Referring, again, to the spirit in which education should be conducted, Spener asks: "To what does all the striving of the professors tend but to fill out the brain with theological philosophy, or a human skill in holy things, while their hearts are void of all true heavenly influences? The anxiety of the far-seeing Erasmus is but too fully realized, for he testified that his joy over the widely increasing application to study was diminished by the fear that much heathenism would steal in upon the spirit."

With the general endeavor expressed in these words a large proportion of educators from all sects and parties would agree. That education should strive for the radical improvement of the heart, that the purpose of the school as such, i. e., from first to last, is not merely the impartation of certain knowledges, that all teaching must contain an educative tendency-these are propositions which commend themselves to all who have had direct relations with the young in their years of development. It is well known, however, that many are honestly disposed to go much further than this. It is the conviction of a large number of our people that education must never be allowed to become godless; that each institution of learning should make it an essential part of its business to inculcate the fundamentals of religion. It is the reiterated assertion of one of the most powerful church organizations to be found in history, that our schools are without God, and so permit the young of both sexes to grow up uninstructed in the essential truths of a right life. The history of education teaches some plain and weighty lessons respecting this present matter. The pietistic movement originated naturally and justly. It was the full protest of the spiritual nature against formalism. It recognized something better than knowledge, and it sought to furnish this higher truth. Its position was exactly that of many sincere minds to-day who feel dissatisfied with the education of any young man or woman that consists of knowledge alone, being without the informing spirit that leads to nobility of character.

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What did pietism accomplish? It brought the schools back to every-day life. Applying catechetical instruction to the children, and regarding all education as designed to nourish a spirit of piety, these protestants against formalism drew education out into general view and common life. The schools were regarded as an organic whole, whose basis was the common school; and, further, the entire school system was placed in most intimate relations with the home school-training being required to be supplemented by home-culture. These principles spread over Protestant Germany; schools for the poor and orphan-schools were established in great number. We ask what came from this attempt to conduct education in the religious spirit? Our answer is, a most lamentable extreme-a serious and thorough failure. As if in very mockery, the protestants against formalism became diseased with formality. Pietism became the letter that

killeth. Here was the principle which worked all mischief. Let man keep himself from everything not avowedly and directly religious. The application of this principle separated man more and more from real life, and, in the place of that very spirit to be brought out and cherished, there was left to these schools of the pietists a vicious form. The outward posture became the essential thing. A spiritual police system was introduced, all schools and families were constantly searched in quest of the chief means of instruction-the Bible and the catechism. It came to be believed that the young people, if left to themselves, would go to destruction. Accordingly, the pupils were never left alone, not even for a moment; exercises for worship were multiplied, praying and preaching never ceased. Here was an educational system originated to develop true piety, and actually producing lying, hypocrisy, and contemptible Phariseeism. Here was an educational system designed in the interests of spirituality, and at the same time working a twofold evil-crushing out in weaker natures all fresh, individual life - power; repressing in stronger natures those passions which fed upon themselves for the years of school-life only to break forth at last with destructive fury.

We may realize the fearful state to which pietism came by noting the condition of the orphan-schools and poor-schools. These houses were originally the result of Christian sympathy; they became "instruments for a kind of soul-cure." The prayers of the orphans were solicited and published on the doors of the buildings. "Four groschen to pray for a man with bad eyes." "One groschen to be freed from the toothache." "Eight groschen, pray God, dear orphans, on account of my sinful thoughts." "Four groschen that God may send me belief on the Son of God." Spener did not recognize the truth he proclaimed he was never entirely free from the formalism he opposed. He felt the deadness of the Church, and at the same time believed that salvation was necessarily bound up with certain forms of dogmatical teaching. He desired a true and living piety, but did not believe this was anywise possible except for those who accepted, without question, the visible, literal form of faith. Piety, thus confined, could not develop otherwise than as it did with Spener and his associates. This striking movement in the history of education and its disastrous outcome might well lead the thoughtful mind to inquire whether religion is a matter that can be taught. It may lie in the very nature of this subject that it can not be communicated from the professorial chair, however wonderfully endowed. Upon the supposition (an hypothesis far beyond the territory of hope) that all educators could agree as to what make up the fundamentals of religion, it might be found that the best, the only, method of imparting them would be by example, by a deportment sincerely in harmony with them.*

* See, in this connection, that delightful little work, "An Attic Philosopher," by Émile Souvestre.

Reference has been made in these papers to a third general cause contributing to the rescue of education from middle-age formalism. This third cause was 66 discovery," that is, actual increase of knowledge in various domains. This enlarged knowledge was, for the most part, of a physical character; it had reference to the visible, measurable phenomena of Nature. There lay wrapped up in the wonderful advancements of the eighteenth century both bane and blessing. Society, as representing the external relations of men with one another, was immeasurably benefited. Civilization, as we now know it, received power to become only through the magnificent discernment of natural laws which, beginning in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, has proceeded with sure course to our own time. Health and wealth and all physical comforts were secured for men as never before by manifold scientific discoveries. We should go even further than this and recognize the relation which obtains between man's physical and his intellectual and moral well-being. To increase man's healthfulness is to make possible an increase in his intellectual and moral nature. An almost immeasurable amount of ignorance and vice must be attributed to bodily disease and untoward physical surroundings. To purify the air which man breathes and the food which he eats is to take the first steps for his culture and his salvation. All gratitude, then, for the work which has been done, and is now doing, to improve man's physical condition! Such work is organically connected with whatsoever is truly progressive in intellect, morality, and religion.

I have said that there was evil in the course of this movement in the eighteenth century which we are now considering. Denial, or rather that doubtful mind which is essential to the attainment of truth, became an end and afforded pleasure. No evil that can befall man is greater than the evil of loving to deny. This evil began its course in English deism, went on to fuller manifestation in the admirers of Voltaire, and found its completion in D'Holbach and Büchner. Let not this statement be misunderstood. Men are sick, and know not the disease which afflicts them. Disease is often concealed in its development along the line of generations. The father appears rational and well, the poisoned child becomes demented and dies. History is, as it were, the life of one man prolonged; whatsoever lies in this life finds time for development and full manifestation. English deism was an expression of the critical spirit in England. Whence did this spirit receive its peculiar power? From the deaths of persecuted seekers after truth. Here and there a man searched till he found. When he spoke, they slew him in the name of God and the Church. The age of discovery was come, and the instrument for the work was none other than this same critical spirit, the spirit which would test, which would inquire of Nature until she answered. Who should restrain this spirit, or withhold its manifold applications? When Tyndale and Shaftesbury, applying it to religion, resolved all creeds into one formula of

five short phrases, who should hinder? When D'Holbach, in France, and Büchner, in Germany, applying the same spirit to the supposed elementary principles of intellect and morality, resolved these also into movements among the brain-particles, who should hinder? No one should hinder either deism or materialism, if it but leads to the truth, to the real. What shall we say if the instrument come to be loved more than the truth it was designed to make known? What if denial become precious for its own sake? Here is calamity enough. Here is the extreme ;—from credulity to incredulity-from omnivorous belief to omnivorous denial. That there lay in the eighteenth-century development both English deism and French sensualism is no more to constitute a final condemnation of scientific discovery than the monstrosities done in religion's name should be alowed to sweep away the beauties of a pure faith. When one concludes from inquisitions and witch-burnings that there is only evil in Christianity, it is as though he should deny all worth to science because of the critical spirit and its monstrosity, a love of denial.

English deism was applied to education in Defoe's remarkable book "Robinson Crusoe." Man is to be educated according to Nature, rather should we say by Nature.

The contrast is sharp between the natural method of Comenius and this new appeal to Nature. Here society, school-systems, books, were to have no place. To Nature, as a sort of divine person, the child was surrendered for education. It was supposed that Nature would bring out the universal traits of mind, the universal religious ideas, the universal social laws. We find here a most instructive illustration of the tendency, so universal in human thinking, to personify our abstractions. Words such as nature, justice, virtue, law, are used by us to represent some independent entity or being. This ineradicable habit has been the source of desperate evils in all directions. We have now before us its application in education. We are told to follow Nature. This Nature, be it understood, is an all-wise being, independent of our activities, able to guide us with a perfect wisdom. Such was the phase through which education must pass before the true method of following Nature could appear. The sharply contrasted lines of training, now known as the scientific and the classical, are being differentiated at the time of which we write. More than this, if we look closely we shall find here a reason in history for regarding the scientific training as pre-eminently natural, as pre eminently obedient to the command "Follow Nature."

The critical spirit, applied to education, received brilliant expression in France and serious testing in Germany. I state some of the fundamental principles of Rousseau's "Émile": "Everything is good as it proceeds from the hand of the Creator, everything deteriorates in the hands of man. We are educated by Nature, by men, by things. The child should be educated for a common human calling, not for a

special position. No mother, no child. Follow Nature. All the mischief of children comes from weakness; make the child strong, and it will be good. Educators render children miserable in that they take the presence of childhood for nothing, and keep in their eye only the future of the child which it may never reach. See in the child only the child. Before the child reaches understanding, it must be thrown entirely upon the physical world. Therefore, you should not begin to reason too early with children. The first education should be purely negative: it consists not in teaching distinctions between virtue and vice, but in keeping the heart from faults, the understanding from errors. The only moral instruction for children is to do nobody any evil. Instruction should begin with things. At twelve years of age sense-impressions should be built up to conceptions. No other book should be used than the world, no other instruction than facts. The secret of education is so to arrange it that bodily and spiritual exercises are reciprocally helpful. At the fifteenth year of his life Émile appears in this wise cultivated. Obliged to learn by himself, he uses his own, not another man's understanding, and he puts forth nothing on authority. Émile has, to be sure, little but no half knowledge. He knows there is much he does not know. He has only knowledge of Nature-nothing historical; about metaphysics and morality he knows nothing. What death is, he knows not; but accustomed, without resistance, to surrender himself to the law of necessity, he will die, when he must, without a sigh. His body is sound, his limbs are sure, his understanding right and without prejudice, his heart free and without passions. Thus is Émile at fifteen years of age.

"But man is not created to remain a child. He steps out of this condition at Nature's appointed time. His physiognomy changes and gains expression. The voice changes. The eyes, those mirrors of the soul, that hitherto have said nothing, receive language and meaning; an increasing fire animates them, their glances are living. He feels without knowing what he feels. He is restless without cause. Be upon thy guard. Not one moment from the rudder, or all is lost! Now is the man really born to life, and nothing human is foreign to him. Hitherto our anxiety has been but a child's play; now it begins to be a great weight. This time, when generally education is ended, is the very time when ours shall truly commence. Now Émile is to become acquainted with his own kind. This is the period for history. To know men, you must see them act. In intercourse with the world you only hear men speak-they show their words, but conceal their deeds. In history they are unveiled, and we are able to judge. But Emile shall judge them himself-only thus can he gather knowledge of mankind. If the author's opinion continually lead him, he sees through another's glass, and when this fails he sees nothing at all. He shall see with his own eyes, feel with his own heart; no authority shall control him save the authority of his reason. But now