IN a recent address President Woodrow Wilson, of Princeton University, expressed himself plainly concerning a custom followed more or less generally in this country. He said: “I doubt the utility of the worship of the flag now taught in the public schools.” Commenting upon this utterance, the New York Sun says:— Veneration for the flag, however, may be said to take the place of the religious instruction and worship in our public schools which are made impossible by the variations and conflicts of the different schools of theology and philosophy; but is not such a substitute desirable, even requisite? . . . The flag, therefore, is for them something more than merely a patriotic symbol. It has a moral efficacy in representing the dignity and the order of the social organization and the power of the state for their preservation. In other words, in this veneration of the flag, this desirable substitute for religious instruction and worship in the public schools, the genius of the state, represented by the flag, takes the place of Deity, and the flag “has a moral efficacy,” and therefore “the national emblem of power and order should be kept before the children for reverence and passionate devotion.” One can hardly read this without being reminded of the pagan idea of religion which prevailed in the days of another republic when it was held that “of all the gods of Rome there was none so great as the5genius of Rome itself.” All this confusion of ideas about worshiping some representation of the dignity of the state, and the moral efficacy of such worship, grows out of a false conception of the right relation between religion and government. It indicates a decided tendency to substitute paganism for Christianity, and to accept the idea of the state as “the highest idea of ethics.” We have certainly fallen upon strange times.