Page:The church, the schools and evolution.djvu/86

 Both the implied and the direct accusations are utterly without foundation. Indeed, the thing Dr. Mathews charges is the one thing true Christian education does not do.

When did the Church ever try to force a man, educated or ignorant, to give up what he knows to be facts in order to become a Christian? When was a man ever asked by Christian schools to choose between the assured results and methods of scientific investigation and loyalty to Christ 9 When has that institution which, above all others, has fought ignorance and fostered true scientific investigation used a method that put a premium on ignorance as a prerequisite for faith?

It is not facts that the Church either fears or refuses to accept, but such an interpretation of them by evolutionists and rationalists as to deny the scientific accuracy and therefore the inerrancy of the Word of God. It is altogether beside the truth to intimate that the Church is fostering an education that has to withhold assured scientific facts for fear their knowledge would ruin faith in any theological beliefs whatever "for which the schools stand." It is not the knowledge of scientific facts that true Christian schools ever withhold, but such theories and speculations concerning their meaning as would destroy the schools as Christian institutions if the logic of them were followed to the end. And as for the Church ever abandoning the assured results and methods of scientific investigation, this is precisely the thing the Church is fighting to maintain against the efforts of evolutionists and rationalists. It is rather the Schools that have been abandoning scientific methods of