By Rev. J. H. VINCENT, D. D., SUPERINTENDENT OF INSTRUCTION.
July is one of the C. L. S. C. vacation months.
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“Memorial Day,” Sunday, July 13. Read Paul’s wonderful words about
“Charity” in 1st Corinthians, xiii.
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Salutations—sincere and abundant—to all the members of the Circle who
have opportunity this month of meeting in the green woods or by the
lake-side at one of the “Summer Assemblies.” Hold “Round-Tables.” Talk
and plan, and then report the new things you think of. If you can not go
to any of the great Assemblies, hold a comfortable little “C. L. S. C.
Grove-Rest” or “Go-to-the-Grove” picnic in your own neighborhood. One
such humble gathering may be the seed of a grand Assembly one of these
days.
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A member of the class of ’87 asks concerning the mountain known as
Quarantania. This is a high bluff on the west of the Jordan, near the
north end of the Dead Sea, and believed to be the Mountain of Temptation.
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“Hand Book of Abbreviations and Contractions, current, classical and
mediæval; also of secret, benevolent, and other organizations, legal
works of the United States and Great Britain, and of the Railroads of the
American Continent.” By the Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows, A.M., D.D. Chicago:
The Standard Book Company.
A _multum in parvo_ for the general reader. The title fully unfolds the
character of the volume.
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“A Complete Hand Book of Synonyms and Antonyms, or synonyms and words
of opposite meaning. With an appendix.” By the Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows,
A.M., D.D. Chicago: The Standard Book Company.
This compact, neatly printed, well-bound volume is one of the most
valuable of the “Standard Hand-Book Series,” edited by Bishop Fallows,
of Chicago. For the English reader or writer desiring carefully to
discriminate between words and phrases, anxious to use language most
appropriately, we know of no single volume equaling this hand-book for
utility and general adaptation to his needs.
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To a member of the circle who is really a very large-hearted and noble
man, as I have since found him, but who is “decidedly opposed to teaching
religious truths in schools of any kind,” and who objects to being
required to read the “Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation,” I have made
the following reply, which I insert here, as it may meet similar cases:
_My Dear Sir_:—Your letter of December 27 is before me. We have provided
a college outlook, a college outlook which touches every department
in the realm of culture. We give a bird’s eye view of this vast world
which appeals to every faculty of the soul. We touch the physical man,
the physical world in which he lives, above among stars, below among
stones, about among plants and animals. We study history, the history
of the earth as revealed in science, the history of man as unfolded in
the traditions and records of the race. We study political and social
economy. We also study somewhat (to a very limited degree) the phenomena
and laws of man’s moral and spiritual being. _It would be a strange
course of study that ignored faculties as real, as universal, and as
persistent in their operations as the religious faculties._ We avoid
scrupulously everything that tends to the promotion of sectarianism in
thought or spirit, but we believe in that profound philosophy, which all
leading educators of life have recognized, that “the fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom.” A culture of muscle alone is a one-sided
culture. The culture of the reason alone is equally one-sided. A culture
of memory alone is folly. The true culture is a culture of body, mind
and heart, the soul in its entirety, with its many-sided relations to
the truths which belong to those relations: God, neighbor, home, life,
nation, time, eternity. The C. L. S. C. would indeed be a most narrow
and bigoted thing if it were to refuse attention to the religious world.
Now concerning Dr. Walker’s work on “The Plan of Salvation,” the name is,
I confess, quite misleading. It is a book written forty years ago, by
one of the ablest intellects of America. No American religious book has
had a wider circulation. It is profoundly philosophical, and it gives a
most original view of the old Jewish history; and a man’s education who
calls himself an infidel is incomplete without reading that book. There
is not the slightest tinge of sectarianism about it. It is a vigorous
classic which every student of the English tongue should read. Hundreds
of our readers, who are not members of any evangelical church, and who
are skeptical in their tendency, have read the book with great delight,
and though prejudiced somewhat against the title, have given words of
testimony to its wonderful power as a literary production, to say nothing
about the vigor of its arguments. You say you “find sermons in stones,
and _good in everything_.” Can you not, _if you find good in everything,
find good in a philosophical book written by a mighty intellect,
acknowledged by the scholars of the past forty years_? “The Plan of
Salvation” is not a discussion of the way a soul is to be saved. It is
a discussion of the philosophy underlying the biblical history. You can
not afford not to read it, even if you decline to prosecute our course
of study. I am a little surprised that a broad man should be “decidedly
opposed to teaching religious truths in schools of any kind.” What would
a culture be that ignored the religious? One of the strongest arguments
that I ever read in favor of the Bible as a text-book for study, was
written by Huxley, who pleaded fervently for it as _a book for study in
every secular school_. I do not “compel” you to read Walker’s book; I do
not say you MUST buy the book. You may read any book on any phase of the
question, Roman or Protestant, according to the tendency of your faith.
_Something_ on that line you must read to complete our broad survey.