learn, is, by consequence, the great thing which education has to teach. To prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to discharge; and the only rational mode of judging of any educational course is to judge in what degree it discharges that function."

What an utter neglect of this true and philosophic end of education is manifest in a system that proposes only to furnish the mind with a few facts, or subject it to the discipline of a few intellectual processes. Such a system also ignores entirely the true nature of the child. It takes but the most partial and imperfect view of him. In the estimation of such a theory he is a being capable of learning combinations of figures, of chattering grammatical sentences, of remembering incidents and dates of history, and nothing more. That he is a moral being, that he has a conscience, that the awakening and culture of his moral nature is absolutely essential to all true development, that unless this is done no worthy end of education is ever realized and no real success in life is ever achieved, all this is forgotten or treated with supreme indifference, not to say contempt. The noblest part of our nature is thus untouched, its highest functions are never employed, and no appeal is ever made to its most inspiring motives. To expect any valuable results from such an unphilosophical and irrational process is to insult reason and defy logical sequences. As well might you attempt to execute a difficult piece of music upon an organ without touching its principal keys or employing its most important pipes; as well attempt to solve a trigonometrical problem without a knowledge of the multiplication table. You can as soon make a scholar out of a child by throwing a spelling book and grammar at his head, as you can make him a useful member of society by stuffing him with readers, geographies, and arithmetics.

This unnatural and unreasonable method strikes with paralyzing force the teacher, and prevents his accomplishing the very work he is aiming to do. What is the teacher's real work? again we ask. To aid the pupil in the development of a true character, to qualify him for a worthy life, to render him a proper subject for citizenship and society. How shall he accomplish this all-important work? Evidently by using the limited time he has to the best possible advantage; by touching every key in that marvelous organism which will respond

to the touch, by appealing to every susceptibility and every motive, by awakening every dormant energy, and especially by calling into play those powers and emphasizing those duties most essential to genuine manhood and womanhood. The true teacher does this by bringing himself, his whole moral and intellectual being, into sympathetic contact with his pupil's entire being. Hence it depends upon the teacher himself, his character, his culture, his personal influence, more than upon his mechanical methods of teaching, as to what kind of education his pupils will receive. Thus the genuine teacher is more than all text-books, more than all apparatus and all methods, more than every thing else in the work of true education.

When Pestalozzi was carrying on his great work in the old convent of Stanz, "his whole school apparatus consisted of himself and his pupils." But that was immeasurably more than all the apparatus of modern times minus the mighty personality of the strong-souled teacher himself. Yet of what avail is this transcendent factor in all the work of education-the personal force of the teacher-if it is to be limited to drilling the pupil's mind with figures or stuffing it with facts; or, in other words, if all the moral and spiritual force of the teacher is to be deprived of its legitimate effect, and his work is circumscribed within the narrow and beggarly limits of purely secular studies? Developed, ennobled, made great himself and worthy of his position by reason of his communion with truth in all her vast domain, in the realms of nature, of life, of duty, of destiny, and of God, he cannot, forsooth, lift his pupils to these lofty altitudes, he must not speak of these solemn sublimities and sacred verities, because that would be transcending the province of the State, whose work is to teach its ward to read and spell and cipher.

Could any theory or process of education more completely stultify the teacher and stunt the pupil than this? With such a theory character is nothing in teacher or pupil; the teacher who can cram the most multiplication table and spelling book into the child's mind in a given time, by whatever method or mechanism, bears off the palm, and is the State's best educational agent. How belittling such a view of education is to the teacher, how subversive of the high and noble ends he ought to seek, and how utterly at variance with every principle of sound

philosophy, is apparent to every thoughtful person. Yet such is the legitimate sequence of the vaunted secular theory of common-school instruction.

This theory of education, also, when practically carried into effect, is subversive of the very object for which the public schools are maintained. What is that object? Confessedly a moral one, the prevention of crime, the moral qualification of the present child for the future citizen. All advocates of education agree in this. "Remove ignorance and thus prevent crime," is their constant cry. No class of persons are louder or more persistent in the advocacy of this theory than the secularists themselves. With this conclusion we may not be able fully to agree, but that the end sought in all State education is a moral one is clearly evident. This must be admitted to be the ultimate end in view. No other or lower end would justify the State in taxing its subjects for educational purposes. Education is supported at public expense for the same reason that government itself, in its various departments, is maintained, and that courts of justice are established-because the moral interests, the well-being of the nation, demand it. Hence it is the legitimate province of the State to tax its citizens for schools, because of their supposed necessity to its moral welfare. But the very acknowledgment that the end is a moral one is fatal to the theory of purely secular instruction. A moral end is the pre-eminent purpose in view; but, forsooth, the moral nature of the child must not be the objective point in your instructions, and you must take good care not to use moral methods, nor deal with moral truths, nor appeal to moral motives. You must not appeal to the Deity, a belief in whom underlies the moral nature, nor to the Bible, the highest and purest text-book of morals extant, for that would be obnoxious to some one's prejudices, and subject the State to the charge of teaching sectarianism. You are seeking to develop the moral nature, it is true, and to qualify the child to become a moral agent, to whom is to be committed the most sacred trusts and solemn responsibilities; but you must beware lest you appeal to his conscience, though no faculty in the young is weaker, more imperfect, and more susceptible, and none stands in such transcendent need of development as that, and none is so vitally related to his whole future and fitness for citizenship. Or, if the conscience

is ever the subject of appeal, it must not be by employing those truths and influences which the history of the world has proved to be most effective in developing the moral sense and ennobling human character.

Such is the shallow philosophy, or, rather, utter ignoring of every principle of philosophy, which an unfounded and unreasoning prejudice calls upon this nation to adopt in its public-school system-to seek a moral end by systematically discarding the highest and best-established moral means; to seek development of character by persistently and purposely refusing to touch the most potent forces and factors which constitute character.

If an attempt is made to parry the force of this reasoning by pleading that to impart intellectual instruction to a child improves his morals and thereby secures the end proposed, we reply, first, if we grant that this is true in some slight degree, still it is a most indirect and imperfect method of compassing the end sought, and at best it would be far more effective if coupled with direct moral training; for the two processes of culture are not antagonistic when rightly joined, but mutually dependent and helpful, the one complementing the other. But, secondly, it is not so apparent that simple intelligence without corresponding moral training is an effectual preventive of crime, or that, in itself alone, it tends largely to moral elevation. It is coming to be more and more a question with thoughtful men whether we have not claimed quite too much for intelligence as a preserving and elevating force in society. If statistics have seemed to authorize our general belief in this respect, it is because that hitherto intelligence among us has been almost invariably connected with no inconsiderable moral and religious training, while criminal classes, so-called, were almost wholly deprived of both intelligence and moral influence. But other facts are pressing on us now, and facts which are not at all flattering to our boasted intelligence, nor favorable to reliance upon it for national safety. Though general intelligence is supposed to be largely increasing, yet crime seems not to diminish, and nearly all our prisons are full. Besides, it is ascertained that only twenty per cent. of Stateprison convicts are illiterate.

It is not, then, surprising that there should be some honest questioning as to the more exact relation between the spelling

book and the State-prison. It is true, as we hear so frequently from our modern philosophers, that the "cure for unbalanced lives is training "-that a bad environment makes bad men. It is also true that the only solution of the problem of much of our evil, South and North, is the school-house. But it is the school-house built upon the foundation principles of morals and theistic religion; it is the school-house where God is recognized and the Bible revered, and where the teachings of the world's noblest and best men are permitted to exercise their unrestrained influence.

We shall find wisdom in the practical maxim of the Prussians, that "whatever we would have in the State we must first introduce into the school-room." We want self-government, respect for authority, a profound sense of moral responsibility, developed consciences, reverence for sacred things, the fear of God, truthfulness, honor, unswerving integrity, a moral manliness that cannot be bribed nor intimidated. How shall we secure these indispensable requisites of a safe and prosperous nation without the highest moral training in the schoolroom? The more thoughtfully we examine the question the more thoroughly shall we be convinced that to dissociate the ethical and the intellectual, the Bible and the grammar, is an unwise, unphilosophical, and unsafe procedure. We shall accept the words of Hon. D. D. Barnard, of New York, uttered some years since before the Legislature of that State. "Keeping all the while in view," says he, "the object of popular education, the fitting of the people by morals as well as by intellectual discipline for self-government, no one can doubt that any system of instruction that overlooks the training and informing of the moral faculties must be wretchedly and fatally defective. Crime and intellectual cultivation merely, so far from being dissociated in history and statistics, are, unhappily, old acquaintances and tried friends. To neglect the moral powers in education is to educate not quite half the man. Το cultivate the intellect only is to unhinge the mind and destroy the essential balance of the mental powers; it is to light up a recess only the better to see how dark it is. And if this is all that is done in popular education, then nothing, literally nothing, is done toward establishing popular virtue and forming a moral people."