How the Young Learn Infidelity.
By Pentecost
NOT long ago I found a lad in an inquiry room. I spoke to him, and found, to my surprise, a degree of cold indifference to the subject of religion not often found in the young. He had come in with a school-fellow friend of his, who wanted to speak with me. He at once avowed himself a disbeliever in the Bible. I, amazed at this infidelity in one so young, asked him on what grounds he disbelieved the Bible. He answered, without a moment’s hesitation, that “the scientific difficulties in the book of Genesis make it impossible to believe the Bible is true.” Probing the infidelity of this lad of fourteen, I found that his teacher in the public school where he attended was a disciple of Herbert Spencer, and that he had managed to instill his skepticism into the minds of his pupils. Moreover, the lad had an elder brother in the scientific school at Yale College, and he alleged the opinions of one of the leading professors, who was an atheist. In addition, I found that the boy backed up his infidelity by naming a large number of the prominent educators of the youth of our land as being among those who did not believe in the divine authority of the Bible. He evidently had been filled by his teacher. We hope that such cases are rare among teachers and pupils; but we fear, at the same time, that they are not so exceptional as we could wish. Thus does this kind of infidelity silently percolate from the higher down through the lower and younger classes.—Pentecost.