Conference.

With these characteristics a skillful administrator can make District Conferences a popular and useful organization, just as he has the power in a great measure to make his quarterly visitation to the Churches popular.

What are the comparative gains from a well-conducted District Conference?

1. This body comprises all classes of officials in the Church, except Trustees. It imposes a specific duty on the Presiding Elder, the Traveling and Local Preachers-the former to give an account of his work, and the latter to do likewise, and to be subject to examination of character and relicense if unordained; it requires exhorters to pass through the same steps, and Superintendents to report the condition of their schools; and it recognizes the District Steward. Under this head we note: (1.) The Presiding Elder's authority is not diminished, nor his quarterly visitations impaired. While, to some extent, the disciplinary questions and answers are the same in the District and in the Quarterly Conference, there is this advantage in the former, that the reports from the respective pastors act as a stimulus upon each other, and their statements are fuller and more inspiring. (2.) Pastors are brought into contact with other Pastors, and the reports, in their diversified form, are apt to produce aggressive and more liberal views. (3.) The careful examination of Local Preachers and Exhorters before disinterested persons from all parts of the district, relicensing them upon their merits and suitability for the office, is a much more thorough method than is attained by the Quarterly Conferences. This careful scrutiny of character and inquiry into the work of Local Preachers will have a salutary effect upon them. Their official recognition and assignment to systematic work, so far as possible, opens their way to favor with the people and to greater usefulness. (4.) Pastors alone are required to report the Sunday-schools to Quarterly Conferences, while the District Conference exacts reports from the Superintendent as well as from the Pastor. (5.) District Stewards become acquainted with the real condition of each charge, and this information furnishes each with an understanding of his duties which he cannot acquire elsewhere.

2. Taking into account the representations of the ministry and laymen brought together to consult and discuss questions

of finance, various departments of Church labor, examination of ministerial character and cultivation of the social element, the District Conference, if properly conducted, may advance every interest, and in time become a wonderful power in the Church. It should also supervise certain financial and kindred matters which the Annual Conference is unable to do, while in session, because of other pressing duties.

3. The communities unable to entertain an Annual Conference would readily sustain a District Conference. While their proceedings are unlike in most respects, yet the public services of the latter especially are greatly enjoyed, and leave a salutary influence wherever they are held.

4. All the members of a District Conference generally participate in its discussions and business, while but comparatively few do so at an Annual Conference on matters beyond what relates to themselves. The preparation of essays and special addresses and the discussions which follow, as well as in the transaction of routine proceedings, secure a discipline for the mind of young ministers which they might not obtain readily at a session of an Annual Conference. These Conferences develop latent talent in ministers which might never have been seen elsewhere.

Every

5. Members of the Church have an opportunity to hear questions of polity and doctrine, as well as finance, discussed as they are not likely to hear them anywhere else. thing which tends to disseminate light and knowledge of the wants and demands of Methodism benefits the ministry and members of the Church, and this the District Conference may do.

6. The intermingling of ministers and laymen of a district cannot fail to produce good results. The social element can be cultivated, and a bond of unity established that will enhance the interests of the district. Already many invaluable acquaintances have been formed at various District Conferences, which might never have been obtained by any other

means.

These are a few of the advantages growing out of a wellconducted and spirited District Conference.

ART. V.—SHALL EDUCATION BY THE STATE BE EXCLUSIVELY SECULAR?

It is but too apparent that the Republic of the United States is passing through a transitional, if not, indeed, a revolutionary period. Questions of gravest import are coming before us for adjustment or readjustment; questions fundamental to the perpetuity of the nation, and freighted with its hopes and interests.

Among these questions none is more grave or vital than that of education in all its relations and applications; but especially is the relation of the nation or State to the education of its future citizens of pre-eminent importance. Shall the State educate its youth? Shall it employ compulsory methods? To what extent shall State or national education be carried? Shall it embrace primary education only, or include secondary as well, or advance through all the grades of higher culture, even to the college and the university? And, more important still, what shall be the character of the State's educational work? Shall it be purely secular, or all inclusive, embracing the entire nature of its subjects and having respect to their entire fitness for future citizenship? These important questions cannot receive any extended consideration in the brief limits of this article. We can only give a hasty glance and a passing word to some of them in their specific form, but hope to elucidate certain fundamental principles relating to the generic question of What the State shall teach, or the education requisite for American citizenship.

It is, perhaps, needless to start the question, whether the State shall educate its youth at all. Popular education, under government patronage and support, is an established institution in the United States; an institution deeply rooted in the popular heart, and which will not be surrendered without a struggle. It is too late in the history of our government to discuss that question in its simple form. It is not, however, too late to inquire concerning the reasons which underlie this cherished institution, the foundation principles on which it rests. We may legitimately ask, then, what are the ends sought in our sys tem of common-school education? The answer is neither diffi cult nor doubtful. Qualification for citizenship, preparation for

the manifold duties of life, protection to the interests of society, the safety, perpetuity, and prosperity of the nationthese are the ends sought and believed to be secured by the education which the State maintains at public expense. If these are the acknowledged and unquestioned ends sought, it is certainly a legitimate and important question which presses with imperative force upon us, How are these ends best secured? If the State proposes to accomplish certain definite ends, and employs certain well-defined means for that purpose, its citizens, who are taxed for the object contemplated, have a right to inquire as to the adaptation of the means to the end; and whether the end is really secured by the agencies employed. Here, then, comes before us, properly and forcibly, the question as to the character of our common-school education: what it actually is, what it should be in order to justify the State in supporting it? It will be answered that the ends proposed are secured by imparting knowledge to youth that they may become intelligent. But such an answer is vague and partial, and quite unsatisfactory to thoughtful people. How much knowledge does it require to make a man a good and safe citizen? Does simple intelligence, meaning by the term an intellectual knowledge of certain branches of study, constitute all, or even the most important part, of education? Are the ends which the State seeks and which its safety demands realized by any such meager and partial methods of education? Does it follow that because a child can read and write, or has passed through a more extended literary course, he is thereby qualified for the solemn and responsible duties of society, and of becoming a personal and potent factor in the social and civil institutions of a great republic? This vital question, deeper and broader and graver than all others relating to education, is the question which in some form is being rapidly pressed to the front in our country, and demands immediate and thoughtful consideration. The question, when reduced to its more specific form, is this: Shall the education given by the State be purely and exclusively secular? The subject is not a theoret ical one merely. In several localities it has taken a very decidedly practical form. It is before some of the State legislatures for discussion and decision. Local school boards have it on their hands, and some of them are pressing it to a speedy settle

ment. Teachers are called upon to adjust their daily work with this question ever before them. There is a party in every State, daily increasing in numerical strength, becoming more emphatic in its utterances, more pronounced in its attitude, whose avowed object is completely to secularize and atheize the State and the nation in all their work and in all their relations to State institutions and individual subjects. It is important that every intelligent citizen should have a thorough understanding of the subject, and be prepared for wise and prompt action in relation thereto. We do not propose to view the subject from the stand-point of a Christian minister, nor that of a devoted Protestant, nor even in the light of pure, unsectarian Christianity. We prefer to discuss it upon other and lower grounds, and view it as a simple citizen, in the light of sound, worldly sense, of true philosophy, and of undeniable history. Without bigotry, without sectarian prejudices, without bias, assuming nothing but the common principles of morality and theistic or natural religion, let us approach this subject, seeking to know only what is truth, what is right, and wherein lies the greatest good for the greatest number.

I A complete secularization of our public instruction so as essentially to exclude moral and religious education would be thoroughly unphilosophical. To do this is to ignore the true end of education. What is that end? The united testimony of all recognized authority harmonizes with the judgment of all thoughtful persons in answering this question. Pestalozzi, whose place as an educator is universally recognized, and of whom it has been truly said that he has exerted a greater influence than any other man on education in England, America,. and the north of Europe, states as his first principle that "education relates to the whole man, and consists in the drawing. forth, strengthening, and perfecting all the faculties with which an all-wise Creator has endowed him, physical, intellectual, and moral." "Education," he says, "has to do with the hand, the head, and the heart." Herbert Spencer will surely not be charged with any bias toward Puritanism in matters of education, but he affirms that the one end of all true education is to learn "how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others," or, in other words, "how to live completely. And this, being the great thing needful for us to FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII.-20