The Need of Christian Education

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jul 2, 1908

_The Need of Christian Education_

“THE modern university is poisoning the minds of the young men of the present generation. Skepticism and atheism are being instilled in their minds through the teachings of our professors, and the situation is one that is most alarming to the church people of to-day.” With this comment, followed by a criticism of two professors in Garrett Biblical Institute, the Rev. L. B. Webb, of the Evansville Theological Seminary, Evansville, Wis., ended an address recently before the Free Methodist Conference held at the Free Methodist church, Lexington and Leavitt streets. “In the universities of the present time,” he said, “there are too many professors . . . whose teachings are instilling in the minds of our young people such ideas of skepticism and atheism that the situation is becoming alarming. It is impossible to expect any young man preparing for the ministry to attend the large universities, and not have his mind filled with the poisonous teachings. The influence that these professors possess we can not deny, and we must act, if we hope to eliminate or counteract it. We should counteract it by taking a greater interest in our schools and their teachings.”

The following was published about the same time by the Chicago American:—

Dr. ——, professor of theology in the Garrett Biblical Institute, is accused of being a teacher of the doctrines of Tom Paine in the latest issue of the Methodist Outlook, a magazine published by R. C. Powers. Dr. ——, who occupies a similar position in the Boston University school of theology, is attacked also.

A severe condemnation of the teachings of the Evansville and Boston theologians serves as a prelude to an exhortation that Methodist parents withdraw their children from the institutions named.

“Don’t send your children to schools where such teachers are allowed to remain on the faculty,” says the writer.

The article from which these extracts are taken concludes with the statement that “but recently a prominent officer in the W. C. T. U. on the Pacific Coast took President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, of the State University at Berkeley, Cal., to task in the public press for his public example of drinking and smoking before the eight hundred and more students under his charge. Surely there is a pressing need for Christian schools where sound doctrines are taught, and where godly and wholesome examples are set before the students.”