Christian Education

Christian Education
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.
BY BATSELL BAXTER.

I appreciate the privilege of being in another meeting of preachers and other Christians to study about the things that will make us better and cause us to be more effective in the service of the Lord. And right here in the beginning I want to say a word to these preachers:

Brethren, I think a worthy Gospel preacher is one of the noblest creatures of God. I am a teacher, but I preach every Lord's Day, and I come in contact with preachers all the time. Most of you have homes and yet you do not have homes; they are your homes, and yet you are denied the blessings and comforts of life in the midst of your families. You are for weeks at a time away off somewhere sowing the seed of the Kingdom, while your loved ones at home are struggling along without your presence and comfort and guidance. Just how you can stand it I don't know; and I am sure you could not stand it at all were it not for the faith you have in God, and the conviction that prompted Paul to say "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel." May the Lord abundantly bless you in every good work, and may his rich­est blessings rest upon those at home who most of the time must struggle along without you.

Religion is a natural and necessary part of man's char­acter, and there can be no genuine moral life without it. The child is not a lump of clay or wax to be passively molded; neither is he a blank sheet of paper upon which the teacher may write. He is a living acting organism full of energy and power, and this energy and power are daily growing into a character with fixed habits and beliefs. Edu­cation must direct these thoughts and habits. It must build Christian manhood, form character, impart high ideals, and train for effective and righteous service. No education that leaves out the Bible and God and Christ can do this. Other kinds of education can fill the memory and stimulate the ambitions, but only Christian education can guide the heart and brain along the right paths of life. One atom of living faith is worth more than all of the mere historical knowl­edge that could be brought together; and one drop of true love and reverence for God is worth more than a whole ocean of scientific learning.

There is no genuine education without some connection with the religion of the Bible. An education exclusively in­tellectual leads to arrogance and a contempt for moral influ­ence. I have in mind a brilliant and learned man. He is an intellectual giant; his mind roams at will in the high alti­tudes of intellectual achievement, and he fills his students with awe and admiration at the wealth of his learning". His mind is keen and sharp; but his moral sensibilities are blunt and dull. He knows nothing of the Bible; he cares little about God; and his thoughts are far above the problems of the welfare of his fellow-man. That man is a failure what­ever he may attain in an intellectual way —a failure because he is one-sided; he has left God out. The Bible tells us about Samson, God's strong man. He once met a lion in the way and ripped the jaws of the king of beasts; he wanted once to get out of the city of Gaza when the gates were locked. He pulled up the gates —posts and all —and carried them off up a high hill. But he had a weak and undeveloped character. He had little connection with the divine" will. He was a failure. His enemies feared his physical strength, but they scorned his weak character. He fell because he was a one-sided man. An education ex­clusively physical leads to animalism. An education exclu­sively moral leads to bigotry and Phariseeism. Don't you remember that Pharisee who went up into the temple to pray and tell the Lord what a good fellow he was and how proud the Lord ought to be of him? And don't you remember that the Lord was better pleased with the poor publican who knew he was a sinner and made a clean breast of it all? That Pharisee was a moral man; that is about all you can say for him. He certainly lacked everything pertaining to the spir­itual side. He was a failure. No man can attain the highest life, and do the good that he ought to do without religious instruction to go right along with his other instruction. That religious instruction must not be a kind of A MAKESHIFT, A KIND OF SOME­THING TACKED ON TO THE REST OF THE COURSE. TREATED AS A KIND OF NECESSARY NONSENSE, PUT IN SIMPLY TO SATISFY WHAT IS REGARDED BY THE INSTITUTION AS SUPER­STITION AND IGNORANCE. THAT RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION MUST NOT BE BELITTLED AND HEDGED IN. IT MUST BE THE MAIN THING IN THE COURSE AND THE OTHER WORK MUST ALL BE BUILT AROUND IT AND BE A HELP TO IT AND NOT A HINDRANCE. THAT RELIGIOUS IN­STRUCTION MUST BE IN AN INSTITUTION WHOSE VERY ATMOSPHERE IS PERVADED WITH THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY, AND WHOSE TEACHERS BELIEVE THE BIBLE AND PRACTICE ITS PRECEPTS. Fire extinguishers are filled with carbon-dioxide. You can throw a stream of carbon dioxide into a room filled with fire and shut the door, and your fire is smothered out. Fire cannot burn in an at­mosphere of carbon-dioxide. We expect students to go off to some big college which is filled with worldliness and tinctured with atheism with a little religious instruction on the side, and come back filled with the spirit of Christianity. We might as well expect a candle set down in a room filled with carbon-dioxide to keep on burning as to expect a stud­ent to get any real strength out of religious teaching in an institution whose very atmosphere chokes the religious spirit out of him and mocks his faith in God.

I want us to remember that a great factor in moulding the destiny of the student is the teacher. Teachers are gen­erally chosen in many schools for what they know and not for what they are. I believe that a teacher ought to know the subject that he is going to teach. He ought to know it as thoroughly as it is possible for him to know it. He ought to be able to impart it to others. But the teacher must be a strong character, and ABOVE ALL. HE MUST BE A CHRISTIAN. The teacher has a tremendous responsi­bility. His life must be a living example of Christianity. For his heart is in touch daily with the hearts of his students and he is moulding their destiny. His heart must be clean and pure and filled with righteousness. Have you ever watched the little boy following along and trying to walk in the father's steps? Every father has seen it. When you turn that boy over to some school to finish his education he picks out some teacher as his ideal, and he tries to walk in that teacher's steps just as he used to try to walk in yours. And he has all confidence in that teacher just as he used to have all confidence in you. He is dazzled by that teacher's learning. He longs to get up on the intellectual heights where that teacher stands. That teacher can tell him that the faith of his father is superstition and he will believe it; that teacher can tell him the Bible is a bundle of contradic­tions, and he will think it must be so; that teacher can tell him there is no God, and the boy's faith will waiver and fail, and he will come back to you wrecked and ruined for eter­nity. Or if that teacher is the right kind; if he is a strong Christian, he can send you back that boy stronger in faith and more diligent in God's service than when he went away. I f I were sending a boy or girl to school, I would not only want to know about what the ideals of the school were; I would want to know what were the ideals of its teachers. I would want to know that every teacher in that school was a Christian and that the influence every day was on the side of Christianity and not against it.

I want to say right here that I am in favor of small col­leges. Oh, I don't mean little schools of thirty or forty students. I think the ideal school in point of numbers should contain not less than two hundred students and not more than three hundred. That is about all one faculty can do justice to. Mere bigness is paraded before our eyes until we have come to believe that bigness is everything. We see bigness in industrial institutions, thousands of tools being turned out of this factory every day where the old fashioned blacksmith used to hammer out only one or two. But those old hammered tools have never been equaled for strength and service. It is alright to have big schools with classes of fifty or a hundred each, in which the students are mere num­bers unknown to the teacher except as numbers; this is alright if we are just making machines out of them. But we are not doing thai; at least we don't intend that. We want to build character; we want the classes to be small enough so that the teacher can have time to talk heart-to-heart with each student once in a while. For character and individu­ality, the records show that the big schools are far behind the little ones. Most of our great men have come from col­leges whose enrollment was small enough that the teachers could come in personal touch with their students.

I want us to notice our obligation toward the cause of Christian Education. The state provides free education. We pay for it whether we have children in the state schools or not. We may say "Education is no longer in our hands." The state says "On religious matters we are silent." So some of us are content to just let religious instruction drop. As Christians we must realize our obligations. We must, and we will continue to provide the right kind of education. As I look around me I see evidence that Christians have been sacrificing for the proper training of boys and girls. I don't know how much sacrifice it has cost men and women all over this country to put these buildings and this equip­ment here; but I do know that if this school results in saving for God "and for a life of usefulness and service to humanity one boy or girl that would not otherwise have been saved all this outlay of money and effort will have been well spent. A big estimate of the worth of one boy? NO! Not if it is my boy, or your boy. I am confident that this institution and others like it have already been an eternal blessing to hund­reds of boys and girls; and I hope and pray that its useful­ness has but begun. This work is a monument for good to every man and woman who has sacrificed in any way for it. When we die what we have given we take with us; what we have kept for ourselves we lose. Brother David Lipscomb left little or no property. He has no costly monument; yes he has; one of the grandest monuments a man could wish. There is the Nashville Bible School. It has been a blessing to boys and girls for thirty years and its prospects "re brighter now than ever before. It is a lasting monument to the memory of the man who gave thousands of dollars that it might exist.

1 wonder how much we who are younger and have reaped and are reaping the benefit of the sacrifice and love of others appreciate it. When Brother T. B. Larimore started over the mountains of Tennessee from his mother's humble cabin to attend a little college a few miles away that good mother fixed him a lunch and gave him her blessings. When, about three o'clock in the afternoon, he stopped in the cool shade near a spring to eat, he found that the basket was filled with better food than his mother had at home. As he bent over the basket, tears dropped down upon the food; he folded the cloth over it and started on his journey again. He was not hungry; he could not eat. Many of you students are wearing new clothes while mother or father have mended the old ones. Mother is wearing the old hat so that you girls may have a new one and not be embarrassed. Oh! she rather likes the old hat anyhow. You understand. Can you fail when parents have an interest like that in you? The charge has sometimes been made that Christianity and education are opposed to each other. The Catholics in the Dark Ages were opposed to education for the .common people. But God's people have never been opposed to it. The more education of the right kind, the better. The Lord has always stood for education, especially for religious edu­cation. He has not shown special interest in having his people study mathematics and the sciences, but he has always made it plain that the more they could learn about Him and His will the better He was pleased. Away back yonder in the early day Babylon had a system of education. It was effective. From a worldly standpoint it was great. But it left God out. So Jehovah took a man, Abraham, away out to himself and trained him so that he could be the father of a people who would go to school to the Lord and his prophets. The order among the Jews was "precept upon precept, line upon line; here a little and there a little." Moses was educated for forty years in the wilderness before God would have him lead Israel out of bondage. He edu­cated the people in schools conducted specially for the purpose. After the entrance into Canaan the Jews carried the Ten Commandments in a leather case on the wrist and nailed them in a metal case upon the door of their houses. Later, the teaching almost stopped and we hear Jehovah saying through his prophet Hosea: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because thou hast rejected knowledge I have rejected thee" (Hosea 4:6). Twenty years later Isaiah warned the people that their lack of knowledge would bring them into captivity. (Isaiah 5:13). At one time there were the schools of the Prophets —communities with buildings set apart at Ramah, Bethel, Jericho, and Gilgal, where the young went to school to Cod's chosen teachers. It was the prophets from these schools who repeatedly warned Israel of apostasy and turned the people back con­tinually into the right paths. After the captivity, there were the synagogues for teaching the Law. Paul was educated at the feet of Gamaliel in just such a school in Jerusalem. At the age of twelve or thirteen years the boy was taken to one of these synagogue schools and there began his work. We find our Lord, at the age of twelve in the midst of the teach­ers, asking and answering questions. Thus we see that our Saviour himself partook of the educational training that God had provided for his people. After the new dispensation began we find Paul teaching daily at Ephesus in the school of Tyrannus. Here was a school that opened its doors to the teaching of the Bible every day. And here was an in­spired apostle taking advantage of it and the Holy Spirit in­dorsing the work. And the Scriptures dominated the policy of that school. This arrangement continued for two years. And I want you to notice what the Holy Spirit says of the effect, "All Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks." And a little further on we are told of a further effect; "And not a few of them that practiced magical arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all —so mightily grew the word of the Lord and pre­vailed." (Acts 19:10; Acts 19:19). That's the way the Apostle Paul got rid of the wrong kind of education; he just set the right kind right up by the side of it and kept hammering away until the victory was won and that whole region had turned to the Lord. Can't we do the same thing today? Brethren, education counts, and counts heavy, in the work of the Lord. Here were twelve apostles, all inspired alike with the Holy Spirit; Paul was educated and the others were not. Whose influence has come down to us with the greatest force today? Who wrote most of the New Testament? Who stood before kings and carried the Gospel into the strong­holds of heathen learning and superstition. Paul. He was not any better than the rest of the apostles, but his educa­tion enabled him to get into fields that they could not touch. Now. as then, the educated world is against Christianity. Now, as then, education is one of our greatest weapons with which to fight false theories.

I admire a man who fights in the open. Suppose that an enemy invades our shores and begins to devastate the land. Our forces are hastily organized and a terrible battle is fought. We drive the invader into the sea. We go back home thinking he will never return. But secretly his agents slip in and poison the water in our wells, poison the food in our markets and on our tables. The poison is not strong enough to kill grown men and women, but it has its deadly effect upon the young; upon our boys and girls. A physician is called to a home; a boy is dying. He searches for the cause; he finds the poison in the food that the parent has been giving that child. The enemy put it there. He finds the poison in the water the child drinks. There is no cure. Not many years ago Robert Owen came to these shores as the champion of Infidelity. He attacked Christianity as a mighty Goliath. When the others had fled, Alexander Campbell took his sling and stone and went out to meet the man who had defied the armies of Israel. There was a mighty struggle. At the end of it the mighty Goliath sat with his head in his hands and wept like a child while the Lord's David drove home the truth. The mighty Owen was crushed. He left these shores and his theory went with him. All religious people rejoiced. But stealthily and stead­ily the infidel has been poisoning our food and drink since that day. Not water and meat and bread, but the food that goes into our minds and makes up our character! The poison is not strong enough to affect much those of us who are rooted and grounded in the faith of Christ. But it is deadly to the young. A mother comes to you or to me and says: "My boy is declining spiritually. He has been off to school and he has no interest in the Lord's work any more." You talk with him a little while and have to tell that mother, Your boy is dicing. There is no remedy for his condition but the Bible and he has already discredited that." Then vou begin to look for the poison, Yes, here it is:

History:
"The first men had no history. They lived a savage life. In thought and act they were brutelike; and in brain power they were only a little above the beast about them." ("In the image of God created he him.")
History:
"The early Hebrew conception of the future life was borrowed from the Babylonians" The Story of the Flood was taken from the Babylonians."
Physiography:
"The earth was not created; it was flung off in ribbon­like bands from the Sun." ("In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth.")
Zoology:
"No one knows when and where life originated on the earth. Many of the ancients believed that animals were created by divine providence, but this theory of special creation is no longer accepted. The first animals that existed on the earth consisted of a single cell. The complex animals have evolved from these simpler forms in some period in the world's history. .Man is no exception to the evolutionary process but is closely allied to the anthropoid apes, and doubtless arose from an ape-like ancestor!" When I look into the clear innocent blue eyes of my little boy and hear him say, "God is up in Heaven, Bad men killed Jesus, Jesus loves us, He wants us to be Good;" I am filled with trembling at my responsibility. I will give him over some day to other teachers to complete his training. I had rather that some one steal into my home and take his young life in its innocence and purity than that some man deliberately —under the cover of education —wreck his faith and damn his soul.

Let us hold up the hands of Christian men and keep them provided with every possible means for teaching the full truth about God along with the secular education. The destiny of our boys and girls demands it.