SCIENCE IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 451 



bundles of habits, tbey would give more heed to their conduct while 

 in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and 

 never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves 

 its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's 

 play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, " I won't 

 count this time ! " Well ! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven 

 may not count it ; but it is being counted none the less. Down among 

 his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and 

 storing it up to be used against him when the next teraptaton comes. 

 Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of 

 course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become 

 permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints 

 in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific 

 spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth 

 have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line 

 of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working- 

 day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with per- 

 fect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself 

 one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he 

 may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, 

 the poicer of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself 

 up within him as a possession that will never pass away. Young 

 people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has 

 probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in 

 youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put to- 

 gether. 



SCIENCE IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 



By DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 



II. 



[Concluded.] 



LET us now turn our attention to those higher seminaries of learn- 

 ing, which, though often assisted by public funds, or patronized 

 in one way or another by the state, are not exclusively state institu- 

 tions. Wherever a college or university happens to be under state 

 control, precisely the same principles should obtain regarding the 

 teaching of religion as we have found applicable in the case of inferior 

 schools. Indeed, whether the institution be public or private, these 

 principles equally apply, but there are some differences in situation of 

 which we must take note. 



Undoubtedly a religious organization has and should have the right 

 to found and maintain schools to educate the young into its beliefs. 

 Most of the New England colleges were established primarily to train 



