Notes on Education and Christianity
By Editor
THERE is but one way of salvation,—Jesus Christ. There is but one standard of truth,—God's word. He who receives that word as it is in Christ Jesus receives Christ. READ "The Christian Ideal of Civil Government," in our General Articles department. Could anyone ask for more? Are not those who do ambitious to exercise lordship? WE commend to those who would be rich the article in another department, entitled "One Cause of Suffering." Its suggestions, if followed, will do much toward relieving distress. DR. TENNIS S. HAMLIN, of Washington, D. C., calls attention in the Independent to the important facts that less than forty years ago a college year at Harvard or Yale cost from $180 to $280, with the period of study consisting of forty-one weeks. Now it costs from $800 to $1,000, with a college year of thirty-six nominal weeks. He pleads for a return of the forty weeks' period. This drift of the universities is in harmony with the spirit of the age. THE Literary Digest quotes the Rev. Maurice Philips as saying that "in India the only organized opposition which Christianity has as yet had to meet has been from the efforts of the Hindu graduates of our universities. Similarly in China the other day we had to draw attention to the fact that the effort of introducing higher education among the natives of Hongkong has been to raise up a class more dangerous, and more politically and religiously opposed to us, than the ordinary native of China itself. And all this may be expected as long as science so called is made the basis, and standard of education, and the word of God is made secondary. In the primary schools and in childhood days the word of God is generally taught by Protestant teachers as the authoritative standard of truth, if taught at all, but in the colleges and universities all this must be unlearned; the word of God is no longer authority only as it conforms to various scientific data and deductions which the next year may utterly demolish. What wonder that "education," such education as the higher schools generally give, is opposed to Christianity!