_Universal education._--The necessity for universal intelligence is so evident that governments not only recognize and foster benevolent efforts of individuals for education, but rightly make the organization itself a direct force in maintaining educational institutions. Public schools are now universally recognized by most enlightened people as meeting a universal need, and therefore one of the essentials of good government. How extensive such provision should be is still an unsettled question. In fact, it can never be finally settled in any growing community, because the universal need of the community becomes more and more extended. So far as universal intelligence depends upon the higher intelligence of leaders in the community, the whole mass is interested in the training of that higher intelligence. The very nature of education, shedding its light over all in its neighborhood, makes every member of the community a sharer in the advantages of university training. Hence governments rightly and economically administer educational systems which involve the welfare of all. The same responsibility makes improper the use of public funds in support of private institutions without such restrictions as insure the good of all.
The propriety of governmental control of churches and religious training must rest upon the same basis of principle. Religion is of such a personal nature, so wholly a matter of conscience, that it cannot be said in any proper sense to be universal. Yet the need of religions sentiment and freedom in development of that sentiment is universal. The state does well to provide security for religious thought, practices and fostering influences in all governmental machinery. On this ground the civil law protects a Sabbath. The state church has had its apparent reason for existence, and still has in many parts of the world, from the close connection between religious training and popular education. Naturally state churches emphasize the educational side of religions institutions. The world is coming to see more clearly the dividing line between information or thought about religion and religious action in faith, its common basis, and can leave the latter for individual growth.