y the State. They are intensified by the divided
opinion of the church universal, of which the Catholic and Greek
sections hold that education must be religious and under the care of
the Church; while the State-Church Protestant section holds that it
may be religious under certain conditions, and the extreme
secularistic protestant wing holds that it cannot be religious because
conducted by the State, and a rather diminishing protestant section in
free-church nations holds that the higher education should be
Christian, while the secondary and primary may safely be left to the
secular State.

These dangers are not only imminent but actual. The whole effort to
support a Christian education in the public schools is sometimes
called a "bootless wrangle." One section is thrown over towards
secularism, pure and simple, in recoiling from Church-education
exclusive and reactionary. The leading of the little child, the
favorite indication of the millennium's arrival, is frustrated amid
the clamor of the free thinkers and the uncertainty of the Church and
the necessities of the State. We are slowly but surely, if we go on
in this way, taking our children out of Christ's arms and our youth
from beside His footsteps. And that is at once the most fearful sin
against Him, and the most terrible injustice to them, we could
possibly commit. Who can do anything to stay this destructive
tendency? "God bless him," I would say in Livingstone's spirit,
"whoever he may be," that will help to heal this open wound of the
world.

I think Mr. Barker's little book will help. It supplies much
information carefully collected from scattered sources, given in brief
and explicit statements. Its range of themes is wide and upon them all
some standard thoughts are given. It is addressed to all readers and
should find them among parents (whom it should make patrons), among
those who have hearts to pray and those who have hands to help. It
will prove to be of rare interest to all whose duty it is to teach,
and it has much wise counsel for those who are to study.

The treatment of the function of the College for the cultivation of
the moral and spiritual nature (Chapter IV) deserves special
attention. Its declarations are firm, its ideals high and its selected
opinions apt and forcible. It ought to end the reign of any
institution in which religion is not put at the center and kept as
efficient as human instrumentalities can make it. The demand for
pro