revelation of God in His Word are convinced but for the intervention of our soon-coming Lord, the prostituted genius of man can, and perhaps will, terminate the greater pairt of the human race and blow up the planet. An emphasis on science without an emphasis on char acter, morals and spirituality is like carefully training a child in the use of a gun, which he will kill others or blow out his own brains. In the United States, because of vocal, active minor ity pressure groups, who are everlastingly crying, “ In tolerance!” we now work on the preposterous theory that it is illegal to teach our young people in any of our public institutions the faith on which our Republic rests. For example, a public school teacher can teach the tenets of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, but not of New Testament Christianity. Someone has pointed out that she can talk all she wants about Nero, but she dare not tell about his distinguished contemporary, the Apostle Paul, or, in any case, she dare not tell the secret of his dynamic lijfe. In view of the place given to God and the Christian religion in our national history, it would seem right and logical that the government that makes such a profes sion of trust in God is under a solemn obligation to impart the truth about God which is set forth in the historical documents that lie at the basis of our national life. But, once again, we can no longer depend upon our public institutions to carry out this wonderful mission. Here again, we must depend solely upon the Christian school if the job is to be done. We cannot depend upon the secular college classroom to care about the souls of our young people, their personal relationship to God, and the lofty Christian standards that have made us great. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry said, “Many young people re ceive excellent secular education, of course. Without the integrating perspective of Christianity, however, such education soon destroys itself and its people. It cannot pump into the blood-stream of national life those nutriments essential for survival, let alone vital ity. Much of today’s secularism and paganism is the fruit of education divorced from the Christian faith.” Secular education leaves young men and women without pointing out to them the direction of life. They are left mere playthings of the fates, feathers in a mighty wind, pieces of driftwood on the ocean of eter nity. They are without any invisible means of support. Young men and women without spiritual resources, without a vital, living, positive, perpendicular relation ship with God through faith in the God-Man, Jesus Christ, become the “hollow” people of T. S. Eliot’s poem, who have lost their direction, and who have lost their souls. The fact that moral power is the only answer to thermonuclear power, desperately demands an educa tional effort that is basically Christian. J. Edgar Hoover says, concerning the morality of Communism, that Communist “morality is not deter mined by ethical standards grounded in an absolute, but in the expedient interpretations of the party—meaning in actual practice the whim and desires of the ruling clique or party leader. This leads to the terrifying doc trine that ‘the end justifies the means.’ ” He further says, “ This rejection of God gives Com munism a demonic aspect — transforming it into a fanatical, satanic, brutal phenomenon.” This, of course, is an overt, official atheism. But I remind you of the fact that in the United States and other democracies, we have a similar break in the con tinuity of our spiritual heritage, which takes the form of an actual paganism that nevertheless is combined
with a lip service to the ancient faith, or at any rate, an unwillingness to deny it outright. This has become dramatically apparent in the obvious discrepancy be tween our hypocritical morality and our immoral beha vior. But which of the two threats—official aetheism or actual atheism—is the more dangerous? It is difficult to decide. But it is clear that ours is the only one we can do anything about, and that brings me to this: our morals have gone all soggy, and black and white have been blended into a ghastly grey. Nevertheless, we have inherited a morality, a morality revealed to us specific ally in the content of the New Testament and person ally in the matchless person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the area of education we have not thought as deeply about this as we have thought about scientific research. What an enigma it is that we are now willing to spend 40 billion dollars to place a man on the moon, which has no more moral and spiritual significance than making mud pies in the backyard! I agree with Sir Robert Watson, the British scientist, who said, “ Spacism is only scrambled escapism.” Citing the tragic condi tions that exist in our world with respect to nutrition, health, shelter, education, for more than two-thirds of the earth’s population, his point is that our inability to face up to the realities of the moment in which we live has made us eager to get out the escape hatch into space and leave the mess behind. Obviously, escapism is no answer at all. We are willing to spend 40 billion dollars in a spectacular stunt, but we seem utterly unwilling to pay an equal price for success in an enterprise with out which our missile effort is catastrophic in its ulti mate effect. I refer to the restoration of Christian faith and morality, and this faith and morality are no longer reproduced and taught in the crossly materialistic insti tutions o f our day. Once again I remind you that the last citadel in this respect is the Christian educational institution. Some one has rightly said, “The mandatory need of our time is the discovery or rediscovery of an ethical creed that can give Western man at this juncture in his history, steady moral guidance.” But “ steady moral guidance” can come only from Christian experience and Christian education. It is not necessary that we search for this ethical creed. We possess it. And one of the ways in which our fundamental faith can be renewed and propa gated for our time is by seeing to it that our young people receive a Christian liberal arts education, and that our nation’s leaders know and believe in our rich Christian heritage. The mighty revelation of God in His Holy Word must be carefully blended into every area o f academic life. Since this is no longer the pre rogative of our secular institutions, the Christian insti tution must do it, or it will not be done. Devout Chris tians are concerned by these trends in a secular age, and they feel that beyond the shadow of successful contra diction, the educational institution that is based, built and bulwarked on the inerrant Word o f God and the person o f Christ, in all the majesty of His Deity, is our only hope. We who believe in the Christian way of life must support such educational institutions as never before. To teach and preach vital Christianity one must know the real Christ by personal experience. One must teach and preach out of the laboratory of unimpeach able experience and no man can know Jesus Christ in personal experience without the mystery of the new birth. This is the climactic, dramatic metamorphosis which the Holy Spirit alone accomplishes in the heart of man. This is the miraculous element in Christianity. As Dr. Chafer said: “ This is the most stupendous thing which God does on this planet.” THE KING'S BUSINESS
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