Second, none but Christians in good standing and with a spiritual
conception of life should be allowed to teach in Christian schools.
Church schools are worse than useless if they bring students under the
influence of those who do not believe in the religion upon which the
Church and church schools are built. Atheism and Agnosticism are more
dangerous when hidden under the cloak of religion than when they are
exposed to view.
Third, in schools supported by taxation we should have a real neutrality
wherever neutrality in religion is desired. If the Bible cannot be
defended in these schools it should not be attacked, either directly or
under the guise of philosophy or science. The neutrality which we now
have is often but a sham; it carefully excludes the Christian religion
but permits the use of the schoolrooms for the destruction of faith and
for the teaching of materialistic doctrines.
It is not sufficient to say that _some_ believers in Darwinism retain
their belief in Christianity; some survive smallpox. As we avoid
smallpox because _many_ die of it, so we should avoid Darwinism because
it _leads many astray_.
If it is contended that an instructor has a right to teach anything
he likes, I reply that the parents who pay the salary have a right to
decide what shall be taught. To continue the illustration used above, a
person can expose himself to the smallpox if he desires to do so, but he
has no right to communicate it to others. So a man can believe anything
he pleases but he has no right to teach it against the protest of his
employers.
Acceptance of Darwin's doctrine tends to destroy one's belief in
immortality as taught by the Bible. If there has been no break in the
line between man and the beasts--no time when by the act of the Heavenly
Father man became "a living Soul," at what period in man's development
was he endowed with the hope of a future life? And, if the brute theory
leads to the abandonment of belief in a future life with its rewards and
punishments, what stimulus to righteous living is offered in its place?
Darwinism leads to a denial of God. Nietzsche carried Darwinism to its
logical conclusion and it made him the most extreme of anti-Christians.
I had read extracts from his writings--enough to acquaint me with his
sweeping denial of God and of the Saviour--but not enough to make me
familiar with his philosophy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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