Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/471

Rh Even if there were unity of belief in Christianity, the existence of other religions in the world, supported by millions of people, is of itself sufficient to make the man who loves truth above all things demand for higher educational institutions something more truly catholic for an aim than the promotion of any one religion. If the highest truth be coincident with Christian doctrine; then, if truth in itself be made the chief end, the only result is to advance Christianity also, while there is no possible ground of reproach on the score of sectarianism. Such a reproach is not alone liable to come from atheists and agnostics, who may be considered possibly to have no rights which Christians are bound to respect. There happens to be in Christian communities a large class of people of the highest degree of enlightenment to whom the central doctrines of Christianity are repugnant, and who are devoted to a religion of their own—the religion, indeed, out of which Christianity sprang, but a religion which does not recognize any divine character in Jesus of Nazareth or any divine mission in his career. Such people are not atheists or agnostics. They worship the same God as the Christians do; and they adopt as a sacred book more than half the Christian Bible. In former times Christians used to treat them with the greatest contumely, scarcely as human beings, in fact; in some parts of the world to-day they are persecuted. But in countries where equality before the law is the rule, they have the same rights as other people; and their religious views ought to be recognized in those institutions to which they contribute. The existence of a large number of believers in the Jewish religion is certainly an additional argument against dogmatic religious teaching in any seminary of learning which seeks or obtains state aid. It is also conclusive against the claim that to promote Christianity is not a sectarian aim, for by the expression not alone practical or humanitarian, but doctrinal or theological Christianity is always intended.

Yet this contention that they are in no wise sectarian or partisan continues to he made by distinctively Christian colleges. Under this declaration, they open their doors to the world and profess to give the youth all the higher instruction he needs. They claim to teach knowledge, science, truth. But they certainly would not allow anything to be truth which militates against Christianity as an exclusive religion, as the only hope for mankind—this hope lying not in the spirit of altruism pervading Christianity but in loyalty to Jesus Christ personally as the sole Redeemer and Saviour. The Jewish view of Jesus would not be tolerated for an instant; the Unitarian belief is not less obnoxious; the agnostic humility is thought blasphemous. The possibility of the "orthodox" principles and facts being error is not to be allowed or considered! The chief business of these institutions is to maintain the truth of their religious creed as a postulate not to be questioned, as an assumed point of departure for all acquisition of knowledge, and as the supreme end of all learning. For instance. President Adams, of