Theorists may be able to construct a system of ethics upon a foundation of materialism; but their mechanical and utilitarian doctrines have not the power to exalt the imagination or to confirm the will. Their educational value is feeble. Here in America we have already passed the stage of social development in which we might hold out to the young, as an ideal, the hope of becoming President of the Republic, or the possessor of millions of money. We know what sorry men presidents and millionnaires may be. We cannot look upon our country simply as a wide race-course with well-filled purses hanging at the goal for the prize-winners. We clearly perceive that a man's possessions are not himself, and that he is or ought to be more than anything which can belong to him. Ideals of excellence, therefore, must be substituted for those of success. Opinion governs the world, but ideals draw souls and stimulate to noble action. The more we transform with the aid of machinery the world of matter, the more necessary does it become that we make plain to all that man's true home is the world of thought and love, of hope and aspiration. The ideals of utilitarianism and secularism are unsatisfactory. They make no appeal to the infinite in man, to that in him which makes pursuit better than possession, and which, could he believe there is no absolute truth, love, and beauty, would lead him to despair. To-day, as of old, the soul is born of God and for God, and finds no peace unless it rest in him. Theology, assuredly, is not religion; but religion implies theology, and a church without a creed is a body without articulation. The virtues of religion are indispensable. Without them, it is not well either with individuals or with nations; but these virtues cannot be inculcated by those who, standing aloof from ecclesiastical organizations, are thereby cut off from the thought and work of all who in every age have most loved God, and whose faith in the soul has been most living. Religious men have wrought for God in the church, as patriots have wrought for liberty and justice in the nation; and to exclude the representatives of the churches from the school is practically to exclude religion,--the power which more than all others makes for righteousness, which inspires hope and confidence, which makes possible faith in the whole human brotherhood, in the face even of the political and social wrongs which are still everywhere tolerated. To exclude religion is to exclude the spirit of reverence, of gentleness and obedience, of modesty and purity; it is to exclude the spirit by which the barbarians have been civilized, by which woman has been uplifted and ennobled and the child made sacred. From many sides the demand is made that the State schools exercise a greater moral influence, that they be made efficient in forming character as well as in training the mind. It is recognized that knowing how to read and write does not insure good behavior.