The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-07-06


ity of a Sunday school rests on an
entirely different basis. Religion and
law are the most conservative of all
institutions. They strike their roots
SO deep that they are hard to kill,
hard to eradicate or to change. An
tiquity would appear to give them
strength rather than the contrary.
Hence the large percentage of folly,
of superstition, of decayed and USE
less material with which they are
loaded down. And hence the Sun
day-schools of the oldest denomina
tions teach most that we don't want
a child to believe-the most that is
demoraIizing, that is fraudulent and
mischievous to holiness and happi-
ness, and to a truly enjoyable life.
To specify the facts any religious
doctrine or institution which tam
pers with the penalty of doing wrong,
is dangerous to chld's morality. 1t
does not matter whether escape is
promised through the power of money,
of a delusive mercy, or of deceptive
prayer. The effect is disastrously
the same. Children, and men too,
are seduced into doing wrong through
a delusive expectation that they won't
get caught-that they won't get pun
ished. This is always the tempter's
and the seducer's chief stock in argu-
ment. And when we clothe such
delusion with the holy sanction of re-
ligion and make the church or the
Lord Jesus the go-between to secure
our protection and screen us from the
righteous penalties of doing wrong,
we have destroyed every barrier
against sinful life except the cold
uncertainties of human law itself.
And to circumvent the law and
avoid its penalties becomes praise
worthy in the minds of youth and
children who have been taught that
the righteous Jesus Christ is engaged
in this kind of scheming as his chief
occupation. To teach our children
that it is permissible and praiseworthy
to escape all penalties possible,- that
it is just as well for somebody else to
suffer for their sins as to suffer them
selves, is to make fearful abrasion
upon their moral nature. 1t is to
start them in life burdened with
shocking moral deformity. 1t is to
fit them to work at roguery, to delight
in fraud, to palliate moral outrage,
and to participate in any kind of
slipperihess which can be INDUCED
without detection. And this is a
great reason "why so many Christians
need watching" The moral founda-
ton is askew. Its principles of justice
are diseased. would allow no child
of mine to be taught the shocking
absurdity that God would accept the
punishment of a righteous man as a
substitute for the debts of the wicked.
It is fearful thing to teach child
that another party will "pay it all"
and let us escape. "God will by no
means clear the guilty" is the only
safe principle in which to indoctrin-
ate the children and youth.
Another danger in many Sunday
schools is that the more thoughtful
may be driven into infdelity, agnos-
ticism, or atheism. Robert Ingersoll
is a conspicuous example of pernicious
religious instruction. In my own ex-
perience, remember bitterly the
years in which / walked on the very
outer edge of atheism and nissan
thropy. The heart kept continually
saying-Give me no God at all rather
than the God represented. hated
the conception of him. He seemed
far more monstrous than the devil.
And if any being in the universe de-
served everlasting damnation it
seemed to my youthful imagination
that it was the God of John Calvin
and of Jonathan Edwards-the God
of becrazed revivalist.
my brain took fire. Is this. l cried,
The end of prayer and preaching?
Then down with pulpit. down with priest.
Aud give us natures teaching!
Foul shame and scorn be on ye all.
Who turn the good to evil.
And steal the Bible from the Lord,
To give 1t to the Devil"
And to me, at this day, it seems a
dangerous and demoralizing educa-
ton which is poisoned by such views
of the tender and merciful Supreme
Being. How shall we persuade
child to love God under the convic-
ton that he will send all children to
burning hell who have not been
baptized, and all parents there who
have made no profession of religioni
There are also other absurd and
offensive things which belong to the