Respectfully submitted by your Committee.
Addison P. Foster, Chairman.
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.
REV. ADDISON P. FOSTER, JERSEY CITY, N. J.
We have all noticed that of late public attention has been much drawn to the need of universal education in this land as a means of national safety. That book to which reference has been made several times in this meeting, and which every thoughtful man must read if he would inform himself in regard to the trend of popular thought to-day, “A Fool’s Errand,” by Judge Tourgee, concludes with an argument for the need of national education in these words:
“The remedy for darkness is light; for ignorance, knowledge; for wrong, righteousness. * * * Make the spelling-book the sceptre of national power. Let the nation educate the colored man and the poor white man, because the nation held them in bondage and is responsible for their education. Educate the voter because the nation cannot afford that he should be ignorant. * * * Honest ignorance in the masses is more to be dreaded than malevolent intelligence in the few.”
To the same effect are the words of our honored President Hayes, in his speech at Canton, Ohio, on the 1st of September last: “Ignorant voters are powder and balls for the demagogues. In the present condition of our country, universal education requires the aid of the General Government.” * * * * * *
Education, then, is called for. But the danger that specially attacks us is in the South. * * * There is more than twenty per cent. of illiteracy all through the Southern portion of our land. * * * But this illiteracy is largest, unquestionably, among those who are black. It has been stated that in one of our Southern States ninety per cent. of the colored people are illiterate; in another, ninety-one per cent.; in another, ninety-three per cent.; in another, ninety-five per cent.; and in Mississippi and Texas ninety-six per cent. Eighty-eight per cent. of the entire colored people in the South are illiterate—or were in 1870; undoubtedly it has changed somewhat since.
We are to labor, then, in our desire to secure popular education, especially among the blacks, and through the blacks we are to reach the whites. * * * But, as we educate the blacks, we ask ourselves, What sort of education shall it be? And I would say, it must be a Christian education. It can be nothing else if it is to accomplish its work. Public men, speaking on political subjects, refer only to a secular education. It is well that they should enforce that and insist upon it; but were we to content ourselves with secular education alone, we should make the most grievous mistake of the century. It is impossible to rely upon secular education for the saving of the nation; we must make it a Christian education as well.