EDUCATION AND THE BIBLE —Ruskin and others hoped that filling
the schools might tend to ry the gaols, hospitals and lunatic asylums. Magistrates deplore increase in juvenile crime, the hospitals' gracious work is still ted, and if insanity is not increasing there seems to be a growing for homes for " border-line " cases. Did the pioneers expect too ch, or is modern education reared on a foundation of sand? Educa- must be based on some theory of life, its origin and purpose, the theory of evolution has for years been its base and background. ution is not science, is not the outcome of observation, experiment reasoning; it is a flight of fancy, a bold assumption for which generations of diligent searching has not found confirmatory ence. Eve t if evolution were science, it would not be enough, science, while it discovers and describes, does not explain, and wants an explanation, of why he is here and what he would be 'ow the Bible does claim to explain the origin and meaning of life. it make good this claim? Seven years of close reading and ecting on it convinces me that it does and that it is the only theory t fits the facts. For many years I read what its enemies had to , for years what some of its would-be friends had to say, and at g last I consigned both sets of books to the boiler and did what ould have done forty years ago: read the Bible itself, in the thorised and Revised versions. The more I read the more I was winced that I was not dealing with cunningly-devised fables, but facts, and the more literally I took the words before my eyes profounder their meaning. So far I have. found no statement in Bible which experimental science has proved to be wrong ; and archaeologist and historian confirm the truth of it. And I submit t once more the Bible should be the base and background of all cation ; and it should be read at home, not in the day-schools. [iv maintain that a child is made or marred in its first seven years ; e would say made or marred twenty years before it is born. What dren need today is not more education, but better parents, parents are conscious of their duty to those they bring to life and who uld resent this responsibility being taken from them.
e we parents past praying for? On the contrary, I think we are ready for a return, not to nebulous " religion," but definitely to back to the Bible, which men of light and learning set aside only find physics in ruins, mathematics going out in mystery, and osophy culminating in blank despair. " On a people's conception God hangs their fate," and England's fate is at the hazard now.—
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