The Bible in College Work
By C. C. Lewis
THE greatest thing in education is moral character. The basis of moral character is responsibility. Every man is responsible to his fellow men and to society; and all are responsible to their common Creator. This sense of responsibility to God is recognized in the constitutions of many of the States, in the judicial oath, and by the overwhelming consensus of public opinion. Therefore whatever tends powerfully to strengthen the sense of moral obligation and responsibility in the human breast is worthy of a large place in education. The mighty truth of moral responsibility is nowhere else so clearly and forcibly set forth as in the Bible. It is taught therein by precept and illustration. It is assumed from Genesis to Revelation. It exhales from every page of the sacred volume. Hence the Bible, embodying the best instruction and the best illustrations in regard to moral responsibility, should be and is the best text-book upon this most important subject. And since this best book upon this most important subject is, and by the rights of religious liberty ought to be, excluded as a text-book from schools supported and conducted by the state, it follows that this book ought to hold a more prominent place in the private colleges of the land; for these colleges are nearly all of a denominational character. They exist largely to promote the ends of the denominations that establish and support them. These ends they find in the Bible. The Bible should therefore be prominently taught in these colleges. If it is not, if the subjects taught are practically the same as those taught in the schools of the state, these colleges become unnecessary rivals to the schools of the state. The only hope of the denominational colleges to excel the schools of the state lies in teaching well those religious subjects which it is their mission to teach, and which the schools of the state do not profess to teach. If these colleges can not excel in their own field, they can not be expected to excel in the field of secular education belonging especially to the schools of the state. The chief reason why the colleges are not able to teach the Bible more and better is because their energies are largely exhausted in meeting the standard of the state in regard to secular education. When the curriculum regarded as the standard is met by the students, there is little time or place left for religious studies. Like Chaucer's physician, their study is and can be but little on the Bible. But the Bible is worthy of a higher place in the college course. In the opinion of so eminent a scholar as Professor Moulton, of Chicago University, speaking particularly of Isaiah, 'It may be safely asserted that nowhere else in the literature of the world have so many colossally great ideas been brought together within the limits of a single work.' Continuing the thought, Professor Moulton says: 'Even in literary form the world has produced nothing greater than Isaiah. . . . But when we proceed to the matter and thought of Isaiah,—the literary matter quite apart from the theology founded upon it,—how can we explain the neglect of such a masterpiece in our plans of liberal education? It is the boast of England and America that its higher education is religious in its spirit. Why is it, then, that our youth are taught to associate exquisiteness of expression, force of presentation, brilliance of imaginative picturing, only with literature in which the prevailing matter and thought is on a low moral plane? Such a paradox is part of the paganism which came in with the Renaissance, and which our higher education is still too conservative to shake off. The friends of literary education, who rebel against the thought of so one-sided culture, have a definite issue to contend for—that at least Isaiah and Job should take their place beside Plato and Homer in the curricula of our colleges and schools.' How much more should the friends of Christian as well as literary education join in the plea that the study of great Christian authors like Isaiah and Job and Paul and Jesus Christ be granted equal credit in fulfilling the required standard with the study of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Cæsar, eminent pagans though they may have been?