THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER
The acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God should be regarded as essential, on the part of all teachers of children and youth.
If the Bible is the great fountain of saving truth and the highest authority on human conduct, and it is to be used as a daily text book, then, it naturally follows, the teacher should be "a workman approved unto God, apt to teach and rightly dividing the word of truth." Persons who do not believe in the Bible do not care to teach it, and when they are required to do so, they are pretty sure to vaunt their unbelief. The influence of such teachers tends to establish unbelief instead of awakening a longing desire for more truth.
Emerson in one of his essays, after pressing the fact that the soul is the receiver and revealer of truth, states an undeniable fact, when he says:
"That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily but involuntarily. Thoughts go out of our minds through avenues, which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head. The infallible index of true progress is found in the tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding, nor his company, nor books, nor actions, nor talents, nor all together can hinder him from being deferential to a higher spirit than his own. If he has not found his home in God, his manners, his form of speech, the turn of his sentences, the build, shall I say of all his opinions, will involuntarily confess it, let him brave it out how he will."
The longings of the human heart are unsatisfied, until the soul finds its home in God, its creator and preserver. Teachers that ignore this fact, lack one thing that is vitally important. Our Lord Jesus, the great teacher, expressed its relative importance when he said: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you."
A RAILROAD PRESIDENT
James J. Hill, a prominent railroad president recently made this important statement:
"We are making a mistake to train our young people in various lines of knowledge for undertaking the big tasks of life, without making sure also that those fundamental principles of right and wrong as taught in the Bible, have become a part of their equipment. There is a control of forces and motives, that is essential to the management of the vast affairs of our nation, which comes only through an educated conscience; and to fail to equip young men, who are to manage the great affairs of the future, with this control and direction, is a serious mistake of the age and bears with it a certain menace for the future."
In a recent issue of the Assembly Herald there appeared the following very pertinent paragraphs on this subject, credited to the Synod of Tennessee: