XI. THE WORLD IN THE HEART OF GOD

Leading thinkers, Christian and un-Christian, in many lands, were saying in 1922, as they looked out on a world upset politically, financially, and morally: "It is Christ or chaos."

Why not choose Christ?

The churches have not wholly escaped the moral reaction which began before the World War and was in-' tensified by it and especially by the release of tension when the war was over, which made Clemenceau exclaim, "Get back to work; away with this world-wide of laziness"; but the churches, which are still strong in spiritual and moral force, should be the first to respond to the calls to earnest "work" which come louder from world conditions than from any human voice.

The churches' supreme task, by failure to perform which they would discredit themselves and fall in the general wreck, is to revive in multitudes in whom the "faith of our fathers" is dormant but not dead, the sense of the ever presence of a personal God.

The prophets and poets of the Old Testament "practiced the presence of God." In hours of temptation they were checked by the feeling, We can not do anything behind His back; and when heroic words and deeds were needed, they said, "Why should we fear anything with Him looking at us?" President Woodrow Wilson, in a great address on the Bible, showed that the sense of God and the examples of the heroes of faith in the Bible have nerved all great crusaders for human rights to resist despots unto death.

Mr. Fred B. Smith, on his return from a world tour on which he had been sent to rouse the churches of the world to a war against War, read the 46th Psalm as the heart of the Old Testament, its most representative chapter (over against the Beatitudes for the New):

"The Lord of hosts is with us,

The God of Jacob is our refuge;
Therefore will not we fear,

Though the earth be removed."

It is curious that our State University trustees, when they see in history that this one chapter of the Bible nerved Luther and Knox and hundreds of other heroes to fight the battles of religious liberty and free speech and democracy, do not pause to ask what there is to take its place in a curriculum from which, through unscholarly fears and prejudices, they have excluded what is admissibly the greatest of books, giving the people a so-called "University" from which the chief factor of life also, religion, has been shut out on the discourteous assumption that gentlemen could not even consider the common foundations of religion or even read the Bible that all faiths concerned revere, without ungentlemanly disregard of others' rights.

To Old Testament men of faith the world was in the heart of God. The New Testament deepened that sense of dwelling in God by adding the sense of mutual indwelling, as when Jesus said, "Abide in me and I in you" (John 15:5). A whole chapter of the post-ascension life of Christ might be made from Paul's mystic references in his messages to the churches to a new and perpetual incarnation of the risen Christ, not in one human personality but in the whole body of believers: "Christ in you."

That is the Christ that can prevent "chaos"-not the

"Christ" of whom alarmed statesmen speak who are not spiritual or active Christians themselves but think that a recovered intellectual interest in Christ's "ideals" would save us from the Godless mob animalism that threatens civilization. Nothing less than Christ in the heart of millions now Christless can save the day.

Daily Bible Reading in Homes and Schools Essential

In order to restore the sense of the nearness of a living God we must restore in home and school the daily reading of the deeds and words of the Bible's men of faith. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and all great Americans were saturated with Bible examples and Bible precepts. No infidel or even agnostic is found among America's great statesmen. The next "drive" of the churches should be, not for funds but for faith, deep and abiding, to be based, not on an annual revival or a weekly Sunday sermon or Sunday school lesson, but on daily Bible manna in homes and schools. There is no easier way; but those who have restored and improved daily Bible reading in homes and schools in recent years have found the supposed difficulties were mostly imaginary.

Strange the churches do not see in the spontaneous giving at the close of a revival, a hint that the normal way to increase their funds is to "seek first the Kingdom of God." That means more of church energy devoted to spiritual "drives," and they should aim at something more than adding denominational adherents. "The Kingdom of God" means making Christ King of business and politics and pleasure; of the city, the State, the nation, and of internationalism.

Parents have excused themselves from daily family worship, and therefore they have not had the face to make any fight against public school teachers doing the

same.

Parents have also excused their children from going to church. And in most churches the pastor has joined the procession and given up what should be and used to be the pastor's greatest work, training two weekly classes that should be maintained in every church for all or most of the year, one class containing all the children. of eight years or more who have not been admitted to church, to prepare them to join intelligently, the other class composed of all those who have within a year joined the church, who need the closest guidance to get well started in their church responsibilities.

These “lost arts" of Christian education are four of the five chief agencies that our fathers used to train children for service of God and man, the five fingers of the hand of religious child training. The other finger, the little finger, the Sunday school, with only one hour a week for its task and mostly untrained teachers, has been relied upon to do the work of the full hand; and it could not do it if it had been working to the full limit of its ability. It is pathetic to see how the ablest of Christian educators have been struggling to get two fingers at work, seeking to reenforce the Sunday school by one hour a week of church teaching, which is very desirable. But even if all the churches added the weekday hour-and only a few are even expected to do so for many years to come-two fingers can not do the work of a whole hand. And the only finger that can reach all the children is the public school, in which there should not only be Bible reading but also memorizing of the choicest passages. There should be on the walls of public schoolswhy not in home nurseries also?-wall charts of the Commandments and Beatitudes.1

1 The Illinois Woman's College has made itself famous because it stands almost alone in doing what every Christian college at least should do, in memorizing the great chapters of the Bibl and repeating them in concert.

NOTHING THAT PREACHERS OR LAWMAKERS CAN DO WOULD ACCOMPLISH SO MUCH IN A YEAR TO BRING BACK TO THE PEOPLE A MORE GENERAL SENSE OF GOD'S NEARNESS, AS APROPOS, SYMPATHETIC, DAILY BIBLE READINGS IN HOMES AND SCHOOLS. PARENTS AND TEACHERS WOULD, NO DOUBT, RESPOND TO AN ORGANIZED EFFORT IN EACH COMMUNITY TO ENLIST THEM IN THIS TASK AND

EQUIP THEM FOR IT. THIS CAN NOT BE DONE BY ANY OF

THE NATIONAL AGENCIES ON WHICH LOCAL LEADERS HAVE

OF LATE YEARS TOO MUCH RELIED. THIS IS A LOCAL COM

MUNITY TASK.

With Pestalozzi God was the Alpha and Omega in his dealing with the child. He counted "morality and spirituality not merely as sisterly helpers of intellectual education, but as the absolute and necessary foundation of it." There are two notable statues of the great Educator. The second statue stands in the Bahnofstrasse of this city of Zurich. Its picture is before us. It is the triumph of a sculptor's insight of genius. For while there is the touch of human compassion in Pestalozzi's hand laid upon the boy, yet the touch is there only that the child's look may be directed, not towards his benefactor, but heavenward and Godward. The human compassion is but the instrument of the divine motive. That is the secret of Pestalozzianism. Here is the man's greatness. He lived that he might teach human childhood to say:

"Shall I lift up mine eyes unto the mountains? From whence shall my help come?

"My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."

The general failure of schools of all grades to memorize the great classics of literature is one of the most amazing faults of modern education. Apropos quotations should become again one of the charms of polite conversation and public speaking.