priest in humanity is important, for they are the sole dispensers of science and metaphysics to the multitude. We have seen how much it is to be hoped that the priest, who is so ignorant to-day in Catholic countries, will soon receive a better education, will soon begin to create a reason for his continued existence in modern society. If he falls too far behind the intellectual movement of the times, he will drop out simply, and the schoolmaster will inherit his power. After all there are all kinds of apostles, in blouse and frock-coat as well as in priestly robes; and the proselytism of some of them is based upon a mystical disinterestedness, and of others on a certain practical aim; there are some who travel about the world, and some who sit by the fire and are none the less active for all that. What may be affirmed safely is that in all times apostles have been even more disposed to address little children than men, and it is notable that the modern Vincent de Paul was a schoolmaster-Pestalozzi. [Sidenote: Moral education the legitimate successor of religious education.] What is taking the place of religious education, in existing societies, is moral education. The moral sentiment, as we know, is the least suspicious element in the modern religious sentiment, and metaphysical hypotheses, based in the last resort upon moral conceptions, are the ultimate and highest outcome of religious hypotheses. To the elements of philosophic morality it has been proposed to add, in secondary and even in primary instruction, some notion of the history of religions[84]. If this proposition is to be made acceptable it must be reduced within just limits. Let us cherish no illusion; M. Vernes is wrong if he believes that a professor, and in especial a schoolmaster, ever could dwell with insistence upon the history of the Jews without coming into conflict with the clergy. A truly scientific criticism of the legends which are usually taught children under the name of sacred history positively batters down the very foundations of Christianity. Clergymen and priests would not endure it; they would protest and with some show of reason against it, in the name of religious neutrality: religion is not less certain in their eyes than science, and the ignorant faith that distinguishes many of them has not yet been tempered by a habit of free criticism; so that anything like a genuine historical education which should openly controvert portions of the traditional theology must be considered in advance as impossible. There must be no question in the matter of openly refuting anybody; the course of instruction must simply be such as to furnish those who follow it with a criterion of truth, and to teach them to make use of it. We believe therefore that if the history of religions is ever made a part of the regular course of instruction, it will deal principally with everything but the history of the Jews. It might