work without being of service to the other. Anything which induces cleanliness, obedience, honesty, mastery, devotion, fruits in righteousness, promotes the results desired by both. It would be better for our children, and hence best for all institutions with which they are or may be associated, if the school gave them better ideas of the relative value of facts. These stubborn things have always been with us and will remain to the end, but we should see clearly that isolated details are not only difficult to master, but when mastered become burdens, increasing in weight, not only as they increase in number, but as we add to the length of time they are to be retained. When related and we see this relation, they are of service, because they will give us a better understanding of the principles which underlie them, and a truer conception of the teachings they embody. Unless facts illuminate or stimulate our investigations, it would be better to house them in books than in heads. If stored away in the mind by a conscious effort they tend to stupefy and paralyze. One's information becomes a means of grace only when he knows a thing so well that he is unconscious of his knowledge. We are learning the unwisdom of trying to become wise by making ourselves walking encyclopedias. We are beginning to discover that these labors not only sap the sweetness of life, but communicate to it a certain wooden quality which unfits one to live a life of the spirit in all its warmth, beauty, righteousness. The man who is satisfied with details grows narrower with the years and leaner as his horde increases. The miserly spirit is as surely developed by this process as it is in the poor wretch who gloats over his shining accumulations. Such a one has reached his limit of usefulness when he has told the few things he thinks he knows. The work of the public schools develops keenness and capacity of observation in its student force, and hence the childen come to have an unusual facility in doing things, but the development of those powers without the safeguard of a high moral sense tends to produce rebels instead of safe citizens. Pedagogical vagaries have taken on many forms, but perhaps the least excusable is found in the so-called enrichment of our courses of study. These additions have given us many new subjects and an almost unending list of new topics to be strained through the sieves in the tops of the children's heads. The result has been that children have come to place a higher estimate on the form than on the life it shelters or may give to the seeker for its blessing. They have developed great capacity for absorbing, but have not the power of digesting the facts devoured, hence they have become the least interesting and the most hopeless of intellectual and moral dyspeptics. They suffered from all the evils incident to excessive and intoxicating diet. They have but little of that staying quality, or love for work, which results from wholesome conditions. Even the physical food of the child is stimulating and irritating rather than satisfying and nourishing, while his clothing is designed to attract the attention of others and cultivate the vanity of the wearer. Our teachers are coming to see that all questions are, in their ultimate analysis, moral questions. The age at which the child should enter school, the length of time he should remain therein, the studies he should pursue, the manner in which he should do his work, the spirit which should control him, the purpose he should have in life, and his willingness to serve, are among the things which should receive the first consideration, but which are too often left to the decision of accident. The child can never be well taught until those having the direction of his training come to see that they are responsible for fitting a human being to become a child of the Most High. Physical surroundings, mental drill, moral nurture, are only useful so far as they contribute to this end. The schools have gone much too far in directing physical action and in limiting the moral judgment of the child. His first and greatest right is the right to grow, physically and morally. The former depends upon proper and sufficient food and exercise; the latter upon counsel and guidance and also upon freedom to learn through his mistakes. If all acts are performed under external restraint, the actor is not only enfeebled, but debased. It would be better if we said less frequently, " don't," and more frequently permitted the child to learn from experience the evils of wrong-doing and the rewards of right living. Crutches are useful to the invalid, but crippling to the robust. Suggestions and even compulsion have their place in the training of the child, but if the one is used too frequently, or the other is insisted upon too strenuously, the victim can neither go afoot nor alone; he can neither render a service nor increase his power. We need a saner plan for the work of the school-room. Intelligent thoughtfulness would teach us that facts are based upon simple principles which can be so worded as to be easily within the comprehen sion of the child. Facts and processes should be mastered for the purpose of making principles, not only comprehensible, but luminious. When one understands the principles involved in facts studied, he is not only growing, but is nurturing the desire for growth, and, still better, is breeding the wish to give to others of the riches which flood his life and delight his soul. This better understanding not only gives zest and stimulus to work, but also develops that catholicity of spirit so necessary to intelligent christianity. We often wonder why many of the so-called best people in the world most hinder its progress. It is largely due to the fact that they have become so absorbed in existing conditions that they are incapacitated for seeing either the genesis or the final conclusion of things. When the problem in which they are specially interested seems nearing solution, they occupy themselves with shouting "whoa" in despairing accents. A pupil who has been so trained that he can see that all the processes in any subject of study are based upon a few principles will grow to understand that God has an intelligent plan in the management of the world. Such enlargement of his view and powers will bring to him with controlling force the thought that much will be required of those to whom much has been given; that wherever light and virtue are found there exists the responsibility of carrying these blessings to the dwellers in darkness and to the victims of vice. The arguments in favor of expansion, as statements of facts, may or may not be convincing; the cry of imperialism, as an excuse for spasms, is of no special interest, but the principle holds, that he who has divinity in large measure, is responsible for the growth of the divine in others less fortunate. When one sees clearly the principles involved in a given course of action, then he is prepared to appreciate the moral quality of the items incident to such action, and is not in danger of being blinded by a mass of details. No school is worthy of the name unless the children taught therein come to have a sense of their personal, community, and national responsibility. This knowledge will show them that every violation of rules or laws, every instance of malicious destruction of property, every manifestation of vandalism, all exhibitions of impudence and insolence, all forms of disrespect for persons, places, positions, sacred things, helps to make possible the development of an anarchist and the evolution of an assassin. When the school shall have come into its highest estate, the child will grow to feel his accountability to himself and to that Power which has given him life, that he may hasten that day for which the world is praying and toiling, with a faith manifest in works Christlike in spirit and Godlike in results. Even the child must learn that the safety of this nation does not rest in the hands of its rulers, but in the lives of its common people. If this is to be a safe and a wholesome country to live in, then this multitude must come to an appreciation of the fact that true greatness consists in simplicity, gentleness, faithfulness, individuality; in doing our duty in the place in which we find ourselves. Station, wealth, office, name, none of these, nor all of them, are necessary to the rendering of a worthy service. The child should be taught to reverence the head of a household who is true to all the interests committed to his care, and is faithful in all the work his hands find to do, because he is the man who gives us the mastery, not only of the world's markets, but of its destiny as well. It is quite as important for one to be anxious to do his work as it is for one to work out his own salvation. The desire to walk under one's own hat, the ability to earn the hat, the capacity to do one's own reading, thinking, voting, the determination to represent one's self and count one when standing alone, are evidences of a working piety that the world much needs in these days. The silent, as well as the oral, instruction of the teacher should help the child to something better than a mastery of text-books, if he is to do the work of life worthily. His school-room experiences should teach him that he is the sufferer as well as the loser, if he makes it necessary for anyone to fight for his rights, whether they be social, financial, political, or religious. He can learn, while yet young, that failure to pay his proportion of the public assessment of service or tax is a crime against himself and one for which he will find it difficult to atone. He will here have opportunities to learn that he is not only doing the right thing, but promoting all of his best interest, when he seeks to give to others equal or better opportunities than have fallen to his own lot. The wisest man since Plato has said: "There are a thousand who can talk for one who can think, and a thousand more who can think for one who can feel; for to feel is poetry, philosophy, and religion all in one." No school can fit a child for life unless it leads him to see that it as necessary for him to feel a truth as to know what is truth. There can be no question but that feeling is the highes form of intelligence yet discovered by the subtlest physchologist. Our great poets have been not only the historians of the future, but they have also lived most because they have loved most. The thrilling pulse of nature has startled them with its power; the wisdom embalmed in the daisy has taught them of life, death, and the judgment to come; they have read the record written in the rocks, because they have been in touch as well as in tune with the Father, who not only loves his children, but has done all they will allow him to do to fit them to become his sons and partakers of his glory. As it is the duty of the preacher, in a certain sense, to reveal the beauty and wisdom of God to those who look to him for light and guidance, so it is the work of the teacher to stand between the masters and the child, and with an expression more halting render it possible for him to make companions of these great souls and drink of the fountains which they, like Pegasus of old, have left for the refreshment of all who will drink. It was not the learning of Mark Hopkins, the wisdom of Dr. Arnold, nor the vision of Horace Mann, that made each a power while living and a blessing in these latter days, but it was the fact that they possessed in fullest measure that fine love of childhood which found its highest manifestation in old Domsie. This love made that old stone school-house in the glen, among the pines, more than a university, and kept Domsie on the watch for the boy o' parts, and gave him the lad a sagacity which made it easy for him to provide ways and means to send the youth, when found, to Edinboro. - The child is entitled to such an introduction to the masters as will enable him to understand the stations into which they were born, the conditions under which they worked, the sufferings they endured, and the service they rendered. To him the lives of Wagner, Millet, Michael Angelo, and Lincoln must be something more than dates and names and places. He must appreciate the humble homes into which three of them were born, and the noble parentage of the fourth, and he must be able to discern, as his acquaintance with them becomes more intimate, that each loved some form of nature with a great passion; that each had a purpose to which he was true through appalling sufferings; that each sweat great drops of blood that other lives might be better lived, and that each opened the windows of the souls of millions and let in the light |