Such falling ought not to surprise us. ought not to surprise the intelligent.

Natural consequences

Boston is
It goes

Many of the native born, whom Massachusetts is trying to reform at Westboro and elsewhere, are now pupils of her penal code, to whom she failed to teach the moral code. more philosophical in effort to secure pure water. first to the fountains and not to the faucets. The Board of Education says correctly: "The Public Schools were established that they might train the youth to be good citizens." And for such a purpose Massachusetts no more needs the physical athlete, or the intellectual, than she does the moral. The highway of the human race has had too many of the first two and not enough of the latter to make the road safe and the travel comfortable. "The State holds in its own hands the power to determine what must be the character and extent of that education which its own safety requires all its children to possess." And this is said wisely by the Board, on the principle that right living between man and man, and good citizenship, are mostly matters of education into which one must be developed.

And to quote once more and more emphatically: "The omission of the moral element from the public instruction of the children of the State will soon produce a State not worth preserving."-1877-8, p. 86.

Evidently there is not enough moral power generated in Massachusetts to meet her business and civil necessities. The supply is not up to the demand in the market, and the unsupplied are waiting to be furnished in the reformatory institutions of the State. The public rather than the penal schools should be administerd and expected to furnish them.

From the early workings of that magnificent Lyman plan and foundation laid at Westboro, Massachusetts has been laboring with tentative variations on the problem of juvenile way. wardness and criminality. Mostly the processes have been curative rather than preventive. The moral nature, where alone waywardness and criminality can have origin and growth, seems to be first discovered, or at least recognized by the State, after it has become vitiated and damaging to the Commonwealth. Cannot the State touch the moral part of its three

fold child and coming citizen, before it reaches Westboro in a damaged and criminal condition? If the State did not assume control, to an extent, over the other two-thirds of the child, and on the ground that it has a governmental right to provide for itself good citizens out of its native born material, it might, with some consistency, decline to take the other or moral third in hand, till it becomes viciously impaired and hurtful to the common good. But if the State may so far rise above the private rights of the family as to make compulsory an amount of intellectual and physical training of its children for a public end, why suspend authority and work, when the moral nature is reached? Does the right of eminent domain, so to speak, end for the State and begin with the family on a moral boundary?

Of course the State is not barred by any theory that the moral nature cannot be aided in its development, and towards the virtues.

What is possible in teaching morals in the Public Schools? To teach them is of course possible. Geography for beginners. History for beginners. Why not Morals for beginners? The question answers itself. The awakened mind is hardly more responsive to the declarations of the multiplication table than to a table of primary, juvenile morals. Moral truths can be received intellectually as well as any others on the same grade, and if not heartily always, yet as heartily as a child of ten receives many other important and useful truths.

It is possible to teach morals without teaching religion. There is a moral code clearly distinguishable from Judaism or Christianity, or Romanism, or Protestantism, a code on which each of these religionists can unite, together with an intelligent and virtuous theist. So much of a system of morals could be taught, not only with the assent, but to the delight of the community. Corporations, banks, civil and commercial offices, neighborhoods and dwelling houses would welcome heartily the practice of such a code and be immediately benefited. Moral qualities complete and crown such a citizen as the State wants and proposes to make. Before a duty so high and so imperative, Massachusetts has not been wont to hesitate and confer about impossibles. The question, whether it is possible

for her to teach her own children morals in her own schools, carries with it an unpleasant implication.

The problem concerning juvenile immoralities and crimes is becoming more and more imperious for solution, and the working of it is almost entirely in the line of reformation and not of prevention. It is much as if we should ignore vaccination, and move extensively for small-pox hospitals. Is not the time at hand for the higher civilization and an almost idolized public school system to take in hand the education of the neglected and best third in the nature of the child?

ARTICLE VIII.—NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE LOVE.*-This book, as its second and longer title shows (see below), is a treatise on Christian Ethics written from the theological point of view held by a devoted advocate of the more strictly confessional sort in the "Evangelical Church." It might almost equally well be said that it is a treatise on systematic theology written from the point of view furnished by New Testament Ethics of the Johannean type. For the complete blending or fusion of Biblical (almost wholly that of the New Testament) theology and systematic moral philosophy is the avowed principle and purpose of the author. This is more true of Sartorius than of Nitzsch, in his System der Christlichen Lehre, whom the former praises (p. xiii.) for taking a similar point of view. In the judgment of Sartorius it has been the bane of both Christian Ethics and Christian systematic theology, that they have so often been separated, and treated as though they sprung from a different root and had a different content. Such separation has caused a harmful contrast (p. x.) between "theory and practice," "doctrine and love." The author of this book, therefore, opposes "this severance of the moral and the theological, which is of Pelagian origin, and which places ethics in a position of self-sufficient independence." His opposition is open, hearty, and maintained throughout (see p. xv.). A living science of Christianity does "not consist of two divided and coördinate branches of dogma and morals, but in an individual life of God in man and man in God." Hence his striking phrase," a Holy Ethics." The Spirit of truth-ethical and scientific truth-is the Holy Spirit.

There is a certain pious warmth and spiritual con amore about this work. In his opening sentence the author exhibits on his breast the signs of what was called in Neander, a "pectoral theology." "Theology," says Sartorius, p. ix., "is a sacred science, it is practical knowledge, i. e. a combination of the apprehension of the intellect with the dispositions of the heart."

*The Doctrine of Divine Love, or Outlines of the Moral Philosophy of the Evangelical Church. By ERNEST SARTORIUS; translated by SOPHIA TAYLOR. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. New York: Scribner & Welford. 1884.

Such honor we are quite ready to do to Theology in the abstract, and in the concrete examples of certain men like Neander, Müller, Dorner, and their like; but the theology of not a few, of most of the writers and teachers whose words are in the papers, reviews, and lecture-rooms of the theological world, we esteem to be far from "sacred" as to "the dispositions of the heart.”

The point of starting for Sartorius is, "instead of the usual definitions of religion, reason, revelation, etc.," "that scriptural definition of God, as brief as it is excellent, God is Love (1 John iv. 8), which is not merely the commencement, but also the vital principle from which theology. . . is developed in that community of believers called the Evangelical Church" (xi. f.) The last part of this sentence assures us afresh that we are to expect, not simply a Christian, but a strictly confessional theological ethics. Later on in the Introduction (xxiii.) the author announces his undying adherence to the "Confession of Augsburg," which he characterizes as "the only orthodox and anti-heretical basis of true Christian union and ecclesiastical association."

From the one principle "God is love," the author deduces his system of theological ethics in four main branches, comprised in two Parts. Part I. treats (1) of "the primary Divine love and its opposite ;" and (2) of "Redeeming Divine love." Part II. brings before us in two sections, the reasons for maintaining which are not so clear, (3) the "Renewing," and (4) the Obeying Divine love. The necessities of the deduction obviously make the divis ions, and their treatment, somewhat artificial and uncomely.

Proceeding with his plan, Sartorius deduces the doctrine of the Trinity from the necessities of Divine love. It is this love which both unites and distinguishes the three persons of the Trinity. Did not Augustine long ago declare: "Thou seest the Trinity when thou seest Love, for the Loving, the Beloved, and their Love are three ?" (p. 16 f.). The alternative which the denial of the necessity of the Trinity as a deduction from the Divine love forces us into, is the assertion of the eternity of the World as the object of this love (p. 19). Creation also seems to be considered by the author as a necessity deduced from this one essential attribute of the Divine Tri-personality: it is the forth-going of condescending love (see pp. 23 ff.). But the question is not plainly asked, and if asked could not be answered satisfactorily from Sartorius' point of view,-Why is not condescending love also a permanent and eternal necessity of the Divine Being?