“Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honor than the house. For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God. And Moses verily was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; but Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” Heb. 3:1–6.
“Consider the Apostle and High Priest of Our Profession.”—To consider is to take careful notice, to enter into the details. The apostle has been placing before the mind Christ’s creative power, his humiliation, and his keeping power. He is now calling attention to his faithfulness in all that he has promised. Moses, who was a type of Christ as a leader of God’s people, is here mentioned as an example of faithfulness.
The Faithfulness of Moses.
Moses had all the opportunities to become a popular man in a mighty nation. “And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.” But with all this learning and talent he never forgot the early impressions which he had received from his mother, who acted as his nurse for his foster mother. She had impressed upon his young mind the importance of being true to principle and faithful to the God of Israel.
Like all others, he had a longing for those of his own blood, who were kept in servitude. His desire, strengthened by his loyalty to God, led him to forsake the royal palace of Egypt and become a leader in an unpopular cause. Like humanity in every age, he was fallible, and at one time, at least, let his enthusiasm overrule his better judgment, and was led to take the life of his fellow-man. “And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian.” Acts 7:23, 24. This rash act cost him a long schooling in the wilderness with the flocks of the field. Yet he never turned his back upon the Lord, but received the chastisement in meekness and love.
“By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” Heb. 11:24, 25. In all his experiences in the wilderness he never broke his consecration vow with the Lord. One might have visited him after ten years had passed and beheld him caring for the tender lambs of the flock, or climbing the mountain side in search of the self-willed sheep that had strayed away. Although he might not have fully realized what an important education he was receiving to fit him for one of the wisest generals the world ever knew, yet no doubt he was contented and happy in his work. He knew that all things would work out for his good if he was only faithful to his great Teacher.
Thirty, forty years rolled by, and still the learned statesman of Egypt was only a leader of sheep. In this period of time he had had ample opportunity to decide whether he would leave the place the Lord had called him to, and make his way back to Egypt, or whether he would abide where God had said “stay” until he was commanded to depart. No doubt his patience had been sorely tried in chasing over the stony hills after his flock. He had learned how to deal with the erring, and how to manage the stubborn and rebellious. He had learned to face winter’s blasts, and endure summer’s heat and storms. He had met the wild beasts of the forests, that were as ravenous for the members of his flock as would be the Amorites in after years for the people which he should lead. As a shepherd he had known hunger and privations. If he could not sit at the table furnished by the Egyptians, he could take a cold “bite” down by the side of some quiet stream that flowed from some mountain height down through the wilderness. All these experiences were preparing him for a great work for the Lord.
After all his experiences as a shepherd, the Lord meets him in the bush, and gives him his commission to be a leader of a rebellious and ignorant people. No doubt but what Moses could see more pleasure in remaining with his sheep than going forth as a leader of Israel. He tried to excuse himself on the ground of incompetency, yet he dare not say, “I will not go.” He received his charge and left his flock and started for Egypt. Many changes had taken place in Egypt and with his own people since he left that country. Many of those at the court with whom he had formerly associated had passed away. Instead of being recognized by the throne of Egypt as one who had been brought up there, he would now be looked upon as a stranger. His own people, in Goshen, had not faith enough to believe his testimony that God had sent him to deliver them. Yet Moses was faithful in all his house.
In all his experience in leading the children of Israel out of Egypt he manifested that life of trust that is ever pleasing to God. When every one would forsake him and turn back to Egypt, he looked to the One who was directing for counsel. When the Red Sea was on one side and before him, and the rough mountains on the other side, shutting them in, while the hosts of Pharaoh were closing in behind, he was not discouraged. On every side he heard murmuring cry against him. But on account of his faithfulness God had informed him in regard to his ways, while the people could only see the acts of the Lord. He knew that the God of heaven would not fail him, so he dared to step forward, and in the name of the Great Shepherd bid the waters of the sea open and receive the flock from Pharaoh’s grasp. Thus in all his life he trusted the Lord, and received an epitaph grander in its character than any that has been written for the greatest monarch of the world. “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” Deut. 34:10.
Christ’s Faithfulness.
We read that it was Christ that went with Israel through the wilderness: “They drank of that spiritual rock that followed them; and that rock was Christ.” 1 Cor. 10:4. But the same One that directed Moses in leading this people out of Egypt was the same One that met him at the bush. So Christ was with him in all his experience as a shepherd. It is true that Moses sinned before leaving his native land for the land of Midian, but Jesus is faithful to forgive sin when it is confessed. 1 John 1:9. When men cast out the offender and consider him a failure, Jesus is willing to lift him up and take him through a course of training that will fit him for work for God.
“But Christ [is faithful] as a son over his own house; whose house are we.” Moses had only one nation of people to lead. Christ has a people in every nation, kindred, and tongue. Moses made some mistakes, but Christ never made any. The faithfulness of Moses consisted in his integrity in holding onto God even when he made a mistake. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ includes the holding onto Moses and forgiving his sins and keeping him in his own work.
He was not only faithful to Moses, but he is just as faithful to every son and daughter of Adam who will accept his faithfulness. “Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it.” 1 Thess. 5:24. Christ is faithful to fulfill every promise in its largest sense and fullest meaning, and there never was a believer who could justly charge him with the breach of his word. Ye “are kept by the power of God through faith.” 1 Peter 1:5. Whatever strength the believer wants to enable him to bear hardship, endure the cross, fight against his spiritual enemies, Christ is faithful and just to supply all his needs. He that is able to keep believers from falling (Jude 24) will keep them until they receive the end of their faith. Thus the life which Christ begins by his grace, he continues by his strength; and every act of this spiritual life is from him. The will, the power is his, for he doeth all, and is in all. His promises are yea and amen, and his faithfulness will endure forever and ever.
Our Faithfulness.
It is not enough that Christ is faithful to us. To avail anything in our behalf we must accept all he offers to us. Like Moses, we must be faithful to him. We may be driven out into the wilderness and kept there until it seems as though our life work has become a failure. We may be kept in the school of training until it seems that Christ will come and the Gospel work be closed before we are free to have any part in his work. We chafe and wish we could have our own way. We may even go so far as to charge our brethren with hindering our usefulness in the cause of God. Many souls whom Christ wished to save and make a bright and shining light, have gone into obscurity, because of unfaithfulness at such times as these. They have not learned the faithfulness of Jesus Christ as manifested in his cry in Gethsemane, “Not my will, but Thine be done.”
One of Satan’s strong efforts is to bring discouragement upon the believing one. When he sees a Christian strong in the Lord through faith, it stirs his malice, and makes him burn with envious rage. He leaves no temptation untried to draw him from Christ. If he can get believers from their dependence upon Christ, he carries his point. When some mistake is made, he comes in and whispers doubt as to the pardon that has already been claimed. Sometimes he will seek to bring guilt into the conscience by suggesting the failings, the shortcomings, the wandering in prayer, or the dullness in hearing or reading the Scriptures. If he can get the9child of grace to dwell upon these things, so as to forget Christ, he has caused him to be unfaithful.
But Jesus says: “Ask, and it shall be given you.” “Ye are complete in him.” Col. 1:9, 10. “They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.” Ps. 34:10. Their loving Shepherd will see that they lack nothing; no good thing will he withhold from them. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things [food, and raiment, and all necessaries] shall be added unto you.”
What a powerful motive is here for the strengthening of our faith! “My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Phil. 4:19. Be our needs ever so many, or ever so great, our God has engaged to supply them all. We may boldly “cast all our care upon him,” and rest assured of his managing our life infinitely better than we can. He is faithful to do all he promised, if we are faithful to let him have all he asks us to yield to him. Our faithfulness consists in yielding every member of our bodies to his service.
THE SUNDAY QUESTION IN NEW YORK.
By W. N. G.
The Examiner, the leading organ of the Baptist denomination, publishes and indorses a sermon by Rev. Wm. R. Huntington, D.D., of Grace Episcopal Church, New York City, on the subject “Ought Cities to Make Sunday Laws?” It was called out by the effort on the part of the liquor interests of that city to make the municipality an exception in the execution of the state Sunday law, the effort being based on the plea of “home rule for cities.” The theory is laid down that such laws should come from the state as the supreme authority; that “only the people in their sovereign, that is to say, in their supreme authority, can take in hand great moral law, and say, Thus or thus it shall be modified.”
The admission that “a great moral law” may be “modified” at all by human authority is a significant position for Protestants to assume, and especially for Baptists. But the precedent having been set by the Roman Church in the modification of the fourth commandment to make it apply to the first day of the week, the acceptance of this precedent by Protestants opens the way for further Protestant assumption in this line. Yet Dr. Huntington, while admitting that human authority may modify moral law, draws the line at any less authority than that of the people in a state capacity.
Another striking fact, from a Protestant standpoint, is that this sermon is being circulated as a political document in the state election campaign, in which the Sunday issue is a prominent feature. Thus the leading Baptist organ, in its indorsement of Dr. Huntington’s position, squarely assumes that the Sunday question is a political one, to be settled by state authority. The sermon purports to be a plea for the preservation of the “ancient landmark,” a “venerable social institute known as the weekly rest.” It says:—
“To preserve ancient landmarks is far easier than to restore them when once wiped out or battered down, and those to whom a threatened fabric is dear can save themselves much future trouble by a little present vigilance.”
This would sound far better as an argument for the preservation of the religious liberty which our Federal Constitution nominally guarantees, than in support of a “modified” moral law enforcing Sunday observance. But the sermon contains a very frank and manifest statement of the Sunday issue in New York, which applies with equal force to the whole country. It is as follows:—
“That the issue has become very badly obscured there can be no manner of doubt. Some are under the impression, naturally enough, but most erroneously that it is the so-called ‘temperance question’ with which we are called to deal. Others are persuaded that the principle at stake is the all-important one of the supremacy of law, the duty of the sworn officers of the state to enforce the state’s decree.”
“It is evident, when we look facts in the face, that it is not the temperance question which is now at stake, for no one can pretend that even the complete suppression of the sale of intoxicants, if confined to a single day of the week, would settle that. Temperance legislation, if it would be properly so called, must aim at covering all days.”
“No, the question really at the fore is the Sunday question. An attack is making upon the immunities of the weekly rest, as those immunities have been defined by usage and by public law. It so happens that in this particular case the hostile movement has sprung up in the quarter known as ‘the liquor interest,’ and that is what is confusing people’s minds; but there are other points of the compass from which the assault might just as naturally have come. The simple truth of the matter is that Sunday is all the while in the position of a beleaguered fortress. Now on this side, now on that, the batteries flash. Both of the twin giants of selfishness, the gaunt one who swears by money, and the bloated one who swears by pleasure, are confederate against those sacred walls, and the names of their followers is Legion. ‘Many there be,’ cried the besieged, ‘that fight against us, O thou most Highest; yet are there those who undismayed keep on saying quietly to themselves, “God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed; God shall help her, and that right early.”’”
That “the issue has become very badly obscured” is true in more than one sense, and in more localities than New York. If Dr. Huntington’s position against “home rule for cities” in the matter of Sunday laws is sustained by Sunday advocates at large, then what about the local Sunday ordinances of cities and counties where there is no general state Sunday law? Would not these local ordinances logically be ruled out? Will not the rule work both ways? Or is the “issue” so “badly obscured” that in cities whose residents want a Sunday law the people may properly act in the matter without the authority of the state, but those who do not want it should have such a law made for them by the state, because of their incapacity to act in matters pertaining to moral law?
Verily, “the issue has become very badly obscured,” and, notwithstanding Dr. Huntington’s lucid statement of fact above quoted, his conclusion from that premise is not well taken. If indeed God were “in the midst” of the Sunday “fortress,” why should not Sunday devotees be “undismayed,” and rest secure in the thought that “therefore shall she not be removed”? People who really believe that God is “in the midst” of the measures or institutions which they have espoused, have no occasion to be otherwise than “undismayed.”
This is the position that observers of the seventh day assume, and they can well rest there, for no one can dispute that God is in the midst of the fourth commandment, which says distinctly that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” Therefore those who keep the day, knowing that it is undisputedly an institution of God’s planting, and not a mere “social institute,” never ask for human laws to enforce its demands. They do not believe that the decrees of man can add anything to the ability of the Almighty to enforce his law. What his own Holy Spirit can not accomplish by appeal to the human heart, the puny arm of man can not do by any weak attempt of his devising. “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” Notwithstanding appearances would indicate that the true Sabbath is about to be annihilated by the “sovereignty” of the people in their state and national capacity, those who are loyal to the “ancient landmark,” which the Lord himself planted in his unchangeable law, have all confidence that “God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed; God shall help her, and that right early.” From the standpoint of the seventh-day Sabbath we can heartily indorse these words of Dr. Huntington:—
“To say that Christ annulled the Rest-day, and, while sanctioning the other nine-tenths of the Decalogue, treated this one-tenth as if it had never been, is to hazard an assertion incapable of proof.”
And to this we may add that, to say that Christ indorses a change in that Rest-day commandment, after positively stating that “till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law,” is also “to hazard an assertion incapable of proof.” W. N. G.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE.
THE church never was aided by the state, for state aid always proved a curse. The state was never helped by union with the church. The following eloquent words of Macaulay, in his review of Southey’s “Colloquies on Society,” are to the point: “The ark of God was never taken till it was surrounded by the arms of earthly defenders. In captivity its sanctity was sufficient to vindicate it from insult, and to lay the hostile fiend prostrate on the threshold of his own temple.
“The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.
“To such a system it can bring no addition of dignity or of strength that it is part and parcel of the common law. It is not now for the first time left to rely on the force of its own evidences and the attractions of its own beauty. Its sublime theology confounded the Grecian schools in the fair conflict of reason with reason. The bravest and wisest of the Cæsars found their arms and their policy unavailing, when opposed to the weapons that were not carnal and the kingdom that was not, of this world. The victory which Porphyry and Diocletian failed to gain is not, to all appearance, reserved for any of those who have, in this age, directed their attacks against the last restraint of the powerful and the last hope of the wretched.
“The whole history of Christianity shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power than of being crushed by its opposition. Those who thrust temporal sovereignty upon her, treat her as their prototypes treated her Author. They bow the knee, and spit upon her; they cry, ‘Hail!’ and smite her on the cheek; they put a scepter in her hand, but it is a fragile reed; they crown her, but it is with thorns; they cover with purple the wounds which their own hands have inflicted on her, and inscribe magnificent titles over the cross on which they have fixed her to perish in ignominy and pain.”
FORMALISM VS. TRUTH.
[Apropos of the frequent exhortation to make the church service attractive, the London Freeman has the following.]
A PLAGUE on your old-fashioned ways
And preaching doctrines stern:
We come to church to be amused,
And do not want to learn.
From thoughts of judgment or of sin
We find our spirits shrinking;
We want to rest on Sabbath days,
And not be set a-thinking.
To hear the music people come,
And not to praise or pray;
Let there be nothing to offend
And drive nice folks away.
All preaching for our age should be
Made brief and bright and breezy;
That sermon surely is the best
That makes religion easy.
THE ALL-SEEING EYE.
By T. De Witt Talmage
Marvels of the Human Eye.
“He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” Ps. 94:9.
The imperial organ of the human system is the eye. All up and down the Bible God honors it, extols it, illustrates it, or arraigns it. Five hundred and thirty-four times it is mentioned in the Bible. Omnipresence—“the eyes of the Lord are in every place.” Divine care—“as the apple of the eye.” The clouds—“the eyelids of the morning.” Irreverence—“the eye that mocketh at its father.” Pride—“O, how lofty are their eyes!” Inattention—“the fool’s eye in the ends of the earth.” Divine inspection—“wheels full of eyes.” Suddenness—“in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” Olivet sermon—“the light of the body is the eye.” The surgeons, the doctors, the anatomists, and the physiologists understand much of the glories of the two great lights of the human face; but the vast multitudes go on from cradle to grave without any appreciation of the two great masterpieces of the Lord God Almighty. If God had lacked anything of infinite wisdom, he would have failed in creating the human eye. We wander through the earth trying to see wonderful sights, but the most wonderful sight that we ever see is not so wonderful as the instruments through which we see it. It has been a strange thing to me for forty years that some scientist, with enough eloquence and magnetism, did not go through the country with illustrated lectures on canvas thirty feet square, to startle and thrill and overwhelm Christendom with the marvels of the human eye.
“He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” I suppose the text referred to the human eye, since it excels all others in structure and in adaptation.
In the first chapter of Genesis we find that God, without any consultation, created the light, created the trees, created the fish, created the fowl, but when he was about to make man, he called a convention of Divinity, as though to imply that all the powers of Godhead were to be enlisted in the achievement. “Let us make man.” Put a whole ton of emphasis on that word “us.” “Let us make man.” And if God called a convention of Divinity to create man, I think the two great questions in that conference were how to create a soul and how to make an appropriate window for that emperor to look out of.
See how God honored the eyes when he made a roof for them, so that the sweat of toil should not smart them, the eyebrows not bending over the eye, but reaching to the right and to the left, so that the rain and the sweat should be compelled to drop upon the cheek, instead of falling into this divinely protected human eyesight. See how God honored the eye in the fact presented by anatomists and physiologists that there are 800 contrivances in every eye. For window shutters, the eyelids opening and closing 30,000 times a day. The eyelashes so constructed that they have their selections as to what shall be admitted, saying to the dust, “Stay out,” and saying to the light, “Come in.” For inside curtains the iris, or pupil of the eye, according as the light is greater or less, contracting or dilating. The eye of the owl is blind in the daytime; the eyes of some creatures are blind at night; but the human eye, so marvelously constructed, can see both by day and by night.
What an anthem of praise to God is the human eye! The tongue is speechless and a clumsy instrument of expression as compared with it. Have you not seen it flash with indignation, or kindle with enthusiasm, or expand with devotion, or melt with sympathy, or stare with fright, or leer with villainy, or droop with sadness, or pale with envy, or fire with revenge, or twinkle with mirth, or beam with love? It is tragedy and comedy and pastoral and lyric in turn. Have you not seen its uplifted brow of surprise, or its frown of wrath, or its contraction of pain? If the eye says one thing and the lips say another thing, you believe the eye rather than the lips. The eyes of Archibald Alexander and Charles G. Finney were the mightiest part of their sermon. George Whitefield enthralled great assemblages with his eyes, though they were crippled with strabismus. Many a military chieftain has with a look hurled a regiment to victory or to death. Martin Luther turned his great eye on an assassin who came to take his life, and the villain fled. Under the glance of the human eye, the tiger, with five times a man’s strength, snarls back into the African jungle.
This morning, in my imperfect way, I have only hinted at the splendors, the glories, the wonders, the divine revelations, the apocalypses of the human eye, and I stagger back from the awful portals of the physiological miracle, which must have taxed the ingenuity of a God, to cry out in your ears the words of my text, “He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” Shall Herschel not know as much as his telescope? Shall Fraunhofer not know as much as his spectroscope? Shall Swammerdam not know as much as his microscope? Shall Dr. Hooke not know as much as his micrometer? Shall the thing formed know more than its master? “He that formed the eye, shall He not see?”
The recoil of this question is tremendous. We stand at the center of a vast circumference of observation. No privacy. On us, eyes of cherubim, eyes of seraphim, eyes of archangel, eyes of God. We may not be able to see the inhabitants of other worlds, but perhaps they may be able to see us.
It passes out from the guess into the positive when we are told in the Bible that the inhabitants of other worlds do come as convoy to this. Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation? But human inspection, and angelic inspection, and lunar inspection, and solar inspection, are tame compared with the thought of divine inspection.
O, the eye of God! It sees our sorrows to assuage them, sees our perplexities to disentangle them, sees our wants to sympathize with them. If we fight him back, the eye of an antagonist. If we ask his grace, the eye of an everlasting friend. You often find in a book or manuscript a star calling your attention to a footnote, or explanation. That star the printer calls an asterisk. But all the stars of the night are asterisks calling your attention to God, an all-observing God. Our every nerve, a divine handwriting. Our every muscle, a pulley divinely swung. Our every bone sculptured with divine suggestion. Our every eye, a reflection of the divine eye. God above us, and God beneath us, and God before us, and God behind us, and God within us. What a stupendous thing to live! What a stupendous thing to die! No such thing as hidden transgression.
But you say, “God is in one world and I am in another world; he seems so far off from me, I don’t really think he sees what is going on in my life.” Can you see the sun 95,000,000 miles away, and do you not think that God has as prolonged vision? But you say, “There are phases of my life, and there are colors—shades of color—in my annoyances and my vexations that I don’t think God can understand.” Does not God gather up all the colors, and all the shades of color, in the rainbow? And do you suppose there is any phase or any shade in your life that he has not gathered up in his own heart?
Besides that, I want to tell you that it will soon all be over, this struggle. That eye of yours, so exquisitely fashioned and strung, and hinged and roofed, will before long be closed in the last slumber. Loving hands will smooth down the silken fringes. So He giveth His beloved sleep. A legend of St. Frotobert is that his mother was blind, and he was so sorely pitiful for the misfortune that one day in sympathy he kissed her eyes, and by miracle she saw everything. But it is not a legend when I tell you that all the blind eyes of the Christian dead under the kiss of the resurrection morn shall gloriously open. O, what a day will that be for those who went groping through this world under perpetual obscuration, or were dependent on the hand of a friend, or with an uncertain staff felt their way, and for the aged of dim sight, about whom it may be said that “they which look out of the windows are darkened,” when eternal daybreak comes in!—T. De Witt Talmage.
DO ALL THAT YOU CAN.
By Margaret E. Sangster
“I can not do much,” said a little star,
“To make this dark world bright;
My silvery beams can not pierce far
Into the gloom of night;
Yet I am a part of God’s great plan,
And so I will do the best that I can.”
“What can be the use,” said a fleecy cloud,
“Of these few drops that I hold?
They will hardly bend the lily proud
If caught in her chalice of gold;
But I, too, am part of God’s great plan,
So my treasures I’ll give as well as I can.”
A child went merrily forth to play,
But a thought like a silver thread
Kept winding in and out all day
Through the happy golden head—
“Mother said, ‘Darling, do all that you can,
For you are a part of God’s great plan.’”
She knew no more than the twinkling star,
Or the cloud with its rain cup full,
How, why, or for what all strange things are.
She was only a child at school,
But she thought, “‘Tis a part of God’s great plan
That even I should do all that I can.”
So she helped another child along,
When the way was rough to his feet,
And she sang from her heart a little song
That we all thought wondrous sweet;
And her father—a weary, toil-worn man—
Said, “I, too, will do the best that I can.”
—Margaret E. Sangster.
London People's Palace Scheme Bans Intoxicating Liquors
The charity commissioners of London have framed a new scheme for carrying on the People's Palace, and in it there is a promise “that no intoxicating liquors shall be introduced,” and there are to be “free lectures on temperance and thrift.”
VIVISECTION IN SCHOOLS
The Journal of Education, among many other good things, has the following faithful protest against the killing of cats, rabbits, birds, or frogs for school work. We commend what it says to both parents and teachers:—
EFFECTS OF KILLING.
Now before a class of pupils in a public school, suppose you illustrate the lesson by dissection of a rabbit or a cat, killed at that time and for that purpose. It is possible that the majority of students might have their attention fixed only upon the facts of anatomy thus illustrated. But to some others—children quite as likely as otherwise to have been most carefully trained, and to be the objects of most tender solicitude—there will come slowly creeping into consciousness a vague, abnormal, horrible sense of satisfaction at the sight of this quivering flesh, yet ruddy with the warm blood of out-gone life. Which are the pupils that experience this emotion? Will they confess it to you?—Not at all. Yet they may be nearest and dearest to you by every human tie. It is you who have put them to a danger from which they should have been spared. You have aroused within them a sensation that is oftentimes the very mother of every cruelty. For out of this awakened sensation of abnormal pleasure at the sight of blood is born the instinct of murder, and the lowest tendencies of viciousness and crime.
ANOTHER VIEW.
There is yet another aspect of these methods of instruction—their influence upon all children who are entirely normal, but yet exceedingly sensitive to impressions. I do not hesitate to say that nothing such a child will learn by these lessons can ever compensate for the deleterious impression it may receive by the needless sacrifice of life in its presence. Say what we will, there is a kind of moral deterioration inseparable from the act of killing anything which is doing us no harm. To put out of existence a noxious animal or insect is to obey the instinct of self-preservation; but to take a perfectly harmless creature, kin to the pet of many a child, and to deprive it of whatever joys come from living—simply that children may see how curiously nature has constructed it—can hardly fail to give them a sense of wrongful complicity with deprivation of another’s rights. Not long since I was talking with a young girl graduate of the principal female college in this country, and although she was greatly interested in the study of biology, she told me that a most distasteful impression was created among the girl students by the fact that so many rabbits were killed to demonstrate what the sacrifice of a single life would have done equally well. Is it wise to blunt this sensibility regarding the sacredness of life? I am not referring to the psychopathic child, but to all children alike. There will come a time when, as young men and women, they should know how to prevent pain, by causing the painless termination of life; but for childhood that lesson should be unlearned, and as far as possible delayed. The beauty, the grace, the excellence of all harmless living things is the lesson for children, rather than precocious intimacy with the mystery of death.
A DANGER.
Then, too, there is yet another danger. The desire, the ambition to imitate is one of the first instincts of conscious life. I question whether there was ever experiment in class room that some child or children did not try to imitate in private or by themselves. Suppose it is merely a dissection of a rabbit just killed. Some child or children will wish to repeat it—and kill the rabbit themselves. Then you have initiated childhood into private vivisection. Is that advisable? Admit that you caution your class against such repetitions. But you can not easily convince an inquiring mind that what is right for the teacher to do in public may not also be copied in the privacy of his own room, and in the presence of his classmates.
“But is not dissection of recently killed animals absolutely necessary to a right understanding of the text-book?”
Not at all. Such methods of instruction are not only dangerous, but wholly unnecessary.
OBJECTS OF STUDYING PHYSIOLOGY.
What is the purpose of lessons in school physiology? Is it to start boys and girls on the road to a medical school?—Certainly not. The one great object—in fact, the only practical object—is simply to enforce on the minds of the pupils the lessons of hygiene. What are the plain rules for the preservation of health? What are the effects which may arise from use of tobacco, especially by the young? Wherein lies the danger of alcoholic stimulants? What injury to health comes from overeating, from improper food, from bad ventilation, from constriction of the body by unhygienic dress? How do people ignorantly injure their digestion, their breathing capacity, the heart, the brain? How may typhoid fever be prevented? How does a community help to stamp out scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, smallpox, and other epidemic diseases? What shall one do in case of an accident, till the doctor comes?
These are the lessons of practical hygiene which schoolchildren should be thoroughly taught. They are the lessons which instruction in physiology in schools was designed to impart, and the importance of which can not be overestimated. But surely it needs no killing of rabbits, cats, or dogs to make such lessons plain. Everything needful may be illustrated by colored charts and manikins. A quickly-forgotten smattering of anatomy may indeed be learned by a child, dabbling its fingers in bloody tissues, but nothing which might not be better learned by other methods, without the danger of moral perversion, and at the cost of not a single pang.
Dangerous and unnecessary—these are the words which, in the august name of Science herself, may we not stamp upon all methods of instruction in our public schools which make for the brutalization of childhood by inducing early familiarity with the sacrifice of life?
