The Educational Controversy in Washington
By W. A. Colcord
Why Sunday Laws and Religious Instruction in Public Schools Are Demanded
THERE is a decided determination on the part of a certain class in Washington to make religion a part of the government system. This is manifested, first, in the effort to secure Sunday legislation for the District of Columbia; and, second, in a movement recently started, to introduce a system of religious instruction into the public schools of Washington, a report of which appeared in last week's REVIEW. The church having left the pure doctrines and principles of the gospel, and failing to look to the Holy Spirit for guidance and for power with which to carry on the work of the church, we can quite understand how certain church leaders of to-day are making this false move and this fatal attempt to reform matters by an appeal to the state. Much of the religion of the present time lacks vitality. The real inspiration, the living breath, of God is not in it. The form of godliness is retained, but a course is taken which denies the presence of the living power of God to save men from sin. Hence power is looked for from another source. And, as to the natural eye and understanding nothing is in sight which seems to possess so much available power and active machinery for accomplishing results as does the state, appeal is made by these leaders of religious thought to the state to do the work which should be done by the church. The power of God having been not only lost, but lost sight of, the strong arm of the state is very naturally sought. And why is this power sought first of all in the matters of Sabbath observance and religious instruction? This also is easy to understand. The Sabbath and the family are two divine institutions which have come down to us from Eden. Preserved in their purity and rightly regarded, they are two connecting links between earth and heaven, between man and God. The Sabbath is the sign and the constant reminder of the Creator. The family is the heaven-appointed school where the children are to be instructed in the knowledge and fear of God. There is no reminder of God like the Sabbath; there is no school like the home. But when the Sabbath is disregarded, or when the institution as originally ordained is changed or perverted; and when religion is no longer taught in the home, and the children grow up without hearing from the lips of father and mother of the God who made them, and the Saviour who died for them, the high and holy ends of these two great institutions are frustrated, and irreligion, godlessness, crime, and lawlessness are the sure and inevitable results. This being so, the only logical and consistent corrective for this irreligious and demoralized state of things, as must be apparent to every one, is a return to the keeping of the Sabbath of the Lord and to the teaching of religion in the home. A true Sabbath reform and a genuine educational reform is the only real solution to the question. But, unwilling to go to the root of the evil and make these necessary reforms, men are asking the state to enforce the observance of a sabbath for which there is no divine command, and to teach in its schools that which it is neither adapted nor ordained to teach. Thus it is in Washington. This is exactly the course which is being pursued by religious leaders at the capital of the nation. First, Sunday laws are demanded, and then religious instruction in the public schools is called for. These two things—the enforcement of the false sabbath and a state-taught religion—naturally go together, just as the keeping of the true Sabbath and the true method of education go hand in hand. With the willingness and the desire to obey God and keep all his commandments go the willingness and the desire to bring up the children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. On the other hand, with the unwillingness to keep God's commandments, and especially the fourth commandment, go the unwillingness and the unfitness to teach the children the way of the Lord. But realizing nevertheless that the children need such instruction, and that the present7irreligious and demoralized state of society is largely due to the lack of such instruction, men are seeking to shift the burden and responsibility of this work from the home and the church, where it rightly belongs, to the public-school teacher and the state, where it does not and never can rightly belong. And this situation is not peculiar to Washington. What is demanded here is being demanded everywhere. The condition which we face here is the condition we must face everywhere. The general disregard of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and the almost total neglect of religion in the home, are bringing about a fearful state of things morally. And as men refuse to reform and to accept God's way out of the difficulty, we must expect that the demands upon the state for help, both in the matter of Sabbath observance and in that of religious instruction, will likewise become universal. And all this only emphasizes the fact that we must be prepared to meet the situation as it is wherever we are, and to set forth both by example and by precept the real reform and solution to the whole question. Let us be sure that we do not neglect religion in our own homes. And let it be of that sort that has light, and breadth, and joy, and love, and sweetness in it.