Scriptures for himself, without paying much regard, if any, to interpretations differing from his own. It would not need a prolonged enquiry to discover that those who protest against the ingérence of tradition and authority-the authority of mininisters-in the interpretation of Scripture, assume a decidedly authoritative tone whenever they find occasion to communicate their beliefs and opinions to others. No one, I venture to say, is so authoritative as the religious "free lance." Yet, while he exults in his freedom from the yoke of servitude to any human authority, he is really depending on authority. Suppose that to such an one, after his having set forth his moral code and theological system, the question is put, "On what do you ground all this teaching? What is your evidence for its soundness and truth?" He will refer the question to the Bible, telling him that in its pages is contained the revelation, vouchsafed by God, of the truth that makes men free. He will have to admit, of course, that "the inspiration of the Bible" means the inspiration of the men who wrote the several books of which the Bible is composed. If he be then asked how he knows that these men were inspired, it will hardly be enough. that they should cite the words of the Second Epistle of Peter, "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," for the author of that document is not exactly an independent witness. If personal experience of the truth and divinity of the Bible be alleged, the witness may have to face the question whether he was not put in the way of attaining to that personal experience by a certain predisposition in favour of the Bible, and he may be called upon to account for that predisposition. It will be strange, indeed, if this line of questioning does not lead to the discovery that the man who has renounced authority was not originally influenced by it, and that this influence was the immediate moving cause of his seeking to the Bible for his rule of belief and rule of conduct. How is it that the writings of the Prophets, Apostles, and Evangelists have been preserved to this day? Again, how do we account for the fact that other books, which might have been included under the title of Holy Writ, have not been included? How is it that, out of the whole mass of Jewish and Christian literature, only a few works have come to be distinguished from the rest as canonical, authentic, sacred?

As individuals vary in other things, so do they in their acceptance, or rejection, of the Bible as the treasury of having wisdom. Of those who profess to reverence it, some do so, and have always done so, without having thought much, if at all, about the reasons justifying that position. They acquiesce in what they have been told about it by teachers and preachers, to whose testimony they have given an assent, and to whose authority a recognition, that is almost unconscious. Others have given a rational assent. They have first believed, then, it may be, they have wrestled with doubts-suffering the "growing pains" of the intellect-then they have found reasons for believing. In such cases, one finds that the position they have taken up is the "resultant" of private judgment combined with the influence of the testimony of others, a great "cloud of witnesses." Even on points where they may be said to have surrendered private judgment, the very act of surrender has been determined by private judgment. "This I cannot pretend to understand," such an one will say," I cannot reason it out. But others before me, men who were neither foolish nor wicked, have taken up the position of assent, not that of denial. Many have lived to good purpose in the faith of these things. I will endeavour to follow in the way wherein they walked." Rational belief is not of the same extent or content in every instance. But all rational believers have this in common, that they do recognize authority, and the authority they recognize is not that of their several reasoning minds only. It is the authority of other minds, whose utterances are utterances of sincerity and knowledge, utterances confirmed less "in persuasive words of human wisdom" than "in manifestation of spirit and power." Once again, we find authority constituted by knowledge and experience.

Trinity College, Toronto.

H. T. F. DUCKWORTH.

EDUCATION ON THE FRONTIER.

HE aim of the Reading Camp Association has been to demonstrate to the public in general and the provincial governments in particular, by a series of experiments in each province, that the education of the frontiersman at the camp. and on the homestead is feasible. It has shown that in spite of the long hours of labor something worth while can be accomplished and preparation made for the shorter day that is inevitably coming when the worker will have leisure to study to better advantage.

The Association has looked to the Universities to supply instructors for carrying on the work and it has not appealed in vain. During the last twelve years four hundred college men have donned the rough dress of the frontiersman, gone down. into the ditch with the workers and engaged in the most menial tasks. They have shared the burdens and lived clean lives in the very same conditions in which the men live and work. Not a few young men in this country have been forced to paddle their own canoes while acquiring an education. When they have not done so literally in acting as guides to surveyors and prospectors, they have metaphorically by engaging in some other form of manual labor equally beneficial for their physical development. Our difficulty has been to secure a sufficient number of this class in the winter season.

Before the provincial governments assume full responsibility for the education of the lumberjack, miner, fisherman, navvy and homesteader it will be necessary for the Universities to furnish more of this type of graduate. The success of the experiments, the sympathetic co-operation of the public, of the Universities themselves, of the provincial departments of education, and the general centrifugal tendencies in education lead the writer to believe that the Universities will yet measure up to the task.

Just at present none of our forms of education is fully adapted to the needs of the frontiersman, nor in fact of the rural population generally. But hopeful signs are not lacking.

The adaptation of the school to industrial, agricultural and social uses, termed the "discovery of the school house"; correspondence schools, Chatauqua courses, and the short courses recently organized by many of our provincial governments are steps in the right direction and are bound to result in something better. Even Indian industrial education is subject to this criticism. Only a mere fraction of Indian children can be induced to quit their homes and take advantage of the school. The majority remain in ignorance, while the life in the new conditions is so vastly different from the nomadic life of the encampment that the educational development is forced and unnatural, and in a great many cases undermines the physical constitution of the student. The methods that our Indian industrial principals are forced to adopt in order to beguile scholars away from their parents to the schools are little short of criminal and are unworthy of our civilization. It is high time that we brought industrial education to the Indian camp instead of severing the family ties and outraging the harmless superstitions of the pathfinders of our great common heritage. All education to be useful must be brought to the farm and camp and shop. Especially is this an urgent necessity in the case of primitive and unlettered peoples where the separation of children from the home is so strenuously opposed. We have sufficient evidence of the uselessness of this method in the fact that the great majority of the Indian students drift back into their old habits, refuse to cultivate the soil, and depend upon the chase for a living. The late Dr. Oronhyatekha is an exception and there may be one or two others of lesser weight, but they are only exceptions proving the rule. The students of our Indian schools seldom make any serious attempt to apply the methods of farming taught them. This is due in great part to the fact that they are not taught the application of the method on their particular piece of land. This of course can only be done on the spot. Indian, and in fact all industrial education is most commendable but fails in its object because it dissociates the student from his natural environment. It unsettles him for a life of usefulness on the farm and in the workshop where after all he is most needed.

A larger number of graduates of the famous negro Tuskegee Institute go back to the farm, but this is partly due to the

fact that the conditions in which they work at the school are not essentially different from those on their farms. It is partly due also to the personality of its founder. Booker T. Washington is able to convince his pupils that the labor of the hands is honorable, essential to health and a very necessary part of one's education. Few teachers succeed so well where the scholar is taken out of his natural element to be taught. It is common knowledge that the managers of agricultural schools generally for colored youths in the South are greatly discouraged. About ten per cent. of the students and graduates take up farming as a means of livelihood, fifteen per cent. go into trades and business, twenty per cent. enter the teaching profession and the balance of fifty-five per cent. become hotel and Pullman car porters. In fact, not more than ten per cent. of the graduates of our own agricultural colleges go back to the farm to earn their bread and butter. The essential difference between instruction at the school and on the farm-and this is true of all industrial education-is that the student does his work with expensive machinery, in conditions and with tools and materials that are not within his grasp on the little plot of ground at the back of the township. The lesson and the application must be taught together on his own five acres and in his own crude workshop, else it is "love's labor lost."

The call to the high school, the technical school, the agricultural college and University is to modernize education, to bring it out from its long seclusion in the cloisters and laboratories of the cities to the practical service of man as "the daily round, the common task" on the farm, the lake, the ocean, in the shop, the mine, the woods. Of course it will always be necessary to have stationary buildings and laboratories at fixed centres and more of them, but these should no longer be selfcontained and barren. They should become the parents of other universities and schools and like Abraham of old inherit the promise: "As the stars so shall thy seed be." In this age of easy transportation, expensive apparatus that could not be supplied to smaller institutions at a reasonable cost could be kept on wheels and available for courses of study in a number of centres when required.

The problem of the city is the complement of that of the frontier. The city is the nursing bed of ease, luxury and vice.