The State cannot be expected to regard the matter from other than a purely utilitarian standpoint. "Will it make the people better citizens?" it enquires. "Will it lesson crime and promote honesty, thrift and loyalty?" These questions still remain unanswered, and in the midst of so much rationalistic teaching, and especially with the example of the noble lives of many rationalists before it, the State believes that there is room for much difference of opinion, and therefore it cannot move in the matter. The advocates of religious education seem to take it for granted that their beliefs are unassailable and that they are simply fighting against the powers of Darkness: but they forget that they are doing very little to bring others to hold the same convictions as themselves. It should not be a difficult task to answer to the utilitarian position with an emphatic affirmative and to bring conclusive evidence to support that affirmative. Where, it may be asked, are to be found the men who are leaders in thought and action who have, without any religious influence whatever, risen from the depths of misery, crime and filth? Where are to be found the families now living in honesty and virtue, though still in poverty, families in the midst of which every form of wickedness was once to be seen, who owe nothing to religious influence? The rationalist may claim that when his educational theories are adopted and put into practice all dens of misery and vice will disappear, but he cannot support his statement with convincing proofs. The teacher of religion is infinitely better off. While he strenuously supports the adoption of better and larger educational effort, he insists that, in order to gain the active co-operation of those on behalf of whom it is to be employed, religious influences must be brought to bear, and for the support of his statement he need only say "open your eyes and look around you." The influence of religion in regaining criminals cannot be gainsaid by any, and the United States Educational Report for 1897-98 declares that it is most important for the inculcation of sound morality, that children should, from a very early age, be brought under the influence of good religious teaching. When the State is convinced that religious education is an absolute necessity, it will approach the question of ways and means with a determination that a satisfactory solution must be arrived at, and what it will then demand is not so much an emasculated Bible as the bringing to bear upon the children of the vital regenerative influences of religion. Chapter IX. SOME AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS:-- THE PROBATION SYSTEM. THE ELMIRA SYSTEM. =The Probation System.=--In several of the States of America an attempt has been made to devise a substitute for imprisonment in the cases of persons convicted for minor offences. The State of Massachusets was the first to take the lead by initiating a somewhat elaborate system of probation.