BY J. BROWNLIE HENDERSON. XXHil. 
number of His sayings to form a course of lessons from 
which dogma and “isms ”’ would be entirely absent. Owing 
to the power of the Churches, until that is done, possibly 
the best course to pursue is the present one—let religion 
alone in the State School. If there is one statement more 
than another that has been borne out by history, it is the 
thousands of years old one, that “ Righteousness exalteth 
a nation’ The Spartans pinned their faith to a sound body 
but they soon perished. The Athenians developed both 
mind and body—were possibly the most highly cultured 
race the world has ever seen—yet it did not save them 
from the vilest immorality and debauchery, and final extinc- 
tion as a nation. In the middle ages the rulers of the 
nations tried ignorance as a method of keeping the nation 
together ; they had a few educated thinkers and rulers, and all 
the remainder workers who were not on any account to think. 
But that also failed. Solomon was right, ‘‘ Righteousness 
exalteth a nation,” and nothing else will. Yet thousands 
of our children are growing up with practically no moral 
training. “Thou shalt not be found out,” is the only 
commandment they are taught to respect. It is just as 
impossible to develop the moral as it is to develop the 
mental side of human nature without any training. I 
consider it one of the darkest outlooks for our Common- 
wealth that so many thousands of children are coming 
to maturity with undeveloped or blunted moral perceptions. 
The very small amount of time devoted to moral and 
physical development of our children I look on as the most 
serious defects of our State primary education. The sub- 
jects of the syllabus I consider a matter of much smaller 
importance. A good teacher will educate with almost any 
subject, and a bad teacher will not educate with the best 
subjects. The training of the teachers is of far greater 
importance than the items of the syllabus. Of course 
there are some subjects of more importance than others, 
and it seems absurd to an onlooker to see history and 
geography taught while physiology and dietetics are avoided. 
A very slender knowledge of foods would probably have a 
marked effect in lowering the infantile death rate. It 
shocks one to hear from medical men of the awful yearly 
sacrifice of infants through improper feeding. It is largely 
