Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/629

Rh supernatural idea? It may be said that so long as the Bible is read and expounded and treated as authoritative in the churches, the same conflict between naturalism outside the Church and supernaturalism within it will exist; but to this may be answered that on the clergy rests the responsibility for finding a modus vivendi between the two, and that, with their special learning and the special interest they have in the matter, much may be possible to them that is wholly beyond the scope of the lay teacher in a public school. There are clergymen who tell us to-day that it is in no wise necessary to believe in the biblical story of creation as a record of facts, and some are almost prepared to dispense with all belief in the miraculous; but could the school teacher in whose hands the Bible was placed as an authoritative text-book be allowed or expected to indulge in such critical exercitations? The idea is ridiculous: a text-book is a textbook, and its meaning must lie on the surface; its words must be susceptible of being taken at their face value; and no special gifts or graces must be required for its satisfactory use as a text-book.

That the Bible as a whole is a most impressive book; that it bears a noble stamp of earnestness and moral elevation; that it contains moral teaching of inestimable value—these are propositions which we should be the last to deny; but, admitting them to the full, we still consider that it is a wise and true instinct which reconciles the majority even of those who place the highest estimate on the Bible to dispensing with its use in the public schools.

But how about those masses who, according to Dean Carmichael, are becoming educated, and owing to that very fact more dangerous than the mob that stormed the BastileBastille [sic]? That all the signs of the times are favorable we by no means think; but as regards the influence of popular education, what we dread is not the awakening of the intellect of the multitude so much as the stifling of it and the enslaving of it to false ideas. So far as popular education has an awakening effect, its influence, we doubt not, will be good. A man does not become dangerous because he has learned to sign his name; but he becomes dangerous both to himself and to others if he has been taught to dissociate cause and effect; if he has got it into his head that benefits may be obtained without labor; if his brain has been muddled with the notion that others are responsible for making him happy and prosperous. We dread an education which in any way withdraws a youth from the salutary influence of natural reactions and tends to give him an artificial conception of the world he lives in. We dread an education which favors the formation of indolent habits, or which confuses and enfeebles the mind by calling upon it to pursue abstract trains of thought when it should be occupied with the concrete. We dread an education which at once excites ambition and disinclines for toil; which gives a smattering of many things, but no true sense of power or competence in regard to anything; which represses individuality and so robs character of a main element of strength. And all these unfavorable results, we fear, are wrought by much of the education that is imparted to-day. But to try to conquer our evils or avert our perils by driving back the masses into ecclesiastical penfolds is as chimerical an idea as could well be conceived. The world is willing, and more than willing, to listen to those who can shed a glory upon human life borrowed from regions of faith and hope that lie above our ordinary range of