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happen to appeal to a man or it may not. If a man is under the stress of a strong temptation, he is not likely to be greatly influenced by the thought of posterity or the rest of the race. What does he care for the greater good of the greater number? At that moment he is more concerned about the greater good of himself. If one should approach a man who is about to gulp down a drink that will make him stagger, and urge him to desist on the ground that if he becomes intoxicated he will work harm to posterity and perhaps to the present population of the world, he would probably retort, though probably in more forcible language, "What do I care for posterity or the rest of the world?"

There is another school of ethical teachers, represented chiefly by the Society for Ethical Culture, who tell us that we should love goodness for its own sake. That, too, is all very well if it happens to appeal to anyone. If anyone likes to do right rather than wrong, why of course he ought to do so, and would do so. But what of the man who likes to do wrong rather than right, along with most of the human race? The appeal to be good for the sake of goodness will have no more effect upon such a man, than the appeal to take some cheese, because it is good, will have on a child who abhors cheese.

To the question, "Why must I do right?" there is only one answer that is conclusive and compelling. That is the answer of Christianity. We must do right because it is the will of God, and our true welfare here and for eternity depends on our conforming to his will. We know what is right, what is the will of God, because God has been revealing his will, partially through His prophets, and completely through the incarnation of his Son Jesus Christ. He, the Son of God, was made man to show us by his life and teaching what kind of a life our Father wants all his children to live.

This answer of Christianity, however, is just the answer that the man who has been educated in our public schools cannot understand. He cannot understand it because throughout his whole education God was left out. It was forbidden by law to teach anything about God; about the truth he has revealed to us men to keep us in the way of safety; about Jesus Christ,

who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The grown man, under the assaults of temptation, finds himself unequipped to deal with them, because the highest and most valuable of truth -the truth about God and spiritual realities--has been left out of his education. Surrounded by unseen, spiritual enemies, he is powerless to do battle with them, because at the beginning of the journey he was not girded with the armor of God.

It may be thought by some, that as it is the business of the Sunday school to give instruction in these subjects, therefore the public school should have nothing to do with them. Let us by all means give due credit to the Sunday school. It now provides the only systematic religious and moral training the great majority of our children will ever get. Let us be thankful for this beneficent influence and make the most of it. But what can the Sunday school accomplish during only one short hour of the week? What are children, whose religious training is thus limited to one hour a week in Sunday school, to infer as to the relative importance of the subjects of religious and secular teaching? Are they to be greatly blamed if they infer that this material world is to be valued in comparison with the kingdom of God at about the ratio of forty to one? Forty hours a week spent in learning about geometry, botany, history and the English and German languages, and one hour a week spent in learning about God and eternity. What wonder that children grow up to think of religion as something for Sunday use only.

Such moral training as at present exists in connection with our public school system is, therefore, utterly inadequate and productive of the flimsiest results. This is partly because it is too vague and incidental, partly because it is not based upon the only secure foundation, the Christian faith. The fatherhood of God is a rock foundation upon which all enduring morality must be built. God the Father sent his only begotten Son into the world to reveal that great truth. The purpose of Christ was to bring all men into union with himself, and so enable them to live the life of sonship and brotherhood in the family of God. This idea of the Divine Fatherhood is the idea which runs like a golden thread through the Sermon on the

Mount. At the close of the sermon, the Master likens those who hear his sayings and do them, to the man who built his house upon a rock; and those who refuse to live in accordance with his teachings, to the man who built his house upon the sand. The fatherhood of God, and the faith that has grown out of it, form the rock upon which we must base the teaching and the practice of morality. Morality taught otherwise will be a house upon the shifting sands, which the winds of adversity and floods of temptation will sweep away.

The Christian faith must be taught to the children of our public schools if their moral training is to have any permanent results. But how is the Christian faith to be taught? That is the vital question that must be faced. We all know it would be madness to suggest that it be taught by the regular teachers in the schools, as a part of the regular course of study. Our violent disagreements in religious belief would make it impossible to concur as to the kind of religion to be taught, or as to the qualifications of teachers fit to teach it. Unbelievers would object to their children being taught any religion at all; and they would have a perfect right to object. It is certain that under our present conditions it is utterly impracticable to teach any kind of religion at all in our public schools.

There is, however, a way out of the difficulty. What that way is, it is the purpose of this article to set forth. The plan, stated briefly, is as follows: that school children shall be permitted, without detriment to their school standing, to absent themselves from the public schools one afternoon or one morning of each week, in order that they may attend religious instruction in their own churches. This arrangement might be effected by state legislation, or it might be the result of local agreement in any community. The privilege could be limited to children of a certain age, say children of the grammar schools or of the first two years of high school; or it could be left open for all ages. It ought to be a simple matter so to arrange the curriculum that religious instruction could be substituted for other studies of a voluntary character, such as manual training, or elocution, or botany, or pedagogy. This plan would fit in harmoniously with the elective system which is being adopted so generally in all departments of education.

According to this plan the responsibility for the moral training of children would rest upon their parents, where it ought to rest. Such parents as would be content with a merely secular education for their children would not be obliged to send them to any church instructions. Parents who might become dissatisfied with the religious instruction given by their particular denomination would be at liberty to transfer their children to some more efficient instruction, or put them back upon a purely secular education. In this way there would be furnished a continual stimulus to make the religious instruction as thorough as possible, and to base it on the most approved pedagogical principles. Of course any church that did not care to enter the field of religious instruction on a week day, would not be obliged to do so.

As to the practical arrangements in the churches for this religious instruction of such children as might be sent to them, that would have to be settled by each church in its own way. Some could afford to have paid and well-trained teachers; others would need to depend upon voluntary teachers—and this ought to give employment to many idle young women of leisure and education; while in other places, especially in rural communities, the pastor could do all the teaching himself. The pastor could give the instructions wherever there were not over two hundred children, by means of some such system as the French catechetical method of St. Sulpice. If the plan were at all generally adopted there would soon be devised many excellent systems of instruction suitable for the purpose.

The only people who would be put to inconvenience by such a plan would be the clergy. No doubt there would be many indignant protests from clerical "old fogies," as well as from many of the younger clergy who are fond of their pipes and easy chairs. But if giving religious instruction to the young, and training them in Christian morals, be not among their chief pastoral duties, the clergy of to-day have departed very far from their Master's ideal of the Christian minister as a shepherd of souls.

The above scheme is not a brand-new, doctrinaire theory, advanced here for the first time. It has already been widely

discussed and seriously entertained by leaders of religious thought who have the nation's interests at heart.

At the Inter-Church Conference in New York, in November, 1905, the plan was advocated by Dr. Wenner, the President of the Lutheran Synod of New York and New Jersey. The proposed plan was embodied in a Conference resolution. A similar proposal was made by a Roman Catholic, Fr. McDermott, of Philadelphia. In December, 1905, a public meeting was held in the same interest in New York, presided over by Dr. Greer, the Bishop coadjutor of the Episcopal diocese of New York.

Another conference to consider this proposal was held in New York at the United Charities Building, on January 30, 1906. In this conference Jews and Roman Catholics took part along with Protestants of all kinds and Unitarians. The conference was called at the suggestion of the above-mentioned Dr. Wenner, by the State Federation of Churches. The following is taken from a newspaper report of the conference :

"The proposition was that permission should be granted to enrolled children in the public schools to absent themselves from their classes on Wednesday afternoons to attend religious instruction in the churches of their family faith. The excuse from public school attendance was to follow presentation of a certificate of church school attendance; and the instruction in public schools during this period was to be so arranged that those who substituted religious instruction for it might not suffer in their educational standing. Dr. Wenner, in presenting this plan, after alluding to the facts brought out by Dr. Laidlaw that the proportion of Protestant communicants to inhabitants in New York was slowly falling, said neither the Sunday school nor the parochial school would suffice to check this movement. After an experience of many years he was now having six graded classes for one hour each week, after school and early Saturday morning, and the older children together for an hour on Saturday. Children that did not attend were excommunicated. While the system worked fairly well, he found the children tired after school, and thought better results could be got if he could have the two hours of the public school session on Wednesday after

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