This, it seems to me, is a fair presentation of the views and ideas which go to the making of current American opinion on the question of religious instruction in State schools; and current opinion, when the subject-matter is not susceptible of physical demonstration, cannot be turned suddenly in an opposite direction. When men have grown accustomed to look at things in a certain way, they have acquired a mental habit, which no mere argument, however cogent or eloquent, is able to overcome. To what extent this view of the school question prevails is readily perceived by whoever recalls to mind that not one of the States of the Union has attempted to introduce the denominational system of education, while all the political parties have bound themselves to uphold the present purely secular system. The opinion that the prosperity of the nation depends upon the intelligence and activity of the people, and to no appreciable extent upon the influence of ecclesiastical organizations, has so far prevailed, that the general feeling has come to be that the State has no direct interest in the church, which is the concern merely of individuals. The religious denominations themselves have helped to inspire this sentiment by their jealousies and rivalries. The smaller sects feel that State aid for denominational schools would accrue to the benefit chiefly of the larger; and the others are willing to forego favors which they could not receive without permitting the Catholic Church to participate also in the bounty of the government. The Catholic view of the school question is as clearly defined as it is well known. It rests upon the general ground that man is created for a supernatural end, and that the church is the divinely appointed agency to help him to attain his supreme destiny. If education is a training for completeness of life, its primary element is the religious, for complete life is life in God. Hence we may not assume an attitude toward the child, whether in the home, in the church, or in the school, which might imply that life apart from God could be anything else than broken and fragmentary. A complete man is not one whose mind only is active and enlightened; but he is a complete man who is alive in all his faculties. The truly human is found not in knowledge alone, but also in faith, in hope, in love, in pure-mindedness, in reverence, in the sense of beauty, in devoutness, in the thrill of awe, which Goethe says is the highest thing in man. If the teacher is forbidden to touch upon religion, the source of these noble virtues and ideal moods is sealed. His work and influence become mechanical, and he will form but commonplace and vulgar men. And if an educational system is established on this narrow and material basis, the result will be deterioration of the national type, and the loss of the finer qualities which make men many-sided and interesting, which are the safeguards of personal purity and of unselfish conduct.