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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