USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Religious Education Association : proceedings of the first annual convention, Chicago, February 10-12, 1903 > Part 12
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Within five years, through the intelligent and devoted efforts of a few of our leaders, new energy has been infused into the department of religious work, and espe- cially into the department of Bible study. No man or woman who is interested in the purposes of this Con- vention should fail to procure and read the annual report of the International Committee of the Y. M. C. A. on religious work and the " Prospectus for Religious Work.": Indisputably the Bible-study department of the Y. M. C. A. is now, in its materials and in its methods, in advance of all other agencies for religious education that the church possesses. The "Prospectus for Reli- gious Work" sets forth in detail forty courscs of Bible study, varied, adaptable, practical, and designed to inter- est in personal study. These courses have been carefully prepared by experts, repeatedly tested in actual teach- ing, and thoroughly revised in the light of experience. They have been selected from many times their number. The Sunday schools and Young People's Societies could not do better than at once to adopt some of them. It will be a sad oversight if Sunday-school workers who are now aroused to the need of something better fail to perceive the rich resources which the Y. M. C. A. offers ready to their hands.
Last year 43,000 young men attended the Bible
* These can readily be procured by sending to the Committee, 3 West Twenty ninth street, New York city.
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classes of the Young Men's Christian Associations. Great as this number is, it represents but the infancy of the movement. These men came to the buildings. The latest thought is to go at the noon hour and carry reli- gious instruction to the 4,000,000 men engaged in manu- facturing pursuits-the mechanics, the lumbermen, the miners, the mill operatives of all kinds. The thing is perfectly practicable. Its success has already been bril- liantly demonstrated in Cleveland, and now in 125 cities a beginning has been made with a weekly attendance of fully 30,000 men.
If we wonderingly and admiringly compare the 20,000-ton steamship of today with the caravels of Columbus, if thus we compare the vast mills of the United States Steel Company with the single forge and anvil of the old-time village blacksmith, with equal wonder may we compare the equipment and machinery of the Young Men's Christian Association with everything that the church has hitherto possessed for the promotion of religious education among young men.
But we are here not simply to review and to rejoice in what we have. We are here to plan yet larger things. We are here not merely to encourage one another to renewed energy along familiar lines, but to open wholly new lines. Now one thing especially which I hope this Convention will make plain is that all over this country individual workers are coming to a broader conception of the scope of religious education. What I have to say applies just as much to the Sunday schools as to the Young Men's Christian Associations and the Young Peo- ple's Societies. Hitherto it has been generally assumed without discussion that religious education consists sim- ply in studying the Scriptures. Many of our Sunday schools are even called " Bible schools," to indicate this fact. Of the history of the Christian church for the last eighteen hundred years the mass of our young people
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grow up without a single idea, except possibly some vague notions about the Reformation. Of the present religious needs of the world and the agencies that are seeking to meet them, the mass of our young people never make any comprehensive and scientific study. Of the Christian religion, its progress and its problems, our young people have studied nothing nearer to themselves than the closing events of Paul's journey to Rome, as if the Holy Spirit had done and spoken nothing through the church since the first century. But the necessity for a broader work is already felt by many of our best work- ers. The Epworth League is doing something in the study of church history. In many Young Men's Christian Asso- ciations there are practical lecture courses and classes. In many churches there are men's clubs, but these are largely for older people.
What I plead for is the full recognition in our Sunday schools, in our Young People's Societies, and in our Associations, of three necessary and indissoluble branches of religious education : first, the Bible ; second, the his- tory of Christian life and effort; third, the needs and duties of the hour. To many persons the proposal to divide the time now given to Bible study and to place some other subjects beside the Bible will be most unwel- come. It will suggest the suspicion that this is the entering wedge of a movement to supersede the Bible altogether. But nothing could be farther from my mind. Let me illustrate what I mean. No earnest Christian could fail to enjoy teaching the sixth chapter of Gala- tians. How beautiful are those injunctions : "Let us not be weary in well-doing ; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. So then, as we have opportunity, let us work that which is good toward all men, and especially toward them that are of the household of the faith." But suppose that the teacher, after impressing this lesson upon his class, should take the next meeting to show
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them how in the course of history these principles have worked out in saintly lives, and suppose that at the meet- ing following he should discuss our present opportunities for doing good; would that be neglecting the Bible or depreciating it? We teach with delight the parable of the good Samaritan. But we have no class to study whether any people are today being beaten, wounded, robbed, and neglected.
When we come to reflect upon the narrow basis of our ordinary religious education, wonder grows that we attain as good results as we do. Take any average young man who has grown up in the Sunday school, the Endeavor Soci- ety, and the Y. M. C. A .; ask him about the system of poor- relief in the city. He can give no account of it. Ask him what hospitals there are, and whether they are ade- quate, whether up-to-date. He knows nothing. Go on about the social settlements, the boys' clubs, the prisons, whatever concerns the moral and religious welfare of the city. With mortification he confesses that he has been trained in nothing later than the parable of the good Samaritan. It is a shame to us all.
Our failure has arisen from a fundamental error as to the nature and right use of the Bible. Many people seem to think and talk as if the Bible were a sort of domestic receipt-book, something that you can consult and find . exactly what to do in each concrete instance. One Bible- class teacher said that he was trying to train his young men to go directly to the words of Jesus for decision in every difficulty. But God has not made right-living in thi's world so mechanical and easy as that. From Jesus we never get anything but a principle. Nothing is more surprising than the surpassing wisdom with which he abstains from laying down specific rules. In the applica- tion of the principles of Jesus we must put laborious sci- entific study upon the facts of our own time and place. - No man, for example, can learn the wisest method of
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helping the poor simply by studying the words of Jesus. Obviously the Master never intended that we should.
It may be said that we do now in reality all that I am advocating, only we do it in combination. A lesson is taught upon a Scripture passage which presents a gen- cral principle ; illustrations are drawn from Christian history and biography ; practical applications are made to current affairs ; and thus the whole field is really covered. There is some truth in this. But let us reflect upon some of the evils of the system. The exercise is called a Bible class. The time is limited. The intro- duction of the illustrative and practical matter crowds the actual study of the Bible into a very small space. No effort is made to fix the exact limits of the sacred writer's thought. No scientific study is given to the supposed present facts to which the Bible truth is applied. The scholar leaves with a confused idea as to how much was the word of Jesus and how much was the inference of the teacher. Let us have Bible classes in which the effort shall be simply to learn what the Bible contains, without mixing in any modern questions. Such study of the Bible for three months would revolutionize the opinions of many people. And let us have other classes for the investigation of present facts and the lessons of experience. And then let the Bible principles be applied to the ascertained facts.
If the present Convention should arouse fresh enthu- siasm in Bible study without such enlargement of the subject-matter of religious education as I am now urging, I greatly fear that the result will be more pedantry than spirituality. Men may make the Bible the sub- ject of their study without being interested deeply in practical religion. In studying Galatians, for example, we may follow Professor Ramsay in his learned investi- gations into the geography of Asia Minor, and we may become very certain that the readers whom Paul
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addressed lived in South Galatia and not in North Galatia. This is all interesting. It is in a true sense Bible study. But it is not study of the subject that Paul was interested in, namely, the ways of " doing good to all men as we have opportunity." Our secular schools have outgrown the fault of exalting the text- book at the expense of the subject-matter. Formerly children committed to memory statements about things. They did not look at the things. Now they are taken into the laboratory or into the field and are introduced to living creatures and nature in action. The difference in outcome of genuine knowledge is world-wide; and, strange to say, the essential meaning of the book is bet- ter understood than under the old system that gave the whole time to its words.
In an instructive article upon "The New Testament Conception of Prayer and the Extension of the King- dom," Professor Bosworth recently said :
He who would pray should have specific information regarding particular contemporary situations, their needs and possibilities. The prolonged study of definite contemporary situations will awaken the kindling interest and the strong sympathy which are essential to real prayer. To inform one's self about Jesus' ideal world-civi- lization and about the process of realizing it in particular communi- ties and individual lives in our own day, to think about the information thus gained, will bring one into a state of mind in which prayer will be natural and necessary. To do this will require time, but one cannot expect to do so great a thing without patiently edu- cating himself up to it.
Who can doubt the truth of these words ? And if their truth is admitted, how can we resist the conclusion that the church is under a solemn obligation to devote time to the patient education of young people in " con- temporary situations, needs, and possibilities."
Up to this time no general effort has been made to train the young in knowledge of the history of Christian . life and effort in past centuries. Christian people have
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in the past made costly mistakes, they have encountered fiery trials, they have won glorious victories. In the light of that history invaluable lessons of wisdom may be read. But it is all an unexplored continent to most of our young people. There are hundreds of names of confessors, heroes, martyrs, soldiers, preachers, singers - names that shine like stars in the night of human sin and sorrow. The story of William Tyndale, hunted like a nihilist and finally burned at the stake, for the crime of giving us our incomparable English Bible ; the story of John Howard, traversing Europe to explore the foul and infected prisons, and dying in Russia of camp fever in his devotion to the improvement of prisons and hospi- tals ; the story of Livingstone, covering the continent of Africa in weary marches and finally dying on his knees in prayer-these are but instances of the glorious examples that should be burned into the hearts of our young men and women. A suitable educational litera- ture should at once be created-text-books of golden deeds, brief biographics of Christian examples, clear and inspiring accounts of historical crises and movements.
I see in imagination the time when every Young Men's Christian Association and every Young People's Society will be a center not only for the study of the Bible, but for the study of all religious and moral prob- lems. There will be groups of young people studying the problems of the personal Christian life, the problems of the city, the problems of society, the problems of the nation, and the problems of the world. The moral and religious geography of the world will be considered. The evils, the needs, the signs of hope, the living leaders of cach nation will be known.
The prophet Micah in a sublime outburst exclaimed to the ancient Israelite : "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God ?" In this simple scheme
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we may find the curriculum of our new departments of reli- gious education. Let us by the study of history and of pres- ent facts learn the practical ways of justice and kindness.
REV. NEHEMIAH BOYNTON, D.D.,
PASTOR FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, DETROIT, MICHIGAN
More than half a century ago Horace Bushnell declared : "Brethren, whether you will believe it or not, a new day has come, If we will, we can make it a better day ; but it demands a furniture of thought and feeling such as we must stretch ourselves in a degree to realize."
It was a prophet's voice, true and strengthful, but soli- tary, and in common judgment "off the key." How Dr. Bushnell today would have hailed this growing com- pany greeting the dawn and stretching itself to realize and to actualize the possibilities of the fascinating and auspicious day.
The appreciation of inwardness as more real than out- wardness, of wholeness as more vital than fragmenta- riness ; of the usual as more consequential than the extra- ordinary ; of quiet, constant persistence as more effective than volatile, intermittent disturbance-these contribute to a recognition of spirit and proportion which demand for their domestication abundant provision of new, strong, up-to-date "furniture of thought and of feeling."
Young People's Societies afford a most inviting and important opportunity for religious and moral education, in the modern sense, because these Societies meet life so largely along the avenues of service. If the Sunday schools stand predominantly for instruction in righteous- ness, the Young People's Societies stand for the fitting of Christian ideas to life and for the inspiration of serv- ice. "Nothing," says Carlyle, "is so terrible as active ignorance! What one does is very largely determined by what one sees ; the area of one's activity is measured by the amplitude of one's horizon; and, hence, one's
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services must be petty unless one's sight is wide-eyed, and one's vision is clear."
Modern religious education, then, is capable of three great ministries through Young People's Societies :
1. Regarding the idea of salvation. An evangelist of international fame as a man both of parts and of piety, in an address delivered before a thronging multitude, not a month ago, earnestly and vigorously protested against the traditional and widely current idea of salvation, as either a sort of fire insurance from loss, or a card of admission one day to a spectacular paradise. The sig- nificance of the protest was its confession of the inade- quacy of the restricted idea, in which phrases have been overworked and principles undervalued. The most incisive study of Christian missions of which I know, from the pen of Dr. William Newton Clarke, accentu- ates the conviction that "the narrowing of the idea of salvation is a main cause of the weakness of the mission- ary motive." In some way a great inclusive persuasion has dropped away from the conception.
The literature of social problems bristles with complaint that the implications of the law of love are not in explicit evidence, and that the fact that "one man can no more be a Christian alone than one man can sing an oratorio alone" is a fact not clearly apprehended. Salvation as the ally of pure individualism is seen as a pious and pernicious manifestation of refined selfishness. Salva- tion as moral fellowship with God annihilates the self- ishness of individualism, through personal participation with Him in the great world enterprises whose redemp- tion is the meaning of his providence and the consumma- tion of his purpose.
Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul May keep the path, but will not reach the goal. While he who walks in love may travel far, Yet God will lead him where the blessed are.
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The urgency which is pressing Young People's Socie- ties out into all forms of endeavor and of service, the lend-a-hand spirit which is so buoyantly and optimistically actualizing the faith of the rising generation, wait in many instances for their "furniture of thought and feeling" to give adequacy, dignity, and purpose. Meagerness of conception and low horizon account for the regretted vacillation and impotence of many Young People's So- cieties today. The organization waits to be inspirited with conceptions as whole as the enthusiasm is high, or as the purpose is emphatic.
Religious education regarding the idea of salvation in its naturalness and inclusion is quite as essential as either moral enthusiasm or Christian endeavor. Young Peo- ple's Societies need not alone the momentum of a . glowing faith: they need as well the inspiring confidence of an adequate conception. A theological student, madly in love with oratory, once said to his Scotch classmate, "I tell you, utterance is a fine thing." "I think it is finer to have something to utter," replied the canny fellow student.
A brave, incisive, reverent campaign of education among Young People's Societies, in the interests of the widening truth of salvation, would give a direction to energies which today largely miscarry, and a meaning to organization which would redeem it to nobler and more worthy spiritual uses.
2. The idea of spirituality. One of the potent ways in which the dead hand of the past grips and stifles the life of the present is revealed in the restrictions of the idea of spirituality. To the great majority, spirituality is an unusual, an unattractive, and an unreal soul-posses- sion: unusual, because of exceeding difficulty of attain- ment; unattractive, because its price is harrowing sacrifice; unreal, because associated with experiences which so far as throbbing, actual life is concerned, are
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tangential rather than circumferential. "Beware of a religion," exclaims a French writer, "which substitutes itself for everything: that makes monks. Seek a reli- gion which permeates everything: that makes Christians."
The spirituality which is in residence in an enlarging soul, which permeates the whole life, which informs com- mon abilities, exercises itself in homely tasks, wears everyday clothes, goes to market and to mill, seeks in every way self-realization in order to a more adequate self-devotion, loses itself not upon the solitary mountain but in the bustling crowd, asks not for dreams or prophets' ecstacies, but just a chance to live capaciously for the world - such a wholesome, human, athletic con- ception, which is happily gaining ground at present, is not the gift of the religious appreciation of yesterday to the life of today: rather we have pictures delineating spiritual values which are largely passive suffering; biog- raphies of Saints, consisting quite largely of the records of mawkish, uncanny and celibate experiences which are so far removed from common life as to furnish occasion for marvel and wonder, but not for inspiration. They emphasize the separateness and not the inclusion of the spiritual life.
The result is that a good deal of the exhortation today is directed toward a type of life, and is oblivious to a temper of life which alone can give any type virility. A salvation army lassie in her slum work, worthy as it is, does not exhaust the idea of the spiritual life. The capacious, cultured, consecrated spirit of the lamented Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer gives that life a brilliant and blessed radiance which is glorified by the area and pro- portion of the soul it permeates. Robertson, stripped because of his utter integrity, of every positive belief save one, namely, that it is always right to do right, and dedicating his whole soul to live in every fiber of his being, in every item of his experience, in every moment
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of his time-that solitary, possibly meager, but yet verified and real persuasion - is an example of trench- ant and triumphant spirituality quite out of the latitude and longitude of a Mr. Alline, whose diary has the entry: "On Wednesday, the Ist, I preached at a wed- ding and had the happiness thereby to be the means of excluding carnal mirth." Phillips Brooks, with his ring- ing exhortation, "Pray and work for fulness of life above everything: full red blood in the body: full honesty and truth in the mind: and the fulness of a grateful love for the Saviour in your heart ;" Henry Drummond, that lustrous spiritual star of the first magnitude, knight- errant of truth, lover of the souls of boys, who could never escape the fascination of a Punch and Judy show, or the sedative of a first-rate story; James Chalmers, intrepid, inveterate missionary to the cannibals, who took the hardships of his life as "pepper and salt, giving zest to work and creating appetite for more;" who thought the word "sacrifices" should be left out of a Christian's vocabulary, and who almost dictatorially demanded for missionaries "men and women without any namby- pambyism;" these all present spirituality in usable form, dominating ordinary experience, effective in the widest areas, and master of the feast of life. This spirituality is athletic, not anæmic; it is contagious; one craves it for one's own soul-possession. It identifies the religious with the real; it demonstrates that nothing truly human lies outside of the Christian sphere; it bids men quit the mere quest of spirituality and be content to live a whole life in sympathy with Christ's ideals and inspirations, to find in the life itself the glowing satis- faction of an abiding fellowship and an actual workable spirituality.
Surely, broader ideas of spirituality, to be matched with the widening of our present-day life, will come through our Young People's Societies only as religious
.
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instruction has its opportunity, and the mind of Christ is regarded for vision as the heart of Christ is cherished for service.
3. The third suggestion regarding religious and moral education through Young People's Societies is in the nature of a corollary to the second, and relates to the mighty and puzzling question of amusements. There is no question of more pressing importance, as regards young people, no question in more dire confusion, or which should give lovers of youth greater concern today than the question of amusements. We have fallen upon an age the very intensity of which flees to recreation for a breathing space, and then proceeds to play just as hard as it has but just now worked. Very rapidly the amuse- ments of life are getting into an altogether dispropor- tionate relation to the actuality of life.
If you ask how the colleges are solving it, you find that as it appears in athletics very few are inclined to tackle it. Athletics run wild just at present in the majority of American colleges. If you ask how the religious papers are helping to solve it, you are met in many quarters by casuistry in place of clear, explicit statements, by advice which weakens instead of strength- ening the appeal, and by the "better-not," "keep-on - the-safe-side" style of argument, which has almost lost the respect, and which certainly no longer commands the judgment, of the great majority of our youth. If you ask the young people themselves, you find that at Society socials they indulge in one form of amusement, and in their own circles quite another, with no very clear reason why, beyond a cloudy impression that it is "different in the Society." Here that pernicious dualism appears which has been the trick donkey of the elect for cen- turies. Amusements represent the great unrelated fact in the young people's life today. That amusements are to be harnessed and driven in the interests of the whole
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