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
“Does he study the human body?—Dissection and anatomy are the foundations
of his study. Chemistry?—The laboratory furnishes him the means of
analysis and inquiry into physical substances. History?—He questions
the statements which have been unquestioned heretofore, ransacks
libraries for authorities in ancient volumes and more ancient documents.
Literature?—The poem which he read only to enjoy he now subjects
to the scalpel, inquires whether it really is beautiful, why it is
beautiful, how its meter should be classified, how its figures have been
constructed. Philosophy?—He subjects his own consciousness to a process
of vivisection in an endeavor to ascertain the physiology and anatomy of
the human spirit; brings his soul into the laboratory that he may learn
its chemical constituents.
“Meanwhile the constructive and synthetic process is relegated to a
second place, or lost sight of altogether. Does he study medicine?—He
gives more attention to diagnosis than to therapeutics; to the analysis
of disease than to the problem how to overcome it. Law?—He spends
more time in analyzing cases than in developing power to grasp great
principles and apply them in the administration of justice to varying
conditions. The classics?—It is strange if he has not at graduation
spent more weeks in the syntax and grammar of the language than he has
spent hours in acquiring and appreciating the thought and the spirit
of the great classic authors. It has been well and truly said of the
modern student that he does not study grammar to understand Homer, he
reads Homer to get the Greek grammar. His historical study has given him
dates, events, a mental historical chart; perhaps, too, it has given him
a scholar’s power to discriminate between the true and the false, the
historical and the mythical in ancient legends: but not to many has it
given an understanding of the significance of events, a comprehension
of, or even new light upon, the real meaning of the life of man on the
earth. Has he been studying philosophy?—Happy he is if, as a result of
his analysis of self-consciousness, he has not become morbid respecting
his own inner life, or cynically skeptical concerning the inner life of
others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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