The Necessity of the Church-School by Bertha S. Roger

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 5, 1907

The Necessity of the Church-School

By Bertha S. Roger

WHAT is more common or more pleasant to the ear of the small son or daughter than the words, “You will soon be old enough to go to school, little one; mama will miss you, O so much! but you must go to school and get an education.” Educate! educate! educate! It can not be too emphatically spoken, nor too oft repeated. Everywhere do we mark institutions of learning rising before us almost without number, paralleling the march of civilization. It is right it should be so. What would this land be without her public-school system to-day?

Think back a few short years, you who have grown gray in the conflict of life! Think of the days spent within the scarred walls of the old log schoolhouse on the hill. Those days of birch and plum sprout and rule were not without their sterling virtues in spite of the ferulings, dunce-caps, and lengthy vowel drills. There was also the unending rule of courtesy and politeness when a neighbor or traveler passed by. Perchance a sprightly game of bat and ball or leap-frog was in progress; what mattered? A superior was passing, and in respect every cap must be lifted, and the game must wait a moment until he had passed by. A failure on the part of a pupil to do this, or the giving of any rude salutation, such as greets our ears so often now, was severely punished. May we glean no lesson here?

What is education? Is it not the equal development of the whole being, physical, mental, and spiritual? Is man without this trinity? Not for a moment could we consider such an idea, and we know that the undue cultivation of any one of these regardless of the others erects an unbalanced structure, lacking in strength, beauty, and symmetry. It should be “a building fitly framed together;” but what shall we do? where shall we turn? The years of childhood and youth are brief. Should they wander through every treatise of learning to cull from the thrashings of years the grains for their sustenance and growth? It can not be done! Time would not permit it; reason would not uphold it.

We must place within their hands the best while the mind is plastic, yielding, and susceptible. We will not even suggest the pursuit of mythology, higher criticism, or evolution. Sound reasoning can not sustain them; and yet the public-school system to-day is full of them. The idea that the Bible should be the foundation for every line of study, and should be the root of every text-book, is driven from their borders. But does that make it any the less true?—Nay, verily! Our Father in heaven has provided a bountiful feast of fat things for the whole man. “Taste and see!”

But some one says, “The idea of taking the Bible as the foundation for everything. How stale and prosy! You would soon get it all learned by heart; and what stupid school work! Where would be room for the stretch of imagination so necessary to the development of the child mind? I’d rather my child would study the tale of King Midas and beautiful Cinderella, and enjoy good old ‘Mother Goose’!”

Ah, indeed! you want your child amused.

We will say he has had a lesson on the wondrous feats of ‘King Midas,’ the supposed fairy, who, by the touch of his finger, turned all things to solid gold. He has studied it, recited it, and perhaps written an essay on it. It has made an indelible impress on his brain which time can not efface. He comes home at night full of the wonders of his lesson. You smile on hearing it, and reply, “O my son, do not become so enthusiastic over just a fairy tale. It is not true, you know; it is simply a fairy story, and fairies are not real things.”

He looks at you so disappointed, and asks, “Was it all a lie then, mama?”

“Well, yes, you might call it a lie, I presume, for it is not true, dear.”

His lesson has been a study in lies, plainly speaking. The next day he must needs learn another if he is following the course of study we had to follow when I was a child.

Somehow, it is fascinating, and he’d rather hear fairy tales and ghost stories and read the Sunday’s “funny paper” than almost any thing else. Every theatrical bulletin-board is studied by him for the illustration of the thrilling, blood-curdling play to be enacted upon the stage. As he grows older, the appetite for the unreal becomes the strong ruling element in his nature. It has been nourished too long not to have grown strong and vigorous. The piles of novels and fictitious literature stored upon his shelves give evidence of the squandering of many precious hours. The bulletin-board illustrations no longer satisfy him; he must go and see the plays, each and every one within his range. ‘Wonderful how neatly that thief slipped those valuables out of the pocket of that

old lord as He and his lady were walking by! Wonder if a fellow could do that with a bit of practise?’

He tries it on his chum, just for fun you know, just for sport. I will leave you to add the sequel. And this picture is not overdrawn in the least; in fact, the truth is scarcely touched on.

On the other hand, let me suggest a scripture for the development of the imagination of the child: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) — ten simple words, but what do they cover? We might better ask, What have they left out? Is it possible to search out any truth, to pursue any study whatsoever outside of the scope of those ten words? “Well,” one might say, “there is nothing said as to plants, animals, and man.” Indeed! is there not? Does not the eleventh verse of that same chapter say, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth”? Do you not see it demonstrated as truth before your eyes daily? Then in the seventh verse of the second chapter, we read: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”—from the earth again. This is also a basis for the study of physiology as connected with the study of botany, which is the very best way it can be taught.

Teach those beautiful mysteries so often coupled and often never rightly understood; teach them, I say, from the fragrant flowers at your feet; bring out the harmony and beauty of truth and purity as God intended it should be. Let this be done at the mother’s knee. Mothers, be faithful to your trust!

We read of the wisdom of Solomon, a man who, while faithful to his God, stood forth as the wisest among men. “He spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.” I Kings 4:33. Quite a student of nature was King Solomon. Any room in the study of botany and biology for the expansion of the imagination? The thirty-second verse says that “he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five.” An excellent musician he must have been also; and if we carefully read a few of his proverbs, we shall notice that he was a close student of the human mind; the science of psychology was not unknown to him.

And now should the child show a taste for the study of astronomy, where can you select a truer foundation for his study than Isa. 40:25, 26? “To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.” Also Job 9:6-9: “Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble. Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars. Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea. Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.”

Time and space would fail me if I were to attempt to explain (if it were in my power) the fulness of Gen. 1:1. A plant of thought it is whose roots reach to everything in heaven and in earth. You can never exhaust it.

O! cultivate in the child (that crowning work of God’s creation) a taste for the true, the pure, and the holy. This life is but a brief span, a hand’s breadth as it were, set off from the great eternity. Educate in such a manner that the drop of learning here gathered may join the great ocean of knowledge we shall have the privilege of delving into, with the angels of God as our instructors.

The public school can not be expected to teach from the Bible as its chief text-book. It is educating for citizenship in this world only.

“Choose you this day whom ye will serve,” and educate! educate! educate! but waste not powers of body, mind, and soul on the unreal. Earth, sea, and sky will teem with countless topics for research, and remember we look “for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

Mrs. BERTHA S. ROGER.