THE CONTENT OF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE TO MEN OF TODAY, REPORT ON COURSES OF STUDIES IN LIFE PROBLEMS, THE ETHICAL VALUE OF PHYSICAL TRAINING, THE PLACE OF PLAYGROUND WORK, Principal J. Howard Bradstreet. THE ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PLAY, Luther H. Gulick, M.D. CHARACTER-MAKING IN BOYS' CAMPS, Edgar M. Robinson, M.A. CHARACTER-MAKING IN BOYS' FRATERNITIES, Rev. Frank L. Masseck. THE SIGNIFICANCE TO RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YEARS OF INFANCY, Charles Richmond Henderson, Ph.D., D.D. THE RELATION OF THE HOME TO MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCA TION, Elmer Ellsworth Brown, Ph.D. THE NERVOUS SYSTEM OF THe Infant, George E. Dawson, Ph.D. THE USE OF THE STORY IN THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE INFANT, Mrs. Louise Seymour Houghton. FIRST STEPS IN CHARACTER FORMATION, Edward O. Sisson, Ph.D. THE PLACE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION, Andrew Keogh, M.A. UTILIZING THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY IN CHURCH WORK, Mrs. Alice Peloubet Norton. A PLAN OF Work for the Library Department OF THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, Azariah Smith Root, A.M. SOCIAL AND ETHICAL IDEALS IN SUMMER ASSEMBLIES, THE SUMMER SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL, MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION, A COMPLETE DIRECTORY OF, All these important subjects are treated at length, by the writers mentioned, in the New Volume, THE MATERIALS OF RELIG IOUS EDUCATION. You need this for yourself. You cannot do a better service than to see that your Sundayschool Superintendent, your Teachers, your Pastor secures a copy. Your friends interested in moral and religious education will thank you for calling their attention to this valuable volume. Remember it is free as a membership privilege in THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION; otherwise the price is net $2.00. THE JOURNAL OF THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Vol. II DECEMBER, 1907 RELIGION AND MORALITY MORAL TRAINING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS No. 5 Entered as Second-Class Matter May 29, 1906, at the Post Office at Chicago, Illinois, under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1897. The attention of the delegates from Chicago and the West who will attend the meeting of the" Religious Education Association TO BE HELD AT WASHINGTON, D. C. FEBRUARY 11 TO 13, 1908 is directed to the facilities offered by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad for reaching that point. THE BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD is the only line that operates through trains between Chicago and Washinton, D. C. without change of cars THE NEW YORK EXPRESS leaves at 10:40 A. M., and runs via Grafton, Cumberland and Harper's Ferry, and is due to arrive in Washington at 12:30 noon the following day. THE ROYAL BLUE LIMITED departs at 5:00 P. M., and runs via Pittsburgh, Cumberland and Harper's Ferry, and is due in Washington at 4:50 the following afternoon. This train passes over the Alleghany Mountains in day time and the magnificent scenery can be viewed to advantage from the observa tion car. For Sleeping Car Accomodations and further information W. W. PICKING, District Passenger Agent 224 CLARK STREET, CHICAGO D. B. MARTIN Manager Passenger Trafic Baltimore B. N. AUSTIN General Passenger Agent Chicago THE JOURNAL OF THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (Copyright, 1907, by The Religious Education Association) As soon as the activities of any being become acts for ends, they have moral quality. Non-moral action is action on the plane of mere instinct or impulse, where considerations play no part. It is the consideration, or the end aimed at, that makes an act morally good or morally bad. An act directed toward a bad end is immoral, though ignorance of its badness on the part of the agent may modify our judgment of his character. Similarly, action for any good end is moral action, though the character of the agent be only partly expressed therein. These are merely formal distinctions; to reach a notion of concrete morality we must consider the actual ends that men pursue. In a broad sense, action that is directed to social ends is moral, and action that is directed to anti-social, or even unsocial ends is immoral. By social ends I mean primarily the good of human persons, however that good is conceived. We may differ or be mistaken as to what is good for men in general or for a particular man, but we are formally moral as long as we act for that which seems to us to be the real good of human beings. Though the notion of humanity is central, it is not exclusive. It radiates in the direction of all life that is conceived as capable of goods and ills like those which we ourselves experience. Thus, moral aims come to include the animal life about us, and, if we believe that there are higher orders of life than the human, moral conduct will include them as ends as far as our acts can affect their good. Morality thus comes to include the relations of men to their gods, and each religion acquires ethical quality corresponding to the notion of the godhead. Any religion that worships gods *A paper read at the Meeting of the Council of Religious Education, Niagara Falls, July 2 and 3. 1907. who pursue social ends is to that extent an ethical religion, and obedience to such gods becomes a part of morality. But obedience in this case is not a mere yielding to compulsion or superior power, but the following of a leader whose purposes the worshipper himself judges and approves. A moral man is distinguished from an immoral one, then, by the degree in which social aims control his conduct. What, now, distinguishes the religious life from the irreligious? We premise, of course, that for us religion must be thoroughly socialized. That is, it must be ethical religion. (1) The religious man is distinguished partly by the quality of that which he takes to be the social good. For him the good is spiritual as distinguished from external, material, or merely sensuous. That is, for him the truly human life is not made up of the possession of things, or the possession of power, or the enjoyment of sensuous pleasures, but of the free and social exercise of the higher or spiritual capacities, namely, his capacities for truth, the appreciation of beauty, and the exercise of unselfish love. That is to say, personality is the final end of action for the religious man. I speak, of course, of the religious issue as it comes to us at our stage of civilization. There can be morality or socialized conduct that does not reach this stage of spirituality. On the other hand, when morality does reach this stage; when it takes spiritual personality as a finality for itself, reverencing it as something holy, as somewhat not to be used but to be served, then morality already includes a part of the religious attitude. (2) The religious man is distinguished also partly by his conception of the possibilities of the spirtual person. As personalty is a finality for him as an end of conduct, so it becomes more real to him than anything else. He tends to think of it as capable of surviving death and thereby having scope for the realization of its high ideals. The religious man therefore lets loose his hopes, looks for the ultimate triumph of all that is highest and best, and lives more generously than he could upon any mere calculation of empirical probabilities. (3) The religious man is characterized, further, by his conception of the range of personal reality, or by the extent that he gives to his notion of society. The whole of his world acquires social meaning. The very ground of things is social. least he looks and longs for such an ultimate basis of society. That is, he has faith in God, or seeks to find God, and his moral life becomes devotion to the Kingdom of God. You will notice, of course, that I am not attempting to construct a formal definition of religion. Our present interest is not to find what we have in common with lower religions, or even |