The Washington herald., 1911-02-18
THE TREND OF THINGS

HE IREND OF THINGS
President Faunce, of Brown Univer-
sity, welcomed the 1000 delegates and
visitors to the Religious Education As
sociation convention at Providence this
week and sounded the keynote of the
sessions. which gathered around the gen.
eral topic, Religious education and the
American home" He said:
We bid you welcome, not to any pag-
eantry, academic or ecclesiastical; not
to banquets and social functions, but to
serious study, to the whole-hearted en-
deavor to knit together all the forces of
intelligence and righteousness in America
in behalf of the religious education of
the American people.
This assembly is in itself more i'm
pressive than any address to which it
can listen On our platform will appear
Protestants, Catholics, Hebrews, mem
bers of every political party, residents of
every section of the republic leaders in
colleges, settlements. reforms. the max
ers of the home and church and school,
all united in the belief that religion with
out education is superstition and educa-
tion without religion is futile and dan
gerous.
Nor is our problem American only.
England has been filled for half a CEN
fury with discussion on this subject.
Germany and France each in its own
way has grappled with if. Japan has
published its textbooks and its imperial
Tescript. China is shaking off its Ori-
entail lethargy and asking if Occidental
science means indifference to the conser-
walton of moral values and emphasis on
the moral personality
increase of knowledge will mean in
crease of sorrow if in learning what is
true the modern nations fail also to
learn what is worth while, if in broaden
ing their horizon they fail to deepen
character.
THE chief results of the advance of
knowledge are social and ethical. Those
results are coming so swiftly as to daz-
zle and bewilder many. The great eco
nomic and industrial changes of the last
half century have transformed business
life, have puzzled and baffied our
churches, have often shattered the tra-
ditional home. and have laid upon the
schools burden under which they stag
ger.
.AII our most venerable institutions
are smitten with the conviction of sin
family sin. municipal sin, national sin,
and are crying. What shall we do to be
saved?' Self-eXaminatiOn is forced upon
railroad and insurance company, upon
library and academy, and mill and bank.
Especially is the home now the center of
eager and persistent inquiry
"A Chinese student living on Manhat-
tan Island wrote home to his parents:
In New York the people do not have
any homes. They have a high stone
wall each side of the street and the peo-
pie eat and sleep inside the wall The
home as we once knew il in America
was fundamentally an educational insti-
tuition, d steady training in obedience,
courtesy. cooperation, reverence for the
unseen, and the practice of useful arts.
The Home of the Future.
What is that home to be in the fu-
ture? The answer is to be found not in
the shrewd representations of material
istic evolution, but in the high and in
telligent resolve of the religious forces
Of the republic. We refuse to surrender
the home to the greed of gain, to the
pursuit of pleasure, to the Indifference
of those who fear not God nor regard
man.
'Whatever changes may come TO the
world, all advance, individual and ma
tionaI, must rest at least on the unpol-
tender sympathy of parent and child
1T was predicted of IsraeTs Messiah
that when in the fullness of time he
entered the waiting world he should turn
the heart of the fathers to the children
and the heart Of the children to the
father That is a task so great as to be
worthy of the desire of all nations, so
wide and enduring that each of US may
share in its achievement
The cry OF the children is not only
cry for wages and for bread; it is
a cry for the rights of the spirit. for
instruction in the meaning of life, for
opportunity to achieve the moral self.
1t is the plea of outStretched hands and
tender voices that youth shall not be
allowed to die atop, and that the souls of
the children shall not be forgotten by
those who gave them birth.
But how shall this be achieved? That
is the question this convention will at
tempt TO answer. We agree, all of US,
as to the end we seek: the only question
IS one Of method. Possibly many meth
DDS, not competing or antagonizing, but
supplementing one another. may be found
''As a Protestant I gladly recognize
the loyalty to the home exhibited. for
ages by the Jewish race and the safe
guards placed for centuries around the
home by the Catholic Church. We ask
lllS d4O VI every eCOhOI4ISlr every his
torian, every journalist, every teacher,
and every man who loves his country.
I'VE meet midway between the birth
days Of Washington and Lincoln; Wash
ington, whose broad colonial mansion at
Mount Vernon is the shrine of patriots,
and Lincoln, whose early home tells all
Americans that the bleakest, most pro-
saic cabin may be the birthplace of
civic virtue and religious faith.
Whatever the home of our future citi-
zens shall be, whether in city or country,
in mansion or apartment house, in wealth
or poverty, let US resolve it shah be more
than walls and furniture, that it shall
shelter the spirit and nourish the char
acter, and open toward the sky"
WITH THE EPISCOPALIANS.