intellectual and moral life." It is more than two generations since
those sentences were written, and still the average public expenditure
on the education of a child in the United States is less than fifteen
dollars a year. Eastern Massachusetts is the community in the whole
world which gives most thought, time, and money to education, public
and endowed. Whence came this social wisdom? From Protestantism, from
Congregationalism, from the religious teachings of Channing and his
disciples. Listen to this sentence: "Benevolence is short-sighted
indeed, and must blame itself for failure, if it do not see in education
the chief interest of the human race."

It is impossible to join in this centennial celebration of the advent to
Boston of this religious pioneer and philanthropic leader without
perceiving that in certain respects the country has recently fallen away
from the moral standards he set up. Channing taught that no real good
can come through violence, injustice, greed, and the inculcation of
hatred and enmities, or of suspicions and contempts. He believed that
public well-being can be promoted only through public justice, freedom,
peace, and good will among men.

He never could have imagined that there would be an outburst in his
dear country, grown rich and strong, of such doctrines as that the might
of arms, possessions, or majorities makes right; that a superior
civilization may rightly force itself on an inferior by wholesale
killing, hurting, and impoverishing; that an extension of commerce, or
of missionary activities, justifies war; that the example of imperial
Rome is an instructive one for republican America; and that the right to
liberty and the brotherhood of man are obsolete sentimentalities.

Nevertheless, in spite of these temporary aberrations of the public mind