knowledge and experience, I pass on to mention one practical conclusion, viz.: the necessity of studying carefully the whole record of the growth in individual children in youth, of instincts, wants, and interests, from the religious point of view. If we are to adapt successfully our methods of dealing with the child to his current life experience, we have first to discover the facts relating to abnormal development. The problem is a complicated one. Child study has made a beginning, but only a beginning. Its successful prosecution requires a prolonged and coöperative study. There are needed both a large inductive basis in facts, and the best working tools and methods of psychological theory. Child psychology in the religious, as in other aspects of experience, will suffer a set-back if it becomes separated from the same control of the general psychology of which it is a part. It will also suffer a set-back if there is too great evenness in trying to draw at once some conclusion as to practice from every new set of facts discovered. For instance, while much of the data that have been secured regarding the phenomena of adolescence is very important in laying down base lines for further study, it would be a mistake to try immediately to extract from the facts general principles regarding either the instruction or education of youth from the religious point of view. The material is still too scanty. It has not as yet been checked up by an extensive study of youth under all kinds of social and religious environments. The negative and varying instances have been so far excluded rather than utilized. In many cases we do not know whether our facts are to be interpreted as causes or effects; or if they are effects, we do not know how far they are normal accompaniments of psychological growth, or more or less pathological problems of external social conditions.

This word of caution, however, is not directed against the childstudy in itself. Its purport is exactly the opposite: to indicate the necessity of more, and much more, of it. It will be necessary to carry on the investigations in a coöperative way. Only a large number of inquirers working at the same general question, under different circumstances, and from different points of view, can reach satisfactory results. If a convention like this were to take steps to initiate and organize a movement for this sort of study it would mark the dawn of a new day in religious education. Such a movement could provide the facts necessary for a positive basis

of a constructive movement, and would, at the same time, obviate the danger of a one-sided, premature generalization from crude and uncertain facts.

I make no apology for concluding with a practical suggestion of this sort. The title of my remarks, "The Relation of Modern Psychology to Religious Education," conveys in and of itself a greater truth than could be expressed in any remarks that I might make. The title indicates that it is possible to approach the subject of religious instruction in the reverent spirit of science, making the same sort of study of the problem that we would of any other educational problem. If methods of teaching, principles of selecting and using subject-matter in all supposedly secular branches of education are being subjected to careful and systematic scientific study, how can those interested in religion-and who is not justify neglect of the most fundamental of all educational questions, the moral and religious?

B

FAITH'S PRAYER.

ESIDE a tree and shaded rock

A herd boy knelt beside his flock
And softly told, with pious air,
His alphabet as ev'ning prayer.

Unseen, a pastor lingered near:

"My child, what means this sound I hear?
My child, a prayer yours cannot be;
You only say your A-B-C."

"I have no better way to pray;
All that I know to God I say.

L

I tell the letters on my knees;

He makes the words Himself to please."

"Unity Hymns and Chorals."

TO A SLUG.

ET those who call thee mean and low

Take heed that, crawling to and fro

In weary paths, they leave as fine

And silver-flashing trace as thine!

-Fulia Ditto Young, in Good Housekeeping.

ALFRED BAYLISS, SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, SPRINGFIELD, ILL.

I

VISITED a country school the other day which I should like to describe as a basis for this discussion. The house is comparatively new, and enjoys the unusual distinction-in Illinois-of being heated by a furnace. There is a narrow closet extending the whole width of the building, from which leads the stairway to the basement. There is also an outer stairway to a door opening into the basement. I took the liberty to work my way into the schoolroom thru this back door, and up the stairs, thus making an opportunity to explore that basement, and take an inventory of the contents of the long closet before intruding upon the school.

The excavation for the basement is under about one-third of the floor space, and was intended to be just large enough for the furnace and coal supply, but by some happy inadvertence it had been made larger than absolutely necessary for those conveniences, and so there is room in the corner nearest the window for a little workshop. There is a well-made (by the teacher) carpenter's bench, strong but not elegant, with a good vise and a fair kit of tools, including a jack-plane, two chisels, a tri-square, joiners' gauge, brace and two bits, a drawing knife, saw, two jig saws, two hammers, three bench knives, a small lathe, and a glue pot. There were some pieces of unfinished work and quite a little stock of lumber. Such an outfit I had never before seen in connection with a one-room country school.

As I stood in the closet upstairs I could hear a small boy say: "Lesson two X's, V, one I, twenty-six. Forms of Land and Water. A pen-in-su-la is a body of land, etc." As I entered the schoolroom the first thing I saw was the omnipresent time-table of recitations, fifteen in the morning and seventeen in the afternoon. There was a twenty-minute period for the "A" arithmetic, and fifteen minutes each for three other subjects; all the other "hours" were five or ten minutes long. The school, therefore, is "normal" in some respects. Those four long recitation periods are ac*Delivered at the meeting of the Department of Superintendence, Cincinnati, February, 1903.

counted for by the fact that six of the pupils are in the eighth grade. The thirty-three pupils enrolled vary in age from six to eighteen years. A baker's dozen of them are over twelve years old. There were fifteen boys and four girls present the day I was there.

One notes at a glance that the ceiling is papered, that the matting in the aisles is neat, and the rug near the teacher's table rather pretty; but the casual visitor might go away uncertain about the walls, they are so covered with the handiwork of. the children-colored maps, drawings, amateur photographs, and the like. These things detract so much from the effect of the three or four fine pictures, that the children are planning to remove some of their own work to the halls, and give Rosa Bonheur, Millet, and Herring a better chance. Cases of that kind of growth are not uncommon in Illinois.

This school had attracted attention by the great variety and excellence of its exhibits at the Illinois State Fair. To illustrate, I quote a paragraph from a newspaper.

"The Cottage Hill School in Sangamon County, Mr. E. C. Pruitt, teacher, is probably the most remarkable country school in Illinois in the matter of making agricultural collections. It takes first premium in products of school garden, flowers from school garden, collection of seeds gathered by the pupils, geological collection, school collection of woods, school collection of insects, and maps of Illinois and grand division maps, and second (no first being granted) in amateur photography of school grounds and scenes. Cottage Hill School also has a library of one hundred and fifty or two hundred books. Sixty-five kinds of wood are shown; the large table of potted plants taken from the school garden is very beautiful, and a credit to any gardener; the products of the school garden include potatoes, tomatoes, corn of different kinds, beans of different kinds, onions, turnips, several grasses, and several other products. The seed collection is very elaborate, and the hundreds of kinds are neatly displayed in glass bottles and elongated globes especially adapted to the purpose. The other collections mentioned are much beyond the ordinary. A pantagrapher talked with some parents who send children to this school. They reported that the boys and girls are greatly interested in these collections and the garden-making, and that they talk about it a great deal at home. There is much enthusiasm in the school, and many things are learned about the features mentioned."

One of the boys told me they had earned $290 in this way. I said, "What have you done with all that money?" His reply

was an expressive gesture, which said, as plain as words, “look around and make your own list." I told the school their library would be richer by one or two more books if they would tell me in writing what became of that money. There was a ready assent, and the next Monday morning after my visit I received thirteen letters bearing on the subject. Considered as a piece of literary art, the one I read is neither the best nor the worst, but from the informational side it is among the best.

COTTAGE HILL SCHOOL, JANUARY 15, 1903. DEAR SIR: You said you would like to know what we done with the $290 we took away from the State Fair of Illinois for premiums, I will menction some of the things I can think of, there is our library consisting of a 185 books, Two book cases, a 12-inch globe Dictionary stand, Music chart, case for seeds, and globes, for seed, Lumber for stage curtain and carpet, Six lampes with reflecters, Clock, Two fine pictures One of Christ, the other of Britany sheep, framed eight Diplomoes, and several of our premium maps and many other pictures to numerous to mention, Artificial palm, three tables and eight chairs, Six drawing boards, gave $17.50 to pupils, flowers and flower seeds, papered the school room, 100 seed bottles, lathe, work bench and set of tools, stand cover Song books, and many articcals we neaded to make all of these things. Well I guess I will close now as I can think of nothing else. Yours truly

I do not file this statement as an exhibit of the "Illinois Plan." The case is not a type. It may not be an illustration of a rational solution of the problem of "Industrial Education in Rural Schools." I shall not be surprised to hear it characterized as a case of misdirected energy, exhibiting nothing of educational value, or even as a lawless obstruction of the real business of the school. It is, nevertheless, an existing case, and, moreover, one of which there will soon be many counterparts, if the energy of country teachers and supervisors is turned, as seems not unlikely, in the direction indicated by it; for the country school, as never before, is taking its cue from the town. The country teachers have a feeling, if they do not know, that the town teachers have the advantage of them, and are doing some things better than they can do themselves. They are ready to make any sort of experiment, do anything their supervisors suggest. They are impetuously eager to "prove all things." They will hold fast to that which is good, too, if, by reason of light and guidance, they chance to find it.

In this instance there is, apparently, a lack of coördination and logical continuity, or something else equally euphonious and equally meaningless to the country teacher. This teacher knows