American homes today, is not limited by class or locality. It is widespread and active. It will not be curbed until all good citizens, regardless of class or creed, are thoroughly aroused to the sinister significance of it all and reconsecrate themselves to one of the highest and most sacred of human responsibilitiesthe reëstablishment of old and tested ideals and the maintenance of the home as the cornerstone of our American and Christian civilization. Those who have not lost their vision and their faith and who, in spite of the destructive tendencies of the time, are standing steadfast and fighting bravely against heavy odds that this priceless possession may be retained for the welfare of the coming generations, for the benefit of the nation, and for the safety of civilization are the real patriots of the present hour. They deserve our wholehearted support.

Aspul E. Strams

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE IN

BOARDING SCHOOLS

§ 1

Does the modern boy daily increase in favor with God while he lives at boarding school? When he graduates is he a God-believing, Godfearing citizen of the kingdom of heaven on earth? Has the process of being educated, along with its manifold mental and physical blessings, done something indelibly beautiful to his soul?

These may seem high-flying queries. They may sound too ambitious to be interjected into the trivial round and common task of going to school. The reader may fear, in seemly Anglo-Saxon reticence, that we are about to "talk religion." Precisely. Let him beware, and if he feels that religion is not an integral part of education, let him retire. For we believe that it is normal to speak of religion as a happy and expected part of education. It is not queer, or forced. We are not speaking of orchids in a garden of

cucumbers; nor trying to import something emotional into the commonplace. There is nothing commonplace about education anyway. Every phase of it is instinct with permanency. Whoever cares for and knows about youth will agree that the second decade is in all directions a romance. You do not have to stir things up-they are always astir. You do not have to carry in religion-it is there. Boys are mystics: schools are bound to feel the pains and dreams of the spirit. You will not have half sensed the education of the modern boy unless you recognize him as a natural disciple of spiritual things; nor will you have grasped what schooling is until you realize that a school is a state of mind, a sector of actual vivid life, in which religion is a wholly normal influence and force. The school years are intensely sensitive years, aglow with religion or God-consciousness. We have a right then to investigate the schools, on behalf of our sons, and ask: What are you schools and schoolmasters doing to help my boy become a citizen of the kingdom of God? Not only what is, but what should be, shall be our theme. The future is as important as

the present and as sacred as the past. All of us who are concerned with education, as parents or friends or teachers, should plan grandly for tomorrow, rebuilding failure or ineffectiveness into fruitage. In this discussion, therefore, there is contemplated no reverent assent or sad capitulation to things as they are. Possibly religion in boarding schools may be beyond criticism, but probably it is defective and weak. We shall survey the religious influence of boarding schools with the avowed purpose of reform. How can schools improve in technique or in spirit, in order the better, the far better to serve the boys of our land?

The religious life of our schools does not flourish. Too often it has been tolerated, patronized, used for prestige, or neglected. Why do school managements become less religious than the adolescents they seek to lead? Where has a school chapel borne fruit an hundred fold? Where in its kind is the school chapel as enthusiastically used as the football field? Where do teachers regard Sunday's praise as conscientiously as Monday's stint? In what school, of all the charm

ing or imposing foundations that dot our country, is God central? Where is God daily exalted as the source of every blessing by pupils and teachers? The far opposite which we are used to is so common that we regard such a goal as chimerical. It is abandoned, and schools settle down to the cult of manly morals, calling that religion, which of course it is not; and go about their business of lessons and sports and all the activities that buzz on the heels of the curricula, without God in the school.

A magnificent thought surely, the opposite would be-God in schools. Let that, and nothing smaller, be our theme. God and His children in a school dedicated to His glory and their gain-what could be as natural or as glowing with interest? Always that is our radiant central thought-God and the boy. If in these pages we review what schools do and should not do about chapel services, Bible lessons and missionary endeavor we dryly seem to be far from God, let it be remembered that in education Nihil longe Deo. In all problems concerning youth nothing is far from or to God. It is not the school charter