The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-11-16

pduse on the threshold ot the college, and make nqulsition as to the meaning of the thing which you have done.
 Tt is the great purpose of the school to make human life intelligent. Thou sands of forces play upon human history, and struggle to focalize human destiny. It is fatal 10 be ignorant. The beach Is strewn with human wreckage which might have had happier portage, had the pilot been better informed.
 "To give the human being better un- derstandng of himself that he may enter the life-contest with disciplined facul ties and conscious poise-to make him fa- miliar with the things around him that he may reduce the laws of nature to rules and prescribe those formulas which make him the master of the things below him to enable him to build a more than Ro- man highway to the center of the earth, or to soar and sit on the point of the distant star-the emancipate his mind from superstition, and dissolve the bands Of fear. that he may live with the lever age of knowledge in his right hand-this is the generic purpose of all schools and all schooling. Theology and medicine. sci ence and art. governments and const- ttitions, railroads and steamship. tele- graphs and telephones, and well-nigh all the other great blessings of life, came into the world through the school room.
 An Educated Christian.
 "The school may be considered under three aspects: CD as a social institution; CD as a civic institution; (S as a church institution
 As a social institution. it educates for the sake of educating-that it may give to the member of society the most power and the best equipment for the social ends of his being. It has attained its ideal when it has produced the educated gentleman
 As civic institution. it's chief end has been accomplished when it produces the educated ctizen-the man who has self-grasp and a controlling command of the essential branches or learning for the benefit of organized society. The state is huge policeman to make the members of society behave themselves, and in the exercise of it's police powers, it establishes schools as the best conser vatores of intelligent good behavior.
 ''As church institution. it's ideal is an educated Christian-a man who has not only self-grasp and command of the essential branches of culture, but who also holds before his mind the chief end of his existence. and construes all his training and endowments as ancillary to this end.
 Tt has grown into proverb that man is essentially a religious being An old German mystic has somewhere said that God is an unutterable sigh in the innermost depths of the souF; but with more truth the proposition may be re- versed: The soul in it's nnermost depths is an utterabe sigh for God" The most central and dynamic impulses in human life root themselves in mans religious nature. As little obvious as it may app pear at first sight. every day is radiant and poetic or dull and prosaic. according to the thoughts about God. which we carry around in our bosoms every day. There are some things about which we can afford to be ignorant; some prob lems for whose solution we can afford to wait; but we must know God the be- ing with whom we have to do, and to whom we are daily responsible. All the differences between the most degraded civilization and the most exalted concep- tions of life are at bottom, but differences of view about God. So deeply rooted here is our nature that the nations of the earth are high or low in civilization, happiness and culture, according as their conception of God is high or low, true or false
 Our Chief Glory.
 "Dr. ThornwelI was correct when he said that the supremest problem for this democratic country of ours is the intro- duction of religion into the instruction of our youth. If religion be so potent and so fundamental. then an education which ignores or neglects this department of mans nature is as one-sided and de- fective as would be that education which trains the intellect to the neglect of the sensibility or the sensibility to the ex cIusIon of the conscience. It would amount to the training of the lesser de- partments of the soul to the exclusion of the very wcightiest and most con trolling elements in his constitution.
 What pray, is to diffcrentiate the des- .I.i., hlf nf hnG which have gone before 1t? What have we that our predecessors did not possess but the Christian religion2 It is our dis tinctive mark-our crowning possession and chief glory. IL alone can make for us a happier and more successful history than that of our national prede- cessors.
 Answered Prayers.
 70 World God. give me wealth, the ancient Egyptian prayed. The prayer was and wealth flowed into the cof- fers of Egypt until it became d proverb Rut there is the civilization of the peo- ple on tie banks of the Nile, who made money the foundation of their glory? The mummy is its corpse. and the pyramid its monument.
 ancient Grecian prayed. The prayer was answered. and the Porch, Lyceum and Acadamy sprang up in the isles of the sea. But what has become or the civil ization of Socrates and the scholastics? The school boy with dictionary and grammer digs the story out of dead language.
 70 World God. give me powerl the ancient Roman prayed. And the prayer was answered; and the enshielded legions of the Roman empire went in triumph to the ends of the earth. But where is the civilization which was built up on the banks of the tawny Tiber? It Is q theme for the sophomore's Reclamation and a warning to the rest of the earth.
 70 World God give me ThNselfl the ancient Hebrew prayed. And the prayer was answered: and God bowed the heavens and came down in the person of his Son-lsrael's answer to lsraeIs prayer But where Is the civilization that once adorned the hills of Palestine? To- day the Jew wanders up and down the shore-line of history-a people with ont a country q religion without a temple. a glory that is in the past
 "Shall our fate be different from theirs Only upon condition that we see and appreciate that which is our dinerentiat- ing possession, and make Christianity fundamental in the curriculum of our instruction.
 The Church Teacher.
 ''Speaking in general terms, there are