School Boards: What They Can Do, and
What They May Do," which were sent to the papers by the editor of
the _Contemporary Review_. (See _Coll. Ess._, iii, 374.) Here was
his programme, a great part of which he saw carried out:--Physical
training, for health and as a basis for further training; Domestic
training, especially for girls; Moral training, in a knowledge of
moral and social laws, and an engaging of the affections for what is
good instead of what is evil; Intellectual training, in knowledge and
the means of acquiring knowledge, alike for practical purposes and for
recreation.

The opponents of popular education raised their still familiar outcry
about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for
the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what
state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing
their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a
scheme, if properly carried out, ought rather to expel nonsense. Above
all, it set the interests of humanity above the mere development of
skill, which would simply turn the child of man into the subtlest
beast of the field.

True education, he declared, was impossible without "religion," the
unchanging essence of which lies in the love of some ethical ideal to
govern and guide conduct, "together with the awe and reverence which
have no kinship with base fear, but rise whenever one tries to pierce
below the surface of things, whether they be material or spiritual."

It was in this sense that he advocated Bible-reading in
schools--simple Bible-reading, without theological gloss. On the one
hand, this was the only workable plan under existing circumstances.
True, that he would not have employed the Bible as the agency for
introducing the religious and ethical idea in a system that could
begin with a clean slate. He believed that the principle of strict
secularity in State education is sound and must ultimately prevail.
But moral instruction must not be too rudely divorced from the system
of belief current among the generality; and the Bible had been the
instrument of the clergy of all denominations, to whose efforts the
mass of half-instructed people owed such redemption from ignorance and
barbarism as they possessed. Make all needful deductions, and there
remains a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur, interwoven with
three centuries of our history. The Bible, as English literature, as
old-world hi