of the custom. The obedience clause in the marriage ceremony is happily dropping away, and husbands are becoming domesticated and civilized. A completely mutual life is desirable, not simply for the enjoyment of the two, but on account of the children who are later coming into the home. An attempt to develop a community spirit among children, when it does not exist already in the family, which is the fountain-head of their impulses and ideals, would be a bubble. What the parents profess may count for something, but what they feel and live counts for indefinitely more. That which children find in the very atmosphere of the home is what they imbibe. The per- vading spirit of the home is getting in its most telling work during the days while the children are in the mother's arms, on her lap, and about 339 340 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION her knees. There is nothing so catching as the contagion of moods and impulses; and it is our stock of instincts and impulses and moods that determines what each of us will do and love and live for, and not so much what we think out in later years. A second consideration in making the home a community is that of numbers. For the community life of the home to reflect the social whole at all adequately, and develop the children on many sides, it should consist of several members. The fact that an only child in a family is likely to be selfish and socially deformed is proverbial; and Dr. Bohannon's study of the question has massed the evidences that such is the case. This need not be true, if parents were prudent in their training, and unselfish in their love for the solitary prodigy; but who can be prudent under such circumstances ? The best protec- tion against the danger where the providence of nature sends only one or two children into the family, is in increasing the number by adop- tion. It is a good omen that so many home finding societies are springing up and doing a flourishing business. The objection to adopt- ing children is, to the minds of many persons, the number of instances in which it has failed to produce happy results. The reply is two- fold. In the first place, disappointments rarely occur when children are adopted in the earliest days of babyhood. Rather than wait to find how the child is going to turn out, before receiving it, it is better to begin preforming and shaping its life, by surrounding it with pure social atmosphere to breathe, and the best spiritual food to grow by. Then, again, it is an unkindness, if not a crime, to adopt a child into a household from a mere sense of duty. Unless the love-life can pre- dominate in the act, and jealousy, favoritism, pride in descent, and all other forms of selfishness can be overcome, the orphan child, as well as the small home circle, are better off without the union. We can hardly afford to sacrifice the ruggedness, the fine self-con- trol, and the social responsiveness that develop naturally in the midst of the group, even at the risk of a certain amount of contamination from children supposedly less immaculate than our own. It is in the social group, by actually facing for themselves the difficult situations that arise, that character is formed. What the child can do, the re- sults that he can achieve among his fellows, is the measure of his will, and the tension and quality of his will is the measure to himself of his own personality. It is in the social group, and there only, as James Mark Baldwin has so well pointed out, in the actual demands that others are making upon him, that the child forms any adequately vivid and comprehensive social feeling. With parents that are authorita- SOCIAL AND CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY IN YOUTH 341 tive and yet companionable, with a group of other children about him, differing in age, tastes, and temperament, and with these" supplemented by dolls and pets that want protection and care, there is scarcely a latent power in his nature that is not daily stimulated. And he is being taught the lessons he needs to learn for citizenship. When pas- sionate, he leams self-control; when selfish, he has a quick and sure harvest of unhappiness; when obstinate, he feels himself growing aloof from his fellows. With all the knocks he is getting, and also with the pleasures from intermingling, society becomes a reality to him, and not a fine fancy. Its absolute demands on him, and his responsibility to it, become real facts that he can no more gnore and slight than he can the fact of his own being. There is also fine training for citizenship in the complexity of the situations children must face in the family group. There is hardly a moment of their waking life in which there does not arise diversity of wishes and a complication of rights to which each must adjust him- self. The socially unfit are those who fail in adjustment, just as the socially and political successful are those who can respond in a large way to a large number of persons. With an only child in the family, the complex situations hardly arise, and with two children they are too infrequent and too easy of solution. Real training for life consists in tactful adjustment almost instantaneously to that indefinable some- thing called public sentiment; a fact so compHca'ed and intricate that its elements cannot be weighed intellectually, but must be untangled by a sort of refined sensitivity. It is no mere play on words to point out, as John Dewey has done, the connection between responsiveness and moral responsibility. Unless social responsiveness has become fixed through long habituation, it is questionable whether the most healthy social sense can ever arise. In the matter of having the community spirit pervade the home, a word is deserved about discipline. We, as Americans, are proverbially lax in parental authority and the rigidness of our home discipline. The distinction is our clear gain, if it means that a higher kind of authority is prevailing in our homes than the imperiousness of our Anglo-Saxon fathers. I trust it fits in among the many good fruits of our democratic tree. Our professors are not so august, our preachers not so terrible, our teachers not so awe-inspiring, nor is our obedience so groveling as in other times and countries. And still our authority and obedience, if we are to flourish, must be no less real. The one indispensable thing in the relation of parents and children is companion- ship. The natural fruits of autocracy, whether in Russia or in an 342 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION American home, are unhappiness, friction, waste, disobedience, and underhandedness. There will come a time in each child's -life when arbitrary authority must break down, if the boy is to become a strong man. The occasion for a break should never arise. The youth's independence is not something to give him out of hand when he reaches the age of twenty-one, but a natural right, in the exercise of which he should be schooled from earliest babyhood. The highest gift of a parent is not freedom or wealth, but self-respect, love, good will, and fellowship. Companionship, responsiveness, and a strong spirit of love and de- votion— these are the ends to be attained. The means toward them consist chiefly in doing things together in the household. It is the rule, not only outside the home, but within it, that the strongest attach- ments spring up, and happiness abounds, when people are losing them- selves in a common task. When people have honestly worked together, succeeded and failed together, laughed and sighed together, nothing can separate them. What I have to say about the common occupations of the home must be confined, for the most part, to those which cen- ter around the property rights and property sense. I am concerned with this, because it is fundamental, and also because it is much over- looked. While I do not believe in communism as a social doctrine for all, I do believe in a modified form of communism in the family. The entire family, children and all, should have a common purse, and should consult together, as far as possible, on all interests, plans, pro- jects, and investments. I have seen something like this in operation in one family, and certainly to the happiness and profit of all concerned. I imagine you asking. How can a child enter into the complexities of modern life, and the intricacies of modern enterprises? The high degree of organization that has set in is all the more reason for under- taking such a plan, if only it is the children and the home life we are considering. As the situation now stands, it has grown far beyond their comprehension. There was a time when the raising and making, the bartering, buying and selling, the planning and using, were all going on in open view to the children. Now the father hiurries away in the morning, and practically all his waking life is a closed book to wife and children. The integrity of the home is weakened by so much, — the home, which must remain, if our national life is to be healthy, the nursery, not only of the bodies of children, but of every- thing that pertains to their adult life as well. Hence, I am inclined to beheve that communism in the home is not only important for the SOCIAL AND CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY IN YOUTH 343 happiness of the family circle in furnishing a tangible incentive to their common life, and for leading them easily and naturally into the things they need to know and do, but also for the sake of the unity and in- tegrity of society itself. A common purse, ledger, and property might be a good thing for the independent and self-sufficient father too, and for his business. This needs no higher sanction than that it is in line with the policy of the President in dealing with trusts. If a half-dozen pairs of innocent eyes are to look into the man's accounts, and as many hearts not yet hardened to the tricks of trade are to adjudge his deals, it would some- times influence the character of his transactions. It would often affect the nature of his purchases. He would hardly enter so freely items for drinks, knick-knacks, clubs, and other forms of selfishness. Along with the common purse and ledger should go, of course, the separate ones of each. Children should be paid for special services; should have their separate tasks, rooms, and occupations; should have their own patch of ground, or little enterprises, and learn to produce and see the fruit of their own skill and ingenuity. It is a mistake to suppose that a social sense can grow up apart from a fair recognition of personal worth and personal rights. In the highest ethics there is a fine equilibrium, or rather a perfect blending of the self, on the one hand, and all the rest, on the other. The self is the measure of love in the golden rule and in the second commandment. The two things must develop together. In many ways the lines of responsiveness should extend beyond the family group. A family that exists for itself alone is as selfish as a person with the same ideals. The final center of interest is in the social group, and not in the family. As children come along in years, the parents may encourage the cliques, teams, games, societies, and social events that bring the children into larger social groups. With books, magazines, newspapers, discussions in the family of the move- ments of the times in politics, industry, religion, and art, the interests should be rapidly forming which lead children to feel themselves a part of a larger social order; so that when the days come for them to drift away from the home circle into the social group, they may be in it and of it as naturally as they came into the mother's arms who first received them. PLANS FOR THE WORK OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT FOR THE COMING YEAR MRS. ANDREW MacLEISH GLENCOE, ILLINOIS The plan of this department contemplates work which will stimu- late and encourage religious home life and training. It proposes, first, to reduce to a simple and easily intelligible form the principles that underlie the kindergarten. Froebel's insight into child-nature, and his philosophy of life are most helpful to parents, but his style is so obscure that he cannot be apprehended without earnest study. The committee of the Home Department, therefore, purpose enlistmg the services of students of Froebel in the cause of simplifying and widely extending his teachings. Their second line of work will be in the direction of opening to parents, and stimulating them to use, opportunities for studying the Bible from what may be called, for want of a better term, the mod- ern point of view. The Executive Committee of the Home Depart- ment feel it to be very important that the work of religious training and instruction should not be taken from the home and delegated en- tirely to other organizations, as the church and Sunday school. Par- ents are the rightful religious instructors of their children, but, in view of the great changes that are taking place just now in the outer forms of religious faith, and in the understanding of the Bible, they need to familiarize themselves with the results of modern scholarship, that they may be able to present a rational conception of religious truth, and one that will meet the needs of the coming generation. As their third line of effort, the department propose to undertake a study of the present status of family worship. By means of a ques- tionnaire widely distributed, they will gather together all the facts pos- sible, with suggestions as to method and character of the service, and ways of adapting it to the conditions of modem life. It is hoped that a helpful and suggestive report may be possible, as a result of this investigation. 344 XI 11. LIBRARIES ANNUAL SURVEY OF THE RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL WORK OF LIBRARIES DREW B. HALL LIBRARIAN MILLICENT LIBRARY, FAIRHAVEN, MASSACHUSETTS The public library is an educational institution. If it is to pro- vide religious literature and to succor the religious worker, three con- ditions must be met: i. The Hbrary must have the disposition, and the ability on the part of its staff, to look after the religious needs of its community; for this work it will find groups and organizations already formed in the church societies and Sunday schools. 2. These societies must be ahve and ready to seek and to receive the library's ad. 3. The library must contain, and keep up to date, a collection of religious hterature, suitable for the use of both laymen and clergy- men, and of all divisions and sects of the church. Last year the annual survey took the form of an inquiry into the first and second conditions and it revealed, in general, a greater readi- ness on the part of the libraries to give aid, than on the part of church organizations to receive it. This year the survey is concerned with the third condition — that of material equipment. To discover what resources public libraries have to offer the student of the Bible and of general religious questions, and more definitely than has heretofore been done, what use is made of them, the following questions as to volumes and circulation were addressed to a considerable number of large town and city public libraries: 1 . Do church societies habitually notify you of their topics of study, and use special reserved lists on them? 2. The total number of volumes in your library? 3. Among these, how many are classed as religious? 4. How many of these "religious volumes" are less than twenty- five years old? 5. Total volumes of all classes added in your last fiscal year. 6. The number of these classed as religious. 7. The total circulation last year. 8. The circulation of religious books. 9. Additional facts and figures of interest in this connection? 345 346 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION All almost unqualified negative, in answer to the first query, sup- ports last year's report. From the next two questions, as to total volumes and those classed as religious, the percentage of religious works varies from 2.23 per cent in a town of 12,000 inhabitants within twelve miles of Boston, and 2.4 per cent in a city of 23,000 in central New York, to 13 per cent for a district library in Maryland. The average, however, is 4.2 per cent, to which nine-tenths of the libraries closely approximate. Further, the average of careful estimates (not entirely reliable as statis- tics, but the best figures obtainable) of the volumes less than twenty- five years old is only 2.5 per cent. Comparisons with three careful and inclusive bibliographical state- ments, the A. L. A. catalogue, Sonnenschein's best books and its sup- plement, and the Publishers' Weekly tables, of the annual book-pro- duction of the United States and England, are interesting. The percentage of rehgious entries in the A. L. A. catalogue, of 1893 is 4, and in last year's edition, 4.2 per cent. This coincidence, with the actual percentage in working libraries, seems to indicate either that the editors of the catalogues kept remarkably close to present con- ditions, or that 4 per cent is the natural, predestined proportion of religious to non-religious works. On the other hand, Mr. Sonnen- schein considers that of publications worthy of note and entry in his bibliographies, theology, including all religious topics, comprises about 12 per cent; three times the number in our collections. The third means of comparison is the annual report of publica- tions in this country and England. These reports are especially of interest in connection with the returns from my fifth and sixth in- quiries as to total accessions and the number classed as religious. These returns give 2.8 as the average percentage of religious works added in the last fiscal year. Among individual libraries, 9 per cent in a city of central New York is at one extreme, and .6 (sx-tenths) of one per cent in a town not ten miles from Boston at the other, neither institution being one of those previously instanced, and each reporting as religious 3.5 per cent of their total collection. That is, libraries containing 4.2 per cent religion are at present adding 2.8 per cent yearly, presumably mostly new publications. In 1902, the Pub- lishers' Weekly recorded 7,833 volumes, and of these, 639, or 8 per cent, were religious; in 1903, out of 7,865, 513 volumes, or 6.5 per cent, were religious, and in 1904, out of 8,300, 717 volumes, or 8.7 per cent. If these figures seem small, it should be noted that fiction, heading the list with 22 per cent, is followed next by religion with its 8 per cent. RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL WORK OF LIBRARIES 347 From these new religious publications, averaging 700 volumes, and from the thousands of past years, libraries are annually obtaining 2.8 per cent of their accessions, which, among one thousand, means only 38. This argues either that all the churches and all the townspeople are satisfied with 28 new volumes yearly on spiritual matters, or that too often the pen of the religious author is that of the ready writer, and his mind that of the sectarian and weakling, or that the libraries are missing a great opportunity. Replies to the seventh and eighth questions, concerning the home use of these books, furnish additional information. In the libraries, already considered, the circulation of religious books is .98 per cent of the whole, ranging from .3 per cent to 2.4 per cent. To recapitulate, pubhc libraries contain about one volume classed in religion to every twenty-five in other classes, and one to forty less than twenty-five years old; each year, out of every thousand volumes of accessions, twenty-eight are religious, and the home use is less than one hundredth; on an average, one sixty-fifth the circulation of fiction and one-fourth that of literature. For our encouragement, and especially for the encouragement of those who feel that the time is ripe for a "general revival of religious and moral education," and for a general return from these allied sub- jects to the fundamental truths set forth in the Bible, there is, finally, this report from a busy, prosperous city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, a city whose moral character is commonly regarded to- day much as of old was that of Sodom and Gomorrah: " We have been purchasing more fully of religious works directly in response to a larger call for these books on the part of readers. Much of this literature has been in some way connected with, or the result of, modem Biblical criticism. I am glad to say that there are several church societies, etc., engaged in studying the Old or New Testaments in a scientific manner." I have come, during the preparation of this paper, to feel that church societies and the clergy are not calling upon and using public libraries as they well might, and especially that libraries, while meet- ing gladly all who come for aid, have not the best possible equipment for fostering "personal study on the part of parents and teachers," and that they are not giving as much attention to the work of the church uni- versal, buying eagerly the best, most popularly useful literature, as they are warranted in doing by the ends to be gained and the supreme importance of the subjects to be considered, THE MORAL VALUE OF READING WILLIAM I. FLETCHER LIBRARIAN AMHERST COLLEGE, AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS What I have to say on this subject has reference mainly to the use and utiHties of the pubKc hbrary. The object of the pubhc library is to place within the reach of the mass of the people the best books in all the ranges of literature and knowledge, and not only so, but also to exert some influence to induce the people to read these books. That is to say, no one will regard it as an end worthy of the pubhc and private outlay, which has been so lavishly expended on our 1 bra- ries, that they shall hold and safely preserve the treasures of litera- ture, if the commimity only receive the indirect benefit that may come from the use of the books by their preachers, editors, and teachers, and do not themselves, to any extent, read the books. And yet a little examination into the matter wil bring out rather strikingly two things: i. That only a small minority of the books are read; and 2. That only a small minority of the people read the library books. On one hand, we have on the library shelves, practically untouched, rows upon rows of most excellent books. On the other, we have scores and hundreds of families whose highest intellectual and social needs those books would supply, remaining quite indifferent to them, and entirely unrepresented among the library's patrons. There is, it must be confessed, a very common apathetic indifference to the library, and to good literature, on the part of the people of our towns and cities, which is an evil as strenuously to be combatted as the evil of the lack of books, where that exists. Certainly, our libraries ought to reach with their influence many more of the people than they do. That they may do so, requires a higher conception of what the value of reading to the community is. If we look upon it as a matter of dilettantism, especially if we share the subtle skepticism, which is so prevalent, as to the capacity of the popular mind for culture, we shall only half-heartedly enter into efforts to bring the books and the people together. That we may have for ourselves, and for others, higher ideals as to the use of books it is worth while to examine this question of the moral value of reading. For, if we recognize in books a power for the moral elevation of the people, and not merely for the promotion of intelligence and of technical skill, we shall be prepared 348 THE MORAL VALUE OF READING 349 to enter into efforts for the greater efficiency of this agency with the enthusiasm of a crusade. A new era is undoubtedly dawn-ng in the management of our libraries; an era of attractive interiors, helpful attendants, freedom in the use of books, abolition of needless and irksome restraints, and, beyond all, the actual carrying of books to the homes of the people, especially through the school, and the familiarizing of school children with good literature. Such an attitude, on the part of the library, as this implies the truly missionary spirit, which must be essentially moral, and recognize the benefits it seeks to confer as moral benefits, and not merely economic or intellectual benefits, though it must be confessed the lines here are hard to draw. Perhaps it is not neces- sary that they should be drawn very closely. Let us now inquire wherein lies the moral value of reading, — of general or miscellaneous reading, we must be understood to mean. In the first place, reading furnishes occupation for otherwise idle hours. Speaking before the Boston Mercantile Library Association in 1850, the late George S. Hillard said, "Occupation is the armor of the soul, and the train of Idleness is borne up by all the vices." Reading tends to elevate and refine conversation and social inter- course. In my boyhood it was, for a time, my lot to work in the fields with young farm-hands, and I always recall with a shudder the talk with which they beguiled the time. It is difficult for us who live in an atmosphere so charged, as is ours, with intelligence and culture to realize what life is, where it is narrowed down to the immediate interests and happenings of our own lives and those immediately about us. We get a glimpse of the nar- ro^vness and degradation of such a life in the accounts of the people of the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee, to say nothing of the "sweet Aubums" of our New England hills. Carlyle said, " Do not books accomplish miracles, as runes were fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating- library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages, but will help to regulate the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish girls." So, let us not fail to recognize the moral value of romance reading in humanizing and refining the lives and homes of our people, and preparing a soil for the seed of a better life. And it has been remarked by some of our most experienced libra- rians, among them the late Dr. Poole of Boston and Chicago, that most readers, having formed a habit of reading, proceed to read a better class of books than those which first allure and please them. 3SO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION and that, in fact, they generally read books that are superior in their general tone to their daily life and thought, and so are led on from one stage to another. Certainly, this seems likely, for it would be a poor sort of romance which did not present some ideals of heroism, of devotion, of unselfishness, above the sordid lives which many lead. However much force there may be in these observations, it is when we pass to social and political developments under democracy that the moral value of reading in the community becomes most strikingly evident. The world over, the people are rapidly assuming the direc- tion of affairs. In Russia, the power of czars and bureaus to suppress them seems steadily weakening. In Germany, the popular element in the government constantly gains in power. Let us observe some of the ways in which reading may prepare the people for the responsibility, thrown upon them by democracy. The reading of history goes far' to teach the hoUowness of demagogic pretensions, and to expose the falsity of the claims of novelty advanced by this or that political creed or programme. The well-read citizen knows that the same experiments have been tried before, and takes a warning from the page of history. And in biography, which is his- tory, plus personality, the citizen has the stimulus to virtuous conduct in public life of the example of living men. Who can estimate what has been done for the political education of our young voters by the biographies of Booker Washington, Jacob A. Riis, Robert E. Lee, John A. Andrew, Roger Wolcott, and others of these most recent, to say nothing of those of Washington and Lincoln. The reading of books of travels sober one's judgments by exhib- iting the effects upon character of environment, in climate, in geographic conditions, in forms of government, and teaches how to m.ake due allowances in behalf of the strangers who come to us from other shores; while travels in unexplored regions, towards the north or south pole, or into the heart of Africa, by their display of heroic qualities on the part of the explorer, kindle the latent heroism of the reader, and prepare him to stand unflinchingly by a good cause, through thick and thin. Can we tell what the world would be without the example of a Sir John Franklin, a Dr. Kane, a Living- stone, a Stanley ? names whose very mention makes our blood run quick, and stirs us to emulate their heroism and fortitude. Again, the books which make the mysteries and the marvels of modern science the common property of all who read, who can meas- ure their influence in the molding of character ? Not only the astron- omer, if sane, must be devout and reverent, but he who catches a THE MORAL VALUE OF READING 351 glimpse of the heights and depths which are opened by any of the sciences. The non-Euclidean geometry admitting that parallel lines may meet somewhere, the physics which avers that objects never really come into contact with one another, the astronomy which handles universes as the very small dust of the balance, — these sciences are making their way down among the people, challenging the pride and conceit of hard-and-fast knowledge, and making men ready to abandon preconceived notions and cherished prejudices. And the science which, by patient and sympathetic observation, is slowly winning the secrets of our humble companions, the dumb animals, the little folks in feathers and fur, and the larger folk who inhabit the woods or our farms, is broadening our humanity and softening our hearts. Such are some of the moral effects of reading. When we dwell upon them we see in them the promise and potency of nearly all that we can desire for mankind. Intelligence, good taste, good manners, reasonable and sane political action, gentleness and kindliness in house- hold and social life, honesty and square dealing in business, — all these, we feel, are fostered by good reading. A very large question that must be met is that of newspaper-reading. Very different, and even conflicting, opinions are held by those of good judgment and intelli- gence. Undoubtedly, the substitution of newspaper-reading, especially of the yellow type, for the reading of good books would be a calamity. But no such substitution takes place. It is rather a case of the news- paper or nothing. And so viewed, the newspaper is infinitely the better. Those who have observed the almost universal use of the cheap news- paper by the mass of the people in the cities, while they may deplore the comparatively low grade of culture thus indicated, must and do recognize that it means essentially the education of these people. It broadens horizons and quickens sympathies. It brings the ends of the earth together, and puts the reader in touch with all that is going on, thus making him feel with a thrill that he is a "citizen of the world." And the newspaper is always championing some good cause — fresh air, better tenements, better fire-protection, freer government in some form ; a constant school of politics. Granted that the form is often sensa- tional in the extreme, it is the form that it must take to secure patron- age, and it always tends to improve. What we have said about the reading of a low order of novels applies equally to this. PRINCIPLES GOVERNING THE CHOICE OF RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL BOOKS FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES GEORGE F. BOWERMAN LIBRARIAN PUBLIC LIBRARY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON, D. C. In the 1893 edition of the American Library Association catalogue, 220 out of 5,230 titles fell under the group of religion and theology, or 4 per cent of the whole number; in the 1904 edition, 319 out of 7,520 titles, or 4.2 per cent, were included in this group. Taking into consideration the great variety of subjects upon which books are writ- ten, and the enormous yearly output of books in the classes of such popular interest as fiction, biography, travel, history, fine arts, useful arts, and general literature, this 4 per cent is perhaps a fair con- servative estimate of what is due religious literature. It would seem, however, that public interest in religious and theological subjects might easily justify a larger percentage, even allowing for the fact that with so many persons the spoken sermon seems almost entirely to preclude the necessity of the religious book. Broadly speaking, the department of religion and theology in a public library should be as well equipped as any other departments, and only the reasons which operate to restrict the collections in other departments should be valid in the religious department, namely, paucity of funds, and, in some cases, lack of use. With the adoption of a principle of proportion, the question of choice of books arises. In general, it may be said that the same rules of choice should be adopted that apply to books in other classes, and thus, in theory, the question raised by the title of this paper is dis- posed of. But, in practice, difficulties often arise in choosing for pur- chase religious, and especially theological, books, or, in deciding con- cerning their acceptance as gifts, — diflSculties which do not arise in con- nection with books of other classes. In my own case, I have often found it necessary to give the matter some thought, because of objec- tions which were raised by prominent and educated users of the library, and in several cases by trustees, to the presence of certain books in the library, and more rarely to the absence of others from its shelves. Numbers of individual cases which have come up for decision have led to the adoption of a rather general policy governing the subject. In the first place, the standpoint of the public library in judging of 352 RELIGIOUS BOOKS FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES 353 any books, even religious books, is not primarily religious, but literary and educational. The library can in no way be a partisan. Since religion, to-day, is not a unit, but is manifested under various forms, the library can- not co-operate with the adherents of one form, while discriminating against those of another. Its shelves must fairly represent, in addi- tion to the broad field of religious literature devoid of sectarian bias, many different and often antagonistic beliefs, according to the de- mand of readers. If some one asks why a certain volume of an anti-Catholic tone is allowed in the library, the answer must be that the library collection is not one-sided; that it represents many differing views. Or, if some opponent of Christian science objects to the pres- ence in the library of Christian science magazines and books, the ob- vious reply is that Christian scientists are part of the community to which the library ministers, and so must justly be considered. Pursuing the same general policy with regard to periodicals, the public library may properly be a subscriber to the leading journal of each denomination which possesses any considerable number of ad- herents in the community. Many denominations are glad to present to the library their leading periodical. Of course, this is done in the spirit of propaganda, and the magazine may then be considered a tract, which some libraries are unwilling to accept. For the sake of consistency, they are therefore inclined to refuse admittance to all such denominational periodicals. If church journals are used and en- joyed by readers, however, as they undoubtedly are, there seems to be as good reason for supplying them as for supplying the various technical and trade journals. Of religious histories and biographies, the public library should, of course, have a liberal supply. All the standard lives of Christ should be included, regardless of their doctrinal point of view, and new works, as they appear, should be purchased on their merits. The best works on the various ethnic religions would also form part of a well-rounded collection. There is a large number of books which are thoroughly religious in character without being doctrinal or controversial, such as works on practical Christianity, and general religious thought and life, as well as books of devotion, meditation, and some volumes of sermons. Concerning such books, there is usually little difficulty in deciding, but they should be purchased with discrimination. Religious books of a decidedly doctrinal and controversial nature form the class regarding which there are likely to be differences of 354 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION opinion. Many such books are offered to the Hbrary as gifts, just as denominational magazines are offered, by persons who wish to prop- agate certain doctrines. In general, I should say that all such doc- . trinal books, which come to the library as gifts should be accepted, provided they do not violate all the canons of good taste, and are not in thought indecent or subversive of morals. Of course, any book which is illiterate or vulgar in expression, coarse, or immoral in thought, according to generally accepted standards of morality, and cheap and tasteless in printing, binding, etc., should be politely declined, always with the true reason, tactfully and perhaps not always fully, explained. But a book should not be declined simply because the librarian or some of his associates, or the trustees of the library, do not agree with the opinions expressed in it; and in declining a gift for any of the reasons already mentioned, the librarian should be careful to make clear to the donor that it is not declined because of its doctrines. It is hardly necessary to say that, to insure fairness, this policy of ac- ceptance of gifts must be carried out in all cases. Some one may ob- ject that even if this policy is consistently carried out, still un airness arises, because the gifts to a library will undoubtedly not include books on all doctrines. But a reply to such an objection is, that any member of the community who wishes to insure the presence in the library of a book supporting his especial belief may present such a book to the library, or, if he does not wish to present it, he may request its purchase. The privileges of presenting books to the library and of requesting the purchase of books are, or should be, open to all. As a matter of policy, in order to assure every citizen of the absolute impartiality of the library, it is well to secure for the library a repre- sentative collection of the literature, especially on its historical side, of each denomination having a number of adherents in the commu- nity. The selection of doctrinal and controversial books for purchase should be guided by the same standards of taste that prevail in the case of gifts, that is, by demand, and by the condition of the book fund. A library would hardly buy an expensive work on the creed of some small and obscure sect, represented, perhaps, by only three or four persons in the community. Nor would it perhaps be able to purchase many works of such detailed and scholarly criticism as would be of use to only a few theological scholars, though, where the fund is sufficient, even such scholarly works may very properly be purchased. In the children's department of a library, it seems to me that a somewhat different policy should be pursued with regard to religious RELIGIOUS BOOKS FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES 355 books. Adults either have abeady formed their religious opinions when they come to the library, and know what they wish to read, or they are of sufficient maturity to be entitled to a free selection of ma- terial to aid in forming their opinions. It is different with children They have undeveloped but impressionable minds, and though the pub- lic library very appropriately aims to form in them good literary taste, it has nothing to do with forming a religious bias. It is perhaps, also, unfair to parents to furnish their children with material for form- ing religious beliefs contrary to what they wish, though it may justly be said that parents should themselves supervise the reading of their children. Many parents do not do this, however. Several fathers and mothers have said to me, "I have sent my boy down to your library. Of course, anything he finds there will be all right." Therefore it seems to me that the children's room of a public library is no place for religious literature of a doctrinal or controversial character. Sun- day school libraries may, if it is desired, supply denominational read- ing to the children sent to them. The religious books that may properly be found in the children's room of the public library are those of a very general religious char- acter, such as Bible stories, told in a simple way, lives of Christ ar- ranged for children, and that great favorite of nearly all children. Pil- grim's Progress. The list of books for boys and gurls prepared by the Brooklyn Public Library contains only fourteen titles under Ethics and religion. That prepared for the Iowa Library Commission by Miss Moore, children's librarian of the Pratt Institute Free Library contains only eleven under that heading. A small number of titles of well-selected books, and those few often duplicated, form a better re- ligious collection for a children's room than a more extensive list. THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOLS SAM WALTER FOSS LIBIIARIAN PUBLIC LIBRARY, SOMERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS The public library should co-operate with the Simday school be- cause the public library needs the Sunday school, I suppose it will not be very strenously denied now, in any quarter, that it is the business of the pubHc library to circulate good books, and the more good books it circulates the better pubUc library it is. The public library says to any organization it sees going among the people, " While you are out upon your work will you please take some of my books with you?" The public library uses every team that is harnessed and is going in the right direction to take a bundle of books along. The Sunday school is a team that is harnessed. As nearly as its drivers can see through the fogs and storms that beset all drivers, it is going in the right direction. The public library wants to go in the same direction, but it has no team. So it politely asks the Sunday school for a ride. The good public li- brary, looking for a ride, will find teams enough. Its books can be carried to the people through the agency of the day schools, the fire stations, the car-bams, the pohce stations, the boys' club, the Y.M.C.A., the city stables, factories, and manufactories of all kinds. The Suiiday- school is only one of many teams by which the library gets free rides among the people. The public library has waited for the people to come to it, but has found that the majority of the people never come. On'y a small fraction of the men in any community ever enter the public library of that community. We cater to a very small percentage of the population. The majority of men, and a goodly fraction of women, are chronic absentees from public libraries. It has taken a gener- ation to learn the simple lesson that the way to reach men is to go where they are. The Sunday school is one of the places where they are; and the PubUc Library that really believes in circulating books will willingly accept the co-operation of the Sunday school. The public library needs the Svmday school. But does the Svmday- school need the pubUc library ? If it is one of the objects of the Sunday- school to circulate good books, then many Sunday schools do certainly need the public library, for many of the Sunday schools do not have any good books to circulate. I think it may be laid down as an axiom that the goody-goody book is always a bad book. In all seriousness, its influence is pernicious, and its effect, on the whole, immoral. Though 3S6 THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOLS 357 highly recommended by moral hygienists of an earlier day, such books are bad food for immortal souls. They are resultant in too flabby a tissue for real men. Nearly all Sunday schools see now that they were grievously in error in forcing this kind of diet on growing boys and girls. But the books are still on the shelves, and are not worn out, and there is no money with which to buy more books. Why should it not call on the Pubhc Library for help? It has, perhaps, only a few dollars a year to spend for books. The public library has hundreds, of en thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of dollars for the annual pur- chase of books, and is in the book-buying business. So the public library is a team harnessed up and going to the bookstore to buy books. It is coming home with large bundles and boxes filled with books. If it is willing to buy a few for the Sunday school, the Sunday school is a little slow, is it not, if it refuses the service ? Let both the library and the Sunday school use the team that is harnessed up and is going in the right direction. Some objections have been brought farward against the co-operation of the Sunday school and the public library. It is said that the church and the state should be kept forever separate and distinct. This is true, and it is a matter in which all patriotic and all religious men agree. If the public library should venture to dictate what manner of books the Sunday school should use, that would be an interference of the state with the church; and such a public library could not abide the thunder of the pubhc wrath that would be hurled against it. On the other hand, if the Sunday school should attempt to dictate the kind of books the pubhc library should buy, such a d ctation would be an interference of the church with the state and would hardly meet with a smiling re- sponse from any librarian or any board of trustees. Any librarian who would try to force Presbyterian books upon a Unitarian Sunday school, or Mormon literature upon a Methodist Sunday school, would probably lead an exciting life. But all such difficulties are easily avoided. Let the library throw open its doors to all Sunday schools, and let the Sunday schools select the books they desire. On the whole, I would advise pubUc libraries to buy such books as the Sunday schools recom- mend. Our library has always done so, and I do not know that any books have as yet been recommended which we have been unwilling to buy. It would not be well for libraries to buy for Sunday schools books of intense ecclesiastical partisanship, books bitterly controver- sial, or books narrowly sectarian. I would buy even such books as these for individuals; for the intense ecclesiastical partisan, the bit- ter controversialist, and the narrow sectarian are citizens with rights. 358 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION and very frequently pay taxes. But a religious organization, like a church or a Sunday school, is hardly justified in ask'ng a library supported by public funds to become a propagandist of its own pecu- liar ecclesiastical tenets. But as far as my own experience goes ,none of these things ever happen. Sunday schools, as a rule, do not ask for ecclesiastical books, dogmatic books, or controversial books. They want, as a rule helpful inspiring and wholesome books for the young. They ask for the k'nd of books that a library delights to buy, and dup- licate, and reduplicate. We find hat they are going in the right direc- tion, and we can ride with them without quarreling, and not without pleasan' converse on the trip. I hope to see the day come speedily when all the Sunday schools of all the churches wll use the books of all the public Hbraries. There are many Sunday schools that will not do it now, and there are many public libraries that would not permit them to do it even if they were willing and eager for the service. There are a few theoretical obstacles in the way that look portentous; but they are built largely of mist and moon- shine, and recede into nothingness as we advance upon them. The thing works well in actual execution. Here are two institutions, the Simday school and the pubhc library, both of them hampered more or less by human defects and un-wisdom, but both of them with lofty ideals, both of them trying to do men good, both of them sound-hearted at the core. Both of them think that somehow they are moving toward that " far-off, divine event to which the whole creation moves." We are traveling toward a common goal. Let us go together and help each other along. HILLER C. WELLMAN LIBRARIAN CITY LIBRARY, SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS Is it worth while to have secular books in a Sunday school library ? This question is frequently pressed, now that public libraries are min- istering so generously to children. The answer must be an unqualified Yes. Such books add to the attractiveness of the Sunday school, and furnish the child with quiet recreation to help him observe Sunday. But the paramount reason is the moral influence of books. The two or three assistants in the pubHc library's children's room deal with some five thousand children while the teacher may have but five. She is brought into the most intimate relations with them. She often meets those whom the library can never reach. She must have at hand proper books, in order to interest children in good reading. For this reason libraries are eager to lend books to Sunday schools. Many of the THE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOLS 359 latter already have books of their own; but, to be effective, such collec- tions must be kept fresh. Replies to a circular sent to various Sunday school libraries all over the country brought out this unexpected fact — that if the library is to be a live one, there must be frequent additions. Otherwise even a large collection soon becomes dead. In Springfield, from fifty to one hundred volumes are sent to any Sunday school applying for them. The plan is quite flexible. There is no formaUty, except a note from pastor or superintendent promising to make good undue loss. The books are chosen by the superintendent or by the library ofl&cials, and are exchanged as often as may be desired, but usually they are kept six months at a time. Explanatory circulars have been sent to every pastor or superintendent, and although only nine Sunday schools last year took advantage of this plan, they borrowed among them nearly a thousand books, and presumably each book was read many times. The propriety of this service has sometimes been questioned by li- brary authorities elsewhere, when a similar plan has been proposed, but it seems quite as justifiable to lend several books to several people or an association as to lend one to an individual. The service differs only in degree, not in character. In two cases, branch libraries have been established in churches,which keep the books in their parish houses, and once a week open the room to anyone wishing to borrow the books. At first the churches supported these branches entirely without aid, but in one case the work grew so extensive that a library assistant now takes charge of it. Besides these general collections, the library, of course, supphes numerous books to individual members of Sunday school classes. One such class, for example, is making an uncommonly thorough and com- prehensive study of ecclesiastical history from the very earliest times. Its members are assigned topics, for which the library hunts up and furnishes the books and articles. Other classes are studying missions, and for them the library furnishes practically all the books suggested in Dr. Griffis' " Dux Christus." The teachers, too, constantly seek the library's aid. Guides and manuals for teaching are often found in the Sunday school library, but they frequently are not used there, owing, probably, to the absence of the catalogues, apparatus, and staff of assistants that exist in a public library for fitting the right book to the right person. Certainly, at the public library teachers' manuals of all kinds, particularly such books as Moodie's " Tools for Teachers," made up of anecdotes, legends, etc., classified according to the moral qualities they illustrate, are in constant 36o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION demand. The single text-book no longer suffices eitlier in the Sunday school or the secular school. New methods call for much collateral and illustrative material, and for this the teacher naturally depends on the public library. Brief lists of the teachers' manuals, of books on the Holy Land, of the best popular works on the archaeology, science, and manners and customs of the Bible, etc., are being prepared to be printed and distributed among Sunday school teachers. The ministers' club appointed a committee of clergy and laymen to compile a list of the best books in the library for Sunday school pupils, and this, too, if completed, will probably be printed by the library. The clergy and the library maintain intimate relations. Last winter a conference was held to discuss methods of co-operation. Advice in the purchase of religious books is often sought from the ministers, and they are invited to furnish descriptive notes for bulletin and newspaper notices. The library has a fund yielding two hundred and fifty dollars per year, given by its former librarian, William Rice, for buying religious books, and as the total number published annually in the United States is only some six hundred or seven hundred, this sum is ample to buy all those of general interest for the library. New books of this class have been sent to the monthly meetings of the ministers for inspection. Non-resident clergymen from neighboring cities and towns also are allowed to borrow these books without charge. This valuable and unusual privilege was instituted when William Rice was librarian, and has been continued partly in recognition of his devoted services and generous endowment of the theological department. Besides books, the library has a large collection of pictures, many of which were gathered expressly for Sunday school use. There are over a thousand illustrating the Bible. Those showing scenes in the life of Christ are arranged chronologically, according to Stevens and Burton's "Harmony of the Gospels." A key consisting of a numbered list of the events makes reference easy to the groups of pictures. The cost of gathering such a collection is very small except for the expenditure of time. THE NEED OF PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIES TO MAINTAIN THE STANDARD OF OUR MINISTRY GEORGE A. JACKSON LIBRARIAN GENERAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS I have made some careful and far-reaching inquiries of men standing in official relations with all branches of our ministry in several states. To these inquiries I have received courteous and pains taking replies. The substance of my inquiry was as to the proportions of trained and untrained men in our several associations, conferences, conventions, dioceses, etc., and what relation these sustain to similar proportions of a generation ago. By " trained " men, I explained that I did not of necessity mean college-bred men, but did mean those whose education or experience, however gained, should enable them to meet on a certain parity of footing with the educated people of their communities. These are the general results of my investigation: 1. Contrary to a former impression, I to-day think that the original training of our New England ministers is not behind but is in advance of that of a generation ago. 2. This opinion is of our ministry as a whole. In some well-peopled sections, and among classes of ministers where we once looked for broad training as a matter of course, there has been a little falling ofif. In- stitutions promotive of piety rather than learning have sent students into parishes once manned by competent scholars. But judges to whom I defer think that this is but a temporary phase, due to influences which are passing away. But over against this waning, we must place the conspicuous up-grading of other and very considerable bodies of our ministers, thus more than maintaining the general status. 3. Yet candor compels me to assert that in certain large and more remote districts there is a somewhat general decline in ministerial effi- ciency, which decline, I am confidently told, is due to the pitifully small salaries given to the ministers. 4. A noteworthy fact is this, that all our denominations are getting many excellent ministers from other states and other countries. Once we exported ministers in large numbers: now we import them. And we must not let any petty provincialism prevent our welcoming these men. The colleges of the West and South show no serious dearth of candidates for the ministry. So much for the educational status of our clergymen. Their moral status, their sincerity and devotion, no one 36 1 362 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION questions. Our efficient school system and our unparalleled library equipment make it unsafe for a half-taught pretender to pose among us as learned. Our communities are few where there are not families with college traditions, if not actual college connections. Our people read. They know what is going on in the great world. Few churches could be found among us where the bearing of the great Russo-Japanese struggle upon missionary work, and the progress of the kingdom of God, have not been considered by lay persons. And the world of thought is known to us. The universally accepted conclusions of science have become to us axioms. For a preacher to insist upon six literal days of creation would be likely to discount him down in Aroostook as truly as here on the Back Bay. And we know in a general way that these scientific truths are not, as it was once feared they might be, antago- nistic to religion. All this makes the present period a very exceptional one in the history of religious thought. Men think to-day involuntarily in accordance with canons of the evolutionary philosophy. Nothing stands isolated ; all is related. Fiat origins are next to unthinkable. Orderly processes with results take the place of ultimate and inexplicable events and en- tities. True of every other department of thought, this was bound to be true of our religious thinking. As a consequence, everything most sacred to us has had to bear new tests. Now, one of the reasons why ministers to-day and for the next twenty- five years should have the best professional books is that they may be true spiritual guides upon this supremest subject of religion, the reality of the revelation of God among men. For if it has taken enlightened scholars a quarter-century to reach restful conclusions, it will take the popular mind at least a like period to reach the same goal. I said earlier that there was one unnamed topic upon which our people had a general knowledge. It is this of Biblical criticism. Thousands and tens of thousands among us know just enough about it to inspire doubts and fears, and a half distrust of the teachings of their ministers, a feeling that they are not telling them the whole truth. And too often from sheer ignorance the ministers are not telling them the truth. Too often, alas, when they do speak of the subject, it is simply to denounce criticisms as ungodly attacks upon the Bible. This manner of treat- ment, in communities of reading people who know that the best and ablest divines in the country approve of reverent criticism, simply under- mines the minister's influence. Either — so people reason — he is him- self ignorant upon this distinctively professional subject, where it is his duty to be informed, and so not fitted for a religious teacher, or he is THE NEED OF PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIES 363 uncandid, and so not trustworthy as a moral guide. Especially do our brighter young people share this feeling, those who go to college or push out into the world. I have granted that, as a body, our ministers have had an original equipment adequate to their work. Had these men begun their min- istry, say, in 1825, with a relatively good training, they might have worked for twenty-five years very successfully, without any special stimulus from without, because men's ideas of God's providence, of the Bible, and of the Christian life did not materially change from 1825 to 1850; Whereas the theological education given to our ministers even fifteen years ago, — and the majority of them left the schools longer ago than that, — unless it has been supplemented by somewhat diligent reading meantime, does not qualify them for spiritual guides of reading com- munities. And that hundreds and hundreds of them are simply draw- ing upon those old divinity school resources is painfully evident from the conditions aheady set forth. What shall we ? Arraign these men as recreants to their trust ? In some instances, possibly; but as a rule, not so. For, unlike most other classes in New England, ministers do not have access to the professional books needed to keep them abreast of their duties. In some few centers of learning, and in the rare cases of ample salaries or independent re- resources, this, of course, is not true. But when we recall that our public libraries, while catering to all other wants, do not buy theological books, — three to four per cent covers all the religious books in the average library, and not a tithe of these are suitable for professional helps to clergymen, — and remember that less than a third part of our churches pay salaries of a thousand dollars, and many of the two thirds far less than that, we must have large charity for ministers who cease to read, and as a consequence fall behind in the race. For too often they simply cannot command books, even when they realize their need of them. Because in this showing I made special reference to the matter of biblical criticism, do not think that I deem this the sole feature of the newer religious thought for our ministers to know. Far from it. There are larger conceptions of religion as a heritage of all mankind; there is knowledge of the ethnic religions, with their excellencies as well as their gross defects, which our ministers should grasp, that they may in- telligently direct the missionary work of their churches. There are new methods of spiritual work, new lines of activity for Christian workers, adaptations of Christian principles to social and industrial problems, a score of directions in which the live pastor may be reaching out, and that without leaving his own legitimate sphere. For I am no apologist 364 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION for the minister who forgets that his distinctive functions are priestly and prophetic; and that there are to-day educators, journalists, sociolo- gists, political economists, and other professional workers, trained for their spheres, who make it unnecessary for him to be such a factotum of learning as were his old-time predecessors. And now what is this work to be done for our ministers ? Nothing that schools or colleges can do. A little can be done and is being done by the seminaries, in the line of the work which Andover, for example, is attempting by gathering pastors for special instructions; but the men who can be reached by such work are few. Rather should our ministers outside the intellectual centers, the college and seminary bred men as truly as others, be furnished with professional books; such books, I mean, as they need to guide the thought of reading but not discriminating communities, whose half-knowledge is prejudicing them against eternal truths. Every argument for public library work, free libraries, holds good for furnishing free to clergymen their needed books. That, some one says, would be a class charity, and there is already too much treating of ministers as semi-paupers. Of course I agree that ministers should be so paid as to make them independent of all discrimination in their favor; but as a matter of fact they are not so paid. As a class, they can- not command the tools of their trade equally with high-grade mechanics. And the public, so lavish with general libraries, and so penurious with clerical stipends, is actually discriminating against this most deserving body of public servants when it withholds from them a free and ample supply of their kind of books. Existing professional libraries should be utilized, and these libraries, by more adequate support, should be enabled to do this work. Already it is being done in part. But the work should be put upon such a basis that not only the books may be made available to all clergymen at a nominal cost, but that bulletins may be regularly sent out, catalogues supplied, and other steps be taken which librarians understand. Only so can we supply the many ministers who actually hunger for books, rouse the topid who have forgotten their need of books, and generally enable our ministry to become masters intellectually of the present re- ligious situation. XIV. THE PRESS HOW CAN THE PRESS EDUCATE THE PUBLIC RESPECT- ING THE PROGRESS AND MEANING OF THE MISSIONARY MOVEMENT MR. SILAS McBEE EDITOR THE CHURCHMAN, NEW YORK CITY There would seem but one answer to this question: by printing missionary news. The primary work of the press is to inform the public, and a worthy cause can desire no better system of education than one founded on accurate information. The record of the life of a movement reveals at once its meaning and its progress. When, therefore, the press comes to print full and fair missionary news, it will become an enormous educational force for missions. This the press does not now do. The problem, therefore, is, not How can the press educate the public in this matter ? but how can the press be induced to print missionary news ? I do not lay the blame, certainly not the bur- den of blame, upon the press. A newspaper, like any other business, is largely controlled by the law of supply and demand. As the great majority of people know little, and therefore care little, about Christian missions, it would manifestly be unfair to expect the press to print missionary news beyond the demand for it, or to become a missionary for missions unless it did so from conviction. But if the press is to be converted and is to become an instrument for Christian missions, or if a demand is to be created for missionary news which it will feel constrained to print. Christians themselves must ac- complish this. There is a wide difference between political economy and Christian economy. In one the demand creates the supply, but in the other the supply creates the demand. A messenger of Christ does not wait until men demand the gospel, but he goes forth as a supply to create a demand for the gospel The economic principle is to get; the Christian principle is to give. Here is an essential dif- ference, and it is the principle involved here that differentiates the re- ligious and the secular press. The religious press, together with all other religious agencies, must furnish the supply which will in turn create a demand for information about religious life and work. Passing by those instances in which the press willfully or ignorantly misrepresents Christian enterprise, the American press is especially 365 366 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION generous in printing news that has any vitality, regardless of the sub- ject-matter of the news. I have heard a manager of press dispatches say that his company was willing to pay higher for " live religious news " than for any other class of matter, because the demand for it was increasing with great rapidity, but that it was the hardest kind of news to get. I am disposed, therefore, to say that the blame — certainly the bulk of the blame — rests upon those who are responsible for mis- sions, from the home to the farthest foreign field. If the religious press, with the aid of all these, cannot secure live news, if it cannot draw such news from the life of the Church, how can we expect the general press adequately to present the progress and meaning of mis- sions ? But in thus emphasizing the responsibility of the religious press, I do not minimize the responsibility of every Christian worker, official and lay. I only mean that the religious press ought to be able to make its demand for news so urgent that the news would be forth- coming. This the religious editor will never do until he is himself (and realizes that every member of the Church is) as much a mis- sionary as those who are sent to the utmost bounds of the earth . When once this conviction possesses and controls the policy of the religious editor, his opportunities and his advantages will multiply, and he will demand, not imaginative stories or pious dissertations that are worse than imaginings, but the actual facts of the Church's life as expressed in the lives of those who are endeavoring to extend the king- dom of their Lord and Master. In such a demand he has a right to expect the co-operation of all Christians. The press has justified its claim to be a power in the propagation of news, and the more good news, living, real, inspiring news, that can be given to the world through the press, the greater will become its power for the betterment of man- kind. It is unreasonable to expect a daily newspaper — I am glad to say that it is becoming impossible to require a religious newspaper — to print subjective and overpious interpretations of things, instead of the rec- ord of the things themselves. Let me illustrate. If a battle is fought, the story that is read the world round is the vivid picture of what took place. If a political victory is won, the same kind of story is printed and eagerly devoured from one end of the land to the other. In the same way the world wants to know, and to know in the most picturesque and vivid way, the victories of the Christian Church. It does not want the excursions into subjective personal experiences or the explanations of speculative causes that led up to certain results, with which we are overburdened in our missionary meetings, and which too often encum- ber, if they do not obliterate, the force of missionary appeals. THE SUNDAY PRESS AS RELATED TO MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION REV. JOHN L. SEWALL RANDOLPH, MASSACHUSETTS The Sunday newspaper makes upon each of us a distinct impression. We are familiar with its look. We have at least a general idea of its contents. We are aware of certain attitudes of mind toward it, ran- ging from eager interest to strong aversion. I offer for your present thought a study of the Sunday press in its relation to moral and re- ligious education. This calls for thorough and fair-minded inquiry concerning its motives, dimensions, and character, forming as it does a very living factor in the world of present-day thought. It is easy to use strong language concerning some of our modern newspapers, the defects of whose week-day editions are accentuated in their Sunday issues. No one can deny the existence to-day of some " yellow," utterly unreliable journals, who thrive on scare-heads, and in dull times can always manufacture a sensation, if only to contra- dict it in a later issue. These papers certainly appear to be purely mercantile ventures, indiffernt to their influence if only they find purchasers with ready money. It seems almost absurd to discuss the relation of such sheets to moral and religious education. Such high themes exert no more constructive influence with these publishers than with the makers of steam-boilers, or overcoats, or breakfast foods. All their energy is centered on one plain, strenuous business proposition — how to get out a paper next Sunday morning that will eclipse last Sunday's, and distance all competitors in sales and profits. What dif- ference does it make to them whether their voluminous sheets are used for Sunday school text-book or for carpet- linings, if once they are bought ? We need not mince terms in dealing with such literary phenomena ; but, fortunately, they are the exception, and not the rule, in the news- paper world. We must discriminate between them and a different class, one of whose managers I have questioned, and from whose reply I make the following quotation: " The aims, motives, and policy of a Sunday paper do not differ from those of any other paper during the week. The main difference is in the size and quality of reading matter, which is carefully selected to entertain, instruct, and amuse the reader. In that particular it may antagonize the preacher, and in that 367 368 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION alone. The great majority of newspapers are conducted with a high moral principle, which causes their managers to throw away sensation after sensation that readers would undoubtedly devour if they could but get the chance. A newspaper manager would be a fool who had no concern for the influence of his paper; if its influence was bad, it would sell only spasmodically. To go into the homes of the people, you must give a clean, reliable paper, or it does not sell. The motive of the publisher is to produce a paper that interests the women and children; that a man, no matter who, will be glad to bring home to his family." In 1884 there were 78 daily papers publishing Sunday editions, a custom which began during war times forty years ago. (There were also 153 weekly papers with Sunday as their publication date, which have since nearly doubled in number; few of these, however, have as large a circulation as one thousand, and they need no special consideration in this discussion.) In 1884 there were in the five cities of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Boston seventeen dailies with Sunday editions; eleven in foreign languages, with average weekly circulation close to 150,000; the remaining six in English, aggregating over 200,000. What do we find after twenty years? These 78 Sun- day papers have increased in number to 336, and their circulation to approximately ten millian copies each week. The showing in the five cities mentioned is now as follows: F( New York Chicago Philadelphia St. Louis Boston 29 560, 000 34 4, 546, 400 This advance in these our largest cities is noteworthy, seventeen papers becoming in two decades 63, and multiplying their circulation fifteen-fold; but equally so is the progress of the remaining 61 dailies in other cities, whose number has risen since 1884 to 273, and whose circulation also touches the five-million mark. It is important to note that the locations of these papers are quite evenly distributed; one or more is published in every state of the Union, save Delaware, Nevada, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Wyoming ; and in every territory ex- cept New Mexico and Alaska. By use of special trains and the issuing of early editions beginning at midnight Saturday, these papers reach ;ign Circulation English Circulation 7 331, 000 13 I, 642, 600 8 103, 000 6 928, 800 2 116, 000 6 721, 800 2 10, 000 5 520, 000 0 4 733, 200 THE SUNDAY PRESS 369 the remotest railroad points in New England, for example, before Sun- day noon. Here, then, we have a grand total of ten million Sunday papers sent out fifty-two limes a year, reaching each week, at the lowest estimate, twenty-five million readers, or one third of our population, who eagerly pay in nickels (and sums reaching as high as eight and ten cents in remote places) between $26,000,000 and $30,000,000 every twelve months. Let us admit that the Sunday paper cannot be suppressed nor checked in its growth, and as a logical sequence of that admission, let us frankly refuse to longer ignore its influence. It must be reckoned with in any truthful estimate of the forces affecting religious and moral standards. The most that its bitterest opponent could hope to accom- plish would be to thrust back the hour of its publication to Saturday afternoon; but this result is about as likely to happen as the stopping of all trolley-cars on the Lord's day. If it occurred, it would still leave this huge mass of reading matter, unchanged a whit in its character, in the hands of the people, and that, too, on the one day of the week which is becoming the only leisure time left to Americans — ministers excepted — for reading. Can we, then, hope in any way to change the prevailing character of the Sunday press, so as to lessen elements in it which seem reli- giously or morally hurtful, or at the least useless ? and can we substitute something really helpful? Yes; ij we know how. We ministers can- not do it by scolding our people for staying at home with their papers Sunday morning, and missing our sermons. We cannot do it by con- demning, however justly, certain features of the paper which seem to us poor reading for Sunday or any other day. Nor ought we to be too confident that the millennium is at hand because in the columns of the Sunday paper famous divines and distinguished educators write on themes of momentary sensation, even though a few threads of religion and morals may be discerned interwoven into the fabric. The only way to change the Sunday press so as to make it forceful for righteous- ness and truth is to go to the editor's office and lay upon his desk some new literary wares, embodying in skilful form your moral dynamic, and then persuade him that there will be a market for the paper that prints it. This is no impossible achievement; but it needs more com- mon sense than simply offering a sermon, written on both sides of the paper and interlined in a clergyman's average penmanship. This sup- position is not a caricature; it is, unfortunately, too often a fair illus- tration of the sagacity used in attempts to get religious matter into the daily press. There is nothing which the editors of all the Sunday 370 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION papers in the land want so much at this precise moment as something new and interesting; some attractive " feature" for next Sunday's issue; something that will catch the eye of the man floundering amid the billowy waves of two hundred square feet of ink-smeared wood- pulp, and offer to him a good hope of rescue from drowning in a del- uge of " things he has seen before." How much confidence do we really have in the attractiveness of the great verities of religion and morals? Is our strong speech on this theme always sincere? We are so fond of saying that the gospel of Christ is the most interesting thing in the world. Do we believe what we say? and can we make the as- sertion good? The gospel is certainly a sufficient novelty to many of the present readers of Sunday papers. Whatever men's indifference to the abstract doctrines of religion and differences of religious sects, all are keenly alive to the victories of vital religion in truthful and honest lives. There was never an hour when the masses of our coun- trymen were more stirred over injustice and the triumph of shrewd knavery, or more eager for anything that will make good morals domi- nant in the men with whom they do business day by day. Now, whenever the teacher of religion or morals, distressed over the lacks of the Sunday press and eager to see its great power turned to higher uses, can present themes of higher interest in a form whose attractiveness to readers will fit his own estimate of the importance of his matter, the problem will be solved. He will find no difficulty in the substitution of such matter for something now in the Sunday paper, and which is staying there only until the editor can find something which his customers would prefer. The hopefulness of such suc- cess is strengthened by the present transformation of the Sunday paper from a mere collection of the last day's news into a weekly magazine, thus permitting the widest range of literary substance and form, — biography, interviews, parable, or fiction. There may be found already, in some Sunday papers, occasional articles possessing religious or moral worth; but the largest charity is forced to admit their infrequency. The practical problem is, can and will the number of such articles be increased by those who honestly aspire for usefulness to the cause which we represent here this afternoon? Do any of us care and dare to compete with the present feature-makers of the Sunday paper, and thus make a practical effort to better the relations between it and the highest educational and religious values? THE RELATION OF THE RELIGIOUS PRESS TO THE POPULARIZATION OF BIBLE STUDY REV. FREDERICK A. BISBEE, D. D. EDITOR OF THE UNIVERSALIST LEADER, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS In a sense, we have a new Bible and a new method, which have com- manded the attention of a new class, and in a measure discouraged the attention and interest of the large mass of once eager readers, if not students. It is quite generally accepted among reHgious teachers that the new Bible which the new method has given has lost none of its charm and none of its value, but rather has been enriched and made more efficient for service when it shall again resume its regal place in popular favor. And the question before us at this time is, What can the Religious Press do to revive or awaken popular interest ? It is my conviction that there is no instrumentality posessed of such large possibilities along this line as the Religious Press and that there is no more worthy object to command its enthusiastic service. It is possible for the reUgious press to recall the Bible from the attic and the closet and lay it open again in the family circle and the Sunday school class. But there are conditions. The first condition is that the religious press shall earnestly want to do this thing. And that condition does not obtain to-day. The policy of the rehgious press does not differ from the modem pulpit in cultivating a diversity of interests to such an extent as to defeat any specific purpose. I only note the facts to which we have all been driven, as it seems to us, however unwillingly; the fact that we have pushed the distinctly religious interests, to foster which we were called into being, farther and farther back in our papers to make room for the so-called " hve topics " of secular life, devoting our conspicious columns to the discussion of current events, to exactly the same class of editorial work we find in the secular press, flattering ourselves that we are molding national or even international life. We all want to be all-round editors, instead of sticking to our own peculiar business of planting and fostering religion as the chief interest of mankind. Trace any religious journal to its origin, and we shall find it had its birth in some splendid sacrifice; there were those who believed their faith was essential to the welfare and happiness of the world, and they were determined, at whatever cost, to send that faith forth on its benevolent mission; they gave their money, their time, their 371 372 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION strength, their very hfe, for that purpose; they did not think of making money; they did not say, " Twenty thousand circulation will com- mand so much advertising," but they did say, " Twenty thousand cir- culation will help to save two thousand souls." Once, religious papers were started because they had something to say; now, they are started under the vain delusion that they will pay! The passing of two of the leading religious journals of America over to the secular field, the turning of their backs upon the sublime purpose of their founders, can be looked upon as little less than a disaster, especially when many others follow their progress with envious eyes. It is true that new conditions, the multiplying of periodicals, have narrowed the field of the church paper, but it still has its unique field, its peculiar talent, which it must cultivate, or it will be taken away and given to another. The primary purpose of the religious journal is to foster religion, all else must be merely incidental; in proportion as it departs from this purpose does it cease to have reason for being. When we suffer or encourage the crowding of the specifically religious into the ob- scurity of small type and narrow columns to make room for superfi- cially " interesting," we are not only disloyal to our holy purpose, but, I firmly believe, are committing slow but certain suicide. Fundamental to all religious teaching is the Bible. As a matter of fact, what standing has this Holy Book in the religious press of to- day? What proportion of space and what location are given it? I have examined recent numbers of nearly all of the religious journals, only to find a very occasional article, and, excepting in incidental refer- ence in sermon and the exposition of the Sunday school lesson, the primary source of all our spiritual life has been stopped up with " cur- rent events," alleged " literature," or essays on political, sociological or economical themes. Is this the way to make the Bible popular? We can be sure others will think no higher of the Bible than we think; and when we banish it to the back part of our paper, we can be sure our readers will banish it to the back part of their minds and hearts. Another condition of popularization is a popular presentation. And herein do we face serious difficulties. The editor, recognizing the steps already taken in the new and scientific treatment of the Scriptures, cannot encourage publication of the old methods and the old results; we naturally want the new and better, but the new is still in the hands of those who are academic rather than popular; the re- sult is that we shut out the old if it is offered and when we seek the new we get only that which belongs to the classroom or the Monday morn- ing convocation; for the new Bible is still so largely in the hands of THE POPULARIZATION OF BIBLE STUDY 373 the student. Thus is the editor ground between the upper and nether stones. We have to keep in mind that the vast majority of our readers are the people, and not the ministers. I fancy my own experience has been duplicated in other offices. With a sincere desire to put the good results of the new Bible study before our readers, so that they would see and understand that their Bible is not being despoiled of its riches, but is being enriched and hfted to a still higher plane of service and exalted to greater honor, I tried to secure from those who were most competent to speak articles which should accomplish this purpose. And what did I get? Theses on the process of criticism, of great worth, and perfectly adapted to the classroom of the seminary, but of no worth, of no interest to the average reader. But I am not discouraged; when we really want a Uterature which will help restore the Bible to its supreme place in the hearts of the people, we shall get it; and with that at our command, we can make large contribution to the restoration. Yet another, and perhaps most important, condition is, hearty editorial sympathy and service. After all is said, the real direction and force of a paper's influence is determined by the editor, — else he should not be the editor. He may be open-minded and generous, and admit to his columns the most antagonistic matter, yet, consciously or unconsciously, he shapes the policy and purpose to his own mind. As to specific methods, I confess myself at fault; I believe in the editorial, of course, but the editorial which supports and is supported by the able article has a larger measure of efficiency. It is not possible to work out systems of study on the editorial page ; it is possible to awaken interest, to cultivate and sharpen the appetite, to stir motives, to give momentum. It is possible to magnify the study of the Bible as chief among the life-studies. And why do we not ? We exploit other books, and call our constituency to the reading and study of them; we play at politics and toy with literature, and study schemes for social better- ment, while the Book of books, the Treasure-chamber of God's Word, the greatest literature of the ages, the source of all true pohtics, the fountain-head of all social reform, the secret of all Christian character, which alone can redeem the world and bring in the kingdom of Heaven, lies neglected, unread in the homes, perfunctorily in the pulpit, while in the so-called Bible class we study about it but do not study it. XV. CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION THE PLACE AND POSSIBILITIES OF CORRESPONDENCE IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION PRESIDENT FRANK W. GUNSAULUS, D.D. ARMOUR INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; PASTOR CENTRAL CHURCH, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS I remember, as I stand here, that once upon a time Mr. Armour, the founder of the Armour Institute of Technology, visited this city of Boston with me, and after we had looked over the work which is done so nobly here by the Massachusetts institute, we tried to re-lay the founda- tions of the institute in Chicago. He said to me about a year after that, when once he was visiting the institute and saw a good many well- dressed young men there, " I don't know whether this is the thing I wanted to do or not. I want to get at the man in the overalls and the man with the dinner-pail. It seems to me that there ought to be some way to get this institution to the man who can't get to the institution. Now, with sausages and with hams and soap we go to the people, and it does n't seem to me an undignified thing for an institution of learning to go to the people who need it the most." In that spirit we began the work of instruction by correspondence. Let it be understood at the very beginning, that instruction by corre- spondence is no substitute whatever for other kinds, any better and more efl&cient kinds, of instruction. It is a last resort. It is an effort to get at the man who can't get at the instruction himself. It is a sincere desire, taking an organized form, and working along lines that seem sensible and are also very inspiring in their nature and in their tendency, to do something for the man who not only needs it the most, but for the man whom the world needs the most, for the man of the democracy, for the man whose relationship to life, through his family, is an ef- cient one, a relationship to be husbanded and guarded and to be rein- spired as often as possible, in order that the pyramid of our American thoughtful Hfe may rest upon its base, and in order that out of the de- mocracy there may perpetually emerge a real aristocracy with trained hands and trained brains to lead and to help on the great, good time. [Correspondence instruction means, in the first place, a high morality with regard to that thing which we call " a little time." Here are these men with their little time on their hands. The day's work is done, the man with his overalls and dinner-pail goes home: what is he going to do 374 CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION 375 with his evening ? It is a great comfort to recognize that there are more than 60,000 human beings whose evenings cannot be spent in any kind of dissipating activity, but are actually spent so that this little time is exalted into something hke a leading importance in their lives. And lo! the horizon opens, the man finds himself in league with scholars, he realizes the fact that he belongs to the great republic of educated people, or people who are being educated, and that little time shines with so much of significance to him that it actually creates an atmosphere for all the other times of the day, and it glows, and its glow is contagious, so that the other hours, the hours of his conversation, the hours of his labor, come to circle around this hour with its splendid significance to his life and to the life of his family. The personal attention given by correspondence brings about a relationship between the teacher, between the author of the instruction- paper and the scholar, which is very wholesome and very uplifting to the lives of these men. And if correspondence instruction is pursued as it ought to be, — that is, if the right sort of men have it in charge, if the missionary spirit — for it is impossible to conduct this work without a genuine missionary spirit — if the missionary spirit is all at work, forcing its paths of activity into new grounds, indicating here and there the new possibilities to which the man wakes as he goes forward, — if that missionary spirit is present, you will find at once how really it per- vades every phase of the man's life, and how personality quickens per- sonality, even though they may not have seen one another's faces. It used to be said that university extension is a cheap, short road to learning. There are no cheap and no short roads to learning. It was thought that university extension would cause people to think they knew more than they do, and it was thought that the whole fabric of education was to go because people would see these things for themselves, the wonder would depart, the amazement that stands by the side of the ordinary professor would go, and all the cloistered phantasm that has belonged for too many years to culture would go. Let it go. It has gone; it will go more and more. The very moment we realize that the cultured man is the man who can do things from a high point of view, after the " pattern in the mount " of his life, with vision, knowing that there are laws in this universe — the very instant that man has learned to send his Hfe along practical lines efl&ciently, he has entered into the great brotherhood of cultured men. You will realize at once how to-day, say to-night, — there are, perhaps, to-night 260,000, more than 260,000, men, women, boys, and girls attend- ing university extension lectures. Why, do I think for a moment that 376 THE AIMS. OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION this has not been a real revival ? We are praying for a revival of religion, with the most complete ingratitude to God for the real revivals that we have been enjoying for the last ten or fifteen years ever known in the history of the Church. We are forgetting this immense revival in civics. We are forgetting the revival which has come to the world in the kinder- garten. We are forgetting the revival which has come all over the domain of culture since it has received a genuine missionary motive and has been baptized, as it never was baptized before, by the Holy Spirit. Think, will you, how all through the country Sunday school teachers, how all through these towns Christian workers, young men and young women, would add to the morality of their Hves, the seriousness of their lives, the fine and high intention of life, by actually having a course of study. Oh, well, he can get it in the books in the village library! He may get something in the books in the village library. But there is no continuity about his studies, he has no papers to prepare, he has none of the training which will come by perpetual examination. If he goes to the village library and gets his book, perhaps the book itself is not written along the line of instruction in such a way as a correspondence paper may be written. And, indeed, the fact stands that our Sunday school teachers and our Christian workers do not go, and they do not obtain these things. If they do go, and if they do read, there is nothing of the quickening, disciplining influence which comes by reporting after their study, and reporting by way of examination. You may be perfectly sure that nothing but the highest class of men and women, nothing but the very best teachers, nothing but mastery in pedagogy, can ever supply these instruction-papers. In the matter of engineering, it is impossible to allow the ordinary man to prepare what is called an instruction-paper, for it does not in- struct. Three things must be had, — simplicity, lucidity, thoroughness. Would it not do something for our whole religious life, would it not do something for the whole realm of imagination, if it were compelled to be so simple that the ordinary man could understand it ? I think the effect of an instruction-paper on a man, an instruction-paper that is simple, is a very desirable end. But I think that to have to write an instruction-paper, I think for a great organization like this so to deal with the form and forces of religion, so to deal with biblical literature and with the problems and their solution, that men can understand, the common people can understand, the democracy shall know, will add strength, because it will add, through simplicity, to all our thought and to all our endeavor. Your instruction-paper must not be less thorough than the most CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION 377 technical book, but it must he so thorough, and it must be so lucid, that the facts themselves, and the forces and the laws, stand out clearly. This would compel us to a recognition of the fundamental things, this would get us to the realities of the religious life and to the facts which have to do with the progress of Christian thought. With regard especially to this work of religious education by corre- spondence, no man has done so much as President Harper has to carry forward by this missionary spirit the riches that are in institutions and in men, and thus to effect a real uphft of those who could not get to school, by means of correspondence instruction. Has it in any way harmed the standards of the university ? Does it in any way affect the mental abihty or the scholarship of any, man ? Certainly not. Take it in engineering. We say that that is the most difficult field in which correspondence instruction may be prosecuted. Why? The boy has no laboratory, the man has no place in which he may work as he does in the shops, for example, of the Massachusetts Institute or the Armour Institute of Technology. Are you sure he has no laboratory ? His engine-room is his laboratory, the place where he works is his labora- tory, the problems of the next moment are problems to be solved with all seriousness. His studies and his daily labor co-ordinate and operate on one another. Has your Smiday school teacher no laboratory ? Here is your Sunday school class. Has your man in the little town, who wants the bettering of the community, no laboratory ? There are the people whom he wants to help. Has any man lack of a laboratory ? Here is his own soul, here is his own personality, here is his own conduct. Connect that man at once with the realm of scholarship, let him know that these things that are in the air are practical realities that he may have in his life, and you have offered a new world for that man. My brother, the instant demand in this America of ours is to make the common people realize that the best things of life are not owned either by the rich or by the cultured. Just the moment we get men to feel that the finest, the most enrichening things of life, are theirs, there will be less anarchy, there will be less criticism of rich men. Men will begin to realize all over how much more fair and how much more beautiful it is to be in possession of education, to have the great realm of learning open to them, than it is simply to possess money. Now, what would some of these subjects be ? In the very first place, I would have a course of correspondence instruction, guided and directed by men of undoubted capacity in pedagogy. I would begin another course with psychology. You will be amazed to find out how thirsty 378 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION people are for knowledge along these lines. The Sunday school teacher is actually working at the problems that just a little further up are problems of religious pedagogy, are problems of psychology. I would go further than this ; I would have in every church a kinder- garten. The kindergarten is the most Christian thing in the whole realm of education. It is the method of dealing with the child as Christ dealt with the woman of Samaria. It does not make a cistern out of a child, filling it full of rules and dates and names, and then taking the top off and looking in and having an examination. No, it is a well of water, springing up into everlasting life. I would have courses of instruction on home religion, on the instru- mentalities and helps that would in apy way develop the religion of the home. The religion of the family ought to be dealt with with as much scientific accuracy, and with as much seriousness certainly, as affairs of zoology or botany or chemistry. Will we get people to think that there is anything really serious and important about the religion of the home if it has not more place in the brain, in the intellect, among the studious powers of the human soul than it occupies to-day ? Certainly not. I would have courses on temperance. There are thousands of people that want to work in this direction who do not know how. Scien- tific temperance information and training is necessary to eflSciency in this work. Take the field of modem discovery in archeology, and in modern science, unapplied science, a revival of intellectual and serious religious- ness, what Phillips Brooks called " the mind's love of God," " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind." That will come to us just as soon as we put along with the rest of our culture some serious information of this sort. I would have the common people study Church history by the cor- respondence course, and get to see that the great men and women of the Church are really interesting human beings; that the men who have done the greatest things in the world have done them under the influence of religion. I would have courses in Christian ethics, in sociology, in criminology, in philanthropy, in charities. Above all, I would have courses in civics and in missions. But around all, and crowning all, I would have, central and supreme, the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. My fellow-workers, we are, as I believe, upon the edge of a great, new Holy Day. It will be a day of revival. Shall not the ReHgious Education Association see to it that by this means the people shall be reached, and that this revival, which will be a people's revival, shall be an intelligent revival also? A SURVEY OF THE CORRESPONDENCE COURSES AT PRESENT AVAILABLE FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION REV. JESSE L. CUNINGGIM DIRECTOR CORRESPONPENCE SCHOOL, METHODIST EPISCOPAL CfiURCH, SOUTH, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE With a desire to make the Correspondence Instruction Department of the Religious Education Association of greater service to the several other departments, and to the cause of religious education in general, the Executive Committee of the department undertook, some months ago, to ascertain the number and character of correspondence courses at present available for religious education. At a meeting of the com- mittee held in Chicago on July 21, 1904, the secretary, Mr. H. F. Mal- lory, presented a list of such courses as far as could at that time be ascertained. The present writer has embodied in this paper much of the material presented by Mr. Mallory, and has added such other facts as he has been able to secure. I. A few words in regard to the several institutions offering corre- spondence courses will not only be valuable in making these institutions better known to those desiring correspondence work, but will serve also, in part, to indicate the general character of the courses offered. The American Institute of Sacred Literature was organized in 1889, growing out of the Institute of Hebrew which had been organized in 188 1 by Dr. William R. Harper, at that time Professor of Hebrew in the Baptist Theological Seminary at Morgan Park, Illinois. The in- stitute is not related to any college or university, but is under the general charge of the Coimcil of Seventy, which is composed of seventy Biblical teachers in the leading educational institutions throughout the country. The council, and the institute under its control, do not stand for " any theory of interpretation, or school of criticism or denomination." The work of the institute is confined to the study of sacred literature and related subjects; its attitude to the Scriptures is the historical attitude, and its spirit is thoroughly evangelical. The work of the institute is intended for ministers, teachers, and parents. A course may be begun at any time and the fee ranges from fifty cents to eight dollars, according to the course. The Correspondence Study Department of the University of Chicago was organized in 1892, at the time the University was established, and is a regular department of the university. It is undenominational in its 379 38o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION purpose, and the work offered is open to all who are properly qualified. The range of courses offered covers a number of the departments of the university, including the sciences, history, literature, and the like. The courses available for the more specific lines of religious education constitute but a small part of the work done by the department. The fee for each course is sixteen dollars, and in the case of those enrolling for the first time a matriculation fee of five dollars. The Correspondence School of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was established in 1902 by the General Conference of the Meth- odist Episcopal Church, South. It is organized under the Genera Board of Education of the Church, and conducted under the direction of the Biblical Department of Vanderbilt University. It is thus denomina- tional in its organization, and intended especially for the preachers and teachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Its advantages, however, are open to all who may desire to use them. Its work at present is confined to Biblical and theological lines, and the fee for a year's course is ten dollars. The Correspondence Department of the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago was established in 1899 as a department of the Moody Bible Institute. It has the same general purpose and seeks to do the same character of work as that done by the Moody Institute. The school is undenominational, and its work is intended for all whose obligations tie them to their homes or to their present positions. It is entirely theological and Biblical in its character. The fee is five dollars for each course. The Scofield Bible Correspondence Course was organized seventeen years ago, for those desiring to study the Bible. It is not connected with a university or school of any kind, but is a purely private enterprise. There is but one course, and all the students are under the personal supervision of Dr. Scofield. The cost of the course is ten dollars. The Reid Holiness Correspondence School is a new school, only begun last year; not related in any way with a school or university, but an individual undertaking on the part of its president. Rev. Isaiah Reid. It is for all who are interested in Bible-study, and especially in the doctrine of holiness. The purpose of the school is primarily to promote " holi- ness." The expenses for each course include five dollars enrollment fee and twenty-five cents for each monthly examination-paper sent in. The Correspondence School in Theology was established in 1891 by the General Conference of Free Baptists, and is connected, at least, unofficially, with the Cobb Divinity School. It is denominational and is intended for candidates for license and ordination in the Free Baptist CORRESPONDENCE COURSES AT PRESENT AVAILABLE 381 Church who camiot attend a divinity school, for preachers, and for lay- men. The course includes a good part of the work usually included in a theological seminary. A matriculation fee of three dollars is charged at the beginning, but is credited on the latter part of the course. The tuition fee is one dollar a month for one lesson a week, and as a course requires eight months, the tuition fee for each course amounts to eight dollars. The Correspondence School for Christian Workers has been recently organized in the interest of Christian Endeavorers and other religious workers, under the superintendence of Rev. Francis E. Clark, D. D., and Amos R. Wells. It is undenominational in character. The fee for each course is from five to seven dollars, including the cost of the books required. The Bible Normal Union was organized in 1886 by the Sabbath School Board of the United Brethren in Christ. It is intended for Sun- day school teachers and others who desire to study the Bible. The aim is to make it a correspondence school for the study of the Bible and methods of teaching it. A course, including the books for required read- ing, costs four dollars and eighty-five cents. The non-resident courses of the Iowa Christian College are connected directly with the Iowa Christian College. It is a denominational school, but the work is open to all who desire to enter it. The fees are twelve dollars or twenty-four dollars a course according to the course, with reduction if fees are paid in advance. The Boston Correspondence School was organized in 1882 and in- corperated in 1889. It undertakes to furnish " instruction by mail in any branch of learning"; the courses adapted to the uses of rehgious education are therefore but a small part of its undertaking. The courses are five, ten, and twenty-five dollars, according to the character of the course. The Intercontinental Correspondence University was chartered by the United States Congress in 1904, with authority " to give and furnish instruction, by mail or otherwise, in any or all branches of knowledge, in any or all parts of the world." The instruction furnished in religious education is therefore but a small portion of the work of the university. The cost of a course varies according to the course, but twenty-five dollars is the fee for a large number of courses. The university is un- denominational, and is open to every one. The New Church Correspondence School was organized four years ago, under the direction of the New Church Educational Association, which now has its administrative headquarters at Washington, D. C. 382 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Its aim is to give Sunday school teachers and parents a glance at some of the fundamental doctrines of the New Church (otherwise called Swe- denborgians). The fee for a course of study is three dollars. II. How many correspondence courses are there available for re- ligious education, and on what subjects? While the number is not so large as could be desired, still a good beginning has been made. The American Institute of Sacred Literature offers three different kinds of courses: elementary courses, professional reading courses, and cor- respondence courses for Sunday school teachers and more advanced students. There are six of the elementary courses, all on some phase of Bible-study. Of the reading courses, ten are studies in the English Bible, one in sociology, one in homiletics, one in church history, and one in the psychology of religion. There are twenty-six correspondence courses for Sunday school teachers and more advanced students; and of these twenty-one are in the Bible, its languages, literature, history, and theology; and five have to do more specifically with Sunday school work. The largest number of strictly correspondence courses offered by any school are given by the University of Chicago. On the languages, liter- ature, history, and theology of the Bible, it ofi'ers twenty-three courses: on theology proper, four; church history, two; sociology, ten ; comparative religions, two; and several courses in philosophy and psychology, dealing more or less directly with the problems of religious education. The Correspondence School of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, offers ten courses in the English Bible and New Testament Greek, two , in theology, two in church history, or in sociology, one in comparative religions, two in practical theology, and four miscellaneous courses, made up of various subjects. The Moody Bible Institute has one course in the English Bible, one in systematic theology, and one in practical theology. The Scofield Bible Correspondence Course comprises but one course, divided into seven sections, as follows: Section I. The Scriptures; Section II. The Study of the Scriptures; Section III. The Great Words of the Scriptures; Section IV. God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Section V. The Saints; Section VI. The Service of the Saints; Section VII. The Future. By the Reid Holiness School three miscellaneous courses are given, partly Bible-study and partly theological, the doctrine of holiness being the main subject under consideration. The Correspondence School in Theology has seven courses — two in Bible-study, two in theology, one in church history, one in practical theology, andone miscellaneous (science and psychology). CORRESPONDENCE COURSES AT PRESENT AVAILABLE 383 Five courses are offered by the Correspondence School for Christian Workers, all of them relating to the Sunday school, Clfristian Endeavor, and Missions. The Bible Normal Union offers five courses, four of them on the English Bible, and one largely on the methods of Sunday school work. The home-study courses of the Iowa Christian College are two, — one entitled " The Comprehensive Bible Course, covering the Bible, her- meneutics, Christian evidences, Bible geography, etc., leading to a diploma and degree, Master of Ancient Literature"; the other a Busy People's Course, not so extended as the former. " The universal scope of the instructional work " of the Boston Cor- respondence School, to quote the words of the dean, " precludes the possibility of a catalogue." It has been impossible, therefore, to ascertain the number of courses available for rehgious education. The letter- head, however, names courses in theology, in New Testament Greek, in the English Bible, and in the conference studies of the Methodist Episco- pal Church. The Intercontinental Correspondence University offers courses in Hebrew, Greek, Church history, pastoral theology, English Bible, comparative religions, and other subjects, but the number of courses cannot be stated. The advertisement says, " We teach everything teach- able." The New Church Correspondence School is at present conducting two courses, both dealing with the distinctive doctrines of Swedenbor- gianism. III. The character of the instruction in the several courses named above can be presented only in part. It is possible to note only a few of the characteristics which are considered most essential to good cor- respondence work. The courses offered by the American Institute of Sacred Literature, with the exception of the elementary and professional reading courses provide for progressive lessons, written recitations, one each week, and personal instruction, including suggestions as well as corrections. One year more or less, according to the course, is allowed as a time limit in which to complete the work, and for each course completed a certificate is awarded, but no diploma or degree is given. Two kinds of correspondence courses are offered by the University of Chicago, formal and informal. The informal courses are designed for a special class of students, and are arranged between the instructor and the student, according to the student's particular needs. In the for- mal courses there are progressive lesson-sheets, written recitations, re- quiring two or three hours of preparation, corrections and suggestions by 384 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION a personal instructor, and a final examination. The course ordinarily must be completed in twelve months, but the time may be extended by the payment of an extra fee. The work is credited to a degree from the University of Chicago, one-third of the work required for a degree being allowed by correspondence. In the courses offered by the Correspondence School of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the student is furnished with progressive lesson- sheets containing the assignment of a lesson, references to parallel reading, and suggestions for the student's guidance. He is expected to prepare a written recitation each week, which is corrected by the in- structor and returned to the student with further suggestions. One year is allowed for the completion of a course, but, according to the judgment of the school, the time may be extended. For each course completed a certificate is awarded, and credit is given for the B. D. degree from Vanderbilt University, provided two-thirds of the work required for the degree is done in residence. The instruction-papers furnished by the Moody Bible Institute are printed in pamphlets, containing from thirty-two to eighty pages each. These pamphlets and the English Bible are all the books required. Written lessons calling for six hours' study are to be sent in every two weeks, and each lesson is corrected and returned to the student. Final examinations are given on the several sections of each course, and when the course is completed, a 'certificate of progress is granted, which is accepted in the bible department of the institute, as qualifying in part (to what extent is not stated) for the regular diploma. Great emphasis is laid upon prayer as a necessary part of the work. In the Scofield Correspondence Course there are printed pamphlets containing lesson outlines, with full examinations. These are answered and returned by the students, and are graded by the instructor; they are not returned to the student, unless special request is made and postage furnished. Errors are pointed out by letter. No fixed time limit is placed on the course, but when it is completed satisfactorily, a diploma is awarded. THE CLASSIFICATION OF CORRESPONDENCE COURSES, AND THE CRITERIA BY WTIICH SUCH CLASSIFI- CATION IS TO BE MADE MISS GEORGIA L. CHAMBERLIN EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF SACRED LITERATURE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS It is clear that at present great confusion exists in the department of education which may be designated correspondence instruction, SO far as it touches subjects dealing with religion, the Bible, etc. This confusion is found (i) in the motives upon which the courses are of- fered and (2) in the minds of those desiring instruction, yet not know- ing what they ought to have, or which, from the many courses offered, would furnish the desired knowledge. Practically, the only means of getting at these courses is through advertisements, and a " correspondence course," so termed in ad- vertisements, may mean, on the one extreme, a printed list of ques- tions on some topic, followed by a printed hst of answers, or at the other extreme it may represent the closest relationship between a Uv- ing teacher and pupil, involving the assignment of lessons, the weekly or fortnightly recitation, and the careful criticism of this recitation, the work being recognized by some well-established educational in- stitution. It may also mean any degree of personal or institutional instruction between these two extremes, and the prospective student loses much valuable time in his search for the right thing, and perhaps finally makes his choice on a commercial or other unworthy basis. He cannot even be sure that the results which he will receive will be in proportion to the amount which he pays, as in the mercantile world, for some of the worst educational work in this direction lies behind an extravagant fee. Clearly, then, one thing to be desired is, such a method of announcing courses that the student will, from the announce- ment, understand something of the character of the work. In the field of secular education there is an established nomenclature which is tolerably clear to all the world. We are coming to under- stand that it is better to call a small college doing college work a col- lege, rather than a university, and a school doing work of high school grade feels that the name of academy is more appropriate than that of college. Why can we not insist upon as clear a definition of terms 38s 386 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION by those offering correspondence instruction, so that the designation itself will characterize the course? We cannot adopt the nomenclature of secular education, because in the region of mathematics, science, or philosophy the subject itself frequently indicates its position in relation to a curriculum, certain subjects belonging only to secondary education and certain subjects to college work. In the field of correspondence instruction in rehgious education, we are dealing entirely with the adult student, and with a limited number of subjects (the Bible, ethics, social science, etc.) which must be pre- sented in various forms and grades adaptable to different classes of persons. The character of the work and the point of view from which it is presented must be the basis for any standard nomenclature which shall be recognized by all institutions offering correspondence courses. What is demanded of the student ? What is contributed by the teacher ? And for what class of students is the course intended ? — are the matters upon which the student desires definite information. Would it not be legitimate to establish the principle that anything called a correspondence course should involve three elements: (fl) The assignment of a definite task ; {h) The written recitation or report upon that task; (c) The personal criticism of that recitation by a living teacher. To the numerous non-resident courses in which the work consists of the study of the Bible or a text-book by means of a printed syllabus or guide, where no personal criticism of the examination-paper is expected, and no personal communications concerning it pass between the instructor and the student, can we not assign another name, that of Study Courses, prefacing this term, possibly, by the word "non- resident," or perhaps, less technically, " home study "? Yet another designation is needed for courses in which the in- struction consists of the recommendation of a list of books for reading upon some subject, and the work of the student involves the attain- ment of no necessary standard in reporting upon this reading. What more natural term for such work can there be than, simply, Reading Courses ? All these various classes of work each fulfilling a special and im- portant function, might perhaps be grouped under the general title. Non-resident Instruction : (i) By correspondence courses; (2) By study courses; (3) By reading courses. THE CLASSIFICATION OF CORRESPONDENCE COURSES 387 Here is a classification which is clear and definite, and which would soon become self-explanatory. There is a clear ground, also, for classification of courses on the basis of their intention. There is economy of time for the teacher- student in following a course of study, in the life of Christ, for instance, which has been prepared with the teacher rather than the mere seeker for mformation in mind. Pedagogical suggestions and illustrations of great value may be introduced without in any way disturbing the informational character of the course. Just so the minister needs to know that the course which he chooses takes into account his previous study and the necessity of his familiarity with all sides of his subject. As a practical basis of distinction here, we shall have, therefore, under each of our previous classes of work, correspondence courses, study courses, reading courses, work for professional and for non- professional students. Regular correspondence courses in biblical history, literature, peda- gogy, or ethics should be conducted either by institutions of recognized standing, having well-equipped departments for resident work in these subjects and endovraient sufficient to carry the correspondence in- struction, or by organizations specially endowed for this purpose. There is need for expenditure of all and more than can be secured in tuition fees, in a campaign of education which shall bring in students and arouse a wider interest in the subject of religious education. The third and last standard which I wish to suggest rests upon the proper estimate of the ability of possible students. It has been the custom of many educators in the religious field to prepare courses in Sunday school teacher-training, and in Bible-study and other lines of religious education, which, in the world of secular education, would be considered " A, B, C " courses. We should remember that we are dealing with adult students, many of whom are at least high school graduates, and large numbers of whom are active in literary clubs. Because we have offered these people training courses which would in no sense demand the use of their best intellectual effort, they and the pubhc have come to feel that the best intellectual effort is not necessary in teaching the Bible. Courses for teachers, at least, should not be below the high school grade of work done in the history and literature of other nations than the Hebrews. By establishing such a standard, the poorer teachers would be weeded out gradually, and the profession of Sunday school teaching would come to have a recog- nized standing. It is only the better and wiser element in any commu- nity who will pay for and follow out a biblical course by correspondence. 388 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Then why not make that course such as to command the respect and interest of this class of students ? Great efforts have been made to mterest young people in corre- spondence courses, and the possibilities in this field were so large that the result has been a tendency to pull all correspondence instruction down to the level of the young people who wish to give only a few moments a day to the work and have no serious or lasting purpose in it. The work for this class of students may well be done in the field, not of correspondence instruction, but of non-resident study and reading courses. It is also true that the study and reading courses which have been outlined for young people and for popular use have in many cases been prepared by persons who understood neither the importance of proper pedagogical method, nor of the proper selection of material, but I think that it will be acknowledged by those who have examined what may be termed the reading and study courses of some of the larger organizations, that much better work has been done in this de- partment than in what may be more strictly termed correspondence instruction. Here will be found the most excellent courses of the Young Men's Christian Association, the Epworth League, the Baptist Christian Culture courses, and the Outline Study courses of the American Institute of Sacred Literature, and others too numerous to mention. It is in the grade above this, and in the courses intended for those who wish to teach, that the standard needs to be made much higher. It will be admitted that we have mentioned three desirable points upon which should be established standards for correspondence work in religious education, viz.: i. A nomenclature which shall adequately define to the public; 2. The confinement of the privilege of offering courses to institutions of recognized educational standing and re- sources; and 3. The lifting of the grade of work offered to such a place as will command the respect of the constituency for which it is intended. What steps can be taken by the Religious Education Association toward bringing about the recognition of these standards ? This is a problem to be solved, but it would seem that one element in the solution would be the use of the same courses by different organizations. When one good course has been prepared upon a subject at great expense and labor, why is it not feasible for other institutions to make an arrange- ment by which they may avail themselves of the same course? The use in common of both courses and instructors might be arranged by several institutions. THE CLASSIFICATION OF CORRESPONDENCE COURSES 389 At all events, should there not be a board or committee of the Re- ligious Education Association which should pronounce upon corre- spondence courses, upon reading courses, and upon study courses, and give the stamp of its approval or disapproval in each case, aiming to bring those which do not meet the standards up to them, and to direct and concentrate attention on those which have borne the test of examination ? The valuable investigations presented in Mr. Cuning- gim's paper would give the basis for the work of such a board or com- mittee. And what are the questions which this board or committee should ask? 1. Is the course under consideration well worked out in method? 2. Is the material for study the best for its purpose? 3. To what class (professional, non-professional, correspondence, study, reading) does it belong? 4. Does it meet a need in the field of religious education ? 5. If a correspondence course, will an expert instructor be pro- vided ? It would not be the province of such a committee to distinguish between schools of thought as such. The most conservative as well as the most liberal parties should have the privilege of presenting courses for examination, and the decision of the association should be made on the basis of the five questions suggested. XVI. SUMMER ASSEMBLIES SUMMER SUNDAY SCHOOL INSTITUTES REV. E. MORRIS FERGUSSON TRENTON, NEW JERSEY In this discussion of the summer institute as a means of Sunday school progress, let us first consider the problem of reforming the Sun- day school teaching force. Thousands of individual teachers there are, of course, who might well, for that matter, consider the problem of reforming us; but that the teachers as a body need Hfting to a higher pedagogic level, hardly needs argument. The first — that is, the most obvious — need of the teachers is information and mental drill. They are ignorant of so many things, — the Bible, pedagogy, child psychology, and so on. The first, because the simplest step in the helping of the teachers, therefore, has always been to teach them. Normal and teacher-training manuals have been multiplied for more than a generation, and through the use of them great good has undoubtedly been wrought. But they have all been projected upon the assumption that we — the writers, advocates, and teachers of these manuals — know what the teachers need to learn ; and that is a good deal to assume, as some pastors are in position to testify. When you undertake to soimd the depths of some teachers' Bible ig- norance, it is well to be provided with an extra line. Yet are we not told to begin with the known before proceeding to the unknown? Most, if not all, of the current plans for reforming the teachers through normal classes of teachers conducted locally on the basis of a text-book, are convicted at least of inadequacy, out of the very pages they essay to teach. Text-book instruction, therefore, must be supplemented by con- ference instruction, such as is gained in an institute or a convention, where many teachers from different schools come together. Here a wise instructor, by various devices of questioning, can draw out enough of the teachers' individualities, and can so follow past experiences in the handling of like conferences, as to make a fairly close joint between the pupil's knowledge and the new truth the leader has to teach. Prior to the need for teaching is the need for awakening. Our teachers, most of them, know far more than they have the heart to teach. Their conception of the teacher's call of God, of the divine 390 SUMMER SUNDAY SCHOOL INSTITUTES 391 verity and significance of their message to their pupils, and of the personal sacrifice and consecration without which pedagogical formulas are Hamlet un-Hamleted, — these conceptions need to be remade in many a soul that now contentedly plods on and deems its God- appointed duty fully done. What class, meeting for half an hour after prayer-meeting, will stir to this awakening? What, but the mingling with a great company, each of whom has made sacrifices to come and more sacrifices to stay, and among whom are kindred spirits whose friendship, newly formed, shall spur and encourage with recital of like difiiculties more bravely met and more gloriously overcome? And if, before this company, comes one and another whom all honor as teacher without peer, shall not the life-power of such a speaker be used of the Spirit to reach and transform dull lives and dead ministries with a power that is not m books and methods ? The summer Sunday school institute has proved itself by far the most potent force thus far developed for the spread of the idea of grade classification among the Sunday schools and the teachers. Beginning with the primary teachers, already so classified, it has now developed, or powerfully aided in developing, two other classifications, the junior teachers above the primary department and the beginners' or kinder- garten-grade teachers below, and is now struggling with the much more complex task of segregating the intermediate teachers of the next grade above, representing the early adolescent pupils. Beginning with the representatives of the large and fairly well organized Sunday schools of the cities and towns, its influence on this line is steadily reaching the small schools of the country, where grade work is just as needful, but where methods, appliances, and plans must be modified to so much greater extent by the personal factor and the limitations of architecture and resource. As fast as the classifying or placmg of the Sunday school teacher is accomplished or with any definiteness projected, there is a call for leaders, and there begins to be created a supply of leaders able to respond to the call. The grading of the Sunday school calls for grade leader- ship; and the leader is almost always within reach, though frequently not in view. Your future junior department superintendent, who five years hence will be at the head of a well-drilled force of junior teachers, and giving to your boys and girls of nine to twelve a rea- sonably complete and correlated Bible and church education for the three or four years of that period, may now be teaching a class of senior girls, or be serving as assistant in the primary department. Find her, and send her to one of the summer institutes now being multiplied in 392 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the land. Put her in touch with the leaders who have found one an- other, and whose eager desire to pass on the good they know waits only your co-operation in getting her within their reach. Do not expect her to fit herself for this high, self-sacrificing and permanent service at her own charges, but pay her way out of your school funds, and add the needed money for such books and printed tools as the literature- counter of the school will show and the instructors recommend. Then, when she returns, give her a chance, and she will not be disobedient to her heavenly vision. And when the officers of your state, county, district, or city Sunday school organization recognize in her the helper they need in extending these new ideas and this new spirit to less fa- vored workers in their field, encourage her to respond, knowing that most of what she has learned was taught her by those who gave their services then as freely as she is asked to give hers now. But the institute lasts but for a week. You can get busy mothers, and teachers, and housekeepers, with a few preachers and one or two business men, to come together at an attractive watering-place for a week; and while they are there, if they are the real people and not a make-beheve school recruited from the locality by posters and pulpit notices, you can hold them tight in any weather to a programme that covers two full sessions of every day. We have sent home many a student from our seductive seashore spot who never saw salt water till after five o'clock in the afternoon, except through the auditorium windows. But after the week, what then? The management of the institute must face this problem, and the answer involves the next need of the teacher — organization. Teach them how to form local unions, meeting weekly in their own town, give them materials, pro- grammes, courses of study; send an expert to help them to organize, and to speak at their annual institute; and, in return, invite their union representative to sit with you in planning for next year's summer school sessions, and ask their help in securing a goodly number of new students therefor. In this reciprocity of service is the promise of permanent life, and of the ever- widening extension of the ideas for which the organization stands. It remains to add a few suggestions to those who feel moved to put these recommendations into practice. But first let us face the question which some are already formulating: Is not this enterprise very much the same as the Chautauqua Assembly movement, and does not at least the Bible-teaching and Sunday school department of such an assembly do practically the same good as that for which you aim? No; for two principal reasons: (i) It does not reach the people we SUMMER SUNDAY SCHOOL INSTITUTES 393 are after, because its season's work is spread out, an hour or two a day, and to get it all you must stay longer than our people can afford. The work of the assembly is confessedly vacation work; it provides a good time, with instruction sandwiched in. No Sunday school would pay the expenses of from one to six of its teachers for three or four weeks at such a place, nor would the teachers accept such a bounty. Our work is crowded into one busy week; and while on the ground the student gets all the work his powers can stand. If he wants a vacation, he stays another week to " rest up," but he does that at his own charges. Moreover, (2) while it is conceivable that the formal instruction of an assembly class might equal or exceed that of a week- long institute, the life-imparting power of the crowded session is lack- ing; nor can public opinion be evoked or new vision of truth be crys- tallized into resolutions and plans of action, as has repeatedly occurred at the Asbury Park School. We are a club as well as a school; we evolve truth as well as teach it; we criticise and reshape our own last year's plans, in the light of experience reported and discussed. The assembly class has its large and important functions, but it is not a summer Sunday school institute, and cannot take the place of that distinct instrumentaHty. A successful summer Sunday school institute must have : 1. A field. It must be strategically placed, and must stand for the needs of the Sunday school teachers in a fairly well-marked area, while welcoming students from any quarter. 2. A home, — some spot that shall seem attractive and comfortable in hot weather, and to which husbands and friends may also come without seeming peculiar. A proper building, secured on generous terms, is of course also essential. 3. A backer, — some responsible organization already working for the teachers, and in a position to guarantee and partly raise the four or five hundred dollars that a good school of this sort will cost. This organization is usually the state Sunday school association; but the Chautauqua Assembly ran such a school several year ago, and the University of West Virginia had one as part of its regular summer school work last year. 4. A circle of progressive teachers, from among whom the needed workers can be drawn, and whose combined ideas and convictions will constitute the capital of public opinion needed to begin business on. This condition it indispensable. If lacking in any field, it would probably be wiser to take preliminary steps to develop such a circle, even if that should mean the postponing of the enterprise for two or 394 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION three years. The school must be a living organization, not a dead construction. 5. A committee of management, which should as far as possible actually represent the teachers for whom provision is to be made. If the backers proceed on the assumption that they know what the teachers need, and then draft their programme and hire their speakers, their failure is foredoomed. Only the teachers know what the teachers need, and they do not know as much now as they will know when the sessions are over. The members of this committee will naturally become the section leaders and platform helpers at the school, carrying out the plans themselves have laid. 6. A free and strong platform. The platform must be free from political " pulls " and appointments to please, from ax-grinding business, from addresses that are run in because the speakers happen to be available, and from the dictation or control of the backing or- ganization or any other outside power. If the teachers are to grow, their thoughts must have room to recrystallize in. The speakers must be strong in power to help. At least one should be an expert from outside the ordinary circle of Sunday school workers, who can bring in some new and formative line of experience and thought. Others should be such as can get near to the actual teachers and lift them to new effort. 7. Extensive advertising, supplemented by aggressive field-work during the whole year preceding the sessions. Many of the best students will be found and induced to come, or their schools induced to send them, only through the personal work of the field secretary or other friend of the cause. The advertising should be directed more to the Sunday schools and the pastors than to the teachers themselves, though these should be reached whenever possible. 8. A spirit of prayer and of reverence for the Word of God. Bible- study should be a leading line of instruction, and the daily period of devotion should be planned for with special care. The school must stand for reverence, faith, and consecration, or the hopes of its founders will be vain. BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION AT THE SUMMER ASSEMBLY PROFESSOR HERBERT L. WILLETT, Ph.D. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Among the instruments of public instruction lying beyond the limits of formal academic organization, none is proving more effective than the summer assembly. Within a comparatively brief period this movement has taken an important, apparently permanent, position in the list of educational forces. Its appeal is strong. To a people chiefly urban in character, and harried with the rush of city life, it offers the privilege of a retreat to nature, a return to simpler conditions of living, and at the same time the opportunity to pursue some forms of study which will afford intellectual refreshment and mental discipline. In such a system of instruction the Bible has a legitimate and com- manding position. It holds easily the chief place in literature. Its pages are a mine of precious things to be searched by seekers after hidden treasures. The Book of Job is the unapproached masterpiece among the world's greatest poems. The Book of Psalms contains the most perfect lyrics ever penned. The Proverbs are unmatched in per- fection of form and depth of meaning, " jewels five words long, that on the stretched forefinger of all time sparkle forever." The stories of the Bible are more thrilling than the pages of romance. The oratory of Moses, Isaiah, Peter, and Paul, not to mention the Man of Nazareth, suffers in no degree by comparison with the classic utterances of an- cient or modern days. And the lives here portrayed are those of the most outstanding men in history, a galaxy of stars that circle forever about the most radiant Life of the ages, the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Such a book ought not to require any plea in its behalf to be ad- mitted to an outstanding place in the programme of the summer assem- bly,which promises to be, in important respects, the popular university of the future. If education is to include, as all authorities are insisting to-day, the elements of ethical and religious discipline, certainly a means so admirable as the Bible must find instant welcome, and its neglect cannot longer be permitted in any adequate plan of study. It is the function of the instruments of education, among which the summer assembly is assuredly included, to provide those elements of instruction which are most required, the neglect of which would endanger the public welfare, 395 396 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION A renaissance of such study of the Scriptures is needed to-day. The apparatus is abundant. The materials are inexhaustible. The pro- fessions of interest are constant. All that is needed is that the work shall actually be done. The proofs that it is not being done to any such extent or with any such devotion as the reports of the Bible societies or the superficial indications of Bible-study organizations might at first give warrant for believing, are apparent upon closer inspection. Family worship with its accompanying use of the Scriptures is de- clining, if indeed that is not too mild a statement; Biblical instruction in the Sunday-schools, even if it approached the pedagogical standard of the public school, which it does not, could not supply in the brief periods of its prosecution the material required ; the programme of public education excludes, or all but excludes, biblical studies from the cur- riculum; the natural desire to keep up^with the literature of the day leaves scant time to the most interested reader of the Bible to pursue a line of study to which he is not compelled by inclination or profes- sional responsibility. The result of this condition is to be seen in a disheartening degree of ignorance respecting the Bible, on the part of young men and women fully equipped in other regards; in a certain traditional knowledge of the Bible possessed by many older people in the churches, unrefreshed, however, by recent study, and therefore the most likely to be jostled and perplexed by any utterances out of strict harmony with settled views; and in the wider circle of the community, such limited views of Biblical teaching as provide ground for mistaken beliefs regarding the Bible, for doubt and skepticism. Surely, there is urgent need of an actual and adequate acquaintance with the Scriptures, and upon no instrument of education does this responsibility fall more heavily than upon the summer assembly. Among the classes of people for whom this provision ought to be made by the assembly, easily the first is the ministry. To an mcreas- ing number of pastors the Chautauqua idea offers the means of rec- reation combined with study. BibHcal knowledge of greater or less degree may be assumed as the possession of every minister; but there are few who might not profit greatly by fresh and systematic study of the Scriptures, and it is a singular fact that those who are best ac- quainted with the Bible are the most eager to increase their mastery of its contents. The assembly has brought assistance, also, to the Sunday school teachers. Many of them are aware of the contrast between the trained and skillful teaching in the day schools and that with which the Sunday BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION AT THE SUMMER ASSEMBLY 397 school must too largely content itself; and in response to this urgent need of improvement they are supplementing their Biblical knowledge by every means iii their power. The least trained of them know that it is not isolated Biblical facts which are to be taught, but some compre- hensive view of the Bible. Still another class, sure to be largely represented in the personnel of a summer assembly, is the teacher in the public schools. On no group does a greater responsibility rest in this period of transition and crisis than on these instructors of youth. Secularism is demanding the elimination of all ethical and religious teaching in the schools. Christian sentiment and enlightened opinion are uniting in the view that such elimination is a peril too great to be faced without appre- hension as to the outcome. Time and space fail as one thinks of the college and seminary students, of the Christian workers in our own and another organization for social and religious service, of the parents who are slowly waken- ing to a sense of the urgent need of religious instruction in the home and are looking wistfully for assistance in its provision, and of the general public of the assembly, composed of all sorts and conditions of people, many of whom are quite indifferent to the Bible and the religious life, but all of whom are capable of some arousal and amend- ment. For all these the assembly needs to provide in its platform and its classrooms. A word should be spoken regarding the teacher selected for biblical instruction in the assembly. He should not be one suggested by mere convenience, proximity, cheapness, or friendship. Too free- quently one witnesses the spectacle of an assembly securing specialists for its other departments, but leaving the biblical study in charge of some unprepared and incompetent person, simply because he happens to be a preacher and can be secured with little or no expense. No economy is so wasteful, no saving so expensive, as that which grudges the employment of the most skilled and competent Bible teacher ob- tainable. Three quaUties he should have in marked degree. He should know the Bible and biblical science as it has taken form in our day. He should understand the art of teaching, which is of equal importance. Most of all, he should embody in himself the ideals of the Bible, as one in whom the Word has again become flesh; for only those who have the mind of Christ can interpret the things of Christ. Thus equipped, the teacher will prove himself a workman that needeth, not to be ashamed, handling aright the Word of truth. Of the method of Biblical study no extended outline is required. If 398 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION there are demands, and time permits, there should be classes for the study of the biblical languages. Astonishing progress can be made in the mastery of Hebrew or New Testament Greek during the brief period of an assembly, where the student's attention is concentrated upon one theme. The history of biblical times is a subject of increas- ing importance, as the sources of information regarding the peoples of Palestine and the neighboring lands grow ampler in our day. The bearings of modem research in biblical countries upon the knowledge of the Bible are too vital to be ignored by any well-informed person. The sealed places in Holy Writ are being opened under the light from the monuments. Then, too, the history of the Bible as a literary product is a story of fascinating interest. The manner of its origin and growth, the conditions under which its various parts took form, the story of the different documents and versions, the development of the canon, and the work of criticism in our own age, are all phases of a theme of never-failing interest. Nor must the study of the Bible in its component parts be slighted ; no knowledge of the whole can be obtained that does not emerge from a study of all the parts. The two methods of biblical study which have proved least profitable are the attempt to gain a knowledge of the Book in general by a mere cursory reading, and on the other hand, the overminuteness of text-study. The Book can be known only through a mastery of its divisions, and the study of texts must rise to the study of contexts. The individual books yield themselves admirably to class-work. Even more profitable is the consideration of the great sections of biblical literature, such as prophecy, the legal writings, the wisdom books, the devotional, episto- lary, and apocalyptical divisions. Here alone can a sound knowledge of the progress and significance of biblical utterances be obtained. It need hardly be added that the study of the Bible itself should be ac- companied by the full use of the introductory literature which has become so valuable an aid in our time. The disciplines of criticism, introduction, and exegesis have placed at the disposal of the most casual Bible student an apparatus which he is no longer at liberty to ignore. This, so far as opportunity permits, must be employed in the work of the summer assembly. THE SUMMER ASSEMBLY AND THE MORAL INSTRUC- TION OF CHILDREN REV. WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, Ph. D. JUNIOR PASTOR MADISON AVENUE REFORMED CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY My first suggestion as to the relation of the summer assembly to the moral education of children is, that the assembly itself, if rightly con- ducted, is, both by contagion and direct appeal, a means of moral in- fluence. This education by general environment is not so apt to be wholesome if the assembly is engrafted upon a resort which has already attained a worldly or unintellectual reputation. I heard of such a place in southern Illinois, at the end of a street-car line, which, upon being refused a liquor license on very good grounds, decided to become a Chautauqua. But, certainly, no one has ever visited the original Chautauqua, in New York state, who has not felt that it is, for the summer months, the ideal City Beautiful, and who has not been glad that boys and girls are playing in the streets thereof. The cheerful order and general civic fellowship, the restful Sabbath, the devotion to intellectual ideals, the deference shown to great thinkers and actors in human life, the emphasis upon good music, the careful introduction of the arts, the drama, and the dance upon the plane of noble self-expression, the wholesome relations of the whole community to fun and play, the fellowship of people from North and South, the central place of religion in the life — every influence, from the disposal of sewage up to the idealism expressed by " the Golden Gates " and the Hall of the Christ, is a character-making force in the life of children. When we remember that from one-fourth to one-third of the half- million people who attend summer assemblies are children, we realize that the problems of moral education for youth at such places are by no means unimportant. The nearness to nature, the opportunities of personal approach which the assembly affords, the readiness with which most of its advantages may be used with the young for moral ends, and the impressibleness and esprit de corps of their numbers make the moral opportunities unusual. From the standpoint of the parent, in seeking a summer assembly which shall include not merely a vacation but a means of moral teaching for his child, the ten-day local assembly, with its small group of cottagers and its large night crowds, will be shunned in favor of the assembly with 399 400 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION a longer session, an isolated situation, and a more permanent and quiet kind of life. It is hard to see how the former can be made to mean much more to a child than a sort of intellectual circus, a brief and infre- quent flash of rather wholesome excitement to break up the summer's humdrum. But at the assembly which has a six or ten weeks' season, there is first the intellectual opportunity. The tendency upon the first visit to a Chautauqua, whether by old or young, is to rush feverishly to everything for a few days, and then do as one pleases for the rest of one's stay, dropping in occasionally to a picture-talk or a concert. Even in this tendency to" smatter," there is for children this advantage: it is an antidote to idleness, the curse of a child's vacation. The original Chautauqua has two magniftcient clubs, one for boys and one for girls, in which, with separate leaders and buildings, there is afforded every day a programme of physical exercise, practical talks, nature rambles, arts and crafts, camping and play, which is admirable. A southern Y. M. C. A. secretary is giving his summers to conducting two weeks' series of such children's programmes at the smaller and shorter assemblies, which must be immensely helpful, where the more elaborate club life is impossible. The direct social influence of a moral character at such assemblies is best gained by such a club life as has been described. At Chautauqua, lawlessness among boys is quelled by making them policemen and guards of the grounds, and their civic spirit is cultivated by including them in all the assembly processions, out-door functions and frolics. The power of responsibility is conferred by putting them in charge of the aquatic day and patriotic celebrations. At the Good Will Pines, in Maine, con- ducted in connection with the famous farm school there, the boys of the farm are introduced in a wholesome way to the broader outlook of city life by receiving as their guests at this unique camp-assembly boys from the city Christian Associations of Portland and Bangor. At the many Y. M. C. A. state summer camps, there is not only a mingling of boys from many counties, a united bearing of domestic duties, and a large measure of self-government, but the magic of the camp-fire is used to mingle the ancient mystic feeling for the night and for fire, the fellow- ship of song, sport, and rest, and the religious appeal. The summer assemblies that gather many boys have an opportunity by such means to touch the roots of character. The finest example of social spirit thus developed is no doubt seen in the conferences of older boys which have gathered under Y. M. C. A. auspices for the past few years at Lake George and Lake Geneva. There not only is the religious feeling warm, THE MORAL INSTRUCTION OF CHILDREN 401 but the sole purpose of the gathering is that these Christian boys may confer as to how best they may reach and help their comrades. Those who have attended these conferences regard them as veritable social crusades of remarkable maturity and enthusiasm of purpose. The direct religious opportunity of an average summer assembly is not so great in some ways as one might suppose. The boys and girls are a procession, coming and going. Therefore the International Sunday School Lesson, with its system and its requirements of previous knowledge and preparation, does not seem to fit the spirit and needs of the place, while usually the well-trained and famous Sunday school workers who may lead the assembly Sunday schools are so surrounded by well-meaning and inquiring adult auditors looking for points for their own work that the children become self-conscious and uneasy, and the lesson becomes an exposition to adults with the children as mere lay figures. At the New York Chautauqua, the Sunday hour of religious instruction is conducted in the Boys' Club Building as " a school of Christian ethics " by the athletic and club leaders of the week, in the form of a series of practical addresses, with music furnished by the chil- dren. Thus the hero-worship of their manly leaders is connected with religious principle, and there is some mutuality about the enter- prise. The opportunities in this direction have not been seriously enough realized and embraced anywhere. Adult speculators should be abso- lutely debarred; the talks should be exclusively by those who have real relations to child life; and the treatment should be wholesome, natural, even blithesome, and closely related to every-day experiences and prob- lems. Meetings with evangelistic speakers and appeals are still held at summer assemblies, and they are no doubt immediately fruitful in many conversions. The novelty of the place and speaker, the excite- ment of the general situation, the esprit de corps of the unusual number of children, make objective manifestations extremely easy to secure. There are people who are adept at producing such results. But for real character-making these methods are to be deprecated where so few opportunities of religious instruction and exercise are at hand, and where the reaction upon home-coming is so inevitable. On the other hand, the man or woman who will become the comrade of a group of boys or girls in their play or rambles or study at an assembly, and who will be patient both to secure such decisions and to follow them up by instruction of the children and conference with their parents, has a most unique and hopeful Christian opportunity. In summary, the atmosphere of the assembly itself, the development 402 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION of an intellectual and social life, especially planned for children, and the religious guidance of a teacher who is also a comrade of young people — these seem to be the three most useful opportunities of the summer assem- bly for moral education. XV 11. RELIGIOUS ART THE TREATMENT OF CHURCH INTERIORS MR. RALPH ADAMS CRAM BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS As art has owed its very existence to religion, and must continue doing so to the end of time, so is the converse true, that religion finds its visible expression through the art it has created for its service. You cannot dissociate the two without infinite injury to both. Our Puritan ancestors and the emancipated genius of the present age are at one in this, and the painters and architects who think to survive aloof from all religious influence will fail just as signally as the iconoclasts and vandals of the sixteenth century failed in their warfare against beauty, and its symbolism, and its didacticism, and its prophetic faculty. Religion simply cannot get along without art. And by " art " I do not mean such passing whims of society as may for the moment be the vogue, but the eternal, indestructible principle of beauty which is as definite a thing as the precession of the equinoxes. There was a time when an instinct for beauty was the heritage of every human being. The effort to separate religion from art and man from religion has resulted in changing all that, and now there is no art instinct among any civilized people except the Japanese. Hence the lamentable falling back upon professional artists, of whatever special calling, who, nine times out of ten, though perhaps highly trained, are yet just as deficient in the instinct for beauty as those who call them into their service. We have, for instance, the " ecclesiastical decorator and furnisher," with his brass pulpits, ingenious stained glass and tawdry embroidery, his egregious carved-oak altars and spun-brass candlesticks, his glittering mosaics, and, above all, his remarkable schemes for color decoration. He adver- tises copiously, and his name stands perhaps for all that is rich and elegant, but really he is an affliction, for there is neither religious feeling nor reliable instinct behind him. Yet beauty in the service of God we must have; and the need is abso- lute. Nothing we possess is really worthy to be used in God's service, but by some manifestation of infinite Wisdom it happens that the labor of love and devotion, the pains spent to bring forth absolute beauty, as well as that beauty itself, all serve to give a new value to a knot of wood or a knob of stone, and this value is so great that, if it were possible, the 403 404 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION product thus obtained is in a way worthy of the service to which it is put. Beauty, then, and perfection, are utterly inseparable from the idea of an acceptable church, and beauty and perfection we must have. Art is a service and a factor in education; in either of its aspects, it must be of the best obtainable, or it is evil. Here is one place, at least, where substitutes are out of the question. In its first function it is the intrinsically precious, the laboriously fashioned, the exquisitely per- fected, that alone is admissible; makeshifts, imitations, are ruled out of court, and economical devices for obtaining fallacious appearances, labour-saving expedients, and cheap substitutes are impious and tinged by sacrilege. Really, I believe that art — that is, concrete and absolute beauty acting as a system of subtle, spiritual, and psychological influence — is perhaps the greatest teaching agency, the greatest, because the most subtle and penetrating in its power, man has ever developed. We try to make our churches beautiful and intrinsically precious because beauty and intrinsic worth are a kind of sacrifice, an oblation poured out before God, but we make them this as well because one fact that runs through all earthly experience is that the lasting lessons come through the medium of the soul as well as through that of the mind. The artistic treatment of a church interior must depend, not upon the taste or the wealth of a given congregation, but up£>n the nature of the visible methods of worship, for the including of which the building has erected. Puritanism was logical, granting its premises; it eliminated art from its public services, and therefore it refused art in the treatment of its temples. This was a sane and rational thing to do. The white- washed meeting-house, void of the least hint of art of every shape and kind, fitted perfectly the Puritan service from which art had been banished in equal measure. Now conditions are changing ; art, scorned and humiliated for several centuries, is coming once more into favor. It is felt that if the liturgical churches are becoming once more redolent of beauty, the non-liturgical should not fall behind, and pictures, sculp- ture, carving, stained glass, and music are put under requisition, as they were of old. Good ; but it seems to me there is a danger of misrepresen- tation here, a danger not always avoided. To duplicate, in a non- liturgical and rigorously evangelical church, the ornamentation appro- priate to another that is sacramental in its doctrine and liturgical in its worship, is at the least ungrammatical. Frank and honest exposition of principle and doctrine is one of the first functions of art in its relation to religion. For the Roman and Anglican communities there is no limit to what may possibly be done, but elsewhere it seems to me that THE TREATMENJ' OF CHURCH INTERIORS 405 good taste and consistency rather demand a measure of restraint, for the time being, at least. Now, about getting the best art. I am not here to give a few easy rules for testing the design of a pulpit or altar or stained-glass window ; to explain how colors should be mixed or placed in juxtaposition, to demonstrate the proper principles and limits of decoration in a Gothic church, a Georgian meeting-house, or a Christian science tabernacle. These are the province of the architect employed to do a given piece of work; and to the architect ,willy-nilly, must you go until those happier times are come again when art is once more so much a part of civilization that the clergyman, the householder, and the stone-mason all come once again so fully into their heritage of the instinct for beauty that each is himself an artist and architect, and a better man than any to-day. In the mean time, how weigh conflicting claims, and decide as between architect and architect or decorator and decorator ? By a competition of schemes and a vote of a building committee, or a poll of the congre- gation? Never, under any circumstances whatever. How then? Simply by recognizing the fact that from the first moment of recorded history, and whether in Europe or Asia, the laws and principles of good art were absolutely the same, whether expressed in the lines of a Greek or Buddhist temple, a Roman basilica, or a Gothic cathedral, down to some ill-defined point in the first half of the sixteenth century, and that after that the laws were entirely new, and, except in music, literature, and the drama, just as entirely bad. This, then, is the bar of justice before which any artistic postulant for favor must plead. If in his words and work he shows that he understands, accepts, and tries to follow the pre-sixteenth-century laws, then he is the man to tie to. He may fail, and he luill fail, to produce work that will rival that of the great years, but he will not disgrace you, and through the employment you give him, and the standards to which you hold him, he will go on to better and better things. And, lest you misunderstand me, let me say that acceptance of the laws does not mean, in my mind acceptance of the forms. I can imagine a building and its ornament, exterior and interior, in which should appear no single form, molding, or piece of carving the genesis of which could be directly traced to any given period of the past, but which should, nevertheless, be so dominated by the eternal laws of beauty in composi- tion, form and decoration, that it would be equally good with the best that ever was. Shifting and ever-changing modes are one thing, under- lying laws are quite other, and these are the things that count. You see it is, after all, and must be, a matter of general principles. It 4o6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION is impossible to separate the question of interior decoration of churches from that of their outward and visible form and their inward and spirit- ual grace. It is a great question, perhaps architecturally the greatest, since a church is the noblest structure that man may build. From the standpoint of religion, doctrine, and education, the problem is unparal- leled in its importance. I am only pleading for this priority, asserting the persistence and immutability of law, and condemning the old doc- trine that it is all a matter of fashion or taste, and that in art every man has a right to say that though he knows nothing of art, he does know what he likes. Finally, have some one man responsible during his life for all that is added to a church. If it is a new edifice, then retain the architect permanently to pass on every window, every piece of decoration, every stick of furniture that is subsequently added. You can ruin a good church by bad glass and worse ornaments; you can save many an indifferent structure by good things of their several kinds. A true church is never finished, and it is unwise to change horses in the middle of a river. THE TREATMENT OF CHURCH EXTERIORS MR. JAMES STURGIS PRAY ASSISTANT IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, BOSTON, MASSACHUSErTS I shall only attempt, — i. To call attention to the crying need that more trained thought be given to the treatment of church exteriors; 2. To point out some general principles most important to be kept clearly in view in the treatment of each individual case; and 3. To refer in some detail to the treatment of two well-marked types of church grounds, with a few practical suggestions to those who for any reason, in treating such grounds, cannot conveniently obtain the ser- vices of a good landscape architect. In all this it must be borne in mind that I am Hterally only touching upon the outside of the subject. Of beautiful churches to-day we have almost no end, and, what is far more encouraging, they are multiplying at an ever-increasing rate. More and more is wealth being devoted to rearing substantial, convenient, and beautiful church buildings; but generally, alas, with- out as yet any corresponding attention being given to the equally appro- priate treatment of the grounds about them. To design a monumental church edifice, an architect, as a matter of course, and one of recog- nized ability and taste, is employed. But when it comes to the grounds, either this same architect, who has not the special training to fit him for the special work, or, far worse, an ordinary gardener, is enough. The fact, however, that you have asked a landscape-architect to talk to you this afternoon on the subject proves that you who, as a great educational organization, can well exert the widest influence, recognize that we have now reached in this country that point in the evolution of our church homes when more careful attention to the building's setting, its convenient approaches, and the beautification of such grounds as it m.ay haply possess, is in order, — is fitting, if not imperative. It is coming to be no longer sufficient that the building should be beautiful and satisfying after one has entered its portals; the importance of its outward appearance before the world is to be considered. Not that its interior and exterior are to be regarded as separate matters, however, for they are, and should be, recognized as but parts of one whole. The appearance of the exterior is but another aspect of this whole and indeed, in one way, the primary aspect, since by its quality it attracts to the interior or repels from it, as the case 407 4o8 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION may be. Surely, what is least forbidding, what is least exclusive, in out- ward look, in other words, what is most beautiful and most attracting about the exterior of the church — most hospitable and inviting — will be most fitting, most in accord with the spirit of the New Tes- tament, rather than that of the Old. In the treatment of church exteriors there are certain most impor- tant general principles which should always be borne in mind, and should be applied, as far as possible, in each individual case. The first problem in any typical case, and one in which the land- scape architect has the keenest interest, is that of determining the pre- cise location which, all things considered, the building may best occupy within the limits of the lot. The building being fittingly designed for its purposes and its situation, and being most conveniently and effectively placed with reference to the highway or highways, and at the most agreeable elevation above the ground surface, the treatment of a church exterior in any ordinary case may be said to have a three- fold aim; namely, i. To make the edifice itself appear to the very best advantage; 2. To render the available area of remaining land, so far as may be, practically useful; and 3. To give the utmost possible beauty to the grounds themselves. The first of these aims should always be the controlling one, and neither the second nor the third should or- dinarily be allowed to interfere with its most perfect accomplishment. I conceive that the two most worthy motives for expending large sums in building churches have always been: i. The wish to express, in a beautiful, monumental, costly structure, the reverence that its builders have shared for their God; and 2. The desire to attract and invite their brethren to share the comfort of His worship. In all this the grounds are essentially concerned along with the building, and the most worth-while use, then, of the grounds will always be, first of all, to afford the most effective setting possible to the building itself. A church normally, and it seems to me very properly, dominates its surroundings, so far at least as these owe their existence to man's agency. The architect, in this respect, is properly freer than in de- signing almost any other building. The lines of permanent highways, however, and probable directions of most usual approach, are as im- portant limitations upon the placing of the building as are the size and shape of the lot itself. And this is true not only in the matter of ob- taining most convenient access, but also in the equally important mat- ter of securing the utmost impressiveness or attractiveness of the build- ing to those approaching; while all four of these considerations, namely, the size and shape of the lot, its convenient access and its effective ap- THE TREATMENT OF CHURCH EXTERIORS 409 proach, properly influence both the distance back from the highway or highways at which it shall be placed, and the orientation of the build- ing. The unrestful appearance of many church exteriors is attributable in their setting to some one or more of the following three frequent causes: i. Undue proximity to the highway; 2, Facing in an unreason- able or an inappropriate direction, being neither properly squared with the highway nor distinctly at an angle with it; 3. The unpleasant relation in elevation of the top of the foundation to the surface of the ground, that is, the first floor, through its corresponding external indica- tions, may be too high or too low, and this unpleasantness is apt to be emphasized by the disagreeableness of the front steps, or the junction of the vertical walls of the building with the relatively horizontal sur- face of the groimd is an ugly one through its baldness, and the sharp contrast along an aggressive line between the perfectly formal and the more or less natural. One thing, the building, rests on top of another thing, the ground, whereas, by judicious planting, the two may fre- quently be so blended into one whole that the eye passes pleasantly across the line of transition. The two particular types of problem to which I now pass, I will call the old New England meeting-house type built of wood, and the more monumental city church, whether of brick or stone. Of course these are only two, and do not cover all cases, as, for example, the little modem country church which is not of the meeting-house type, and which is fast becoming, perhaps, the most common class. But to this class, what I shall say of the grounds of the more monumental city church will largely apply. First, to consider the meeting-house type. We all know how attractive the ordinary wooden meeting-house is as seen from a considerable dis- tance, dominating a little hamlet. which nestles amid the hills. I am sure you will all agree with me that, at least as thus seen, it is most agreeable when painted white, with green blinds. As seen near at hand, it can never suggest anything but the sterner faith of our sturdy forefathers, whether Pilgrim, Puritan, Quaker, or what not, and any attempt to soften its severity by painting with color or much planting, even if the plants be chosen with restraint, is pretty apt merely to weaken its old expression without accomplishing a new one. The result is hodge-podge. Far better is it, as always where we can, to follow Pope's advice and "seek the genius of the place in all." In this case, then, it will be most effective so to select and dispose any planting we may use as rather to enforce the old solemnity of the building, its dignity, which 4IO THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION is often very considerable, aiming more to awaken respect, or it may be reverence, than to attract through lighter quality. It would be hard to find a building more formal in its lines than the meeting-house we are considering, or any which more thoroughly dominates its surroundings. We recognize its spirit to be at once rigid and devotional, conventional but aspiring, a spirit which it ex- presses in every line of its not too attractive countenance. Fitness, harmony, demand thus at once and incontestably a formal handling of the immediate surroundings of such an edifice. Were the building of stone, it is true, judicious informal shrubbery-planting about its base might enhance the formal beauty of the building. Since it is of wood, this is not true, yet something of the actual forbidding quality of barrenness which many now feel, and justly, in many examples of the type, may in some cases be somewhat relieved by the temperate use of some good vine or vines of attractive foliage and flower — ever- green if preferred — ^the choice to depend on locality and other conditions of the particular case. Instead of vines grown on trellises, a formal clipped hedge of privet, of arbor-vitse, or of the fragrant box, around the base of the build- ing and several feet out from it, will in some cases look well. Open- ings can be kept clipped opposite any basement windows. Besides this planting close to the building, there is, in such grounds as we are considering, small need for planting, for, in general, well- kept turf, where the ground is not occupied by necessary areas of gravel road or path, will be much more effective than any other form of vegetation. But it is always desirable that the boundaries of the lot be clearly marked, and, whether or not there be a wall or fence, the planting of the boundary may add to its effectiveness. This planting, in the case of the grounds of the typical meeting-house, may often best be a formal clipped hedge in keeping with the rigid lines of the building; its formality will tend to increase the unity of the place. If the grounds, however, are of some extent, so that the boundaries do not count much in direct relation to the lines of the building, an infor- mal border shrubbery will not be out of keeping, and will be far more interesting in itself, through its greater variety in outline, color, and tex- ture. The use of trees in such grounds depends so upon the size and form of the area available that no general prescription can safely be made. In general, it is better to err on the side of omission than overcrowding, for in the latter case the strong, simple efifect of the type is lost. On the contrary, where the grounds are large enough to permit, formal rows of trees along the boundaries, and even leading up to the main entrance, are sometimes exceedingly effective. THE TREATMENT OF CHURCH EXTERIORS 411 I ask. your attention to several special possibilities in connection with church grounds, not yet taken advantage of, so far as I know. Where there is room, what could be more interesting or instructive to children of the Sunday school than actually to grow some of the plants of which they read in the Scriptures, or which have, through the ages, been elements of the landscape in Palestine? Surely, this would be good use of ground, and a space sufficient could very often be set apart for this use, without injuring the harmony of the whole. Hap- pily, a large number of the plants native to the Holy Land grow here, or have close relatives here, as, for instance, the box, the irises, leeks, beans, coriander, thistles, wheat, melons, mandrakes, balsams, worm- wood, and mustard, besides a good share of our common trees which could be grown until they became too large. Many other plants illus- trative of the Scriptures will suggest themselves the minute thought be given to the matter. Many city children never see a flower. How like heaven would the church garden literally appear, full of strange blossoms ! THE EDUCATIVE POWER OF ORGAN MUSIC MR. GEORGE A. BURDETT ORGANIST CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS Religion is the function of the soul; education — in its fullest and highest sense — is the finding and unfolding of that function, the dis- covery and development of that soul. Music is its voice; the organ, its instrument. The educative aim and effort of church services, in every element thereof, is the outdrawing and nurture of man's soul-self, the breath of which is worship. Hence, with holy harmony of purpose and exertion, the study of all possible educative powers for church use is a most sacred and solemn duty. The pulse of the spirit is the ideal revealed to the spiritualized imagination, the eye of the soul. With this spiritualized and quickened imagination shall men, in some degree, see God. In the early ages in times of war, the cloister was the refuge for scholars and artists of all sorts. Men of action fought; scholars thought; artists poured forth heart and soul. Fra Angelico was a type; Savonarola, no solitary exception. Music is a product of ecclesi- astic nurture. So in the thirty-years' war in Germany, the organ was almost an asylum for musicians; they devoutly cultivated it, till or- ganists were as vernacular to music as are pianists to-day. So abound- ing was this cultivation, that organs in themselves had become in the time of Bach a foremost force of spiritual influence. Candidates were not only carefully examined musically, but were catechised in religion, were pledged to sober livmg and conscientious performance of duties; they were then installed with musical ceremonials and exhortations from the pastor. The organ was the key to all of Bach's great works; the mold in which he thought and wrote everything. He greatly glorified this use in the service of God. Countless are the testimonies in history to the power of the organ in divine service; a single example must suffice. Practorius — mighty man in many mental lines — " thanks Almighty God that He has vouchsafed so great a mercy, so perfectum a gift to all mankind, so full of His praise and power to beget Christian contemplation." Average people even instinctively recognize that the organ belongs in church. They will tell you, in a tone of voice that means much, that to them "there is something about an organ " — generally they say no more; perhaps because they do not quite understand its power over 412 THE EDUCATIVE POWER OF ORGAN MUSIC 413 them, and often because of the natural shrinking from speaking of the affairs of the soul. Most men have an " Achilles' heel " of musical susceptibility, notwithstanding " not knowing one tune from another." It is like a dormant seed in most men ; but it can be nurtured with pa- tient persistence to fruitage; the growth is often unconscious, to be sure, but the organ can carry on from Sunday to Sunday a saving and subtle work, like sunlight and dew. It can go far to bring rest and repose into the heart and mind, and this is, indeed, much in our day; for rest and repose are prerequisite to all fruits of the spirit. One shining shadow we see at the very outset: Church-organ music should always have a spire! As, to the eye, that heavenward suggestion should always be instant and unmistakable both in the interior and the exterior of the church edifice, so should the music of the organ lead, through the ear, to divine worship. The organ should be harmonious with this purpose, to eye as well as ear. To many, organs look like grocery-store windows, just as many churches in outward aspect are in danger of being mistaken for fire-engine houses. The organ music should always have a spire; even as the choir music should always have a chime, and both together should constitute a chancel in tone expression and impression. Organ music in the church must be regarded in no sense and at no time as a performance; the organist is not in office as a virtuoso, but as a ministrant; his sacred message is his concern; he must efface himself. All thought of admiration for himself or his organ must be put away. He is to prepare the congregation for worship and aid them in this. Display of his own skill or of his organ blocks the educative power or any power of churchly influence. On the other hand, his competency — fine and refined perceptions and abilities — his mas- tery of himself and his art, must be sufficient to give this power inherent in his art and his instrument free and full exercise. He ought to be a man of spiritual fitness; not only an organist but a musician, not only a musician but a church musician in gift and training, not only that, even, but a man in a suitable and essential sense — no narrow or prudish sense. The organ music should have a spire. The prelude is not for bait; nor is it a pastime in the interest of chronic laggards; the offertory is not for entertainment; the postlude should not be fireworks. The music should be clean of all suggestion of the worldly ways, free from associations even with secular usage and surroundings. It should not be conspicuously ornate or scholastic, but it should be a message eloquently delivered. Habit has reduced the postlude generally to a 414 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION perverted opportunity; its possibility is a peculiar power, seldom used; and this is not all the fault of the organist, by any means. The prelude has a latent power for spiritual preparation by no means always utilized by the congregations. The music that is used should be true to its purpose; not simply good art sound, sane and strong, but church art; not pretty, or pleas- ing, or sweet, or sentimental, but of earnest sentiment, true to its pur- pose. Simple it may be, but noble, elevated, uplifting, worshipful. You remind me, perhaps, that worship is essentially praise; yes, and there is place for praise in the organ music, not boisterous and bombastic and blatant hurly-burly, but dignified, and majestic, poiseful solid and massive, telling of the glory of God and not the vainglory of man. Praise is reached or developed through confession, and prayer, and adoration; all the fruits of devout and meditative moods. There must be peace within the hearts and minds of the congrega- tion, through penitence and prayer ; hence let the organist minister with sympathetic insight and reverent imagination. He shall select and interpret from his soul-self, mindful of the power that is his to ad- minister and of the soul-selves that he is helping to develop, or other- wise helping to stifle or to starve. He must play from conscience. And so. must the congregations cultivate conscience in this question of the organ music, and give unceasing heed thereto. The good har- vest requires both seed and soil of the best. Music committees should be elected in this spirit, and in turn they should select their organist in like spirit. Many a worthy man is turned from the true path of power and ministration, or is spoiled in the making, by the pressure of pleasing that is put upon him by committees and their constituents. But we are gradually throwing off this bondage; many a parish, or members thereof, have seen the light. Many a loyal soul is ministering to this end. The tide of the spirit is coming in! No clearer sign of this than this very assembly. Even as we must bestow all possible rever- ence of imagination and skill into the making of God's house, so we must do our utmost to enable His voice to be heard and heeded; and one of the powers to this end, precious and unlimited, is enshrined for us in the organ. THE EDUCATIVE VALUE OF THE ART OF THE GREAT PAINTERS REV. HENRY G. SPAULDING ART LECTURER, BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS The relation of this art to ethical and religious culture is as obvious and as direct as that of literature or music, and its high educative value is at once apparent if we take the end and aim of religious education to be the training of the whole man in life's great school. What, then, has been the actual connection between religion as thus defined and the art of the great painters ? In the first place, Renaissance painting put before the mind of Christendom the poetic aspects of its religion. By means of his im- mortal parables, which are pictures in words, Jesus portrayed various aspects of the divine kingdom, making his appeal to the imagination of his hearers. In like manner the great artists of the Renaissance painted upon their canvas scenes and events taken from the popular Christian mythology, from the legends of the saints, or from the bib- lical narratives themselves, — which for them, as artists, belonged less to the realm of historic fact than to that of the religious imagina- tion. Take, for example, the whole cycle of scenes and events from the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Our gospels give us only a dim and shadowy outline of certain portions of that life. But in Chris- tian art we have the richly illustrated biography, so to speak, of a woman who is the personification of all female loveliness and excel- lence, all wisdom and purity. With a boundless avidity for the pictu- resque, these painters found another rich storehouse of subjects in the introductory chapters of the first and third Gospels. The " holy night " of the Saviour's birth is transformed, in Correggio's famous picture, into a spiritual vision in which the thought of the Christ as the Light of the world is expressed by the mystic radiance emanating from the body of the holy Child and shedding a glory even upon the angels who hover above the manger. For their pictures of other scenes of the Christmas story these Re- naissance painters found poetic suggestions in the Gospel narratives. In the time when the synoptic Gospels took their present shape the fervent imagination of the early church had already pictured the ad- vent of the Messiah as a drama in which heaven and earth united their creative splendors. The artists' vivid appeal to the eye turned the old 415 4i6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Scripture into new poetry and fixed the visions in enduring forms. Their paintings turn the story of Bethlehem into a new evangel of peace and good will. As we look at these wondering shepherds and these kneeling Magi, we seem to see a great world-company of the lowly and the lofty moving, in one vast procession, to offer tribute and render homage to the condescending, great God, who incarnated himself in human childhood. In ways like these the art of the great painters set in a new light the poetic aspects of the Christian faith. Blot from the Gospels the pic- torial parables of Jesus and take Christian art from history, and you rob the religion of Christ of some of its most precious treasures. A faith that made no appeal to the spiritual imagination, an ideal of holiness that burst upon the world trailing no " clouds of glory as it came," would be a poor substitute for the Christianity which we now have, and which, as we see the fair semblances of its inspiring ideals glowing on the painter's canvas, is like a morning in the spring, sweet with the lingering fragrance of the early flowers and sparkling with the meadow grasses still wet with the dew. But the art of the Renaissance rendered another, and even more important service to Christianity. The great painters anticipated, in part, our modern attitude toward the Bible. We no longer look upon the Bible as an arsenal of proof-texts bristling with weapons for theological warfare. Nor is it chiefly valuable to us as a collection of ancient records regarded merely as the history of one chosen race. We study it as a great nation's religious literature; but we prize it for the principles which it sets forth in living presentations. It contains, as no other book, a wealth of symbolical, pictorial, and suggestive truths which are translatable into the common speech of present-day conduct. It abounds in allegories in which, as in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," we may read the story of the soul's inward struggles and of its conflicts with the world without. Our sorrows are there to be comforted; our joys, to be hallowed; our temptations, to become the tests of a vic- torious manhood. It tells us of strenuous faith that wins the crown; of buoyant and patient hope; of helpful love, which, passing through the clarifying alembic of the consecrated soul, becomes a love divine, " that stoops to share man's sharpest pang, his bitterest tear." This higher valuation of the Bible was felt and acted upon by the great painters. They would have' had little patience with the pietistic literalism which seeks to understand and interpret the New Testament by studying the altered scenery of the Holy Land and associating with the Arabs of modern Syria. " Christ and his Apostles," the art critic. THE EDUCATIVE VALUE OF THE PAINTERS' ART 417 Mr. Beranson, has well said, " were to these painters the embodiment of living principles and living ideas. They could not think of them otherwise than as people of their own kind, living under conditions easily intelligible to themselves and their fellow-men. The more familiar, then, the look and surroundings of Biblical and saintly per- sonages, the more would they drive home the principles and ideas which they incarnated." It is easy to carry this view of the matter too far. We read ourselves into the men whom we read about ; and we think that what we find, or what finds us, in a book or in a picture is what the author or the painter put into it. But, with all allowance for mistakes of this sort, we cannot fail to see that these Renaissance painters brought the old stories and the old-time events out of the dead Past and set them with intelligible forms and warm colors into the midst of the living Present. In doing this the artists, unconsciously perhaps, but none the less effectively, detached ideas and ideals from the written records and brought them close to our common human sympathies. How full of meaning, too, are the great painters' representations of scenes from the ministry of Jesus! What a rebuke was given to the carping judgments of living sinners when the woman taken in adultery makes her mute appeal to the merciful Galilean in the midst of a com- pany composed, not of ancient Jews, but of the sensualists and liber- tines of his own day and his own city! Even the painful scenes of Passion Week make a deeper impression as those who looked upon the pictures recognized the place as their own neighborhood, and saw, in the brutal, angry throng, their fellow-citizens; for, in this way, it was borne in upon their minds that they and such as they might crucify their Lord afresh. Or, turn again to the Madonna pictures by the Great Masters. To his vision of the Eternally Feminine, Dante had raised, in the Paradiso, his hymn of praise: ." Whatsoe'er may be Of excellence in creature, pity mild, Relenting mercy, large munificence, Are all combined in thee." In many of the masterpieces of Renaissance paintings this gracious and beautiful creation of religious poetry and Christian mythology, the Madonna — the Mother, whose heart of joy is shadowed by the sorrows which her Babe one day must bear — expresses, as no dogma of the creeds ever expressed, the essential meaning of that self- forgetting, self-sacrificing love of which the Cross is the abiding symbol. ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES PROFESSOR WALDO S. PRATT, Mus.D. HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY The importance of this topic from our point of view needs no ex- tended emphasis. We are charged with the problem of arousing interest in the various applications of the fine arts to religious uses, and, if possible, of stimulating advance in such applications. But nearly all of these applications that we can touch take place in the routine of church life and activity. Pre-eminently do they appear in the great field of public worship as one aspect of that life. In this field all must recognize the immense influence of the ministry in de- termining what shall be the canons of theory and what the usages of praxis. To a degree that is almost appalling, public worship is what the ministry makes it, particularly in those communions where liturgical rules and traditions are most flexible or formless. More than this, popular thought about all that pertains to public worship or branches out from it must be strongly dominated by the average thought among the ministry. " Like priest, like people." If, then, we would move wisely and effectively toward the popular uplifting of church building and decoration, of church music and hymnody, of the use of artistic appliances in Sunday school instruction, of the religious apphcations of Uterary art both in the church and in the home, and of the whole popular apprehension of the interrelation between things aesthetic and things reHgious, we must early concen- trate effort upon the strategic center of the whole situation — which is the ministry. Unless the ministry generally can be awakened to the altogether unique values of fine art in manifold forms for accom- plishing spiritual results of the highest importance and the greatest permanence, we shall be driven to the much slower process of so generat- ing thought among the laity that they in time shall compel the clergy to move, whether they will or no. But we should cordially acknowledge that among ministers there are many whose minds are open in this direction and who are eager to recover for Christianity to-day that artistic power that it has had in other ages in fuller measure than now. Ministers of this class, how- ever, can hardly be said to be common, or, so to speak, typical. They are scattered here and there, and there are few means by which their efforts can come to combined expression and so exert their full power. 418 ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 419 We may perhaps venture the guess that most of them are men of middle age, whose interest in the artistic side of reHgion has grown gradually as experience has broadened and as reflection has become mature. The younger men, as a rule, seem much less commonly in sympathy with this aspect of Christian effort. To some of them artisticness means effeminacy or luxury, and perhaps a care for the beautiful seems like carelessness about the true and the good. Neither in college nor in the seminary have they received any positive impulse to think otherwise. All their contacts with art have been with it as simple amusement, and usually very empty-headed and even heartless amusement at that. I think that it is safe to say that the constant influx of young Hfe into the ministry is not bringing with it any con- siderable knowledge of the fine arts in their larger forms nor any de- cided purpose to apply them vigorously in their God-intended work in the interest of sphrituality. This brings us face to face with our question. In what directions should the theological seminary aim to teach artistic subjects? which of these are most necessary and most practicable? and what methods are germane in each? The time here at our disposal is so short that no adequate statement can be made of this really extensive subject. What I shall say must stand without argument or illustration for the most part. Art topics, it is now well understood, can enter into formal educa- tion in three somewhat distinct ways. First, the student may be introduced to the technical processes of an art and drilled in these as if his object was to become an artist — a method that presupposes some noticeable natural aptitude and that involves a large expenditure of time. Second, instead of working thus synthetically, he may be trained in the analysis of art products and given a historian's sense of how they have been gradually developed as expressions of civilization — a method that has the great advantages of being analogous to meihods in constant use in other fields and of making not too great demands upon the student's time. Third, instead of either pursuing technical skill or scientific or historical information, efforts may be made to present to the student's appreciation in a somewhat informal way more or less extensive collections or reproductions of art works for their general cultural effect. Each of these methods has its own decided value, and through various combinations of them art subjects of different kinds may be made integral parts of a curriculum in any educational institution. For the needs of a theological seminary they should be used with due regard to the limitations of time and relative emphasis 420 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION that are more orless obvious. In colleges and universities all of them are in successful operation in the interest of several different fine arts, notably in literature. The question for us is as to how much of them may be practical and desirable in a seminary. Let us take the three methods in turn. Technical training for the sake of active artistic skill is called for in a seminary in three forms of fine art — in literary composition, in public reading and speaking, and in singing (with possibly the rudi- ments of musical construction). The acquisition of a forcible literary style as a true art is of inestimable importance to a minister, since language, written and spoken, is the tool whereby the minister does most of his professional work. All seminaries have prolonged courses in homiletics, or the preparation of sermons, yet these plainly do not suffice to make their graduates the experts in the use of English that they ought to be. It is disagreeably notorious that the average minister is careless and crude in this direction, and the worst of it is, that he so often despises culture of this sort as merely a decorative accompKshment rather than something that concerns the very sub- stance and potency of all that he is to say or write. All seminaries, too, have some drill in the art of pubUc speaking, especially in its more advanced forms. Very few of them, however, go down to the root of the matter or provide systematically concatenated courses. For myself, I must beheve that one of the prime essentials in a semi- nary is drill in voice-building, through individual lessons at first, so as to ascertain and correct those deep-lying faults or misconceptions that often hamper a minister throughout his career. The object at first should be the real culture of the conversational voice quite as much as the so-called " oratorical " voice. On this foimdation many dif- ferent and more advanced lines of special study can be rested with hope of real utility. Voice-building, too, opens the way toward the art of singing, which almost every one now recognizes as of the greatest importance for the active minister. Here again the plea must be for attention to the matter systematically, beginning with the art of sight- singing, with its involved drill in part-singing. This will pass over more or less, especially with some students, into a study of the rudi- ments of harmony, but this need not be pressed as a necessity. That seminary is especially fortunate to those students to whom is also acces- sible the practice of well-drilled chorus choirs or a choral society, since these provide that more elaborate experience with part-singing which is almost out of the question in the seminary itself. We put down, then, on our Hst of courses in art subjects designed to give real ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 421 artistic skill of a strictly technical sort, three items: Drill in literary style, drill in vocal expression, drill in singing. Fully as strong a plea may be made for courses of a scientific or historical character in a number of directions. Such courses are naturally carried on through lectures, the benefit of which consists in the gradual acquisition by the student, not only of a large body of in- formation, but of a personal keenness of appreciation and discrimina- tion that is quite as important. I almost hesitate to give the list of topics that seem to me important and somewhat practical, simply be- cause I shall be charged with being chimerical. Yet most of the topics that I would urge have been tried in some way and found possible and useful. In most seminaries there is a call for some work in EngUsh litera- ture, especially in its relations to religion and morals. This may take many forms; such as, the Theology of the English Poets, the Moral Influence of Fiction or the Drama, the Impress of the Historic Church upon the Development of Literary Art in General. Probably, there would be an advantage in having the point of view varied from year to year. Doubtless there is a place for courses upon the style and thought of particular writers of conspicious power, such as any one might name. In connection with the work in elocution, there ought to be some historical and critical work done to give an idea of the vast extent of the field of eloquence in its several great applications. The field of music, too, offers an unlimited range of useful themes, begin- ning with that which joins hard upon literature, upon theology and upon practical spirituality, namely, the history of hymnody, which ought to be conspicious in every seminary curriculum. To this I would add the history of church music as a special branch of musical art, and I would push out beyond this, if possible, to include some sketch of the general history of music as a whole, sufficient to give an idea of its close relation to the history of civilization. I also beHeve that there is room occassionally for analytical studies in particular musical art-forms, especially the oratorio, but not forgetting the sym- phony, the song and some instrumental forms. The lives of certain musicians may sometimes be considered by themselves with much profit, especially those that have left a positive impress upon sacred music. From music it is natural to pass to several of its sister arts. Almost every one of them had its origin in the Church, has given to the Church much of its choicest energy, and has powerfully affected the course of religious and moral development in the past. Architec- ture is conspicuous in this regard, and probably all seminaries ought to offer to their students some means of knowing by observation and 422 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION explanation the styles and forms that have been associated with the Church in different periods, both for their historic value and for their wealth of suggestion as to present-day church-building. Painting and sculpture are almost equally valuable, and for the same reasons. Reproductions of such art-work, also, are of the greatest use in religious education in the Sunday school, and ministers cannot afford to be absolutely ignorant about them. In short, it may almost be said that no established discipline in the history of fine art can be named that would not have utility if given a place in a seminary curriculum at some time. The objection to all such courses is, that, to make them worth while in a scientific sense, they must be presented by an expert, must occupy a long series of class-room hours, and must be entered into by the stu- dent with such thoroughness that they seriously invade his time and his energy for other studies. For a few of them, like the history of hymnody, for example, it may be said that the profit is well worth all it may cost. For others, however, I think that the way to bring them in is rather under the head of " cultural " courses, in which the aim is not so much to address the student's intellect and reason as to affect his instinctive taste and feeling. The best good of a course of demon- strations of oratorio music or of architectural masterpieces, for in- stance, is not that which can be tested by an examination or set down in note-books, but that unconscious awakening of the heart to artistic beauty and meaning which may become a lifelong possession and joy. Accordingly, I believe that most work in these directions should be conducted somewhat informally, and with such an emphasis on the ex- hibition of specimens that they may speak for themselves, and work almost unaided that influence upon sensitiveness, upon imagination, upon reverence and aspiration, that is in their power. There is hardly a seminary that does not have professors who could add one or more such cultural courses to their list with success, and in doing so would establish a new link of sympathy between themselves and their stu- dents. Handled in this way, such courses would escape the danger of becoming too technical or too devoid of definite religious application, and the close relation of students with their regular instructors would encourage that questioning and discussion that make such studies peculiarly profitable. The one point of greatest practical difficulty is in the providing of specimens for use. All these involve considerable monetary expenditure, yet every one of them can be justified as a part of library equip-ment. For example, in these days the reproduction of music by mechanical piano-players is advancing with startling rapid- ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 423 ity, and bids fair to be an educational appliance of the first impor- tance. The reproduction of architectural and pictorial specimens in the form of lantern-slides is already very common, and its pedagogical application needs no explanation or defense. All enterprising semi- naries should provide among their apparatus the means for the pre- sentation of such specimens to its student5-, and should no more grudge this outlay than it does v^^hat it spends for other tools of study. What- ever is secured becomes a permanent possession, which, with suitable care, will serve several generations of students. Put as briefly and perhaps insistently as are these remarks, it is likely that they will seem somewhat revolutionary and extreme. Yet as was said at the outset, nothing has been suggested that has not had some sort of trial somewhere. Indeed, the list might easily have been made longer, especially if the whole discipUne of liturgies had been included. The criticism that is most likely* is, that in the ordinary seminary curriculum there is no time for all these things. I am not so foolish as to hold that all of them should be required of all students. Each institution must determine by experiment what can be made effective, and most courses of this sort must be held as electives until they have estabHshed their utiHty, if not always. Probably some courses should be given only once in two or three years, alternating with others, and should be open to students of all classes. This is an obvious economy of effort for all concerned. No sensible person would urge that the whole plan of seminary instruction should be remodeled so as to make room for a large amount of art study, as if it were of equal importance with exegesis or church history or dogmatics or pastoral theology. All that is claimed is, that no seminary in these days can afford to send out its students with absolutely no knowledge and no sympathy in these directions, both for their personal sake and for the sake of their ministerial effectiveness. Let me expand this last clause a Uttle. The practical minister needs development on the artistic or aesthetic side for his own sake, because his work calls for a full-rounded personal culture. In the long run, his influence will be measured by the magnitude of what he is in himself, by the breadth of his sympathies, the depth of his feelings, the elevation of his ideals. In this presence it is not necessary to argue that the awakening of the aesthetic faculties is for all men indispensable to these results. No possible acumen of the intellect, or furnishing of the scientific memory, or even direction of the will or affections, if it be unchastened and ungraced by the quickening of the imagination and of the sense of beauty and fitness, can possibly make a well-bal- 424 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION anced character. How often has it proved that a mind of great ra- tional and volitional power has plainly failed of its possible greatness because it was too pragmatic and too unlovely in all its operations. The truth involved in these assertions eludes final statement in words, but no person of insight, I venture to think, will deny that there is truth in them. If this be so, then it follows that theological education cannot safely or justly overlook it. The means chosen to approach it may vary greatly, but the aim in view does not vary, namely, to stir in every student those faculties that have so much to do with making him a broad and sensitive man. The practical minister needs development on the aesthetic side for the sake of his ministerial effectiveness, both because much of his rou- tine work is essentially artistic in character and because the artistic avenue of appeal to men generally is surely one of the most open and most direct. It can hardly be said too often or too strongly that the whole administration of public worship in all its varied forms is es- sentially artistic in character, not because it happens to include artistic features, but because liturgical action cannot help being an artistic complex throughout. That many services are conspicuously un aes- thetic in plan and in detail does not mean that nothing artistic enters into them, but that the art in them is poor. In this great function of ministerial duty many an unassuming man, without knowing it, is finding the joy and reaping the reward of the true artist, though per- haps he would be mystified if you were to tell him so. On the other hand, many an earnest worker stumbles and fumbles through his vari- ous liturgical acts simply because his artistic instinct is weak or un- developed regarding them. Leadership in services of public worship constitutes by far the major part of the entire routine public work of the ministry, and hence it is not too much to say that any preparation for the profession that does not provide artistic stimulus to the would- be minister in his student days is woefully defective, since it is not calling into action just those faculties that are to be most necessary throughout his whole professional career. This thesis might be de- fended and advanced at almost any length. But we must not fail to say, in addition, that the avenue of appeal to men, through the capacity of deUght and fascination for that which is finished, exquisite, and beau- tiful, is really one of the best that is open to any social worker. It is often said that in these days, and perhaps especially in this country, the reverse of this is the fact. But we may venture to doubt the cor- rectness of any analysis of any one who exercises social power if it leaves out of account those qualities of his habitual modes of approach ARTISTIC STUDIES IN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES 425 to men that are inherently aesthetic. What is called " magnetism " is often nothing but the instinct for aesthetic attack. The suscepti- bility to what is beautiful is far more universal than some critics would allow, usually because they make their definition of the beautiful too narrow. And it may be soberly questioned whether any approach to a man's personality is more direct and searching than this. This is the reason why immoral art of every kind is so dangerous, but it is also the assurance that artistic action or creation that is dominated by a moral or spiritual purpose may hope to be successful and irresisti- ble in the long run. The capacity of sympathy through the aesthetic nature varies somewhat with the successive periods of life, but it is not absent from any. Probably it becomes most conspicuous just as youth merges in maturity — just the age at which the deepest spiritual im- press for good or ill is usually made. Ought not our system of minis- terial training to recognize this fact, and make provision for awaken- ing and furnishing those faculties in the young minister that will enable him to be effective in this way with those who are thus susceptible? Allow me two more remarks. One concerns the attitude of the faculties of our seminaries to this subject. It must be admitted that the traditional atmosphere of some of these institutions is not evidently favorable to lines of study like those here urged. Whatever of reluc- tance to admit them, or even to regard them as desirable, is probably on the part of those who control the work of instruction. I know well how perplexing are the problems of theological pedagogy in these days, and how indefinitely numerous are the demands put upon the seminaries to adopt this or that feature into their curriculum. It would be foolish to call for a large apportionment of time or for great outlays upon new instructors or new apparatus for the presenta- tion of the topics of which we have been speaking. But is it too much to ask that the professors in our seminaries generally give serious con- sideration to the question whether they cannot gradually do more to cultivate and direct the aesthetic powers of their students, beginning with perhaps but one experimental course, but taking pains that it shall be vmderstood that this is but one among many that are in mind ? Is it too much to ask that in various ways the treatment of established subjects in the classrooms be made to include due reference to their conspicuously artistic features? I suspect, for example, that there have been various long courses in Church history in which there has not been one sympathetic or illuminating mention of the extraordi- nary influence in the Middle Ages that the fine arts exercised m the whole matter of popular religion or of the equally extraordinary influence 426 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION that hymnody has exerted in the last two centuries. I suspect, too, that there have been courses in homiletics that have not once brought out in full the conspicuous fact that preaching is above all else a piece of literary and expressional fine art, all the more striking as such be- cause it is so complex in structure. I suspect that there have been vi^hole courses of lectures on the dogmatic and philosophical side of theology that have not once brought out the conspicuous fact that while the theology of the schools may be formal and logical in its character, that of the people is always instinctive and really artistic. These impressions may be unwarranted, but if there is any truth in them, there is a call for a new attitude toward this whole class of subjects on the part of theological faculties. That such subjects have not been made more of in seminaries is constantly charged to the lack of time. It ought to be made clear that it is not due to any lack of interest. My other closing remark concerns the way in which studies like those here advocated are brought before the minds of students. I beheve that they should usually be offered as electives, so that taking them may not be by compulsion, but as far as possible con amore. Yet care should be exercised that their real importance and practical value be not misapprehended. The danger about all studies of this class, especially when presented in demonstrative or " cultural " courses, is, that they shall appear to the student as more entertaining than serious, more as a diversion than as directly instructive. To guard against misuse, therefore, they should be somewhat explained beforehand, and great pains should be taken at intervals in them to make plain their bearing upon practical ministerial work. The student who already has a craving for them will not be slow to perceive their importance, but help will be required for men who have not yet awakened to the need of artistic information and sympathy. This help should come from various quarters, if possible, not altogether from whoever is deputed to give artistic instruction, because from him it will seem to be special pleading. My own experience is that the average student is far from being unready to appreciate and appropriate work in artistic directions, but his vague impressions and desires need con- firmation and enHghtenment, so that whatever he attempts may seem dignified and worthy, not a pastime or an eccentric crotchet, but a serious part of his self-equipment for his life-work. THE GENERAL ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS THE GENERAL ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS THE BOY IN THE COUNTRY The Problem of the Country Boy REV. HERBERT A. JUMP PASTOR BOWDON COLLEGE CHURCH, BRUNSWICK, MAINE When the Aknighty created the first man he made the world signifi- cant; when he created the first boy he made it interesting. If man was molded from the dust of the earth, the boy was compounded out of dust and electricity. The electricity in him constitutes the boy- problem, and this problem besets the village, no less than the city. The fact, moreover, that two thirds of the people of the United States is a country population, i. e., lives in communities of less than eight thousand population, attaches special importance to the problem of the rural boy. This boy, considered as a restless perplexity in breeches, is not essen- tially different from his city cousin. Heredity operates beyond the munic- ipal fire-limits, and environment exercises influence without aid from an arc light. The village tavern and the city saloon are twin devils, and foolish parents are to be found everywhere. Thepueritia pagana is perhaps less flexible and alert, slower to choose and act, than the pueritia urhana, for its world is not so furiously a world of motion as that which beats upon the sensorium of the city boy. Its eye rests upon a panoramic rather than a kinetoscopic environment. Also, it is less socially adapt- able, for it has rubbed elbows only with other boys like itself, and the same kind of " rubbing " having gone on now for many generations, the " elbows " are instinctively familiar with one another. And it is less breathlessly ambitious, less touched with the fever for success. It is unlike the city species, in that it is more acquainted with quiet than with change. Self-reUant when lost in the woods, the country boy is awkward or terror-stricken in a crowd; the " Rube " is a stock character in cur- rent drama comedy. His monotonous environment fails to develop in 1 The papers following were read al the convention of the General Alliance of Workers with Boys. The directors of the General Alliance of Workers with Boys decided to celebrate their decen- nial by holding their annual convention in connection with that of the Religious Education Asso- ciation. The Alliance, like the Association, is international and non-sectarian. It enrolls several hundred men and women, most of whom are salaried and volunteer leaders of many varieties of social work with boys. The organ of the Alliance is a quarterly magazine. Work with Boys, pub- lished in Fall River. In addition to the formal programme of the Alliance as a department, there were reunions of those interested in special forms of work and excursions to social institutions for boys in Boston. 429 430 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION him as much institutional fertility as it does manual facility. He is less an inventor and supporter of clubs than his city cousin. His vitality suffers from scarcity of boyish avenues along which to travel; and he is, in consequence, often an adult before his time. Peril comes to the city boy from the exhilaration of positive wrong-doing; to the country boy from the drifting possibilities of a nature where the physical has out- stripped in development the imaginative and idealistic. The one does too many things that are bad; the other does not attempt enough things, either good or bad. You redeem the city boy by damming up the sluices into which his life-currents ought not to flow; but to save the country boy, you dig new channels into which his surging strength can be directed. Roughly speaking, the country boy corresponds to an earlier or tribal stage of social evolution, before the great city was invented; and his defects are corrected by bringing to bear upon him precisely those socializing iniluences of which the city boy has a surfeit. Let us hasten at this point to disabuse ourselves of a notion popularly accepted, the idea, viz., that contact with nature has, per se, amoral significance. Walking over grassy fields, finding song-sparrows' nests, and visiting the haunts of the retiring orchid — which are possibihties in the country boy's Hfe — ought to give him a saintward impulse, so the nature-study enthusiast says. But they do not. Even when the country boy does have toward nature that contemptuous ignorance begotten of famiharity, he receives from her little if any moral dynamic. A badly started boy goes to the bad as readily in a sequestered valley as in a turbulent metropoHs. Suppose one hundred thousand children in Chicago cannot tell a daisy from a violet, as has been claimed; they are not more likely to cheat in examinations on that account. And when you have transplanted them into the country and filled them with flower-lore, you have but taught them flowers, and flowers are not ethics. In one of the prettiest villages of Maine, a hill top town commanding a view of the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, it was discovered that definite influences were corrupting the morals of the boys. At length the source of the infection was unearthed, and behold! in this quiet town a full-fledged academy of sin was holding regular sessions under the leadership of a foul-minded but masterful boy. A group of lads at the age when the gang-spirit was dominant had been organized with all the delicious accompaniments of a secret society to learn " the things a fellow ought to know to be a man." Smoking, profanity, and obscene stories were not the worst courses in the curriculum of this " Fagin's school." In a community where every prospect pleased, only the boys were vile. This dark picture, however, ought not to be THE BOY IN THE COUNTRY 431 left unrelieved. The salvation of a boy consists in the right satisfaction of his interests, and when a " gang " is wisely " chaperoned " (to use a word of Dr. Forbush's), its acquisitive and competitive activities find in the world of nature a rich exploitable field. Under such circum- stances, the country boy begins to enjoy his advantage of contact with nature. But, alas! how rarely does the gang find its " chaperon "! The most alarming feature of the country boy problem is that for the most part it is as yet a problem unattacked. The city boy has long been the object of study and reforming endeavor. His psychology, physiology, sociology, and soteriology have been pretty well w^orked out. It really is a privilege to be a bad boy in a city nowadays. The candi- date for redemptive work has so much done for him by countless philanthropic agencies, that the perplexity must be, forsooth! to decide by which particular means he will let himself be " rescued." With the country boy, on the other hand, all is different. He has neither been systematically studied nor has altruistic enthusiasm annexed him to its province. For him there are no boys' clubs, gymnasiums, game centers, free baths, juvenile libraries, social settlements, or trade schools. For him exists no w^ealthy patron w^ho will outdo Providence in generosity — for the gifts of Providence are limited by wisdom. For him there is none of the proud glamour accompanying the consciousness that he is a " cata- logued case." Because his needs are not as sensational as those of the city boy, the morally backward boy in the rural town has been left to feel that society never cares for him until he has broken some law, and then he experiences in the policeman or constable only her severe and punishing hand. " For many years," writes Mr. Riis, " grass has been considered sacred in New York city; only recently have boys begun to be so considered." The towns are slower than the metropolis; the majority of them neglect both grass and boys, and even the most pro- gressive communities spend more money printing signs for the protection of the greensward than they invest in conscious ministry to their coming young men. But the inertia of even our daredevil American optimism will ere long be roused and broken; the advancing army of social progress will not dare to leave this unreduced fortress of the country boy threatening its rear; around the rural lad, as well as round the city lad, must be flung the arms of a wise and upbuilding friendliness. The " promoter " is a newly evolved functionary in the industrial world who has quickly justified his existence. He is the individual who builds money-power into corporations, who organizes financial elements into a unified, working aggregate. Something or some person must be found capable of fulfilling the " promoter " function for the 432 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION boy-power of our country towns. There are agencies already on the field, to be sure, but they are not coping with the problem. Either new agencies must be devised, or else the now-existing agencies must be increased in efficiency. Always the home is the mainstay of hope. But the boy who possesses the right kind of Christian home is not part of the boy problem, and the boy who makes the problem is generally one who has no " home," in the spiritual sense of the term, and often none in the material sense. What shall be done for the homeless boy, and who will do it ? Why should not the school building in our towns be generally appro- priated as a boys' rendezvous? In each village, let a system of self- governing clubs be organized with athletic, chivalric, patriotic, parha- mentary, or social interests, adapted to various ages and susceptible to the impetus of competition. Each club will be under the supervision of an adult, mature enough to hold before the boys' minds unyielding ideals of manly living, but young enough to understand and forgive recurring neglects of such ideals. These club leaders will naturally meet from time to time for conference with the general superintendent, who will bean interested citizen, a teacher, or, least desirably, a minister. In these clubs, the country boy will be first of all socialized. He will enjoy, also, the rich gains following upon supervised athletics, and mean- while, and quietly, the companionship of noble standards is molding him into their image. THE CHIVALRIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS REV. FRANK L. MASSECK PASTOR CHURCH OF OUR FATHER, SPENCER, MASSACHUSETTS; NATIONAL KING OF THE KNIGHTS OF KING ARTHUR Every person who comes into intimate contact with boys, whether as parent, teacher, or friend, reahzes the truth, emphasized in GuHck's " Studies of Adolescence," the " spontaneous tendency of boys in pubes- cent years to develop social and political organizations." Mr. Sheldon, in "The Institutional Activities of American Children," shows that the tendency to spontaneously imitate every form of adult organization is manifest before the age of ten, and that only about thirty per cent of the large number of children whom he observed had not belonged to some such organization. After ten, the boys cease to imitate adult societies, and tend to form social units characteristic of the lower stages of evolu- tion, pirates, robbers, soldiers, savages, where the strongest and boldest is the leader. At this point is found the danger of this instinctive ten- dency. President Hall says: " Especially in city life, the boy is divorced from the steadying laws of recapitulation which insure emergence in due season into a higher state, and so is all the more plastic, helpless, dis- oriented, and in need of succor. In decadent country communities, with fev/er and feebler offspring, with lax notions of parental discipline, such associations often break out in hoodlumism, and in many unsettled portions of the country a semi-savage state of society results. Under all circumstances the boys left to themselves tend to disorder and trival- ity. Hence, in large part, comes the immeasurable waste of adolescent hfe." These are the facts. What is now proposed as a remedy? Presi- dent Hall says: " All social Ufe should be organized about youth like placenta, and should restore, if possible, all the lost phyletic elements that are needful, while adult leaders should strive to ripen that deep and lasting friendship which the young so readily develop, with hfelong and enthusiastic gratitude for those that really serve them. Every adolescent boy ought to belong to some club or society marked by such secrecy as is compatible with safety. Something esoteric, mysterious, a symbolic badge, countersign, a lodge and its equipment, and perhaps other things owned in common, give a real basis for comradeship, and cultivate a peculiar form of group-honor. The prime purpose which should determine every choice of matter and method is moral, viz. so to direct 433 434 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION intelligence and will as to secure the largest measure of social service, advance altruism, reduce selfishness, and thus advance the higher cosmic order. Youth loves combat. Its very best safeguard and its highest ideal is honor, and this has its best expression in what may be called the ethnic Bible of the Saxon race in its adolescent stage, the literature of chivalry. I am convinced that there is nothing more whole- some for the material of Enghsh study than that of the early mythic period in Western Europe. I refer to the literature of the Arthuriad and the San grail. We have here a vast body of ethical material, char- acters that are almost colossal in their proportions, incidents thrilling and dramatic to a degree that stirs the blood and thrills the nerves. It teaches the highest reverence for womanhood, piety, valor, loyalty, courage, munificence, justice, and obedience. The very life-blood of chivalry is heroism." This is the ideal remedy proposed. Twelve years ago, Dr. Forbush began a practical experiment at realizing this ideal, and President Hall says, " This idealized court of King Arthur is the very best form for this age." It is interesting to know that others, unconscious of what Dr. Forbush has already so well done, have had visions of a similar work, and made some progress towards realization. Only the other day a letter came into my hands, from a clergyman in Chicago, who had almost worked out a practical scheme before he learned of the Knights of King Arthur. In England, Dr. Paton has evolved the " Boys' Life Brigade," in which he endeavors to teach boys to develop, relieve, and save life, rather than to destroy, which is the tendency, at least in the various forms of military organizations. Out of this. Dr. Paton had come to propose a " Court of Honor," which would seek to develop the highest life and aspiration in the heart of the boys. These and various other attempts to the same end show us so clearly that the prophecy of the reign of Arthur is being realized in our time. Many of these workers are now allying themselves with the Knights. But now comes the practical question. How does the chivalric idea work out in practice? For reply, I will give you some illustrations taken from the records of our Castles. The oldest living Castle is Roseville No. 44, in Newark, New Jersey. The leader is a lady. For nearly nine years she has been working with the boys who have successively come under her influence. By means of drills of various kinds, and with games, the boys have been attracted to the meetings. They have helped buy a carpet for the church, and now are at work on the mortgage. Cake and cream have frequently been enjoyed. The object, " Boys for Christ," has ever been kept in view, and tact- THE CHIVALRIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS 435 fully a word has now and then been spoken. Miss Jones writes, " It is difficult to measure the growth of character. But I believe no good influence has been lost. I have seen the boys made purer by meeting together as a K. O. K. A." A Baptist minister in Nashville, Tennessee, writes, " I do very little preaching to the boys. I think the best thing is to tie them to the church and myself, and let them feel that about the church may be found the most wholesome life for a boy. I am aiming at forming a bond, rather than piling up statistics as to how many moral lessons I swathed them with. I believe this course was amply justified when, at the close of a special series of meetings which I myself conducted, and in which I asked the special sympathy and support of the Castle, fourteen of the members united with the church. But that is not all. We supported a boy in school last year, furnishing him also with books. We believe in the K. O. K. A. and wish it many summers." Another pastor, in a town where all the influences are opposed to church membership, and in a church which had never had a male under twenty-one unite with it, after three years of work, saw four of the boys take their positions at the altar, one of whom afterwards entered the Divinity School, and will shortly be ordained as pastor of a large church. Another of the group has been for four years superintendent of the Sun- day school. These results were accomplished in the face of ridicule, derision, and scorn. Ministers and teachers all over the country confess that with the Castle they are able effectively to reach boys who could not be touched by the Sunday school, or any form of young people's religious organiza- tions. In a Httle town of northern Vermont, where the boys were notori- ously vulgar, obscene, and impure, the Baptist and Congregational pas- tors united and formed a Castle. In less than a year the influence of that little group of lads had almost purified the entire boy-life. Cigarette-smoking ceased. Profanity was seldom heard. Impurity was driven out of sight. So great was the transformation, that business men on the street commented upon the fact, and showed their ap- preciation of the wonderful work by receptions to the members of the Castle, these unexpected attentions serving still further to increase the good influence of the order. THE CIVIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS MYRON T. SCUDDER PRINCIPAL, NEW PALTZ NORMAL SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY The civic ideals of any nation are greatly influenced by the geo- graphic conditions of the territory inhabited by that nation. Guyot says that because of the continental structure of Asia, the civilization of the races on that continent became arrested in their development. The civic ideals of its races are archaic; they reached a stable equilibrium centuries ago, and are hopelessly ineffectual from progress. With Europe the case is different. For its physical features, including so many peninsulas well guarded by moimtain barriers, yet permitting easy inter- course by water, make it " specially fitted to foster the formation of distinct nationaUties, each developing in a special direction." It supports strongly centralized governments or monarchies, in which pohtical individualism and a spirit of altruism could have but Httle play. But for America, particularly in the " noble domain of the United States," the geographer claims a grand function. This country, because of its extraordinary wealth of resources and physical features (great reaches of country interlaced by navigable rivers with no serious moun- tain barriers), tends to create mutual interests among all the peoples who come here, fosters internal commerce, unites rather than separates peoples, and checks the formation of local nationalities. America is therefore the Amalgamator of races, the continent of altruistic democ- racy. Thus, imavoidably, are bred civic ideals differing from those of other nations, and vastly more compHcated for the individual citizen, and demanding a higher degree of pohtical intelhgence. Into these civic ideals, the youth of our country must be most carefully inducted. The task is herculean, and all the more so because of the unique structure and composition of the national government. In a great nation com- posed as this is of a number of small nations, the principle of local autonomy and state sovereignty necessarily clashes with the principle of a centraHzed government at Washington. To insure survival and strong growth, our youth must be prepared to participate intelhgently, loyally, unselfishly, and honestly in the struggle between these two principles. But how shall this be done ? The educators of youth have an extraor- dinarily difficult task on hand, and unfortunately the pedagogy of the subject is not yet worked out. The teaching of a very intricate subject 436 THE CIVIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS 437 is further complicated by the necessity of considering the laws of mental growth and the nature of the youthful mind as it passes rapidly through the various phases of its development. Perhaps we shall eventually devise a scheme for teaching civics, based on the historic order of devel- opment of governmental machinery, leading from the simple one-man power of primitive man, up through a simple democracy like that of the Indian tribes, to the more compHcated intertribal relations, not yet representative in form, shown in the stories of Siegfried, Ulysses, etc., on to the feudal system and then to colonial government, where the principle of representation becomes a necessity, and following this by village or county organization, finishing up with municipal government. Such a scheme certainly opens up a field of great promise and of un- bounded research and work for framers of courses of study! The American boy, then, and the American girl too must from the ' very start be made acquainted in one way or another with American civic ideals, and, what is more, they should have early experience in devising laws and ordinances for self-government, as well as practice in obeying and enforcing the same. While this is of special importance, because of our republican form of government, it is also an essential in the development of the kind of character needed by American youth. In this country, we feel the necessity of appealing to the individual's own will in order really to govern him. We see that "self-government makes a man strong and fit for life, while will, coercion, or government from without renders him unfit for self -regulation." Wise government of our youth, that is, a government in which they themselves may really participate, will tend to establish habits of self-control, obedience to law, and thoughtfulness of others' welfare. Is it not therefore, both absurd and wrong to rear the future citizens of a representative government under a form of school government which is little better than despotism (for where in the world is there a more arbitary rule than is shown in the school-rooms in which young Americans spend so many of the forma- tive years of their lives?) — a despotism which at least has too often failed as utterly as any despotism can fail to develop in the individual that rational sense of responsibility for himself and for others which is one very important safeguard of democratic institutions? Each school then, and we may say, club or other similar organization, may profitably seek to provide not only an object-lesson in the forms of government, but actual practice in exercising the rights and duties of citizenship. Sporadic attempts in this direction have made their way from time to time to pubhc notice, coming generally from some college, like, for instance, the once far-famed Amherst plan, but it was not until the valuable lesson taught by the George Junior Republic, and by the 438 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION splendidly conceived idea of the school city, that the movement for actual participation in government came to be established on a substan- tial and permanent basis. It is to the school city in particular that your attention is invited, as being in many respects the best type of junior representative government for both schools and clubs, and as best illustrating our topic, " The Civic Idea in Work with Boys." Devised by Mr. Wilson L. Gill now living in Germantown, Pennsylvania, it has steadily made its way into hundreds of places in both hemispheres, and lately the Board of Edu- cation of Philadelphia has adopted it as an essential feature of school administration in that city, as indeed Cuba had done three years ago. Through the various departments and activities of this organization, the entire aim is to build up healthy civic ideals and to afford practice in carrying them out, and to effect this, the genius and resources both of pupils and faculty are taxed to the utmost. Summarizing, then, the underlying purposes of this politico-social educational organization, and noting that the educational principle involved throughout is, invariably, " learning by doing," we may say that it is admirably adapted — 1. To make boys and girls acquainted with the practical workings of the poHtical machinery of representative government. 2. To train them in the actual use of the ballot as a means for really modifying their environment, thus establishing their confidence in and respect for this instrument for recording the popular will. 3. To develop the idea of social service and responsibility, as well as to inculcate a lofty civic spirit. The theory of government and the complexity of administrative machinery cannot begin to be appreciated by our citizens unless they receive much practical training. Text-book study is astonishingly inade- quate. Come face to face with any phase of political or governmental procedure, and see if it is an easy matter to describe step by step the modus operandi of carrying it into execution. It is small wonder that a population so inadequately trained as ours can be easily duped or its will thwarted and its ballot rendered powerless by unscrupulous politi- cians. It is not remarkable, either, that with many people confidence in the value of the ballot has been weakened. But let a generation or two of our young people come up through a system where day after day they find that their ballots do amount to something, and are continually modifying their environment, and they will not be so likely to say, when they reach the age of twenty-one, and are called on to participate in the government of the nation, " What is the use of voting? We can do nothing. It is all cut and dried for us, and everything predetermined by bosses and manipulators before we can get into the voting-booth." THE BOY IN THE CITY A Country School and Camp for City Boys MR. EDWARD A. BENNER PRINCIPAL WELLESLEY SCHOOL FOR BOYS, WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS In offering the present paper I wish to be understood as giving the results of my own experience, and I do not desire to appear as an advo- cate of a special plan of an education which, under other conditions and in other hands, might fail to realize as much good as the present in- stance may seem to indicate. The Wellesley Camp was undertaken seven years ago, on Lake Wentworth, in New Hampshire, and is now permanently settled on the east shore of Ossipee Lake, in New Hampshire. Nowhere has nature a greater charm, nor anywhere are her features more inspiring than here where woods, a level expanse of water, the mountains and the plain, constitute the perfection of natural beauty and offer a per- manent inspiration and joy to the mind. The contrast of such scenes with the dungeon life of the city is very impressive upon the mind of a boy. He never saw before, it may be, so wide a sky. The Wellesley Camp has always required of the campers a certain amount of work. Life is reduced to simple elements. There we can- not press a button and have a machine do the rest. \Ye do not think it well to have an Ethiopian in a white suit wait upon the whims of the boys. Under tactful and inspiring men, boys love to work, and the instances are rare in which they do not submit to it willingly. The rooms must be swept, the verandas kept clear, the grounds pohced and improved, the wood cut and brought, water carried perhaps from the spring, vegetables prepared for the cook, tables waited upon, boats calked and painted, a flag-staff cut and trimmed. The Welles- ley campers do all these things, and they like it. In educating resourceful men, nothing has ever taken the place of the farm. We imitate it feebly in our sloyd schools, basketry, pyrog- raphy, arts and crafts devices; but it was nature and the farm that made the men. No system of heroic play like basket-ball or football can equally discipUne the spirit. Men and boys grow strong by the submission of the soul to difficult and sometimes hateful labor. A camp and a school, too, if possible should so instruct boys that they would feel it a point of honor to attack any kind of necessary work. Does anybody remember Xenophon's story of the Anabasis, and the 439 440 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION joyous leadership of the Young Pretender? There is in it a passage that is fine for every boy to dig out of the Greek by himself It is where Cyrus's wagons stuck in the mud. When he saw the troops working too leisurely to extricate them, he turned as in rage, and com- manded the proudest nobles about him to get the wagons out. Here, says Xenophon, was a chance to see discipline. Tearing off their splendid cloaks where each man stood, they hurled themselves in their rich garments down the incline as one would run for victory; and, leaping with their chains and bracelets into the mud, lifted and lugged the wagons out. That should be the spirit of our well-bom and high- bred American boys. In all discussions of the deterioration of American citizenship through the immigration of imdesirable foreigners, we are assured that our American ideals in education, business, and social life are able to assimilate and redeem this vast mass of strangers. Not Ameri- can ideals alone, but change of climate and soil and the necessity of adapting themselves to new conditions so that they may earn a living, produce such a mighty renewal in these foreigners who come to us. Change of scene in the limits of our own country has done the same for the sons and daughters of the East, who have made their homes in the middle or far West. Any family or race, kept for many genera- tions in the cradle of its origin, inevitably decUnes. Our own people are kept progressive and vital largely by the mingling of elements widely separated in locality and manners. A given brand of wheat or potatoes will yield satisfactory crops in a given locality for a series of years, and then the seed will run out. The same grain or tuber, transplanted to a different locality, will often produce beyond behef. The analogy is significant. Physicians employ the fact when they send sick people to California "for a change of air." But who rea- lizes that the same " change of air " may be of inestimable value to young persons during their period of growth ? The chief result of the change physically seemed to be a great in- crease of vitality. They seemed more aUve than when they came, abler to do things, more willing to attack a difficult labor. This im- provement was especially marked in the case of one or two delicate boys. One, for example, was so frail that his mother had hardly per- mitted him to draw a deep breath, lest some injury should result. He became so rugged that after a few weeks he was able to dance up and down the five-mile cUmb of Chocorua, ten miles in all, Hke a moun- tain goat. But the most significant result of this close contact with nature THE BOY IN THE CITY 441 is a moral one. The whole scheme seems to make the boys more serious and more m.anly. The appeal to justice and honor comes closer to them than it did before. To sit by a little camp-fire and view the immeasurable darkness around and above; to be within a forest where one might be lost; to see the spread of deep, engulfing water; to feel the vast solitude aroimd, all these make a boy feel his insignificance, and nothing is better for a boy. Especially is this true of the city boy, who is too apt to consider himself the model and cyno- sure of the world. The studies are arranged so that the afternoons can be given up to out-door occupation. Rowing or sailing with the masters, a great variety of excursions by boat or afoot, mountain-climbing, and occa- sional coaching trips, diversified by the various games on the play- ground, form the diversions of the boys. To build a camp-fire in a big stone oven, to cook potatoes in it, are among the supreme joys of boys 12 and 14 years old and under. The condition most favorable for study and for growth is the silence, and the absence of artificial distractions. In the wilderness of the great Ossipee there are no footlights and no kinematoscopes. The " elevated " no longer thunders its din into your ears, and the rare whistle of the locomotive is faint and far. No discord enters to mar the sweet sights and sounds of nature. The din and excitement of the city bear hard upon children, although they often appear to pass unnoticed by them. The excitements of city life are indurating to the intellect and the disposition. No child can steadily do his best when subjected to their influence, and positive injury is likely to result unless relief and pro- tection are afi'orded them. The simple Hfe is needed most of all by children to produce cahn- ness of nerve and poise of character. The decisions of the mind are clearer amid simple conditions. The greatest hope of city-bred chil- dren is to give them deep drafts of country Ufe; to engage their activi- ties in the labors incident to it, and to give them free scope and en- couragement in the observations and studies of nature. THE JUVENILE CITY LEAGUE OF NEW YORK MR. WILLIAM C. LANGDON PRATT INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK The Juvenile City League is an organization of street-boys in New York City with the purpose of training them toward a true attitude of citizenship. It does this by getting them to look out for such simple matters in connection with the city departments as are appropriate for boys living in a city; for example, keeping their streets clean; the removal of dead cats and dogs; the waste of water at the faucets in the tenement hallway sinks; miscellaneous spitting; the proper separa- tion and disposal of garbage, ashes, and rubbish. The work was started in June, 1903, in a district of the West Side of the borough of Manhattan (New York proper). It originated with Miss Catherine S. Leverich, chairman of the Committee on Streets of the Woman's Municipal League of New York. She has raised the money for the work, and in fact has personally contributed most of it herself. The speaker has been in charge of the work as its director, having the assistance, at various times, of from one to four workers in each of the league's four districts. Miss Leverich got her idea for the league from Colonel George E. Waring, who instituted clubs amongst the children of New York to interest and guide them in helping to keep the streets clean. The idea of the present league at the start was to revive these street-clean- ing clubs with the development of enlarging the scope of the work to include matters concerning other city departments, — the board of health, the department of tenement-houses, of water, of charities, as well as the department of street-cleaning. The question was. How can the boys of New York be brought to look at civic duties from the right point of view — that of doing them — and to feel that the city is a great home community and business firm, in which, when they reach the proper age, they will be partners; that, taken literally, they are to be members of the corporation of the city of New York. In answer, the Juvenile City League set itself to work out by experi- ment such a scheme of civic work for the boys of New York City as might be wholesome in character and adaptable to the varying con- ditions— local, financial, racial — of the different neighborhoods in all the five boroughs of Greater New York. The athletic life is the boy's normal state of existence. The proper 442 THE JUVENILE CITY LEAGUE OF NEW YORK 443 purpose of the league, therefore, is not to make of its members ab- sorbed little civic specialists, but to make the boy's natural athletic life develop into good citizenship. The league has spent much of its time and energy in athletics. Baseball, basket-ball, and boxing have predominated. For e.xample, last summer we had a regular baseball league organized, which played off a series of sixty-four games. Each team represented one block. Each block had to sign its players, and professional regulations were pretty closely adhered to. At first the games very much resembled a vigorous debating tournament, the subjects of discussion being the umpire's decisions, and of course every game ended in a free fight, " to prove it." But by the time the summer was half over, the umpire's decision, never mind how ob- jectionable, was never questioned, and even after the last, the cham- pionship game, there was no disturbance. The civic instruction is given principally, through a series of cards, which are issued to the members of the league about once in three weeks. The cards are 7 by 9 inches in size, of good lasting material, and have a hole near the top to hang them on the wall. The subjects so far treated are: 1. Keep your street clean. 2. Take care of your garbage. 3. Colonel George E. Waring. 4. Put only ashes in your ash-can. 5. Have gentlemanly manners. 6. Tie up rubbish in bundles. 7. Help clean away the snow. 8. Report dead animals for removal. These cards give a few simple directions as to what to do; then, under the word " Because," printed in large letters, brief reasons therefor, and finally, in smaller type, a paragraph of pertinent informa- tion on the subject; as, for example, in No. 2, what becomes of the garbage, how it is taken away and made into marketable products, or, in No. 4, how the ashes are taken to Riker's Island to make land for the city at a saving of probably $2,000 per acre. At the bottom of every card is the suggestion, " Keep this card carefully. Hang it up in your home." The third card in the series gives a short account of the life of Colonel Waring, with a portrait produced from " Street- Cleaning and Its Effects," by permission of Doubleday, Page, and Com- pany, and an estimate of his work quoted from an address by the present commissioner, John McGaw Woodbury. These cards are prepared with the assistance of the experts of the departments con- 444 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION cerned, and usually had the benefit of the criticism of the commis- sioner before being printed. The effort has been to make them as simple as possible, but absolutely correct. Distributed to the boys through their gang-leaders and club captains, these cards were valued by the boys and by their families, and they were kept. In certain specific instances we know of cards that have been kept in the homes for over a year, for over a year and a half. For example, when it was deemed advisable to have a reissue of some ear her card, frequently boys have come up and said, " I have that. I have Nos. i, 2, 3,. and 5. Can I get 4?" The effectiveness of the work is considerable. For example, take card No. i, " Keep your street clean," when first issued, the boys would keep their block quite immaculate for about two weeks — the average lifetime of their civic enthusiasm for one particular thing. Then it would be time to issue card No. 2. But there was almost always a decided general improvement, such that the foreman of the street-cleaning department would notice. The league is now concentrating its attention upon the establish- ment of work of this character permanently in the city's educational system. Private money can well work out the scheme and devise methods on a unit basis, but private money cannot of course carry such work on any scale sufficiently large to accomplish substantial results in the civic training of the boyhood of the city. How can this work be car- ried on in the pubhc schools? No argument is needed on the point that the board of education is the proper agency to carry on this work. It is pubhc work; it is educational work; the schools already have, in large measure, the working force and equipment for much of the work in their teachers and playgrounds and roof-gardens. None the less, to be practicable, to stand any chance of adoption, the scheme pre- sented to the board of education must be one which will not require any material change in the curriculum, will not add to the labors of the already over-worked teachers, and will not entail very much addi- tionaFexpense. FEDERATING CHURCH WORK FOR BOYS IN LARGE CITIES PROFESSOR EDWIN J. HOUSTON, Ph. D. PRESIDENT OF THE BOYS' BROTHERHOOD OF PHILADELPHIA; PRESIDENT OF THE PHILADELPHIA ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS Church work among boys will be greatly improved by its intelligent federation. This federation should not only begin in the Sunday school of each church, but should, I think, begin in each class of the Sunday school. Regarding the Sunday school of each church as a unit, this unit properly consists of a number of smaller units consisting of the separate classes. The best work to be accompHshed will depend to a great ex- tent upon the intelUgence and care that have been exercised in forming such classes. Instead of leaving the membership of each class a matter of chance, as is unfortunately too often done, the proper selection of its members should be regarded as a matter of the greatest importance. This selection should include the important question of age, mental ability and social position, this last consideration being handled del- icately. As far as possible, the members of a Sunday school class should be selected from the same type of boys. Of course, this will not always be possible, but it is at least advisable. The object of carefully selecting the members of each class is for the purpose of associating together in each class boys who will be as nearly as possible associated together during the week-days in their work, in their games, exercises, etc. In all classes where such a unit is established, the work of the Sunday school will go on much more smoothly, the attendance will be better, and the interest in the work will be greatly increased. The proper imits having been formed in the separate classes, an endeavor should then be made to federate the work of these classes in each Sunday school. Limiting my remarks now to the question of the boys' side of the school, I think it would be advisable, as far as possible, to establish such a federation of classes in the school as will permit some of the boys taking part in the management of the school, that is, forming its ofl&cers. After the work of federation in the Sunday school has been effected, the more important question arises of federating the boys' work imder- taken in each church throughout the city. This federation can either be denominational or interdenominational. So far as boys' work is 445 446 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION concerned, I think it will be found that the advantages will lie mainly on the side of some kind of interdenominational federation. All successful work for the betterment of the growing boy, whether undertaken by the church or by organization from outside the church, must necessarily be based on the boy's peculiarities or characteristics. I will refer only to some of the more important of these. 1. The boy must be provided with playmates or co-workers. Call them what you will, they are what the boy calls his crowd or gang. The boy is not a solitary individual, but likes crowds. These he will find; so that it is of prime importance, in the first place, to provide for him a safe crowd of playfellows. In all locaHties, especially in large cities, it is by no means an easy matter to provide unobjectionable playmates. It is unsafe, however, to leave such selection to the boys themselves. The best work for boys is that which carefully considers this need. 2. The boy likes to take part in any work that is undertaken on his behalf. The most successful work is that in which the boy him- self takes a large part. In such cases, however, the limitations of childhood must be carefully borne in mind. In other words, the work must be properly directed by adults, who constitute the court of final resort for all cases the boys themselves are unable properly to handle. 3. The greatest need of the growing boy is to afford him some opportunity for expending that wonderful excess of energy with which nature has supplied him, and which is absolutely necessary for his continued successful growth. As you all know, one of the best marked characteristics of the growing boy is his restless activity. He is fairly bubbling over with energy, too often misdirected, and generally thought- lessly expended. It is this characteristic of boyhood that makes the boy so undesirable a companion to all who fail to understand him. But I think it needs no argument to prove that the greatest part of what passes with many as the natural wickedness or innate depravity of boys is only the necessity that exists for the boy to indulge in what I have ventured to call " physiological explosions." Such explosions, or excessive expenditures of energy, are absolutely necessary for his proper growth, and so far from regarding them as evidences of total depravity, I hail them as among the best evidences of something of value in the boy; i. e., energy that requires only inteUigent direction. Now, for successful work among boys in the Sunday school, all of these peculiarities must be taken into account. This is the reason for carefully determining the membership of the separate classes, for federating the classes into a unit at the Sunday school, and subse- CHURCH WORK FOR BOYS IN LARGE CITIES 447 quently for federating the separate Sunday schools of the entire city into a larger unit, either in the form of a denominational or an inter- denominational union. But it is the work which must be carried on outside of the Sunday school, during the week-days, that it is most difficult for the Sunday school to provide, and this especially as regards the necessity for the boy to safely find a vent for his superfluous energy, ^\^lere the church has been properly provided with a parish house or other church build- ing equipped with a gymnasium, etc., the work can, to a certain extent, be carried on in such places. There are, however, certain serious objections that have been found to be invariably connected with work of this character. Some of the most important of these are as follows : 1. The necessity for separate gymnasium buildings for men and yoimg boys. Whatever advantages may exist from a theoretical stand- point in having one gymnasium where both adults and young boys can exercise, the experience of nearly every one, I believe, has shown that work under these conditions will not be successful. It is possible, and indeed advisable, to carry on such work for men and the older boys, say boys over seventeen or eighteen, but for boys between ten and seventeen, a necessity exists for separate buildings. 2. A lack of the crowd element, or of a sufficient number of play- fellows. Where a separate gymnasium or recreation house has been established in any Sunday school, much good work can be done among its boys. As a rule, however, such work, if limited to the boys immedi- ately connected with the Sunday School and church, will not be very successful, nor is the reason difficult to find. The element of the crowd will generally be lacking. There are very few Sunday schools that have a sufficient attendance to make such gymnasium attractive. 3. A lack of opportunities for competition. As soon as' a class of boys makes a certain advance in gymnastic work, a natural desire exists to compete with other classes of boys. For this purpose some kind of federation of the Sunday school associations must be made. 4. The lack of an athletic field or grounds where such games as baseball, football, cricket, etc., can be played. Our large cities are generally deficient in large playgrounds for the children and athletic fields for the boys. Even if such a field were provided for individual churches, the lack of the crowd element which could best be obtamed by federation would be a serious drawback to the work. But I would not limit the federation of the church work to the gymnastic side. There are other divisions of boys' work, such as find expression in the camping club, the debating club, the camera club, 448 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the glee club, etc., that equally require federation for their best re- sults. Let us inquire what has already been done in the direction of the federation of church work among the class of boys that attend Sunday schools. I believe the most important work that has been done in this direction can be divided into the following classes, — i.e.: 1. Denominational federation, including the Brotherhood of St. Andrew and the Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip. 2. The various Junior Christian Endeavor Societies of the differ- ent evangelical churches. 3. The various Junior Ep worth Leagues of the Methodist Epis- copal and other churches. 4. The Kjiights of St. Arthur of the different evangelical churches. 5. The companies of the Boys' Brigades of the different evangeh- cal churches. 6. The Total Abstinence Beneficial Associations of the Roman Catholic churches. 7. The Boys' Department of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion. I do not think that any marked federation has been as yet ac- complished in this work, and I believe that such federation would be a great improvement. 8. The Boys' Brotherhood of Philadelphia, that is now in opera- tion in some form or other in different parts of this country. I believe, however, that the work of all these organizations would be greatly improved if it were brought into closer contact with the church, so as to permit, in the carrying on of the work, its direction by some representative of the different churches represented in the mem- bership. THE BROOKLYN CHURCH ATHLETIC LEAGUE GEORGE J. FISHER, M. D. PHYSICAL DIRECTOR CENTRAL YOUNG MEn's CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK The great question iii the Sunday school seems to be, "' How can we keep these boys interested?" In order to be effective in boys' work, the Sunday school must reach him during the week. If it can have something to do with his games, in which he is tremendously enthusiastic, it will put the church in a right relation with the boy, and he will become interested in church work. The Sunday school should not be, as some one has said, " a society for sitting still," for boys were not made to sit still. They have their energy to expend, and are bound to use it either for good or evil. Boys' clubs and societies have been formed by the churches to guide this energy in the right direction, and while some of these have been successful, others have fallen short of what they felt they should have accomphshed. Why? Because the men behind the movement, as a rule, have not had the experience. It was from no fault of theirs, for they had not had the opportunity to derive the necessary knowledge. The churches in Brooklyn that had felt the need of assistance ap- pealed to the Young Men's Christian Association, from time to time, to furnish trained men to take charge of gymnastic and calisthenic classes. This demand grew so great, that it was thought wise to form an organization that would bind all of the Sunday schools together for their mutual benefit. The superintendents were called in conference to map out a plan whereby their needs could best be met, and the outcome of this conference was the organization of the Sunday School Athletic League of Brooklyn. To quote from the constitution: "The object of the league shall be: I. To work for the betterment and the enlargement of the Sun- day schools in Brooklyn, by developing character through athletic contests, and by making Sunday school attendance a condition of membership. 2. To maintain a high standard of honesty, courtesy, and manliness in athletic sports. 3. To establish scientific physical training in the Sunday schools. 4. To secure and maintain a genuine amateur basis in Sunday school sport. 5. To institute, regulate, and govern inter-Sunday school gymnastic and athletic meets. 449 450 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The league had for its organizer Dr. George J. Fisher, physical director of the Central Branch of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion of Brooklyn, a man peculiarly adapted, through his experience with boys and gymnasium work, to pilot such an organization. It has been through his knowledge and untiring work that the organiza- tion has been brought to the position that it now holds, and all credit is due to his enthusiasm. The first step was the formation of various sections, representing the different phases of athletic sports and superintended by specialists. For illustration, the league has sections on caUsthenics and gymnas- tics, bowling, basket-ball, baseball, aquatics, track and field sports. Each of these is under the charge of a committee composed of men who are experts on the subject. The gymnastic committee has formulated a set of cahsthenic and dumb-bell drill exercises for use of the Sunday schools, so that all will be working on identical lines. This same committee has provided a set of standard tests for each group of boys between certain ages, as follows : Boys — 12 to 14 years of age 70 yards potato race 25 seconds Pull-up 6 times Broad jump 5 feet 6 inches Juniors — 14 to 16 years 120 yards potato race 40 seconds Pull-up 8 times Running high jump 3 feet 10 inches Intermediate — 16 to 18 years Quarter-mile patoto race 2 minutes 22 seconds Pull-up 10 times Running high jump 4 feet 2 inches Dip 7 times Every boy passing these tests, that are made at a stated time, re- ceives a bronze button with the insignia of the league embossed upon it. Before being allowed to compete in any meet, the scholar must first file a statement with the secretary that he is an amateur. His regis- tration blank must be indorsed by the pastor and superintendent of the Sunday School affirming regular membership and attendance at school for four consecutive Sundays before registration is applied for. A certificate from a physician is also required, stating that the applicant is physically able to engage in competition. If a scholar desires to THE BROOKLYN CHURCH ATHLETIC LEAGUE 451 change schools, he cannot represent the school he has last entered, without first obtaining a written release from his former superintendent. VVe have supplied officers for the local athletic meets, have organized basket-ball and bowling tournaments and have furnished twelve men to various Sunday schools as teachers of gymnastics and managers of boys' clubs. Some of these are paid, some have no remuneration. It has been found that a large number who had already drifted from the Sunday school have now returned to resume their membership, so that they may be entitled to the privilege of the athletic league. The form of registration has enabled the league to carry on all the athletic work on a clean sport basis. Discussion MR. E. STAGG WHITIN SPEYER SCHOOL SETTLEMENT, NEW YORK CITY Let me outline, in a word, the evolution of the tendency which has brought about our boy problem. Here in the birth place of free- dom and the schools, I need not emphasize the early growth of either, save to note that both went hand in hand until the great industrial development. By leaps and bounds our nation has strode into the industrial arena, our education has followed fast, yet not hand in hand , as it should have done. To-day, educators, as well as social workers, admit that there is a lack of harmony. In the old Puritan days, the education, which, in the old country, had been given to but a few, was given the many, and it served well our democratic purpose. But under the complex condition of to-day, this type of education, developed even as much as it has been, has proved inadequate. For some years now, we have been blind to this truth, and have sought to correct the evils resulting from this lack of harmony, instead of correct- ing our education. We have sought to establish, not for the criminal, but for the normal healthy American boy, corrective organizations to correct what education should have prevented. By degrees, these corrective forces — Boys' Clubs, Settlements, Young Men's Christian Associations, etc., which have sought to supplement the home, the school, and the church, have gradually been changing, and in all of them, whatever their policy may be, the final justification of their existence is that they are educational. Along with this change of our corrective work to more preventive and educational lines has come the newer social philosophy into the school itself, and this is gradually, tending, by slow degrees, to modify the spirit and the work of the school to meet the needs that we workers with boys are pointing out. 452 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION So it is that what this new education, is bringing about in the schools is of vital interest to those of us who are engaged in these kindred fields. The newer aim of education, that of adopting the child to his social environment, together with that theory of interest which the boy worker has used, and which the pedagogue now is just working out — these two principles have tended to make a radical change in education. The need to-day is the appUcation of these theories to the practice in our schools. A good many attempts have been made, and the crude results can be seen. These theories were behind John Dewey in his work at Chicago, and are the justification for the school extension as we see it in our great cities to-day. But as yet it is only by the quiet movement, guided by investigation, which is being carried on by the universities and normal schools, that the gradual school expansion is coming about. At Speyer School we are in the throes of it. We are commencing, with the child as a imit, to study through psychology the needs of his inner nature, and through sociological methods we are obtain- ing a correct appreciation of his social environments and needs. This study tends to point out a need for a more social organization of the class, limited, maybe, to the definite neighborhood, under a teacher, who is a neighborhood visitor, and with an atmosphere of freedom and spontaneity in the method of recitation which develops the power to reason and to do. An entirely new idea of what study should be is coming into our school classes. With the emphasis on this social value of study comes the need of not only many eliminations in the elementary school curriculum, but also some additions and many changes. The study of the environment and neighborhood conditions of the respective schools will lead to more definite functioning of this work. Even the equipment of the schoolroom is brought into question, and the old desks which the university, the trade school, and the normal school have long since discarded are destined to take their leave. Not only are our schoolrooms warmed by pictures and flower-boxes, but an air of cheer and brightness is given them by the covering of blackboards and the use of a few draperies. Education in its restricted sense has for some time grappled with the problem of the boy imder fourteen years of age out of school hours. It naturally will control his work in school, and in the afternoon club of which he is a member. The thoughtful teacher, in the newer type of school, can solve the problem of the boy of this age equally well with ourselves. But in dealing with the boy beyond the fourteenth year, if we omit the very few and abnormally bright boys who go to high school, the pedagogue has little experience. What is to be done for THE BROOKLYN CHURCH ATHLETIC LEAGUE 453 the working boy between fourteen and twenty-one? What can the elementary school do in preparing him for that time ? What can the evening club and recreation center do to further develop him so that he may meet the needs of his social environment? These questions can only be answered by a clear statement of the principles that under- lie our work. TEN YEARS OF WORK WITH BOYS: A RETROSPECT AND A FORECAST REV. WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, Ph. D. NEW YORK CITY, FOUNDER OF THE ALLIANCE It used to be customary to reckon the fundamental agencies of edu- cation as three; namely, the home, the school, and the church. We now count four. The fourth is society. Human nature, and especially child nature, ought to be educated, not only individually, but also socially, and is to be educated not only by society, but for society. During the ten years of the Hfe of our Alliance, this conviction has had its most rapid growth, especially as the conviction applies to boy- hood; and therefore, instead of relating merely the uneventful annals of our Alliance, I will devote this brief commemorative paper to an out- line of ten years' development of social work with boys. The earHest form of social work with boys in the country, except in reformatories and orphanages, seems to have been the so-called " mass clubs " for street-boys. Of these the oldest is the Salem Fra- ternity, opened in 1869. These clubs rapidly increased for a time under the leadership of the Alliance of Christian Workers, but when that went to pieces, they gradually fell away for lack of supervision and trained workers. During the last ten years their growth has been more gradual, but more healthy. There are now about 80 of them, enrolling probably about 25,000 street-boys. They were once little more than warm meeting-places and game-rooms, presided over by " moral policemen," but many of them now have classes, gymnasia, and small group clubs, and resemble the Y. M. C. A. in method, save that they include no direct rehgious teaching, and they reach a much more needy class, especially of aliens, Roman Catholics and Jews. Their fatal defect up to this time has been that, unlike the Y. M. C. A., not having any provision for young men, they have been obliged to return their members at the most critical period of life to the streets. These street-boys' clubs are still sorely in need of fellowship and supervision. Owning, as yet, little but personal property, they are easily overthrown when their salaried leader is removed. Three pos- sibiUties seem open to them. The International Committee of the Y. M. C. A. might take them on as a special branch of their work, without obliging them to adopt all the Y. M. C. A. principles. Local clubs might be conducted under the supervision of the school authori- 454 TEN YEARS OF WORK WITH BOYS 455 ties as an extension of the educational system, or, what seem just now the more hkely result, a committee analogous to that which directs the Y. M. C. A. will be formed to direct these clubs. Next in order of time to the mass clubs were clubs connected with social settlements, churches, or private philanthropy, which, because they work with smaller numbers in more intimate relations, are often called group clubs. Those in settlements are very numerous, and closely resemble each other. They are drawn entirely from the neighborhood ; they usually are attempts to reproduce or to organize some sort of a natural " gang"; their occupations are more educational than those of the mass clubs ; and they usually connect closely with the settlement gymnasium, classes, and camp. These clubs do not reach so needy a class as the mass clubs do, because the street-boy is wary of cultured people and small parlors, but they do a more thorough work than is possible in the other sort. These two kinds of clubs used to feel little sympathy or respect for each other, but recently the mass clubs are seeking to multiply their groups and the group clubs to secure in some large room, especially for prospective recruits, something of the esprit de corps of the larger assemblage. The churches have recently become very much awake to the pos- sibilities of group club work. Ten years ago the Christian Endeavor Society, a magnificient organization, profoundly religious in purpose, and predominantly feminine in membership, was the only social cen- ter for youth. But now the Boys' Brigade has had its growth and partial decline, the Knights of King Arthur is increasing in strength, and equipments for manual training, gymnastic work, and free play are multiplied, while from the Christian Endeavor Society and the Sunday school as direct offshoots little social groups of varying methods are being organized in great numbers, whose life and soul is that most precious power, the affection and patient care of some devoted adult leader. The settlement clubs usually have a local ath- letic league. The church clubs are beginning to follow their exam- ple. The boys' work in the Y. M. C. A. is the most finely organized. Its growth is entirely recent. Some 300 associations report a work for boys, and they reach over 100,000 individuals. The Association has both the mass and the group happily united, a great variety of methods of approach, usually a good equipment and a trained leader, contact with boys both indoors and out, winter and summer, and all united by a holy purpose for character. The Association leaders have been so prompt to see the dignity and importance of this work that 4S6 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION it has already outgrown its immaturities and many of its faults. It has, as has no other organization, employed the imselfish moral endeav- ors of boys for each other's good. It has also begun a wise effort to affiliate with itself organizations outside its own buildings, such as church clubs, athletic clubs, and even street gangs. This endeavor is most praiseworthy and hopeful, for economizing instrumentalities and covering the local field. There is much to be accomplished in this direction. In small cities I believe the Association is still often the active rival of the churches, depleting many churches of groups of boys who could be more thoroughly and intimately governed by pas- tors or church workers and offering some opportunities, especially re- ligious, which the churches should be forced to maintain. In such communities the function of the Association is, I insist,, to supple- ment the churches, not to displace them, in work with boys. On the other hand, in the work of formal religious instruction in classes, by manual and other modem methods, the Association is aheady setting a stimulating and provocative example in Bible-study for boys to the church schools. The two special types of boys which our programme to-day discusses are touched but not entirely reached by any methods yet described. The problem of the city boy is yet unsolved. The Y. M. C. A. hardly touches any class below that of the schoolboy and the working-boy. There is danger that the mass club is, by its very increasing worth, draw- ing apart from the street arab and the alien. The municipal boys' clubs and play centers, connected with our schools in our largest cities, are the new, most hopeful, and most inclusive agency. The sHght tendencies which they already show to feel political influence and to stand for low athletic ideas, we are sanguine to believe, are local and temporary. Other agencies are also at work. The glorious play- ground movement, newsboys' leagues, and brass bands, the crusades against child labor and the tenement, school examination and care of defectives and degenerates, and the placing-out agencies for sending boys to the country, are all preventive means of untold value. The juvenile court and the probation system, the state school and the state farm in place of the reformatory and jail, these are excellent agencies for reform after the first downward step has been taken. But so much remains to be done. Knowledge is coming to us of the actual conditions of newsboys' lives in our great cities and of a few un- selfish endeavors that have been made to get down into " the gang " and win it, not into a settlement or church, whither it would not go, but by humanizing it and lifting it up even in its own haunts. These TEN YEARS OF WORK WITH BOYS 457 facts indicate a kind of work demanding sacrificing energy such as neither settlement nor church can often command. The problem of the country boy is equally urgent. Unless he is helped, the springs of the nation's life will be fouled. To summarize a wise personal letter from Prof. D. C. Wells of Dartmouth, who has studied and wrought at this problem: there are not enough such boys together to generate any heat; they are so well known that they shrink from entering any club that has a recognized moralizing purpose; they do not care much for skilled craftsmanship, preferring to " chance it " in life; and the number of institutions that can reach them or of individuals who want to is small. The school cannot. The church might, but will it? Some kind of a " village house," with a hearty social life and a workshop linked to some local industry, seems to be indicated as a need in every small community in America. One other class of boys remains to be mentioned, and that one which is increasing in numbers. I refer to sons of wealthy parents. I suppose it would be sufl5cient to arouse sympathy in any crusade in their behalf, and yet no one who has any genuine Americanism can deny that one is needed. The tendencies of the rich boy's life are all towards isolation, contempt for poverty and toil, and a conception of himself as the depositary of a fortune and of an unhampered chance to know the. world, the flesh, and the devil. The only cure for this, as for every sort of boy, is to catch him young. Some of this class are in Sunday schools and can be brought to know other classes of boys before they get to be snobs. Some of them are getting a pretty good idea of fellowship in schools like Groton and St. Mark's, and at the school camps in New Hampshire. A few of them succeed in learn- ing the joy of helping the other fellow when they get to manhood. THE THIRD CONVENTION PROCEEDINGS THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION Boston, Massachusetts, February 12-16, 1905 opening service Sunday, February 12th, at 7:30 p. m., " A Meeting of Devotion, Spiritual Fellowship, and Inspiration, " preparatory to the work of the Convention, was held in the Old South Church, Copley Square. Pro- fessor Francis G. Peabody, D. D., of Harvard University, First Vice- President of the Association, presided. Addresses were made by Mr. L. Wilbur Messer, General Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, Chicago, 111.; Rt. Rev. William Lawrence, D. D., S. T. D., Bishop of the Protestant Espiscopal diocese of Massachusetts; Professor George A. Coe, Ph. D., Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois; and Professor Edward C. Moore, D. D., Harvard University. RECEPTIONS On the morning of February 13th, a reception was given at Welles- ley College to the association. After a gracious welcome by President Caroline Hazard, Litt. D., a devotional service was held in the college chapel, conducted by President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D.. followed by visits to buildings and a luncheon. In the afternoon at three o'clock, the Association was welcomed by Harvard University, in Sanders Theatre, with greetings by the acting president of the University, in the absence of President Eliot, and by Professor Francis G. Peabody, D. D., to which fitting response was made by President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D. After stereopticon views illustrating the development of the University buildings had been described by Professor Peabody, the guests, under the escort of stu- dents of the University, visited as many of the buildings as possible. A reception was given by the ladies of the University Faculty at the Phillips Brooks House. In the evening at 8 o'clock, an official reception was given to the Association in the historic Faneuil Hall, under the auspices of the entertainment committee of the Boston Committee of Arrangements. Hon. E. H. Haskell, chairman of the sub-committee, introduced Hon. John D. Long, Ex-Governor of Massachusetts, as the presiding officer of the evening. After felicitous greetings, he introduced Lieutenant- Governor Curtis Guild, of Massachusetts; William E. Huntingdon, 461 462 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION D. D., President of Boston University; Rt. Rev. William Lawrence, D. D., S. T. D., Bishop of the Protestant Espiscopal diocese of Mas- sachusetts; and Rev. P. S. Henson, D. D., pastor of the Tremont Temple Baptist Church, who made addresses of hearty welcome. Appropiate response was made for the Association by President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D. These exercises were followed by an informal reception, during which the members of the Association had the privi- lege of meeting personally the honored guests of the occasion, who, in addition to those named above, were Rabbi Charles Fleischer, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, President Henry S. Pritchett, Ph. D., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; President Caroline Hazard, Lit. D., of Wellesley College; Miss Sarah L. Arnold, Dean of Sim- mons College; Hon. Samuel B. Capen, Hon. Robert Treat Paine, and Rev. Francis E. Clark, D. D., President of the United Societies of Christian Endeavor. CONSECRATION SERVICE Tuesday, at 4 p. m., in the Park Street Church, the Association as- sembled for a Meeting of Spiritual Worship and Consecration, prepara- tory to the General Sessions of the Convention. Professor Edward C. Moore, D. D., of Harvard University, presided. Prayers for di- vine blessing upon the Convention were led by Bishop William Eraser McDowell, President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D., Rev. J. T. Beckley, D. D., President W. H. P. Faimce, and Professor Francis G. Peabody, D. D. The choir of Wellesley College assisted in the services. THE THEME OF THE CONVENTION The programme of the Convention was carefully constructed upon the general theme, " The Aims of Religious Education." The general sessions were five in number, including a joint session of Departments, on Wednesday morning, and the business session on Thursday morning. THE FIRST GENERAL SESSION OF THE CONVENTION Was held in Converse Hall, Tremont Temple, Tuesday, at 7:30 p. m. After devotional services conducted by Rev. Rockwell Harmon Potter, pastor First Church of Christ, Hartford, Connecticut, an address of welcome was made by Mr. Albert E. Winship, Litt. D., editor the Journal 0/ Education, chairman of the Boston Committee of Arrange- ments. THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 463 ADDRESS OF WELCOME ALBERT E. WINSHIP, Lit. D. EDITOR THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION; CHAIRMAN OF THE BOSTON COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS Mr. President and other Guests, — It is impossible to speak our ap- preciation of our guests or our pleasure as host in six minutes, nor could any one, least of all the chairman of a committee of seventy do the the occasion justice in limitless time. In order to escape such respon- sibility, I had Sunday evening and the whole of Monday set apart for a series of suggestions of our welcome. Our largest and most historic church — the Old South — furnished appropriate introduc- tion ; at Wellesley College, modern Christian scholasticism found ex- pression; at Harvard, the oldest educational institution, the highest scholarship of the day acknowledged the honor of your presence; and in the evening, at Faneuil Hall — Liberty's shrine — we turned loose an array of dignitaries who could not be trusted with a six-minute limitation. It is left for the chairman merely to express an official welcome. It is unfortunate for us that you were born in February. We really do not keep open house in this month. Ordinarily, we are " not at home." Our weather is not on exhibition, our seaside resorts and mountain houses are closed, you have done your Christmas shopping, and even our bargain-counters have been closed. We recognize, how- ever, the appropriateness of your birthday season, as February's one distinction is her glorious galaxy of birthdays, with such names as Washington and Lincoln, Longfellow and Lowell, St. Valentine and Votaw. I fully appreciate that it is ours to act, yours to speak; ours to serve, yours to command. We shall be busy doing, that you may have free- dom in talking. Our only ambition is to honor the traditions of our fathers as host. For two centuries, threescore and ten years. Religion and Education have walked hand in hand in Boston. In this we have pride, as being the Jerusalem of the New World ; and with no little chagrin did we see this child of the new century born in the cattle mart of the West; but wise men went from the East with their ofifering of faith, hope, and charity, — and the greatest of these was charity. W^ith unfeigned pride we now see this child placed in the cradle of liberty. We cannot welcome you, your religion, or your education, you have a more noble welcome from worthier lives ; for this is not the city of these 464 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION men and women who serve tables, but it is the city of Cotton Mather and PhilHps Brooks, of Sam Adams and Charles Sumner, of Horace Mann and Julia Ward Howe. Theirs is the welcome. It may not be out of place to suggest that we will welcome all the religion that you think Chicago and New York can spare, and that you are welcome to all the education you can extract from our traditions. We know that we are enriched by your coming and will be saddened by your going. We hope you will be comfortable while you stay and that your memories of Boston will be pleasant. We 've no "Welcome" when you come, We've no " Farewell" when you go; For you came not when you came, And you go not when you go. A Welcome ne'er we '11 give you, And Farewell we '11 never say; In our hearts you 're always with us, Always will be, every day. Response on behalf of the Association was made by Clifford W. Barnes, M. A., General Secretary. The President's Annual Address was delivered by President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D. The subject for the first general session, " How can We Bring the Individual into Conscious Relation with God ?" was discussed in three addresses, — on " The Direct Influence of God upon One's Life," by Rev. William F. McDowell, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Chicago, Illinois; on " The Bible as an Aid to Self-discovery," by President Henry Churchill King, D. D., Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio; and on " The Church as a Factor in Per- sonal Religious Development," by Rt. Rev. William Lawrence, D. D., S. T. D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Massachu- setts. The session was closed with prayer by Rev. John Coleman Adams, D. D., pastor Universalist Church, Hartford, Connecticut. THE JOINT SESSION OF DEPARTMENTS Wednesday, 10 a. m. The Convention met in the Park Street Church. Devotional services were conducted by Rev. Samuel A. Eliot, D.D., president American Unitarian Association, Boston, Massachusetts. Rev. William C. Bitting, D. D., pastor Mount Morris Baptist Church, New York City, and William J. Parker, assistant general secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, Chicago, Illinois, were elected secretaries of the Convention. THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 465 President Charles Cuthert Hall, D. D., appointed, with the con- firmation of the Convention, the committees: On Enrollment: Chairman, Mr. Appleton P. Williams. On Nominations: Chairman, Mr. Loring W. Messer. On Resolutions: Chairman, President Henry Churchill King. Rules for the Convention were adopted as follows: " The principal addresses at the evening sessions shall be limited to twenty minutes each. Speeches in the formal discussion shall be limited to eight minutes each. Addresses in the Joint Session of Depart- ments shall be limited to twelve minutes each. The speaker in each case shall be notified by a stroke of the bell when he enters upon the last minute of his time; and by a double stroke of the bell when the last minute is completed. The time of any speaker shall not be extended. "Addresses by members from the floor, in the Joint Session of Departments, shall be limited to three minutes each. Members desiring to participate in the discussion shall send their cards by the ushers to the presiding officer, who will call on as many as the time of the session permits." The President announced the serious illness of President William R. Harper, LL. D., of the University of Chicago, Illinois; Professor George W. Pease, Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy, Hartford, Con- necticut; and Rt. Rev. John L. Spalding, Bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Peoria, who had been expected to participate in the Convention. After united prayer in their behalf, led by Professor George A. Coe, Ph. D., Northwestern University, Chicago, lUinois, it was voted that, with President Hall, Rev. Endicott Peabody, D. D., head master Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts; Chancellor James H. Kirkland, Ph. D., LL. D., Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee; and President William De Wilt Hyde, D. D., LL. D., Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, be appointed a committee to ex- press to these sufferers the sympathies of the Convention." The topic for the Joint Session of the Departments, " The Place of Formal Instruction in Religious and Moral Instruction," was discussed in addresses on " The Home," by President G. Stanley Hall, Ph. D., LL.D., Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts; " The Sunday School," by Rev. Everett D. Burr, D. D., pastor First Baptist Church, Newton Center, Massachusetts; "The Young Men's Christian Associa- tion," by Professor George Albert Coe, Ph. D., Northwestern Unversity, Chicago, Illinois; " The Pubhc School," by Mr. George H. Martin, secretary of the Board of Education, Boston, Massachusetts; " The Preparatory School," by Rev. Endicott Peabody, D. D., head master Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts; and " The College," by Presi- 466 ■ THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION dent George Harris, D. D., LL. D., Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts. The joint session then gave place to a special session of the Department of Correspondence Instruction, at which an address was made by President Frank W. Gunsaulus, D. D., Armour Institute of Technology, Chicago, IlUnois, on " The Place and Possibilities of Correspondence Instruction in Religious Education." The session was closed with prayer by Rev. E. F. Merriam, D. D., editor The Watchman, Boston, Massachusetts. THE SECOND GENERAL SESSION OF THE CONVENTION Wednesday evening, 7 :3o o'clock, the Convention assembled in Con- verse Hall, Tremont Temple. Devotional services were conducted by Professor Herbert L. Willett, Ph. D., the University of Chicago, Illinois. The subject for the evening, "How can We Develop in the Individual a Social Conscience ?" was discussed in three addresses, — on " Literature as an Expression of Social Ideals," by Professor Arthur S. Hoyt, D. D., Auburn Theological Seminary, Auburn, New York; on "Science as a Teacher of Morality," by Professor John M. Coulter, Ph. D., the University of Chicago, Illinois ; and on " The Ethical Education of Public Opinion, " by President Henry S. Pritchett, Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts. The general subject was further discussed by Professor Henry S. Nash, D. D., Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Professor William E. B. Du Bois, Ph. D., Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia; and Rev. Samuel M. Crothers, D. D., minister of the First Parish, Cambridge, Massa- chusetts. A pleasant experience was the presence on the platform of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who was introduced to the audience by President Hall. The entire audience rose to greet the distinquished guest. After a few words of encouragement to the Association, Mrs. Howe, by request, repeated her "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The session closed with prayer by Rev. Charles F. Rice, D. D., pastor Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church, Springfield, Massachusetts. ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION The Association met for its annual business session in the Park Street Church, Thursday morning, 10 o'clock, with President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D., in the chair. Devotional services were conducted by Rev. Albert E. Dunning, D. D., editor The Congregationalist, Boston, Massachusetts. The Directors having recommended certain amendments to the THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 467 Constitution, the Chair appointed as a committee to formulate such amendments, Messrs. Sanders, Coe, and Bitting. The minutes of the Second Convention of the Association, Philadel- phia, March 2-4, 1904, were presented by the Recording Secretary of the Association, Professor George A. Coe, Ph. D., and approved as printed in the Proceedings of that Convention. Clifford W. Barnes, Ph. D., General Secretary, presented the follow- ing Annual Report, which was accepted and ordered placed on file: THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE GENERAL SECRETARY In giving the report of the General Secretary for the year which has just come to a close, I must beg your indulgence if more is said concern- ing the work which is planned than of that which has been accomplished. To summarize briefly, the Association may be said during the past twelve months, to have: First. Completed its organization. A movement so wide in its scope and so varied in its activities could not be properly officered, much less gain momentum, short of the two years which have marked the life of this Association. And when one carefully scans the 250 names which make up its official list, and realizes the particular fitness of each man for his special task, he can but feel that this in itself is a remarkable achievement. Second. Developed some of its departments. We would mention especially those of the Home, Religious Art, and Music, Young Men's Christian Association and Libraries. These departments have kept in touch with the Association headquarters, their ofiicers have met in consultation, they have made investigations along their respective lines, and expect to publish very soon some valuable monographs. Third. Established guilds. These local organizations of the Religious Education Association have now been formed in six places, and include a total membership of over four hundred and sixty. Active members of a guild are members in full standing of the Religious Edu- cation Association, joining in the regular manner, but paying their enrollment fee of one dollar directly to the guild. Nothing in the past year's experience has been more encouraging than the zeal with which Christian workers of all denominations have united in these local- organizations, undertaking serious study in Old and New Testament Literature, in Teacher-training, in Religious Art and Music, in the betterment of home instruction, in establishing traveling libraries, and in a general agitation for better and more pervasive religious and moral education. Turning now to the future, I take pleasure in presenting for your approval the following policy, which has just been adopted by the Board of Directors for the coming year. I . Leasing new and enlarged quarters for the Executive Office. With the growth in Association membership, and the consequent increase in detail work, the space occupied at 153 La Salle Street is proving too 468 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION small, and larger and better rooms are needed. The Executive OflSice is therefore to be moved on the ist of May to the new First National Bank Building, perhaps the handsomest structure of its kind in the world, and certainly for our work the best located in Chicago. 2. Installing a complete and permanent exhibit, in connection with the Executive OflSce, of all literature, charts, Sunday school lesson helps, and other material which bear directly upon moral and religious education. It is planned to have this matter so skillfully arranged and so well selected that the oflScer in charge shall be able to answer any query concerning the best thing produced (or the finest work done) in any of the various lines in which the Association is interested. As rapidly as new material comes to hand, the purpose is to bring it to the attention of the respective departments to which it properly belongs, and obtain the judgment of the department as to its merit. 3. Carry on the editorial work of the Association at the Executive Office, and make the Official Bulletin the voice of the Association and of its various departments in commending whatever movement, method, or teaching seems worthy of publicity and support. The tools will be at hand in the material constantly received, in the wise and careful judgments rendered by the departments, and possibly in an editorial staff of able critics representing several denominations and recognized for their standing and fairness. It is planned to issue at least six num- bers of the Bulletin each year, to have original productions from some of the departments in each number, and, with the critical reviews pre- sented, to thus furnish our members with a magazine of unique character and great value. 4. Choose from among the departments two or three whose work is of most immediate importance, assist them in preparing a practical scheme of operation, and then, standing behind with the full strength of the Association, endeavor to achieve some definite results. 5. Hold twenty conferences under the auspices of the Religious Education Association in as many large centers, covering the middle section of our country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. These con- ferences need not occupy more than an afternoon and evening, but in that time two great interdenominational meetings can be held, five or six strong addresses can be given, and a community sentiment in favor of moral and religious education can be thoroughly aroused. It is planned to conclude these conferences with the organization of a guild, which shall be the local representative of the Religious Education Association, and, in addition to its other work, shall arrange each year for a general gathering of the kind described. 6. Prosecute a vigorous canvass for new members. Through these conferences and the interest which they are expected to kindle, through the Ofi&cial Bulletin and the influence which it ought to exert through the quickened activity of every department, and last, but not least, through the actual accomplishment of some work that will strongly appeal to the people, through all these agencies and through the loyal endeavor of each of you, we hope to speedily raise the membership of this Association from two thousand to five thousand. And this increase THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 469 in members is most desirable, not merely nor chiefly because it will help the Association financially, but because it will magnify, by each new member, the Association's opportunity for good, and will vastly strengthen its authority when it speaks for reform. 7. And finally, obtain subscriptions to the amount of $20,000, with which to carry on this aggressive campaign. The membership dues are so small, and the cost of our literature alone is so great, that it is impossible to make this work pay for itself. We are well aware of the fact that colleges and universities, unless supported by the state, require for their maintenance large endowments and generous sub- scriptions. In a sense, this Association is an educational institution, drawing its students from forty-eight states and territories, six British provinces, and nine foreign countries, numbering in its faculty two hundred and fifty of the leading educators of America, claiming alliance with thirty-nine of the leading churches and denominations of the world, and exerting an influence for the moral and religious betterment of humanity which only God in his wisdom can measure. Never did greatness of opportunity and largeness of public service make a stronger demand for generous support, and we hope the day is not far distant when some wise and liberal citizen shall place this great movement on the firm foundation which a strong endowment provides. Professor C. W. Votaw, Ph. D., Editorial Secretary, presented the following Annual Report, which was accepted and ordered placed on file: THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE EDITORIAL SECRETARY The work of the Editorial Secretary during the past year, the second year in the history of the Association, has nearly doubled in comparison with that of the first year. During the first year 560 pages of material were edited and published by the Editorial Secretary. During this second year, which has just closed, the amount was 1,010 pages of litera- ture. It was to be expected that such an increase of the publication work of the Association should take place, and the amount would have been trebled rather than doubled had the resources of the Association been as large as we could have wished, and had we not had to undergo a change of General Secretaries. The specific publications of the Association may be enumerated. 1. The first publication of the fiscal year was the Ofiicial Bulletin No. 3, a forty-eight-page pamphlet, issued May i, 1904. Twenty thousand copies of this Bulletin were printed, sent to members, and otherwise carefully distributed during the year. 2. The second publication was the volume of Proceedings of the Philadelphia Convention, issued September 10, 1904. The edition of the Proceedings this year was 3,000 copies, and the pages were pre- served in electrotype for use in a second edition when it is called for. The cost of printing the volume was $2,423.13. 470 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 3. The policy outlined in the report of the Editorial Secretary a year ago to issue in separate pamphlet form the addresses given in a particular department, was followed this year in the department of Religious Art and Music, and of Christian Associations. Five hun- dred copies of each set of papers were provided for the special use of the department, and at the expense of the executive committees of these departments. The papers of other departments would have been similarly issued in separate form had it been possible to arrange for the necessary expense. 4. Official Bulletin No. 4, a pamphlet of twenty pages, was issued September i, 1904, 2,500 copies being printed. 5. A four-page circular, descriptive of the contents of the first and second annual volumes of Proceedings. 6. A general circular, of eight pages containing the simplest facts ■concerning the Association, for wide use in making known the history and ideas of our movement. Twenty thousand copies of this eight-page circular have been printed. 7. The list of officers and members contained in the closing ninety pages of the volume of Proceedings was separately printed in pamphlet form for the general use of the Executive Office. One thousand copies of this reprint have been used. 8. Official Bulletin No. 5, a pamphlet of 40 pages, was issued Jan- uary 15, 1905. 9. The preliminary programme of the Boston Convention, a thirty-two-page pamphlet. 10. A circular of twelve pages has just been prepared for use at this Convention, and, subsequently, with reference to the Local Guilds. 11. The final programme for this Convention, a pamphlet of thirty-two pages, with cover. An edition of ten thousand copies was prepared. This brief statement of the publications of the Association during the past year will give some indication as to the editorial work that has actually been done at headquarters. Summing it all up, 89,000 pieces of printed matter have been used in the work of the Association during the year. And the actual number of pages of this printed material for the year is 3,264,000, every page of which has been put judiciously into circulation where its influence has certainly been felt. FINANCIAL REPORT For the Eleven Months, March i, 1904, to January 31, 1905 (The previous fiscal year of the Association ended February 29, 1904.) Receipts Balance in bank, March i, 1904 $154.64 Receipts from memberships 3>53S-7^ Sale of Proceedings 362.05 Contributions 4,070.16 Miscellaneous receipts 1 7-84 Loan from Commercial Bank 3,000.00 $11,140.40 THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 471 Expenditures Pay-roll $5,345.04 Traveling and Philadelphia Convention ex- penses 830.3s Rent 453-75 Postage and express 1,119.22 Printing, 1903 account $1,922.27 Printing, 1904 account 1,091.63 3,013.90 Office expenses, stationery, telephone, etc .. . 278.25 Assets Class A Balance in bank, January. 31, 1905 $ 81.79 Cash on hand 18.10 Special pledges, payable July ist 6,000.00 MEMBERSHIP REPORT )1 1,040.51 Balance $99.89 Liabilities Commercial National Bank, Chicago $3,000.00 University of Chicago Press 5,474.61 Bills payable 747-34 $9,221.95 $6,099.89 $6,099.89 Class B Sustaining pledges outstanding $1,165.00 Philadelphia conditional pledges 2,185.00 1903 and 1904 membership dues 225.00 /903 Proceedings (1,499 volumes) 1,199.20 1904 Proceedings (911 volumes) 728.80 Miscellaneous bills receivable 90.00 $5>593-oo Estimated value 3,122.06 $3,122.06 $9,221.95 The membership of the Association, as reported last year, was 1,647, including ^^ institutional; the membership is now 1,980, including 84 institutional memberships, showing an increase during the year of 333- The Committee on Enrollment presented the following report, which was accepted and ordered placed on file. 472 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON ENROLLMENT Maine, 20; New Hampshire, 22; Vermont, 7; Massachusetts, 444; Rhode Island, 9; Connecticut, 52; New York state, 49; Pennsylvania, 13; New Jersey, 6; Illinois, 14; Ohio, 10; Iowa, 8; Virginia, 2; Kentucky, i; Tennessee, 5; Alabama, i; District of Columbia, 2; Minnesota, 2; North Dakota, i; South Dakota, i; Washington, i; Mississippi, i; California, 2; Wisconsin, i; Michigan, 6; Northwest Territory, i; Montreal, i; New Brunswick, 3; Nova Scotia, 1; Prince Edward Island, i; Ontario, 3; England, i; Finland, i; Bulgaria, i ; Japan, i ; India, i 695 The Committee on Nominations presented a report nominating ofhcers and directors as follows. (See the List of Officers, pp. 000- 000.) The Secretary of the Convention was instructed to cast the ballot of the members of the Association for the President and Vice-Presi- dents nominated in the report, and they were declared unanimously elected. The Secretary of the Convention was instructed to cast the ballot of the members of the Association for the Directors nominated in the report, and they were declared unanimously elected. REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION The Committee on Amendments to the Constitution presented its report. The amendments proposed were unanimously adopted, as follows : Amend Article III, section 3, by substituting for the present section the following: "Sec. 3. In each department except the Council of Religious Education the voting membership shall consist of such members of the Association as express in writing their desire to be affiliated with the department and are accepted by the Executive Committee thereof." Amend Article III, section 4, paragraph 2, second sentence, by sub- stituting for said sentence the following: "The absence of a member from two consecutive annual meetings of the Council may be regarded as equivalent to resignation of mem- bership, and a new member may be elected for the unexpired term." Substitute for Article IV the following: " ARTICLE IV — MEMBERSHIP " Section i. There shall be three classes of members: Active (individual and institutional). Sustaining, and Corresponding. " Sec. 2. Active members shall be (i) teachers, pastors, and any persons otherwise engaged or interested in the work of religious or moral education as represented by the seventeen departments named in Art. Ill; (2) institutions and organizations thus engaged. " Sec. 3. The Corresponding Members shall be persons not THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 473 resident in America who may be elected to such membership by the Board of Directors. The number of Corresponding Members shall at no time exceed fifty. " Sec. 4. The fees of membership shall be as follows: Active Members shall pay an annual fee of Three Dollars; Sustaining Mem- bers, an annual fee of Ten Dollars; Corresponding Members shall pay no fees. All fees shall be payable on or before the holding of the Annual Convention. Members who have paid into the Association the amount of One Hundred Dollars at one time shall be designated Life Members. " Sec. 5. Members may withdraw from membership by giving written notice to the Secretary before January i. Resumption of membership will be possible on payment of the annual fee for the cur- rent year. " Sec. 6. All members of the Association whose fees are paid shall receive the volume of " Proceedings " of the Annual Convention. " Sec. 7. All members of the Association shall be elected by the Board of Directors. " Sec. 8. Only those members whose fees are paid shall have the right to vote and to hold office in the Association and its departments." Amend Article V, section i, by striking out the words, " Financial Secretary." RESOLUTIONS OF THE CONVENTION The Committee on resolutions presented its report, which was adopted. The Religious Education Association, deeply appreciating the coirdial welcome it has received in the city of Boston, and the thorough and generous provision that has been made for the conduct of its busi- ness and the comfort of its members, desires to express its hearty thanks to all who have contributed to this cause. 1. To the Committee of Arrangements, especially to its chairman, Dr. Albert E. Winship, and its secretary. Rev. Frederick H. Means, for the careful planning and thorough work which has been so largely responsible for the success of the Convention. 2. To all those generous donors who have contribnted to the ex- penses of the Convention. 3. To the prominent citizens who tendered to the Association the delightful reception at Faneuil Hall, and to the special Entertainment Committee, through whom the reception was arranged. 4. To the Officers of the Old South Church for the use of their building for the service of Sunday evening, February 12th; to the choir of that church for their inspiring part in the worship; and to the First Baptist Church and its pastor for their co-operation m the service. 5. To Wellesley College and Harvard University for their gracious and beautiful hospitality. 6. To the Ancient and' Hotior able Artillery Company for the courte- ous invitation to visit their armory. 474 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 7. To those who have put at our disposal the halls in which the busi- ness of the Convention has been so conveniently transacted, especially to the Twentieth Century Club, Boston University, the American Unitarian Association, the Young Men's Christian Association, and the Boston Public Library, the use of whose rooms was freely given. 8. To the Press for full and accurate reports of the proceedings of the Convention, made possible by the hearty co-operation of all the speakers, together with the effective work of the Press Agent. 9. To the Committee in charge of the Sunday School Exhibit, for placing before us, at the cost of much labor and expense on their part, a collection so unique and helpful. 10. To the Officers of the English High School Cadet Corps for their assistance as ushers at our general sessions, a service freely rendered and admirably performed. 11. We thank all the men and women who have helped in any way to make this Convention a success, and have thereby declared their faith in the ideals and purpose of this Association. The Aims of the Association 12. Impressed with a deep conviction of the need of a general revival of religious and moral education, and guided by the experience of the last three years, the Religious Education Associa- tion offers the following statement of its purpose: The threefold purpose of the Religious Education Association is: To inspire the educational forces of our country with the religious ideal; To inspire the religious forces of our country with the educational ideal; and To keep before the public mind the ideal of Religious Education, and the sense of its need and value. In detail, its purpose is: 1. To bring together in one comprehensive organization the leaders and workers of all ecclesiastical, evangelical, educational, cultural, and social organizations who wish for fellowship, for mutual interchange of thought, information and experience, and for co-opera- tion in achieving the highest ideal of personality and citizenship. 2. By means of this organization of leaders, to promote the inter- relation of all existing agencies of religious and moral education, for mutual knowledge and sympathy, for economy of effort, for friendly co-operation, and for united strength. 3. To survey the whole field of religious and moral education, promoting a study of conditions, reporting the organized and individ- ual forces at work within it, fostering thought, discussion, and experi- ment, determining the principles .and the methods of progress. 4. To reach and to disseminate correct thinking on the relation of religion and morality to education. 5. To make religion a pervasive power for personal and social goodness. THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 475 6. To maintain the high ideal of education, in which character and service are the goal. 7. To show that religious education, taken comprehensively, in- cludes evangelism as a vital factor. 8. To apply to religious and moral education the best educational principles and modes of practice derived from modern psychology and pedagogy, and thereby to put the religious forces of the country in sympathetic touch with the matured results of scholarly research in all lines. 9. To promote the study and interpretation of the Bible, and to encourage all methods by which its truth may be learned and made ef- fective for the development of religious and ethical life. 10. To promote worship and social service as essential to the highest culture, and to this end to emphasize the educational function of the church. 11. To discover the means by which the Sunday school may be made more efficient in the religious culture of the young. 12. To assist those who are in the process of education to co- ordinate their intellectual development with the maintenance and deepening of a religious experience, and to enlist the interest and support of the intellectual leaders of the nation on the side of the moral and re- ligious life. 13. To accomplish this work through — (i) The Annual Convention, for the specific discussion of the problems of religious and moral education and for conference by workers as to methods. (2) The annual volume of Proceedings, putting into permanent form the addresses of the Convention and containing general informa- tion about the Association. (3) The Council, for the purpose of reaching and disseminating correct thinking on all general subjects relating to religious and moral education. (4) The Departments, whose executive committees and co-operat- ing members shall carry forward the ideas and the plans of the Asso- ciation in their several fields. (5) The Executive Office, to serve as a clearing-house of informa- tion, connecting with officers and members, and advancing the work through the various channels provided. (6) Conferences on Religious and Moral Education, to be held in states, districts, and cities, for discussion, stimulus, and spread of ideas and methods. (7) Guilds organized in communities, to unite ministers, Sunday school workers, public school teachers, Endeavorers, Y. M. C. A. workers, and all persons interested in religion and morality, for mu- tual fellowship, study, and co-operation in educational progress. (8) Literature of the Association, to be occasionally published in the form of official bulletins, proceedings of district or departmental conferences reports of investigations, monographs on special sub- jects, departmental handbooks, etc. 476 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Mr. L. Wilbur Messer made a statement on behalf of the Execu- tive Committee concerning the finances of the Association, in which he announced that the debt accumulated during the two years of exist- ence, amounting to $6,000, had been provided for by guaranteed sub- scriptions, and that the sum of $20,000, apart from membership fees, was needed for the enlarged work of the Association. THE ANNUAL SURVEY OF PROGRESS Following the business session of the Association, " The Annual Sur- vey of Progress in Religious and Moral Education " was presented by President W. H. P. Faunce, D.D., LL.D., President Brown Uni- versity, Providence, Rhode Island, the newly elected First Vice- President of the Association. The session of the Association was closed with prayer by Rev. Rivington D. Lord, D. D., President General Conference Free Bap- tists, Brooklyn, New York. THIRD GENERAL SESSION OF THE CONVENTION The third general session of t he Convention was held in Converse Hall, Tremont Temple Thursday evening, 7.30 o'clock. The First Vice-President of the Association, Professor Francis G. Peabody, D. D., Harvard University, presided. Devotional services were conducted by Rev. William P. Merrill, D. D., pastor Sixth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois. The resolutions of the Convention concerning the " Aims of the Religious Education Association " were read by Rev. Frank K. San- ders, Ph.D., D.D., Ex-President of the Association. On behalf of the Council of the Association, Ex-President Sanders made a statement of the plans of the Council for the current year. DIGEST OF MINUTES OF THE COUNCIL OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION February 14-16, 1905 Voted, That the Chairman of the Council appoint a committee to select a commission to prepare a book of religious selections for use in public and private schools; that the Chairman of the Council be a member of this committee; and that the commission report in writing to the members of the Council before the next meeting. This com- mittee, as chosen by the Chairman, consisted of Dean Sanders, Dr. Coe, Dr. Votaw, President Swain, President C. C. Hall, and Professor Pace. THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 477 Voted, That the Recording Secretary be requested to communi- cate to the Executive Board of the Association the judgment of the Council that a manual briefly setting forth the field of religious educa- tion, the agencies at work, their co-ordination, and what it is desirable to achieve, should be prepared. Voted, That the committee to choose the commission to prepare the book of religious selections be asked to select an editorial board to prepare a selected bibliography of religious education. Voted, That the same committee select a commission to study the elements of an adequate religious education. Voted, That the same committee select a commission to study re- ligious statistics. Voted, That the Executive Committee of the Council be empowered to call special meetings of the Council. Voted, That the report of the Nominating Committee be adopted, and that the Recording Secretary be authorized to cast lots for the expiration of the terms of all unassigned members. This report was as follows: For Chairman, Dean Frank K. Sanders, Ph. D., D. D. For Recording Secretary, Rev. Wilham Byron Forbush, Ph. D. For additional members of the Executive Committee (the Chair- man, Recording Secretary, and Executive Secretary, Dr. Coe, being exofficio members), Walter L. Hervey, Ph. D. ; President L. L. Dog- gett. Ph. D.; President H. C. King, D. D. For members of the Council: Re-elected: Patterson Du Bois; Principal Samuel T. Dutton; J. D. Hammond, D. D.; Professor Charles R. Henderson, D. D.; Pro- fessor George W. Pease; Professor E. D. Starbuck, Ph.D.; Professor Frederick Tracy, Ph. D. New Members: Rev. James Atkins, D. D.; Professor Borden P. Bowne, LL. D.; President Samuel Eliot, D. D.; Professor H. H. Home, Ph. D.; Very Rev. Thomas J. Shahan, D. D.; Professor C. W. Votaw, Ph. D. The lot resulted as follows: Expiration in 1906; Bowne, Brumbaugh, Butler, Coe, Dawson, Hervey, St. John, Tillett, Wells. 1907: Baldwin, Doggett, Gulick, Home, Mathews, McDowell, Miller, Pace, Peloubet. 1908: Blakeslee, E. E. Brown, M. C. Brown, Haley, C. C. Hall, G. S. Hall, Mead, See, Shahan. 478 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 1909: Atkins, Burton, Fauhce, Forbush, Harrower, Pratt, Stewart, Swain, Thwing. 1910: Dewey, Harper, Harris, King, McMurry, Sanders, Sheldon, Spalding, Taylor, Tyler. 191 1 : Du Bois, Button, Eliot, Hammond, Henderson, Pease, Star- buck, Tracy, Votaw. Total, fifty-five. Voted, That the Chairman appoint a committee to nominate new members, to report at the next session. Wm. Byron Forbush, Recording Secretary. On behalf of the Directors of the Association, Ex-President San- ders presented the following resolution of appreciation of the work of the retiring President, Rev. Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D. It was unanimously adopted. RESOLUTION OF APPRECIATION TO DR. HALL The members of the Religious Education Association in attendance at this Convention desire to place on record an expression of their grateful appreciation of the important service rendered by their re- tiring President, the Rev. Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, during this criti- cal year of the history of the Association. His felicitous presentation of the aims and ideals of the Associa- tion on many public occasions; his profound faith in its future; his devotion to its immediate interests; his ability in commending it to those who are leaders in the life and thought of our nation, — have given to the movement strength, inspiration, and stability. Graceful and grateful response was made by President Hall. The presiding officer announced the election of Rev. WiUiam F. McDowell, Bishop of the Methodist Espiscopal Church, Chicago, lUinois, as President of the Association, and introduced the newly elected First Vice-President, Rev. W. H. P. Faunce, D. D., LL. D., President of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, who re- sponded in behalf of the new President. The subject of the evening, " How can We Quicken in the Indi- vidual a Sense of National and Universal Brotherhood, " was discussed in two addresses, — on " The Sacredness of Citizenship, " by President William J. Tucker, D. D., LL. D., Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, and on " The Mission of Christianity to the World," by President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D., Union Theological Seminary, New York City. THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 479 With a prayer by Dean Frank Knight Sanders, Ph. D., D. D., Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connnecticut the Third Annual Con- vention of the ReUgious Education Association was declared to be ended. DEPARTMENTAL SESSIONS The Departmental Sessions of the Convention were held for the most part on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, from 2 to 6 o'clock. The several departments and their places and times of meeting were as follows: Department I, The Council of Rehgious Education, held sessions, for members only, in the blue room of Tremont Temple, at 9 A. m. on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, and a public session at 10:30 a. m. Tuesday. Department II, Universities and Colleges, held two sessions, at Channing Hall, Unitarian Building, at 4 o'clock on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Department III, Theological Seminaries, held two sessions, — one at Lorimer Hall, Tremont Temple, the other at Chipman Hall, Tre- mont Temple, at 2 o'clock on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Department IV, Churches and Pastors, held two sessions, — one at Wesleyan Hall, the other at Pilgrim Hall, Congregational House, at 2 o'clock on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Department V, Sunday Schools; held two sessions, — one at Lorimer Hall, at 4 o'clock Wednesday afternoon; the other, a joint session with the Department of Teacher-training, at Lorimer Hall, at 2 o'clock Thursday afternoon. Department VI, Secondary Pubhc Schools, held two sessions, — one at Boston University Chapel, the other at Chipman Hall, Tremont Temple, at 4 o'clock, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Department VII, Elementary Public Schools, held two sessions, — one in the blue room of Tremont Temple the other at Park Street Church vestry, at 4 o'clock Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Department VIII, Private Schools, held no sessions. Department IX, Teacher-training, held two sessions, — one at the blue room, Tremont Temple, Wednesday afternoon at 2 o'clock, the other, a joint session with the Department of Sunday Schools, at Lori- mer Hall, Tremont Temple, Thursday afternoon at 2 o'clock. Department X, Christian Associations, held two sessions, at the Y. M. C. A. Building at 4 o'clock on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. 48o THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Department XI, Young People's Societies, held two sessions, — one at Wesleyan Hall, the other at Pilgrim Hall, Congregational House, at 4 o'clock on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Department XII, The Home, held two sessions, at Channing Hall, Unitarian Building, at 2 o'clock Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Department XIII, Libraries, held one session, Wednesday afternoon at 2 o'clock, at the Boston Public Library. Department XIV, The Press, held one session, Thursday afternoon at 2 o'clock, at the Twentieth Century Club. Department XV, Correspondence Instruction, held two sessions, — one at Park Street Church, Wednesday morning at 12 o'clock, the other at Small Hall, Unitarian Building, Thursday afternoon at 2 o'clock. Department XVI, Summer Assemblies, held one session, Wednesday afternoon at 2 o'clock, at Small Hall, Unitarian Building. Department XVII, Religious Art and Music, held two sessions, at Twentieth Century Club, — one on Wednesday afternoon at 2 o'clock, the other on Thursday afternoon at 4 o'clock. MINUTES OF THE DEPARTMENTAL MEETINGS The minutes of the Departmental Meetings are preserved by the recording secretaries of the departments. The new departmental officers elected may be seen in the List of Officers of the Association for the current year, on pp. 483-486, post. The programmes of the Departmental Meetings are indicated by the addresses reported under each Department named in the preceding pages of this volume. AN EXHIBIT OF SUNDAY SCHOOL MATERIAL An exhibition of religious education, relating to instruction in Prot- estant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish Sunday schools was arranged by Rev. Milton S. Littlefield, Rev. W. W. Smith, M. D., Rev. Richard Morse Hodge, D, D., Committee on Religious Education Exhibit of the Department of Sunday Schools. The exhibit consisted of plans of Sunday school buildings, school furniture, text-books, hymn-books, reference-books for teachers, Sunday school curricula, pictures, print and relief maps, models of Oriental dwellings, furniture, etc., and note- books, drawings, relief and surface map^, and other work executed by Sunday school pupils. Members of the committee in charge were on hand to explain the exhibits and to give demonstrations in manual methods of instrution. THE MINUTES OF THE THIRD CONVENTION 481 THE BOSTON COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS The local preparations for the Convention and the entertainment of the Convention during its sessions were admirably provided by a Committee of more than seventy representative citizens of Boston, whose names follow: WiNSHiP, Albert E. Lit. D. Chairman. Means, Frederick A., Secretary. Heath, Daniel C., Treasurer. Allen, Frederick B. Vice-Chairman. BowNE, Borden P., Ph. D. Capen, Samuel B., LL.D. Gushing, Grafton D. Dole, Charles F. Dunning, Albert E., D.D. Eliot, Samuel A., D.D. Gordon, George A., D.D Grose, George R. Hodges, George, D.D. Mabie, Henry C, D.D. Parmenter, C. W., Lit. D. Perin, George L., D.D. Peabody, Francis G., D.D. Rowley, Francis H., D.D. Shaw, William. Small, Augustus D. Trueblood, Benjamin F. Weed, Alonzo R. Willard, Horace M., Sc.D. Wright, Theodore F., Ph.D. HuLiNG, Ray Greene, A.M., Sc.D., Chairman of Finance Committee. Burr, Everett, D., D.D., Chairman 0} Committee on Halls. Chandler, Edward H., Chairman 0} Press Committee. Haskell, Edward H., Chairman of Entertainment Committee. Williams, Appleton P., Chairman of Local Attendance Committee. Flanders, Ralph L., Chairman of Music Committee. Rogers, Dwight L., Chairman of Transportation and Hotel Committee. Crawford, William C, Chairman of Sight-seeing Committee. Adams, Charles H. Bailey, Albert E. Bentley, Charles N. Blakeslee, Erastus, D.D. Boyd, Charles E. Bradner, Lester, Jr. Brand, Charles A. Bridgman, Howard A. Bushnell, Samuel C. Childs, Harold C. Cummings, Edward. Farrar, Frederick A. Gardner, Robert H. Gates, Owen H. Goodwin, Henry. Hale, Harris G. Hartshorn, W. N. HoRR, George E., D.D. Humphreys, Richard C. Lathrop, H. N. Lewis, Homer P. Macdougall, H. C. Main, William W. Maxwell, Arthur A. Mehaffey, George W. Merriam, Edward F. Mills, Carlton P. Moore, Edward C, Ph. D., D.D. Morris, George P. Morse, Herbert L. Parker, Frederick C. W. Parker, Henry C. Peabody, Henry W. Peirce, Silas. Perrin, W. T., D.D. Sears, Seth. Shumway, Franklin P. SwETT, Vernon B. Wentworth, Oliver M- WiCKES, Frank S. C. Willard, Horace Mann, Sc.D. 482 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION THE GENERAL ALLIANCE OF WORKERS WITH BOYS The General Alliance of Workers with Boys held its annual con- vention in connection with the ReHgious Education Association. Pub- lic sessions were held as follows : Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock in Channing Hall, Unitarian Hall. Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock in Channing Hall, Unitarian Building. William C. Bitting, William J. Parker, Secretaries. THE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION 1905 PRESIDENT William Eraser McDowell Bishop Methodist Episcopal Church VICE-PRESIDENTS William Herbert P. Faunce President Brown University, Providence, R. I. R. Douglas Eraser Editor Sunday School Publications, Toronto, Can. F. W. GuNSAULUS President Armour Institute, Chicago, 111. G. Stanley Hall President Clark University, Worcester, Mass. William Lawrence Bishop of Massachusetts, Boston, Mass. Hamilton C. Macdougall . .Professor Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass. William J. McKittrick .... Pastor First Presbyterian Chtrch, St. Louis, Mo. Frank N. McMurry Professor Columbia University, New York City. Richard G. Moulton Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111. Cyrus Northrop President University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn. L. Clark Seelye President Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Appleton p. Williams President Massachusetts Sunday School Associa- tion, Boston, Mass. Benjamin Ide Wheeler . . . President University of California, Berkeley, Cal. EXECUTIVE BOARD The general officers 0} the Association, ex-officio President, William Eraser McDowell, Bishop Methodist Episcopal Church. First Vice-President, William Herbert P. Faunce, President Brown University, Providence. General Secretary, Clifford W. Barnes, Chicago, 111. Recording Secretary, George Albert Coe, Professor Northwestern University Evanston, 111. Treasurer, James H. Eckels, President Commercial National Bank, Chicago, 111. CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD William Rainey Harper .... President University of Chicago, Chicago, 111. VICE-CHAIRMAN L. Wilbur Messer General Secretary Y. M. C. A., Chicago, 111. William Lowe Bryan President Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind. John M. Coulter Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111; David R. Forgan Vice-President First National Bank, Chicago, 111. Charles H. Hulburd President Elgin National Watch Company, Chi- cago, 111. Charles Cuthbert Hall . . . President Union Theological Seminary, New York City. 483 484 THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Walter L. Hervey Examiner Board of Education, New York City. Charles S. Holt Attorney and Counselor at Law, Chicago, 111. Charles L. Hutchinson Vice-President Corn Exchange Bank, Chicago.IU. Henry Churchill King .... President Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. William Douglas|MacKenzie, President Hartford Theological Seminary, Hartford, Conn. William P. Merrill Pastor Sixth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, 111. GiFFORD PiNCHOT Commissioner of Forestry, Washington, D. C. George L. Robinson Professor McCormick Theological Seminary Chi- cago, 111. Frank Knight Sanders Dean Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Conn. William Shaw Treasurer United Society Christian Endeavor, Boston, Mass Herbert L. Willett Professor University of Chicago, Chicago, 111. BOARD OF DIRECTORS DIRECTORS FOR LIFE Frank Knight Sanders, Ph. D., D. D., Dean Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Conn. Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D President Union Theological Semi- nary, New York City. DIRECTORS AT LARGE Nolan R. Best Associate Editor The Interior, Chicago 111. Nehemiah Boynton, D. D Pastor First Congregational Church, Detroit, Mich. Edward L. Curtis, D. D Professor Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Conn. Samuel A. Eliot, D. D President Unitarian Association, Bos- ton, Mass. Robert A. Falconer, LL. D Professor Presbyterian College, Hali- fax, N. S. Calvin H. French President Huron College, Huron, South Dakota. Richard D. Harlem, D. D President Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, 111. Rev. Pascal Harrower Chairman Sunday School Commis- sion Diocese New York, New York City. Richard C. Cecil Hughes, D. D President Ripon College, Ripon, Wis. Robert L. Kelley, Ph. M President Earlham College, Rich- mond, Ind. James H. Kirkland Chancellor Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tenn. John E. McFayden, A. M Professor Knox College, Toronto, Canada. Walter Miller Professor Tulane University, New Orleans, La. Samuel C. Mitchell, Ph. D Professor Richmond College, Rich mond, Va. THE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION 485 Allen B. Philputt, D. D Pastor Central Christian Church, Indianapolis, Ind. Edwin F. See General Secretary The Young Men's Christian Association, Brooklyn, New York. Charles H. Snedeker Dean St. Paul's Cathedral, Cincinnati, Ohio. Henry A. Stimson, D. D Pastor Manhattan Congregational Church, New York City. Floyd W. Tomkins, D. D Rector Holy Trinity Protestant Epis- copal Church, Philadelphia, Pa. William J. Tucker, D. D., LL. D President Dartmouth College, Hano- ver, N. H. STATE DIRECTORS California, John K. McLean, D. D., President Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley. Colorado, William F. Slocum, LL. D. President Colorado College, Colorado Springs. Z)/5/r/c/ 0/ C