Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/457

 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOL AND CHURCH 437

Granted that religion does most to temper the soul to kind- ness, and would that this article offered some suggestion as to how the church might win people to fuller understanding of the love of God ; it is wisdom, however, to strengthen the church at any point, whenever possible. The church needs some method of revealing the application of the love of God to human cotiduct. The child comes and asks, " Who is my neighbor ?" Two girls were picking coal from a dump, and doing it for the sake of mother. They espied two girl schoolmates, dressed in stunning style, carrying a parasol, and soon to pass by the dump. I saw them skulk away and hide behind the fence until the Misses Style had passed. A boy explained this hiding by saying: "Aw! Those girls would say, 'You have to work on the dump.' " The Golden Rule and Prayer are familiar, but the interpretation thereof is vague. The church should educate into an under- standing of what Christianity applied to everday life really is, and should sanction these definite interpretations as the will and love of God. And the church needs a method of doing this effectively.

The position of this article is the same as that of the original article,' /. e., that the church and school are distinct and coordi- nate and cooperating educational institutions, and that the church is assigned the leadership in the task of educating the ethical as well as the religious life. But the schools should supplement the ethical education of the churches. And there is a natural division of labor. Professor James Baldwin states strongly, in his Mental Development, Social and Ethical Interpretations, what seems to me the justification of the method which is suggested in this paper, and his classification of the sanctions for conduct suggests the following, suited to this discussion :

1. The conscious, personal desires of physique, intellect, and soul of the subject. Under this head will come desire for food, for the fulfillment of ideals and tastes, for honor and esteem.

2. The conscious, social desires of the society in which the subject lives, i. e., the established ideals and tastes of family,

■ Reprints of this and of Mrs. Fairchild's article can be had of E. C. B. at 25 cents a copy.