A RABBI ON MORAL TRAINING IN THE SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 21, 20 February 1891, Page 27

A RABBI ON MORAL TRAINING IN THE SCHOOLS.

(From the Catholic Review.) Rabbi Leon Harrison lectured last Sunday before the congre ; gaiioa of Temple Israel, in Avon Hal], on Bedford avenue, Brooklyn) on the subject of teaching morals m public schools. He Baid : "Now, I prize education above all other earthly goods. I honour the scholar far more than the millionaire. And yet some of the greatest scoundrels on record have been educated men. Some of the most \illaoouß thieves have been Lord High Chancellors. Statesmen, and poets, end sages have wallowed in tbe foulest mire of moral corruption. " Is there any people in the world more saturated with learning and culture than the German Dation ? Can education do more for v people than it has for the countrymen of Goethe, Immanuel Kant, Heinrich Heine, Mommsen, Wagner and Beethoven? Yet could any fouier crime be committed against civilisation than the bounding by them of an entire race— a blasting indictment of their pretended philosophy, their liberalism, their enlightenment ? " If moral culture is a daily necessity and is to *rain our emotions find sympathies ttien churches alone and Sunday schools are insufficient— miserably insufficient. We need more than bomceopatbic doses of morality. Little children do not gain much from this meagre instruction. Tbe little ones have their own trials and troubles, their own faults and virturs tbat are quite as large to them as full gzd cares are to their elders. Tbey need more strengthening moral food than is given them to-day, and more of it. In an age like this, when culture does not imply character, when educauon is otteo but a thin veneering for polished villany, do not lay sole stress on mental training, but prize it at its true value, add thereto strength •f purpose, enlighteoed conscience, trained and true sympathies."