After watching the educational struggle which has gone on for ages between truth and error, and observing that scarcely a century has passed which has not witnessed a controversy more or less severe between Christian and papal methods of instruction, one is prepared to believe that this is a subject inseparably connected with the history of nations. This being true, we must expect to find ourselves in the midst of the controversy to-day. It needs but a casual glance at current history to confirm this fact; for minds are troubled because of existing evils, and hearts are open for educational truth.

If we are inclined to think that the principles of Christian education are new and before unheard of, we have but to catch the thoughts which have swayed true educators from the time of Christ to the present day to know that the same spirit has been at work in all ages to draw the hearts of men to God.

The advent of Christ was a wonderful event. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” That man might behold the workings of God in human flesh, and see here the manifestation of truth, Christ was born. His was pre-eminently a work of education, and His system was Christian education. By this means, Heaven again reached earth, and clasped it to her bosom. Men, in their shortsightedness, were unable to comprehend the spiritual teachings of the Son of God, and often His most powerful lessons fell unappreciated on the ears of the multitudes, and even on the ears of the apostles.

Much as the life of Christ has done for the world, there has never been a man, or a nation of men, who have fully followed his teachings. Error has ever been mixed with truth, and the educators of the world have failed to see the realization of their hopes because of this partial grasp of truth.

Christ, when rejected by the world, did not withdraw entirely, and leave man to his fate; but He sent forth His Spirit, the Spirit of Truth as an educator, leading minds into truth. This working of the Spirit is plainly seen, for one man has been directed to one phase of true education, while another, perhaps a contemporary worker, or perhaps a successor, it may be a fellow countryman, or one at a great distance, has picked up another thread in the skein, and developed another thought for the world.

The world has never long been left without some representative of Christian education. In attempting to define the term which stands as the subject of this chapter, attention is called to the partial work of reform which has been accomplished by men whom the world recognizes as educators. The errors of a false education, so prevalent in times past, and still recognized as a part of the educational systems now in vogue, stand in strong contrast to the correct ideas advocated by these men at various times.

The men whose ideas are given in this chapter lived and wrought after the Reformation; and in order to reveal the error against which they worked, it is necessary to consider the methods of instruction to be found in papal schools. Similar thoughts are found on previous pages, but, for the sake of contrast, they are here repeated.

Painter says: “When a young man had acquired a thorough mastery of the Latin language for all purposes; when he was well versed in the theological and philosophical opinions of his preceptors; when he was skillful in dispute, and could make a brilliant display from the resources of a well-stored memory, he had reached the highest points to which the Jesuits sought to lead him. Originality and independence of mind, love of truth for its own sake, the power of reflecting, and of forming correct judgments, were not merely neglected, they were suppressed in the Jesuits’ system.”[171] Karl Schmidt likewise testifies in the words, “Books, words, had been the subjects of instruction.... The knowledge of things was wanting. Instead of things themselves, words about the things were taught.” “Learning by doing” is the rule in Christian education. A large amount of Latin and Greek was, and is still, the rule in the papal educational system, and these languages were taught, not for the sake of thought, but merely for the words.

The world had for a century been bound by the study of the classics. This bondage was broken by the Reformation, but the world returned thither again. Milton, the poet of the seventeenth century, wrote: “Language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. Though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only.... We do amiss to spend seven or eight years in scraping together so much Latin and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year.”[172]

Ratich, a German educator of the sixteenth century, said: “We are in bondage to Latin. The Greeks and Saracens would never have done so much for posterity if they had spent their youth in acquiring a foreign tongue. We must study our own language, and then the sciences.” “Everything first in the mother tongue,” and “nothing on mere authority,” were rules in his schoolroom. Comenius, the renowned teacher, used to say: “If so much time is to be spent on the language alone, when is the boy to know about things,—when will he learn philosophy, when religion, and so forth? He will consume his life in preparing for life.”

How exactly this applies to the word-study of our boys and girls to-day! It matters not whether it be Latin or English grammar; indeed, it may be that other mode of expression,—some form of mathematics,—where time and energy are devoted to the process merely. A failure to make the development of thought—independent thinking, in fact—the main object in instruction, stamps any method of teaching as papal, no matter by what name it is known, or by whom the subjects are taught. It was the life work of Comenius to counteract this tendency, as the following principles show. He insisted that “nothing should be taught that is not of solid utility.” “Nothing is to be learned by heart that is not first thoroughly understood.” “Theologians and physicians should study Greek.” “Doing can be learned only by doing.” That educational reformers of to-day are advocating these same principles will be seen later. This is a part of Christian education.

John Locke, an English educator of the seventeenth century, had truth on the subject of education. Of the languages, he says: “When I consider what ado is made about a little Latin and Greek, how many years are spent in it, and what a noise and business it makes to no purpose, I can hardly forbear thinking that parents of children still live in fear of the schoolmaster’s rod, which they look on as the only instrument of education; as if a language or two were its whole business.”

Character was valued by this man, and his statement as to the relative importance of study is valuable to parents and teachers. “Reading and writing and learning I allow to be necessary, but yet not the chief business. I imagine you think him a very foolish fellow that should not value a virtuous or a wise man infinitely before a scholar. Not but that I think learning a great help to both, in well-disposed minds; but yet it must be confessed also that in others not so disposed, it helps them only to be the more foolish or worse men.

“I say this, that when you consider the breeding of your son, and are looking out for a schoolmaster, or a tutor, you would not have, as is usual, Latin and logic only in your thoughts. Learning must be had, but in the second place, as subservient only to greater qualities. Seek out somebody that may know how discreetly to frame his manners: place him in hands where you may, as much as possible, secure his innocence, cherish and nurse up the good, and gently correct and weed out any bad inclinations, and settle in him good habits. This is the main point; and this being provided for, learning may be had into the bargain.”

To how great an extent are Protestants following this excellent advice? In what schools for Protestant boys and girls is innocence cherished? where is the good nourished? where are bad inclinations gently weeded out, and good habits settled? where do these things take a position ahead of book learning?

“Virtue,” continues Locke, “as the first and most necessary of those endowments that belong to a man or gentleman, was based on religion. As the foundation of this, there ought very early to be imprinted on his mind a true notion of God.” Here one finds a clear conception of Christian education, which parents of to-day would do well to study.

The study of the classics, together with the memory work which was the chief characteristic of these studies, was not the only defect in papal education; hence it is not the only error from which educators, led, as one must believe, by the spirit of truth, have from time to time broken away. The cramming system, so justly denounced by thinking minds as one of the most far-reaching defects of the present school system, is a mark of papal education wherever it may be found. And probably no generation has passed which has not heard some voice lifted against this pernicious practice of the schoolroom. The God of heaven recognizes that the human mind contains the highest possibilities of earth; the child is a part of himself; and when wrong methods of education are used in dealing with developing minds, He, the head of the body, of which we are members, feels the hurt; so it is that Christian education is an emanation from the mind of God.

Montaigne, speaking of education in the sixteenth century, said: “It is the custom of schoolmasters to be eternally thundering in their pupils’ ears, as if they were pouring into a funnel, while the pupils’ business is only to repeat what their masters have said.” He is taught that “a tutor ... should, according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it [the child’s mind] to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste and relish things, and of himself to choose and discern them.... Too much learning stifles the soul, just as plants are stifled by too much moisture, and lamps by too much oil. Our pedants plunder knowledge from books, and carry it on the tips of their lips, just as birds carry seeds to feed their young.... We toil and labor only to stuff the memory, but leave the conscience and understanding unfurnished and void.”

As late as January, 1900, Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal, wrote concerning the cramming process of the popular schools: “Do American men and women realize that in five cities of our country alone there were, during the last school term, over sixteen thousand children between the ages of eight and fourteen taken out of the public schools because their nervous systems were wrecked, and their minds were incapable of going on any further in the infernal cramming system which exists to-day in our schools?... Conservative medical men who have given their lives to the study of children place the number whose health is shattered by overstudy at more than 50,000 each year.... It is cramming, cramming, cramming. A certain amount of ‘ground must be gone over,’ as it is usually called. Whether the child is physically able to work the ‘ground’ does not enter into the question.”

The writer dwells upon the evils of night study, and continues: “True reform always begins at the root of all evils, and the root of the evil of home study lies in the cramming system.”

Mrs. Lew Wallace says: “Go into any public school, and you will see girls pallid as day lilies and boys with flat chests and the waxen skin that has been named the school complexion. Every incentive and stimulus is held out; dread of blame, love of praise, prizes, medals, badges, the coveted flourish in the newspapers—the strain never slackens.... The burden is books. The tasks imposed on the young are fearful. The effort seems to be to make text-books as difficult and complicated as possible instead of smoothing the hill so high and hard to climb.”

In her characteristic style, Mrs. Wallace condemns the usual methods of teaching arithmetic and language:—

“Said a mother, ‘Two and two are what?’”

“The boy hesitated.

“‘Surely you know that two and two make four.’

“‘Yes, mama; but I am trying to remember the process.’

“Process, indeed!...

“One day Mary was bending over a tablet writing words on both sides of a straight line, like multiplied numerators and denominators.

“‘What are you at now?’ asked grandma.

“Mary answered with pride, ‘I am diagraming.’

“‘In the name of sense, what’s diagraming?’

“‘It’s mental discipline. Miss Cram says I have a fine mind that needs developing. Look here, grandma, now this is the correct placing of elements. Fourscore and seven are joined by the word and, a subordinate connective copulative conjunction. It modifies years, the attribute of the preposition. Ago is a modal verb of past time. The root of the first clause is—.

“‘Why, that’s Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg. I keep it in my work-basket and know it by heart.’

“‘Indeed! Well, ours is a simple personal—.’

“‘That’s enough. If President Lincoln had been brought up on such stuff, that speech would never have been written. He called a noun a noun, and was done with it.’”[173]

Montaigne could scarcely have given a more vivid description had he seen the grind of modern education, where grades are strictly kept, and all children, the strong and the tender alike, are forced through the same process. There is no relief save in dropping by the wayside when disease fastens its tendrils on the human frame.

Against this system all educational reformers have striven, but it remains with us still. Christian parents, could they see the relative value of soul and mental culture, would demand the establishment of a new order of things. Christian education alone can effect a cure.

Comenius strove to correct this error by the introduction of nature-study. He says: “The right instruction of youth does not consist in cramming them with a mass of words, phrases, sentences, and opinions collected from authors, but in unfolding the understanding, that many little streams may flow therefrom as from a living fountain.... Why shall we not, instead of dead books, open the living book of nature? Not the shadows of things, but the things themselves, which make an impression on the senses and the imagination, are to be brought before youth. By actual observation, not by a verbal description of things, must instruction begin.... Men must be led as far as possible to draw their wisdom, not from books, but from a consideration of heaven and earth, oaks and beeches; that is, they must know and examine things themselves, and not simply be contented with the observations and testimony of others.”

His fundamental principles were, “Education is a development of the whole man,” and “Many studies are to be avoided as dissipating the mental strength.”

A long stride was taken by Comenius toward breaking the mechanical teaching of the papacy. The error into which his followers fall is in making nature the all in all, failing to recognize the Word of God as the only guide and interpreter of natural phenomena. This mistake has led modern schools to take the position in science studies which is described in the following words by Frank S. Hoffman, professor of philosophy in one of America’s leading theological schools: “Every man, because he is a man, is endowed with powers for forming judgments, and he is placed in this world to develop and apply those powers to all the objects with which he comes in contact.”[174] In such words does he plainly state that human reason is the means by which man is to obtain his wisdom. Then follows his explanation of the method of procedure when reason has been thus exalted. These are his words: “In every sphere of investigation he [man] should begin with doubt, and the student will make the most rapid progress who has acquired the art of doubting well.”

Suppose, now, that the subject under consideration is some newly discovered natural phenomenon, and the student of nature wishes to investigate. According to Professor Hoffman, a modern theologian, and hence a teacher, he must “begin with doubt, and the student will make the most rapid progress who has acquired the art of doubting well.” Christian education, in contrast with this method, says, “Through faith we understand.”

That this method of study—to begin with doubt—is not only applicable to the natural sciences, but to the study of spiritual truths also, Professor Hoffman continues: “We ask that every student of theology take up the subject precisely as he would any other science: that he begin with doubt, and carefully weigh the arguments for every doctrine, accepting or rejecting each assertion according as the balance of probabilities is for or against it.... We believe that even the teachings of Jesus should be viewed from this standpoint, and should be accepted or rejected on the ground of their inherent reasonableness.”

Thus the spirit of doubt with which the child is taught to study nature, goes with him through all his school years; it grows with his growth; and if he enters a theological school to prepare for the ministry, he is confronted by the same method in the investigation of the teachings of Christ. What wonder that the results of modern education are a class of infidels and skeptics?

The words of President Harper, of Chicago University, are worth repeating: “It is difficult to prophesy what the results of our present method of educating the youth will be in fifty years. We are training the mind in the public schools, but the moral side in the child’s nature is almost entirely neglected.” Not only is it neglected, but faith is trampled to the ground, and human reason exalted above its prostrate form. “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” A pertinent question, indeed, for educators to answer.

This method of doubting is papal, and can be traced directly to Socrates, the Greek. Of him, we read: “Socrates was not a ‘philosopher,’ nor yet a ‘teacher,’ but rather an ‘educator,’ having for his function ‘to rouse, persuade, and rebuke’.... Socrates’ theory of education had for its basis a profound and consistent conception.”[175]

In dealing with his students, the same authority thus states his method of procedure: “Taking his departure from some apparently remote principle or proposition to which the respondent yielded a ready assent, Socrates would draw from it an unexpected but undeniable consequence which was plainly inconsistent with the opinion impugned. In this way he brought his interlocutor to pass judgment upon himself, and reduced him to a state of doubt or perplexity. ‘Before I ever met you,’ says Meno, in a dialogue which Plato called by his name, ‘I was told that you spent your time in doubting and leading others to doubt: and it is a fact that your witcheries and spells have brought me to that condition; you are like the torpedo; as it benumbs anyone who approaches and touches it, so do you.’”

We can readily trace the connection between the Socratic method of doubting and the same method as advocated by the professor of the theological school, for “his [Socrates’s] practice led to the Platonic revival,” and the Platonic system of education and its introduction in modern schools has been too thoroughly discussed in previous pages to need repetition here.

The Socratic method of teaching—the development of doubt—seems to characterize much of the teaching of to-day, if we can judge from an article which appeared in the Outlook, written by the editor, Lyman Abbott. The educational work is thus described:—

“The educational processes of our time—possibly of all time—are largely analytical and critical. They consist chiefly in analyzing the subjects brought to the student for examination, separating them into their constituent parts, considering how they have been put together, and sitting in judgment on the finished fabric or on the process by which it has been constructed.

“Thus all, or nearly all, study is analytical, critical,—a process of inquiry and investigation. The process presupposes an inquiring if not a skeptical mood. Doubt is the pedagogue which leads the pupil to knowledge.

“Does he study the human body?—Dissection and anatomy are the foundations of his study. Chemistry?—The laboratory furnishes him the means of analysis and inquiry into physical substances. History?—He questions the statements which have been unquestioned heretofore, ransacks libraries for authorities in ancient volumes and more ancient documents. Literature?—The poem which he read only to enjoy he now subjects to the scalpel, inquires whether it really is beautiful, why it is beautiful, how its meter should be classified, how its figures have been constructed. Philosophy?—He subjects his own consciousness to a process of vivisection in an endeavor to ascertain the physiology and anatomy of the human spirit; brings his soul into the laboratory that he may learn its chemical constituents.

“Meanwhile the constructive and synthetic process is relegated to a second place, or lost sight of altogether. Does he study medicine?—He gives more attention to diagnosis than to therapeutics; to the analysis of disease than to the problem how to overcome it. Law?—He spends more time in analyzing cases than in developing power to grasp great principles and apply them in the administration of justice to varying conditions. The classics?—It is strange if he has not at graduation spent more weeks in the syntax and grammar of the language than he has spent hours in acquiring and appreciating the thought and the spirit of the great classic authors. It has been well and truly said of the modern student that he does not study grammar to understand Homer, he reads Homer to get the Greek grammar. His historical study has given him dates, events, a mental historical chart; perhaps, too, it has given him a scholar’s power to discriminate between the true and the false, the historical and the mythical in ancient legends: but not to many has it given an understanding of the significance of events, a comprehension of, or even new light upon, the real meaning of the life of man on the earth. Has he been studying philosophy?—Happy he is if, as a result of his analysis of self-consciousness, he has not become morbid respecting his own inner life, or cynically skeptical concerning the inner life of others.

“It is doubtless in the realm of ethics and religion that the disastrous results of a too exclusive analytical process and a too exclusive critical spirit are seen. Carrying the same spirit, applying the same methods, to the investigation of religion, the Bible becomes to him simply a collection of ancient literature, whose sources, structure, and forms he studies, whose spirit, he, at least for the time, forgets; worship is a ritual whose origin, rise, and development he investigates; whose real significance as an expression of penitence, gratitude, and consecration he loses sight of altogether. Faith is a series of tenets whose biological development he traces; or a form of consciousness whose relation to brain action he inquires into; or whose growth by evolutionary processes out of earlier states he endeavors to retrace.

“Vivisection is almost sure sooner or later to become a post-mortem; and the subject of it, whether it be a flower, a body, an author, or an experience, generally dies under the scalpel. It is for this reason that so many students in school, academy, and college lose not merely their theology, which is perhaps no great loss, but their religion, which is an irreparable loss, while they are acquiring an education.”[176]

This spirit of doubt characterizes the teachings of modern higher critics. The critical study of the Bible, Dr. Newton tells us, “has disposed forever of the claim that it is such an oracle of God as we can submit our intellects to unquestioningly.” “Dr. Briggs says that there are three co-ordinate authorities—the church, the Bible, and reason. ‘But when they disagree, which is to be the final court of appeal?’ asks Dr. Newton. ‘They do disagree widely to-day.’ Dr. Newton believes that the ultimate court of appeal is reason,—not the reason of Thomas Paine and the present-day realistic rationalists, but rather the ‘Divine Reason’ of Socrates and of Plato.... Reason in this sense means not merely or chiefly the rationalizing faculty, but the moral nature—the whole spiritual being of man. ‘It is what conscience teaches, as well as what intellect affirms, that, together with the voice of the heart, forms the trinity of true authority—of reason.’”[177]

This is indeed the exaltation of reason. There is, in such a system, no room whatever for faith. W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, writing of Sunday-schools, attributes their decline to the adoption, by Sunday-school teachers, of the methods employed in the secular schools. A few words from him will suffice. He says: “With the spectacle of the systematic organization of the secular schools and the improvement of methods of teaching before them, the leaders in the church have endeavored to perfect the methods of the religious instruction of youth. They have met the following dangers which lay in their path; namely, first, the danger of adopting methods of instruction in religion which were fit and proper only for secular instruction; second, the selection of religious matter for the course of study which did not lead in a most direct manner toward vital religion, although it would readily take on a pedagogic form.”[178]

In order to show the reason why methods which are perfectly proper in giving secular education are not adapted to religious instruction, Mr. Harris explains: “The secular school gives positive instruction. It teaches mathematics, natural science, history, and language. Knowledge of the facts can be precise and accurate, and a similar knowledge of the principles can be arrived at. The self-activity of the pupil is ... demanded by the teacher of the secular school. The pupil must not take things on authority, but must test and verify.... He must trace out the mathematical demonstrations.... He must learn the method of investigating facts.... The spirit of the secular school therefore comes to be an enlightening one, although not of the highest order.”

The whole tendency of secular education, according to Mr. Harris, is to develop a spirit of investigation and proof. This, he says, is a means of enlightening, but not of the highest order. The highest means of enlightening the mind is by faith. That is God’s method. Christian schools must avoid the secular methods of instruction, adopting in their stead that highest form of enlightening,—faith. That separates Christian schools from secular schools in methods as well as in the subject matter taught.

This secular method of investigation saps the spiritual life, and is responsible for the decline in modern Protestantism. Mr. Harris continues: “Religious education, it is obvious in giving the highest results of thought and life to the young, must cling to the form of authority, and not attempt to borrow the methods of mathematics, science, and history from the secular school. Such borrowing will result only in giving the young people an overweening confidence in the finality of their own immature judgments. They will become conceited and shallow-minded.... Against this danger of sapping or undermining all authority in religion by the introduction of the methods of the secular school which lay stress on the self-activity of the child, the Sunday-school has not been sufficiently protected in the more recent years of its history.”

If the adoption of secular methods of teaching in the Sunday-school, where children are instructed one day only in the week, has so weakened Protestantism, what must be the result when children are daily taught in the public schools by methods which tend always to exalt human reason above faith. It is little wonder that five days’ instruction can not be counteracted by the very best Sabbath instruction even in those schools which have not adopted secular methods in teaching the Bible.

Protestants should learn from this that in starting Christian schools the methods followed in the secular schools can not be adopted. Here is the stumbling-block over which many are apt to fall. Religious instruction demands methods of teaching which will develop faith.

I can not refrain from recurring to the teachings of Comenius, since they so strongly opposed the methods of education followed by those who, to-day, claim to be his disciples. James H. Blodgett says: “Comenius, anticipating more modern leaders in the philosophy and the art of education, prepared an outline of the Pansophic School about 1650, in which the work of a complete education was divided for seven classes. The general school was to spend the first hour of the morning in hymns, Bible reading, and prayers.”[179] “Class III, the Atrial,” we are told by the same writer, “was to have the inscription, ‘Let no one enter who can not speak.’ In this class the boys should begin to read the Bible.... The history of this class is the famous deeds of the Biblical narrative.” Of Class IV we read: “A special collection of hymns and psalms must be arranged for this class; also an epitome of the New Testament, which should comprise a continuous life of Christ and His apostles, compiled from the four Gospels.... The accessory study is Greek.... It is comparatively easy to learn to read the New Testament [in Greek], and this is the chief utility of the study.” Bible study formed an important feature of the work of Class V, for concerning its work we read: “A Bible Manual, also, called the Gate of the Sanctuary, is to be placed in the pupils’ hands. This is to contain the whole of Scripture history in the words of the Bible, but so digested that it may be read in one year.”

Class VII was theological; and the reader will readily note the difference between the course of instruction marked out for it by Comenius, and that suggested by Professor Hoffman for theological students in the twentieth century. “Inscription over the door: ‘Let no one enter who is irreligious.’ ... The class book should be a work dealing with the last stage of wisdom on earth, that is to say, the communion of souls with God. Universal history should be studied, and in particular the history of the church for whose sake the world exists.... The future minister must learn how to address a congregation, and should be taught the laws of sacred oratory.”

Let it be remembered that Comenius was a bishop of the Moravian Brethren, a denomination noted for its extensive missionary work, its missions dotting the earth. Their activity in church work can readily be accounted for by their system of education. Any Protestant church which wishes to survive, and desires the spread of its principles, must see that its children are educated spiritually as well as mentally and physically.

We are now brought to consider another very important phase of education,—the relation of mental to physical training. False systems have ever exalted the former to the neglect of the latter. Christ combined the two, and educators from the seventeenth century on have presented correct views on the subject.

Locke begins his “Thoughts on Education” with these words: “A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.” “The attainment of this happy condition,” observes Painter, “is the end of education.... In his [Locke’s] mind, the function of education was to form noble men well equipped for the duties of practical life.”[180]

A pure soul in a sound body should precede study of mere facts. Locke’s ideas of education are thus described by Quick: “His aim was to give a boy a robust mind in a robust body. His body was to endure hardness, his reason was to teach him self-denial. But this result was to be brought about by leading, not driving him. He was to be trained, not for the university, but for the world. Good principles, good manners, and discretion were to be cared for first of all; intelligence and intellectual activity next; and actual knowledge last of all.... The prevalent drill in the grammar of the classical languages was to be abandoned, and the mother-tongue was to be carefully studied.... In everything the part the pupil was to play in life was steadily to be kept in view.”

And yet to-day, when the editor of one of our magazines proposed that our university students discuss the question, “What order of studies is best suited to fit the average man for his duties in the world of to-day?” or, “What is the relative importance of the various branches of education in fitting a man to secure his own happiness and rendering him a useful citizen and neighbor?” the president of Yale University replied: “Some of the men hesitate to give the official sanction of the university to a debate on short notice on questions of which most of the contestants know very little. Why should not our university students know and choose the practical studies? If they do not know them, why not?”[181]

There are educators, however, who are willing to break away from the conservatism of the past, and who advocate a change of methods in the elementary schools. Such are the thoughts presented by the superintendent of public instruction in the State of Michigan, in a manual issued in May, 1900. There is sound sense in the following paragraphs, which will appeal to all who consider the needs of a child’s mind. He says:—

“It is the duty of the schools to produce parallel growths of all the faculties, leaving the pupil free to swing out into the realm of choice with no distorted tastes or shortened powers. The training of the hand ministers to this parallel development.

“We remember when the sciences were taught wholly from the text. Later, the principles of Pestalozzi entered the class room, and we stood open-eyed and open-minded, as the truths of science were demonstrated with the proper apparatus in the hands of the teacher. But to-day Froebel’s idea has taken possession, and the pupil performs the experiment. It is his hand that creates the conditions; it is his eye that watches the changes, his hand that notes them. Science teaching has thus adopted the manual training idea; and such are the results that Latin, Greek, and mathematics are no longer considered as the only intellective subjects for college training.

“What the manual training idea has done for science teaching, it will do for mathematics and other kindred subjects. The dissatisfaction among professional and business men regarding the teaching of practical things in our schools is wide-spread. This is especially true regarding arithmetic, penmanship, spelling, and language. Anyone who doubts this needs but to enter the business places of his own city and make inquiry. There is a well-grounded feeling that in the mastery of arithmetic is a discipline closely allied to that needed in the activities of life; and when a father discovers that his child of sixteen or seventeen years has no idea of practical business questions and little skill in analytical processes, he justly charges the school with inefficiency. The difficulty, however, is that the pupil has had no opportunity to sense arithmetic. To him measurements and values are indefinite ideas. He commits facts to memory, and blindly tries to work out problems. If his memory and imagination are good, he stands well, and receives a high mark. But still the work is vague; it does not touch his life or experience; it has no meaning. Put that pupil into a manual-training school,—the boy in the shop, the girl in the kitchen [practical experience has demonstrated that the girl has a place in the shop also],—and at once mathematical facts become distinct ideas.

“Step into the shop of a manual-training school [or step into the well-ordered kitchen], and observe the boy with a project before him. What are the steps through which his mind must bring him to the final perfection of the work.

“First, he must give the project careful study.

“Second, he must design it and make a drawing of it. This at once puts mathematics into his hand as well as his head. He must use square, compass, try-square, and pencil. Exact measurements must be made, divisions and subdivisions calculated, lines carefully drawn.

“Third, he must select material of proper dimensions and fiber, and then must reflect how to apply it to the draught made so that there is no waste.

“Fourth, he must plane and saw to the line, correct and fit; in short, must create the project that has had existence in his mind and upon paper only. Then it is that his arithmetic begins to throb with life, his judgment to command, and his ethical sense to unfold.”

This is the testimony of teachers who have made a practical application of arithmetic and geometry in the carpenter shop. Children twelve and fourteen years of age solve problems in proportion, in square root, in measurements, and in denominate numbers, which baffle the skill of the ordinary high-school graduate. This, too, is a part of Christian education. Doubtless Christ himself gained most of his mathematical knowledge at the carpenter’s bench.

“The most practical education,” says Hiram Corson “(but this, so-considered, pre-eminently practical age does not seem to know it), is the education of the spiritual man; for it is this, and not the education of the intellectual man, which is, must be (or Christianity has made a great mistake), the basis of individual character, and to individual character ... humanity owes its sustainment.” The proper combination, then, of religious training and practical hand work in teaching mathematics or language will develop stability of character, and this is the end and aim of Christian education.

There are, however, in this twentieth century, various other ways of rendering education practical; and since these ways are a factor in the Christian training of youth, they should receive attention. God made no mistake when he gave to Adam the work of tilling the soil. Since the days of Eden, those men who have shunned the cities, and chosen instead to dwell in rural districts, have, as a rule, come closest to the heart of the Creator. The true way to study the sciences is to come in touch with Nature.

For this, also, we have the example of Christ. “In training His disciples, Jesus chose to withdraw from the confusion of the city, to the quiet of the fields and hills, as more in harmony with the lessons of self-abnegation He desired to teach them. And during His ministry He loved to gather the people about Him under the blue heavens, on some grassy hillside, or on the beach beside the lake. Here, surrounded by the works of His own creation, He could turn the thoughts of His hearers from the artificial to the natural. In the growth and development of nature were revealed the principles of His kingdom. As men should lift up their eyes to the hills of God, and behold the wonderful works of His hands, they could learn the precious lessons of divine truth. Christ’s teaching would be repeated to them in the things of nature.... The things of nature take up the parables of our Lord, and repeat His counsels.”

The teacher who has a desire to ennoble the character of his pupils will seek a place where Nature in her silent language gives lessons which no human tongue can utter. Parents who desire the best good of their sons and daughters, will, when the light of Christian education dawns upon their minds, hasten into the country, that the youthful minds over which they are keeping guard may be influenced by the natural rather than by the artificial.

It is not surprising that the best educators who have opened their minds to truth have taught that cultivation of the soil, with the training of the eye and the hand in the shop, should accompany mental discipline. Prof. James R. Buchanan, says: “Blessed is the farmer’s boy.... The industrial feature, not limited to handicraft, but embracing all forms of useful exertion, is the essential basis of a true education; as it insures, if rightly conducted, a worthy character, a healthy constitution, a solid intellect, and a capacity for practical success; for it gives vigor to the entire brain, and a far better invigorating mental discipline than can ever be obtained from text-books. The boy who has constructed a wagon, or a bureau, or raised a small crop, as instructed, has more independence of mind and originality than the one who has only studied text-books. The boys of Lancaster, Ohio, who gave half their time to useful industry, made better progress in school studies than the common school pupils who had their whole time for study, and at the same time presented a model of conduct in all respects unequaled in any non-working school in this country.”[182]

Close adherence to the text-book is the papal method of teaching, and is a necessary accompaniment of prescribed courses, while the humanistic tendency is well developed. Christian schools, because of the truths they advocate, are forced to depart from the established order in the educational world, and their education is rendered practical by joining the farm and the school.

This method of teaching is already followed in some places, showing that that system so often designated Christian education is not a thing of recent birth, neither is it the product of some man’s mind. Its principles have been made known from time to time, and these principles have been followed more or less carefully in all periods of the world’s history.

That the combining of soil-cultivation and study is a practical thing, and not a mere theory, is attested by the words of United States Consul-General John Karel, who reports as follows concerning “School Gardens in Russia:” “In a good many countries of western Europe, especially in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and partly in Sweden, the public village schools have sections of land allotted to them, which are either devoted to the use of the teachers, who take the profits therefrom, or serve for the establishment of school gardens. School gardens in western Europe bear, in a certain measure, a scientific character. Children are made to carry out in them practically what they learn theoretically.

“In Russia ... it was well known that the land owners and peasants were in great need of instruction in farming; consequently schools of all kinds were established by the ministry of agriculture throughout the country.... For the development of the gardening industry, schools were founded first in Penza, in Bessarabia, ... and in 1869 a school of gardening and viticulture was found at Nikitsk. The work of the Nikitsk school was divided as follows: During the winter semester there were three hours of lessons per day and four and one-half hours of practical study in the garden, vineyard, and in the cellar. During the summer semester the lessons in class lasted only one hour, or sometimes two hours, but the practical studies occupied daily six or even eight hours.”[183]

Teachers in these schools are enabled to support themselves at least partially from the sale of fruits, berries, vegetables, honey, etc., but this was not the chief inducement in starting school gardens. The writer last quoted continues: “The desire to add something to the low salaries of the village school teachers, and, on the other hand, to acquaint as much as possible, not only children, but also grown-up people, with gardening, sericulture, and apiculture, has caused an increase during the last ten years, in the number of school gardens, apiaries, and silkworm hatcheries. In 1892 there were about two thousand school gardens in Russia. At the present time [1897] there are 7,521, with 532 apiaries, and 372 silkworm hatcheries.”

Mr. Mescherski, who is chief of one of the departments of agriculture, and one of the principal advocates of school gardens in Russia, has stated the object of school gardens and their significance as follows: “School gardens ... are of importance on the following grounds. (1) Hygienic, as being a place for physical labor in the open air, so necessary for the teacher and pupils.... (2) Scientific educational, as acquainting children with the life of useful plants, developing their minds by the study of nature, and promoting in the rising generation a regard for labor and a more moral and Æsthetic sentiment concerning trees. (3) General economical ... and (4) personal economical,” which refers to the support of the teacher.

If the Russian government, on the liberation of its serfs and its crown peasants, found it so greatly to its advantage to establish school gardens, of what lasting benefit would they be to Christians! Protestants, instead of crowding into the cities where the laboring man is subject to the trades unions, trusts, and monopolies, should seek for themselves a few acres of land, and should see that schools are established for the education of their children where the mechanical text-book grind is replaced by the study of God’s will as revealed in His Word and works. Nature studies thus conducted, instead of developing doubt, will strengthen the faith of the pupil, and the students from such schools will be fitted for citizenship not only in the governments of earth but in the Kingdom of God. This also is a part of the system of instruction known as Christian education.