Will We Learn the Lesson? by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Jul 24, 1913

Will We Learn the Lesson?

By Editor

Of the training which the Roman Catholic Church affords its children in the principles of its faith, and of the lesson which Protestants may wisely learn from this example, the Lutheran of June 12, 1913, says:—

While Protestants are scattering a great deal of energy in social service and similar movements, the Roman Catholics are looking after the children. In Chicago they gather up as many of the infant waifs that are brought into the world by unwilling mothers as they can lay their hands on, and are nursing them into good Roman Catholic church-members. They leave to Protestants the work of straightening out trees after they have grown crooked, and devote themselves to the bending of twigs in the direction in which they would have them incline. To them a child with a future is worth ten perverted adults whom no number of high-pressure revivals can permanently wean away from their past. This is not saying that the church must neglect to seek the lost however advanced they may be in years or pronounced in sin; but it is saying that an ounce of prevention in the work of redemption is worth a pound of cure. It is saying that if the stream of humanity is to be purified, the best place to begin is at the fountain. The church must watch the cradle if it would prevent disaster at the grave. O, for more Christian kindergarten teachers in the form of fathers and mothers in the home! We should then need less in the church and the Sunday-school. But as things are, we must have both. In the value it places upon the child, let the Roman Church be our teacher.