Teaching the Child Patriotism

by Kate Upson Clark

THE Venerable Bede wrote of a king of Northumberland and his counselors as debating whether the emissaries of Pope Gregory should be allowed to present to their people the Christian faith. A gray-haired Chief told of a little bird, which on a stormy night flew into his warm, bright dining-hall. It was a sweet moment for the bird, but his surroundings were unnatural. He was frightened, and presently out he flew into the storm again.

"He came out of the dark, and into the dark he returned," said the old Chief. "Thus it is with human life. We come we know not whence. We depart we know not whither. If anybody can tell us anything about it, in God's name, let us hear him."

And thus came the missionaries into Britain and made it a so-called religious nation.

Our religious journals have discussed from many standpoints the possibility of making our own a religious nation. A formally "established" religion is especially forbidden us. We all admit this to be wise, and that Church and State should be separate. Yet there are few thoughtful people who do not realize that each individual has his spiritual part, which must be fed and nourished, and that this cannot be done by culture alone. When a series of sex-films was on display in New York, and good people were wondering whether more of good than bad would result to the young who flocked to see them, one distinguished man said to another, "Knowledge alone will never make men virtuous,"—and no truer word was ever spoken, as the spectacle of highly educated Germany amply proves.

We are told that there are other forces than the love of God and the desire to serve Him, which may elevate and redeem mankind. That old Gospel, we are told, is outgrown. By other means, character, the banishment of injustice and crime and the establishment of universal brotherhood can be just as well secured.

First, Science was to do it. "From Huxley's 'Lay Sermons' of 1870," says the Christian Work, "to the latest fulmination of Professor Haeckel, we have been hearing that Science was the true Messiah, the eliminator of all evil." Science was to be taught to our children in the place of the outworn fables of the Bible.

Then came the prophets of Education. Herbert Spencer and his followers informed us that education was the panacea for all ills. Educate the people as to what is best and they will choose the best.

The prophets of Culture came next. All that was necessary to bring in the millennium was the diffusion of art, literature, music, philosophy. The mastery of the world by supermen was to be the religion that should create a strong and virtuous nation. Not meek men, not suffering Christs, but giant men, by force summoning perfect character and perfect efficiency out of erring humanity.

Economic Reform was the idol of the next decade or two. If we could get an eight-hour day, one day's rest in seven, a good wage, plenty to eat and model tenements, then religion, as the Church views it, would be superfluous.

During the last forty or fifty years, all of these gospels have been given a fair trial. "Science," says Dr. Frederick Lynch, "has driven the classics out of our colleges, and has almost become the text-book of our Sunday Schools,"—and yet it has worked little improvement in our national morals, and is just now devoted chiefly to the inventing of machines and chemicals for the slaughter of mankind. Even airships have apparently been used mostly for dropping bombs on playgrounds and nurseries. Education was never more general. Education has stood next to the army in the consideration of Germany. Many of our principal cheap politicians and grafters are educated men.