methods, or may be learned from text-books; but good moral training is of a higher and more complex character. "Creeds pasted upon the memory," says Spencer, “good principles learned by rote, lessons in right and wrong, will not eradicate vicious propensities, though people, in spite of their experience as parents and as citizens, persist in hoping they will." "The difficulties of moral teaching," says Bain, "exceed in every way the difficulties of intellectual teaching." In the child's moral nature, sympathy is the ruling impulse, and influence the controlling power. The teacher must be a trusted and affectionate guide, not a bundle of philosophical ethics.

It is true the child's moral tendencies are largely the result of home influences or of hereditary transmission ; nevertheless, the school cannot shirk its appropriate share of responsibility.

II. THE SPHERE OF SCHOOL.

Unfavorable home influences must be counteracted as far as possible at school, and the moral faculties must be called into daily exercise until habits of right-thinking result in habits of right-doing. The strict discipline of school is in itself a powerful means of moral culture. Pupils are trained to habits of order, regularity, punctuality, industry, truthfulness, obedience, regard for the rights of others, and a general sense of justice. The influence of school, continued for a series of years, in these respects, is very powerful in the formation of habit and character.

But beyond these incidental and indirect results, what is it possible to accomplish in the way of moral development? In the past, moral training was very generally confounded with religious instruction; and some still hold

that there can be no moral culture not based on specific religious instruction or sectarian faith. In our public schools, purely secular instruction is the rule, both by law and custom; religious exercises the exception. For the purpose of practical consideration, then, we may remand religious teaching to the home, the Sunday-school, and the Church.

The reading of the Bible, still required in some schools as a formal morning exercise, may or may not be an aid in moral training, according to the manner and spirit in which the exercise is conducted. The same holds true of morning or evening school prayers. Unless marked by earnestness on the part of the teacher, and attentive reverence by pupils, it is better to omit them. With regard to such devotional exercises, considered by many to be on the border-line of religious instruction, teachers must be guided by local custom and regulations; but they should bear in mind that there is a growing tendency to make the public schools purely secular; that the present is an age of the broadest personal liberty in respect to religious belief; and that they must manifest in school a tolerant regard for the conscientious scruples as well as the legal rights of both Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, Liberal and Churchman.

"It is not merely by hearing the Bible read,” says Professor George W. Minns, " or by learning Bible lessons or theological dogmas, or by any forms or ceremonies, that the religious spirit cometh. All these, at their best, are only means to an end; they are not the end itself, and they often defeat it. Motives are the springs of all actions. We judge of a man's conduct by his motives; the spirit with which a man works, the motives which prompt his con

duct-these show and constitute the man, and these are moral qualities springing from and dwelling in the heart." Professor Bain, in his late work, Education as a Science, thus clearly draws the following dividing line:

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Morality is not religion, and religion is not morality; and yet the two have points of coincidence. Morality cannot be the same thing without religion as with it; religion, working in its own sphere, does not make full provision for all the moral exigencies of human life. The precepts of morality must be chiefly grounded on our human relations in this world as known by practical experience; the motives, too, grow very largely out of those relations. Religion has precepts of its own, and these are all the more effectively worked when worked in separation."

"I wish to be distinctly understood," says W. T. Harris, "as claiming only that public-school education is moral, and completely so, on its own basis; that it lays the basis for religion, but is no substitute for religion. It is not a substitute for the State because it teaches justice; it only prepares an indispensable culture for the citizen of the State. The State must exist; religion must exist, and complement the structure of human culture begun in moral education."

III. POSSIBILITIES AND CONDITIONS.

Leaving out of consideration all religious forms and observances in school, what is it possible to accomplish in the way of moral training? There are some who think nothing can be done if distinctive religious instruction is omitted, and that moral training must necessarily be disregarded; but this, in the words of Huxley, "is burning the ship to get rid of the cockroaches."

If moral training consisted merely in telling children what is right and what is wrong, and in dealing out ethical maxims and proverbs; if it were enough to tell children it is wicked to lie, steal, or swear; if it would make boys truthful and honest to learn commandments by rote -then the teacher's task would be an easy one. "Did you ever give a lesson on honesty?" asked Horace Mann of a teacher in England. "Oh no," was the ready reply, "that isn't necessary; they have the commandment in the catechism, you know."

But the fact that true moral development depends on complex conditions is no reason why the whole matter should be practically ignored, as seems to be the case in some schools.

Moral development depends partly on the clearness of the intellectual faculties, and partly upon physical conditions; partly on hereditary traits, and partly on educational bias. It is influenced by the pupil's associates, home discipline, by school government, and by religious instruction in the family, the Church, and the Sunday-school.

There can be no sound moral character not based upon a sound understanding capable of forming correct judgments upon thoughts and acts. Emotions, appetites, passions, and will must be under the control of intelligent mental perceptions. Sound health is an important factor. "Every man is a rascal as soon as he is sick," says Dr. Johnson. As the child should be made to feel, in physical training, that every violation of the laws of health is visited by swift and inevitable punishment, so in moral training the central idea should be to make the child realize the natural penalty upon himself of every violation of the law of right.

"The tendency of each new generation," says Spencer, "to develop itself wrongly indicates the degree of modification that has yet to take place. Those respects in which a child requires restraint are just the respects in which he is taking after the aboriginal man. The selfish squabbles of the nursery, the persecutions of the playground, the lyings and petty thefts, the rough treatment of inferior creatures, the propensity to destroy-all these imply that tendency to pursue self-gratification at the expense of other beings which qualified man for the wilderness, and which disqualifies him for civilized life."

IV. GENERAL DIRECTIONS FROM HERBERT SPENCER.

1. "There are in all children tendencies to good feelings and actions, and also tendencies and impulses to wrong-doing. These tendencies, whether good or bad, are the result of hereditary transmission and of surrounding circumstances."

2. "Do not expect from children any great amount of moral goodness."

3. "Do not attempt to force young children into precocious moral goodness. Be content with moderate measures and moderate results."

4. "Bear in mind the fact that a higher morality, like a higher intelligence, must be reached by a slow growth." 5. "Leave children, whenever you can, to the discipline of experience."

6. "Be sparing of commands; but whenever you do command, command with decision and firmness."

7. "Let your penalties be like the penalties inflicted by inanimate nature-inevitable."

8. "The aim of your discipline should be to produce a