he will go on to them all the better for the little we have at any rate
given him. But what we want to give to our Elementary Schools in
general is the vocabulary, to some extent, of a second language, and
that language one which is at the bottom of a great deal of modern life
and modern language. This, I am convinced, we may give in some such
method as the method I have above suggested, but in no other."

There is, perhaps, no more interesting or more characteristic feature of
his doctrine about elementary schools than his insistence, early and
late, on a close and familiar acquaintance with the Bible. "Chords of
power," he said, "are touched by this instruction which no other part of
the instruction in a popular school reaches, and chords various, not the
single religious chord only. The Bible is for the child in an elementary
school almost his only contact with poetry and philosophy. What a course
of eloquence and poetry (to call it by that name alone) is the Bible in
a school which has and can have but little eloquence and poetry! and how
much do our elementary schools lose by not having any such course as
part of their school programme! All who value the Bible may rest assured
that thus to know and possess the Bible is the most certain way to
extend the power and efficacy of the Bible."

The spiritual sense, the doctrinal and dogmatic import, of Holy
Scripture lay, in his judgment, quite outside the scope of the School.
"The Bible's application and edification belong to the Church; its
literary and historical substance to the School." He saw clearly the
manifold and conflicting perils to which a simple love and knowledge of
the Bible were exposed the moment that exegesis began to play about it.
He pointed out that Cardinal Newman interpreted the words, _I will lay
thy stones with fair colours and thy foundations with sapphires_, as
authorizing "the sumptuosities of the Church of Rome"; and to