serve as a clearing house for ideas and activities unifying, stimulating and developing all the forces for securing religious education. The convention voted to adopt a constitution modeled on the lines of the National Educational Association, and it elected a president, sixteen vice-presidents, twenty-one directors at large, and an executive. board of twenty-one. Before the close of the year the Association numbered over 1,500 members, in which the religious and educational strength of the country centered. At the close of its first year it enrolled half as many active members as the National Educational Association after its thirty years of history. A meeting of the Board of Directors convened at Boston in July to hear a report from the executive board, and to provide for the vigorous promotion of the work of the Association.

The work before the Association was defined to be to give religion. its rightful part in the development of the individual and of society, to correlate religious and moral instruction with that in history, science, and literature, obtained in public or private schools, to determine the established results of modern psychology and pedagogy, and of the historical study of the bible as related to religious instruction; to indicate the proper place of the bible in religious and moral instruction, and the wise methods of its use; to establish its adaptiveness, historically studied, for the promotion of such religious instruction as the state may rightfully promote; to show the necessity of adapting religious instruction to various stages of physical, mental, moral and spiritual development in the pupil; to promote the adoption in all schools of courses of study and methods of teaching which take into account the present status of knowledge. To further the adequate training of leaders and teachers for the responsible work of religious instruction, and to unite all individuals and agencies now laboring for these higher ideals of religious education.

The College of the City of New York

The election of Dr. John Huston Finley to be President of the College of the City of New York was an event of considerable importance in the educational world. This institution is the outgrowth of the old New York Free Academy established to give free instruction offered by the colleges and polytechnic institutions. Beautiful

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new buildings were designed for the new home of the college, the cornerstone of which was laid during the year. The new site is six miles north from the old one, and the structures are to be gothic halls, the cost of which will be no less than $2,600,000. Formerly, the college was open to only graduates of the New York public schools, but since that date any resident of New York City over fourteen years of age is eligible to be a student. There are now considerably more than 2,000 students every year, and the new buildings allow for from 3,000 to 5,000.

CHAPTER XIV

RELIGION

Historically the paramount event of 1903 was the election of a new Pope. No change in temporal power could possibly affect so widely or so intimately the people of Christendom as did the change in the spiritual head of the 261,161,000 communicants of the Roman Catholic Church. Considering his advanced age and prolonged weakness, the death of Pope Leo XIII on July 28 can hardly be said to have occasioned surprise. It occasioned worldwide sorrow, and brought forth high tributes from representatives of every land and every creed. It was universally agreed that no Pope had ever sustained more admirably the dignity of St. Peter's chair or more greatly enhanced its influence. Protestant comment was hardly less eulogistic than that of the Catholic press. Historical and denominational controversies were forgotten in a moment of common gratitude for a useful and saintly life, for an administration in favor of public and private morals, of justice between man and man, and of international peace.

Brilliant jubilee ceremonies began at Rome on February 20 in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Leo XIII's election, reaching a still more brilliant culmination on March 3 in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his coronation. At least 75,000 people were present in St. Peter's at the celebration of the jubilee mass for the Pope. The brother and sister-in-law of the Queen of Italy, and representatives of many noble and royal families of Europe, as well as prominent priests and laymen from this hemisphere, were in the congregation. On March 2 the Pope had celebrated his ninetythird birthday. He was the second of two hundred and sixty-two Popes to reach the "Years of Peter," that is, to occupy the papal throne for the number of years accredited to St. Peter as Bishop of Rome. In spite of his ninety-three years, Leo. XIII retained his intellectual vigor almost to the day of his death, resisting the ravages

of pleuro-pneumonia with an energy of which few younger men would have been capable. It was only during the last two days of his life that he ceased to receive cardinals and church dignitaries, and to speak with them on questions of ecclesiastical importance.

Career of Leo XIII

Pope Leo XIII was born neither to poverty nor to riches. His father was Count Ludovici Pecci, a colonel in the army of Napoleon I, the owner of a small estate. His mother was apparently an ambitious woman whose sole thought was the education of her two boys. The future Pope, who was known in youth as Vincentino, received a good education at the Jesuit College at Viterbo, and afterward in their College at Rome. He became a priest in 1837. The next year, when twenty-eight years old, he was made Governor-delegate of Benevento, a district haunted by brigands, whom he shortly reduced to order by capturing and executing fourteen of the most daring of them. He became Archbishop of Damietta in 1843. He was sent as Papal Nuncio to Belgium for a year, and during that period he visited England. In 1844 he was recalled to Italy and three years later was made Governor-Bishop of Perugia. In 1853 Pope Pius IX made him a Cardinal and on February 19, 1878, Cardinal Pecci, in his sixty-ninth year, was elected Pope Leo XIII.

Coming into papal power he was confronted with the difficulties which his predecessor's policy had brought forth. The Roman Church had difficulties with Italy, Germany, and France. His first move was to send a vigorous dispatch to St. Petersburg denouncing the conduct of the Russian government. After a delay of several weeks the despatch was returned to Rome without comment. Thereupon, Leo XIII wrote a birthday letter to the Czar full of congratulations and good wishes, which were received in friendly spirit. The Pope found Bismarck defiant and angry. "We shall not go to Canossa," said the Iron Chancellor, at the beginning of the "Kulturkampf," but the new Pope handled the situation so well that Bismarck did eventually go to Canossa and make his peace with Rome. In France the Pope was quick to realize that the Republic had come to stay, and he ordered the Bishops to desist from the campaign in favor of the lost cause of monarchy. He did not make peace, but he secured a truce for many

years. Thus, by adopting what he himself described as "the strategy of peace," Pope Leo succeeded in converting two of his foes into friends, and in lessening the strife between church and state in France. He never made peace with Italy, however, and to the very last clung tenaciously to the idea that the worldwide sovereignty of the church was absolutely dependent upon the possession of secular authority over the city of Rome.

Under the influence of Anglo-American inspiration the Pope finally broke with the dynasties, and threw in his lot with the people. "We must go to the people," he said, we must seek the alliance of all honest folk, whatsoever their origin or opinion; we must not lose heart; we will triumph over prejudice, injustice, and error." His encyclical on labor represented the last work of the great pontiff on one of the most vexed questions of modern society.

The Pope's own version of what he considered to be his mission in life was found in his encyclical for Pentecost promulgated 1897, in which he said: "We have endeavored to direct all that we have attempted and persistently carried out during a long pontificate toward two chief ends,- in the first place, toward the restoration, both in rulers and peoples, of the principles of the Christian life in civil and domestic society, since there is no true life for men except from Christ; and, secondly, to promote the reunion of those who have fallen away from the Catholic Church either by heresy or by schism, since it is most undoubtedly the will of Christ that all should be united in one flock under one shepherd."

Cardinal Satolli thus summed up the great pontiff's purpose and achievement: "From the time when Leo XIII succeeded Pius IX, he had formed a grand plan in which he took cognizance of all the needs of humanity, and determined on the provisions he would make for those needs during the whole course of his pontificate. We can best distinguish this design of the Pope in three particular directions. First, in the Holy Father's zeal for the development of studies; secondly, in the continued interest which he has shown in social science; and, thirdly, in his untiring efforts to bring peace into the Christian countries by the spread of civilization, the teaching of religion, and the promotion of concord between Church and State."

At the death of a Pope, the custom of the church requires an elab