If this discussion has thus far seemed nebulous and impractical to the reader, I hope its meaning will become clear as we apply it to the problems of religious education. Does the religious environment that we create for our children in the church and Sunday-school meet the conditions that insure life? That is, does it stimulate reactions in the child that involve his entire self? Is it natural to him—an environment in which he feels at home, in which he enjoys himself, in which he delights to work and live? Does it provide for him complete opportunities for self-expression? Does it stimulate feelings that are true to his age and outlook upon life? Does it set going trains of thought that he will follow up of his own accord? Does it provide for activities that he can put his best energies into with enthusiasm and look back upon for days and months as having given him something tangible and vital? If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, then are we really educating our children in the churches and Sunday-schools. If they cannot be so answered, then are we not educating our children in these places. And more: We are violating the laws of life and growth -arresting the process not only of religious development, but of moral and intellectual as well.

But, perhaps, such a religious environment cannot be created? Perhaps, it is not possible, if indeed necessary, that religious educators should stimulate feelings that are natural to the child, or excite thought that can be interpreted through experience, or secure activities that give play to healthy instincts and ambitions? Well, the public schools are doing these very things under our eyes. They are solving the problem of making education fit into the program of life as nature reveals it. They are creating an environment of buildings, equipments, curricula and teachers to which the child can respond in terms of his own feeling, thinking and doing. Our children go to school in the morning eager for their work and happy in the opportunity to go. They return at night full of enthusiasm over what they have been doing, talking and living over in their plays the tasks of the schoolroom. The interests of home are carried over into the school, and the interests of the school over into the home. They are one, and the child's life is unbroken. All this is said of the better type of schools, but they are common and becoming

more so. There can be no question that if religious education is to be continued under the auspices of the church and Sundayschool, religious educators will sometime do what secular educators have done. They will create an environment of buildings, equipments, curricula and teachers that will really give children something to respond to that will call out their natural, that is to say, their best selves. Children will cease to be taken out of a life that, with all its limitations, does give them large opportunities for self-expression six days in the week, and, for a short hour or two on Sunday, be subjected to instruction that is mostly verbal and offers little chance for self-activity.

The problem of religious self-expression in children will be solved along three lines, corresponding to the three modes of such self-expression. First, greater emphasis will be placed upon the instinctive and feeling response of children. That is to say, the natural tendencies and attitudes of mind will be consulted. Expressed in still other terms, children's spontaneous interests will be regarded as indices of their needs, perverted it may be but nevertheless significant, and will be accepted as guides both in eliminating evil tendencies and in strengthening good tendencies. It will be seen that, pedagogically as well as scripturally, "Out of the heart are the issues of life", and that all attempts to crush down or root out a child's fundamental instincts and feelings must weaken the selfhood and destroy that personal initiative which is so essential to a vigorous life. It will be seen, too, that it is just as dangerous to stimulate precocious religious feelings as it is to stimulate precocity of any kind. Premature feelings mean premature decay of feelings, or perversion in directions of mental disease. Indeed, it will sometime be recognized that what is called religious feeling is really a synthesis of many feelings not ordinarily considered religious. These latter are intrinsically religious, however, and, if properly nurtured, will naturally yield their religious content to the more complex emotions of later life, enriching and ennobling them.

Again, greater emphasis will be placed in religious instruction upon self-activity in thinking. It will be seen that the power of selective thought is intrinsically more important for religion than the parrot-like repetition of words, imperfectly understood. It will be seen that to get the symbols of truth into the mind, whether they be the words of the Bible or of a creed, avails nothing

at all unless the soul reacts to them with the intelligence and interest that come from significant experience. Words are dead things unless we have that in our heads and our hearts that can vitalize them. Religious instruction that does not deal with material to which the minds of students can react intelligently, arrests the powers of thought, produces apathy of feeling, and therefore destroys both the capacity for seeking truth and the interest in it. For this reason, the selection of Biblical material that lies too much outside of children's intelligence and interest, and the dogmatic attitude that discourages free, individual thought in young people and adults, render imbecile the intellectual life of any church and condemn it to hopeless inferiority in religious standards and conduct. There is no sphere of life where abridgment of self-expression is so fatal to human growth and achievement as in the intellectual order.

Finally, greater emphasis will be laid upon motor expression in religious education. That is to say, attention will be more and more directed to the executive function of righteousness. It is all very well to feel righteously and to think righteously, but the final test of both is the deed. How to make religion motor and executive is indeed one of the greatest of problems, personally and socially. Religious educators must, and will, devise some means of helping boys and girls to work out their religious feelings and ideas. The heterogeneous manual exercises over sand-maps, the singing in choirs, the taking part in prayer-meetings will not suffice. These activities may be valuable, or next to worthless, according to the spirit and conditions under which they are performed. Motor, or executive, righteousness must come nearer to life than these activities can possibly come. It must be of a type that affects the life of the doer and that of his fellowman. It must take the form of doing deeds of virtue, honesty, kindness, patriotism and the like. A church and Sunday-school that can make their religious instruction efficient through an organized body of righteous workers, in the home, business, politics and throughout social life everywhere, will have realized this ideal. Such an outcome of education in objective results that embody the ideas and impulses imparted through instruction, is the present aim and often the accomplished fact, in many of our best public schools. There is no reason why the same should not be true of the agencies of religious education.

The Moral and Religious Element in

Education

NATHANIEL BUTLER, A. M., D. D.

Dean, The College of Education, The University of Chicago

An eminent psychologist from New England, lecturing last summer at the University of Chicago, asserted that "We no longer look to education to bring the millenium. We used to imagine that if we could only provide good schools and get the boys and girls under the influence of education we should finally do away with every kind of disorder, sin, and crime. In fact, however, we have found that education has failed on this side. No matter how much we may educate the intellect, the intellect still remains the slave of the passions. Men will do, not what they know, but what they love to do. Reason appears to have been given to man chiefly to enable him to discover reasons for doing what he likes. Consequently while the training of the intellect may save us from the grosser sins and crimes, it reveals to us meaner ones."

The lecturer went on to assert that within his time no form of public iniquity had existed in eastern Massachusetts that had not at its head some graduate of Harvard University. Being himself a graduate of Harvard, he was of course at liberty to make that assertion; but probably the statement could be generalized so as to apply to any institution of learning.

Now the assertion of this eminent scholar is true only if we assume that education means the training of boys and girls in that discipline which enables people merely to know and to think. But no one would accept that as an adequate definition of the aim of education. The general demand voiced in the public press, is that the schools must train boys and girls in all the elements of good citizenship. No one would for a moment suppose that thinking and knowing are the only elements of this citizenship, for men of the keenest intellect and the widest knowledge are often found promoting schemes of dishonesty and engaged in enterprises which make directly against public and private well-being. No, when you have trained the under

standing and have done no more, you have no guarantee whatever that you have made a good neighbor and a useful citizen. Education is well understood to mean training for social efficiency and this involves at least four elements. (1) That the individual be master of some vocation. (2) That he have an intelligent conception of human life and of his part in it. (3) That he be alert and alive intellectually and physically. (4) That he have that settled and crystallized tendency toward sound and appropriate conduct that we call "character." Unless you secure the fourth result, you have no sure guarantee of any good outcome from the rest, and this is the general judgment of all men when they are in their sane moments and are not in a controversial spirit. Everybody assents to the general proposition that the ultimate values of education are to be expressed not in terms of the intellect but of character. And that the final fruit of the educative process is intelligent and moral conduct. We seek the trained intelligence and the good will.

It is clear then that intelligent and moral conduct is a legitimate end, if not the end of education. It is just as clear that intelligent and moral conduct is not guaranteed by the discipline that trains merely to know and to think. Those who are interested in education as well as students of social welfare in general, are clear and agreed upon this point. It is now proposed to make this end more certain of attainment by Religious Education. Religious teaching is to be given a larger place in the general educational scheme and, on the other hand, the most approved educational methods are to be introduced into religious instruction and training.

It is well to be clear upon this question: Precisely what is it that we may, and what is it that we may not, expect to accomplish by means of religious education? Evidently we are not attempting in this general effort to secure that the pupil subscribe to some particular creed or join some denominational body. Important as these ends are, they are more special and narrow than those proposed by this larger educational endeavor. What then is the aim? This: To make sharp, clear, and operative, in every individual a sense of personal obligation to fellowman and to God. If this end is gained and the individual gains an intelligent conception of this two-fold obligation, and the fixed habit of vital response to it, you have a safe citizen and a sound