Now, what shall we teach in our public schools? Education without morality? No, says every one. Education without religion? Yes, say many; meaning that the dogmas of no religious sect shall be taught in the public schools. Now, I do not advocate the teaching of the dogmas of any particular religious sect in the public schools, as they now exist; but I do say, without fear of successful contradiction, that without religion you will not teach morality, and without morality you will soon have neither state nor church. Morality is not a sentiment, but a principle having its ratio in religion, which is simply God as he has revealed himself to man.

Rev. M. J. Savage, in the January number of the FORUM, holds that "morality and religion are separable," and declares that he "would have the last trace of religious teaching taken out of the public schools." That is strange language for a minister of religion, and bespeaks a very imperfect apprehension of the causa efficiens from which morality springs and has its being.

Religion and morality are inseparable, and depend upon each other as cause and effect. Morality is a principle, not a sentiment-a principle that has God, truth, justice, as its motive. But God is religion; truth is religion; justice is religion; and the God we as a people know is the Christian God, and the truth and justice we know is Christian truth and Christian justice. The morality, therefore, which we teach must be Christian morality, having its origin in the Christian religion. The morality of the state is Christian morality: our courts are framed and their judgments are grounded on the basis of Christian morality and in accordance with the revealed law as taught by the Christian church. To pretend, therefore, that we can teach morality without religion is the veriest nonsense, and bespeaks either utter ignorance of the subject or a malicious intent to deceive. Even pagan morality had its origin in religion, and found its cause in the religion of nature, just as our morality finds its cause and the motive for its being in the Christian religion. If, then, we will teach morality in our public schools, we must teach the why and wherefore for its practice, else we end in mere sentiment, which begins in feeling and ends in tears. Morality is not

feeling, morality is not tears; morality is the result of a clear recognition of God and his law, and a firm determination to do God's will because it is God's will, and to keep God's law because it is God's law. We obey the state, not because the state commands, but because the state is empowered of God to command, and we bow to the majesty of the law because it is supposed to be in accord with God's law. Obedience is given to law because God is back of it; so morality is, because God commands it. But God's commands are religion, as God has revealed it to us, and as the church teaches it. God, religion, church, are all correlative terms, just as God, religion, morality, are correlative terms. One cannot be conceived without the other, nor can one be taught without the other.

If our public schools are to do what all are agreed must be done, i. e., if they are to teach morality, then, as an inevitable consequence, religion, the only possible basis of morality, must be also taught in them, and taught firmly and fearlessly. Mincing religion is but apology and sham, and must end, as it has done, in relaxed morality.

Let us look at this question of religion in education from another standpoint. It is an admitted fact that purity in politics no longer exists. Honesty in our legislative halls is a bygone virtue. To such extent has dishonesty invaded public life that honest, self-respecting citizens will not seek for office, or, if elected, they do not succeed, because they cannot, and will not, resort to the ways of dishonesty that seem now needed for success. The dishonesty of our stock exchanges, the recklessness of our railroad management, the dishonesty of bank officials, the swindling in corporation and trust funds, and the systematic plans laid to defraud, all bespeak the widespread dishonesty of American society.

Take, again, the revelations made from time to time by phy sicians and statisticians of the deep-seated immorality existing in society, an immorality that has boldly invaded the sanctity of the marriage relation, ending in feticide, divorce courts, legalized and unlegalized polygamy. Add to this the recklessness of human life, drunkenness, irreverence, profanity, and we have a dark enough picture. Now I ask, does an education that on

principle ignores religion, the only antidote to immorality, do its duty? On the face of it our present godless system of education has failed to create moral men and moral women. Shall we continue it, or shall we add systematic moral training to our present intellectual training? That something must be done is clear. We cannot as a people afford to increase our faults. God must be taught early and late. We must begin with the child if we will reach the man, and church and state and parent must join hands in the training of the child. God cannot be ignored, nor can the state be indifferent to the moral training of the citizen. But morality cannot exist without religion nor religion without God. As well assert moonlight without the sun as morality without religion or religion without God. Our whole moral code the Ten Commandments-was given amid the thunders of Sinai: God was back of it. The Ten Commandments were the religion of the Jew. Jesus Christ confirmed them and made them obligatory on the Christian. The Ten Commandments are the essence of the Christian religion. The irreligious attempt to banish religion from our public schools, and consequently from the education of the child, is not only a crime, but the very best evidence that religion is rapidly ceasing to be an integral element of our social life. It is certain that the churches have lost their grip, and that the pulpit is a panderer to sensation and popular passion. This largely because the child is not taught God nor God's law. Teach the child God, teach God's law, and let God, God's law, be taught conjointly with secular knowledge, then there is hope for the future. A moral, virtuous people lasts; an immoral, irreligious people dies or ends in failure. Let us not be ashamed to teach our children a knowledge of God and of his law, in school and out of school, in the church and in the family. There is no danger that the child, or the man either, will know too much of God. Morality, religion, God, are essential to the success of the citizen and the existence of the state. Let the child hear of God first, and of the state next; he will be all the more loyal to the state if he is first loyal to God.

R. GILMOUR.

MEN, WOMEN, AND MONEY.

THE test of a money value being applied nowadays to almost every department of human labor and service, it becomes a question whether it shall not be applied to the work of women in the house. Such an application would, no doubt, be deprecated by many upon grounds of sentiment. "How set a money value," men will ask, "upon relations into which the idea of personal gain should not enter? A nurse, a mistress, may legitimately demand a salary; a wife and mother, never." But we may ask, in the first place, why, while every feminine industry and accomplishment, good or bad, is recognized as having its market value, the most important and laborious service that women can render, namely, the care and administration of a household, should have a naught set against it?

The sentiment which opposes such a claim on the part of women appears not unlike that which denied to the slaves in the South any fixed pecuniary return for their labor. Money was expended upon them. Certain, perhaps all, of their physical wants were provided for. To have assigned them wages would have given them an independence quite incompatible with the old patriarchal relation. "We feed them, we clothe them," the masters might have said, "we care for them in sickness, we teach them prayers and catechism. They are affectionate and simple creatures. We are fond of them, and they love us. Don't try to bring in the question of money between them and us." Unavoidably, however, the question of money was brought in. The slave became a servant, and was thus placed upon a level with all workers whose labor has a recognized value, in the determining of which the worker as well as the employer has something to say.

The statistics supplied by the United States Census regarding the work and wages of women are far from being either complete

or satisfactory Nevertheless, they go far to show that, handicapped as women are by the inadequate payment of their labor, a considerable number of them earn their own support. This is true of mill-hands, of seamstresses, of women in domestic service, and of workers in many another ill-paid department of labor. In more remunerative employments, such as dressmaking, type-writing, telegraphy, and in the occupations of clerks and bookkeepers, they can do more than keep body and soul together; while in literary, artistic, and professional work they are now able, in some measure, to compete with men, both in the excellence of their work and in its remuneration.

The money-getting power of women should surely be taken into consideration in the financial arrangements of the household. The woman who is able to earn from five hundred to ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year should not be considered as a pecuniary cipher in the home. She puts into its administration, besides the charm and affection which are beyond price, an amount of labor which can be approximatively estimated in money. If the household is a poor one, she serves it with every muscle of her body, and with all the simple skill and wisdom which she is able to acquire. If it is a wealthy one, she brings to it æsthetic taste, economic management, the enlargement of hospitality, the graces of the feminine mind and of the feminine presence. If she becomes a mother of children, her pains are increased with her pleasures. She bears weighty responsibilities, and no moment is for her free from care. It will make a great difference as regards her self-respect, and, one would think, that of her husband, whether she is regarded as one obliged by nat ure and circumstances to bear these burdens, with such compensation as the bearing brings with it, or whether she is considered as a free agent who, from motives of wifely and parental affection, consents to realize the values of her life in the performance of household duty.

The progress which the sex have made in wage-earning ability brings with it, as a necessary result, a change in their social standing and aspect. They are no longer to be considered as a dependent class. The old view was that they were supported. The modern fact is that they support themselves, and,