stand a wrong emotion is a right emotion. In the Puritan Revolution, Cromwell perceived that the royal troops were upborne by the emotion of chivalry: it gave impetus to their charge and strength to their arms. He saw that he must oppose to them a force of men also upborne by emotion, who to the might of their muscles should add a great enthusiasm of their souls. So he recruited the Ironsides, who were not only fighting men but praying men, and who were intent not only on a battle but on a cause which consecrated all their valor. He brought into the field a new emotion.

The defect of ethics as a force in the development of conduct is its lack of this quality of emotion, and its consequent failure to provide youth with an independent motive. It is one thing to understand the difference between good and evil, but an altogether different thing to refuse the evil and to choose the good. Indeed, the understanding is so easy as to suggest the definition of

ethics as the science of what everybody knows, expressed in language which nobody can comprehend. But to do right is another matter: even as there are many students of philosophy, but mighty few philosophers. A consideration of ethical values provides details for conduct, and is corrective and necessary; but it does not furnish a motive. This is best supplied by religion.

I concern myself, for this reason, with the training of children in religion, not in ethics. I am dealing here not with honesty or purity, not with the speaking of the truth or with the keeping of one's life unspotted from the world, so much as with the interior purpose, ideal, motive, emotion which shall work itself out into all these forms of conduct. The proposition with which I begin is that the conditions of human nature are such as to make it necessary for us to train our children in religion. The result of right religion is that one of

his own will desires to be good. His monitor is within. He may be removed from the domestic restrictions of his youth, and placed in circumstances which give him freedom to choose both his companions and his manner of life. That will make no difference. He is his own master, and wherever he goes he carries his own standards and ideals. Or rather, he serves a Divine Master in whose presence he lives continually, no matter where he goes. He waits for no external obligation. He can be fully trusted.

CHAPTER II

THE CONDITIONS OF HUMAN NATURE

HATEVER mistakes have been

W

made in the training of children in religion, they have been due for the most part to a lack of consideration for the conditions of childhood. Sometimes there has been a serious defect in the understanding of religion itself, as in the days when the doctrine that children are "conceived and born in sin" was taken to mean that they all belonged to the devil, until by their own voluntary act and choice they transferred their allegiance to the Lord. But commonly the religion has been good enough. The teachers of it have failed to take advantage of the conditions of human

nature.

One of the conditions of human nature

is that we respond naturally to observation. We do our best when we are seen.

This is at the heart of those careful methods at home and at school by which children are provided with unfailing companions and counselors. Thus far, such methods are in accordance with the facts of human life. Not only does observation prevent much which is wrong, but it stimulates to excellent action. When Roger Williams said of the Rhode Island Indians that they would endure torture without a murmur but that they cried when they had the toothache, he indicated the access of fortitude which comes with an admiring audience. The man at the stake was conscious that he was under observation, and he conducted himself in the great manner of a hero. But the toothache was another matter. Nobody cared whether he endured it well or ill.

We are so made that we are helped by being watched. One reason why our words