Religious Education for our purposes is to be construed
narrowly, as distinct from college work, seminary work, and
the traditional church work. Specifically, our subject refers
to Sunday-school and young people's work which has an
education ideal.
In reviewing the past and projecting the new there is a
regrettable disposition to be unduly critical, even disdainful,
of days gone. It is easy to caricature the old, but it is neither
fair nor profitable. The work was good enough at least to
have prepared the way for this more fruitful epoch. No age
is to be judged by its uncouthness, but by its fidelity. Our
solicitude must always be faithfulness to the light, that new
light may break forth. A new term never comes in evolution
except the prior term has been made to yield its contribution.
If we have reason for gratulation it is because the age just
gone did so well. The way to facilitate our evolution is to
exploit to the utmost the genius of our own age.
In the former age psychology was based largely upon in-
trospection. It was descriptive; the mind was divided into
faculties. What the student of psychology found in his own
mind by way of powers and processes, he described. The
mind so described was reckoned the mind of the human.
