zation, is with us
to-day largely an unrealized ideal.

Teachers were respected even more than parents, for it was held that
parents prepared their children for the present, but teachers for the
future. None but mature married men were employed as teachers. It was
said that "he who learns of a young master is like a man who eats green
grapes, and drinks wine fresh from the press; but he who has a master of
mature years is like a man who eats ripe and delicious grapes, and
drinks old wine."

The child entered school at six. Previous to that age physical exercise
and bodily growth were to be the ends sought. "When he enters school,"
says the Talmud, "load him like an ox." Other authorities, however,
encouraged giving him tasks according to his strength. The subjects
taught were reading, writing, natural history, arithmetic, geometry, and
astronomy. The Scriptures were taught to all the children, and all were
versed in religious rites.

The methods were good and attractive, great effort being made to lead
the children to understand, even though it might be necessary to repeat
four hundred times. The discipline was humane. According to the Talmud,
"children should be punished with one hand and caressed with two."
Corporal punishment was administered only to children over eleven years
of age.

=The Schools of the Rabbis.=--Karl Schmidt says: "Culture in a people
begins with the creation of a literature and the use of writing." The
oldest monument of writing among the Israelites is found in the tables
of stone containing the Ten Commandments. Moses, David, Solomon, and
Isaiah, and the other prophets were the founders of the Hebrew
literature.

Among the instrumentalities of higher education were the Schools of the
Prophets, which taught philosophy, medicine, poetry, history, and law to
the sons of prophets and priests, and of leading families. These schools
were influential in stimulating the production of the historical,
poetical, and prophetic books of the Old Testament.

But more important as direct means of higher education were the Schools
of the Rabbis. These sprang up in Alexandria, Babylon, and Jerusalem in
the early centuries of the Christian era. They were private institutions
founded by celebrated teachers. Doubtless it was in such a school as
this that St. Paul was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. The principal
subjects studied were theology and law,--politics, history, mathematics
and science being exc