The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-06-19

The result is that we have in our great
schools and universities rising tide of
facts-facts arranged in systems that we
call knowledge. But knowledge piled
on knowledge does not make wisdom,
and without wisdom-that mysterious
digestant spirit that transforms the food
of learning into the life blood of happi-
ness-without wisdom what are all our
books, all our appliances. all our re-
searches, all our degrees and sheepskins
but marks and signatures of inorganic
facts. And 1 wish to say again by way
of emphasis that education, whatever 1t
is or has been, should be the influence
on consciousness that makes for happi-
ness. And as it may be proved easily
enough that a man, is happy only when
he is most useful, education is still edu-
cation, whether it comes from the shop
or the school, from books or from the
rougher contact with life. Now, useful
ness is not always found in setting
brick in mortar to make cities, nor In
stringing iron and wood across the land
to make railroads, nor in spelling good
white paper to make books, magazines
and newspapers, nor in cording up the
atmosphere with the wise saws of a
statesman. Usefulness is found only
where there is duty, and when duty
beckonS the mason from his trowel, the
railroad man from his track, the editor
from his presses, the statesman from
his party; if he follows he is happy, IL
he stays he is miserably useless, even
though the bricks mount to high heaven,
the railroads run to the foot of the rain
bow, though the white papers spread
their leprosy over all the social body,
and the party carries every precinct.
The Educated Fool.
The educated fool about whom we
hear so much, is the man who, having
ears, hears not the plain call of duty.
Therefore, if your books and these
teachers and these your friends, and
this great prairie. and these skies, and
this civilization of which you are part,
have not taught you something about
duty, something about your relation to
the world outside of you, you too will
be children of folly. Duty comes in
thousand ways every day; sometimes it
comes disguised as hardship and as
shame and sorrow, when you and duty
are strangers. Yet when you get on
mere bowling terms with duty, you will
know that it has but three forms. And
of those forms wish to speak to you
briefly this morning. Your first duty is
to your God. For the fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom. Your sec
ond duty is to your neighbor; for the
second commandment is like unto the
first; and your last duty is to yourself.
When one duty is well done, you will
find, by the mysterious equation that
run through this life of ours that
strangely and unknown to you, you have
solved the other two problems and have
done three duties by doing one.
Cats and Scientists.
One of the essentials of education
should be the acceptance by the educa-
ted person of the fact that God is.
Young scientists often are inclined to
bubble and sniff, but scholarship
should so broaden and cultivate men
that they may take every fact that
scientists contribute to human know
ledge, and put it down as a prop and
sustenance to simple creed. Occa-
sionally scientist comes out of OBJ.
security with the discovery of one of
Gods laws, preening with pride, like
cat with a kitten in her mouth, though
kittens and Gods laws are no new
things. Indeed, the cat on the whole
seems to have more sense than the
scientist AS nearly as one can make
out, she does not regard her kitten as
proof of the automatic mechanical
authorship and control of the universe.
But sometimes when science discovers
a little of facts in it's nest, science be-
gins to wind up the universe like
clock, Danish God from destiny, and
to worship the wriggling, half blind,
stupid facts in the basket. Think how
the first scientist must have scorned
God when he found that fire was not
of divine origin; that it might be made
by rubbing sticks together. Yet GOD
still lives in the hearts of men; even
though fire is kindled, the globe en-
circled gravitatio is defined, and the
lightning chained. Fifty years ago,
science studying the microscopic crys-
tails found in atmospheric dust, discov-
cred that the molecular action of those
CRYSTALS is in many ways similar to
the germ life of the microbe. And to-
day science is making some most in
teresting, most useful and most mar
Vicious discoveries in that neutral strip
of life, between the animal and the
vegetable kingdoms. 1t is possible,
though hardly probable, that science
in YOUR day, If not in mine, will dis
cover the chemical combinations and
constituents of life, and produce low
forms of organic life at will, as low
crystalline forms are made today. More
than that, 1t is not impossible that sci
ence having put together moneron
may coax it by evolution from the
realm of the protista into the animal
kingdom; and having made a mOllusk,
it is simple enough to make monkey
and perhaps man. But what of 1t?
What If science does send an electric
thrill through sea water and start the
molecular action that ends in soul?
What does that prove? Only that an
Almighty God has found man worthy
to know another of his divine secrets.
He told more to Moses on Sinai and
almost as much to the race that wrote
the book of Genesis. And the fact that
the story of Genesis and the story of
science tally, proves that they came
from one source.
Science and Life.
Let science generate life, and go
away and leave it; will the moneron
become a mollusk alone? Will the
mollusk evolve itself into a crustacean
without human aid? Will the back
bone harden in any supine creature
and let it lift up it's head from the
earth unless man directs it? VIII moth
er love come into the heart of any
creature bred from the laboratory of