The _second device_ seems to promise better results. It provides that religious and moral instruction combined shall be given in the public schools under the auspices of the several denominations. According to this plan, the pupils are to be divided, for purposes of moral instruction, into separate classes, according to their sectarian affiliations, and are to be taught separately by their own clergymen or by teachers acting under instructions from the latter. The high authority of Germany is invoked in support of this plan. If I am correctly informed, the president of one of our leading universities has recently spoken in favor of it, and it is likely that an attempt will be made to introduce it in the United States. Already in some of our reformatory schools and other public institutions separate religious services are held by the ministers of the various sects, and we may expect that an analogous arrangement will be proposed with respect to moral teaching in the common schools. It is necessary, therefore, to pay some attention to the German system, and to explain the reasons which have induced or compelled the Germans to adopt the compromise just described. The chief points to be noted are these: In Germany, church and state are united. The King of Prussia, for instance, is the head of the Evangelical Church. This constitutes a vital difference between America and Germany. Secondly, in Germany the schools existed before the state took charge of them. The school system was founded by the Church, and the problem which confronted the Government was how to convert church schools into state schools. An attempt was made to do this by limiting the influence of the clergy, which formerly had been all-powerful and all-pervasive, to certain branches and certain hours of instruction, thereby securing the supremacy of the state in respect to all other branches and at all other hours. In America, on the other hand, the state founded the schools _ab initio_. In Germany the state has actually encroached upon the Church, has entered church schools and reconstructed them in its own interest. To adopt the German system in America would be to permit the Church to encroach upon the state, to enter state schools and subordinate them to sectarian purposes. The example of Germany can not, therefore, be quoted as a precedent in point. The system of compromise in Germany marks an advance in the direction of increasing state influence. Its adoption in this country would mark a retrograde movement in the direction of increasing church influence.