296 GENERAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 



sophical principles of to-day become the labor programme or the political platform 

 of to-morrow. Anarchy in the political sense has forced itself on public attention 

 under every form of government, republican as well as monarchical, until it is 

 universally regarded as one of the grave perils of the age. Anarchy in the 

 economic sense, disintegration of the two great forces of production and distri- 

 bution, namely, capital and labor, already reacts detrimentally upon the whole 

 social organism. But these are only the outward, partial, and visible signs of the 

 intellectual anarchy which lies like a canker at the root of modern life. They 

 did not exist before the disintegration of thought that resulted from the accept- 

 ance of the anarchical principle of private judgment. 



Need of a Great Synthesis 



The need of a great philosophical synthesis that will unify, harmonize, and 

 coordinate all human interests both speculative and practical, the need of the 

 recognition of a common principle of cosmic order, of righteous living, of scien- 

 tific harmony, and religious faith like the Christian Logos is indeed universally 

 acknowledged, until there is not a single great thinker who has not attempted a 

 synthesis similar in scope to the synthetic philosophy of Herbert Spencer. The 

 very multiplicity of syntheses is itself the clearest evidence of the presence of the 

 disease and of the empirical character of the remedies that are being applied to 

 it. No great synthesis has ever been accomplished or ever will be accomplished 

 except within the circle of Christian ideas, and modern progress is bound to 

 pursue an ignis fatuus until it is ready to receive its orientation from Christianity. 

 Every enterprise, ethical and philosophical as well as scientific, is now being con- 

 ducted on purely experimental lines. Ask these' men who are opposed to religious 

 education to characterize for you, in the briefest terms, the institutions whose 

 spirit and methods they direct and control, and they will reply that they are, 

 above all things, schools of purely experimental pedagogy. Now when our 

 Christian system encounters hostility from quarters like this, not, be it observed, 

 through any animus of religious bigotry, but solely in the interests of what is 

 called " educational unity," are we not justified in maintaining that we have 

 passed beyond the merely experimental stage? A system of education that 

 produced a Clement, an Origen, an Athanasius, a Basil, a Chrysostom, a Dante, 

 a Thomas of Aquin, a Bossuet, and in our own age a Leo XIII, men of full-orbed 

 personality, moral and intellectual, amidst every variety of social and political 

 ideals and conditions, cannot be destitute of structural elements of permanent 

 value. The educational controversy is only a particular phase of the opposition 

 that is being set up between the static and dynamic theories of life. If the 

 church has appeared too static and conservative, the reason is that modern 

 progress has been too radical. If she has abstained from a cordial alliance with 

 the intellectual movement of our time, is it not because this movement has failed 

 to unify itself, to comprehend its own inner spirit or to define its direction? 



Educational Movement of To-day 

 But a great era of activity has already commenced. 



Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive, 

 But to be young is very heaven. 



Never before was the universal mass of the Christian people so moved by a 

 common impulse in favor of the highest and best education as at the present 

 moment. The finger of God is here and the impulse of his Holy 'Spirit. Our 

 minds, as true children of the Church, inheriting her traditional spirit, are open 



