accessible to all, under the care
of trained and responsible leaders, in which, without too much
government, the free movements of the young and the abounding
self-expression of the great mass of the employed shall have opportunity
to work out their own education through play, into public righteousness.

The training of citizens for days to come demands exactly the qualities
which are imparted on the play-ground. Morality is not taught and
ethical culture is not imparted by precept, though precept and
exhortation have their due place in the analysis of moral and spiritual
matters, for the thoughtful. But the great number of people are not
ethically thoughtful, and in the acquirement of righteousness all people
are unconscious. The desired action in moral growth is universally
spontaneous. The most sober and intellectual of men must be caught off
his guard and must be lured into voluntary actions before any moral
habits can be formed in him. Mere analysis of truth or self-examination
makes no man good. But men become good by doing things first, and
thinking of them afterward. They can be just as good if they never think
about them, though thinking about ethical matters renders a service to
the community as a whole.

It should be the duty, therefore, of the churches, who are acknowledged
before the whole community as repositories of the conscience of men, to
promote public recreation. Where necessary the church should even
provide a play-ground. In Galesburg, Ill., fifteen churches are
co-operating, through their men's societies, in a central council of
forty members. This Council is made up in the form of four Committees of
ten. Each Committee considers one great interest of the community. One
of these interests is recreation. It is the duty of this Committee in
winter to provide musical and literary entertainment and lectures. In
the summer this Committee has secured the use of the Knox College
recreation field, and employing a trained man, has opened it throughout
the summer as a play-ground for all the children of the city.

The use of recreation for the building up of a community seems to
involve expensive apparatus and sometimes does so. Mrs. Russell Sage at
Sag Harbor, Long Island, has expended many thousands of dollars in the
experiment. Interested in the children, of whom there are about eight
hundred in the town, through the experience of giving them a Christmas
tree, she determined to devote to their use a p