300 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
The writer is aware that theoretical objections can be urged against the 
practicability of the golden mean above suggested, but happily there 
is no such difficulty in the actual practice of thousands of American 
seachers. The great majority of American schools are pervaded by a vital 
religious influence without being sectarian, and this fact should be more 
universally recognized. At least three avenues must always remain open 
for the introduction of needed religious truth and sanctions inte all our 
schools. These are Christian literature, sacred song, and Christian teach- 
ers; and against these there is no law. 
DISCUSSION, 
ZarymoN RicmArDps, of Washington, D. C.: There are certain principles of right and 
wrong which everybody will acknowledge. These principles ought to be taught to our 
children. There are very few good people in the world who would say that there should 
oe no moral teaching in the schools. There are people who object to the introduction 
of religious instruction, not exactly in the sense in which it has been brought out before 
as here to-day, but religious instruction as embracing denominationalism. 
I believe in introducing moral instruction and making it a positive portion of the 
curriculum of every school in the land. 1 was pleased with the thought that has been 
expressed so well by the reader of the paper. We must recognize a supreme God every- 
where, and I do not believe that we ought to have in any of our schools any instructor 
who will not feel at liberty to impress upon the mind of every pupil the idea that there 
is an All-seeing Eye ; that that Eye is the eye of his Creator, who preserves him, who 
keeps him, and who will hold him accountable. Now, the moral virtues begin with the 
Arst—recognition of the God who made us. 
GEORGE P. Browx, Normal, Illinois, on the Separation of Religious and Moral Instruc- 
tion, said: I do not favor making sharp distinctions between religious and moral 
nstruction. I have never been able to determine for myself where morality ends or 
religion begins. There seems to be pretty good authority for declaring that pure and 
andefiled religion consists in visiting the fatherless and the widow in affliction and in 
being unspotted in our lives. This would seem to be a very fair definition of morality 
also. Indeed, the attempt to make sharp distinctions between morality and religion 
tends to formalism in both, Especially is this true in the early life of the religious 
consciousness. Now, the religious consciousness seems to differ from the moral con- 
sciousness in that there is involved in the former the consciousness of the relations of 
whatever is being considered to the Being of supreme worthiness as He is apprehended by 
the individual. This Being of supreme worthiness is to each one of us our highest ideal 
of worthiness, in so far as it is anything more than a mere verbal phrase. This ideal is a 
growing one in eachof us. The soul as intellect seeks to discover the meaning of things, 
:hat is, to organize them into a unity of mutual relations. The Herbartians call this 
apperceiving. Suppose the object I am considering is apperceived with a limited num- 
oer of others. Its meaning is expressed by the word orange. When its relations are 
extended we discover a unity which we call fruit. Extend the range of relations further, 
and the unity is vegetable world. Let the limits of the relations be carried out still fur- 
ther, and the meaning of my object becomes product of nature. Nature is the supreme 
being or source. Give to the apperceiving powers a wider range, and the meaning is ex- 
pressed by ¢‘ dependent beings.” But ¢‘ dependent being ” is a meaningless term except as 
it is brought into the higher unity of independent or self-active being which it implies, 
whose source and cause is within itself—as the philosophers say, a being that is both sub- 
ject and object, or subject-object. Now, when the intellect thus binds back its objects 
to this creative source and thus seeks to explain them, we call the intellect religious. 
Dr. Harris spoke of it the othér day as the piety of the intellect. What I wish to call 
gour attention to is the fact that the race once stopped with nature as the ultimate 
explanation of things; and before it reached that conception it stopped with a narrower 
one. Shall we say there was not as much piety of intellect in tracing the explanation of