Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for ProtestantsSutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Religion
Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for Protestants
Sutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Church and education; Education -- History; Religious education
After the fall, man turned to coarser articles of diet, and his nature
gradually became more gross. The spiritual nature, at first the prominent
part of his being, was dwarfed and overruled until it was but the “small
voice” within. With the development of the physical and the intellectual
to the neglect of the spiritual, have come the evils of modern
society,—the love of display, the perversion of taste, the deformity
of the body, and those attendant sins which destroyed Sodom, and now
threaten our cities. Man became careless in his work also, and the earth
failed to yield her fullness. As a result, thorns and thistles sprang up.
It is not surprising, after following the decline of the race, to find
that the system of education introduced by Christ begins with the
instruction given in the garden of Eden, and that it is based on the
simple law of faith. We better appreciate the gift of Christ when we
dwell upon the thought that while suffering physically, while taking our
infirmities into his own body, He yet preserved a sound mind and a will
wholly subject to the Father’s, that by so doing the philosophy of the
archdeceiver might be overthrown by the divine philosophy.
Again, it is but natural to suppose that when called upon to decide
between the two systems of education, the human and the divine, and
Christian education is chosen, that man will also have to reform his
manner of eating and living. The original diet of man is again made
known, and for his home he is urged to choose a garden spot, away from
crowded cities, where God can speak to his spiritual nature through His
works.
[Sidenote: The false science and death]
God does use the senses of man; but _knowledge_ thus gained becomes
_wisdom_ only when enlightened by the Spirit, the gateway to whose
fountain is opened by the key of faith. Beneath the tree of life
originated the highest method of education,—the plan the world needs
to-day. Beneath the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil arose the conflicting system, having ever one object in view,—the
overthrow of the eternal principles of truth. Under one guise, then
under another, it has borne sway upon the earth. Whether as Babylonish
learning, Greek philosophy, Egyptian wisdom, the high glitter of papal
pomp, or the more modest but no less subtle workings of modern science,
the results always have been, and always will be, a savor of death unto
death.
[Sidenote: The true science of life]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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