THE BREAKDOWN OF “CULTURE” AS A REDEMPTIVE FORCE
All thinking and serious people must, in the past year, spontaneously have reflected upon the shocking incongruity of the most cultured nations of the earth—Germany, France, England, Italy, and in many respects, Russia and Japan—being engaged in a warfare which has no parallel in all of humanity’s previous pages. Hitherto we have been assured that culture, science, literature, art, music, the drama, invention, discovery, technical advance, governmental efficiency, social reform, and all that belongs to the educative phases of man’s progress, constituted all the gospel we needed, and could be relied upon in any event as the mainstay of civilization and the true inspiration of man’s upward and onward course to higher and still higher degrees of attainment. Those who held otherwise and contended that these were not sufficient, but that religion and the ethical teachings of the Bible must ever be the incentive of the world’s substantial growth in depth of character, were looked upon in many quarters as somewhat narrow sectarians, or perhaps regarded superciliously as uncultivated fanatics.
But the failure of culture and mere intellectualism to secure man’s salvation is so evident and appalling in the light of what is happening on the blood-soaked soil of Europe, that the contention of the Secularists has received an answer which is indisputable and conclusive. Culture and education, admittedly the noblest products of man’s endeavor, have fallen disastrously short of the promises made in their behalf. The neglect of religion, the decay of a vital faith, have resulted in an awful catastrophe. To him who runs and reads the signs of our times, the proclamation of the prophets of religion and the ministers of Christ have proved themselves so true as to need no further substantiation. Trust in Jehovah and reliance upon the Redeemer of the world for salvation from sin and the sanctification of the human heart, have once more demonstrated their own absolute necessity.
The end of all education—of all development in the name and line of culture—ought to lie in the strengthening of character. Of what use are all material achievements if only a dismal emptiness is bound up within? Of what profit is it, says one, whether our railroad trains run sixty miles an hour, if men are fools when they enter, and fools still when they leave? Of what significance is the wonder of wireless telegraphy, if the electric flashes through the ether convey only the accounts of commercial frauds, the follies of the rich, the discontent of the poor, social intrigues, and political scandals? Why should we educate our youth if, in the end, they have learned only to lie more plausibly or forge more cleverly? Caliban’s caustic observation was that the only profit he had secured from being taught his master’s language was that he now knew how to curse. A cultivated scoundrel may do more harm with a stroke of his pen than a score of rude burglars can accomplish in twelve months. A superficial education, divorced from religion, may be handmade to villainy’s more effectual service.
Said Huxley once, “Clever men are as common as blackberries; the rare thing is to find a good man.” This chord was struck strongly by Kipling in his “Recessional:”
“Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart:
Lord, God of Hosts, be with us yet
Lest we forget, lest we forget!”
Well did Milton exhort those of his own people in these words: “Let not England forget her precedent in teaching nations how to live.” If the homely and commonplace virtues are allowed to die out in vanities and self-indulgences; if the qualities of self-respect and righteousness, so necessary to our national perpetuity, shall decay through neglect, no amount of mere material prosperity can ever make amends for the disaster.
The world owes a great debt of gratitude without question to Greece and its prophets of the intellect—those who have stood forth through all the generations since as the authorities in philosophy, physics, art, architecture, sculpture, oratory, and politics. Such names as Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pheidias, Praxiteles, Archimedes, Thucydides, Pericles will always shine as stars of the first magnitude in the intellectual heavens. But salvation was not of the Greeks, but “of the Jews.” When we turn to the pages of the Psalmist, the Prophets, and the Evangelists, we scarcely shall find a word about philosophy, geometry, music, painting, the science of politics, or the construction, constitution, movements, and mysteries of the physical universe. But Isaiah, Micah, Amos, the Gospel writers, and Saint Paul—and, infinitely above all, the Carpenter Prophet of Nazareth—have given the world the loftiest and most absolutely necessary rules and ideals of living. Cleverness is evermore inferior to goodness. Let a man have no matter what completeness of education, the ultimate question remains, “How is he going to use it?” And this query must be answered by something beyond the mental development itself. The Devil is accredited with having a first-class mind and a brilliant understanding. A man bearing all the university degrees, if not chastened and restrained by the spirit of a living religious faith, may prove more of a curse than of a blessing to his fellows. The mention of such personalities as Alexander VI, Macchiavelli, Napoleon, and Byron is enough to support the claim we are making. There has never been a great revival of religion which did not result in a corresponding turning away from frivolity and vice to a soulful seriousness and nobler form of life. The ages of faith have also been, as proved by the careers of John Knox, the Puritans, and John Wesley, the ages of national greatness.
Well did Tennyson pray, in lines oft quoted:
“Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before.
“But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock Thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear:
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.”
And again, speaking of his dead friend, Arthur Hallam, he expresses the longing of his own devout soul:
“I would the great world grew like thee,
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity.”
And once more, toward the close of that noblest poem of the nineteenth century, he thus invokes the spirit of Hallam:
“O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure.
“That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquered years
To One that with us works, and trust,
“With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flowed from, soul in soul.”
—Western Christian Advocate.