Demolishing the Old Picture
By L. A. S.
UNDER the plea that certain phases of “nature study” should be given a place in Sunday-school teaching, Mr. W. S. Jackman, of the School of Education of Chicago University, contends that Sunday-school pupils should be taught the conception, which “science has created,” of “the origin, the development, and the destiny of nature, and of man’s place in the great plan.” This would involve the teaching of the Darwinian theory, which, he says, “certainly has more points in its favor regarding the history of life than any other,” and which “completely demolishes the old picture which was very firmly established in our minds in our early years through the teaching of the Sunday-school.” Such teaching will, he sees, “give the child an entirely different point of view from that received by those of us who learned its lessons a quarter of a century ago.” Mr. Jackman then shows us the connecting link between the Darwinian, or evolutionary, theory of man and the “new religion,” the central idea of which is to substitute a human savior in the place of the divine Saviour by teaching men to look for divinity within themselves. “What, in the old conception, was the story of man and nature,” he says, “we now regard as the story of man in nature.” According to this conception, man finds himself in the grasp of certain natural laws from the influence and control of which there is no escape; so that “human actions and their consequences” have their origin in “natural laws that are as rigid and as immutable” as the law of gravitation. Salvation for mankind is to come through gaining and applying a knowledge of these laws. This leads up to Mr. Jackman’s statement of his conception of redemption, of which he says:— I believe in the great doctrine of redemption. When imbued with the new religion, every man will become a savior of the weak and the needy. Man will not only become his brother’s keeper, he will become in truth his redeemer.
If men would read and believe the plain statements of the Bible, they would find that there is nothing new in the idea of saving men from the results of ignorance and violation of the laws of nature, and of being helpful to one another by this means. All this is provided in the gospel plan of life, and not only that, but the most effective agency for its accomplishment—charity, loving one’s neighbor as one’s self—comes from the gospel only. The tree of science yields little of the fruit of charity. The world is rich in scientific knowledge, but it is poor in love; and for that reason it is full of selfishness and full of suffering. But the gospel provides more than this. Many men need a redeemer, but all men need, and need most of all, a Redeemer. And for this reason they can not afford to dispense with the old religion, nor to accept any new religion which does not provide a Redeemer who saves people from their sins.