CHAPTER XV.
INFERNAL SCHOOL SYSTEM.
1. A general view of the vast University of the World with all its subordinate operations. All working in harmony to destroy the good that God would do in the world.
The University of the World is so extensive that one could not visit all its parts during the course of a life-time, but there is a place called the Magic Observatory whence an observer can have a bird’s-eye view of all the principal scholastic operations of the Broad Highway.
The Observatory is owned and controlled by careful agents of Satan who will allow only certain persons to get the benefit of so extensive a view.
Mr. World and Miss Church-Member left the ground of the Temperance College and proceeded to get permission to rise to the glorious heights of the Observatory. Mr. World secured permission, but his companion, not having had sufficient experience in the service of Satan, was refused a pass. The difficulty was settled by a happy thought. Miss Church-Member suggested that while he should improve the opportunity and rise to see the sights, she would visit the College of Fashions, for which privilege she had been yearning.
I saw that Mr. World spent a long time in viewing the endless proportions of the noted Observatory, and finally stood on the lofty viewpoint with an interpreter at his side.
He was then directed to a seat on a mechanical device that moved in a circle; and as he sat there he looked through the powerful glasses of the immense telescope.
He first beheld the Schools of the Fine Arts, with their myriad students who swarmed through a group of buildings so large that it covered the first sweep of the telescope.
At the next turn of the magic device Mr. World saw the Special Schools of Mathematics whose prevalent tendency was to destroy faith. Here the mind of each student was taught to submit everything to the tests of proof, so that by the time one’s training was finished he would believe only what could be scientifically demonstrated. In this way Satan induced many a student to disregard the Bible because he could not reduce all its teachings to the cold and rigid rules of human reasoning.
Thus does Satan manipulate affairs so that many of the Christian schools of the earth have imbibed a similar course:—first exalting Reason, and doing nothing to correspondingly develop in the student the functions of Faith.