RELIGION IN THE SCHOOL. 
295 
RELIGION IN THE SCHOOL. 
BY DR. E. E. WHITE. OF COLUMBUS, OHIO. 
IT will be assumed in this discussion that moral character is the 
supreme test of the school, and, hence, that effective moral training is 
its central duty. 
It will also be assumed that the right training of the will is the essen- 
tial element in moral training, and that this involves the use of the high- 
sst motives that can be made effective. The higher the motives employed, 
the more valuable the resulting will-training. 
The first fact to be considered is that the religious motives are not only 
the highest, but that they transcend all other motives in their influence 
on the will. It is the high sense of obligation which they inspire that 
most effectively frees the will from bondage to selfish impulses and desires, 
and makes its purposes imperative and abiding in conduct. 
Moreover, the religious motives are the correlates of all high ethical 
motives, and these religious correlates quicken and energize the ethical 
feelings to which they are related ; and it may be added that for the 
great majority of men the religious feelings and sanctions are necessary 
to give desired efficiency to ethical motives. Indeed, we know of no 
shoughtful writer who denies this vital relation of religious sanctions to 
ethical motives and conduct. 
These facts show why it is that religion has been the strongest influ- 
ence in human conduct, and the mightiest of historic forces; why the 
religious motives are fibred in modern civilization, and constitute, to most 
men, the most authoritative element of the moral law. There has never 
been a moral code that has secured the free obedience of men, that has 
not derived its highest authority from religion, and this is true in non- 
Christian as well as in Christian lands. Even the decay in Greek myth- 
ology was attended by a decline in Greek morals, such as they were. 
History fully warrants the statement that every attempt to ground moral 
obligation solely on human authority results in the weakening of the 
conscience, the enfeebling of the will, and the lowering of the moral life 
of the people. In the murky atmosphere of carnal and selfish appetites 
and desires, moral distinctions become obscured and confused ; virtue, for 
example, comes to be regarded as mere self-restraint, temperance as the 
prudent control of appetite, and honesty as merely the best policy. 
It may be true that a philosophic basis of obligation can be found in 
man’s moral nature, but the obvious fact of human experience is that the 
appeal of these human-born motives to the will is weak when unsupported 
by religious sanctions and influence. Their failure as barriers to vice is 
gad history.