May 1924
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
271
Some years ago, by invitation of one of the great teach ers who was at that time principal of the largest Boys’ School in the world, with several thousand of students on the Bast side of New York under his supervision, I visited his school and sat on the platform in front of this great assembly of the future American citizens. He arose in dignity and solemnity amidst perfect silence and read the Bible and offered a most sincere and helpful prayer; then immediately passed to a very impressive flag exercise, and thus began the day with this holy combination of the Bible and the flag before the eyes and in the hearts of his stu dents. That scene fastened itself to memory and has been the fountainhead of a desire that I might see the day when the same religious atmosphere should be created in every school in the land. Those boys can never be separated from its impression either in religion or patriotism. One of the greatest influences in all my boyhood life was the daily reading of the Bible and prayer in the old country school- house. It may have had more to do with my life than all the other lessons learned within those walls. Anyway, I must believe that the arithmetic and geography were sec ond to the great things of the soul. I. am cognizant of the objections which have been made and the difficulties which might be mentioned. But I can discover no reason why parts of the Bible should not be de signated for daily reading, something after the manner of the selection of Scripture for our Sunday Schools, and ac companying this reading, without comment, a brief prayer in recognition of God and the necessity for His guidance, be offered; if no other, then a daily repetition of the Lord’s Prayer. If the teacher should be an atheist, there is no place for him or her as a teacher of our children. Some one else ought immediately to be substituted if the teacher should have any opposition to the Bible. This is nominally a Christian country and that teacher should abide by this public desire or give up this position. There is a far better way for either an atheist or an irreligious person to earn their living. This is freedom, and there is no other. This is democracy,— and there is no other. The Bible should be in our public schools, second, Because Education Demands It Mark Twain, in his story of Huckleberry Finn, tells about Huck’s father, coming into the village after a week of drunkenness in the woods, finds the boy he has deserted going to school with a book in his hand. The father asks the child to read a page and when the boy has dutifully fulfilled the task, tears the book into shreds, shakes the ehild until he is half-unconscious and then hisses the words, “ I never could read a word, my father could not read a word and I will cowhide you well if you don’t give up these hifalutin ideas. No child of mine is ever going to know more than his father and his grandfather.” That idea is purely humorous and riduculous and has no relation to real life in America, for here education has its right place and an extremely important place. A part of the nation’s business is to educate its young people and prepare them for self-government and for life. Wendell Phillips once said that Europe greeted our an nouncement of universal suffrage with the words, “A congress of mad men, a republic of lunatics.” To which Fisher Ames answered, “ A monarchy or an autocracy is a man of war, staunch, iron-ribbed and resistless when under full sail, yet a single hidden rock sends her to the bottom. Our Republic is a raft hard to steer, but you can send two cannon-balls through every log in the raft and you cannot sink her.”
It is this that makes for the permanency of a republic. One man killed and an autocracy is slain, but to destroy a republic you must murder the millions. This necessitates that each individual has his definite place to fill and must- be prepared by the best education possible to occupy that important position. His education should not be narrow or incomplete. It should be broad and sufficient. It should include all that is necessary to a real education. There fore, the Bible should have its place in every system of edu cation. No student can afford to ignore all the world’s greatest literature or all the world’s most important history or some of the world’s best philosophy, or all the founda tion of all the world’s laws, or even some elements of sci ence. All this is included within the covers of the Bible which is acknowledged to be the greatest book, or collec tion of books in the world. Merely from the standpoint of education, the Bible should be in every school room in the land, in relation to which now there is an astonishing ignorance. This should not be increased or allowed to continue but immediately remedied. We have our serious defects in education, but none of them more serious than this. The Bible should be in the public school, third, Because Morality Demands It We have had great success in this Western world in solving mechanical problems. I was much interested re cently in reading about the possibility of making a hole of any shape by an invention recently put into practical opera tion. Throughout all the years, the ordinary auger with its gimlet-like point could bore away and make a round hole of various sizes. Roundness was an excellent quality in a hole if you wished to fit into it a round peg. But what if it would serve your purpose better to use a square peg or a triangular one, then it would be a great convenience to bore a hole that is not round. Could this thing be done? Men always said “No” and carpenters with a chisel worked away at the round hole with great difficulty a length of time to transform it into a square hole. Now there is a combina tion of augers and machinery and adjustment, with which a hole of any shape or size can be quickly secured. We are great geniuses in the solution of these mechanical problems, but we have manifested a vast amount of ig norance in the moral world and inability to solve its pro blems. But if we fail here all our success in the mechanical and material world must ultimately be a .failure. If our youth are not given moral training, all other success goes for naught and we have been basely guilty in our relation to them. The tragic results of this guilt are witnessed in many places in the world now. In Germany, with all its past culture, morality is now at its lowest ebb. Bribery among officials is reported rampant, and for the first time in history all the cells at the police station are filled and the overflow is housed in various sections of the cities. Liquor and tobacco are freely sold to minors and the motto of a large percent of the German youth is “ To live one’s self out.” Leaders are convinced that only a revival of religion and morality can give any hope for the coming generation. We are in the same world and must live by the same principles and expect the same causes to produce the same effects. Geographical lines do not prevent the passing over. A friend of mine said he met recently in his city a boy of 11 years of age who was begging and gave evidence also of being dishonest. He said he asked him if he knew the Ten Commandments, and the boy replied that he had never (Continued on page 322)
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