Paganism and our children
Parents, reading this, may say that but a small proportion of the people ever obtain a classical education. But if you send your child only to the modern kindergarten, he is there told the story of Pluto; or of Ceres, goddess of the golden grain; Mercury, the winged messenger god; the wood nymphs; Æolus, who rules the winds and brings the storms; or Apollo, who is driven across the heavens in a chariot of fire. Or, if the real Greek names are dropped, nature is personified in such a way as to give the childish mind a distorted idea of things which leads to anything but the pure and simple truth of God’s Word. He thus drinks in the myths and fables of the Greeks from very infancy. One of his First Readers has the story of Proserpina, who was stolen, and hidden under the earth for a season. Nature-studies are often made attractive to youthful minds by being associated with the ancient Greek gods and goddesses. But even in a more subtle way the ideas of classic lore are taught in the evolutionary theories of science and philosophy, through primary, grammar, and high-school grades.
Evolution
“Philosophy,” as before quoted, is defined to be “the account which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world.” That philosophy is now termed evolution, for evolution is man’s way of accounting for the constitution of the world, and the creatures which inhabit it. Take notice of these words from the pen of Henry Drummond. In a paper prepared for the Parliament of Religions, entitled “Evolution of Christianity,” he says: “Working in its own field, science made the discovery of how God made the world.” “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,” writes Paul to the Hebrews.[44]
Mr. Drummond continues: “To science itself this discovery was startling and as unexpected as it has ever been to theology. Exactly fifty years ago Mr. Darwin wrote in dismay to Mr. Hooker that the old theory of specific creation—that God made all species apart, and introduced them into the world one by one—was melting away before his eyes. He unburdened the thought, as he says in his letter, almost as if he were confessing a murder. But so entirely has the world bowed to the weight of facts before which even Darwin trembled, that one of the last books on Darwinism by so religious a mind as that of Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, contains in its opening chapter these words: ‘The whole scientific and literary world, even the whole educated public, accepts as a matter of common knowledge the origin of the species from the other allied species, by the ordinary process of natural birth. The idea of special creation, or any other exceptional mode of production, is absolutely extinct.’”
It would be well if each could read the words of Drummond for himself; but in brief he says: “It is needless at this time of day to point out the surpassing grandeur of the new conception [evolution]. How it has filled the Christian imagination and kindled to enthusiasm the soberest scientific minds from Darwin downward is known to everyone. For that splendid hypothesis we can not be too grateful to science; and that theology can only enrich itself which gives it even temporary place in its doctrine of creation.”
How strange that God failed to make known this stupendous truth (?) through his Word, and left it for science in the hands of Plato’s descendants to figure out! “What it needed,” says Drummond, “was a credible presentation, in view especially of astronomy, geology, paleontology, and biology. These, as we have said, had made the former theory simply untenable. And science has supplied theology with a theory which the intellect can accept.” Faith has been laid aside. The human intellect has been exalted. Paganism has cast out Christianity, and our boys and girls now study the nebular hypothesis, explanatory of the creation of the worlds, in their astronomy and geography; they dwell upon the eons of ages consumed in the formation of the geologic strata of the earth; they study the fossils of the ages past, and from them describe the evolution of man from a polyp.
Schools have greatest influence
Of what use is the preaching of the gospel on one day of the week, while six days out of seven paganism guides the intellect? Why sit dreaming of heaven, or spend money to proselyte, while pagan education leads your own children by the hand, and weaves about their mind a network of theories which blinds their eyes to spiritual truths? There is weight in the words of President Harper, of Chicago University, who says: “It is difficult to prophesy what the result of our present method of educating the youth will be in fifty years. We are training the mind in our public schools, but the moral side of the child’s nature is almost entirely neglected. The Roman Catholic Church insists on remedying this manifest evil, but our Protestant churches seem to ignore it completely. They expect the Sunday-school to make good what our public schools leave undone, and the consequence is that we overlook a danger as real and as great as any we have had to face.”