of them presented with excessive, laborious formality; no inductive method, or dogmatic method, or object lesson, or language, or memory methods, yet each distinct essence fully developed, all working together in mutual helpfulness as an organic whole, each part applying itself with more fulness at any needed place, all crowned with a perfect, creative idealism. We find here the essence of all that is best in the new education, and the essence of all that is needed.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THREE SENSES.

Christian education may be defined in a threefold way: as, first, the method in which Christ's own soul was unfolded to the world; and second, as the way in which Christ himself taught men ; and third, as a system of education in which Christ's truth is a leading, if not a predominant part. We have now considered the first two of these. We find indicated in them as in a vista, the further development which modern education needs. The details of this needed development will be best .considered in connection with and leading up to the third aspect of Christian education. This is the part of the subject which now lies before us.

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CHAPTER III.

EXPANSION.

TWO ELEMENTS IN GROWTH.

ROWTH as a process is made up of two prin

cipal parts, enlargement and organization; of enlargement, as when a small snowball grows to be a big one, or when one cell produces its like and these in turn a multitude of similar ones; of organization as when a mass of metal is made into a watch or an aggregate of cells into a system of organs aiding each other in the processes of life. Education takes the various elements of growth in the human being, and aids, economizes, systematizes them. Our method of considering and determining the place of the moral and religious element in education, the place of that which is distinctively known as Christianity, will be to consider its relation to the various elements of growth.

EXPANSION ILLUSTRATED.

First, then, in growth we have the element of expansion. In Japan there are oaks which, though fifty years old, are not more than ten or twelve inches high. Some of these were exhibited in London a few years ago. On the other hand so magnificent is the growth of the oak in India, that

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some species reach a height of over one hundred feet, have leaves over a foot long and acorns so large that the acorn cups are two-and-one-half inches in diameter. Of those persons in Europe and America familiar with the oak, probably not one in a dozen, perhaps in some cases not one in a thousand, ever thinks of the possibility of this tree being very different in any part of the world, from what it is in the home neighborhood. When one hears of these diverse forms of the oak which have been described, particularly of the giant oaks of India, there is experienced a mental expansion, an exhilaration, an enlargement of ideas. This illustrates what is meant by the expansion element in mental growth. The simplest form of this is what may be termed magnitude expansion.

MAGNITUDE EXPANSION.

Everyone blest with eyesight during life time looks at the sky thousands of times, yet few ever try to stretch the mind to an adequate grasp of the sky as a vast sublime object. Let one think first of the small dome covering some court house bell, then of the dome of the capitol at Washington, then with increasing effort of a dome one-half a mile in diameter, and so on till in time some conception of a sky many miles in diameter is formed.

The conception is aided at first by thinking of the vault above us as made of blue steel and of the clouds as drapery upon it. Finally some conception of the celestial sphere such as the astronomer has

is arrived at. In all this process there is an effort, the mind quivers and totters as if it longed to be back in its old shrunk up state. But if the effort be persevered in, the mind gains a new quality of enlargement; we may think of the brain cells as actually swollen and unable to shrink back to their former dimensions. Then the comprehension of all lesser magnitude, the enlargement of the ideas to all lesser degree is found to be easy.

When we read of the butterflies of South America whose wings measure twelve inches across from tip to tip, of earthworms in Australia from two to three feet long, of fossil lizards2 eighty feet long, weighing twenty tons when alive: or of some vast enlargement in modern civilization which we must grasp and use if we would do our function in the world, as of sixty thousand new books published each year, of London as a city twenty miles in diameter, of various extensions and fluctuations of commerce, life and thought, to grasp these is not only easy but an exhilaration.

Almost every intelligent person has heard that when the earth is moving most slowly, its velocity is eighteen miles a second. Yet to truly realize this requires much stretching of the ordinary mind. Let one think of some familiar part of a railroad route, eighteen miles long, of the villages and principal objects of interest along the track, then with the finger on the pulse and while the pulse beats once, let the mind flash past all these objects spread out along this space of eighteen miles. In

this way by repeated effort some realization of planetary velocity may be arrived at. Perhaps the mind can go on developing thus and stretch itself to some conception of the velocity of light. Let one conceive of mirrors placed round the earth's equator, so that light will flash from one to the next and so on round the world. Then as we stand by its track with finger on the pulse, while the pulse beats once, the ray flashes past us eight times, and in each of the seven intervals we know that it has flashed once round the world, and if we can flash with it we realize its motion. Then to realize all lesser velocities, that of sound and rifle balls and nerve action, and far more valuable than all, that of news and thought and love, the million fold flashings of life the world over, becomes an easy pleasure.

If with finger on the pulse we flash ourselves through space with planetary velocity, eighteen miles each pulse beat, from sunrise to sunset on a long day, in that time we measure off in definite experience the vast expanse of the sun's diameter. Our faculties are expanded to grasp in some measure the vast energy contained in his huge mass, the force of gravity which at his surface would cause a man to weigh two tons, the vast reservoir of heat which working against gravity causes explosions in the surface tearing out holes into which fifty earths could be poured like so many peas. The mind being expanded to some comprehension of this, the grasp of all lesser aggregates of force is easy, of sunlight on the earth, of sunlight stored