religious education justly feel that we can no more expect fully developed Christian sympathy and insight without special training than we can expect æsthetic insight and interest, or scientific insight and interest, or historical insight and interest without special training. They know that, in general, a human instinct or interest that remains uncultivated in youth will attain, in general, at best, only partial or stunted development; and, at the worst, that it will be so quiescent as to be virtually non-existent, and hence will have small hold, or no hold at all, on an individual in later life.

Now, in this country, nearly everyone feels that the spirit of Christianity, and especially the moral teachings of Christianity, are among the most precious possessions of our civilization. The perpetuation and fuller realization of this spirit and of these teachings, as dominating influences in human life, are so important to the progressive happiness of the race here on earth, to say nothing of the hereafter, that all men agree, no matter what extremes of belief or unbelief may separate them in other respects, that every legitimate effort should be made to perpetuate and disseminate the spirit of Christianity and its moral code as widely and as effectively as possible. On this point there is no disagreement worth considering. And yet I am one of that large number who do not hesitate to declare as emphatically as they can that explicit, formal instruction in religion in the public schools is undesirable, impossible, and unnecessary. And in support of this assertion I beg to present the following considerations.

Although there is substantial unanimity concerning the ultimate aim of religious education, great and mutually irreconcilable differences of opinion prevail as soon as details are broached, and we enter on a consideration of the means and methods to be employed. On the one hand, we have the Roman Catholic Church, whose teaching of Christianity is authoritative and dogmatic; on the other, the Protestant sects, whose teaching is based directly on the Bible, and who agree only in refusing to accept the peculiar dogmas and authority of the Roman Catholics, and differ fundamentally on other points of doctrine; each sect more or less tenaciously main

taining the truth of its own special interpretation of the Bible and its teachings. Further, while Catholics and Protestants agree that the ultimate aim of religious instruction is the inculcation of the spirit of Christianity as set forth in the Bible, in practice, they do not agree in their respective interpretations of the Bible which is the foundation of the teachings of both. One must remember that the Catholic and Lutheran catechisms are based on the same Bible. To the same source-the interpretation of the Bible-we may trace the differences between the Protestant denominations.

Now these differences are divisive in the extreme. They are fundamental, insuperable, and hence permanently divisive, so far as non-Catholics and Catholics are concerned; and hitherto they have been insuperable also, and, in my opinion, will continue to be for a long time to come, so far as the Protestant sects are concerned. Note, for example, the bitter contest based on differences in religious faith between the Church of England and the Dissenters, in England, for possession of the schools; and in our own country the multiplication of Protestant sects. All of these would be unwilling to accept the religious teachings of another sect, denomination, or church, though perfectly willing to tolerate them, so long as there is no attempt on the part of one of them to secure the acceptance of its tenets by another.

If further proof is needed, we find it in the fact that according to the late Chancellor Walter B. Hill, of the University of Georgia, "so far as the record discloses the motives of the complaining parties, every law case in which a rule of exclusion or limitation on the use of the Bible has been invoked has been brought not by an agnostic or infidel, objecting to religious instruction, but by a sectarian, objecting that the teaching was not in accord with the tenets of his sect." I have endeavored to verify this assertion, and so far as I have been able to follow the records I can corroborate Chancellor Hill's statement. Chancellor Hill continues: "This is the situation which will some day bring the blush of shame to the most bigoted sectarians. It looks back to the past, to the period of the Middle Ages described by Judge Bleckley, when every good man

thought it his duty to burn some man who was better than himself.' In those days each orthodoxy said to every other-doxy,

"Quisquis qui credit aliter

Hunc damnamus aeternaliter."

As a matter of history, we know that instruction in religion was originally universal in our public schools. But owing to the growth of democracy, immigration, the multiplication of sects, and the spread of "unbelief," it was ere long impossible to satisfy the patrons of the schools with the instruction in the Puritan catechism and Puritan interpretation of the Bible, generally. Consequently, religious education was relegated entirely to the home and the churches, where each family could secure then and can still, if really in earnest, the particular form of religious instruction which alone, to each, seems instruction in religion.

As already remarked, the differences in creed that then existed still exist in all their early force between the Roman Catholic people, on the one hand, and the Jews and the people of all the Protestant denominations on the other; for the creed of the Roman Church is unalterable. And these differences exist also in varying degrees between the creeds of all the Protestant churches. In spite of the welcome and rational tendency of recent times to minimize the differences between the creeds of the evangelical churches, it is still true that the Methodist or the Baptist regards his own form of the Christian faith as nearer the true faith than that of the Episcopalian; and it is safe to say that most members of all three of the sects named would not be contented with the rudimentary creed of the Universalist or the Unitarian; although the Universalist and the Unitarian, like the Methodist, Baptist, or Episcopalian, believes himself to be a Christian.

I need hardly say that my repeated references to the differences between these Christian sects is not to call attention to the differences as such, but to point out that while there is an undoubted tendency toward a closer union of all Christian churches, and hence a nearer approximation toward unanimity

*Walter B. Hill, N. E. A., 1904.

of creed than we have ever had before, we are still so far from that unanimity as to make it just as impossible to satisfy Catholics, Unitarians, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Jews, for example, to say nothing of unbelievers, with the same form of religious instruction as it was when the doctrinal differences between the sects were dwelt upon more than they now are. The reasons which induced our forbears of little more than two generations ago to insist on excluding instruction in religion from the public schools are therefore still valid.

It is such differences in creed as are here indicated, and the attitude of the several denominations toward the whole body of Christian faith, including, of course, the interpretation of the Bible-not merely those named, but all of them—that have led to the exclusion not only of all specifically doctrinal religious instruction from our public schools, but also, in many places, the use of the Bible itself in opening exercises, and hence also, to our great loss, to the study of the Bible as literature.

An examination of legal provisions on the reading of the Bible in the public schools shows that the laws vary all the way from requiring some portion of the Bible to be read daily in the public schools to absolute prohibition of the reading of the Bible. The general situation seems to be that the law permits the reading of the Bible in the schools in most communities if no one objects, but forbids it if objection is raised.

Quite apart from the legal aspects of this whole matter, there is an important reason why we have lost the study of the Bible in our public schools. The Bible is, of course, regarded by many people as a peculiarly inspired book, as literally the word of God to man. It is, therefore, by these persons re-garded as a book to be revered. To look upon such a book as amenable to merely literary interpretation is by them regarded as sacrilege; it must be read with an attitude of mind quite different from that with which any ordinary literary masterpiece is read and appreciated. That is to say, it must be approached only with a religious purpose, and in the attitude of a learner who is prepared to accept, in advance, without hesitation, qualification, or reservation, as literally true, and spiritually satisfying, all that it contains.

While substantially this view was almost universally held by conscientious Christians, as it was, down to within very recent times, it was only natural that the Bible could not be studied as literature is studied-as, for example, Chaucer, or Shakespeare, or Macaulay, or Emerson is studied. While this extreme view has been recently modified, so far as many enlightened men and women are concerned, it is still widespread enough, even in its modified modern form, to prevent the possibility of the study of the Bible as literature in our public schools of all grades, in most if not in all parts of the country.

But if it were not impossible for the reasons already set forth, to give explicit and formal instruction in religion in the public - schools, it ought not to be given for another reason. As has been already pointed out, there are few divisive influences in human society that cut deeper and entail greater rancor than differences in religious belief. The public school is, and should be, our greatest unifying influence. It is the function, and it is the glory of our public school, that it is the most successful instrument yet devised for preparing people of every sect and of no sect, people of every social grade, and people of the most diverse nationalities, for progressive citizenship in our American | democracy.

This work of the public school is so important that it is almost impossible to overrate it. It is done continuously and unobtrusively year by year for the oncoming youth of each generation of our native born population. And it is done, with peculiar efficiency, for hosts of children of foreign birth or of foreign parentage who are educated in the public schools. Many of the immigrant parents have false notions of the meaning of government, and equally false notions or no notions at all of the rights, duties, and privileges of citizens under a free government; but very many of them have narrow, various, and tenaciously held religious faiths; and many of them have learned by bitter experience what evils follow in the wake of religious differences. At the same time they hold tenaciously to their several faiths. To introduce any religious teaching whatever into the public schools would be to rouse in the minds. of the immigrant population, on the threshold of their adopted