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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
5
PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA DEPLORES LACIv
OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia
University and an educator of international renown,
iast spring delivered at the Episcopal Church of the
Good Shepherd, Augusta, Ga., an address on “Chris
tian Education, which The Bulletin believes could be
placed to advantage in the hands of every educator in
America. It is understood that the address was later
published in pamphlet form by an Episcopalian tract
society.
The Augusta Chronicle published a lengthy account
of the address, a part of which we are pleased to re
produce.
(From the Augusta Chronicle.)
“We would have to go back 1,800 years to find as
highly organized opposition to Christianity as that
existing today, declared Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler,
president of Columbia University, to a congregation
that filled the Church of the Good Shepherd yesterday
morning.
“In the government schools of Russia, one hour
each day is spent in removing traces of what we call
civilization and the Christian religion.”
The address of Dr. Butler was one of the most re
markable ever heard in any Augusta Church. With
hardly a gesture and speaking in a conversational
tone of voice, he held the congregation spellbound
from beginning to end of his talk.
The subject of Dr. Butler’s address was “Christian
Education. He told his hearers that even though a
child had the best physical, intellectual, aesthetic and
institutional education in the land, he would be han
dicapped and even cheated of part of his inheritance
because the religious education was lacking.
He scored the indifference of the day_ saying that
without human effort and energy, there are no grounds
for the optimism prevailing throughout the land.
The feeling that every change is progress, and
that in some mysterious way the outcome will be all
right has no basis in fact, unless we do our part,”
he said.
The speaker criticized the tendency these days to
avoid the fundamental principles and discuss the de
tails in education, politics, economics and religion.
“I sometimes think that we are suffering more than
we realize from this tendency,” Dr. Butler said.
“While there is a great difference of opinion in edu
cational matters, there is little discussion of the fun
damentals of the whole process.
“It is about a hundred years since Chancellor Kent
in an opinion laid down the principle that Chris
tianity is part of the common law of the United
States, meaning that we were cast in a Christian mold,
and however tolerant we might be, we were held in
the grip of Christian framework.
“Christianity today is not only overlooked and neg
lected, but even positively antagonized.
“The differing Christian peoples would rather have
no teaching of the principles at all than a teaching
with an interpretation different from theirs. And so
now we may read the Koran or the books of Confu
cius, or the doctrines of any other religion in our
schools, and study them, but the book of the Christian
religion may not be read. Such was the condition ten
years ago; such is the situation today.
“A new element has taken its place in the world.
We are face to face with a teaching that holds Chris
tianity to be not only an illusion and a superstition,
but a fraud invented to gain control over men. This
you will read in every tract of the Socialists, in every
publication of the Bolshevists.
“The virtues of charity, humility, service, are held
by them to be worthy only of the attention of chil
dren, and the world must get along without them;
from life must be excluded everything that partakes
of religious belief and organization.
“One would say that such a plan could not succeed
at this late date. Anything is possible today. The
human mind was never more credulous than it is
now. Never were people so easily moved.
“While we are comforting ourselves that although
there may be a storm, the structure that has been
built on such a foundation, and founded so securely
can not be shaken, we forget that the protection is
not by faith alone, but by men who are to be leaders
as well.
“We overlook the fact that instead of being an in
cidental, education is an essential part of civilization
and Christianity. So fundamental it is that it goes
back to the time when the father instructed the boy
in how to hunt and fish, and make clothes, and when
the mother taught her daughter how to take care of
the place called home, and how to cook.
“It was a long time before education became a
matter of knowing how to read and write. They were
taught only when they became useful. Writing is of
no use as an end, only as a means. ’
Dr. Butler then told of the inheritance children were
entitled to, including an education of which religion
was an essential.
He pointed out that this part of the education can
not be given in the school.
“So long as there was a state religion, this was
possible,” he said, “but it is no longer. We must
now make sure that the state makes no difficulties in
allowing the child to receive the religious education,
and the home and Church then step in, and supply
the defect.
“The process of education is difficult and complex.
The school alone_ or the college can not bear the
burden of complete education. It has no control over
the environment of the child, and must transfer this
function to other agents. The home must lay the
foundation and supply the atmosphere. The Church