All thinking and serious people must, in the past year, spontaneously
have reflected upon the shocking incongruity of the most cultured
nations of the earth—Germany, France, England, Italy, and in many
respects, Russia and Japan—being engaged in a warfare which has no
parallel in all of humanity’s previous pages. Hitherto we have been
assured that culture, science, literature, art, music, the drama,
invention, discovery, technical advance, governmental efficiency, social
reform, and all that belongs to the educative phases of man’s progress,
constituted all the gospel we needed, and could be relied upon in any
event as the mainstay of civilization and the true inspiration of man’s
upward and onward course to higher and still higher degrees of
attainment. Those who held otherwise and contended that these were not
sufficient, but that religion and the ethical teachings of the Bible
must ever be the incentive of the world’s substantial growth in depth of
character, were looked upon in many quarters as somewhat narrow
sectarians, or perhaps regarded superciliously as uncultivated fanatics.
But the failure of culture and mere intellectualism to secure man’s
salvation is so evident and appalling in the light of what is happening
on the blood-soaked soil of Europe, that the contention of the
Secularists has received an answer which is indisputable and conclusive.
Culture and education, admittedly the noblest products of man’s
endeavor, have fallen disastrously short of the promises made in their
behalf. The neglect of religion, the decay of a vital faith, have
resulted in an awful catastrophe. To him who runs and reads the signs of
our times, the proclamation of the prophets of religion and the
ministers of Christ have proved themselves so true as to need no further
substantiation. Trust in Jehovah and reliance upon the Redeemer of the
world for salvation from sin and the sanctification of the human heart,
have once more demonstrated their own absolute necessity.
The end of all education—of all development in the name and line of
culture—ought to lie in the strengthening of character. Of what use are
all material achievements if only a dismal emptiness is bound up within?
Of what profit is it, says one, whether our railroad trains run sixty
miles an hour, if men are fools when they enter, and fools still when
they leave? Of what significance is the wonder of wireless telegraphy,
if the electric flashes through the ether convey only the accounts of
commercial frauds, the follies of the rich, the discontent of the poor,
social intrigues, and political scandals? Why should we educate our
youth if, in the end, they have learned only to lie more plausibly or
forge more cleverly? Caliban’s caustic observation was that the only
profit he had secured from being taught his master’s language was that
he now knew how to curse. A cultivated scoundrel may do more harm with a
stroke of his pen than a score of rude burglars can accomplish in twelve
months. A superficial education, divorced from religion, may be handmade
to villainy’s more effectual service.
Said Huxley once, “Clever men are as common as blackberries; the rare
thing is to find a good man.” This chord was struck strongly by Kipling
in his “Recessional:”
“Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart:
Lord, God of Hosts, be with us yet
Lest we forget, lest we forget!”
Well did Milton exhort those of his own people in these words: “Let not
England forget her precedent in teaching nations how to live.” If the
homely and commonplace virtues are allowed to die out in vanities and
self-indulgences; if the qualities of self-respect and righteousness, so
necessary to our national perpetuity, shall decay through neglect, no
amount of mere material prosperity can ever make amends for the
disaster.
The world owes a great debt of gratitude without question to Greece and
its prophets of the intellect—those who have stood forth through all the
generations since as the authorities in philosophy, physics, art,
architecture, sculpture, oratory, and politics. Such names as Thales,
Pythagoras, Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pheidias,
Praxiteles, Archimedes, Thucydides, Pericles will always shine as stars
of the first magnitude in the intellectual heavens. But salvation was
not of the Greeks, but “of the Jews.” When we turn to the pages of the
Psalmist, the Prophets, and the Evangelists, we scarcely shall find a
word about philosophy, geometry, music, painting, the science of
politics, or the construction, constitution, movements, and mysteries of
the physical universe. But Isaiah, Micah, Amos, the Gospel writers, and
Saint Paul—and, infinitely above all, the Carpenter Prophet of
Nazareth—have given the world the loftiest and most absolutely necessary
rules and ideals of living. Cleverness is evermore inferior to goodness.
Let a man have no matter what completeness of education, the ultimate
question remains, “How is he going to use it?” And this query must be
answered by something beyond the mental development itself. The Devil is
accredited with having a first-class mind and a brilliant understanding.
A man bearing all the university degrees, if not chastened and
restrained by the spirit of a living religious faith, may prove more of
a curse than of a blessing to his fellows. The mention of such
personalities as Alexander VI, Macchiavelli, Napoleon, and Byron is
enough to support the claim we are making. There has never been a great
revival of religion which did not result in a corresponding turning away
from frivolity and vice to a soulful seriousness and nobler form of
life. The ages of faith have also been, as proved by the careers of John
Knox, the Puritans, and John Wesley, the ages of national greatness.
Well did Tennyson pray, in lines oft quoted:
“Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before.
“But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock Thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear:
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.”
And again, speaking of his dead friend, Arthur Hallam, he expresses the
longing of his own devout soul:
“I would the great world grew like thee,
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity.”
And once more, toward the close of that noblest poem of the nineteenth
century, he thus invokes the spirit of Hallam:
“O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure.
“That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquered years
To One that with us works, and trust,
“With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flowed from, soul in soul.”
—_Western Christian Advocate._