greater. Vocation is God's work; it is too sacred to be tampered with by human hands, and a true lover of souls will encourage any work that tends to the salvation of them.

Those of ours who are in the sanctuary or the religious life are for the most part secure. But those remaining in the world require our greatest solicitude. If we are in contact with them when they have grown to manhood or womanhood great good can be accomplished. We know that single blessedness in the world is a rare grace; and the best safeguard, especially for young men, is the state of matrimony. We can in our intercourse with them urge them to "settle down". Likewise, we should be on the alert to prevent the possibility of mixed marriages.

Finally, of all the ways and means of effecting a future as we desire it for our charges, Brother Luke Joseph has pointed out one which transcends all others, frequent Communion. In frequent Communion lies our work epitomized. Let us be apostles of frequent Communion; daily if possible; weekly, at least. If we succeed in having our pupils frequently meet their God in holy Communion, we may be sure that when they reach the borderland of eternity, the Almighty will come to meet them with the salutation: "I know mine and mine know me".

SOME ERRORS IN EDUCATION

REV. ROBERT B. CONDON, D. D., LA CROSSE, WIS.

The subject, "Some Errors in Education," it is obvious, may be considered from many standpoints and exhibited in many lights.

To treat of all errors in education is, of course, beyond the scope of a single paper. To err is human, and the errors of the centuries, whether religious, philosophical, political, economic or purely scientific, have acted and reacted on education, which, in turn, has been itself, when thus misunderstood and misdirected, a prolific source of error. Hence, the need of careful discrimination in the errors to be discussed in this paper. Hence, the appropriateness of selecting such errors as have a more practical and fundamental bearing, and of avoiding such as are rather academic and antiquarian.

Perhaps, the interpretation of my subject that would be at once taken by the vast many, suggests the lines which my paper should follow. That interpretation, it will hardly be denied,

would confine my paper to a discussion of means of training, whether physical or intellectual, and of methods of pedagogy. An argument would be looked for, pro or con, touching the value of the classics, or of mathematics, or of physical science, or of the modern languages as means of strengthening and refining the mental powers, or an arraignment or advocacy of present methods of teaching as regards their correspondence, or want of correspondence with the findings of physiology and of experimental psychology and with the exigencies of contemporary life. The aim of this plea, it would likewise be assumed, would be, at least ultimately, to influence legislation in its favor. That plea would be construed as an appeal more or less direct to the State as the ultimate depository, the supreme tribunal, in everything appertaining to education.

Now such an interpretation implies that physical and intellectual training make up the sum total of education. It implies that the State has a right to educate in the strict and proper sense of the word.

These implications, which, indeed, are more than implications, which are the guiding lights and working principles of those who would thus construe and develop my subject, are, in the opinion of the writer, the most prevalent and fundamental errors of our day regarding education, and it is the object of this paper to enter briefly into their consideration.

The first of these implications would limit indeed the nature of true education and completely subvert its aim.

Education, from the Latin word, "educo," is the leading forth, the calling into play, the symmetrical evolution of the threefold. powers of man-the physical, the intellectual and the moraleach according to its innate capacity, and each in due order of subordination, the lower to the higher, according to the part which each is to take in the work enjoined upon man by his Creator.

It may be objected that this definition is based upon the belief in a Creator. Let it suffice to answer that without a Creator it is absolutely impossible to formulate any reason whatever for education. Without a Creator, the right to an education, of which the duty to educate is the correlative, would cease to exist and

without this right the rearing and training of human beings would be immeasurably less rational than is the rearing of cattle, the God-given right to an education being admitted.

The words "right" and "duty" introduce us at once into the moral realm, and in this realm reigns the human will with its unique and awful power of self-determination. It is true that this will is dependent for its object upon the intellect. And God, who has given a constant mode of operation to every atom in the material universe, which it is constrained to follow, and which we call a physical law, has given to the human will a law adapted to its superior nature. That law is the law of righteousness. "Thou shalt, thou shalt not," are written, at least as to their primary dictates, on every human heart, and their scope is enlarged and intensified by revelation. Upon the observance of this law depends the weal or woe of the individual and of society. The will may elect to obey that law or to transgress it. In its choice lies the fate of men and nations.

Now, the educators most in fashion at the present time leave out of consideration this all-important factor in human life. They insist upon culture of the intellect. They make no provision for the special training of the will. They imply, therefore, that either the human will is not susceptible of training, or that its training and the safe guardianship of the moral law are sufficiently provided for by the training of the intellect; that as the intellect discerns what is right, the will at once translates that discernment into deed; and that

"Vice is of such a monstrous mien,

That, to be hated, needs but to be seen."

The first of these propositions, that the will is incapable of training, is, it is evident, beneath refutation. It is hardly less absurd, however, than the alternative proposition, that intellectual training spells training of the will; that a man need but sharpen his intellect into the discernment of righteousness, to make that righteousness the aim and informing principle of his conduct. Herbert Spencer, surely an unsuspected witness on this question, tells us that this belief, absurd a priori, is flatly contradicted by facts. Indeed, one has but to glance at the criminal

calendar to learn that the cry of the Latin poet-"I know what is best, and approve it-I follow what is worst"-voices no isolated experience of humanity. And, the same criminal calendar being our witness, the falsest of all false prophets were those who, a generation ago told us that out of universal mental instruction would arise as universal a moral regeneration.

There is no doubt much that is commendable in the enthusiasm for intellectual education. Taken in union with the education of the will it realizes the true ideal of education, and as such is the noblest object of human endeavor and the greatest blessing of human life. In this sense one can endorse indeed the words of Hamlet:

"Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused."

But intellectual education and moral education should go hand in hand. The energies of the mind should be unfolded together with the charities of the soul, in order that man might not only know what is right, but have the rectitude of will necessary to its performance. If we had, however, to confine ourselves to one kind of education only, undoubtedly our choice should be moral education. Without elaborate mental education, a man may have a discernment of the duties of his state of life, a sensitiveness to the voice of conscience, and the strength of will resulting from moral training necessary to perform that duty and to follow that voice. But who will vouch for him who is reared in moral darkness? It is true, indeed, that some measure of moral light is vouchsafed to all, and that a man is blameworthy who acts not up to his measure of light. But when one considers the force of habit, he sees the necessity of forming habits of virtue. When he considers the power of temptation, he sees the necessity of strengthening the will to overcome that power more and more, and that, too, at the time of life when the soul is impressionable and the character is in process of formation. We think of the noble impulses, the splendid capabilities for good that come to naught because of no encouragement. We think of the light that failed because of no loving hand to tend

it. We think of the buds all frosted, buds that might have bloomed, sweet household flowers-because of none to shield them from the blast. Into the dark current of the world's degradation there is daily swept, to the infinite loss of mankind, lives that might have flourished as if in the garden of God, had they been but surrounded with ennobling influences and blessed with moral education.

The education of the intellect may, indeed, open up spheres of high rational enjoyment and may be a passport to the society of genius, but it may also, as experience amply demonstrates, but supplement the ferocity, the greed or the sensuality of the animal with keen intellectuality, and prove not a blessing, but a curse.

Moral education will not, of itself, admit a man to the society of the gifted of time, but it will enable him to be enrolled among the blessed for eternity. The rarest intellectual gifts, the most exhaustive intellectual training-genius itself, without virtue— cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but virtue will be crowned by the Eternal King Himself; and virtue is the object of moral education.

Moral education is more necessary to the State than is intellectual education. The State exists to protect the rights which the individual cannot secure by himself, or as a member of the family. The State exists to promote the temporal welfare. The moral element, therefore, enters into the very notion of the State, and is indeed the reason of its existence. Without the recognition of this moral element, the State loses its dignity, it forfeits its claim to reverence and loyalty, and can secure obedience only by the strong hand.

The stream cannot rise higher than its source. If the individuals of which the State is composed be lacking in the sense of justice, in self-restraint and in devotion to duty, where is the assurance of the general welfare? But reverence for right and devotion to duty and the spirit of self-sacrifice are the outcome of moral education.

Of what avail to invest one with executive power if he will use that power, as so many a usurper of the past, not as a delegated responsibility to be discharged for the common weal, but as a means of self-aggrandizement and as an instrumentality of