geography, history (especially of the United States), natural philosophy, physiology, book-keeping, the lower grades of mathematics, the system of American jurisprudence in its general principles, and perhaps the simpler forms of mental and moral science. Precisely how near the common school should come to the higher academy and the college is an interesting and important question of public policy; but it is not the question in dispute among religious sects. The public school, by the very terms of both the process and the end, naturally and necessarily involves the element of moral education. The children form a society for the time being, and for that time the school-house is their dwelling place. In it they spend their school-hours, in constant intercourse with their teachers and subject to their authority. These teachers, if what they should be, are discreet and well-behaved persons, having a good moral character, cleanly in their habits, pure and chaste in their language, and honest and upright in their discipline. It is their province to preserve school order, to subject their scholars to wholesome restraints, to commend and encourage them when they do well, to condemn and rebuke them when they do wrong, to see to it that they accomplish their task; and thus develop in this theater a set of school virtues, in the habits of patience, diligence, industry, steadiness of application, submission to authority, respect for superiors and for the rights of each other, cleanliness of person, good manners, self-control, truthfulness, honesty, and the like—habits which in kind have their basis and sanction in our moral nature, and which, moreover, are just the habits to fit and dispose them to act well their part in maturer years. These virtues are State virtues, social virtues, business virtues, and are also in constant demand for the purposes of this life, independently of any considerations that respect the future, and may be powerfully enforced by arguments that relate purely to the interests of time. They are certainly good for this world, and good for citizenship, whether there be any hereafter or not. Such elementary moral principles have existed in human thought and to some extent in human practice, wherever man has been found. They attach themselves to his nature and relations. They are not peculiar to Christendom or Christianity; but rather belong to man as man. His depravity has never sunk so low as to involve their total absence. Christianity fosters these virtues and begets others of a higher grade; but it is a grave mistake to suppose that those who administer Christianity, repeat its precepts, teach its doctrines, and preach its sanctions, whether in the pulpit or out of it, are the only apostles of morality in the world, or that they have any exclusive monopoly in this kind of teaching. This is not true, never has been, and never will be true. Morality, in the large sense, is a spontaneous outgrowth of human nature and human relations, notwithstanding the terrible depravity that has infected the race. It is a thing of home, of the street, of the public lecture, of business intercourse, of the State, of the court-room, of the jury-box, of the school-room-yea, of the ten thousand influences that operate in the formation of the human character-as really as it is of the ministry or the Church. The State itself is a moral teacher, by legislative enactment and judicial administration. There is at generic morality, whose usefulness no one questions, that comes within the province of the public school, just as really as do the spiritualities and higher sanctions of religion come within that of the ministry and the Church; and to it nobody objects, whatever may be his religious creed. For the want of a better term, let us call it secular morality—a morality that has its basis in the natural dictates of conscience and its direct sphere in the relations and actualities of the present life. Any theological creed that cannot see it needs reforming. It is certainly the kind of morality which the State is immensely concerned to secure; which makes the orderly, the peaceful, and law-abiding citizen; and which also forms one of the primary objects and great blessings of the public school. We give this outline sketch as a definition of what we mean by a common school secular education. It is not religious in the sense of relating to God or the duties we owe to him, or of affirming or resting upon the authority of the Bible, or adopting or denying any specific system of religious belief. It is just what it is-secular education-and as such distinct from the dogmas of religious sects, whether true or false. It omits to consider these dogmas, just as chemistry does not determine mathematical questions and as political economy does not discuss any theory in geology. It is neither Protestant nor Catholic, heterodox nor orthodox, Christian nor Pagan, because the matters indicated by these terms do not come within its scope. The public school, as the instrumentality of an American State, whose creature it is and for whose purposes and by whose authority it exists, is sufficiently explained and justified by being patterned after the State. There is nothing in it more dreadful than there is in the State itself. If the people can be content to live under the one, they ought to be content with the other. In having no religious system to teach and in denying no such system it fairly represents the State-not the Christian or the Infidel, the Protestant or the Catholic; but a State that in its organic being has no religious creed and no rule or form of worship. It is all that such a State can make it in consistency with its fundamental principles. A theocratic State might go further; but a democratic State cannot, without self-contradiction. But it is objected that this is not a complete education, since it does not include religion. Who ever said that it was so? No system of education is absolutely complete. Neither the pulpit nor the Sabbath-school furnishes such a system, since neither teaches all which it is desirable to know. Education involves a division of labor, and no system undertakes to comprehend every possible kind of knowledge. The incompleteness of the secular education of the public school is no objection to it. that would not equally apply to that of the sanctuary or the theological seminary. Though not complete, it is certainly good as far as it goes. Again, it is said that such a system, by not including religious teaching, omits the most important part of education. This is true, and equally true of every system that does not include religion. The transcendent importance of religious education does not prove it to be either necessary or wise to combine such education at the same time and by the same agency with every other process of educational culture. A young man may very properly study book-keeping, without at the same time studying the Catechism, or going through the discipline of the Sabbath-school. We see no just objection to an arrangement which assigns the teaching of arithmetic to the schoolmaster, and leaves religious teaching to other agencies. The schoolmaster has not the entire charge of the children, and certainly does not undertake their entire education. The fact that he teaches what is secular |