Talking Points On Christian Education Compiled by ELMER T. CLARK Secretary of the Department of Publicity M.E. CHURCH. SOUTH Christian Education Comm'ission, M. E. Church, South J. H. Reynolds, Director General Nashville, Tenn. PUBLISHING HOUSE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH SMITH & LAMAR, AGENTS PREFACE C ^ y This book is published by the Christian Educa- tion Commission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to furnish m.aterial for addresses, sermons, and articles to those who will speak or write in behalf of the Christian Education Movement. Any person inter- ested in the Movement or in any phase of Christian education may read it with profit and is imdted to make the freest use of its contents. Those who represent the Movement are urged to mas- ter thoroughly the first three objectives and to make these, including the doctrine of Christian stewardship, the central them^es in all their deliberations, at least until the month of March. Little or nothing should be said of the financial objective until after that time. If this is stressed before the other great fundamental ob- jectives are made clear to the people, the Movement will be much misrepresented. Let all the objectives be regarded seriously and their importance indicated by the order in which they stand. These spiritual aims are not projected simply to commend a financial campaign to the people; they are the real and fundam.entally supreme issues of the entire Movement and should be so considered. Our first and most important task is to bring our people to see clearly the meaning and place of Christian education in the life of the Church, the State, and the world. Speakers and writers are earnestly urged to emphasize 4 PREFACE always the fact that this is a movement in behalf of Christian education. It is not our function to preach education, as such, since America has already appraised the value of education and is determined to seek it. It is the function of the Church to make education Chris- tian. We should also seek to establish a conception of our work as being that of a m.ovement which will not cease this year, but which will increase in influence as the years go by and will eventually permeate all educational processes. By all means we should adapt our terminology to our conception. Avoid always the use of the words * 'cam- paign'' and "drive." The most unfortunate idea that the people could gain would be that this Movement is a financial ''campaign" for $33,000,000 or any other sum. The raising of a large sum is but one of the prac- tical steps which the Church will take in order to estab- lish an adequate policy of Christian education, and it is no more than that. It is a means, and not an end. Since the words "campaign" and "drive" have come to indicate to the popular mind a financial appeal only, they should be studiously avoided. Let us in all our speaking and in all our conversation insist upon keeping to the forefront the opportunity and obligation the Church has for putting Christ in the education of this generation and all future generations. If we can arouse the Church to a conviction regarding this obligation, the cost of meeting the obligation will seem of minor importance. PREFACE We should, moreover, insist that this conception be big enough. A moral idea is the most powerful human force in existence. If our conception regarding this program of education is big enough, we will implant in the minds of all the people of the Southland this idea and ideal and will set in motion forces of pubhc opinion which will not only provide adequate financial support for our own Church institutions, but which will also bring a new emphasis in the whole system of pubHc edu- cation. If our conception is big enough, if we stand as the apostles for Christianizing the education of this generation, we may indeed change the course of our nation's Hfe. We cannot do this if we limit our con- ception to that of a financial campaign. The authoritative and most important publication of the Christian Education Movement is the "Educa- tional Survey.'' It should be studied long and care- fully. A full famiharity with this official volume will make many other aids unnecessaiy. In the present booklet the reader will find references to certain other pamphlets issued by the Commission or the Board of Education. These may be obtained free by application to the Department of PubHcity, at Nashville. Special attention is invited to the "Handbook on Christian Stewardship" published by the Commission. This covers the great doctrine in all of its aspects and presents it in a manner worthy of a great and progres- sive denomination. It will be furnished free to all speakers and should be given careful study. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/talkingpointsonc01clar CONTENTS Page I. An Adequate Conception of Christian Education.. . 11 II. Religious Education 20 III. American Education Menaced by Irreligious Ten- dencies 25 IV. Methodism and Education 29 V. Christian Education Fundamental to Civilization. . . 37 VI. Christian Stewardship • 54 VII. Deepening the Spiritual Life 63 VIII. Source of Supply 65 IX. National Leadership 77 X. The Financial Objective 81 XI. Miscellaneous Facts 98 XII. The Enlarged Missionary Program Dem.ands an En- larged Educatio rial Program 103 OBJECTIVES OF THE EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT 1. To develop in the mind of the Church an adequate conception of the place of Christian education in the life of the Chui'ch, of the nation, and of the world. 2. To promote the cause of religious education by bringing about a closer and more effective cooperation between our institutions of learning and the Sunday school, and by estabhshing strong departments of re- ligious education in our colleges and universities. 3. To lead at least 5,000 young men and women to pledge themselves to devote their lives to the ministry, to missions, or to some other form of Chi^istian service and to seek a Christian education as a preparation for effective life sen-ice. 4. To raise for our schools, colleges, and universities at least $33,000,000, the minimum sum necessary to enable thern to send out the constantly increasing stream of educated Christian leaders required to cariy forward the Cliristian work of the world, and to secure $1,000,000 to aid worthy students who are looking to some form of Christian sennce in their efforts to obtain an education. 5. To deepen the moral and spiritual life of our people and to promote the spirit of Christian liberahty in all of the efforts put forth to realize these objectives. I AN ADEQUATE CONCEPTION OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION We must seek to impress upon our people the tran- scendent power of education. They must be brought to see that it is the greatest constructive force in the world and that if the Churches are to conquer the mind of the world with the ideals and spirit of Christ, they must seize this arm of power — education — and Christianize all education. The First Objective "The most important, the most fundamental, the most far-reaching objective to be achieved by the Move- ment is : 'To develop in the mind of the Church an ade- quate conception of the place of Christian education in the Hfe of the Church, of the nation, and of the world.' ''Let it be clearly understood at the very outset that this Movement is not a mere drive for m_oney; its task is far more difficult and far miore important than to secure a certain sum of money. The most ambitious result which it seeks to accomplish is nothing less than to reach and to influence in a definite way the mind of the whole Church. What I m.ean here is illustrated by one of the achievements of the Centenary Movement. The mind of the Church toward missions will never be 12 TALKING POINTS ON the same as it was before the Church passed through the experiences of the Centenary. So it is with the Christian Education Movement. It is our aim to bring the whole Church to a state of mind relative to Chris- tian education which it has never had before. To come out of the Movement with an appreciation of the im- portance of Christian education in the Hfe of the Church, and of the nation, and of the world is the largest and finest thing to be accompHshed by our great cause. "The Movement seeks to promote a definite type of education — that is, Christian education. Since 1914 the civilized world has learned the never-to-be-forgotten lesson that in nominally Christian lands pagan types of education may grow and flourish. Let it be understood with all clearness that our concern is with distinctively Christian education. This raises the question: What is Christian education? It is sometimes said that the only difference between Christian education and other types is a difference of atmosphere. But this is not the only difference. "Christian education is differentiated from all other types of education by at least three essential elements: "1. Christian ideals are essential to Christian educa- tion. What are parents and teachers and schools try- ing to make of the young lives committed to their care? If they are a gents of genuinely Christian education, they are trying to make Christian men and women of them. In bringing to realization the potential Christ- like manhood and womanhood of the boys and girls committed to its care. Christian education gives to the CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IS State the highest type of citizenship and to society its finest members. "The supreme concern of Christian education is the spirit. It subscribes fully to the doctrine that The soul of education is the education of the soul.' Vv^hile friendly to all vocational, technical, and professional training, it centers its interest upon the man himself rather than upon the work which he may do in life. I am steadfast in the opinion that the most important thing any college, any university can do and is doing for those committed to its care is to help them to a right answer to the questions: '"What is the meaning of Hfe?' 'What are the true values of Hfe?' 'What shall one do with the mind when trained, with knowledge when ac- quired?' The answers to these questions go to the heart of things. The ansv/er which any man gives to these will tell of the convictions which he has wrought out, the ideals which beckon him on, and the experiences through which he has passed. They tell of the quality of his soul, the breadth and depth and height of his character, the very self he has become. "The most important thing about any type of edu- cation is the ideals which it inculcates and the prin- ciples which it instills into the lives of those brought under its influence. This was the point of breakdown in German education. Germany was the first nation, so far as I know, to discover the tremendous potency of education and the first to apply it fully to the working out of her national and international plans. Germany made no mistake in attributing superhuman power to 14 TALKING POINTS ON education. Her fatal mistake was made in adopting unworthy and selfish ideals and then debasing the edu- cational process by using it for the purpose of reahzing these ideals. Germany paganized her education by the adoption of ideals utterly at variance with the prin- ciples of Christianity. Education, thus supported by pagan motives and selfish desires and debasing ideals, readily lends itself to the purpose of a horrible ruthless- ness. In order for any type of culture to be Christian, it must be supported by Christian ideals and Christian principles, and its supreme values must be those of the spirit reckoned in terms of quaHties of character and attitudes of life. "2. Christian instruction is essential to Christian edu- cation. Instruction is only one element in education, but it is essential. Without instruction there can be no education. The subject-matter of instruction is of first importance. Christian education demands subject- matter of instruction which is Christian to the core. The supreme relation in the Christian Hfe is the relation to God. At the center of Christian consciousness is the consciousness of vital fellowship with God. In the life of the Christian the supreme reahty is God. The relationship to God in the Christian life is just as real as that to men and things. So in Christian education there must be definite religious instruction. This re- quirement requires instruction in the Bible, which is the very core of the subject-matter of religious instruc- tion for Christians. I do not raise the question as to whether or not the Bible should be taught in the public CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 15 schools. Surely, if we are to have religious education, it must be taught somewhere. Whatever bar there may be to teaching it in the pubHc schools, certainly it may be taught with great diligence in the home and in the Sunday school and in the schools, colleges, and universities of the Church. This requirement also de- mands instruction in the hfe, activities, influence, and achievements of the Christian group, of Christian peoples, from the beginning of the Christian era. ''But what of that vast range of the subject-miatter of instruction usually covered by the curricula of school, college, and university? Is this Christian, or anti- Christian, or neutral? By some much of it is m_ade anti- Christian, by others it is made neutral. It is possible for a student to wade through the four years of high school curriculum, the four years of college curriculum, the two or three or four years of university curriculum, and never reahze that there is the shghtest relation between the subject-matter of instruction with which he deals and Christianity or the Christian life. Where this is the case the student has been led to regard the subject-matter of his instruction in the languages, in the sciences, in mathematics, and in philosophy, either as hostile or as altogether neutral toward Christianity and the Christian life. Can it be said that such a man has been the recipient of a Christian education? ''What then? Shall we narrow the range of the cur- riculum to include only what are commonly called rehgious subjects? God forbid ! There are three terms which cover the whole field of knowledge: God, man, 16 TALKING POINTS ON and the world. Comprised in these three terms are all sciences—natural, physical, and social— all languages, all history, all literature, all arts, and all philosophy. Christian education throws wide the door and bids the youth of the land to enter every field of knowledge and to gain therein all mastery and to acquire all possible skill. What Christian education does is to annul the anti attitude and the neutral attitude spoken of above, and which may exist in school or college or community, toward the Christian Hfe. Christianity's Founder came not to destroy, but to fulfill. So Christian education does not destroy what we are accustomed to think of as a secular learning, but absorbs it, Christianizes it, and uses it as an effective agency in producing a culture broad, deep, and profoundly Christian. So in a very real sense there is a Christian physics, a Christian chem- istry, a Christian biology, a Christian interpretation of literature, of hfe, and of the world. "3. The agencies of Christian culture, in order to achieve full results, must have a Christian atmosphere in which to do their work. Atmosphere is not the only difference between the Christian home and the non-Christian home. There is a difference of ideals. There is a dif- ference of instruction, there is a difference of attitude toward the various institutions and values of hfe. There are differences of accent, of emphasis, and of interpre- tation. So there are numerous differences between the Christian school and the non-Christian institution. But the differences of atmosphere are profound and far- reaching. The magnolia will not grow in Canada, and CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 17 the horse chestnut will not gi'ow in Florida, no matter how rich the soil. The atmosphere of Canada will not support the gi^owth of the magnoHa. ''One of the most potent, all-pervading influences of every home and of every institution of learning is its atmosphere. There are homes and schools surrounded by an atmosphere which is uncongenial, even hostile, to the growth of Christian character. The power of the atmosphere surrounding every home centers in the father and mother. The point from, which the atmos- phere which pervades any institution of learning radi- ates is the faculty. An institution cannot be an agency of Christian culture without a Christian faculty. The instructors of any institution stand at the heart and center of power. Every Christian school must live and m.ove and have its being in an atmosphere congenial to and able to support the development of Christian ideals and in which Christian instraction may be effect- ively given." — Stonewall Anderson. Lesson of the World War 'The great central, outstanding lesson of the Vv^'orld War is that by controUing the education of a people you can in a generation change the spirit, ideals, and charac- ter of that nation. Benjamin Kidd, in his "Science of Power," has stated this truth and has pointed out that both Germany and Japan have done that in the last forty years. Ee said that in one generation German education was completely Prussianized — that is, the Prussian military ohgarchy captured all of the proc- 2 18 TALKING POINTS ON esses of German education from the kindergarten to the university, stamped it with the spirit and ideals of Prussian materialism and militarism, and through it completely changed the character and spirit of the German people from a peace-loving, rehgious people to a covetous, conceited, war-mad people. It is this fact that explains the World W ar. When the Prussian lead- ers had finished their task of educating the people for it, they precipitated the war. Education is the strongest force in typing civihzation and is therefore the biggest task of man." — J. H. Reynolds. (See "Lessons of the World War in the Field of Edu- cation," by J. H. Reynolds, pubhshed by Board of Education of M, E. Church, South.) Our Choice "Giving to the world the right kind of education is the most important question before humanity. If we can make education Christian, civihzation is safe; otherwise education is at least as dangerous as igno- rance. Bolshevism in Russia and anarchy in Mexico are examples of what ignorance in the masses, led by fanatics with half-baked social ideas, will do for peoples; while the world devastated by the great war and torn by social anarchy is an example of what a materiaHstic education, an education purely scientific and devoid of God, will do. Of the two, ignorance is less harmful. "But we do not have a choice between education and ignorance. That day is past. We are going to educate. In the present state of civilization education is the pas- CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 19 sion of the world. The United States is expending a billion dollars a year on education. "Our only choice is the kind of education and the great war shov/s that the kind of education is every- thing; for it was the materiaHstic education of Germany, stripped of Christian ethics and resting on the ethics of the jungle, that v/as responsible for the war and its hor- rible methods. Our choice is whether education shall be Christian or heathen, and in that choice we deter- mine the civiHzation of the future. Our General Con- ference of 1918, facing this greatest issue of history, de- cided to exert the full power of our Church in an effort to make our education Christian." — J. H. Reynolds. II RELIGIOUS EDUCATION "To promote the cause of religious education by bringing about a closer and more effective cooperation between our institutions of learning and the Sunday school" is the second objective of the Movement. Christian education covers a wider field than religious education. In religious education the subject-matter of instruction is limited to religious and kindred sub- jects. The very heart of the subject-m.atter of instruc- tion in religious education is the Bible. "A few jT-ears ago there were those among us who denied that there was any such thing as religious edu- cation. To-day it is recognized that the religious edu- cation of the youth of the nation is one of the gravest problems wi^-h which we are confronted. Where State and Church are separated, as in our nation, it is a prob- lem which can be solved only by voluntary effort. The State is pouring out its milHons for the education of its youth, but no part of this wealth can be used directly for rehgious education. "It is needless to debate further the question as to whether or not the Bible should be taught in the public schools. The very presence of the denomina- tions in practically all communities makes it impracti- cable to teach the Bible in the pubHc school. The larger part of religious education secured by the CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 21 youth of the nation must, it seems to me, come through the Church. I think it is time for Protestantism to settle down in the conviction that it is responsible for the quality and degree of religious education of the youth of America. 'The great agency of rehgious education is the Sun- day school. My conviction is that this institution stands at the beginning of its usefulness as an education- al agency. Only in recent years has the Sunday school been regarded as a genuinely educational institution. It is now so regarded by all leaders in this field. "This Movement seeks to bring the work of religious education as represented by the institutions of learning of the Church and the Sunday school into closer and more effective cooperation. We need to show our people that these two agencies are working at the same great task. As a substantial expression of this cooperation, it is the purpose of the Movement to estabhsh in all our colleges and universities a strong department of rehgious education. In this department the Bible and related subjects will be taught. Young men and women will be fitted for teachers in the Sunday schools and for superintendents of rehgious education and other forms of Christian service in the local Church. In this way the colleges and universities of the Church and the Sun- day schools will be brought into vital relationship and made mutually helpful to each oVaQY.''— Stonewall Anderson, 22 TALKING POINTS ON Neglect of the Religious Instruction of Children The Literary Digest of August 14, 1920, page 35, gives some startling facts showing how shamefully the Prot- estant Churches of America have neglected the re- ligious training of the children. This neglect threatens the moral bankruptcy of the nation, and the problem of the proper religious instruction of children is a big national issue. In 1916 there were 21,888,521 children enrolled in the Sunday schools of the United States, while in 1920 there are only 15,617,000, a loss of over six million children from the Sunday schools of the country. Only one-half of the 53,000,000 children in the United States are enrolled in rehgious schools of any kind. Among Protestants the situation is even worse, be- cause with them three out of every five receive no rehgious training. Jewish children receive every year 335 hours of religious instruction, or one hour a day for eleven months in the year. CathoHc children receive 200 hours a year, or four hours a week. Protestant children average half an hour a week, or twenty-six hours a year. The sixteen States served in a large way by our Church have 14,251,873 children who are receiv- ing no rehgious instruction whatever. The number of totally neglected children for each State is as follows: Texas, 1,376,580; Oklahoma, 1,028,000; Louisiana, 624,690; Arkansas, 890,000; Missouri, 883,490; Ken- tucky, 821,150; Tennessee, 920,420; Mississippi, 755,- 900; Alabama, 1,100,250; Georgia, 1,348,790; Florida, CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 23 383,430; South Carolina, 669,340; North CaroHna, 885,540; West Virginia, 472,640; Virginia, 860,082; Maryland, 1,231,570. These figures constitute a severe indictment of the Protestant Churches. Spiritual ilHteracy is the fore- runner of moral bankruptcy and national decay. The solution of the problem is not to try to put religious instruction in the pubhc schools. The Churches and the homes must assume this responsibility. The New York Board of Education has voted to give a whole afternoon a week for the rehgious instruc- tion of children by their own Churches. This action is wise. It puts the responsibihty where it belongs. While the Protestant Churches are not well prepared to meet the emergency, such action will force the ques= tion to the front and will compel an adjustment of Church machinery to meet the situation. This will call for many trained Christian teachers. Let us in this Movem.ent bring the question of an adequate re- ligious educational program before our people and develop an informed conscience on it. End of Religious Education 'The end of religious education is not mere knowl- edge or learning; but rather to bring the indi\idual into life — the largest, richest, highest Hfe; yea, the hfe of God shared with man. 'I am come that they may have life, and that they m.ay have it more abundantly.' 'This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him v/hom thou didst send, even 24 TALKING POINTS Jesus Christ.' This Christian view of God makes the religious Mfe fundamentally ethical. "Religious and moral education cannot be separated. The goal of Christian education is to bring one into close acquaintance with God, to make his relation to God the dominating relation in life, the entrance into the largest life and character.'' — King, Personal and Ideal Elements in Education." in AMERICAN EDUCATION MENACED BY IRRELIGIOUS TENDENCIES Prof. James H. Lueba is the professor of psychology and pedagogy in Br^Ti Ma\^T College. He is a native of Switzerland and was educated in Germany. Pro- fessor Lueba is an atheist, who rejects the behef in God and immortality. In 1916 he pubhshed a book in which he gave the results of a large number of question- naires sent out to students and professors in certain of the large secular colleges and universities of the country in an attempt to fmd out what these people believed about God and the future life. The general result of his investigation showed, ac- cording to his tabulation, that about sixty per cent of the professors of science, psychology, and history in these secular institutions do not beheve in the existence of God. A shghtly smaller per cent of these same pro- fessors also reject belief in personal immortality. The same investigation also showed that between iO% and oO% of the students in these colleges and universities reject behef in God also, and about the same number do not beheve in personal immortahty. A significant pecuharity showed itseK in the statis- tics concerning the faith of these college students. Among the freshmen the number of those who did not 26 TALKING POINTS ON believe in God was about 15%, but the proportion in- creased rapidly in the upper classes. This seems to indicate, if Professor Lueba's tabulation be correct, that only 15% of the students did not beheve in God when they entered these institutions, but that as they contin- ued to sit under the instruction of the professors above referred to they lost their faith until not more than half were believers when they left the institutions. The same statistics revealed the fact that about 60% of the professors and about 50% of the students de- clared that they had no desire for personal immortaUty and did not consider that it had any material influence on human conduct. The Doctrines Taught The following are a few quotations from Professor Lueba's book, showing the sentiments entertained by the professor of education in Bryn Mawr College: ''There are devoted Christians who apparently pre- fer living in intellectual dishonesty to recognizing that the God whom they worship has no existence in their philosophy." "Investigation indicates that the proportion of disbelievers in immortality increases considerably from the freshman to the senior year in college. Considered altogether, my data would indicate from 40% to 50% of young men leaving college entertain an idea of God incompatible with the acceptance of the Christian re- ligion even as interpreted by the liberal clergy.'' CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 27 ''The deepest impression left by these records is that, so far as rehgion is concerned, our students are grovehng in darkness. Christianity as a system of behef has utterly broken dov/n; and nothing definite, adequate, and convincing has taken its^place. Their behef s, when they have any, are superficial and amateurish in the extreme. There is no generally acknowledged author- ity, each one beheves as he can, and few seem disturbed at being unable to hold the tenets of the Churches. This sense of freedom is the glorious side of an otherwise dangerous situation." *'I have come to hold that, in so far at least as the most civihzed nations are concerned, the modern belief in immortality costs more than it is worth." "If we bring into the calculation all the consequences of the behef, and not merely its gratifying effects, we may even be brought to conclude that its disappearance from the most civilized nations would be, on the whole, a gain." "Forty-three per cent of the men and 22 per cent of the women students declare themselves indifferent to the existence of God. These are nearly all nonbe- lievers." "It would be difficult to evaluate the harm done to humanity in the past by the conviction that the real destination of man is the world to come. A sincere be- lief in the Christian God to whom the behever is to be united in heaven is an unavoidable cause of detachment from this life." 28 TALKING POINTS Of course Professor Lueba's inquiry was among the big secular colleges and universities. No such condition exists in Church schools. Indeed, it is quite probable that his statements greatly exaggerate the condition in the large secular institutions. He himself is an atheist, and this fact doubtless colored his whole book. IV METHODISM AND EDUCATION Methodism, with all its meaning and benefits to the world, sprang from the Christian college. Its inspira- tion, its genius, its motive, all find their source and best expression in Christian education. Born in Oxford University, it went out immediately to found the Kingswood School in England, Cokesbury College in America, and similar institutions around the world. Oxford trained at least iovx generations of the Wesley family, thus laying deep the foundations of Methodism in Christian culture. Bartholomew Wesley studied medicine and theology at the famous EngHsh seat of learning. His son John followed to the Alm.a Mater of the father. Samuel Wesley, son of John, entered Exeter College, Oxford, in 1883, and later his three sons — Samuel, Charles, and John — all entered Christ ChuTch College at the same university. Out of the Christian college came these generations of theologians to make Methodism one of the dominant spiritual forces of the earth. From her ovvn colleges there now go out leaders and influences worthy of the Church's past. Since its foundation Methodism has been in the busi- 30 TALKING POINTS ON ness of education. It has founded and maintained schools, colleges, and universities wherever it has gone. Methodism is the child of Christian education. Samuel Wesley, the father of the two great Methodists; John Wesley, the scholar, theologian, and statesman of the Methodist Revival; Charles Wesley, the poet and hymn writer; George Whitefield, its silver-tongued evangel; and Thomas Coke, the bishop ordained by Wesley for service in America, were all trained in Oxford University. Methodism has always recognized its educational responsibility. Its first building was a school — the corner stone of which was laid at Kingswood on the same day that John Wesley preached his first open-air sermon, six weeks before the erection of a church build- ing. The first American General Conference projected Cokesbury College. Action of the General Conference of 1918 'The General Conference of 1918 faced three big questions — the unification of Methodism, the forward movement in missions, and an adequate program of Christian education. All these subjects were maturely considered for days by large and able committees. The General Conference had under consideration the edu- cational movement twice, once upon the report of the Committee on Education and second upon the report of the Committee on Conference. The report of the Committee on Education, a great State paper, recom- CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 31 mended that the General Conference order a popular, Church-wide, intensive campaign for our educational institutions. This report was unanimously adopted. At the request of the Committee on Education the General Conference created a Committee on Conference consist- ing of representatives of all interests concerned and charged it with the duty of considering the feasibility of uniting into one all of the proposed cam.paigns for missions, education, and superannuate endowment. This committee, after a thorough investigation of all the elements in the situation, reported that it was not practicable to unite the campaigns, and closed with this strong deliverance: 'But that in the interest of efficiency and in order that there may be carried on but one popular campaign in the Church at the same time and without prejudice to existing campaigns, we recommend that the right of way be given to the Centenary Movement during the first two years, and to the Educational Campaign during the second two years of the quadrennium, and that during these two periods as far as possible the full power of the Church be delivered in these respective campaigns.' "This report was unanimously adopted by the General Conference. From this history it will be seen that the General Conference squarely faced the prob- lem of uniting all campaigns, set to the task of solving it some of the best minds in the Church, that they failed to find a plan of uniting them, and that upon the rec- 82 TALKING POINTS ON ommendation of this committee they adopted an order separating them. It should be remembered also that it was the Committee on Education that tried to have the campaigns united. This chapter in the his- tory of the last General Conference ought to be better known. It would set at ease some minds now so insis- tent upon uniting cam.paigns. From their zeal you would think that the subject had never been thought of before. This history shows, however, that the General Conference thoroughly considered the question and settled it. "Is it any wonder, if the General Conference could not find a way to unite the campaigns, that boards created by that body should fail? Indeed, it may prove to be providential that no plan of uniting them has been found. Their union would have destroyed the edu- cational value of the Movement. One united campaign would have provided money only. To focus the thought of the whole Church upon missions for two years is worth far more in the missionary education of the people than the millions raised. Likewise, the concen- tration of the thought of the people for the next two years upon the cause of Christian education will have immeasurable educational value in a field fundamental to Christian civiHzation. Our people will have an in- formed conscience on education and missions after this quadrennium. "These two actions of the General Conference con- stitute the Enabhng Act of the Education Movement. With the papers accompanying them they show that CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 33 the General Conference considered the adequate equip- ment of our Christian schools fundamental to Christian civihzation and absolutely essential if our Church is to play a part in the Christianization of the world. The General Conference not only ordered the Educational Movement, but it provided that right of way through- out the Church should be given it, v/ith the full power of the Church deKvered back of it. ''Moreover, the General Conference considered the timeliness of the Movement and decided that national and world conditions were so urgent that delay would be fatal and therefore refused to postpone it. The Con- ference, facing this very issue, said : " 'The present war will be quickly followed by a far more titanic and fateful struggle, a contest for the spiritual supremacy of Christ in the Hfe of the world. Success in the second war will largely depend upon America and more particularly upon her Christian colleges and universities.' 'As our national govern- ment has had to spend immense sums of money on cantonments and officers' training camps to prepare men and officers for the front-hne trenches in Europe before America could deliver her full power in the present war, so the Churches of the living God will have to put mil- lions upon milHons into their colleges and universities, their training camps and cantonments, so that the Churches may be able to mobilize in the front-Hne trenches in the days of world conquest and reconstruc- tion after the war, thousands of Woodrow Wilsons, [ Moots, Bryans, Haygoods, Galloways, Lambuths, 3 34 TALKING POINTS ON Wainrights, and Clines, where they have dozens to- day, and may have their constantly increasing reserve armies well trained and seasoned to fill up the thin- ning ranks on the firing hnes/ — J. H, Reynolds. What Other Churches Are Doing for Their Schools Like individuals, Churches do not live apart; they are not independent ; they are in the midst of an envir- onment which largely determines lines of action. Our Church is surrounded by other Churches whose activi- ties influence our course. This is true in the field of education. The World War has given tremendous em- phasis to education. England has enlarged her edu- cational program; States and communities are increas- ing their public school budgets, and our big universities are seeking to meet the larger demands upon them. Northwestern University of the Methodist Epis- copal Church is in the field for $25,000,000, almost as much as our entire budget; Harvard has raised recently $15,000,000; Yale is seeking $11,000,000; Chicago and Cornell each seek $10,000,000. All of the great Protes-: tant Churches of America have been profoundly in-| fiuenced by this movement. The Methodist Episcopal Church closed an Educational Jubilee Campaign in 1918 which produced for its colleges and universities! $35,000,000. In addition to this the General Confer- ence of that Church at Des Moines last May authorized an educational campaign for $138,000,000. This will CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 35 make a total of $173,000,000 for their colleges and uni- versities, over five times the sum we are asking. The Northern Presbyterian Church is in the field for $33,307,125; the Northern Baptists have just closed a campaign for $30,000,000; the Southern Presbyterians are seeking $8,000,000; and the Southern Baptists have just raised about $25,000,000 for education. The col- leges and universities of the Southern Baptists are in the midst of the greatest period of building and expan- sion in their history. This fact is a source of great em- barrassment to our schools lying alongside of them, but powerless to act until now. Thus a half dozen of our sister denominations through efforts just closed or in process are raising for their enlarged educational pro- grams over $300,000,000. This enlarged educational program of our sister Churches makes immediate action by our C hurch neces- sary if we are to retain our place as one of the dominant spiritual forces of the world. If our Church should fail to do anything for educational institutions while our sister Churches by their larger equipments turn out an increased supply of trained leaders for the ministry and missions, our Church would die. The greatest institutions of learning in America — as well as the oldest — were founded by Churches. A large majority of higher institutions are to-day in connection with religious bodies. In the United States there are about 514 colleges and universities, 620 academies, and 200 theological schools now under Church auspices. 36 TALKING POINTS 'There are 350 institutions of higher grade supported by public taxation, including State and municipal col- leges, universities, and normal schools." Considerably more than half the students in such schools are in those of the Church. The various de- nominations have made investments in education of more than $100,000,000 in the last four years. (For further facts about the Church in education see Educational Survey, pp. 23-26). V CHRISTIAN EDUCATION FUNDAMENTAL TO CIVILIZATION "A world bleeding and broken, with billions' worth of property destroyed, with millions of virile men dead, with other millions maimed or bowed with a sorrow which death alone can lift, v/ith civihzation in some quarters scrapped and everywhere menaced, is a spectacular ex- ample of what the wrong kind of education will do for mankind . It is the index finger of God pointing through this supreme lesson of history to man's monumental folly, to his greatest blunder in his own education, an education devoid of God and resting on the ethics of the jungle — the principle that might makes right. And yet in spite of this lesson much of the world's life con- tinues to organize itself around this same principle on which the Kaiser prepared for and waged the great war. Ethics Underlying Modern International And Industrial Affairs "In international affairs the sanction of modern di- plomacy is largely physical force. At this shrine all departments of State of modern governments worship. At the council board of the nations the pov/er and in- fluence of any given nation are measured by the po- 38 TALKING POINTS ON tential size of its army and navy and not by its wisdom and moral worth. Power remains the first of the com- mandments among the nations — the basis of inter- national ethics. ' 'In the industrial world the same principle holds sway. Labor's power is measured by its war chest, its treasury and its capacity to enforce on capital its demands through strikes. Capital calculates in terms of its power to influence legislation, judicial decision, and administration; to control the press and pubHc opinion, and to overawe and coerce labor through fear of hunger. The diplomat, the capitahst, and the labor leader, all alike, think in terms of the same thing — physical force; their ethical code roots in the same prin- ciple — might makes right. "The great war and the constant industrial war be- tween labor and capital are the inevitable consequences of this principle apphed to international and industrial affairs. It causes hundreds of milhons of people to live with the fear of war or hunger written in their eyes, or with the dread of what war or poverty may bring to their children. Society is still staggering under fi- nancial burdens of big armies and excessive profits, thanks to its barbaric system of international relations and its brutal system of economics, resting, as they both do, upon the ethics of the jungle — get as much as pos- sible and pay or do as httle as possible. Witness the mass of human misery brought on the race by the great war and the fact that almost half of the human family live scarcely above the bread line. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION S9 'The great war was the logical consequence of na- tional selfishness and ambition appHed to international relations, while strikes, lockouts and class struggles are i the natural fruits of individual and class selfishness in j industry. So long as society is organized around the I principle of individual and national selfishness, man- ; kind will continue to repeat the tragic experiences of I the past — wars, bloodshed, poverty, and death. Greed j for peK and power is the motive back of all the sad i story of the checkered history of mankind. What is the great lesson which God would have us learn from it all? The only hope of humanity is in Jesus Christ. ! Its life must be organized around his teachings. The .whole social structure must be permeated with his principles. That is our lesson. Christian Education a Providential Movement "An eminent American said recently that genius con- sists in discovering the major issue or issues in the Hfe of the age in which one lives and of throwing himself into the issue with all of his powers. This is another way of saying that God has dominant currents or move- ments in every age, that it is the function of man to dis- cover these currents and work in harmony with themi, that in working with God's movements he takes ad- vantage of their momentum and accomplishes so much more. "One of the dominant currents of God in this age is Christian education. He is doing everything pos- sible to bring this lesson home to man. The action 40 TALKING POINTS ON of all the Protestant Churches of America in calling for some $300,000,000 for Christian education shows that they sense the situation and are interpreting rightly the lesson which God is trying to teach. "The concerted efforts on behalf of Christian edu- cation by the Protestant Churches of this country con- stitute the most significant as well as the most hope- ful movement of the age. It is providential. It is God- inspired. It is the current of God in the life of the world. It has a big program, a great objective. It undertakes no less a task then the conquest of all the educational and social processes of the nation with the mind of Jesus Christ. It proposes to Christianize all spheres of life — social, industrial, political, and educational. "Its first task is to develop in the minds of the entire Protestant population of America a deep conviction of the supreme value and absolute necessity of Christian education and through their multifarious channels of contact to impress the same views upon the rest of the American people. ''Its next task is through leaders turned out by our Christian schools for all walks of life, to permeate all life spheres with the Christian spirit and ideals, includ- ing industry, education, poHtics, and society. In this way our pubhc schools and big universities would be- come Christian because they would reflect the pubhc opinion of the nation. This movement for Christian- izing education is, therefore, fundamental and goes to the very heart of civilization. The issue is no less than the ideals of organized society, whether they shall be CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 41 Christian or heathen, whether mankind shall continue to stumble, fall, bleed, and die controlled by the ethics of the jungle, or whether they will organize their educa- tional and social processes according to the teaching of Jesus. The latter will give stability and permanence to society." A Fundamental Fact in Modern Business Life Is the Christian Religion "Recently Mr. Roger Babson, a Hfe-long statistician, studied the heads of one hundred leading industries of America and found that 5% of the milKonaires heading up these industries are the sons of bankers, 10% the sons of merchants and manufacturers, 25% the sons of teachers, doctors, and country lawyers, while over 30% were the sons of preachers whose salaries did not exceed an average of $1,500 a year. The significance of these figures is their emphasis of the spiritual element in life as a quahfication for big business. The men of large affairs come not from the homes of luxury in whose at- mosphere Christian ideals do not thrive, but from the humble homes of teachers, doctors, and preachers, whose atmosphere is conducive to spiritual growth and which make sacrifices for the Christian education of children.'' The Security for Investments Is in Christian Character "Railroad and industrial stocks and bonds rest for real security not upon running stock, well-kept tracks and fac- tories, but upon the honesty and integrity of the people. 42 TALKING POINTS ON If fifty-one per cent of the people are honest, indus- trious and law-abiding, the stocks are safe investments. If fifty-one per cent of the people are dishonest and law- less, the bonds have an insecure foundation. The thing which makes the present disturbed situation in the world a matter of concern to business man is not the lack of wealth as a basis for securities, but the lack of character in the people, the possibihty that the ex- periences of mankind within the last six years have shaken their moral and rehgious rootings. Invest- ments in Russia, Italy, or Mexico are not safe now. Hence, perhaps there never was so much need of a re- turn to the religious sanctions and old faiths of the people. "On a visit to South America Mr. Babson, as the guest of the president of the Argentine Republic, was asked by the latter to tell him why South America with far greater material resources, though settled first, is so backward compared to North America. Mr. Babson evaded the question by asking the president himself what his explanation of it was. He replied that the Spaniards who settled South America came to seek gold, while the Pilgrim fathers who settled North Amer- ica came to seek God. "The Christian Education Movement, therefore, in proposing to Christianize all educational processes and through them all industrial, business and political life, is striking at the very root of the troubles of a dis- ordered world and is proposing to supply the very element—moral and spiritual — that a disturbed busi- CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 43 iness and political situation requires to give it balance and stability/' Americanism "Much is said these days about Americanism. This Christian Education Movement of the Protestant Churches is true Americanism. 'It harks back to the fundamental principle of Amer- ican civiHzation — the common law of America, as Daniel Webster said — the Christian religion. Let us not for- get that one of the first things which the Pilgrims did after landing in America v/as to establish a school, and it was a Christian school, founded to fight ignorance, one of Satan's chief allies in his warfare on man. The Christian idea was dominant in our education in the Colonial era and has been a conspicuous element in American education throughout our national history. In Germany Prussianism used education as a tool of mili- tarism; in America it has been used to promote the Christian ideals of democracy, liberty, and humanity. All of our early colleges were founded by the Church and the great majority of American colleges to-day belong to the Church. ''Bishop Candler says what the world needs to-day is a leadership that will call us back to funda- mentals. He is right. The cheap leaders of the day spurn the principles and institutions of the past. They are, therefore, radicals and want to overthrow our social, religious, and governmental institutions. This is characteristic of cheap leaders. Bolshevism, 44 TALKING POINTS ON triumphant in Russia, now gaining a strong hold on Italy, and poisoning the minds of many laboring people in all countries, forcibly illustrates this fact. Radicahsm has gained a stronger hold on America than many think. What this country needs is to go back to the first principles of Americanism — the Christian religion, Christian education, constitutional government, liberty under law. *This Christian Education Movement of the Prot- estant Churches is basic, and if the American people prize their rich heritage — civil and religious liberty, property rights and constitutional government — a heritage which is their glory, and if they wish to per- petuate its blessing to posterity, they will respond whole-heartedly to the Movement and will equip our Christian schools for the larger task ahead of them. If they do not, they or their children may see their property and their free institutions go up in the smoke of red revolution." — J. H. Reynolds. The Christian Spirit Must Permeate All Education "This means that the whole community must come to a reaHzation of the rehgious nature of education, of the necessity of permeating all education with the religious spirit. Here is the heart of the whole matter. The minister of a great institutional Church in New York City asks: 'Why should I give the people every thing but that which sends me to them? If the Chris- tian spirit inspires men and women to carry education CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 45 to the masses of the people, are they not obHgated to j cany the spirit of reHgion into all education?' I ''Are they not also obHgated to make the Bible and religion a recognized part of education? Progress is 1 already being made. The introduction of graded lessons j and modern methods of teaching is making the Sunday • school a truly educational institution. Successful e:c~ periments in several States point to the day of universal week-daij instruction in religion under the direction of the Churches and correlated with the puhlic school. "It was a great day for community progress when the schools began to teach appHed science. It will be a greater day when all of the Churches teach apphed ■ rehgion. But this will require that the teaching of re- ligion go on in the home, the market place, the workshop , as well as in the Church. Of what avail to teach the child certain ideals of life one hour of the day in the • week, if for six days in the week the total pressure of : the community Hfe is against the reahzation of these ideals and some sections of the com.munity definitely teach him other ideals. The total possible wealth of the Commonwealth of God will not be realized until all j the forces of the community are turned to the vital ■• teaching of rehgion,'' — Ward-Edwards, Christianizing : Community Life, pp. 57-58. The Kingdom Elxtends through Education f J "1 have never had a gloomy outlook for the future .'of the human race. I beheve that its only hope for ■ strength of character, for peace and happiness is in the 46 TALKING POINTS ON determination of its relation to Jesus Christ; but it is my firm conviction that some day before the end of time the whole race will be brought to him, and then a pros- perous, peaceful, and powerful world will live, perhaps for a long time, in the glory of his spiritual presence. It is my conviction, however, that this glad day will not come by means of cyclonic revivals, as great good as they may do; they reach but a small per cent of people and often react in the case of very large numbers. It is the steady, persistent teaching of the principles of the religion of Jesus Christ, the growth of calm and mighty character, the development of genuine Christian life that really counts in the making of the world per- manently good. Educative processes are to play an unlimited part in the salvation of men, and the educa- tion that reaches the whole man, shapes the intellectual life, and controls the emotions is essential to the devel- opment of character. I beheve in an emotional life, but it must be the outburst of principles deeply im- planted in heart and brain and not the temporary re- sult of merely outward influence. I believe in revivals but I do not believe that revivals alone can save the world; we need a culture, a teaching, and power of lead- ership to lay firm the foundation of our spiritual life." — C. R. Jenkins. (Read 'The Church College and the Supply of Chris- tian Workers,'' by C. R. Jenkins, published by the Board of Education of the M. E. Church, South.) j i CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 47 Ontthink the Pagan World "In his delightful Httle book, 'The Jesus of History/ Prof. T. R. Glover has an illuminating chapter on The Christian Church in the Roman Empire.' He discusses the 'victory of the Christian Church over the pagan world.' The old pagan rehgion had enormous strength. It was universally accepted; it had great traditions; it had all the splendor of art and ritual — 'everything that, to the ordinary mind, could make for reality and power, to show how absolutely inconceiv- able it was that it could ever pass away.' Into this pagan world came the Christian Church — 'a ludicrous collection of trivial people, very ignorant and very common ; fishermen and pubHcans, as the Gospels show us, "the baker and the fuller," as Celsus said with a sneer' — and yet the Christian Church conquered that great pagan world. "How did it do this? Professor Glover gives three great reasons: the Christian 'outlived' the pagan; he 'outdied' him; and he 'outthought' him. The Christian lived such a life of moral purity and beauty as the world had never seen before; the Christian, al- though burned at the stake or wrapped in the skins of wild beasts and thrown into the amphitheater for the amusement of the spectators, died such a death of peace and victory as the world had never seen before. "But this was not all. The early Church did not overcome the ancient pagan world simply by 'out- living' it and by 'outdying' it. The early Church 'outthoughf the ancient pagan world. And if it had 48 TALKING POINTS ON not outthought it, it would never have overcome it. The Christians were conscious of their intellectual superiority, and they made others aware of it. "To-day Christianity is face to face with a revival of paganism. The philosophy taught in our American universities is for the most part a pagan philosophy. Besides, there has come about the universal teaching of evolution and higher criticism and sociology. What shall be the attitude of the Church toward all these things? There is but one Christian attitude — that all truth is of God. There is but one thing for the Church to do— ^0 outthink the modern pagan world. If the Church cannot outthink the modern pagan world, it will die — and it ought to die." — Bishop E. D. Mouzon. (Read "The Duty of the Church to Educate,'^ by Bishop E. D. Mouzon, published by the Christian Education Commission.) Shifting from Germany to America "The educational center of the world has been shift- ed by the war. "Prior to 1914 Germany taught the teachers of the world through her universities. That was not good for the world, because the German type of education tended to exalt human reason above divine revelation and to dethrone Christ and deify the State. However, it profited Germany commercially and pohtically. If it had continued awhile longer, it seems probable that the German Empire might have dominated mankind. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 49 But that dream has been dispelled, and the world will turn elsewhere for its education in future. Where v/ill it turn? "It will turn probably to the United States. The nations of the earth trust us as they trust no other people. European nations appreciate the strength and unselfishness of America as they never did before, and the nations of the Orient look with increased confidence and hope toward our country. To disappoint such trust and betray such confidence would disgrace us and damage the human race." ''A more religious tyj)e of education than that which has prevailed in Germany must now be offered the world, or the last state of the case will be far worse than the first. An education which imparts power without imparting at the same time rehgious conviction to con- trol and direct the power which it produces will set the world afire again, as it did in 1914, and the next conflagration will be more destructive of human fife and property than that which has com-e so near to • burning down the world during the last few years. A culture which is not Christian is corrupting. "If our country is to become one of the great teach- ing nations of the earth, it is important that its type of education be emphatically and thoroughly Christian." — Bishop W, A. Candler. (Read 'The Universities of the Church in the Life of To-day," by Bishop V:', A. Candler, pubhshed by the Board of Education of the M. E. Church, South.) 4 50 TALKING POINTS ON The Groping World and Its Need "If there ever was a moment in the world's history when the stabiHzing, healing forces of the Christian re- ligion were needed, it is now. The world we once knew is shattered, confused with baffling uncertainties, in sorrow, disillusionment, and in the agony of dimmed and disappointed ideals is trying to find its way to some road over which it may walk in security and hope and happiness. It has not yet found the way, but it has the conviction that the road over which it must go should be built on the sohd foundation of the ancient spiritualities of faith, justice, righteousness, brother- liness, and service, and that nothing will stand that is not so built. If these essential spirituahties are to be made available for re-creating and reconstructing that newer world of our dreams, they must somehow be gotten into our system of education.'' ''Whatever other kinds of education the world par- ticularly needs now, it does need in a generous measure what is understood by rehgious education. And this our Movement must seek to have the Church realize as an obligation which it owes to a troubled and con- fused world, a real gospel which it is the business of the Church to preach and supply." — H. N. Snyder. (Read "What the Educational Campaign Seeks to Accomplish," by H. N. Snyder, published by the Board of Education of the M. E. Church, South.) CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 51 The War Taisght Us a Lesson "Probably the lesson which the war makes to stand out most conspicuously is that education is the strongest force in typing civilization and therefore the biggest task of man. Modern Germany is perhaps more completely the prod- uct of her system of education than any other nation in the world, and her education is largely responsible for the war." ''The most important lesson taught by the war is that our education should be Christian in spirit. Indeed, it may be safe to say that any education not Christian in its ethics is dangerous. To this view a growing num- ber of educators in secular schools, including State uni- versities, are turning. Whereas a few years ago in edu- cational gatherings the note most commonly sounded was secular, and in our universities the spirit and teaching were unchristian if not anti-Christian, now a different voice is heard, and there appears to be a grow- ing demand that the Christian element shall have a larger place in our education. For our leaders at last understand that German education was a return to the ethics of the jungle, to the god of might, a dehberate attempt to overthrow all moral principles of modern civilization, to make German kultur dominant in the Hfe of the nation and later in the hfe of the world." ''Germany and the great war offer the strongest argument possible for Christian education, yea, for the Christian college. The nation that sinneth, it shall die. The people without vision perish, and vision is fur- 52 TALKING POINTS ON nished by leaders. All three of the great prophets of the war were the products of the Christian college. The supreme task of the Christian college is to burn into the soul of the future leaders of the nation the spiritual idealism that will leaven the whole lump. In the light of the war the educational Movement upon which we are proposing to enter has far-reaching nation- al and world consequences. "The war between types of civiHzation, between Christian culture and German kuUur, is now on, and the consequences of the struggle will be infinitely more im- portant than the issues of the great war just closed. That war was a physical contest, and the sword finally settles nothing. The war now on is spiritual and has for its end the spiritual conquest of the world, and we, leaders of Christian education in the most powerful nation, are officers in the army of the living God. This fact lifts the movement far above the petty in- terests of our respective schools and colleges, makes it one of the decisive battles of history, and in the light of this fact we must sink all differences arising out of the conflicting interests of our institutions and unite in winning one of the greatest victories for Chris- tian civiHzation." — J. H. Reynolds. (Read "Lessons of the World War in the Field of Education," by J. H. Reynolds, pubHshed by the Board of Education of the M. E. Church, South.) CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 53 Other Literature to Be Read The last General Conference with prophetic insight saw how fundamental Christian education is to the life of the Church and to civihzation. Every one should read the soul-stirring address on the subject delivered by the last General Conference. See page 9 in Educa- tional Survey of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. For copy of the deliverance of the College of Bishops on Christian Education see the Educational Survey, pp. 13 and 14. "General Statement,'' found on pages 15 and 16 of Educational Survey, is a statesmanlike deliverance and should be read in this connection. "The Paramount Need of Christian Education," by the Methodist Educational Association, is a great State paper. For copy see pages 17 and 18 of Educa- tional Survey. VI CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP ''To lead at least 5,000 young men and women to pledge themselves to devote their lives to the ministry, to missions, or to some other form of Christian service, and to seek a Christian education as a preparation for effective life service'' — the third objective of the Christian Edu- cation Movement. As the Christian Education Movement deals with fundamentals in the life of the Church, we must seek to develop in all of our members and constituency an abiding faith in and practice of Christian stewardship — stewardship of time, of wealth, of talents, and of hfe. Out of this behef and practice will come sufficient man power to carry on all departments of Christian service and funds enough to support adequately all institutions and agencies of the Church. Our Church could place 1,048 well-trained preachers without displacing a single itinerant preacher. There were that many supplies. At the recent session of the Western Virginia Annual Conference, one presiding elder said that his district had thirteen suppHes; that in his district the question was not money, but men. He stated that the people were ready to pay good salaries and were calling for strong men. In many parts of the Church stations would be created if the bishop could provide the preachers. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 55 Workers Needed Immediately There is a shortage of 800 preachers in the M. E. Church, South. That many churches are either closed because they cannot obtain pastors, or they are "sup- pHed" by men who have no equipment for the work of the ministry. The Board of Missions needs 1,000 miissionaries to carry out the Centenary program — and scarcely ten per cent of that number have been discovered. The Home Department is searching for hundreds of workers among the mountaineers, miners, immigrants, Indians, negroes, and in the rural sections, cities, and mission schools of the South and West. Perhaps a dozen of these have been found in the last year, and no more are in sight. The Woman's Missionary Council is scouring the country for trained young women to serve the Church at home and abroad as missionaries, deaconesses, nurses, and teachers. Scarcely a tithe of the num-ber needed can be found. Scores of Churches are looking and advertising in vain for pastors' assistants and directors of religious education, while the schools and colleges of Methodism find it extremely difficult to secure the right kind of Christian teachers. In the language of the day, the M. E. Church, South, is, *'up against it" for trained Christian workers of every kind. This is a serious, distressing fact. And it is true in a day when Christian leaders and workers 56 TALKING POINTS ON are needed as never before. The simple truth is that the world will plunge to red ruin unless they are found speedily. This is not only true in the M. E. Church, South. There is not a Christian organization on earth which has a sufficient supply of workers. The various denominations must find 100,000 trained men and women in the next five years to properly man the mission fields. The Lord alone knows where and how they can be secured — or whether they will be secured at all. Right now 5,000 missionaries will be required to bring Protestant work to the point where it would have been if the war had not occurred. The Northern Methodist Church alone is trying to find 13,000 foreign workers, and its work is on a 25 per cent basis in India, 150,000 converts being turned away each year, because workers cannot be found. The Presbyterians tell us their foreign work could use the entire output of their seminaries regularly, thus leaving not one man for the pulpits at home. So we Methodists of Dixie Land are not alone in our distress at the dearth of workers. But we are per- haps a little "worse off'' than the others because many, very many, of our choicest young people leave us be- cause the better equipped colleges and universities of our sister denominations offer them greater induce- ments — and they leave us because we will not give them, the same advantages they can obtain elsewhere. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 57 Shall we go out of the business of the Kingdom of God? (Read "Some Facts for the People Called Methodists/' hj Elmer T. Clark, pubhshed by the Christian Edu- cation Commission.) Gladstone on Tithing "In regard to money — there is a great advantage in its methodical use. Especially is it wise to dedicate a certain portion of our means to purposes of charity and religion, and this is more easily begun in youth than in after life. The greatest advantage of miaking a little fund of this kind is that when we are asked to give, com- petition is not between self on the one hand and any charity on the other, but between the different pur- poses of religion and charity with one another, among which we ought to make the most careful choice. It is desirable that the tenth of our means be dedicated to God, and it tends to bring a blessing on the rest. No one can tell the richness of the blessings that come to those who thus honor the Lord with their substance." — W. E. Gladstone, in a letter to his son. The Tithe as Necessary as the Sabbath "We need some practical abiding principle like tith- ing to make sure that the principle of stewardship is a reahty in our lives and that we do not inwardly find ourselves swept into self-deception. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man who does not deal with God 58 TALKING POINTS ON in the matter of obligation as he does with his fellows j to find that he has not been giving God his due. I will just ask any man who is here in this room this morning | who has adopted the minimum principle of the tithe! if he did not discover that in the old days he was out- rageously robbing God. Just exactly as we need the Sabbath for some such purpose as this to make sure of the recognition of all time as sacred to the Lord of Life, just so do we need the recognition of our tithe obhgation to God in the matter of our wealth." — Robert E. Speer. "One more revival, only one more is needed, the revival of Christian stewardship, the consecration of the money power to God. When that revival comes the Kingdom of God will come in a day.'' — Horace Bushnell. ''Throughout the four Gospels one verse in every seven deals with man's attitude toward property, and sixteen of Christ's thirty-eight parables refer to this subject. Christ taught that selfishness is man's chief sin. Ma- teriaHsm is America's greatest danger. If a man be truly Christian, he loves his Lord more than his money. ''Ye can not serve God and mammon." Who Owns Your House? You think your house belongs to you, but if the state decides that a railroad shall run over the spot where your house stands, you must surrender it. The house does not actually belong to you, but to society. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 59 This is the "right of eminent domain." We had surely- thought our Hves and bodies belonged to us, indi- vidually, until the war came. Then we found that this was not true at all. Our lives and bodies belonged to society; we were compelled to put our life where society, through the government, directed. Definitions of ownership are being remade. What gives a man title to his possessions? The new tax laws are taking from men profits and part of their income which they had always believed belonged to them in- dividually and by right. Society says: *'No; this much belongs to us," and the individual must yield. But God does not stop with a portion. God is the owner of all things. From "Les Miserables" Bishop Muriel, in "Les Miserables," says to the director of the hospital adjoining his palace: "Come, director, I will tell you what it is. There is evidently a mistake. You have twenty-six persons in five or six small rooms. There are only three of us and we have room for fifty. There is a mistake, I repeat; I you have my house, and I have yours. Restore me mine." I And, unhke many of us, the bishop did not let the matter rest at the point of good intent, for the narra- tive continues — in Hugo's terse words: "The next day the twenty-six poor patients were in- stalled in the bishop's palace and the bishop was in the hospital." 60 TALKING POINTS OA Stewardship and Tithing Points The Church cannot be silent on the subject of monej and do its duty to God and the world. The purpose of stewardship and tithing presenta; ^ tion is primarily to achieve spiritual ends, to get mei right with God. ' An important by-product will be an adequate suppor ^ of all Church enterprises. i ^ God, the creator and preserver of all things, is alscj the owner of all things. 1' To deny his ownership is to dispute the clear am J emphatic declarations of our Lord, and is in effect i denial of God's sovereignty. I Men hold, not as absolute owners but as God's trus- tees or stewards, all property which they rightfully s possess. Between man and man ownership is absolute. Be- ^ tween man and God it is relative, a possession, a trust | Avarice is one of the most universal and insidious | sins known to man. Paul declares that, "the love oi money is a root of all kinds of evil." Christ repeatedly and in the clearest and most em- ' phatic manner taught the principles of Christiar stewardship. See parables of the Talents, the Pound ^ the Rich Fool, Dives and Lazarus, and Christ's inter- view with the rich young ruler. See also the parable ^ of the Unrighteous Stewards, Luke xvi. Tithing was a law given of God, by means to us un-j ] known, to peoples before the Jews came into existence. ^ CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 61 I I As a moral law it v\7as made definite and binding I upon the Jews, but did not represent all they were to I pay for purposes of the Kingdom. Christ condemned tithing when substituted for weightier matters of the law, but did not abrogate the moral law itself any more than he abrogated the law concerning the Sabbath. This aside, we cannot think God expects from us less in proportion to our income than he required of the Jews 3,000 years ago. Tithing marks the lower, not the upper, limit of Christian stewardship. Tithing should be an acknowledgment of, not a substitute for, Christian stewardship. Tithing from the right motive and as an acknowl- edgment of Christian stewardship deepens the spiritual life and, as has been proved again and again, solves the Church's financial problems. "Money will never save the world, but the world will never be saved without money." "Money that belongs to God and is kept back from him is the greatest obstacle to spiritual development.'' "Stewardship of possession is essential to steward- ship of life." Contributions of Protestantism for all purposes in 1918 were $249,000,000. That was a daily per capita of two cents seven mills per member. Seventh-Day Adventists gave eleven cents six mills. A billion dollars 62 TALKING POINTS a year for missionary and educational work means an average daily per capita contribution of thirteen cents seven mills per member. It can be done. (For an able and comprehensive treatment of the subject of stewardship, see manual on Christian stewardship pubHshed by Christian Education Move- ment.) VII DEEPENING THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The last and the most comprehensive objective of 'the Movement is to deepen the moral and spiritual life of our people and to promote the spirit of Christian liberality. The Church proceeds in this Movement with the profound conviction that it is God's great enterprise. i[t is to be carried forward in utmost reliance upon his vill and upon his guidance. In the development of phe Movement we see the unfolding of his purpose, :he accomplishment of his designs, and the establish- nent of his Kingdom. The Church cannot do this ^eat thing except in the strength of the consciousness )f God's presence and help. We stand at the beginning )f the Movement and say with Moses of old, ''Except ihy presence go with us, carry us not up hence." We shall not be able to carry with us in this great ask a consciousness of God's presence except as we are i'.onstantly in prayer. Prayer is the mighty bond which yill bind us to God and to each other in this fellowship ►f service and intercession. This Movement gives an opportunity to preach with enewed emphasis the great Christian doctrine of the itewardship of property. A very clear conviction on he part of the Church of the truth of the Christian 64 TALKING POINTS , doctrine of the stewardship of hfe and the stewardshi] of property is an indispensable need of this hour. Th< success and progress of the kingdom of God will b< more and more conditioned by the strength of the be lief of the Church in this doctrine and by the extent o its appKcation. ti Ours is by far the richest nation in the world. Th i prospect is that the wealth of our people will increas i in the future with a rapidity unknown in the past I What shall we do with our increasing wealth? Wha m shall we do with the lives of our sons and daughters m These are questions of tremendous moment. To sav u the souls of our people a goodly number of their son| is and daughters must be dedicated to the service of thi of Kingdom of God and a fair share of their wealth mug m be consecrated to the purpose of his Kingdom. ti to til 1^ of k op k al Iti' I VIII ^ SOURCE OF SUPPLY \. i| We cannot insist too strongly that without the Chris- tian college the supply of ministers and missionaries evould absolutely cease. From 1904 to 1909 North- ^vestern University, an institution of the Methodist ^ j]piscopal Church, furnished four-fifths as many re- ittruits for the foreign missionary service as all the State i'miversities in America combined. There is one State university in this country that has a thousand ]\Iethod- ^st students, three thousand students who are members -f)f other evangelical Churches, and a body of alumni ihumbering eight thousand. Yet in the past six years ;his university has furnished less than twenty ministers :o all the evangehcal Churches com.bined. The Christian college furnishes all the leaders to :he Church. The number of preachers without col- lege training who have attained prominence in the affairs Df the Church is so small as to be neghgible. It is a dgnificant fact that thirty-one of the fifty-three bish- ops of our Church were Christian educators. It is evi- dence of the quality of men engaged in our education- al! work, and also of the value which Methodism places upon Christian education. I More Preachers Are Demanded ! /'If we are to expand our work, to meet the oppor- tunity and responsibiHty inescapably ours because 5 66 TALKING POINTS Oi^ of the heritage left to us by those who built the hous in which we live, because of the open door before whic' our Lord has placed us, because of the call of need an< the great confidence of the people in our Church, yes if we are simply to hold what has been won, w must have more preachers and must have them a once. The need for increased numbers cannot b questioned. "Our people demand, as they have a right to demanc a ministry in every respect equal to our opportunities The fact most generally overlooked is that they them' selves must provide what is necessary to meet thi demand. The Church has no other earthly means tha; those which its members place in its hands. It is no reasonable to call on the Church for preachers fitte^ , to do this work, and at the same time to give the Churc ] nothing with which to fit the men. What would bi , thought of the intelligence of the nation that called fc ' soldiers and refused or hesitated to supply arms an|j ammunition? The Church will find the men when th ( members supply the means, because our Lord ha t never failed, nor will he ever fail to move men to do hi work." — Bishop Collins Denny. i The Christian College and Missionaries t The Christian Education Movement is necessary \ ^ the Church is to carry out its enlarged missionary pre gram. , CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 67 "The Foreign Missionary Movement in America had its first impulse on a college campus. Four out of five of our present ministers and missionaries came from the Christian college. To the Church the loss of its colleges would be irreparable. Take them away and in ten years the ministry would be depleted and the Churches bankrupt of leadership.'' ("The College in the Church Program," pubhshed by the Council of Church Boards of Education of the United States of America.) "Nearly every missionary in the foreign field was educated in a college of the Church; at least ninety per cent of our educated ministry love some Church college ^ as their Alma Mater; and thousands of Sunday school ' superintendents, Y. M. C. A. secretaries, Sunday school teachers, stewards, and deacons have come out of the denominational halls of learning. The Interchurch eWorld Movement declares after its exhaustive survey 11 that eighty per cent of educated Church workers re- bceived their degrees from institutions of learning a thoroughly pervaded by the spirit of Christianity.'' lij "The home demands the v/ork that we are doing; for we must have a cultured. Christian parenthood. The State demands it; for the very safety of the pubHc, ithe permanence and power of civil governmient, the .moral atmosphere of the public, the religious atmos- phere of its colleges and universities depend to a large '^sxtent upon the men and women educated by the Church of God. The Church must have its institutions 68 TALKING POINTS ON of learning or never hope again for an educated ministry. It must close hundreds of its missions or support its colleges. It must never expect a great lay leadership if it shall refuse to educate its young men and women/' — C. R. Jenkins. (Read "The Church College and the Supply of Chris- tian Workers," by C. R. Jenkins, pubHshed by th€ Board of Education of the M. E. Church, South.) The College Supports Foreign Missions The Christian college is the main support of Christian missions, and has always been. On the field the lead- ing and most influential missionary institution is always the school or college. At home it supplies the mission- ary dynamic and motive, while it furnishes practically all of the workers to the home and foreign fields. In the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, out oi 288 missionaries, 236 were educated in Methodist schools, 10 attended other Church schools, 14 attended independent colleges, and 16 attended State schools. Only 12 went to the field without college training. '•'During the first twenty-eight years of the history of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 201 men were sent out to the various fields served. Of these, 159 v/ere college graduates, although in those days college training was not so easy to obtain as now." "The rosters of some mission stations seem almost hke the alumni rolls of certain colleges.'' CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 69 In this field lies one of the greatest justifications for the larger endowment of Christian colleges. The whole world calls for missionaries; to produce them the Chris- tian school must be more Hberally supported. It is declared that 100,000 trained leaders will be necessary to properly man the various fields in the next five years; that 13,000 will be needed by the Meth- odist Episcopal Church alone; that it will require 5,000 foreign missionaries at once to bring the work of Protes- tantism to the point at which it would have been had not the war occurred; that the Foreign Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church could use the entire output of the theological schools, leaving none for the ministry in this country; that the Methodists in India are on a 25 per cent basis of efiiciencj^ baptizing 50,000 con- verts annually and turning away 150,000 because of an insufficient number of missionaries. The Education.. Movement and tlie Larger Missionary Program ''The Education Movement and the Centenary I program are so closely related that if the work of edu- cation is not definitely strengthened, we had just as well not do the Centenary — indeed, if our educational institutions are not strengthened in a new educational crusade, the things proposed in the Centenary will not be done. ''And here hes the connection. We must send out in the Centenary five hundred new missionaries to 70 TALKING POINTS ON I ( our foreign fields in the next five years. This says nothing about home missionaries and the special workers we need in the Church at home, nor does it ^ take account of the scores of workers that must go into ^ our European fields. So that we must more than double, within five years, the personal force we have built up in foreign lands in the past seventy years of our history. "But significant as are these numbers, more vital far to the progress of our work is the quality these workers must show; and for the production of that quality we are dependent upon our educational institutions. The difference between a missionary that falls in by chance without fitting and the other who fits and fulfills his mission is a difference not of arithmetical, but of geometrical pi'ogression. If our missionaries must be weighed as well as counted in times like these, as they certainly must, then culture more than any- thing else brings down the scale in the measurements of manhood. Only, the culture that counts in character is the culture that can be gotten in Christian institu- tions, which should mean, if it means anything, our own Church schools. A few of our men may come from State and independent institutions, but the bulk of our workers we must get from our denominational schools." CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 71 ^ Trained in the Currents of Life :ial "The missionary, if prepared to do his work, must 39 trained, not in a corner and shut oft while training -.0 rrom the rest of the world. We do not want a niission- aa ..^ ary training school for segi^egating our workers in the .j period of their training, and would not have it if it svere given to us as a gracious compHment. We want 3ur workers trained as other men are trained, strong .J. men, human men, m^en who know how to mix and work ,3 with other mxen, practical m^en, wise mien, men who know how to do and to get things done, and that means ; training in the drifts where strong man are found and ' the world's leaders at home are made. "Nevertheless, in these drifts must mingle invisible influences that make for truth and righteousness and ■ the strength of strong characters. The armis of the Church must be thrown around our men, even in the idrifts, so that they miay not be swept by strong " jworldly tides from their footing, but held steady and itrue to the best in character and service. The drifts rjof Hfe and progress, v/ith strong tides of aspiration ■ jand service, will be found in the universities, but best r found, and may be found alone, in those universities 1 that are Christian. { "Our missionaries must take special courses before 1 they go out and during furlough when in this country, and these courses can be gotten, as we need them, only in our own great schools. We do not want our w^orkers to go off outside of our own territory, into communities 72 TALKING POINTS Oi^ of alien thought, in order to get the intellectual stimulu or technical training they need." As Providential as the Centenary "Herein I sincerely beheve Hes the providence of thi^ Educational Movement as a movement apart from the Centenary. Many loyal friends of both Movement; thought we should have gotten together as did ou] Baptists friends, and made one drive do for both. '. did not think so, certainly not in my second and bettei thought. The General Conference was right when 11 ordered a second campaign. If we had gone in together the presence of the Educational interest would have spoiled, or at least spht, the missionary emphasis oui Church was able to make in the greatest missionary situation that has come in a hundred years and wil. not come in another hundred. "And now our Educational workers, uncomplicated by the presence of any other great interest, may go forth to lay their emphasis not upon education, but upon that for which we stand, a definitely Christian' education. Into schools, churches, homes, they will go with this other emphasis. Our people will be awakened! anew to its importance and will send their children toi their own Christian schools. We shall bring forth and burnish into new brightness our old Christian educa- tional standards. Our educational administrators will get a new vision of obligation, and a new baptism for CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 78 their high service, and our workers at home and abroad, going from such surroundings with all the tonic and energy of such an atmosphere, will go prepared in form and spirit to do the work of world redemption pressing so hardly to their hands." — E. H. Rawlings. Education and Evangelism ''Education is absolutely indispensable as an evan- gehstic agency. In many regards there is no more ef- fective form of evangelistic work than that which educa- tion affords. In the first place, it gives access to classes otherwise almost inaccessible, to social groups and bodies of religious opinion otherwise closed to us. How otherwise, except by medical work, would we have been able to touch the Mohammedan world? How otherwise would we be reaching certain great social strata in India? It operates in those areas with con- tinuous power. Evangelistic work at the best operates now and then. ... "Education is essential to evangelism also, because it raises up our leaders. It raises up leaders for the Church, in the State, and in industry. It is interesting to see how, whatever the theory a mission starts out with may be, it is driven inevitably by the pressure of the facts and conditions to this view, either to do edu- cation itself or else to struggle against any neighboring missions that have a larger pohcy which will do the education for it. We cannot look anywhere in the world to-day and find a fruitful mission that started out as a so-called purely evangelistic mission that was 74 TALKING POINTS ON not driven either itself to incorporate educational aims into its policy or else to relate itself to other missions which, by specialization of function or more compre- hensive program, would be able to do what it had been unprepared itself to do." — Robert E. Speer, The Gospel and the New World, pp. 175-177. Christian Education Revolutionizing Civilization in Heathen Lands "Everywhere Christianity has brought education to the masses. A leading Hindu Nationalist in India says: 'After all, when it comes to practice, Christianity alone is effecting what we Nationalists are crying for — namely, the elevation of the masses.' A minister of education from Europe marveled at the intelHgence and manliness of a boy in our public schools, who be- longed to a race which his nation had held in subjection for hundreds of years. "In the social records of mankind the greatest at- tempt of privileged people to carry to deficient races the means and methods of training for life efficiency is the educational work of Christian missions. They have carried to illiterate tribes and nations a complete edu- cational system from public school to university. They have given the emancipation of modern sciences to races held in the bond of an artificial pedantic system. They have released woman from her ancient bondage and ignorance. They have provided undeveloped groups with the best training for the needs and pur- suits of life that the world knows. They have taught CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 75 tdomestic science and medicine, industry and agricul- - ture. From India, a Princeton graduate reports that ■ his Indian neighbors grow six or eight bushels of wheat ■ ,per acre, while with the proper methods of cultivation and seed introduced by the missionaries, twenty-five to thirty bushels are raised under the same conditions. I "The results are social transformations on such a scale as the world has never seen in so short a period. The sons of coolies who did the work of the animials, J and those of pariahs, who lived in cowering subjection, ' have become scholars and educators. The daughters . of women who were drudges or playthings have be- ■• come competent physicians. Age-long social fetters : have been broken; time-worn prisons for the mind have . been opened; and great masses of the earth's popula- . tion are coming with vision and power to take their part in the future development of mankind. ''Unbiased recognition of this result is the fact that > ithe English government has subsidized mission schools > lin India, and education in China and Japan has now ; .been extended under government direction far beyond ■ the mission schools. These schools have furnished na- ■ iive governments with many of their most enlightened ) \and effective leaders in commerce, education, and states- \manship. More than tiventy of the well-known journals : ^of Japan are edited hy men who graduated from Christian \ \schools. The contribution of Christian education to the ■ growing democracy of the Near East and the Far East : is immeasurable. What forces made the New China? 76 TALKING POINTS Who are the leaders in movements for democracy in other of the non-Christian nations? "Here is proof of the help Christianity is giving the world in its search for democracy. When this worlci movement of Christian education is carried to its inevitable conclusion, when the fullest equipment for life that thi science of education provides is given to all the handicapped groups of this country and Europe and to all the unde-i [ veloped peoples of the earth, what. kind of a world will ther he? The educational achievement of Christian mission is a world fact and force, only because some pionee: spirits of the last generation went from the colleges t endure loneliness and encounter danger/' — Ward-Ed wards, ^'Christianizing Community Life,'' pp. 58-59. IX NATIONAL LEADERSHIP The Christian Education Movement is necessary ■n order that our Church schools may train a Christian Leadership for all lines of human activity — law, medi- line, government, industry, business, as well as for :he ministry, missions and other distinctive lines 3f Christian work. Only one-fourth of the general population of the United States are members of the Protestant Church, but two-thirds of the students in all colleges and universities are Protestant Church members. Thus :he Protestant Churches are furnishing the leadership :o America through the colleges and universities. Here s a great challenge to American Protestantism. Educated men are the world's leaders. Seventy- :hree per cent, nearly three-fourths, of all the people tvho become distinguished enough to have their names "ecorded in "Who's Who" are college trained. Only one per cent of the American population go to col- lege, yet from this one per cent comes 73 per cent of ' the leaders. The great mass, or 99 per cent, of un- trained people, furnish only 27 per cent of leading men and women. "Take the Cambridge calendar, or take the Oxford calendar for two hundred years; look at the Church, \ 78 TALKING POINTS Oli ^ the Parliament, or thebar, and it has always been the ^ case that the men who were first in the competition oi ^ the schools have been first in the competition of life/ ! f — Macaulay. j " ii "To take out of American life the elements put intc| a it by higher education under religious auspices would e change the whole fiber of our social order. The mora! t foundations which underhe all business would be! 1 weakened. It would let down the bars to materiahsm, { if indeed the doors were not thrown open to Bol-j 1 shevism." j Leadership Comes from the College ' Only one per cent of the population of the United ^ States are college graduates; Yet that one per cent furnish 59 per cent of the lead-| ers in all departments of national life, ' While 14 per cent of the others are college trained, but not graduates. " The 99 per cent of untrained people supply only 27 P per cent of the leadership. — Statistics from ''Who's d Who in America." ii ''If the education given at the Church colleges is ^ inferior in any way, the State suffers. It suffers in p many obvious ways, but in one way very immediately, A large number of college graduates, larger than the number of university graduates, go into teaching in the State high schools, and from the high schools come ^ CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 79 the teachers in the grades. Any defect in their edu- cation reproduces itself in all the State schools and poisons the whole State system. To insure good teach- I ing, then, in the high school you must have good teach- i ing in the small college, that nursery of male teachers, ia species that needs careful propagation. May we Inot paraphrase the German school proverb and say to the friends of State education, ''Whatever you would have appear in the high school — those 'colleges of the I people' — you must get into the small colleges"? — R. E. Blackwell. The Question of Leadership Fundamental to the welfare of the nation in any department of its social activity is the quality of its leadership. The supreme duty of the Christian college is to produce Christian leaders for all sections of the world's varied Hfe. "Out of the 1,000 pupils who enter the first grade of our American schools only fourteen remain to com- plete the college course. From this small group come most of the leaders of the Churches as well as the leaders 'in other phases of national Hfe.'' j "It is upon the training of the thirty-eight who enter 1 college, of whom fourteen finally graduate, that the '" Protestant Churches now focus their money, their ^' skill, their prayer." Well-attested statistics show that 90 per cent of all Church and religious leaders come from the Church 80 TALKING POINTS schools. "The Disciples report that but 10 per cent of their college students attend their own denomination- al colleges and yet from that number come 80 per cent of the leaders of the denomination/' A survey made among the graduates of forty-three Christian colleges shows that 21.1 per cent are edu- cators, 21.3 per cent are rehgious leaders, 10.5 per centj are lawyers, 8.5 per cent are business men, 6.5 per cent| are physicians, while the others are in various occu- pations. "The outstanding fact is that college groups are leaders in the communities in which they live and work. About 58.4 per cent of those whose occupations are definitely known belong to groups which, in every community, are the natural leaders. In any community I no other four men will ordinarily exert the aggregate of influence exerted by the minister, the teacher, the lawyer, and the physician." i , ioi i i i THE FINANCIAL OBJECTIVE •'The fourth objective of the Christian Education Movement is to raise for our schools, colleges, and 4iversities at least $33,000,000, the minimum sum ^"licessary to enable them to send out the constantly {creasing stream of educated Christian leaders required ' carry forward the Christian work of the world, and ' secure $1,000,000 to aid worthy students who are oking to some form of Christian service in their ef- rts to obtain an education. The Physical and Financial Condition of Owe Schools Demands Immediate Relief ''The financial condition of our educational institu- ons calls for immediate and substantial relief. Post- Dnement would imperil the Hfe of many schools and Dlleges and would seriously cripple the usefulness of 11. Our people should remember that the schools and Dlleges, in obedience to the action of the last General lonference, have conducted no campaigns since the Dring of 1918, in order that the Centenary might have ndisputed possession of the field. This too at a time ^hen it was the easiest time in their history to raise loney. "Moreover, the situation with the schools has been 6 82 TALKING POINTS 01 rendered almost desperate by the fact that during thes' two years the cost of living has risen by leaps and bounds cutting in tv/o the purchasing power of money, whil the income of the schools has remained almost station ary. This made it impossible to increase the salarie of teachers, already notoriously underpaid even oi a pre-war value of money. While wages and salarie in other fields, including the ministry, have been sub stantially increased, the teacher in our school remainet at his post on the same or only a slightly increase( salary. ''The situation has been made m_ore acute b the fact that since 1918 there has been an unprecedente( increase in attendance. Young people are crowding into our schools as never before. For want of roon many of the colleges have turned away thousands o; students. Indeed, our schools are in the midst of th( greatest crisis in the history of Christian education and the issue is hfe or death." — J. H. Reynolds. liivestments in Education by Leading Denomina- tions The Congregational Church has $80,000,000 in vested in education, the Northern Baptists have like- wise $80,000,000, the Methodist Episcopal, $65,000,000, Northern Presbyterian, $62,000,000, and the Meth- odist Episcopal Church, South, $25,000,000. It will thus be seen that the Southern Methodist Church has made a much smaller investment in education CI CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 83 than any of these other leading denominations. Yet we have more educational institutions than any of these sister Churches, and m_ore mem^bers than any of them except the Methodist Episcopal. The Christian Workers' Educational Aid Fund More than 75 per cent of the students in preparation for the ministry, missionary service, or other distinctly Christian activity must receive aid in some form and from some source in order to secure their education. Of the 75 students in the Scarritt Bible and Training School, 45 are given free scholarships, 6 have work [Scholarships, while only 24 receive no assistance fromi the Church; of this 24, however, some are being sup- ported by private individuals other than their relatives. The colleges and junior colleges of the Church give away more than $85,000 annually in tuition and scholar- ships to preachers, the sons and daughters of preachers and teachers, and other worthy persons. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, obtains •66.7 per cent of all ministers from the homes of farmers land 11.8 per cent from the hom_es of other ministers. "Thus more than three-fourths comie from the classes - which are usually least able to provide the means for adequate educational advantages. Further, these Christian workers enter vocations which promise no financial return above a simple liveli- hood. The average minister in the Methodist Epis- ^ copal Church, South, receives a salary of $974 per year. I 84 TALKING POINTS ON Only one preacher in 100 receives as much as $3,000 per year. The minister's income increases more slowly than that of any other man; while costs have risen 82 per cent, and wages have gone up 95 per cent, the salary of the preacher has increased but 34 per cent. Thus neither the financial status nor the future prospect of the Christian worker is such as to afford the opportunity for an adequate training without assis- tance. In the face of the worst need ever confronted by the Church, there is a decrease in the number of workers. Every department, board, district, and mission field clamors for trained leaders — and this is true of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, not only, but of all denomination. In order to encourage young people who incline to Christian service and assist them in obtaining the highest type of training, there is an imperative demand for the establishment of a large Christian Workers' Educational Aid Fund. It will be a general fund, administered by the General Board of Education. It will be available to any worthy student, man or woman, in any institution of the Church. The sacred trust fund will be preserved for all time and used only for the purpose of giving to the Church a large number of more highly trained workers. The WilKams Loan Fund, bequeathed to the Board of Education by Mr. F. E. WilHams, of Martel, Ten- nessee, in twelve years has educated sixty-four young men by making loans in the total sum of $7,740; at CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 85 the same time the original gift has not only remained intact but has grown from $5,600 to $6,870. This well illustrates the service which can be per- petually rendered by the great fund contemplated in the objectives of the campaign now before the Church. Methodist Universities and the South '*At this moment there are more than sixty thousand foreign students in American institutions of learning, but comparatively few of them are in the colleges and universities of the South. A very large majority of them are in the wealthy and worldly institutions of the North and Northwest, in which liberaHsm prevails and evangehcal Christianity is depreciated, if not de- spised. It is greatly to be feared, therefore, that most of the foreign students now studying in the United States will return to their own lands as powerful op- ponents of the faith of our fathers.'' 'If there be those who desire to break down the evangehcal Christianity of the South and change the character of our civihzation, they can hardly fall upon a better plan for working such a revolution than to induce our people to estabhsh educational institutions of lower grade than a university and send our teachers to their universities to obtain the professional training required now for work in colleges and high schools. By such a process we furnish the money for others to change the type of our social and religious life. When Roman youths went to Greece for education, Roman reHgion and civilization were Hellenized. By a similar 86 TALKING POINTS ON process the South is now suffering a slow but steady- transformation which will become more swift as it proceeds. ''We should have really great universities in which the most thorough postgraduate and professional work can be done, and without such universities we cannot meet the obligations now upon us, nor seize the oppor- tunities before us in the new era which has dawned upon the world/' "Not to make these two universities what they ought to be will cost us much more than the amount which the General Conference has said they should have. Already the South has expended many thousands of dollars for the education of its sons and daughters by- universities outside our section. And it is spend- ing more every day and must continue to expend more until we have made our own universities great and strong. This great financial expenditure, moreover, is the least part of the loss sustained by us on account of our educational destitution and depen- dence. "Not to give our two universities what they now need means the loss of things m^ore precious than money. It means the loss of that which, when once lost, money cannot restore. It means damage to our colleges and high schools, hurt to our Churches at home, and harm to our work in foreign fields. It means the enfeeblement of the evangelical Christianity which we should preserve inviolate as a sacred inheritance from our fathers to be transmitted to our children and children's children ^ CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 87 y md to be carried to the ends of the earth for the honor it )f our Lord and the blessing of mankind." — Bishop W. A. Candler, The Accomplishments of the Colleges vs. Their ' Poverty i "No enterprise on earth has accompHshed as much j IS the Christian colleges have with their limited physical 'esources. The wonder is that what they have done I md the influence that they have had are out of all ij proportion to the small means that they have had at :heir command. In contrast with other kinds of in- f stitutions, their buildings, their laboratories, their . ibraries, their endowments, their general educational _ [acihties, have seemed all too meager and poverty- [ stricken. , "But they have somehov/ possessed a sort of wealth of the spirit, and those who have cared for them have done so under the urge of the religious motive jand a high sense of sacrifice, with the result that they |have been instruments of power for discovering and Itraining Christian leadership. Still, after saying this I and making the largest possible estimate of what jthey have done, the fact stands that they have been immeasurably handicapped for lack of material sup- port and that they will continue to be so handicapped unless the Church to which they belong is intelligent enough to be brought to understand the relation be- tween efficiency and extent of service in education and equipment and endowment." — H, N. Snyder. 88 TALKING POINTS 0. Endowment * 'Higher education is not self-supporting. A colle^ or university to do efficient work must expend an ave age of $300 to $600 annually on each student. 1 throw this whole burden on the student would make ] impossible for most of the young people who seek college education to go to college at all. Large endo\ ments are therefore necessary. The endowment shou^ be sufficient to take care of about 66 per cent of th expense. No institution is safe without endowment. ''Endowments with income covering from forty \ sixty per cent of the annual expenditure are essenti to the efficiency and even to the permanent existen< of institutions of higher learning. Endow or die hi been the universal imperative in higher education." "To require any generation of the future to pay t annual contributions the current expenses of its i] stitutions of higher learning is not warranted by an precedents of benevolence. The general adoption ii such a rule must, I think, expose higher education 1 inevitable decay. Few but the very rich, and at tl: same time very intelligent and very generous, are pr< pared to give for education at all until they come 1 face the confiscation of the grave. Money given in gre^ sums for endowment tends to perpetuate the usefu ness of the donor through all time. His gift confe: upon him an immortality of usefulness. Through he becomes a permanent prop of civilization, an eve: living force in human progress. Endowments thus o: CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 89 fer mighty motives to the giver. Here, if nowhere else, he sees himself achieving immortality. Endowments appeal with resistless force to that love of hfe, eternal life, which is the prime instinct of our being.'' — R. E, Blackwell. (Read "The Contribution of the Christian College to the Life of the Nation,'' by R. E. Blackwell, pub- lished by the Board of Education of the M E. Church, South.) The Comparative Elxpenditure Let it be remembered that more than half of the students in higher institutions are in Church schools. Also that a great majority of such schools are under Church auspices. Yet the expense of operating State and municipal colleges is vastly greater than that of Church colleges. The pubhc treasuries pay $150,000,000 annually for maintaining the 350 pubhc colleges, universities, and normal schools. The Church, on the other hand, main- tains 514 colleges and universities, 620 academies, and 200 theological schools for $25,000,000. In one representative State university there are 5,716 students, and this institution has an income of $3,075,409. In fifty representative denominational colleges there are 13,357 students, yet the combined incomes total $2,927,814. These figures strikingly show the necessity of larger 90 TALKING POINTS ON endowments and support for the denominational college. Nearly all of the great universities and colleges are now in campaigns for greater endowments. North- western is seeking to raise $25,000,000; Harvard is in a campaign for $15,000,000; Yale desires to secure $11,000,000; Chicago and Cornell each need $10,000,- 000; Vassar has called for $6 000,000; Wesleyan has an objective of $3,000,000. Who Pays the Bills? "There are three possible sources of college income — namely, student fees, income from endowment funds, and annual donations. The latter source is an uncertain one. While dependence upon it serves in part to keep an institution in living relations with its constituency, it does not, because of its uncertain character, provide a sound or permanent foundation on which to build. "Students should pay a just proportion of the cost of their education. That proportion will vary somewhat with different institutions. The best information avail- able shows that the average student in our American colleges pays a little more than one-third of the cost of his education. The remainder is borne about equally by the income of endowment funds and annual dona- tions, "In other words, the American Christian college is like a house built upon a foundation one-third of which is shifting sand. This fact presents one of the most serious problems in the college field, the problem of HRISTIAN EDUCATION 91 ssured financial support. The answer is in three 'ords — Largely Increased Endowments. These, and lese only, will meet the need.'' The Teacher and His Salary All persons are famihar with the high cost of hving ,.|id the necessity of increased salaries. The teachers J)-day suffer more than any other men — so much so iiat it is now practically impossible to obtain them, [[any of our schools are utterly unable to fill the places faculty members who die or are forced into other nployments. In four years the cost of living has increased 82 per mt. The wage increase in eight of the leading in- Listries has been 95 per cent. The salary of the college rofessor has increased 31 per cent "The great reason given in justification for their impaigns by all the colleges now seeking larger endow- ments is the necessity of increasing teachers' salaries, I colonial days teachers accepted commodities in a-rt payment of their meager salaries. In days not so istant, members of the faculty of an institution which ow stands among the greatest in the land gratefully !cepted loads of hay and other farm produce as satis- Lctory payments on salaries. It is even recorded that le college having come into possession of a quantity ' pills which were judiciously distributed in payments 1 salary balances long overdue, one member of the Lculty entered formal complaint of inequality in such ayments." 92 TALKING POINTS ( It is said that 143,000 teachers abandoned the W' of teaching last year. If nothing is done to corr this situation we will soon be unable to obtain teacli except those of a very inferior grade. "We must cease to talk vaguely of our colleges 2 universities becoming great 'in time/ They must made great very soon. There is nothing in the m flowing of the tide of time to enrich an instituti Colleges and universities may be endowed 'in tin but somebody has to do the endowing. Time, alo endows nothing. A running stream may go on fore without turning a wheel, or grinding an ounce of gr and so may time flow on without improving our e< cational conditions, unless human hands and hea devise and execute plans for our schools." — Bisi W. A. Candler. "Endow or die has been the universal imperative higher education.'' — Report of the General Board Education. The Education of Women "College education for women is yet less thar century old. Southern people were among the pione^ in this field, and before the Civil War they had mi a noble beginning. After the war, like every th else in this section, educational interests were pa lyzed. From this paralysis there has been a par recovery; though, in comparison with what has b< needed to be done, we have made but a mere beginni mmSTIAN EDUCATION 93 i ^fjdividuals or corporations have controlled woman's niucation for profit or gain, and schools, even under li^urch control, have been farmed out to the best {iders. Education for women has been made ornate ther than serious, superficial rather than fundamental. jLch types may have been the best those Reconstruc- 'Sn days could bring, but such conceptions must now \e way to ideals worthy the name and the end in M lo: "The natural consequence of lack of endowment has reien to make woman's education more expensive. iie tendency has been to eliminate from Christian e(|lleges in part the young woman of moderate means eaj.d to ehminate almost entirely the ones who were lor. Such conditions have forced these young women seek educational advantages in schools where moral lining and religious life are not matters of first fioment. I "By reason of past lack of generosity and lack of a Instructive financial pohcy from any source, the presi- bnt of a Methodist woman's college has, for the most 'i^irt, been made to lead a nerve-racking life, while * riving to serve his generation. With great unfairness himself and greater still to his students, instead of ^Ang a source of inspiration, he has become a drudge, ^a(»ending more time in calculating the number of shces i^j a flitch of bacon or thinking how to get a delinquent l^toon to meet his account, or wondering from what li^turce the salary for the faculty for the next month 94 TALKING POINTS OM ' would come, or how to meet the interest on the colleg 1 debt, than he has spent on the problem of hearts ami ' minds and souls and destinies. Are such men to con] ' tinue bound in shackles and bonds? Is such inadequat ' equipment and preparation to continue as the portioi of women? Changed conditions of to-day make aij ^ imperative demand that the education of women sha] ^ be such as to meet their needs and responsibilitie ^ in Hie,''— J, M, Williams. ^ I u (Read "The Education of Women for the New Age,' a by J. M. Wilhams, published by the Board of Educa; 1) tion of the M. E. Church, South.) I f Immortality of College Investments ci College endowments confer immortahty upon bot' the benefactor and upon the money invested. Th"^ endowed college or university is about the only thin|^ on earth that gives immortality to money investec'?' whether it is the widow's mite or the rich man's mi". lions. Thousands of living exam.ples enforce this trutl: ^j" The universities of Paris, Bologna, Heidelburg, Os ' ford, and Cambridge, with endowments unimpaired bj revolutions and changes in dynasties, are pulsating wit ''^ more life and power to-day than ever before. Cardimpf Wolsey's money spent upon his court quickly disap^^ peared but that used for endowing Christ Church Coli lege has for four hundred years declared annual divi dends in the form of highly educated leaders of the Brit ish empire — eminent jurists, viceroys, prime ministers CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 95 poets, cabinet officers, philosophers and ministers, including John and Charles Wesley — the bearers of world civiHzation in government, lav/, science, in- dustry, and religion. The same principle of the permanent productive- Iness of college endowments operates in America in our own Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Princeton, and Trinity. The railroad investments of the Van- ierbilts and the tobacco holdings of the Dukes will mdergo immeasurable changes of form, use, ownership, md control, but the Vanderbilt gifts to Vanderbilt University and the Duke investments in Trinity vill bear interest in a highly trained leadership to conserve for the nation the permanent values of our civilization as long as man hves on American soil. Moreover, the college or the university is about the )nly institution among men whose endowment gives larthly immortality to the name of the donor. Where jjifts are large this is the inevitable result. The follow- ing are a few among American institutions that in heir names confer immortality upon their founders: /^anderbilt University, Rice Institute, Tulane Univer- ity, Millsaps, Colgate University, Reed College, - jeland Stanford, Vassar, Johns Hopkins, Sophie New- , omb College, Clark University, Smith College, Drake , Jniversity. ^ Our Ability to Pay $33,000,000 '{I jj "The country was never so prosperous. The best p »usiness minds of the nation say that the United States 96 TALKING POINTS ON has several years of unparalleled prosperity ahead of it, and the South is in an especially strong economic position. America's annual income is now $40,000,- 000,000. Of this sum Southern Methodists receive $1,250,000,000. The $33,000,000 which we are asking to be spread over three or four years is less than three per cent of the income of Southern Methodists for one year. The total wealth of the United States now is $240,000,000,000. Of this sum Southern Methodists own $8,000,000,000. The financial objective of our campaign is less than one half of one per cent of the total wealth of our Methodist people. Moreover, we have one of the best crops in our history. We are literally pihng up wealth by billions. "Relatively the United States also is in the strongest financial position among the nations. It has more wealth than any other three nations in the world and our income is even greater proportionately than our wealth. Our income is two and one-half times the income of Great Britain, even if you include all her possessions. 'The financial objective, therefore, is easily within the financial resources of our Church. The wealth of the Church was scarcely touched by the Centenary. The average gift to the Centenary was $40 — that is, $8 a year for five years, or about 15 cents a week. Our people of means made only small subscriptions and those of ordinary means could easily have doubled their contributions. Witness the luxuries in which even our wage earners and salaried people CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 97 I ! are indulging themselves. No, our people sorely need : the campaign to save them from greed and selfishness — • yea, to save their stingy souls. Our greatest peril is ^ our prosperity. I "Where are our tithers? What will become of ] their solemn pledges to tithe unless we keep the 3 sense of stewardship alive and keep before them causes 5 ( worthy of their gifts? Unless we do this our people will backslide and their last estate will be worse than their first. Barring the last two years, this is the easiest time in all history to get money." — J, H. Reynolds. 7 t a 1 r B 1 S; ) 1 1 s I XI MISCELLANEOUS FACTS "We have come to the place where we must make religion more educational and education more rehgious/' — E, N. Snyder, The nine famous colleges first founded in New England were all launched under Church auspices. Of the first 119 colleges founded east of the Mississippi River, 104 were Christian institutions. I When the call for volunteers came in the World War more than 50,000 students of the colleges responded at! once. One out of every three boys answered the call. More than 150,000 students were enrolled for military drill in Students Army Training Corps at the col- leges. Oxford University furnished 11,500 of its graduates to the English armies, and of this number 2,100 were killed in the war. When Vocations Are Chosen A study recently made at the State University of Minnesota reveals interesting data as to when students choose their fife work. This investigation would doubtless give similar results in any large institution. It was seen that 70 per cent of all students choose HRISTIAN EDUCATION 99 leir life work before they enter college; that is, nearly ,1 students decide upon their vocation during the S€ondary or preparatory period. This fact consti- ntes a supreme argument in favor of the Christian ?;ademy, and amply justifies the Church in operating iie twenty-six preparatory schools now under our con- jol. If students decide upon their vocations in the i:ademy period, it is highly necessary that in this f|iriod they be kept in institutions where Christian in- ^'jiences and atmosphere are dominant. ^'Southern Methodism may well be proud of its girl aduates because it has the honor of having conferred r.e first degree ever given to a woman in the history t the world. Miss Catherine Brewer received a di- ■ oma and degree from the Georgia Female College ' 1840. As we look at the status of womanhood at • e present day, it seems atoost impossible to believe at the first one graduated only eighty years ago, within ^le memory of some people now living. Miss Catherine gl'ewer became the mother of Admiral Benson, of the lited States Navy, who distinguished himseK so llantly in the World War. The Georgia Female Col- ye is now Wesleyan College, at Macon, Ga. It is jie of the leading schools for women in our Church .d the oldest chartered wom.an's college in the world, "The difference between a large university and a ■ lall college is that in a large university the student es through more colleges; but in the small college, 100 TALKING POINTS more college goes through the student. — J. L. PeU\ Chief Justice of Maine. ! 'The small Christian college is the hope of Ameri Character is essential to statesmanship and these c leges are vital factors in the development of sterl: character/' — James J. Hill. \ ^ 'After God had carried us safe to New England a we had builded our houses, provided necessaries our livelihood, reared convenient places for Go! worship, and settled the Civil Government; one of i next things we longed for and looked after was to i| vance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dread to leave an illiterate ministry to the Churches wl our present ministers shall be in the dust." — Inscri on a ga.teway at Harvard. "The right instruction of youth is a matter in wh Christ and all the world are concerned." — Luther. ^ "To educate the reason without educating the e sire is Hke placing the repeating rifle in the hands i the savage." — Herbert Spencer. "Whatever you would put into the State, you nij first put into the schools." — Humboldt. j J "Our learning should be neither a couch on wl:| to rest, nor a cloister in which to promenade ale nor as a tower from which to look down on others; ! as a fortress where we may resist them; nor as a w(!^^' shop for gain and merchandise, but as a rich arm USTIAN EDUCATION 101 I i treasury for the glory of the Creator and the en- lolement of hfe." — Lord Bacon. 'It is clear that the benefit of a college education isists not in the abundance of opportunities that been neglected. It consists in the firmness of Dral and intellectual fiber v/hich have been developed ]the college/' — President Lowell. 'Every scholar is something added to the riches of :ommon wealth." — John Knox. ' -The Churches of Christ have given one per cent of air sons and daughters to their colleges and the col- jes have given back 80 to 90 per cent of the Church's nisters and missionaries." — President Bates of Hiram allege. "I am in no v/ay untrue to State institutions when say that in our day a boy might become a bachelor ' master in almost any one of the best of them, and ! as ignorant of the Bible, the moral and spiritual ith which it represents and the fundamental prin- 3les of religion, their nature and value to so- jty, as if he had been educated in a non-Christian luntry . Who is to supply this lack if not the Christian •liege?" — President Thompson, of Ohio State University. "The object of scholarship, the object of all knowl- Ige is to understand; is to comprehend; is to know hat the need of mankind is. This is the reason why ^holarship has usually been more fruitful when as- 102 TALKING POINT, sociated with religion, and scholarship has never, s far as I can at this moment recollect, been associate with any religion, except the religion of Jesus Christ. — Woodrow WHlson. "It is a mistake to train young people in all lines c knowledge and give them full college equipment fc undertaking the big tasks of life without making sui also that fundamental principles of right and wrong a taught in the Bible have become a part of their equip ment. There is a control of forces and motives es sential to the management of vast affairs which come only through an educated conscience." — J. J, Hill. (Read carefully "The Educational Situation America,'' on pages 21-31 of the "Educational Survey." XII THE ENLARGED MISSIONARY PROGRAM DEMANDS AN ENLARGED EDUCA- TIONAL PROGRAM '^If our Church did not reah!ze the need of larger equipment for our Church schools prior to the success- ful Centenary program, certainly the facts developed by that program and the renewed emphasis given to statements which our educational leaders had been making before the Centenary ought to awaken the entire Church to the crucial need for the Christian Education Movement now on under the direction of the Education Commission of the Church. ''It is a statement of the bare facts of the case when we say that our Church schools with their present equip- ment and endowment cannot meet the demand upon them for Christian leadership at hom.e and for service in the foreign fields of the Church. It is the first time in our history, as a Church, that we have unitedly at- tempted a program of Christian Education that will carry down to the local Church and to every home the need of the educational institutions of our Church in order that they may meet their share of the world's need of Christian leadership. ''Visiting an Annual Conference at its recent session a few weeks ago, the statements that were 104 TALKING POINTS ON made in the reports of the presiding elders and others brought before us immediately the crying need for men, I recall that a class of five were seek- ing admission. There was not a man of them who had been to any college. Perhaps two of them had an education equivalent to high school, and though the need of that conference v/as very great and though every legitimate method was sought by which these men could be admitted, at last there were only two that could pass the test for admission. At this same Conference one of the presiding elders in reporting said: 'Thir- teen of the charges on my district are filled hy sup- plies/ That was about one-half of his entire district. So district after district reported and the same story was repeated. *'If we were to follow this clue for data through all of our Annual Conferences, we should perhaps find that more than fifteen per cent of our Churches are filled by suppKes and in some Conferences a much larger percentage. "Again, presiding elders frequently report that new works ought to be opened up, but that there are no men to be sent to take care of them; that many of the present charges ought to be divided, but it could not be done because men could not be found to take charge of any new work. We are coming to realize also in a very definite way that if we shall adequately take care of our rural work, the men who are coming in to our Conferences must have a special training which will fit them to be Christian leaders in rural sections. It HRISTIAN EDUCATION 105 ^^lust be kept in mind that the Southern Methodist =st ten years. ) 1 * 'Looking to the immediate future, and if we care ) ) take a longer look, we are face to face with a tuation that makes the Christian Education Move- lent and program an absolute necessity for our Church, ometimes we have been disposed to think that the hurch school is something at a long distance from the verage home of our people, that a wide gulf stretches 1 between. The fact is that the Church school equip- jing for ministry reaches back into every home of the 106 TALKING POINTS OA Church, for the minister is the man who must go iij and out of our homes, and the standard of culture that hi I carries, the standard of hfe which he manifests, hi; conversation and his walk relate us immediately t(i the entire program which is now being presented witl renewed emphasis to our people. Thinking over th > entire program of the Christian Church to-day, I can ' not find anything in our program which is more vits ' to every home in every local Church than that we shoul 1 equip the men who are to bring the message of th full Christian life to our homes. So that in any san i view of an adequate program of the Church of Chris} ^ the Church school must have a central place. ^ ''We have too frequently been saying as individusj s Church members representing homes that the 'ChurcJ " school or the Christian Education Movement is no! ^■ a matter that concerns m.e;' when the fact is thaj '< whether our children are sent to Church schools or noli " the men who are to be most closely associated with on s homes for Christian training and religious instructior determining thereby in some part the character of th young life, if equipped for this service, must find tha equipment in our Church schools. Laymen Trained as Leaders "The need of a leadership in the local Church amon the laymen is well-nigh universal. We are emphasij ing more and more the stewardship of time; the ol ligation of the layman to give a definite part of h time to Christian service. A few weeks ago a paste CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 107 fof a Church with more than four hundred people in the Sunday school and a membership that had grown from a handful to more than three hundred, said to me: 'I have not in my Church a single layman who has sufficient training, educationally, to be Sunday school superintendent or to help me direct the work of the i Church/ If we were to question hundreds of the pas- *tors of our Churches would not this situation be more or less duphcated in a multitude of our local Churches? "So if we approach the Christian Education Movement from the angle of the home field or the foreign field, rom the angle of the home or the local Church, we are ace to face with the fact of the immediate need of a successful carrying on of the program undertaken under the leadership of the Education Commission. A layman from one of our great centers recently said: 'Our Church has been so impressed with this need of trained workers for the ministry or for Christian service that we are now bearing the expenses of ten ^oung men at our Conference school/ So we beHeve more and more that this program will become a mani- fest one to our laymen and to our local Churches/' — W, B, Beauchamp, ! INDEX Accomplishments of Colleges, 87. Adequate Conception of Education, 11. Aid I\md, 83. Americanism, 43. Anarchy, IS. Andc-rson, S:one?rall, 17, 21. Argentine Republic, 42. Atheism, 25. Avarice, 60. Babson, Roger, 41, 42. Bacon, Lord, 101. Baptist Church, 35, 82. Beauchamp, W. B., 107. Benson, Admiral, 99. Bible, 14, 20, 21, 45, 53, 101. Bishops, 65. Black^ell, R. E., 79, 89. Board of Education, 92. Bologna University.-, 94. B = - ' ^3. 7S. -rrine, 99. 2.^,: . _ ...3^e, 25. 3--:;r.r.ell, Horace, 58. B-j=in6ss, 41. Cambridge University-, 77, 94. Candler, Bishop W. A., 43, 49, 87, 92. Capital, 3S. Cardinal Wolsey, 94. Catholic Education, 22. Centenary, 69, 70, 72, 81, 96, 105. Charity, 57. Chicago, 34. Chicago University, 90, 95. Children, 22. China, 75. Christ Church College, 94. Christian Education, 15. Christian Ideals, 12. Civilization, 37. : Clark, Elmer T., 57. Coke, 80. Cokesbury College, 29. Colgate University, 95. Colonial Era, 43. Columbia University, 95. Congregational Church, 82 \ Coolies, 75. ; Cornell University, 34, 90. Cost of Education, 89. ! Curriculum, 15. Deaconesses, 55. Democracy, 76. Denny, Bishop Collins, 66. Drake University, 95. Early Church, 47. Early Education in America, 98. j Education of Missionaries, 70, 71 Eminent Domain, 59. I Emotion, 46. i Endowments, 88, 90, 91, 92, 94. ■ England, 34. English Government, 75. Ethics, 37, 51. Europe, 70, 74, 76. ' Evangelism, 73. ; Faculty, 17. Far East, 75. Fifth Objective, 63. Financial Objective, 96. First Objective, 11. ' Foreign Missions, 67, 68, 69, 70, ; 74, 76, 103, 105. i Foreign Students, 85. ! Fourth Objective, 81. 110 INDEX General Conference, 19, 30, 31, 53, 72, 81, 86. Georgia Female College, 99. German Education, 13, 14. Germany, 25, 43, 48, 51, 52, 79. Gladstone, W. E., 57. Glover, Prof. T. R., 47. Gospels, 58. Government, 59. Graded Lessons, 45. Great Britain, 96. Harvard University, 34, 90, 95. Heathen Lands, 74. Heidelburg University, 94. High Schools, 78. Hill, J. J., 100, 102. Home Missions, 55. Homes, 41. Hindu, 74. Hugo, Victor, 59. Humboldt, 100. Ignorance, 18. Immortality, 25. Immortality of College Investments, 94. India, 69, 75. Industrial Afiairs, 37. Instruction, 14. Intercession, 63. Interchurch World Movement, 67. International Affairs, 37. Investments, 41. Italy, 42, 44. Japan, 75. Jenkins, C. R., 46, 68. Jewish Education, 22. Jews, 60. Johns Hopkins University, 95. Kingdom, 45, 63, 64. Kingswood School, 29. Knox, John, 101. Labor, 38. Law, Gl. Laymen, 106, 107. Leaders, 33. Leadership, 54, 55, 78, 79. 80. Leland Stanford University, 95. "Les Miserables," 59. Life Work Division, 98. Loan Fund, 83. Lueba, Prof. James H., 25. Mammon, 58. Materialism, 58, 78. Methodism, 29. Methodist Episcopal Church, 34, 56, 65, 69, 82. Mexico, 18, 42. Millionaires, 41. Millsaps College. 95. Ministers, 65, 66, 67, 68, 100, 101, 105, 106. Ministers' Salaries, 83. Minnesota University, 98. Missionaries, 55, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 75, 101, 103, 105. Mohammedan, 73. Money, 57. Moses, 63. Moiizon, Bishop E. D., 48. National Leadership, 77. Navy, 99. Near East, 75. New England, 98, 100. Northwestern University, 34, 65, 90. Nurses, 55. Orient, 49. Other Churches, 34. Ownership, 59, 60. Oxford University, 29, 77, 94, 98. Pagan World, 46. Paganism, 48. Parables, 60. Paris University, 94. Parliament, 78. Parenthood, 67. Pilgrim Fathers. 42, 43. NDEX 111 ostgraduate Work, 86. overty of Colleges, 87. rayer, 63. reachers Needed, 54, 65. -esbyterian Church, 35, 56, 69, 82. •inceton University, 75, 95. roperty, 58. irotestant Church, 77, 79. ladicals, 43. iawUngs, E. H., 73. lead College, 95. eligioua Atmosphere, 67. eligious Education, 20, 21, 22. evivals, 46, 58. eynolds, J. H., 18, 19, 34, 44, 52, 82, 97. ice Institute, 95. iches, 64. oman Empire, 47. ural Work, 104. iussia, 18, 42, 44. ibbath, 57, 58, 61. larritt Bible & Training School, 83. iholarships, 83. nith College, 95. lyder, H. N., 50, 87, 98. )ldiers, 66. i.cial Unrest, 37, 38, 40, 42, 50. |.cial Uplift, 75. |iciety, 59. jiphie Newcomb College, 95. I'urce of Supply, 65. itaniards, 42. jiarks University, 95. •eer, Robert E., 58, 74. lencer, Herbert, 100. dritual Ideals, 13. •irituality, 63. ate Universities, 65. ewardship, 54, 57, 63. Students Army Training Corps, 98. Sunday School, 20, 21, 22, 45, 67, 107. Tax, 59. Teachers' Salaries, 82, 91. Theological Schools, 35. Time Service, 106. Timeliness, 33, 72. Tithe, 58. Tithers, 97. Tithing, 57, 60, 61. Trinity College, 95. Tulane University, 95. Unbelief in Colleges, 25. Uneducated Ministers, 103. United Campaigns, 31. Universities, 85, 86. Vanderbilt University,:95. Vassar College, 90, 95. Wages, 82, 91. War, 17, 19, 33, 34, 38, 39, 49. 50, 51, 59, 98. Wealth, 64, 96. Wealth in America, 96. Wealth of Methodists, 96. Wealth of the South, 96. Webster, Daniel, 43. Wesley, 29. Wesleyan University, 90,r95, 99. Wheat, 75. Whitefield, 30. Who's Who, 77. Williams, J. M., 94. Williams Loan Fund, 84. Wilson, Woodrow, 102. Women, 92, 93, 99. Woman's Missionary Council, 55. Yale University, 34,!90, 95. Y.^M.1C.[A. Secretaries,;,67. I SPIRITUAL [lESOURCES MANUAL For Use of Pastors "in the morning, rising up a greatwhile before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed." (Mark i. JS.) "He went out into the mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer." (Luke vi, 12.) "Lord, teach us to pray." (Luke xi. i.) "Evening and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice." (Ps. Iv. 17.) Department of Spiritual Resources Christian Education Movement and Missionary Centenary, M. E. Church, South Nashville, Tenn. From its inception I have felt keenly the need of thj prayers of the praying people for the Christian Education Movement. Ours is a difficult task as well as a great cause. |^ At such a time we need a vital faith and a clear sense ol divine leadership. Praying alone can bring about this hap- py result. — J. H. Reynolds, Director General, Christian Edu cation Movement. > I need not reemphasize to you how important I considel this department of work. If we shall successfully carry out the fundamental program of the Centenary, we must undergird it with the "Spiritual Resources" plan. — W. B, Beaitchamp, Director General, Missionary Centenary. 1 PUBLISHING HOUSE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH SMITH a LAMAR, AGENTS 9 INTRODUCTION The Christian Education Movement suggests that )astors spend the first three months of the year in em- )hasis on the three spiritual themes : Prayer, Life Serv- ce, and Stewardship, in recognition of the fact that he Christian Education Movement is essentially a spiritual movement. The Christian education of our roung people cannot be accomplished simply by build- ng great schools. The very roots of Christian educa- ion are in the home and the Church. Therefore the Christian Education Movement, to be effective, must irst emphasize the need of a deep spiritual life in the ■amily and in the Church. It must make its appeal to he young men and women to listen to the voice of God vho may be calling them to Christian life service. It nust emphasize one of Christ's central teachings long ivoided or neglected by the Church — that of the Chris- tian's proper attitude toward the material things of life. The emphasis put upon these three themes will make :ertain that the Christian Education Movement will be founded upon sure foundations. The suggestions con- tained in this manual and in the manuals on Christian Life Service and SteAvardship are made to pastors in the hope and belief that they may be useful to each pastor in building up a conviction in the hearts of his SPIRITUAL RESOURCES MANUAL people regarding Christian education which will nol only provide the institutions needed, but which shall send to those institutions from homes and Churches a stream of boys and girls with love of Christ and the Church already in their hearts. 4 CONTENTS I PAGE I. Objectives 7 II. The League of Bible Reading and Prayer 9 III. The Family Altar 22 IV. The Prayer Meeting and Topics for 1921 25 V. Sermon Topics Suggested for January 45 VI. Books and Pamphlets 114 5 SPIRITUAL RESOURCES MANUAL I Objectives The origin and the continuance of the Department of •Spiritual Resources is to be found in the earnest de- !;ire of the directors of the Christian Education Move- ment and the Centenary Campaign to be of greater service to the Church than a mere money-raising agency. The money is an absolute necessity in the de- v^elopment of the work of the kingdom, but of far great- er importance than this is the development of the indi- vidual, the family, and the Church in spiritual life. In other words, the individual, the home, and the Church are a part of the sum total of Christian education rep- resented by the colleges. With this purpose in view, the Department of Spir- itual Resources will have as its objectives : 1. The developijtcnt of the spiritual life of the indi- vidual through daily Bible reading and prayer. An earnest effort will he made to induce every one of the 242,000 who enrolled in the Fellowship of Intercession under the Centenary Campaign and all others possible to enroll for daily Bible reading and prayer. This is a distinct step in advance. The pledge in the Fellow^ship of Intercession was a promise to pray. The present en- rollment will be for daily prayer and, as all prayer is more intelligent when connected with the reading of 7 SPIRITUAL RESOURCES MANUAL the Word, daily reading of the Bible has been added As a help to all those who enroll, a list of daily Bibh i readings and suggestive prayers will be furnished. '%'m 2. The enlargement of the Family Altar League. Un der the efficient management of Rev. S. A. Neblett, 3, 500 family altars were registered in this department and probably as many more set up of which no record reached the office. The family altar has the greatesi potential power of any organization in the world. II is the hope of the department to greatly increase the number of homes in which family altars are established. Helpful literatui-e will be prepared and sent out regu- larly to assist in the conduct of these family altars. 3. Th€ improvement of the prayer meeting and the estahlishment of prayer meetings in rural Churches. We have never yet realized the possibilities of the prayer meeting except in individual Churches, where the program has been carefully prepared and an ear- nest effort made to have it carried out in the most thor- ough manner. The department hopes to 'be able to pre-^ pare helpful suggestions and programs that have been successfully carried out for the use of pastors who de- sire such aids. 4. Reenforcing other agencies. No new organization is contemplated. An earnest and sympathetic effort will be made to assist in every way passible the agen- cies already at work for the development of the spirit- ual resources of the Church. 8 I League of Bible Reading and Prayer ^ The month of January is to be devoted to the culti- ■ation of Spiritual Resources as February and March, respectively, to Life Service and Stewardship. The con- ;ecration to Life Service and the acceptance of Chris- ian Stewardship grow fundamentally out of a vital ipiritual experience and an intelligent conception of our .^elation to God and the working out of his plans. The mccess of these two, vitally important as they are, :herefore will depend largely on the foundations laid n Bible study and prayer. Posters Of great value will be the w^all posters, and it is urged that they be put in the most conspicuous places in the church. Watch Night Every Church in the connection will be given an op- portunity to start the new year with a comprehensive program for a Watch-Night Service. This service should be entered into so heartily and so thoroughly that a great tide of spiritual power will be released which shall sweep the Church out into the new year with enlarged vision and a unified program of service. List of Readings Much thought has been given to selection of the daily readings. Objections can be raised to any plan that 9 SPIRITUAL RESOURCES MANUAL may be adopted. Some are scrappy and skip about in tbe Biblej others are too long or too short. The princi- ple that seemed best to follow was to select some list already in use that would reach the largest number through the already well established channels. Under these conditions there was only one set of topics that could be considered for any length of time, and that was the list selected by the International Sun- day School Association for the daily home readings for the family altar and sent out through the Sunday school literature. More people read the Bible in connection with the Sunday schoo] lesson than through all other agencies combined, and every individual whom we induce to be-, come a daily reader will be a more intelligent pupil or teacher in the Sunday school. Therefore it seemed' wise to join with this great agency in the topics pro- vided for them by the International Sunday School Association. Readings for two days and questions for a week are given here. 1 Readings for Adults Saturday, January 1 A Child Dedicated to God (Luke ii. 21-32) \ x\way back in the dim past God laid upon the hearts of parents the duty of dedicating their children to him. It was to be done as soon after birth as possible. Je- sus himself, was thus dedicated. If we have really tak- 10 PIRITUAL RESOURCES MANUAL n God for our God, how can we fail to take him as our tiildren's God? *rayer Blessed Spirit, help us to think of our Father as the 'ather of our children as well as of ourselves and as he Father not only of our own children but of all lit- le ones who have never had a parent to place them nder his loving care. Amen. Sunday, January 2 lie Pure in Heart (Ps. xxiv. 1-6) If it is the pure in heart who have a right to ascend :nto the hill of Jehovah and stand in his holy place, vhat must God think of us if our task of leading little hildren to Jesus that they may be kept pure is given ittle place or thought in our homes? ^rayer 0 Master, let us not forget that our children will lave been sent to us to little purpose if they fail to nake us think of the pure in heart or to make us am- )itious to lead them to Jesus at a tender age, that they nay be kept pure in heart. Amen. Lesson Questions What did Jesus mean by ''the kingdom of heaven" ? What spirit is required of those who enter it? 11 1 SPIRITUAL RESOURCES MANUAl Who is the best Friend of children^ and what plej did he make for them ? What blessing did he pronounce on them? • What is meant by "occasions of stumbling"? j What is to be done with those who cause children t^ "stumble"? In Jesus's parable who is represented by the los sheep ? Why did the shepherd rejoice? — Home Quarterly. Readings for Young People The same difficulty presents itself in this list of reaa ings that confronts the teacher who would use the uia form topics for the Primary and Junior pupils. Manj of the lessons are too advanced. For that reason wi have selected for the young people of the Junior an« Intermediate ages, all under seventeen, a list of topic} prepared for the Junior and Intermediate Leaguers giving consecutively the stories of the Bible. The se lections for the first week in January are given below. Stories from Old Testament History Peayee. "Just as I am, thine own to be, Friend of the young who lovest me, To consecrate myself to thee, O Saviour Lord, I come, I come." Daily Readings. Jan. 1. The Creation of the World, Genesis i. 2. The Creation of Man, Genesis ii. 12 'spiritual resources manual 3. The Subtle Serpent, Genesis lii. 4. The Two Brothers, Genesis iv. 1-16. 5. The Ark of Gopher Wood, Genesis vi. 6. The Flood of Great Waters, Genesis vii. 7. The Raven and the Dove, Genesis viii. Helps for Mothers There is still another class, and possibly these do the ■eading most far-reaching in its results : the mothers v'ho read to the boys and girls at that impressionable ige when a story is the most telling form of presenting ruth. For these mothers we recommend most heartily lurlbut's "Bible Stories," the edition with questions ifter every story. Foster's "Bible Stories" are splen- lid and preferred by some to all others. For those mothers who do not have any good Bible ;torybook, we will gladly provide the list which we 'ecommend to the Junior and Intermediates. One itory each day of the year will carry the child in the lome through the principal stories of interest to chil- Iren. These daily readings will prove of untold value :o the children, and the mother who does the reading vill have a good knowledge of the Book at the end of ;he year. It is hoped that all that is being done in the various lepartments of the Church to secure daily Bible read- ng and prayer will be supplemented by the Depart- nent of Spiritual Resources, as it is not the purpose of :he department to form any new organization, but to vork through channels already established. 13. 1 SPIRITUAL RESOURCES MANUAl Bible Reading and Prayer H Emphasis will be placed during January on BibL: reading and prayer by the individual, by the familj^. and by the Church in all its departments. January 23-30 will be enrollment week, when every member 6j the Ohurch will be given an opportunity to sign a carJ similar to the one signed in the campaign for the Fel lowship of Intercession. Take this opportunity to point out that Christian education, which the Church has adopted as the mes sage to emphasize this year, includes the training anci; development which one receives through personal hab its of prayer and Bible reading. The Bible is one o;' the greatest textbooks in the world. Here is one o:' the roots of Christian education without which we cai^ have no Christian college. g Enrollment Week — January 23-30 1 Every sermon and talk given during this month J intensive cultivation should so stress the basal thin| in spiritual development as to lead up to enrollmei week and contribute to the success of the plan for en listment. Pastors, minutemen, officials of the Wom| an's Missionary Society, Sunday school, boards of stew] ards, and Epworth Leagues should see that every mem ber of the Church approaches enrollment week with ai intelligent idea of its tremendous importance. I This enrollment is a step in advance of that for th