Is it true that "a very large part of our free education system is devoted to teaching the principles of Nihilism, the absurdities of evolution, the crudities of the nineteenth-century philosophy, weakest and most watery of all the philosophies of the ages"? Dr. William C. Prime makes this claim in the New-York _Journal of Commerce_, and then says, "Of what use it is to read the Bible in the morning, and teach in the afternoon that the Bible is a poor fiction, perhaps some one can explain. That this is precisely what many common schools and free educational institutions are doing, may be discovered with little difficulty." With due deference to the opinion of our genial _confrere_, we cannot accept his conclusions. We have yet to learn of any public school in which flouting at the Bible or religion enters into the matter of instruction, and we apprehend that the number of teachers who thus misuse their office really constitutes so small a fraction of the teaching community as to be hardly worthy the learned doctor's attention. As a matter of fact, by far the greater number of American teachers in public schools and private schools, whatever their faults otherwise, are men and women who are either Christians, or filled with a reverent regard for the Bible and its teachings. * * * * * When Daniel Webster was a youth of eighteen, in college, he wrote to a friend these suggestive words: "I am fully persuaded that our happiness is much at our regulation, and that the 'Know thyself' of the Greek philosopher meant no more than rightly to attune and soften our appetites and passions till they should symphonize like the harp of David." * * * * * Perhaps no one ever paid a finer tribute to conscience than John Adams, when, after advising his son John Quincy to preserve above all things his innocence, he said, "Your conscience is the minister plenipotentiary of God Almighty in your heart. See to it that this minister never negotiates in vain." EDUCATION. When in any of the chief activities of human life it becomes necessary to adopt new methods, or to make some new application of old and well-tried principles, it is always best that change should be discriminating, gradual, and slow; and perhaps nowhere does this maxim demand recognition and respect more imperatively than in educational reform. We are not disposed to find fault with those who contend for the authority and sway of the progressive spirit of the present as against the spirit of the past. In science, art, literature, education; in religion, morals, philosophy, theology, every genuine gain in depth, breadth, and fulness is to be hailed with a thousand welcomes. It would be a pity if an unenlightened veneration for the traditions and principles of a superannuated conservatism were allowed to rob the world even of the smallest portion of the benefit of a single new and useful idea.