PERILS. — RELIGION A^B THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 107 



religious reference ? by forbidding the children to know 

 through their teachers that there be a God? 



How shall our American youth be taught reverence, 

 without which our future is insecure ? From history ? 

 The present generation has become irreverent of the past. 

 We are become, in the name of science, a race of icono- 

 clasts. Whatever is "gray with time," so far from 

 being "godlike" and therefore worthy of veneration, is 

 subjected to the focal light of scientific methods of 

 investigation. In thousands of instances the new has 

 supplanted the old, simply because it deserved to, was 

 incomparably better. So that in the popular mind there 

 has sprung up a sort of contempt for the past. 



Shall our youth learn reverence from the study of 

 Nature ? If Nature is studied not as a revelation of the 

 Infinite One,— her processes his methods ; her harmonies 

 his reason ; her beauties his thoughts ; her wonders his 

 wisdom ; her forces his power ; her laws his will ; if 

 Nature is studied not as the drapery which hides and yet 

 reveals the Infinite, but simply as a magazine of supplies, 

 whence we may enrich ourselves, a quarry from which 

 we may hew a mighty materialistic civilization ; if her 

 laws are to be obeyed only that they may be mastered ; 

 if her forces are to be studied only that they maj^ be 

 conquered, — how are our youth to learn reverence from 

 the study of Nature, and not rather learn proudly to 

 glorify man as Nature s master ? 



In his " Wilhelm Meister, " Goethe expresses the opinion 

 that reverence is not innate, but must be inculcated in 

 order to exist. If reverence is to be taught, who shall 

 do it, if not the State ? And how can the State teach 

 reverence to /Vmerican children without teaching them 

 of God and their accountability to him ? 



We are building a nation. We cannot build perma- 

 nent institutions on mere intelligence, smartness, push, 

 self-assertion. There must be a profound respect for law. 



" The keystone of the world's wide arch, 

 The one sustaining and sustained by all; 

 Which, if it fall, brings all in ruin down . " 



ScJiiller. 



