St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1892-07-04
CULTURE AND CONDUCT. :
Rev. William Wilkinson Pleads
for More RELIGIOUS Education.

1Or more Religious Education.
Preaching in st. Andrews church
last night, Rev. William Wilkinson
said:
II have attended with keen delight
the commencement exercises of two of
our city high schools recently, and was
struck with the way the graduates ac-
quilted themselves. They did great
honor to those who have had the care
and direction of their studies. l am led
how to ask in deep seriousness, What
is the meaning of the rising tide of
public general education?-what is the
goal to which it tends?' Is it to know
what things are in their relation one
to another. to deal with knowledge
in its abstract-ideal without moral
entering upon period of disaster such
as few persons anticipate. The age in
which we live is to much greater extent
than any of think transition time.
In all the historic past there has been
no century since the first of our era
which in interest, in Importance, was so
fraught with tremendous issues, issues
of life and death. to all which is most
vital to man. Without doubt the stu
dent of the twenty-ifth century will
look upon the nineteenth as Outranking
the greatest landmark of progress to
English-speaking men. The lines of
investigation have been in many de-
partmentS SO deepened and widened in
our time that we ourselves do not
know how different they are than our
grandfatherS saw them in scientific OBJ
servatiOn. Now men look with patient
care on Nature i'll all her moods, and do
not fail to see she is the one teacher.
&C.
men of science work have gone by leaps
and bounds in the fifty years last past.
We are leaving time aud place condi-
tons and asking questions in the realm
of the spiritual and the mental such as
our fathers never dreamed about. We
are talking to monkeys now, and they
understand we are told. We soon shall
be able to talk understandingly to birds.
Nature in her hidden ways is being
made to speak to us her profoundeSt
secrets.
what is to be the end of all this?
Are we to have race of men who look
upon the universe as self-regulating.
Self-adjuSted clock with no maker, no
designer. and man as a part of mechan-
ism which he does not control, but in
which he is controlled? Is. all mans
progress to end in doubt, or denial, or
despair? l trOw not. The man is stone
blind who does not see i'll the new era
evidences of an intent, a plan, in the
architecture of the world from the first.
who does not perceive that man.is made
on plan which does not contemplate
his oblivion at death or his isolation
in this life. Who does not know
that culture should of right
imply and eliminate in conduct. which
is noble and useful. To what holy pur-
pose is our boosted and much-vaunted
knowledge if it leave us only race OF
persons who are absorbed in self, who
add house to house, dollar to dollar.
proud OF our cash, naughty, insolent to
those who cannot resent our ill-behav-.
lOr, or crlnging to those whom we wish
to favor US, or our plans, or party. or
church. If we are law to ourselves,
our pleasure or convenience is made to
be for us the standard of right. Better
the savage state than that, for knowl-
edge can only be to such man or peo-
pie delusion, a snare. .'1t will be like
a ''broken tooth or foot out of joint"
by some strange, and, to me, nonun-
derstandable way of thinking, we ap-
ply the words higher education to
mental culture alone. This is all as it
ought not to be; for the records of the
past prove, and the newspapers every
day show how depraved are many per-
sons who have had all the advantages
which even classic training can give. If
you want to see what degradation men
and women of education can descend to,
read the "History of Florence" by
Roscoe. Learn what the men of
Athens were in the palmest
days of Greece. Look at the
American fugitives in Canada, who are
there with the cash of those who trusted
them. 1t will never do to leave the re-
lIgious and the moral sentiment of the
people unframed. That education
which believes in polish, in making men
alert, in the development of all which is
most acute and powerful in the reason
ing and artistic power in man we stand
for, advocate and demand. We also say
let the imperial rights of truth. justice
goodness, mercy, love, chastity, all
which is enshrined in the words faith,
love, reverence for God, good will to
men, all which can assist in making the
now many and heavy burdens of the
poor lighter, and the WEAKNESS of the
sad less miserable, be insisted upon. A
high mental culture which does not
lead to noble conduct is, as Proverbs
says. "a jewel of gold in a swine's
| nose"