To go into this burning question would involve me in an unjustifiable digression; but I must be allowed to express my conviction that the teaching of the Bible in our elementary schools will never be anything but misguided and mischievous until those who are responsible for it have realised that the Old Testament is the inspired literature of a particular people, and have ceased to regard it as the authentic biography of the Eternal God.

It is to the current misconception of the meaning and value of the Bible, and the consequent misconception of the relation of God to Nature and to Man, that the externalism of the West, which is the source of all the graver defects of modern education, is (as I contend) largely due; and it is useless to try to remedy those defects so long as we allow our philosophy of life to be perennially poisoned at its highest springs.
[9] In far too many cases the teacher received a certain proportion of the Grant; and in any case his value in the market tended to vary directly with his ability to secure a large Grant for his school by his success in the yearly examination.
[10] _The Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ_, by Dr.
Emil Schuerer.
[11] Here is another example of the mental blindness which rule-worship in Arithmetic is apt to induce.

The boys in a large "Standard II," who had been spending the whole year in adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing tens of thousands, were given the following sum: A farmer had 126 sheep.

He bought nine.

How many had he then?
Out of 50 boys, one only worked the sum correctly.