L. A. S by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 6, 1904

L. A. S

By L. A. S.

WHILE there are comparatively few people who understand the significance of the great and rapid changes that are coming over the moral aspect of the world, there are many who see that such changes are taking place, and deplore the moral decadence which they indicate. One such individual writes in the Youth’s Companion of the almost universal ignorance of the Bible on the part of the youth of this generation, a condition which, he says, has come about almost in a single generation of time. Under the title, “A Neglected Treasure,” this writer says:—

It is a distinct and serious loss to the intellectual capital of our time that so few young men and women are familiar with the phraseology of the Bible. To say nothing of the ethical and spiritual misfortune, the decline in ability to appreciate or to use Biblical allusions makes literature poorer and less classic. How wide-spread the ignorance is, few except teachers realize. Here are a few examples, collected from actual experience:—

A class of eighteen-year-old girls in a large Boston school had never heard of Lot’s wife, although they understood an allusion to Orpheus in the same connection. Another class of twenty girls were hopelessly confused as to the meaning of the words “Shekinah” and “shibboleth,” with a vague idea that they were names of Old Testament characters. A class of boys and girls made no distinction between St. John the apostle and John the Baptist, and could with difficulty be persuaded that they were actually two men. Not a member of another class could tell why Whittier called his poem on Daniel Webster “Ichabod.”

Most striking and melancholy of all, a large elective class in Harvard University, in a recent recitation, had not one student who could explain an allusion to Calvary.

The alarming feature in all these cases is that among considerable numbers of young men and women there should not be even one who has the knowledge which every schoolboy of two generations ago had. The loss of the wealth of allusion contained in the Bible is a calamity far worse than would be the loss of the Greek or Roman classics. It is like the closing of a great, beautiful region, open for centuries for the delight of humanity, and abandoned because of sheer indifference to its beauties.

Who can read such statements and not be impressed with a conviction that it is high time that parents who have any interest in the salvation of their children should see to it that they are kept out of the currents which are sweeping the youth in such vast numbers toward a Christless goal?