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ADAPTATION OF METHODS OF INSTRUCTION. 301 
things to nature in that former time, as there is now in tracing them to absolute self- 
activity ? 
So, ho, there is the religious will. It is when we determine our conduct by its har- 
mony with this highest ideal of worthiness that we have piety of will. And the soul as 
leeling may love, revere, and worship its highest ideal of worthiness. This is piety of 
teeling. The life is the unity of the activities of intellect, feeling, and will ; or, in differ- 
ant words. the self realizes its life in the unity of these activities. When the self lives in 
the consciousness of the relation of all that is, to the supreme unity. or ideal, or source, 
the life is to that extent religious. 
The proper teaching of every subject, as I see it, is a step toward the recognition of 
she supreme cause in that which is studied. It is an advance in the apprehension of 
what is truer and worthier and more to be revered. What is morality but the recognition 
of a worthier ideal that is to be realized in the life? Morality is the discharge of duty. 
Duty presupposes a higher ideal than what now exists in my life. I must make (hisideal 
3 reality by the deed. The essential difference between religion and morality isin the supe- 
rior worthiness of the ideal. If what I have tried to show is true, then morality and religion 
name merely different degrees of worthiness of the ideals. We see, too, that a religious 
duty in one period in the development of the race may become a moral duty in a later 
period. I am of the opinion that every child in its growth is repeating the experience of 
che race. In a child-like way it regards its parents or teacher very much as it comes to 
regard its highest id=al in subsequent life. It seems to me, therefore, that if we think of 
a child’s life as we ought, the question of whether moral instruction should be separated 
from religious instruction could never arise. 
That it does arise with us is probably due to substituting theology for religion as a 
subject of instruction. Statements of doctrine and certain religious forms or sanctions 
are mistaken for religion. They become mere formalism to the child if it is required to 
learn them. A gentleman in another room a few days ago said that the attempt to teach 
children what they were not ready to receive produced intellectual dyspepsia. I fear 
that the teaching of doctrinal theology in the form commonly pursued in the teaching 
of so-called religion tends to produce religious dyspepsia in children. As those who 
teach come to know how children think and feel, with what ideas and ideals their world 
is filled, they will cease to discuss a question of this kind. They will find the moral and 
religious natures of the child so blended that it will not cceur to them that the two 
should be dissected out and shut up in separate departments. They will see that the 
great thing to do is to stimulate the child’s natural reverence for worthiness. When the 
feeling of reverence for what is conceived to be worthy is the habit of the mind, we may 
wait for time to develop the distinctively religious life in so far as it differs from the 
moral life. 
ADAPTATION OF METHODS OF INSTRUCTION TO 
SPECIAL CONDITIONS OF THE CHILD 
Tue CHAIRMAN, General Eaton, on introducing this subject, stated: ¢¢ Professor Graham 
Bell is unable to be present to-day, to speak to you upon the necessary adaptation of 
methods of instruction to meet special conditions of the child in overcoming defects of 
nearing, speech, ete. 
““ Professor Bell's father and his grandfather made the human voice and hearing a 
special study. His father devised a plan for training in articulation, and for teaching 
:he deaf and dumb to speak. Professor Graham Bell came to this country, and began 
;0 teach this subject. His study of the production of sound, and the means of hearing 
sound, led to the invention of the telephone. 
“ Frequently pupils fail to make progress in school because of the imperfect condition 
of one or more of the organs of sense. Many of these pupils might be greatly benefited 
and advanced if their teachers understood the nature of the defects, and the proper 
steps to be taken toward overcoming them. 
““You know of Laura Bridgman, who could neither see, hear, nor speak. Her sense 
of feeling was the only perfect sense left her. She learned to read with her fingers, but 
she never learned to sneak.