The Winslow mail., 1925-01-09
Religious Training
Is Sadly Neglected
By Rev. Frank r. Speck

The past ten years have marked a
period of unprecedented change in the
political and social life of the world.
A great world war has been fought
and ended. Great nations have COM
pletely changed their forms of gov
ernment, and the people of the world,
especially the old world are thinking,
planning and acting as never before.
During this period America has
awakened to find herself a great ma
ton; the greatest nation in the world,
the wealthiest nation in the world
and all things considered, the most
powerful We have also had our eyes
opened to some other things. We
have discovered that our criminal
record has outstripped anything the
world has ever heard of. No nation
in the world can touch us in our
$4,000 murders for one year, in our
$4,000 suicides and in the $3,346, ,000,-
900 of which we have been robbed
by one means or another during the
same period of time. Many other
equally startling figures might be
compiled but we will let them pass.
But when we are told on good author
ity that more than 80 per cent of
those convicted of crime in our courts
are under 25 years of age and
great per cent under 20 it makes us
wonder if there is not something
wrong with the ideals and principles
which we have been holding before
and instilling into the minds of our
youth.
Might it not be true that we have
been paying not too much attention to
the intellectual and physical training
of our growing youth, but too little
attention to their spiritual develop
ment? We wonder if it might have
been a mistake after all to have ruled
the reading of the Bible out of the
public schools. We wonder if the
churches have been doing their work
among the young people as effectively
as might have been hoped for. We
wonder if the parents have been as
anxious about the religious education
of their children as they might have
been. We wonder if God is being
honored in the homes today as he was
forty years ago. Are we loosing the
Faith of Our Fathers?"
In a New York high school of 1885
pupils test proved that only 434
could tell anything about the Ten
Commandments, and of $4,000 persons
under 16 years of age passing through
the police courts of Chicago fewer
than one-sixth had ever heard of the
Ten Commandments. On the other
hand, Judge Humphrey, a prominent
jurist of Brooklyn is responsible for
the statement that in twenty years
on the bench he could recall but one
of the thousands of criminals brought
before him who had had a Sunday
school training, and a gathering of
statistics from many juvenile courts
brings out the information that boys
and girls trained in the Sunday
schools and Bible schools do not as
a rule get into the police or criminal
courts.
The natural conclusion from this is
if it is true that we need more re-
ligious training; more of it in the
homes, more in the schools and more
boys and girls attending the Sunday
schools and Bible schools. They tell
us that there are in America 27,0O0,000
children receiving no systematic re-
ligious instruction. How is it in
Winslow? Out of thousand young
people under twenty years of age less
than 250 are to be found in our Bible
or Sunday schools on the Sabbath
day We wonder how many are get
ting religious instruction in the
homes? Surely here is food for
thought. We must ask ourselves the
question, Are we playing fair with
the coming generation?"