has now pervaded all sections of the land. Such schools exist in connection with nearly all the Jewish congregations. Independent societies, like that founded by Rebecca Gratz, which numbers now eight branches with three thousand pupils, supply the needs of the vast body of children not otherwise provided for. The Hebrew Sunday School Union of America publishes leaflets and other forms of literature for such classes. The organisation of these Jewish schools is not unlike those of the Christian Sunday Schools. Children are enrolled at about six or seven years of age. The principle of the Kindergarten has been widely adopted in the conduct of the primary classes. Regularly graded classes follow year by year until in about its fifteenth year the child enters the Confirmation Class. It has thus far received consecutive instruction in Biblical History, usually following the lessons of a compendium or text-book. These lessons are used as illustrative material for imparting ethical and religious precepts. In addition to this, the Hebrew language is taught in most schools with the aim of equipping the child for participation in those portions of the public worship which are retained in the ritual of the Synagogue, but mainly to deepen the consciousness of a unity pervading the Jewish community of the world, and at the same time to cultivate a sense of interest in and responsibility for the conservation of the great Hebrew literature of which the Jew is the heritor and custodian. During this period Divine Services, especially arranged for children, are quite generally conducted, during which a sermonette, adapted to the needs of the child's mind. and heart and appealing to its scope of experiences, is offered, making a valuable adjunct to its other moral instruction.

In the Confirmation Classes, the doctrines of the religion are expounded. Here comparative studies are in some measure introduced and the agreements with Christianity and other faiths are emphasised. These lessons close with an impressive

2 As early as 1730 the Shearith Israel congregation of New York maintained a school at which the secular and religious branches were taught. When about 1842 the Public Schools began to be established free from sectarian influence they were gladly hailed by Jewish parents. Thenceforth the special Sabbath or Religious Schools became a valuable adjunct. Vol. XV-No. 2.

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public ceremonial in the Synagogue, in which the child participates. By this means, an earnest effort is made to seize on the vital period of adolescence, in order to stimulate and direct the forming character by the purest moral and spiritual ideals.

Within the last decade, a widespread movement has been inaugurated aiming to extend the work of religious and moral instruction by the organisation of Post-Confirmation classes, Young People's Reading Circles, and study classes for adults. This has been furthered by the National Council of Jewish Women. The Jewish Chautauqua Society, which instituted and fostered this plan, has published systematic course-books or syllabuses, containing outlines for Bible Readings, taking cognisance of the higher criticism, and following this with a series, leading the reader through the mazes of the absorbing story of the Jews from the close of the Bible to the present time. These readings are based mainly on text-books in history and literature issued by the Jewish Publication Society of America. There are also Chautauqua Course-Books in the study of the Hebrew language by the correspondence method.

The Summer Assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua has become the recognised forum for the discussion of all problems affecting Jewish life. During the past eight years it has persistently directed attention to the constructive agencies required to-day for the moral training of the young. It has called into being special classes in religious pedagogy, which attract teachers from all parts of the land. The Gratz College of Philadelphia, the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York and the Hebrew Union College at Cincinnati aim to guide the teachers of the Jewish schools and to equip them for their tasks. The Summer Assembly reaches out to the thousands of teachers scattered throughout the land and sends its message of help into many towns and villages.

Two years ago the Assembly appointed a "Committee of Fifteen" of leading Jewish Educators to take in hand the whole problem of the training of our children with the avowed purpose of bringing our schools into line with the most advanced results of the modern psychological and pedagogical researches. We are absorbed in behalf of our constituency in those very

problems, to the solution of which this course of lectures, as I understand, is to point, viz., a synthesis of the best ideas and a co-ordination of the best methods for the moral training of the young to be deduced from a comparison of what in our separate fields we have done in the past and are doing at the present time.

Our common problem, as I understand it, is this. The moral training of our youth must be improved because of the degeneracy revealed by the Juvenile courts and those very necessities which forced these courts into existence; because of the growth of reformatories and other agencies for reclaiming delinquents; because of the fearful havoc wrought by social impurity; because of the low moral standards in politics and the over-riding of high ethical considerations in the trades, commerce, industries, and even the professions.

What then are the agencies which have been and are employed for the moral culture of the young? Let these be seriously inspected and let our combined wisdom and earnestness be applied to make them more effective. These agencies are (1) Because most widespread-the system of public instruction, including, of course, all academies and institutions privately supported. (2) The schools specifically devoted to moral instruction and generally denominated Sunday Schools. (3) The Homes of the people.

The effectiveness of these agencies is impeached. The Catholic Church has withdrawn its children from the Public Schools, because she would have all knowledge instinct with religious force. The Protestant Church recognising the validity of the argument of the Catholic Church, stands for the reading of the Bible and the use of devotional exercises in the Public Schools. The mother Church Judaism, who instructed both in the supreme value of religion as the inspirer of moral action, yet would put her maternal hand in persuasive restraint upon both of her children. The Jews have broken up their parochial schools, because they recognise in the Public Schools the most blessed gift of America to modern civilisation. Within their walls the democracy finds its truest life. Here all distinctions of wealth, color, race, and creed disappear. It is to be greatly regretted that our Catholic friends withhold their

children from this fraternity. The public school-ground is the real battlefield which is developing the highest American manhood. Under the influence of a high-minded and zealous band of teachers, ideals of civic, national, and social life are impressed, which are intensely moral and, to my mind, devoutly religious. A good man, a good woman, exceeds any book as a moral instructor. The schools may be unreligious in a dogmatic sense, but they are not to be charged with being irreligious. The Jew who gave the Bible to the world and naturally prizes it most, objects strenuously to Bible readings and other devotional exercises in the Public Schools. He regards this as an invasion of the rights of conscience for which our government stands and a defeat of the democratic system. The Book of Esther does not mention the name of God, yet the old Rabbis were not afraid to place it in the Biblical canon. It contained, even though not in words, the vital truth that we shall not see: "Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne."

To make the Public Schools more effective moral mentors, we must give them the fullest possible scope as arenas of applied ethics. A bill was introduced in the Legislature of New York this very week, providing that in all schools and Reformatories receiving State aid, instruction in the principles of morality shall be given from text-books, as thoroughly as in any branch of learning. Considering the fact that so many are dependent in the main upon these schools for their moral training, such a movement is undoubtedly the outgrowth of the purest zeal in behalf of the highest welfare of the child and the State. Strenuous insistance will, however, be necessary upon the avoidance of every tinge of sectarian bias. This demands the removal of all dogmatic instruction to the second agency for the moral training of the young, viz., the religious schools themselves.

The necessity of these special schools for moral instruction whether they be called Sunday Schools, Religious Schools, or Ethical Schools need not be argued here. The Religious freedom we cherish involves the right to teach the sanctions and grounds of morality, as each sect or group of people under

stands them. One finds them in a supernatural revelation; another finds them in a mere doctrine of utility and between these extremes are many shades of conviction. Morality becomes vital to each only in that degree in which it is suffused with the ideal which inspires it, be that ideal a living God or the abstraction called Humanity. Each group of people must therefore be permitted, nay urged, to teach morality in accordance with its own convictions by the means of its own dogmas, symbols, rites, and ceremonies. Therefore with the forms of Judaism, I teach morals to Jews. These forms would be meaningless perhaps to others. So also the Catholic can appeal best to Catholics with the impressive formula of that Church, and the other sects in the language they best understand. Perhaps in that "far off divine event" towards which we are tending, these distinctions may fade out, but to-day they exist. Let us not blink at facts. Let each one be concerned rather to so use the tools he handles that he may create from the unformed child's spirit a superb and beautiful character. To this end, the religious schools must be energised. Too much have they been given over to mere entertainment, to mushy sentimentalism, to the emotionalism that breeds fanatics or at best to shallow recital of texts and verbal exercises and showy displays that lay no lasting hold on the heart. The organisation of such a great national movement as the Religious Education Association is a confession of the fact that the religious schools are far behind the other schools in accomplishing the results aimed at. The Universities, Seminaries, Churches, and Sunday Schools are sending their best men and women to confer together in order to take up this matter more seriously than heretofore and I look with great expectation to the results.

But let these schools attain to their highest possibility and they will yet fail in themselves to make moral men and women. I stand for the ancient Jewish averment that the school is only a supplement to the home. The home is after all the best school of morals. The function of the school is to work with childhood in the mass. The function of the home is to work with the individual child. The school as adjunct to the Church or Ethical Society cultivates the communal sentiment and