Part 7 (2/2)
We are told that there are other forces than the love of God and the desire to serve Him, which may elevate and redeerown By other means, character, the banishment of injustice and crime and the establishment of universal brotherhood can be just as well secured
First, Science was to do it ”From Huxley's 'Lay Sermons' of 1870,” says the _Christian Work_, ”to the latest ful that Science was the true Messiah, the eliht to our children in the place of the outworn fables of the Bible
Then came the prophets of Education Herbert Spencer and his followers informed us that education was the panacea for all ills Educate the people as to what is best and they will choose the best
The prophets of Culture ca in the millennium was the diffusion of art, literature, music, philosophy
The ion that should create a strong and virtuous nation Not iantperfect character and perfect efficiency out of erring humanity
Economic Reforet an eight-hour day, one day's rest in seven, a good wage, plenty to eat and ion, as the Church views it, would be superfluous
During the last forty or fifty years, all of these gospels have been given a fair trial ”Science,” says Dr Frederick Lynch, ”has driven the classics out of our colleges, and has almost become the text-book of our Sunday Schools,”--and yet it has worked little improvement in our nationalof hter of mankind Even airshi+ps have apparently been used rounds and nurseries Education was never eneral Education has stood next to the army in the consideration of Gerrafters are educated men
Culture, too, is almost universal Every town has its library and its women's clubs; and Chautauquas in summer and courses of lectures and concerts in winter, are provided in our ses Germany has boasted of her culture, and we are proud of ours,--but it seems to have done little more than ”to veneer the barbarian” in the promises of Economic Reforland's old-age pensions, the higher wages, shorter hours and better ho people, have proven but vanity ”Be happy and you will be good” is not the great slogan of rede, and that is well But the great ideals of the Bible, the great Pattern of the life of Jesus Christ, these are and ever hteousness which we long to instill into our children Science, Education, Culture, Econos,--but they are, each and all, only parts of the greater Gospel, and that is e ood citizens; for, as a cooes to pieces, so does character without religion
Familiarity with the Bible is one of the essentials to this teaching
Besides its ethical and spiritual power, its stories, its poetry and its great essays furnish so hly conversant with theuished statesmen wandered into a backwoods church, where he heard a well-expressed, logical and highly spiritual discourse from aalways lived in the locality Upon inquiring where this ree, he found that he had always lived in an obscure hamlet and that his library consisted simply of his Bible and his hymn-book
Abrahaely fro Janified and vivid expression Thousands of our best writers and orators are indebted to it for the high quality of their style, and many have so testified
The work of these writers, such as Shakespeare, Browning, Mrs
Browning, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Lowell, Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Sidney Lanier, are full of allusions and figures which cannot be understood by our young people unless they are fareatest e and its spirit Every child should know its stories, should be rand poetry, and should have its ethics and its spiritual lessons deeply graven upon their hearts We can truly say of it:
”Thou art the Voice to kingly boys To lift theht”
”The child,” says President Butler of Coluious as well as to his scientific, literary and aesthetic inheritance Without any one of them he cannot become a truly cultivated manIf it is true that reason and spirit rule the universe, then the highest and s of the spirit That subtle sense of the beautiful and subliht and is a part of it,--this is the highest achievement of which humanity is capable It is typified in the verse of Dante, in the prose of Thomas a Kempis, in the Sistine Madonna of Raphael and in Mozart's Requiem To develop this sense in education is the task of art and literature; to interpret it is the work of philosophy; to nourish it is the function of religion It is hest possession, and those studies which most directly appeal to it are beyond coiven us a fair definition of religion
The New York Bible Society asked hie to be printed in the copies of the New Testa:
”The teachings of the New Testament are foreshadowed in Micah's verse: 'What more doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk huht valiantly against the armies of Germany and Turkey, for these nations in this crisis stand for the reign of Moloch and Beelzebub upon this earth
”Love mercy; treat prisoners well; succor the wounded; treat every woman as if she were your sister; care for little children; be tender with the old and helpless
”Walk hus of the Savior
”May the God of Justice and !”
Mr Roosevelt had evidently in ton for America, well-known to most Episcopalians, but not so familiar to members of other sects In fact, it is rather shameful that so fe it Here it is: