The School and Character.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 11, 13 March 1902, Page 2

The School and Character.

President Roosevelt (whose name, by the way we must pronounce Rose-ze-velt) seems to have a fairly strong working capital of that B Good sense, which only is the gift of heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven. He sees through stone walls and iron doors, at least as far as your average shrewd and observant citizen, and has' sized up/ on Catholic lines, the place of religion in education in a way which ought to be an example to the puny legislators of these colonies who fear to touch a difficulty which Canada, England, Scotland, and even Prussia have settled in a perfectly satisfactory way. 'We must cultivate the mind,' said President Roosevelt recently in an address to the Long Island Bible Society ; ' butitis not enough only to cultivate the mind. With education of the mind must go the spiritual teaching which will make us turn the trained intellect to good account. It is an admirable thing, a most necessary thing, to have a sound body. It is an even better thing to have a sound mind. But infinitely better than either is to have that for the lack of which neither sound mind nor a sound body can atone —character. Character is in the long run the decisive factor in the life of individuals and of nations alike. Sometimes, in rightly putting the stress that we do upon intelligence, we forget the fact that there is something that counts more. It is a good thing to be clever, to be able and smart; but it is a better thing to have the qualities that find their expression in the Decalogue and the Golden Rule. It is a good and necessary thing to be intelligent ; it is a better thing to be straight and decent and fearless.' And so say all of us. But to form character along the lines of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, the gentle influences of religion must surround and mould the mind and heart of the child, not for a hurried, and, perhaps, perfunctory, drowsy, and unwilling half-hour or hour on Sunday, but during the whole course of those highly impressionable years that are passed by our rising generation in the school. There has been of late years a marked revulsion of feeling among the leaders of thought and public life in America in favor of religion in the school. We hope that it will shortly be imported to New Zealand.