and without any thought of organized resistance, die, that we may live. Have these animals souls?

From many points of view that question may be studied. In this column and on this day let it be studied in the light of Christianity's teachings. Wasting no time in discussion of the nature of the soul, let us study the teachings of exact orthodoxy.

"I know all the fowls of the mountains; and the wild beasts of the field are mine."-Psalms, i, II.

There distinctly is the under God's care, as we are.

statement that the animals are He who slays one of the fowls of the mountains, or one of the wild beasts of the field, destroys a life that is individually known to God.

"That which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts."

Does not this intimate that the soul force that exists in animals is preserved as is the imperishable spark in man?

"Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?"

Here is the distinct statement that in man and beast a spirit exists.

May we properly believe in the light of this text that man's spirit, having reached its limit, leaves the earth at death, whereas the spirit of the beast, still imperfect and doomed to further earthly experience, "goeth downward to the earth" to reappear here again in higher form?

Can we not see throughout the Bible personal, divine interest in everything that lives? Is it not just to conclude that life in itself indicates the existence of spirit, and hence of divine care and guidance?

"Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God."-Luke, xii, 6.

You have seen the bird grieving over the destruction of its nest. You have studied the pathetic eyes of the lost dog, and the sad submission of the tired beaten horse. Is there not soul in those stricken creatures, and spiritual feeling deeper than that displayed by many men? In that immortality for

which men long, what part have the animals? Is there hope for them?

"And the four-and-twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying Amen; Alleluia."-Revelation, xix, 4.

Clergymen recently have discussed the existence of soul life in animals. Such discussion is recommended to our readers. First came all animal life, as we know it, and then came man. Science and religion agree on this point, at least.

All owe their being to the same eternal force. On this point again religion and science agree. Is the life in animals merely a passing dream, or does it express in its humble way the promise of life eternal?

In Italy a scientific villain experimented on a dog to ascertain the power of maternal affection. The dog was most cruelly tortured. Its new-born puppy was beside it. Its nerves were wracked, its spine tortured, but whenever permitted to do so, the poor tortured animal mother turned its head toward its whining child and licked it affectionately. Until it died there was nothing that could overcome maternal love in the heart of that poor dumb mother.

Is there not some soul in such love as that?
We believe that there is. What do you think?

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND RELIGION.

As a result of the many attacks that have recently been made upon the American public-school system by prominent religious teachers, the whole subject of religious education is just now attracting unusual attention. The sentiments of Bishop McFaul, of Trenton, N. J., expressed in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, on the occasion of the consecration of the new bishop of Buffalo, have been widely quoted:

"The public schools, at the present constituted, are detrimental to church and state. Eminent non-Catholic educators are gradually perceiving that intellectual cultivation has no effect in arresting the sources of evil in the human heart; that it alters the direction of crime, but not its amount.' Teaching religion in the church and the home is not sufficient; the absence of such teaching in the school is rapidly leading youth into indifference and thus dechristianizing America."

In even more emphatic language, Cardinal Gibbons stated his views, a few days ago, to a correspondent of the Newark (N. J.) News:

"The system of public education in this country is imperfect and vicious, and undermines the religion of our youth. We want our children to receive an education that will not only make them learned but pious men and women.

"We want them to be not only polished members of society, but also conscientious Christians. We desire for them well as their minds. me world, but, above

a training that will form their hearts as We wish them to be not only men of all, men of God.

"The religious and secular education of our children can not be divorced from each other without inflicting a fatal wound upon the soul. The usual consequence of such a

separation is to paralyze the moral faculty and to foment a spirit of indifference in matters of faith.

"Education is to the soul what food is to the body. The milk with which the infant is nourished at its mother's breast, not only feeds its head, but permeates at the same time its heart and other organs of the body. In like manner, the intellectual and moral growth of our children should go handin-hand; otherwise their education is shallow and fragmentary, and often proves a curse instead of a blessing.

"I am not unmindful of the blessed influence of a home education, and especially of a mother's tutelage. But of what avail is a mother's toil if the seeds of faith which she has planted attain a sickly growth in the cheerless atmosphere of a schoolroom from which the sun of religion is rigidly excluded?

"The remedy for these defects would be supplied if the denominational system which now obtains in Canada were applied in our public schools."

The New York Sun, which has been devoting a considerable amount of space to this subject for several months past, prints in a recent issue a striking letter from the Rev. W. Montague Geer, Vicar of St. Paul's Chapel, New York. Mr. Geer's position is practically that of the Roman Catholic dignitaries quoted above. He says, in part:

"Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Hebrews have struck a compromise by which God and Christ yes, and with them pagan ethics at their best are eliminated from the education of the child life of the nation. What is the result? Why, surely, the virtual enthronement of forces that disbelieve in God and Christ and are antagonistic to them. How can those who know what Christianity is and what the nature and needs of children are believe otherwise? There can be no education in these days without religion, or its negation or opposite. What an atmosphere to bring up our children in! Small wonder that atheists and agnostics love to have it so, because in a most pitiful sense of the word the lamb is inside the lion. *

What, then, is the right, the duty, and the policy of the state in this vitally important matter? The situation calls loudly for an answer, which is easily given, hard, indeed, tho it be to put it into practice. The state, for its own protection, is to see that the children are educated, and only to take action where it is necessary to do so, by providing the simplest, most elementary kind of an education for those children who would otherwise be neglected. If private enterprise carries education further than this, it will be on so small a scale, comparatively, that no serious harm is likely to be done.

"In this way an open field and no favor would be given to every religious body to provide proper education for its own children or take the consequences of its neglect of duty. Private schools, large and small, differing widely in dogmatic teaching, but identical in ethics and patriotism, would again spring up and multiply all over the land, and education would again be on a proper and safe basis. The children, or most of them, would be Christianized as well as Americanized. Pagans might be instructed in pagan ethics; Jews would be instructed in Jewish ethics; Protestants and Roman Catholics in Christian ethics. Every religious body would provide for the education of its own children; and the exceptions to this salutary rule would see their children state educated and made thereby the easy prey of some stronger form of religion, or the victim of agnosticism, indifferentism, or atheism and consequently immorality."

Mr. Geer's letter has evoked what The Sun terms a truly amazing amount of correspondence. One of the ablest replies is that of Dr. Isidor Singer, the editor of the new Jewish Encyclopedia. We quote from his letter:

66

Does Mr. Geer know that men of science simply smile at the pretension of our theologians to teach 'religion' in the schoolroom as geography, arithmetic, and zoology are taught? He certainly knows from his study of the history of philosophy that mankind has not yet produced the genius who could lift the veil from the mystery of life, grant us a glimpse into the beyond. Neither Moses nor Plato, neither Confucius