Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - Element of Inspiration in the Schools (1902) [PAGE 10]

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them 01 noi ;n hi8 pleasure. He had n motive for keepin them from r their labor as well as their mother's was Ills; and he had ih legal right to inflict physical chastisement on h« r as \\ as «.u them, We have changed all this, but we could never have done it all at any one time or in any one place. Our statute law ha in a crud md pi< meal way. the natural product of our gradually advancing d mocratic life, given the wife a legal statu nearly equal to the husband's, and in doing that lias done much moi . li has made the wife a companion and helper; h lias mad< ili>- mother a decisive influence in the home; it lias chain « l tl haracter of the home, and in changing the character of tl home it has changed the character of tin- nation for the I tter. It seems to me that it well illustrates the spirit and methods bv wliich wo advance our American institutions. k W liuht speak of the influence which on: mocracy haI

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exerted on the religious life of the country, toleration and senssion and the separation of church and ate incident to tl growth of individualism and to equality under the law: i he puttie away of superstitions; the refusal to permit" the mere wordin of creeds written in the middle aucs to bind the thinknd the feeling of modern life; indifference to the mere forms of worship—all of which are inevitable sequences of the intellectual advance, have changed the conceptions oi' God, have for< I the evolution of a theology capable of reconciliation with scientific truth, have lessened the skepticism which existed

but which was hidden, have deepened faith in the universal

fatherhood of God as they have established the universal

brotherhood of m a n a n d m a d e t h e unity of God and all his ildren vita I in I he w o r l d .

There have been few products of our democracy so notable ;i tin- advance in our industries and our commerce. We meet ill tin rest of i he world and defeat them easily in fields which II he wen by multiplying the productive power of our population through in enious machinery, The United states eommis