Worldly Education a Snare
By L. A. S.
THE imperative need, from a Christian standpoint, of cutting loose from the educational system of the world is plainly shown by such statements as the following, which we note in a published tribute to the late Herbert Spencer, by a professor in Columbia University. Speaking of the extent to which the latter-day doctrine of evolution is indebted to Mr. Spencer, this authority on the subject says:— The whole philosophy of evolution has become so much the very warp and woof of human thought, that we find it difficult to realize that in 1850 not more than half a dozen men in all Europe and America had so much as an inkling of its most fundamental ideas, and that of those only one grasped them in a constructive spirit, and saw that they held the interpretation not merely of organic changes, but even of the unfolding of the universe, from star dust to the highest achievements of socially organized mankind. Within the space of thirty years Mr. Spencer, by his marvelous constructive power, and his not less marvelous gift of intelligible exposition, had made this conception so familiar to all men that since 1880 all men have imagined that mankind has always thought in terms of it, forgetting to whom they owed their enlightenment. When a doctrine which antagonizes every principle of the gospel has become “the very warp and woof of human thought,” and so universally accepted that no one seems to remember that it was not always taught and believed, what else can the few who still contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints do but cut loose completely from the world’s educational system, and institute one for their children in which the Biblical truth, the highest and most essential of all knowledge, shall be preserved? What we must have is an educational system not built upon human thought, but upon divine thought; not upon human wisdom, but upon the wisdom that cometh down from above; a system which leads the mind not away from the Creator, but to him. Mr. Spencer’s life-work, great as it is from the world’s standpoint, is a monument of the utter failure of the best efforts of the human intellect apart from God.