JOHN EVANS PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL AUTHOR OF "THE SPIRITUAL LIFE" AND "THE RELIGION CHICAGO NEW YORK TORONTO 1912 COPYRIGHT, 1904 BY FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 260681 VIMU New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Preface PAGE. 260881 PREFACE The present place of religious and moral education in our civilisation is paradoxical. Everybody knows that the moral health of society and the progress of religion depend largely, if not chiefly, upon the training of the young in matters that pertain to character, yet no other part of education receives so little specific attention. The growth of popular government has increased the importance of high character in the people, yet no substitute has been found, one has scarcely been sought, for the dogmatic religious instruction that has been properly excluded from the people's schools. At a time when the massing of the people in cities is exposing children as never before to the forces of evil, family training in religion and morals suffers, according to all accounts, a decline. At the bloom period of the Sunday school, complaints arise that the populace is ignorant, perhaps growingly so, of the Bible, and that the rate of accessions to the churches is decreasing. The age of reform in education, when we fancy that the child is at last |