Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for Protestants

by E. A. Sutherland

Man’s threefold nature

The human being has a threefold nature,—the physical, the mental, and the spiritual; and Christian education so develops these that they sustain the proper relation one to another. The spiritual nature was the controlling power in the man made in God’s image. In the degeneration of the race, he lost his spiritual insight, and passed first to the intellectual plane, then to the physical. This is seen in the history before the flood. Eden life was a spiritual existence; Adam’s life after the fall was less spiritual, and gradually his descendants came to live on the mental plane. There were master minds in the antediluvian world. Men had no need of books, so strong was the memory and so keen the insight. Through further disobedience, through an education which strengthened reason rather than faith, men sank to the physical plane instead of rising to the spiritual, until in due time the earth was destroyed by water.

Education since the time of Christ

The same planes of existence are distinguishable in all ages since the flood, but Christ alone rose to the purely spiritual level. Israel as a nation might have so lived had true educational methods been followed. Israel falling, the offer was made to the Christian church. Age by age that body has refused to live a spiritual life, or, accepting the proffered gift, has attempted to rise without complying with the necessary conditions,—absolute faith in God’s Word and strict compliance with his commands. The Reformation again turned men’s eyes toward a spiritual education, and American Protestants had the best opportunity ever offered man to return to the original design of the Creator. Failure is again the verdict of the recording angel. Time hastens on, and the last gospel message is going to the world; but before a people can be prepared for the setting up of Christ’s kingdom, they must be educated according to the principles of Christian education, for this is the foundation of all government as well as of all religion.

What is Christian education? Since its object is the training of a human being for life eternal, and that existence is a spiritual life, the spiritual must be the predominating feature of the education. When the spiritual leads, the intellectual and physical take their proper positions. The inner or spiritual man feeds only upon truth, absolute truth; not theory nor speculation, but truth. “Thy word is truth.” The Word of God must then be the basis of all Christian education, the science of salvation the central theme.

The test

Since God reveals his character in two ways, in his Word and in his works, the Bible must be the first book in Christian education, and the book of nature next. Many educators have seen the value of the book of nature, and to-day nature-study forms a large part of the course of instruction in all grades of schools. It may be asked, Is not this, then, Christian education? We reply, Does it restore in men the image of God? If so, it passes the test. But it can not be said to do this, and therefore it falls short. Wherein, then, lies the difficulty in modern nature-teaching, or the sciences in general? Read some of our modern text-books in science. They readily reveal the answer.

Astronomy as taught denies the Bible

Young’s General Astronomy reads: “Section 908. Origin of the Nebular Hypothesis.—Now this [the present condition] is evidently a good arrangement for a planetary system, and therefore some have inferred that the Deity made it so, perfect from the first. But to one who considers the way in which other perfect works of nature usually come to perfection—their processes of growth and development—this explanation seems improbable. It appears far more likely that the planetary system grew than that it was built outright.... In its main idea that the solar system once existed as a nebulous mass, and has reached its present state as the result of a series of purely physical processes, it seems certain to prove correct, and it forms the foundation of all the current speculations upon the subject.

“Section 909. La Place’s Theory.—(a) He supposed that at some past time, which may be taken as a starting point of our system’s history, ... the matter collected in the sun and planets was in the form of a nebula. (b) This nebula was a cloud of intensely heated gas, perhaps hotter, as he supposed, than the sun is now. (c) This nebula, under the action of its own gravitation, assumed an approximately globular form, with a rotation around its axis,” etc., etc.