thought and feeling, that we could but gaze upon them in wonder. Not one of these manifestations, however, but is rooted in the inborn constitution of our fellows. To recognize this is to sympathize with the past—that is, to understand it, wherein also, and wherein alone, we realize the present. The history of education from the early Christian centuries throughout the middle-age period is the expression of a one-sided development starting from a misunderstood Christianity. The new religion was contra-natural, contra-earthly; its training was for heaven. Though some may claim that this teaching did not lie fairly in the authoritative records of the Church, there was much in these records to favor it, and much more still in the situation of the first Christians. Persecution would force attention from things temporal to things eternal. The present would be but a trial, a testing. This misinterpretation was laid upon the early Christians even as it seems to be laid upon many unfortunate souls to-day. Those for whom life is a ceaseless curse need such power as may well be said to come from on high to place the blame where it belongs, on broken law and wasted opportunity. The gospel of a heaven on earth, of a heaven in and by law, of a heaven in and by the present right life, is not even now fully come, though we give thanks for its presence here and there.
My former paper called attention to the following points: the early relations of Christian education with heathen education, the gradual extension of Christianity and the shaping of all instruction for a religious life, Arabian culture, the character of middle-age education as unnatural, contra-earthly. We shall now look directly at this middle-acre training. Where did the teachers of the middle ages teach? In the cloister schools, the cathedral schools, and the parochial schools. These parochial or common schools never amounted to much, because the masses of the people had little interest in knowledge. Still, at a comparatively early time the popes established the parochial schools by the side of the parish church. Charlemagne ordered that the children should be instructed in reading, singing, reckoning, some grammar and writing; and a council held at Mainz, before the middle of the ninth century, required that the children should be sent either to the cloister schools or to those of the parish, that they might learn the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in their own language. The cloister schools are classed as those of the Benedictines, Dominicans, and Franciscans. The first Benedictine monastery was founded at Monte Casino, in the kingdom of Naples, about 5-29, by St. Benedict himself. This order increased so wonderfully and became so powerful that it may be said to have been the chief means for the spread of learning throughout the West from the sixth to the twelfth century. At first the regulations of St. Benedict were for those only who had set themselves apart to the service of the Church. But, with the increase of the reputation of the order, it
