p. 4 | MAN VERSUS GOD

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Sep 23, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 37.

MAN VERSUS GOD.

On Which Will You Base Your Knowledge?

THE Bible idea of education is to know God. Said Jesus, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Said the ancient Idumean, "Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace; thereby good shall come unto thee." In God is all fulness. And he has revealed that fulness in Jesus Christ,—Creator and Redeemer,—and in the Holy Scriptures, which are "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." The greatest and sublimest poetry, the most touching pathos, the keenest logic, the profoundest reasoning, the simplest and most eloquent oratory, the tenderest story of love, the grandest examples of unselfish heroism, the best rules for every-day existence, the only message of righteousness and salvation, all and more come to us in the wonderful words of life of the Book of God. And yet Christianity turns from it to the wisdom of that which is foolishness with God, from the ever-living fountain of God to the broken cisterns of paganism. Here is an example from the Los Angeles Times of August 30, preached and written by Frank Crane, D.D., of Chicago:—

I am no believer in a "business education," nor in wasting time at any school where they make a specialty of the so-called practical studies. I am old fogy enough to think that if one has but a year to spend at college, he should devote it to Greek and Latin and geometry. Such studies give a richness to the intellectual life that can be obtained from no other source. Why should the poor boy be deprived of the intense joy of knowing the classic royalty of earth's thought, simply because he is to be a bookkeeper or a carpenter, or a mechanic? Any bright youth can quickly pick up a trade, but the love for letters and the appreciation of true culture is seldom acquired outside of the classroom. Among the happiest hours of my life, among my purest pleasures, are the hours that have been passed in the study of classics, and why should I wish any man, even if he be a farmer or a mechanic, to have his youth robbed of these halcyon days? Why should he have the depth of life sacrificed to the bustling utilities of the business college? I am for the dear old-fashioned classical education for every man and for every woman. It gives poise to the heart and rightly orientates the soul, it gives a flavor to the mind that is more precious than attar, a fragrance that comes from the flowers of but one Hymettian field.

. . . The kings, the imperators, the half gods among men, are the classic authors. We can buy their voices for a pittance. Why not hold great converse with these majestic minds instead of spending all our spare time in the ephemeral gossip of current literature? With most of us it is because we lack a right taste for imperial ideas. And how shall that taste be engrafted in us? As a rule, altho there are notable exceptions, it is only in the university, it is only with some professor whose very atmosphere carries the precious aroma of learning; it is only by saturating our days and nights, during the formative period of youth, with the resonant grandeur of Homer and the exquisite grace and sweetness of Horace. To the end of time the fountain of intellectual culture will be found in the grove by the porch at Athens, and his life will always be in a measure barren who has not passed that way.

To such an one, and to those who follow such preaching and teaching, what is the Word of God? It is not even worthy of mention, and yet in it is the wisdom and power and fulness of God. It is such teaching in our pulpits, in our universities, in our colleges, in the press, that turns men from the Bible, and sets the heathen gods and demigods between the soul and the great Teacher of the world, nay, the Saviour of the world, Christ Jesus. It is such teaching that produces the following from the same page of the Times:—

"O Demosthenes, dead two thousand years and more, Yet I hear the reverberations of thy mighty voice In the passing winds, the ocean's sullen roar. Its grandeur is depicted upon the mountain's hoary brow, And its awe upon the face of the raging hurricane. Thus all nature and the elements are affected by genius, And thus nature doth preserve a great man's name."

But Jesus Christ lives; his Word is a living Word; and the mighty works of nature perverted to sound the praise of the great Greek, are here and continue to exist by the power of the word of Jesus Christ alone. It is as true now as it was in Paul's day that the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, and that the world by that same wisdom knows not God. And yet professedly Christian teachers are filling the minds of susceptible youth with such wisdom, and teaching them to believe that it is the highest culture possible. "For the Jews [the superstitious] require a sign, and the Greeks [unbelieving and worldly-wise] seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, . . . Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." See 1 Cor. 1:18–25. Then, Christian, can you not say with the mighty and eloquent hero of old, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world"? Gal. 6:14.