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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 future — 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 education 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 (1) 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 passion 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;

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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 revived 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 emotionalism, 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 expedience, 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 religion and morality, and who believe 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

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, telegraph, 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 realities, 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 succumbs 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 what 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 absolutely, 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 education) must embody these ideals, must implant and nurture them, that our children may become exponents of our best thought, and illustrations of our best conduct. What we ourselves are, America will be. The citizens are the nation. Bribery, graft, economic slavery, luxurious living, crime, professional dishonesty, can only exist where men either practice these things themselves or tolerate them in others. There is no way to effect righteousness except for you, and me, and the next man to be righteous. 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 education is that of co-ordinating the agenies within a religious communion. 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: (1) 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. (1) 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

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 interrelations of these agencies, or of their specific and unique contributions to a clean-cut ideal of religious 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 relation 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 sentiment 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 by qualified leaders, and for self-expression by members. The newer visions of what qualifies a leader, and of appropriate forms of selfexpression 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 attended 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.

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