We may take it for granted that the man who has not learned to do anything has not found and is not finding his place in society. He is not able to give himself a value in the social equation. His spirit must be that of the non-contributing member, of the outsider, the wanderer, the vagabond. You can not make a society out of such men, neither can you socialize them. To teach the young that each one of them has a place and a work to do and that his main business in youth is to find out what that work is and to fit himself most diligently to do it seems to me to be the whole purpose of education. Unless every part of it is going to make a difference in our after lives we had better omit it. The food-producing or life-maintaining occupation is the core of our activity; it is only a part of our activity — but it is and should be the organizing part. An education built upon the vocational motive broadly enough construed to enable the young person to acquire the elements of his entire work in life would, I think, be far more truly cultural than the formal education to which we misapply that adjective.

And I am going to claim for it that it will develop a more genuine sense of religion too. After all, it is working with the resisting material of life that brings us face to face with the great fact of God's existence and of the human law of justice and the great need for faith and loving-kindness. Religion is just choosing the kind of a universe that we are forced to insist that this must be. Books may help us to decide what kind of a universe we must think this is, but the lives that we live tell us far more about that than

even the best of books do. The man whose life is one untroubled joy may read his Bible, but its words must seem like an ancient tale to him. If his will throughout has its own way, he will not come to a realizing sense that he is a child of higher powers. He will worship himself and be his own disciple. Phrase it as we will it is chiefly this self-worship that keeps men away from God. Whenever they are caught up in the struggle of mighty forces which will not obey them, but which they must take note of and obey, they become humbled and dependent. It is adversity rather than prosperity that purges the mind. In times of great public calamity alone do men see the glory of the coming of the Lord, for then only do they become genuinely other-minded, feeling their own helplessness and their complete dependence upon a power which is not themselves. Why do we all choose justice then rather than life and the way of sacrifice rather than peace without effort? Because we feel it is the will of God.

Now the education which introduces us early to the realities with which men have struggled ever since the world began is far more certain than the education which comes from books to make us aware of ourselves and the forces with which we must reckon. He who reads a book about agriculture will learn something about the recurring seasons and may gather from it that they are a beneficent arrangement to enable men to live, but he who tills a field will know the recurring seasons as a fact which he must reckon with or starve. He who studies physics for the culture of his mind will

learn something about the law of gravitation, but he who builds a wall or constructs a house will have a realizing sense of it. It is what we do that teaches us. It is easy to get on with one's fellows in the school, but in the shop team work and the ignominy of shirking are realities. Our little undertakings, if they be real, teach us the importance of the virtues. Our great undertakings in which we stand together facing defeat and death teach us perhaps for the first time in our lives that all that we can do is of but slight avail, that unless right is on our side and God fight for us our struggle is in vain. It is purpose, laying hold of life in race-old human ways, rather than indifferent and aimless seeings and hearings, that we must depend upon to make men really conscious of the facts and significance of religion and morals. For a purposeful wrestling with conditions has a sobering poignancy about it as superior to a mere verbal taking account of them as first-hand evidence is superior to hearsay evidence. It is in sweeping rooms, in herding sheep, in plowing fields, in driving engines, in tending machines, in fighting battles, that one must learn to be a child of God, or his religion will be as little a workaday affair as his Sunday clothes are.

WHY WE GET ON SO SLOWLY

It was in a large city. We came by invitation of our host, who all his life has been singularly devoted to making this world a better place for folks to live in. His fellow stockholders have elected him to the directorate of one of the largest corporations in which he owns stock. I mean the public schools; he is an active not merely a voting director. My friend, the director of studies, and I were the first to arrive. "Tell us what it is all about," we said, as soon as we had exchanged greetings. "It came to pass in this way," he said. "My friend G was, as you know, president of the board of education for some years. Three years ago he retired from that body. I used to tell him that our most important duty was to make over the course of study. But we were so busy about vocational schools and parents' complaints and other small matters that we never got to that, though I have long believed that since it is the program of work which both teachers and students are required to follow and the rope which ties the feet of every one of us, it is the thing of things to look out for and keep in order. G never saw it that way when he was president of the board; but now he has a daughter in one of the schools, and what she is forced to do there is more than he can bear. The number of roods in an acre and of fur

longs in a mile seems to have been the straw which broke his self-control. He says it is stuff, and no child should be required to learn it. He came to me a week ago and asked me to bring together a half dozen men to do something about it. That's why you're here. He is bringing a business man, Mr. Z- -, with him, and I have asked two members of the state board of education and the superintendent of schools to come in."

In a little while the company gathered, and our host turned to the ex-president of the board of education and asked him to tell us how it looked "to a former school officer who had been converted from his official indifference by being a parent with his own child in school." He spoke with marked seriousness. "The great problem of life," he said, "is not death; the great problem is children. Nature sees to it that at the last we die peacefully, but as long as we live our children are a source of unceasing anxiety to us. First the baby is not strong, and we go about with the horrible feeling in the back of our minds that in spite of all we can do, he may die. When he is safely over that, we begin to wonder what sort of stuff is in him, and set out to teach him to be clean and mannerly, to show spunk by not crying, and not to pull the house down, or set fire to it, or run in front of automobiles. If he goes to a neighbor's to play with her children and brings something back which does not belong to him, we inquire how he got it. He says it was given to him. Like all mortals his desire to accumulate is very strong, and we wonder if what he says is