American patriotism relies on the public school, conducted with moral and social aims, as the one pre-eminent, assimilating agency to bind together the older and newer elements of our population, in a common devotion to our common country. It has been "America's greatest civil glory and chief civil hope." The enthusiasm, that led to its establishment, was well nigh sacred. It needs to day the support of a public spirit, that will insist on the restoration of the daily reading of the Bible, as the basis of moral instruction in it.
Concerning its educational value President Woodrow Wilson has recently very truthfully said, "The educational value of the Bible is, that it both awakens the spirit to its finest and only true action, and acquaints the student with the noblest body of literature in existence; a body of literature, having in it more mental and imaginative stimulus, than any other body of writings. A man has deprived himself of the best there is in the world, who has deprived himself of the Bible."
How true to day is Paul's description of the people that were living without the Bible in his day. He describes them as "filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, deceit, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, unmerciful."[4]
Our own and every heathen land furnishes abundant proofs, that whenever the gracious promises of the Bible are gratefully received, the proud become humble, the disobedient dutiful, the drunkard sober, the dishonest, honorable; the profligate, prudent; and the miserable become happy. Nothing else has ever done this, but the gospel of Christ always does it, when gratefully received.
ENCOURAGING MOVEMENTS
The legislature of Pennsylvania, in 1913, restored the use of the Bible in the public schools of that state, by a statute requiring the daily reading of at least ten verses of the Bible, in the hearing of all the pupils under every teacher, and making a neglect of this duty a proper cause, for the suspension of the teacher.
The National Reform Association at its last meeting in Portland, Oregon, in 1913, resolved to raise $25,000, for the purpose of undertaking to place a copy of the Bible, in every public school in the land, from which it may have been excluded; and to aid in keeping it, where it is now adopted, as the standard of moral instruction.
Commissioner Claxton, in welcoming the members of the council of church Boards of Education, representing fourteen denominations, at their third meeting in Washington, D. C., in January 1914, very correctly stated the leadership of the church in the educational work of our country, and the importance of its continued relation to it, in the following language:
"The church has been the leader in educational development, at a time when the state was unable and unwilling to pay the large cost for education. Honor should be given the church for its splendid, formative work in education, during the time the state was occupied in building up its political relations. It is indeed a happy thing, that the church is so deeply interested in education, as to maintain national agencies, known as boards."
In regard to the secondary schools he prophetically added, "The day will come, when the Bible will be read in the public schools, just as any other book. There is no good reason, why the Bible should not have its rightful place, in our public school curriculum."