USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Religious Education Association : proceedings of the first annual convention, Chicago, February 10-12, 1903 > Part 21
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4. The relation of the new organization to the churches.
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Ideally the ecclesiastical relations of the new organiza- tion should be as wide as Christendom. Its services should be extended to every association of Christians that desires to utilize them. In no sense is it to be regarded as a rival of the various educational boards of the different denominations. The work which they are undertaking is in almost every case not that which the new Association is fitted to undertake. But within one or more of its departments, it will be possible for the representatives of the different denominations to confer with each other and to arrive at a new apprecia- tion of cach other's point of view and interest.
To limit membership in the new organization in any way by credal tests would be unwise. It is Christian, and anything Christian cannot be foreign to it. And yet its functions are to be something more than the mere academic discussion of religion. Education is a matter of life and not of speculation. What is needed is not a new parliament of religions, but an association of reli- gious workers. The sessions both of the Association itself and of its departments should be marked by a practical spirit. It must help things to come to pass. But these things which are to be brought to pass are not merely educational. Pedagogy has no tricks to teach, and teachers-of all men-must be sincere.
If the Association, thus co-operating with the churches, thus gathering into itself representatives of all Christen- dom, can magnify that function which is so obviously its own, namely, the development of religious education, it will be rendering untold aid to the development not only of Christian unity, but of a Christian society.
And now, my friends, let me add, all these things will not work without the Holy Spirit; there and there alone is our trust. It would be idle and profane to submit so much apparently mechanical invention and plan for its working without lifting our prayers to Almighty God,
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saying: "Come, Holy Spirit, Come." Nothing but life will truly relate any organization to any other organiza- tion. There is no source of life and no guarantee of life to us save through the Holy Spirit. We must have divine life to fit to needs of human life the great institu- tion called the Sunday school, whose history we honor, and whose existence and hopes we regard as one of the proudest testimonials to the work of the Spirit of God in the past and in the present. The Sunday school of the church of God is here to stay. If, in the light of a more deeply Christian faith and pedagogy, it needs read- justment, then it shall be readjusted, as it has been read- justed, in the house of its friends, not in the camp of its enemies. If any readjustment shall come, as readjust- ment will come, as the hope and promise of readjustment have come, they shall come because we believe thoroughly that it is as necessary to be spiritual as it is to be scien- tific.
No man in his senses, no man under the touch of the Spirit of God, would for a moment believe that here we could lose sight of that great fact, the law and process of Christian evolution. A man said to me yesterday: "Why do you not make this thing so scientific as to teach the doctrine of evolution ?" We are doing better than that for the true doctrine of evolution; we are trusting the fact of evolution by rejoicing in the blade and the ear, but we have not expected the ear to come from anything else but from the blade, and we believe the full corn in the ear will come at last out of all that preceded it. Not out of new and superimposed inventions, but out of all that we have grown and gained in the past, shall we have the rich things of the future.
We must not distrust Christ's method of coming to larger things through and by use of what we have. We are serving, in this Convention, the great Master who, by his eloquence and tenderness and love, once wooed men
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and women far from their homes, and they were hungry at eventide. Always it is a false, and especially at such moments treasonable, relationship to Jesus that says to humanity : "Go to your homes and get bread in the even- tide."
Brethren, the Christian church and the Sunday school are responsible for the creation of new wants, great demands, awful thirsts, and even noble hungers in the human soul. The church will be the church of Christ when she stands ready to obey his command, "Give them to cat." We must obey this method. Never until we are willing to take our five loaves and two fishes and put them into the hands of Christ, and behold the amazing miracle wrought by which the five thousand wants were supplied with such a slender store, shall we be able to call ourselves truly his disciples in any crisis.
We know this is the way Jesus works in human progress. This is the anniversary of the birth of Abra- ham Lincoln. There were little conventions long ago that began sounding the music of the hearts of men who were desiring to save the Union. They had only five barley loaves and two fishes of faith. Did they have power to save the Union ? Not they alone. That great movement got into the living hands of Jesus ; five thousand wants were satisfied; the Union was saved; but more, twelve baskets full of broken pieces were gathered up, for better than saving the Union was the washing of our flag clean of the stain of slavery and so making it worthy of the air of heaven. And here, today, we are gathered in the presence of forces that come crying to us, asking that we shall embody the great Master, that we shall not be able to do anything with these things but by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Shall we oppose machinery with machinery? I believe in organization; I would learn it from our enemies, if I could not learn it elsewhere. Let me read you, for example, from the constitution of the "Bohemian Free-
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Thinking Guards," representing hundreds of thousands, whose system of education we ought to know about in order that we may fully garrison our own:
It is the duty of the organization committee to build up a purely atheistic doctrine founded on science ; to aim to unite the free-think- ing societies ; to keep children away from the superstitions of the Christian faith ; to use the free-thinking press of the land to resist all attacks made upon free-thinking societies; to see that all books and novels and stories of Christianity are removed from the libra- ries. The Free-Thinking Guards is an association, and represents an organization which is not only defensive from the attacks of Christians, but is aggressive in teaching free·thinking principles and bringing up our children in those principles ; and we must not allow our children again to fall into the grasp of religious superstition.
I could read here today platforms, constitutions, and the declarations of societies such as would indicate the most terrible unity of our foes. Here is an American child, he may be the son of foreign-born parents ; by and by he is to vote; it is his father that tells us that the Bible shall not be read in the public schools. How shall we oppose these things ? By a cold engine, beautiful and bright, polished to the last degree ? No, we shall con- nect the engine with the boiler, we shall put under the boiler the fire divine; by and by there shall be move- ment, by and by there shall be achievement. We may either have a Babel here or a Pentecost. At Babel they who gathered together were of one language. They builded their tower toward heaven; it was man trying to connect with the skies. It ended in confusion. At Pente- cost they were of all languages, they sought from heaven a connection from heaven to earth. Each at last under- stood the other. It is a shorter distance for God to come from heaven to earth than it is for man to get from earth to heaven. Here today, of all faiths, of one accord, in one place, our prayer, our pleadings, until at length we are answered, should be : "Come, Holy Spirit, come !"
DISCUSSION
REV. GEORGE R. MERRILL, D.D.,
SUPERINTENDENT CONGREGATIONAL, HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
I am to discuss only so much of the matter before us as concerns the relation of the new organization to organized Sunday-school work, specifically to the Inter- national Sunday School Association, on whose Executive Committee I have the honor of serving. I do not, how- ever, officially represent that committee, or speak for it, or for anybody, except myself and those who may agree with me.
The International Sunday School Association is, in associated capacity, the million and a half men and women who are actually doing the Sunday-school work of which some of us were talking last evening. The new organization must reckon with it in the way of courtesy, having Christian regard for its prior occupation of a cer- tain area of the Sunday-school field. The new organiza- tion must reckon with it in wisdom, to make itself of the largest use. For these million and a half of actual Sunday- school workers are the very people by whom the theories and plans of the new organization must be tested and carried out, if they are to be of any practical use.
The relation of the new organization to the Inter- national Association may be expressed, I submit, in two general propositions :
I. The utmost care should be taken in formulating the meaning and mode of the new organization not even apparently to antagonize present organized Sunday- school work. There is no need of doing so, the field of religious and moral education offers enough untilled and untouched areas for abundant present occupation. It
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would be a mistake, in a day which demands economy of force and the prevention of waste in spiritual as well as physical processes, and whose religious watch-word is "federation." No doubt the result would be some dis- integration of present organized work, but the work of the new organization would be more seriously affected. To wound the feelings of our brethren, to bar out from co-operation with us a multitude of people as anxious as ourselves for a great forward movement in religious education, to make a schism in the hosts of those now united in Sunday-school work, these things are neither wise nor Christian.
And yet we may not conceal from ourselves that they are likely to result, if the new organization, turning away from other and unoccupied fields, enters what, by the consent of eighty per cent. of those who are doing the Sunday-school work of the continent, is the province of the International Sunday School Association ; or, to be more frank and specific, if the new organization includes in its program the preparation and advocacy of general schemes of Sunday-school lessons of its own, in opposi- tion to the International lessons. I hold no brief for those lessons : I am making no argument for them or for the International Association. I simply state, in the frankest way, as the occasion demands, a situation and an outlook as they appear to me.
2. The relation of the new organization to the Inter- national Sunday School Association should be one of co-operation and help. The great company of associated Sunday-school workers have no foolish notion that they have reached perfection. They greatly appreciate their own need of help, especially upon the educational side of their work. Only in frankness it should be said that they do not conceive this as the only, or even the chief, side of it. They desire to have set before them educa- tional ideals that will fit into the larger conceptions they
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hold of the service committed to them. They would like to have put within their reach the assured results of the scientific study of childhood. They realize that a great weakness in their work is the lack of trained teachers, and will eagerly welcome means and agencies that will secure such teachers. They feel the need of expositions of Scripture which, being true and scholarly, shall yet be keyed to their use. They are greatly anxious for a generation in the ministry of men who know the English Bible and can teach it. They would like more light on specific adaptations of the record of divine revelation to the progressive stages of mental devel- opment. They are waiting for an agreement of experts on the proper range, material, and method of advanced courses in Bible study. For these, and for a multitude of other things, in regard to which they cannot wisely, in their associated capacity, make or indorse experi- ments, they will be glad of the co-operation and help of the new organization, which is competent for these very things. In return they will give it, what it must have, if it is to amount to anything, and what it can find nowhere else, the advantage of their numbers, their enthusiasm, and their organization, in utilizing the fruits of its labors, in the broad fields of related opportunity that are waiting.
PRESIDENT CHARLES J. LITTLE, D.D., GARRETT BIBLICAL INSTITUTE, EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
The urgent request to take part in this discussion, I could not well decline, yet my contribution to it will be, I fear, quite scant. Walter Bagehot in that wise and witty book, The English Constitution, in which he united the insight of Aristotle with the humor of Swift, con- trasted the literary theory with the actual working of the British government. We may apply his method to every organization, even the unborn one around whose cradle we linger expectant. The literary theory of it
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can be stated easily: It is to be an organization of Protestant Christians whose purpose shall be to co-ordi- nate and illuminate all agencies that are or may be em- ployed in religious and moral education. A splendid enterprise, surely; daring, difficult, and fraught with some danger and more opportunity.
But the history of all organizations shows their actual working to depend, not upon the literary theory of them, but upon the character of their members, their machinery, and especially of their managers. This is the story of cities, churches, corporations, combinations, from the days of Moses and Solon, to the days of Morgan and Mitchell. A body of Protestant Christian educators ! Would that the time were ripe for an organization com- prehending also the Catholic and the Jew! These may insist upon excluding themselves ; yet questions of religious and moral teaching in state universities and public schools can never be thoroughly or effectively discussed without their co-operation.
Organized then, actually though not formally, within Protestant Christian boundaries, the membership of the body must needs be a comprehensive one, if the aims presented are to be achieved. To this end its activity must, in my judgment, be limited to discussion and the formal expression of opinion upon vital matters. Pascal used to say that much of the mischief of the world resulted from the fact that so few men could sit still and think. The strenuous American has no little of the passion for applying green theories long before they are dry. It is easy to repeat resonant phrases like "the established results of modern psychology, modern peda- gogy, and modern Bible study," or " the present status of biblical, theological, ethical, psychological, peda- gogical, and scientific knowledge." But I fancy that it will take any comprehensive body of Protestant Christian educators some time to agree as to just what are these
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" established results " and this "present status." Not a few of us may regard propositions as " established " that have been challenged and contradicted by recog- nized intellectual giants; and not a few of us might be tempted to engage in an active propaganda of just such propositions. If, therefore, this new organization is not to dwindle to a clique of propagandists, it must abandon all ambition to control, and must limit itself to the more difficult and yet more important task of enlightening and inspiring existing agencies.
Next, as to the machinery and management. Be the membership ever so comprehensive, the machinery might be so constructed and the management so composed as to direct the influence of the whole body to the inculca- tion of the theories of an aggressive minority. One who stands ready to reason on the same platform with the Catholic and the Jew need hardly say that he shrinks from discussing no view of the Bible and no theory of moral and religious education that any serious thinker may espouse. But an organization can be so constructed as to be easily usurped and easily wielded by a group numerically small. We have, therefore, reason to con- gratulate ourselves that the constitution offered for our adoption will hardly permit its use for the exclusive cir- culation of ideas that many would regard as spurious science and clipped Christianity. Yet even this consti- tution will require care and catholicity of management, if the organization is to be a light to illuminate the whole house. Take, for instance, the suggestion as to lists of books. Surely it would be a great calamity if this should by any oversight develop into a censorship, into an inverted index expurgatorius, in which books may be con- demned by exclusion. Silence is often the most effective persecution. The horizon of a censor may be danger- ously broad or pitifully narrow, and in either case, the existence of him is a calamity.
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Assuming though, as the proposed constitution war- rants us in doing, that the new organization is to be a lamp and not a rod, an organ for illumination, for the study of contemporary conditions, for the solution of urgent problems, for the perfecting of principles and the presentation of methods, it must quicken and invigorate, as light always does, every living agency for moral and religious education upon which it shines.
I take it that it will produce its effects upon the sixteen agencies enumerated in the constitution, chiefly by its direct influence upon two classes, the minister and the teacher.
I. The minister. It is surely high time that the min- ister recognized his teaching function to be the superior, if not the supreme, one. The pulpit orator, with his elabo- rate oratorical displays, can be spared, if the disciple of Jesus will learn to teach the people. And whatever we may think of their practical application of it, our Roman Catholic friends are far from wrong in their contention that the Christian ministry has a responsibility for what is taught in the home and the school and the library and the magazine. Let us hope, then, that this organization may lead ministers, and the teachers of ministers, up- ward and backward to the older ideal of ministerial re- sponsibility for education, at the same time reconciling this ideal with the liberty and intelligence of modern society.
2. The educator. As the pastor needs to be a teacher, so the teacher needs to be a pastor. It is easy to recog- nize nowadays the eagerness of the educational doc- trinaire and of the professional pedagogue to urge their methods and their asserted discoveries for immediate and universal adoption. But this organization will fail of one great result if it fails to expand the educator and to contract his phylacteries. Even the teacher of the university, rather let me say "especially" the teacher of
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the university, has something to learn from the deep love for the pupil shown by those whose methods he coldly criticises. It is not the scientific method after all that will save our children ; it is wisdom working by love ; it is "truth in the inward parts," exemplified in pure speech and noble thought and gracious conduct ; it is the moral earnestness and unconquerable love without which ethical maxims and even improved catechisms are sound- ing brass and tinkling cymbals. It is quite as necessary to spiritualize the intellect as to intellectualize the soul. And above all knowledge and all methods for its acqui- sition, the wiser thinkers of our time still discern that faith and hope and love which are the conditions of all further progress.
It is time to recognize one baleful influence of spe- cialization (analogous to that pointed out by Adam Smith in the division of labor)-the reduction of the man to an expert manikin, who becomes all the more baleful when he is regarded as an object of worship. There is no education equal to familiar intercourse with a master-mind and a divine spirit. I shall never forget the touching tribute paid by Helmholtz to his great in- structor, Johannes Müller. Quite recently, one equally noble has been paid to Eliphalet Nott by his former pu- pil, Stillman. Is this type of educator to vanish alto- gether? Are the Titans once more to conquer the Gods? It smacks of cynicism, I know, to say, as Walter Bagehot did: "The trouble with men who write books is that they know so little." But the paradox is instructive in spite of its exaggeration. Not a few educators are painfully ignorant of the souls that they are making or marring; and, what is even worse, have no interest in them except as pegs upon which to hang their erudition or their the- ories. Teachers of this type are more absorbed in the making of books and the exploiting of ideas than in the perfecting of their disciples, or of themselves; forgetting
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that the chief glory of the universities is to be mater virorum, the mother of men.
This organization will, I hope, awaken in the modern educator that reverence for his pupils which has inspired great instructors of every time, and out of which has pro- ceeded everything of real value in our present pedagogy; so that he will aspire to become, not merely a cistern of erudition, but a fountain of wisdom; not merely- or mainly a phonograph of up-to-date ideas, but living word, living thought, living truth. This organization, then, like an ellipse with two foci, the minister and the teacher, will embrace every existing agency for moral and religious education within its radiant sweep, vitalizing all of them in proportion as these two increase in light and in love.
L. WILBUR MESSER,
GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
The Young Men's Christian Association is an inter- denominational movement for the Christian culture of men. From the beginning, the Association both in policy and practice has made Bible study basal. Obscured at times in the public mind by the acquirement of material resources and by the multiplication of phases of effort, Bible study in the Association has nevertheless made rapid and continuous advances. The present significance and power of Bible study in the Young Men's Christian Association as a factor in religious and moral education is well understood. The courses of study have been increasingly thorough, progressive, and scholarly, in each case adapted to the capacity and interest of the men served.
An organization engaged so largely in Bible instruc- tion must needs have close working relations with move- ments looking toward the extension and improvement of such instruction. From such an organization as this
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Convention hopes to establish, the Young Men's Christian Association should receive substantial benefit of at least five kinds:
I. Thorough courses of biblical study which embody the results of conservative, reverent scholarship as regards both the text and its interpretation. The large- ness of use which these courses will have will depend on the nicety of their adjustment to the men and methods of the Association.
2. Through the discovery and training of qualified instructors and lecturers. The Association will naturally and of necessity give heed to the recommendations of such an organization regarding men to instruct Bible classes or groups in city, college, railroad, or industrial associations, or lecturers for the numerous conventions, summer conferences, and the schools for training Asso- ciation secretaries.
3. Through the stimulation of a public demand for religious and moral instruction. Through the advanta- geous relations of this organization with the religious and secular press, through conventions like this, through printed matter and the services of lecturers, public atten- tion will be arrested and a desire for scholarly instruction created among young men which should increase the volume and effectiveness of Association effort.
4. Through the definition of common Christian truth. Since the Young Men's Christian Association seeks to base its entire religious work upon those great essentials of Christian truth held in common by the evangelical churches, and as it is not the province of the Association to pass upon controverted questions, the Association should receive a peculiar benefit from the work of such an organization as this, which we assume will be able to reach substantial agreement as to the settled essentials of Christian truth which should be the foundation of the religious education of young men.
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