The end of all education—of all development in the name and line of culture—ought to lie in the strengthening of character. Of what use are all material achievements if only a dismal emptiness is bound up within? Of what profit is it, says one, whether our railroad trains run sixty miles an hour, if men are fools when they enter, and fools still when they leave? Of what significance is the wonder of wireless telegraphy, if the electric flashes through the ether convey only the accounts of commercial frauds, the follies of the rich, the discontent of the poor, social intrigues, and political scandals? Why should we educate our youth if, in the end, they have learned only to lie more plausibly or forge more cleverly? Caliban’s caustic observation was that the only profit he had secured from being taught his master’s language was that he now knew how to curse. A cultivated scoundrel may do more harm with a stroke of his pen than a score of rude burglars can accomplish in twelve months. A superficial education, divorced from religion, may be handmade to villainy’s more effectual service.
Said Huxley once, “Clever men are as common as blackberries; the rare thing is to find a good man.” This chord was struck strongly by Kipling in his “Recessional:”
“Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart:
Lord, God of Hosts, be with us yet
Lest we forget, lest we forget!”
Well did Milton exhort those of his own people in these words: “Let not England forget her precedent in teaching nations how to live.” If the homely and commonplace virtues are allowed to die out in vanities and self-indulgences; if the qualities of self-respect and righteousness, so necessary to our national perpetuity, shall decay through neglect, no amount of mere material prosperity can ever make amends for the disaster.
The world owes a great debt of gratitude without question to Greece and its prophets of the intellect—those who have stood forth through all the generations since as the authorities in philosophy, physics, art, architecture, sculpture, oratory, and politics. Such names as Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pheidias, Praxiteles, Archimedes, Thucydides, Pericles will always shine as stars of the first magnitude in the intellectual heavens. But salvation was not of the Greeks, but “of the Jews.” When we turn to the pages of the Psalmist, the Prophets, and the Evangelists, we scarcely shall find a word about philosophy, geometry, music, painting, the science of politics, or the construction, constitution, movements, and mysteries of the physical universe. But Isaiah, Micah, Amos, the Gospel writers, and Saint Paul—and, infinitely above all, the Carpenter Prophet of Nazareth—have given the world the loftiest and most absolutely necessary rules and ideals of living. Cleverness is evermore inferior to goodness. Let a man have no matter what completeness of education, the ultimate question remains, “How is he going to use it?” And this query must be answered by something beyond the mental development itself. The Devil is accredited with having a first-class mind and a brilliant understanding. A man bearing all the university degrees, if not chastened and restrained by the spirit of a living religious faith, may prove more of a curse than of a blessing to his fellows. The mention of such personalities as Alexander VI, Macchiavelli, Napoleon, and Byron is enough to support the claim we are making. There has never been a great revival of religion which did not result in a corresponding turning away from frivolity and vice to a soulful seriousness and nobler form of life. The ages of faith have also been, as proved by the careers of John Knox, the Puritans, and John Wesley, the ages of national greatness.
Well did Tennyson pray, in lines oft quoted:
“Let knowledge grow from more to more,