ion taught in the schools. Why, sir, what makes the common law except the common life that is underneath, and what enters into the common life is a part of the common law, and Christianity, just so far as it has Christianized the nation and entered into the common life, is something that we are to deal with; not sectarian differences, not differences, on church government, not differences that divide the different denominations in Christendom. For it is to be remembered, that the essential elements in Protestantism are infinitely deeper, as they are infinitely greater and more permanent than the principles which divide one sect from another. The things which separate us are nothing compared with the things which unite us under the one great personage, the leader of humanity in the past, the present and in the future.

Why, if it has come to this, that we cannot teach morals and religion in our schools, then there is something wrong somewhere in our views. We are wrong if we cannot reach that goal; if our road does not lead to that station, let us take another road that will do so. Why, in the name of the Infinite, Supreme Being, in whose image we are made, do you suppose this country is to be saved except by the teachings of morals and religion? Do you suppose that God is going to make this nation an exception to all other great communities and to miraculously shield it from the doom of godless empires? Have we any mortgage on the divine resources? Is it not a form of our vanity to think that this great nation is sufficient to itself, without Almighty God? Shall we wave the flag of atheism and bid the Infinite One defiance? I say, no! Let us have in some way in the common schools the Christian faith taught, taught apart from theological dogmas and formulas. I listened with satisfaction last evening to the gentlemen who talked to us, with satisfaction on that point. Now, I believe there is a way in which Christianity in its broad ethical relations may be imparted to the pupil, that is, in its great sentiments of justice, truth, love and fellowship with souls. And now, I believe that the most important thing, in teaching the lower or higher schools is with the character of the teacher. That is what is needed, and if I may be allowed to make a remark so personal as that, I believe in prayer in the higher sphere, as I believe in gravity in the lower world. I believe every teacher ought to go to his class-room after he has been on his knees before Almighty God.

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT G. W. SAMSON.

Mr. CHANCELLOR.- -I have looked over with interest the selection of themes. There has not been one thus far discussed, nor has a gentle

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man spoken that has not seemed to have the correct idea. We had yesterday the education of the working classes. It is not another of the technical arts, in which Americans need training; but in the idea of morality; that which teaches us the law of intercourse with each other, our relations to the State, and most of all to the Divine Author of all relations. We need that teaching of mental and moral and religious science in the schools. There is one common trend of thought here. We make thus the study of fundamental law a part of general education. Those who have listened to all the papers read have seen this common trend. What had we this morning? What last night? Each converging to one subject of practical work. All those who are pressed in the daily business of teaching see this common trend, as has been noted. To only one or two thoughts can special allusion be now made. First, we certainly must begin this teaching in childhood. Well did Coleridge say, "True greatness is to carry the spirit of childhood into mature years." Well was it recognized last night, and I was delighted with the quotation from Burns' "Cotter's Saturday Night." It is family instruction which in all ages, before the school is approached, leaves an impress on the child which never dies out. Into the school goes, however, the child and youth; and there are met impulses and associations which tend to mislead, to turn away the unwary from the impressions first made. But, second, the longer a man lives, or a woman, the stronger becomes the conviction that those first early impressions were right, and we are brought back to them. To me this second point is one of peculiar interest. I alluded yesterday to the fact that the second speaker mentioned Guizot, of France, as a worthy guide for us at this time. The French revolution came; all the systems of education were gradually revolutionized; that chaos continued until Louis Philippe came into power. Wisely he was proclaimed, not "Roi de France," but "Roi des Francais;" not "king of France" as a birthright and by divine. authority, but "king of the French," by popular election. Then came that grand man Guizot. His last act crowns his life-work. His four volumes should be studied; but especially the third volume, the first half of which relates to the modification of public instruction. Guizot analyses as clearly as did De Tocqueville our political system. Of our educational system, he speaks with special interest. As the very last act of his official life Guizot called together representative Hebrew rabbis, for the Old Testament never can be separated from the New, and with them representatives of both the Catholic and Protestant churches, he himself being a Protestant. These representative men sat down together. They discussed these very questions

that have been up since the opening of this Convocation, including that of this morning. I know personally the Secretary, Dr. Emmanuel Petavel, now in extreme old age, of Geneva, Switzerland. They had agreed upon selections from the New and Old Testament, in translations that all approved, for the Hebrews recognize the truth in the Sermon on the Mount, including the Lord's Prayer. At Rutgers Female College Hebrew girls, with those of the Catholic church, as well as of every branch of the Protestant faith, sit together during the morning reading, and join in the Lord's Prayer; and it was the Hebrew pupils who were first to send a deputation to thank the president for the lessons of the religious service. I regard Leo XIII as having shown supreme wisdom in the republication of the works of Thomas Aquinas. They present first the "Analytics" of Aristotle. Cambridge accepts the idea. Agassiz in natural science, Greenleaf in law, Peabody in divinity, Abbot in Greek, Bowen in philosophy, have all said, as have all leaders in the Reformation, "We must go back to the Greek ethics of Aristotle, as well as to his inductive method in every science; for on it our system of government is based, and also all true religion." That political system, studied by French statesmen as it was by Burke before the American Revolution, teaches that the Executive must have "monarchial" power or authority; that he should be selected from among "the best men, and must be elected by" the people. This is the American system. Queen Victoria has not vetoed a bill in half a century, nor did her predecessor for a previous half century. But our President vetoes as he pleases. Our President gives liberty to forty millions of people, and who disputes it? Not even the Supreme Court. But certainly that Executive must be chosen really, not nominally, by the people; and then they will sustain him. Aristotle's ethics, incorporated into the frame of the American republic, and giving such wisely adjusted powers in the civil law, to which our friend, the Chancellor, and others have called our attention during this session-that moral system we may have; God be thanked that this spirit has been shown in this Convocation on all sides. In that which came out last night, we will be one, heart and hand together. We must have moral and religious teaching in our schools; but it must be that natural ethics, that natural religion which kindles all minds and hearts- the teacher's first, then the hearts of all around him—to that we must come back; to that which Leo XIII commends now to the world in Thomas Aquinas, and by which commendation -not in politics—he is going to be a mighty power, not merely in the religious world, but a mighty power in European if not in American ethics, law and morals. God grant success,

while this, and this only the common truth taught by Christis sought. All who really study His teachings must agree. Jefferson wrote to John Adams, his political antagonist: "The words of Jesus all classes must wish read in our public schools." If these be impressed, His divine declaration will be realized in American schools: "If ye continue in my words ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT POTTER.

MR. CHANCELLOR AND FELLOW TEACHERS. The paper read and the speeches following ably enforce the importance of moral training in the schools. Popular literature too, evinces a growing sense of the need of more general ethical training. A book which has not yet been republished in this country and which takes as its title, I believe, the word "nowhere" spelt backwards, points to a state of society where immoralities are treated as we now treat physical diseases. Bodily health is supposed to be almost universal. The family physician is replaced by the family "Straightener." People afflicted with a tendency to lie, to steal, to commit breaches of trust, etc., speak freely of the complaint afflicting them, and seek adequate remedies which often take the form of physical torture. Ethical culture thus becomes universal!

Mr. Henry George has been referred to in this discussion as a moralist. But he also thoroughly appreciates the importance of the aid of religion, as effecting popular movements.

God has married religion and morality in enduring union. The highest morality and the Christian religion are one and inseparable. Said Washington: "Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." Lord Bacon had well called morality the handmaid of religion, and the keen insight of Swift had declared that the system of morality gathered from ancient sages falls far short of that delivered by the Gospels. Socrates and Plato sought to reënforce morality as it seems by the reëstablishment of the Homeric religious faith. It would be difficult to prove that any consistent ethical system is possible if the religious element is excluded; or that practical morality is possible or has been generally manifested, except where ethical systems have been vitalized by the living power of religious faith. The word "ethics" is but the Greek "custom." In Christian ethics, not custom, but Christ is the standard of morals. He is the source of that inspiring enthusiasm which excludes selfishness, the centre of that personal power which makes the otherwise impracticable in morals possible. Is not such morality a national as well as a personal need

now? Is not the nineteenth century (conspicuous for breaches of trust and the condoning of commercial crimes) deficient in that personal contact with personal sorrow and sin and want, which made the ideal characters in primitive times so nearly Christlike? In centuries called selfcomplacently, if somewhat truly, the dark ages, multitudes of men and women and children, not only in crusades but in characters less conspicuous and more replete with Christian charity, carried the cross of self-denial in heart and life, and thus learned the harmony of duty and happiness. Happiness, the supreme object of human desire; duty, the supreme law of human action; how are the two to be reconciled and united? Mere desire would lead us to violate the rights of others; duty calls upon us to sacrifice self without calculation of reward or happiness. The ethics of Christ present the reconciliation of the two apparently antagonistic principles in one consistent system. With the death in any nation of vital religion, has come immorality and national ruin. Will you accept Greece in evidence? Certainly Athens, the intellectual reservoir of the past, is the fountain-head of succeeding philosophy and science. Yet in Greece, with the spread of superstition, skepticism and practical atheism, morality decayed. Subtle discussions and fine-spun systems of ethics abounded in the schools of the sophists; but with the death of a living religious faith came the death of social integrity, domestic purity and national honor. Greece, beautiful as the Apollo, strong as Hercules, intellectual as the sculptured brow of the Olympian Jove, fell; and the Roman eagles soon gathered above the carcass, and dismembered the corpse fast falling to decay from the extinction of moral and religious life.

The fate of morality, where divested of religion, was as fearfully evidenced in the history of Rome. The early Romans seem really to have believed in Jupiter. By its derivation the very name of their God indicated faith in a living, acting, supreme father and friend of mankind. The heroism of the man was as conspicuous as the domestic purity and excellence of the Roman matrons of that early time was celebrated. When at a later day the popular faith had become a degraded superstition, when Cicero could wonder that the priests did. not laugh in each other's faces as they performed the solemn farce of a religious ceremonial which failed to command the allegiance of the honest and the intelligent, when the Pantheon opened its doors to the idols of all the world, morality, locked in the embrace of atheism, and surrounded by the incantations of superstition, rotted to its grave; atheism having supplanted faith in God, the debauchery of public morals gave the certain presage of the decline and fall of the Roman empire.