HOW MAY THE TEACHING OF RELIGION BE MADE 

 POTENT FOR MORALITY? 



BY WALTER L. HERVEY 



[Walter L. Hervey, Examiner Department of Education, New York City, b 

 Mount Vernon, Ohio, 1862. A.B. Princeton, 1886; Ph.D., ibid., 1892; Uni- 

 versity of Jena, 1893; University of Berlin, 1897-98. Teacher in Secondary 

 Schools, 1886-89; Dean and Professor of History and Institutes of Education, 

 New York College for the Training of Teachers, 1889-91 ; Acting President, 

 ibid., 1891-92; President Teachers' College, 1882-97; Dean of Chautauqua 

 School of Pedagogy, 1893-98; Lecturer, Hartford Theological Seminary, 

 1900-04; Member of New York Board of Examiners, 1898. Member of 

 National Council of Education; Sunday-School Commission Diocese of New 

 York; Religious Education Association. Author of Picture Work, and other 

 books of education.] 



IT is characteristic of present ways of thinking and doing that 

 men increasingly regard moral ends as attainable chiefly by moral 

 means, and moral forms as of less moment than moral forces. To 

 create a moral environment and to bring the individual into vital 

 relation therewith, this is the way to produce abiding results in the 

 moral realm. Now, the social institutions that together make up 

 the moral environment - - the family with its expansion into the 

 school and the social settlement, the press and the public opinion 

 it reflects and forms, the vocation, the civic community, and em- 

 phatically, the Church --are, as never before, alive to their moral 

 vocation. The conscious aim of the school, for example, is not 

 knowledge alone, but character; not intelligence merely, but moral 

 enlightenment; not selfish individualism, but efficient social member- 

 ship. Moreover - - this I postulate - - all these institutions have a 

 common stake in religion; and this, whether or not they are aware 

 of the fact. 



That religion is one of the deepest and most potent of moral forces 

 is sometimes overlooked, -- just because, perhaps, it is so deep and 

 so pervasive. But it may be confidently affirmed that without the 

 stimulus and the sanctions of true religion, i. e., of the religion that 

 makes for righteousness, no one of these social institutions can do 

 its perfect work. How religion may, through education, be made 

 to reinforce the agencies that make for righteousness, is my theme. 

 In discussing it I shall undertake to show, first, what the conditions 

 are under which religion may best perform its work for morality; 

 and, second, what that work is. 



That there exists, and always has existed, a certain gap or divorce 

 between morality and certain forms of religion, is a matter of history 

 as well as of ordinary experience. Religion per se is neither moral 

 nor immoral. It is a powerful force either for good or for evil. 



