Christian Education by H. R. Salisbury

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Aug 29, 1912

Christian Education

By H. R. Salisbury

Conducted by the Department of Education of the General Conference H. R. SALISBURY . . . . . Secretary

'By Their Fruit Ye Shall Know Them'

IN a recent sermon preached in Denver, Colo., Dean Hart (Episcopal) took for his subject, 'The Failure of the Public-School System.' We quote as fully as space will permit. His text was, 'Beware of false prophets. . . . Ye shall know them by their fruits.'

'This is remarkable as being the only criterion the Lord ever gave of the genuineness of his messengers; we know the true from the false by the results which follow the taking of the advice given by the preachers.

'It has always been the belief of the preachers of 'the gospel of humanity,' that with the enlightenment of knowledge all those deeds which seek to hide themselves from the light—all forms of sin—would vanish. We had only to educate, and then righteousness would be the complexion of our civilization. The preachers of this gospel of education were false prophets, and we know it by the fruits. . . .

'The crime which stalks almost unblushingly through the land, the want of responsibility which defames our social honor, the appalling frequency of divorce, the utter lack of self-control, the abundant use of illicit means to gain political positions, are all traceable to its one great and crying defect—inefficiency. The girls leave the school inefficient for the home, and the boys inefficient for work; and do you wonder that the honest, upright, persevering, and capable dealing with the common duties of daily life is shirked because the character has not been molded and furnished to honestly and seriously and efficiently do the work that the day requires? and as life must be lived, shifty and dishonest ways are taken, and modes of dealing are current which our grandfathers would have stigmatized as dishonest trickery or actual thievery.

'Everybody knows that the public-school system is keyed to reaching graduation from the high school, and a further goal beyond that, the college or university. The whole stimulant of the course is to make the grade. . . . That the boys and girls who are graduated from the high schools are not fitted for the practical work of life, is significantly proved by the existence of business colleges. At this moment, in Chicago there are more young people between fourteen and eighteen years of age in such colleges than in all the expensive high schools of that city.

'But this is by no means the most serious page of the indictment. Beyond the high school looms the State university, supported by taxes, and other similar collegiate institutions. Ten years ago fourteen out of every one hundred high-school graduates went on to the university; last year the number had dwindled to five out of every one hundred; and for this reason: the university equips its graduates for the professions, and turns out doctors and lawyers and newspaper men and women by the score, and the damage done to the community by the lowering of the standards of honorable and conscientious professional behavior and conduct is deplorable.

'I learn that there are 750 lawyers in this city, and a leading firm assures me that all the legal business of the city could be done easily by 300 lawyers. The other 450 are struggling to exist, and are intent on 'making business,' so that the legal procedure in our courts is wonderful to behold, and lamentable. Justice is so delayed that she faints by the way. Red-handed murderers remain unhanged, and are finally let loose. Libelers of the most shameful and wicked character can not be tried; and all this is mainly due to the pack of hungry lawyers let loose upon the community by this public-school system, who are, in a sense, compelled to make a living.

'It is even more deplorable with the doctors. I am told there are over 700 medical men in this city, when 200 would be amply sufficient; and what is the result? A year or two ago the president of the State Medical Association published his address, and was good enough to send me a copy. In it he stated that, to the shame of the profession, such abhorrent practises occur as are called fee operations, where bell-boys even are subsidized to steer sufferers, who inquire for a doctor, to one of these degenerates, who hurries the unfortunate to the operating table for the sake of charging a fee. Could anything be more base and inhuman?

'Numbers of immature high-school pupils who can not observe accurately, much less write accurately, are employed at cheap rates upon newspapers. They cause to be printed sheets of untruths. Unfortunately, the whole public, similarly uneducated, is unable to weigh the probabilities of truth, and is even inclined to credit what appears in print, so that the public mind is so fed with unwholesome pabulum that it becomes vitiated and quite incapable of recognizing or digesting truth. And as shocking and tainted happenings are thrust obtrusively upon the public gaze, and compel notice, they almost wholly attract the attention of these reporters, who, regardless of all privacy or decency of feeling, like ghouls, fatten upon the garbage of the community, and supply at the beginning of every day pages of suggestions of evil, until the whole body politic has become so infected that it scarcely knows right from wrong. . . .'

'Mons. de Fallon, a French minister of education, supplied the best definition of education I know of. He said: 'The purpose of education is to aspire to train a child to the yoke of discipline and obedience, to create in him a principle of energy which shall enable him to resist his passions, accept of his own free will the law of labor and duty, and contract habits of order and regularity. To do this, unless the force is derived from religion, is to attempt an impossible task.'

'America has attempted it without religion; the Bible, our one and only source of true religion, our one and only fount of 'religious incentive,' has been a closed book for two generations of children. A child is quick to perceive, and it readily and naturally concludes that, in the opinion of all the people it looked up to and respected for six days in the week, the Bible is of no importance; the fitful hour of the Sunday-school with an untrained teacher, with no force of discipline, and no compulsion to learn, could not and has not reinstated the great Book and its message to the position of preeminence which naturally belongs to it; and the men and women now forming the population have been brought up under this non-religious régime; and what is the result? . . .'

'Crime has steadily increased during the last fifty years, the moral stamina of the nation has deplorably declined. Inefficiency, lack of self-control, irresponsibility, grasping selfishness, love of amusement, are the characteristics of our generation; and their natural consequences are in evidence all around us. Fifty years ago there was one criminal to every 3,442 of the population; to-day, in our State, by careful estimate, there is one to every 250. There are as many murders in Denver, with a population of 200,000, as there are in London, with its 6,000,000. Suicides are so common that the coroner has almost ceased to note them. I counted in his books the year before last, seventy-seven; last year there were only seven registered. Every day the awful fact is casually mentioned that some boy or girl, because thwarted in some trivial desire, or rebuked for some wrong-doing, commits suicide, who by our forefathers would have been denied Christian burial, and interred at four cross-roads, with a stake driven through the breast, an outcast and an abhorrence for men to trample upon. . . .'

'It is folly to appeal to patriotism; we have nothing of it but a sentiment. There is only one hope for us,—that the Saviour King will come and govern us in righteousness; and every earnest lover of God who sees and laments these things, prays, and prays again, 'Come, come, Lord Jesus,' and urges his neighbors to prepare to meet Christ, and sets them the example by living a religious, upright life, in patient expectancy waiting for the coming of the Lord Judge, with 'a conscience void of offense.''

This week alone, four such articles have come to my desk, showing the concern with which the serious are viewing the present state of the world. The remedy suggested in some cases is to place the Bible in the public schools. But let it be remembered that in most of the universities and colleges where the Bible is taught, its inspiration is denied, and its value destroyed by the very teachers themselves, in their mad folly to keep pace with the pernicious school of higher criticism.

Let our schools, where the Bible is a part of every day's instruction, and where faith in its inspiration is guarded by the teacher, who knows its power to save from sin, put forth renewed efforts to do thorough work. As men and women read the signs of the times, and see the results of an education without religious instruction by Christian teachers, they will turn more and more to our schools, as a city of refuge for their children. As teachers, we must prepare to give them what they want,—what they have a right to expect,—a course of study founded upon the Word of God, with thoroughness in every lesson, and Christian deportment in every act. H. R. S.