DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL IDEAS 43 



understood, the final standard by which all things and events are to 

 be measured. This is the most educative of all institutions, because 

 the person who harbors a religious ideal puts himself into the process 

 of applying its standard to every experience of life." 



This standard must be applied to the school, which furnishes to 

 all who pass through it an experience that shapes and colors the 

 subsequent course of their lives. The Christian religion is educa- 

 tion, - - the deepest and most far-reaching educational force in the 

 world, - - the power which more than all else originates and sustains 

 the impulse to conduct, which is three fourths of life. ' The first 

 condition of responsiveness to religious influence," says Professor 

 Peabody, " is the recognition that in their fundamental method and 

 final aim, religion and education are essentially consistent, coordinate, 

 mutually confirmatory, fundamentally one." If education means, 

 as President Butler affirms it does, a gradual adjustment to the 

 spiritual possessions of the race, is there doubt that the wealth 

 of truth and love revealed in Christ is the most precious and the 

 most vital of these possessions? Does He not furnish the highest 

 incentive and the most effective aid to all who would grow into 

 completeness of life, into the perfect image of God? If intimate 

 acquaintance with the noblest who have lived, with their spirit and 

 work, be a chief aim of education, shall we exclude Him who more 

 than all heroes, philosophers, and poets has stirred the minds, raised 

 the thoughts, and purified the affections of mankind? If in our 

 democratic world all the institutions that educate are impelled by 

 the force of public opinion to train to social service, to emphasize 

 the truth that no one can be wise or good or great or happy for himself 

 but only in loving, helpful association with his fellows, where shall 

 we find an example so high or an incentive so strong as in the life of 

 Him who came not to be ministered to but to serve; who made the 

 love of others the test and proof of spiritual kinship with himself? 

 If our sympathy for children, for the multitudes who are still con- 

 demned to drudgery, to sacrifice the sweetness and joy of life that 

 the few may be surfeited with luxuries, is genuine, how is it possible 

 that in the formative and decisive period of human existence we 

 should deliberately shut them out, in any of the processes of educa- 

 tion, from the mind and heart of Him who is the world's great lover 

 of children and of the poor? 



Shall we in our schools set aside days to commemorate some medio- 

 cre patriot, poet, or orator, and make it an offense there to do homage 

 to Him who has given His name to our civilization, who has up- 

 lighted morality with an unexampled splendor, who has inspired a 

 sympathy and love for man which has transformed the life of the 

 race, who has made childhood sacred, and raised woman to a throne 

 whereon the noblest must forever do her reverence, in whom great- 



