In the early history of the nation, “Education,” says Painter, “was restricted to the family, in which the father was the principal teacher. There were no popular schools nor professional teachers. Yet the instruction of the Jew ... embraced a vast number of particulars.”[19] Hinsdale says: “Jewish education began with the mother. What the true Jewish mother, considered as a teacher, was, we know from both the Testaments and from many other sources. The very household duties that she performed molded her children in accordance with the national discipline. ‘The Sabbath meal, the kindling of the Sabbath lamp, and the setting apart of a portion of the dough from the bread for the household—these are but instances with which every Taph, as he clung to his mother’s skirts, must have been familiar.’ The bit of parchment fastened to the doorpost, on which the name of the Most High was written, ... would be among the first things to arrest his attention.
“It was in the school of the mother’s knee that the stories of patriarchs and prophets, of statesmen and warriors, of poets and sages, of kings and judges, wise men and patriots, and of the great Law-giver Himself,—the whole forming the very best body of material for the purposes of child-nurture found in any language,—were told and retold until they became parts of the mind itself.” He then mentions the case of Timothy, and adds: “As teachers of their children, the women of every country may learn lessons from the matrons of Israel.”[20] This was evidently the original plan, and had the families proved faithful to the trust, the greater part, if not all, of the education would have been in the family school. Always, however, as long as Israel was a nation, the child (and the term covered the first twelve or fifteen years) was under the instruction of the parents.
From the home school we follow the Jewish child to the synagogue or church school. Moses was instructed by the Lord to make every priest a teacher, so the nation had a whole tribe of teachers. As every town had its synagogue, so “a town in which there is no school must perish.” Quoting again from Hinsdale: “The children were gathered for instruction in the synagogues and schoolhouses, where the teacher, generally the Chazzan, or officer of the synagogue, ‘imparted to them the precious knowledge of the law, with constant adaptation to their capacity, with unwearied patience, intense earnestness, strictness tempered by kindness, but, above all, with the highest object of their training ever in view. To keep children from all contact with vice; to train them to gentleness, even when bitterest wrong had been received; to show sin in its repulsiveness, rather than to terrify by its consequences; to train to strict truthfulness; to avoid all that might lead to disagreeable or indelicate thoughts; and to do all this without showing partiality, without either undue severity or laxity of discipline, with judicious increase of study and work, with careful attention to thoroughness in acquiring knowledge—all this and more constituted the ideal set before the teacher, and made his office of such high esteem in Israel.’”[21] These teachers took the youth at the most critical period of their development. And how thoroughly they understood the needs of the developing minds!
In the days of Samuel we read, for the first time, of the schools of the prophets, where young men were gathered together for the study of the law, of music, poetry, and history, and of the various trades. The name School of the Prophets would indicate the spirituality of their work, and reference to the time of Elijah and Elisha and the experience of Saul would prove the truth of the inference.
Concerning the subjects taught we are not left in ignorance, if we study the history of the people. Thus, quoting again from Painter: “The Hebrew parent was not only to impart oral instruction to his children, but to teach them also reading and writing. As he was to inscribe the words of the Lord upon his doorposts and gates, he must himself have learned to write; and, as he wrote them for his children, they must have been taught to read. Hence, it appears that the ability to read and write was general among the ancient Jews; and, in this particular, they surpassed every other nation of antiquity.”[22] Hinsdale says: “From the teaching of the alphabet, or writing in the primary school, to the farthest limit of instruction in the academies of the rabbis, all was marked by extreme care, wisdom, accuracy, and moral and religious purpose as the ultimate object.”[23]
“Up to ten years of age the Bible was the sole text-book; from ten to fifteen the Mischna, or traditional law, was used; and after that the pupil was admitted to the discussions of the rabbinical schools. So extensive a course of study, however, was taken only by those who showed decided aptitude for learning. Bible study began with the book of Leviticus; then came other parts of the Pentateuch; next the prophets, and finally the Hagiography.”[24]
In working for this chosen people, God cured physical infirmities with the same case that he healed a sin-sick soul; and with the laws for spiritual growth were given directions for the preservation of health. Every priest was likewise a physician, and the laws concerning the use of simple, healthful foods, proper breathing, ventilation, the use of disinfectants, the bath, etc., were familiar to all who read the statutes of Jehovah.
Painter says, concerning other subjects taught: “Among the potent educational agencies of the Jews, that of the annual national festivals merits consideration.... Commemorating important national events, they kept the people acquainted with their past history.... These frequent reunions not only contributed to national and religious unity, but they exerted a strong educating influence upon the people.”[25]
“The Levites, more than other Hebrews, were to study the book of the law; to preserve and disseminate it in exact copies; to perform the duties of judges and genealogists, and consequently to be theologians, jurists, and historians.... As the priests and Levites were to test the accuracy of weights and measures, ... it was necessary that they should understand something of mathematics; and as they were to determine and announce the movable feasts, new moons, years, and intercalary years, they had occasion for the study of astronomy,” says Jahn.
Since the schools of the prophets flourished in the days of Saul and David, it would not be surprising if David gained some of his musical skill there as well as on the hillside tending sheep, for poetry and music formed part of the course of instruction in these schools. One author pays high tribute to these subjects by saying: “Greek poetry is beautiful; Hebrew poetry is sublime.”
When children were fortified by such an education from infancy to manhood, it is little wonder that the influence which the nation “has exerted upon the world is incalculable. It has supplied the basis of all true theology; it has given a system of faultless morality; and, in Christianity, it has provided the most perfect form of religion. The civilization of Europe and America can be directly traced to the Jews.”[26]
What might have been the result had the nation lived up to its privileges in educational lines is not difficult to determine. Earth’s history would have been shortened by at least two thousand years; for the nation would never have gone into bondage, and Christ would never have been betrayed. As these principles of Christian education are again taking hold of people, with what interest must the progress of the work be watched by the inhabitants of other worlds, who have seen past failures through lack of faith! That Hebrew education tended mainly to a development of the inner man instead of giving merely a conglomeration of facts, is well expressed by Wines. He says: “The Hebrew law required an early, constant, vigorous, and efficient training of the disposition, judgment, manners, and habits, both of thought and feeling. The sentiments held to be proper to man in society were imbibed with the milk of infancy. The manners considered becoming in adults were sedulously imparted in childhood.”
The education, however, was not only moral and intellectual, but physical as well; for every Jewish boy was taught some trade which rendered him self-supporting. Nor did wealth or position remove the need of this. Paul, who sat at the feet of Gamaliel while studying the law, was able to gain a livelihood as a tentmaker when preaching the gospel.
There was, however, in it all this one thought: all instruction was intended to develop the spiritual nature. It was considered the highest honor to become a priest (every Jew might have been both priest and teacher), and in this office man stood next to God. This was wholly a spiritual position, and prefigured the work of the Messiah. True, Israel as a nation never reached the standard set for her, never mounted, as it were, that ladder reaching from earth to heaven; and it was left for the One Man, the Master of Israel, to bind together the two realms of the physical and the spiritual. But from time to time men arose in the Jewish nation who grasped in a far broader sense than the majority, the meaning of true education as delivered to the Jews, and who, by submitting to the educating influence of the Spirit of God, were enabled to become leaders of the people and representatives of God on earth. Such were Moses, Daniel, Job, and Ezekiel, and, to a certain extent, all the prophets of Israel. In each of these the soul rose above the physical man, until it met its parent force in the heart of God. This made it possible for Moses to talk face to face with the Father, and for Ezekiel to follow the angel of revelation to the border land of God’s home.
These men were but enjoying what every man in Israel might have experienced had the nation remained upon the plane to which they were called, receiving their education by faith. One is tempted to ask why they fell. The answer is the same as to that other question, Why do not we arise? They ceased to look upward; faith failed, and reason took its place, and instead of leading they sought to be like the nations about them.
There lay Egypt, with its mighty men, and the carnal heart longed for some of the Egyptian display. To understand it, we must again consider the difference in life and education. Life on the spiritual plane means whole self-forgetfulness; but when carnal desires are heeded, a fall is inevitable. Egyptian education was largely on the physical basis. It is true that mental heights were reached, but only by the few, and those few, bound by earth’s fetters, were unable to break entirely away. The masses, not only in education but in religion, were physical, and basely physical. The sacred bull was a personification of deity. Why?—Because God, to an Egyptian, was an embodiment of lust. All their gods, all their rites and ceremonies, every temple wall and religious service, breathed the dreadful odor of licentiousness. Historians state that the priestly class knew better. And so they did; but their grasp was not that of truth, else they could never have been the priests and teachers of such a religion or of such a system of education.
These words, put in the mouth of an ancient Egyptian priest, speak truly the spirit of Egyptian education. He says: “I that have seen nigh four-score years of misery; ... I that have mastered all the arts, sciences, and religion of ancient Egypt—a land that was wrinkled with age centuries before the era of Moses; I that know both all that the priests of Kem ever taught the people, and also the higher and more recondite forms of ignorance in which the priests themselves believed—I verily know nothing! I can scarcely believe in anything save universal darkness, for which no day-spring cometh, and universal wretchedness for which there is no cure. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this death?”
And yet the Jews would leave that education which offered eternal life, for this which the best-educated Egyptian might acknowledge to be darkness and only darkness. It was from this that God delivered Israel; but many to-day, claiming to be Israel in Spirit, seek still the wisdom and philosophy of Egypt for themselves and their children. Israel could not come in touch with this form of life without contamination. Nay, more, she fell from her exalted state, and never reached it again. “Jerusalem was destroyed because the education of her children was neglected.”
The ceremonial law given after leaving Sinai, at the beginning of that memorable march of forty years, was necessary because the nation had lost all appreciation of the spiritual in the abstract, and could gain no idea whatever of God as a Spirit except through some appeal to the physical senses. This condition was due to the fact that four generations had been subject to Egyptian education.
The plan of types and ceremonies alone appealed to the mind. And even in this inductive method of teaching, the nation seemed slow to learn; for the forty years between the Red Sea and Jordan served to develop scarcely enough faith to carry the people into the promised land. God’s law, written on the tablets of the heart by the pen of faith, appealed to but few. Men ate manna from heaven, but knew not that it was the token of a crucified Saviour: they drank of water flowing constantly from the smitten rock, never dreaming that it prefigured the shed blood of the dying Son of God. Once settled in Canaan, the whole system of education was so planned as to teach the child to accept Christ by faith. Some grasped this spiritual truth; but a few had eyes which saw the things hidden from the multitude, because faith was an avenue to the very soul.
Having the privilege of living by faith, and accepting the divine teaching in this its highest form, they preferred the old way, and walked by sight. “Except ye see, ye will not believe;” “O ye of little faith.” When we look at what the Israelites might have been, and then at what they were, there is a feeling of intense pain, for the fall is inexpressibly great. By little and little, Jehovah strove to reach the higher nature again, and bring Israel to its heaven-selected place. There was steady progress until the days of Solomon, whose wisdom outshone that of the great men of earth, and Israel as a nation was again on the verge of becoming the leading people of the world politically, intellectually, and morally.
Solomon was raised to a position of eminence among the great men of earth because he learned from God the secret of true education. His wisdom was not a gift to him exclusively, but was offered to all who would comply with the educational requirements. Of Solomon we read that God gave him a hearing ear. His spiritual senses were awakened by faith, and he found himself so in harmony with the God of nature that all the works of the Creator were read by him as an open book. His wisdom seemed great in contrast with that of other Jews merely because others failed to live up to their privileges. God desired the whole nation to stand before other people as Solomon stood before the kings of the earth.
The surprising feature to most students is the fact that the system of education given by God will, when followed, open to man such material benefits. It is not, as it is often accused of being, ideal and theoretical, but lacking the practical. On the contrary, it is of the most practical nature, and opens to its followers all legitimate lines of prosperity, placing its devotees above all contestants. This is seen in the experience of the king just mentioned. As a statesman and lawyer, Solomon was noted; as a scientist, he excelled the scholars of the world; for wealth and splendor, the half has not been told; during his reign Jewish architecture, as exemplified in the temple, assumed such grandeur that it became the model for even the æsthetic Greek. In tilling the soil and raising fruit it was always intended that Israel should excel other nations.[27] Youth were trained to fill positions of trust, and were taught the practical duties of everyday life. Such training was given to girls as well as to boys, fitting them to fill properly their allotted sphere as housewives and mothers in Israel.[28]
From the fall which followed this exaltation, Israel never recovered. The educational system losing its true character, the nation was at last carried into captivity. When the Hebrew race lost the spirituality of their education, they lost everything; for political power, national reputation, all, hung upon one thread. “Jerusalem was destroyed because the education of her children was neglected.” This destruction did not come suddenly. There was a decline, then a forward lunge, and another relapse, each time the fall being greater and the reaction weaker.
Several times a halt was made, and the national life was prolonged by a return to the prescribed methods of education. Jehoshaphat, for instance, appointed Levites as teachers to the different cities of Israel, and, as a result, “The fear of the Lord fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were round about Judah, so that they made no war.”[29] Had the reform been carried on which was then begun, the whole national history would have been changed.
Another noticeable fact is that release from bondage was always heralded by two reforms. For instance, before deliverance from Babylon, Daniel was raised up to give the people instruction in health reform and educational reform. These two always accompany each other. The one affects the body, preparing it to become the temple of the Holy Ghost; the other turns the mind toward truth, that the Spirit of God may think through it. A body purified by right living, and a mind trained according to the laws of Christian education, brings an experience such as Daniel had.[30] That he lived on a plane above the majority of men is evident; for “I, Daniel, alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision.” What to Daniel was the voice of God those whose ears were not in tune with the Infinite heard as thunder or as an earthquake. It had been the privilege of all to see and hear as Daniel saw and heard, but they chose a coarser life, a slower vibratory existence, where the mental strain was less, and the heart strings were looser. It was easier to keep in tune with Egypt or Babylon than with the God of heaven. And when the Son of Man was born, he found it hard to select even a small company whose lives were in harmony with His own.
Israel’s education was a spiritual education. Her King was to set up a spiritual kingdom in the hearts of a people spiritualized by the presence of truth. It was the same system which had been delivered by Christ to Adam; the same by which Abraham was taught; and what was not accomplished in the ages past will be accomplished by Christian education in the days preparatory to His second coming.
God called Israel to become a nation of teachers, and gave them statutes and judgments which, when made the basis of the educational systems, tended to make of the nation a peculiar people, a nation of priests, a spiritual race, thereby constituting them the leading people of the world. From what did he call them?—“The Lord hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt.”[31] And again, “Out of Egypt have I called my Son.”[32] Egypt stands as a personification of the heathen world, and its very name means darkness. The dark mantle of paganism has ever obstructed the bright shining of the light of truth.
As Israel’s power, physical, intellectual, and political, was derived from, and depended upon, her system of education, so it would be but natural to suppose that the opposing power of paganism would possess educational ideas, and be controlled by a system of instruction in harmony with its practices. Or, to state it more logically, we necessarily conclude that the pagan world rested upon a distinct system of education, and that the customs and practices of pagan nations were the result of the educational ideas which they advocated.
The God-given system, as found among the Hebrews, rested upon faith, and developed the spiritual side of man’s nature, making it possible in the highest sense for divinity to unite with humanity. The result of this union of the human and the divine—the Immanuel—is the highest creation of the universe. It in itself was a power before which men and demons bowed.
As to paganism and its system of education, what was the religion of the pagan world? and what were the ideas it strove to propagate? First, it placed above God the study and worship of self. Christ is the “true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” All men have, then, at some time in life, light enough to lead them to truth, for the gospel “reveals a divine anger from heaven upon all wickedness and iniquity of men who pervert the true into the false; because the knowledge of God is clear within themselves, God having revealed it to them; for from the creation of the world His invisible attributes might be discovered from the created facts,—that is, His unseen power and Godhead. Consequently, they are inexcusable.”[33]
Men, therefore, who of necessity have light may reject that light, and they then become pagan. Paul, in the first chapter of his Roman letter, states a universal law in that when truth is rejected, error takes its place. The quotation is again taken from Fenton’s translation, because the wording, by differing slightly from the authorized version, stimulates thought: “Because, knowing God, they did not honor Him as a God, or rejoice, but trifled in their augmentations, and darkened their senseless hearts; professing to be philosophers, they played the fool, and transformed the glory of the imperishable God into an image of perishable man, and birds! and beasts! and reptiles! And, therefore, God abandoned them in the lusts of their hearts to filthiness, to dishonor their own bodies to themselves; they having changed the truth of God into falsehood, by honoring and serving the creature contrary to the Creator, who is truly blessed in all ages.”[34]
Having turned from the worship of Jehovah to the worship of man, then bird, and beast, and reptile, we find associated with worship the grossest forms of licentiousness. This is stated by Paul in the first chapter of Romans. The thought which must be borne in mind is that man turns from God and worships himself. He can conceive of no power higher than his own mind, no form more lofty than his own. His first idol is the human form, male or female. He endows this with human passions, for he knows no heart but his own. By beholding he becomes changed into the same passionate creature; a beast becomes the personification of his deity, and the sacred bull his god. Everything about the worship is gross, and birds, crocodiles, and all sorts of reptiles become objects of worship. This is Egypt. This, in fact, pictures the final worship in any country which turns from Christ and places faith in man.
There are a variety of forms in worship, as there are a variety of complexions in the men of different countries; but it is one and the same plan throughout, resting upon one system of education, producing the same results, whether traced in the proud Babylonish court, the loathsome filth of Egypt, Greece with its intellectual pride and culture, in Roman law, or in the more modern European countries. Paganism is the green-eyed monster, crouching on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, whose body follows the course of the Nile, whose paws reach both east and west, and whose breath has poisoned the atmosphere of all Europe. Into those eyes men have gazed expecting to find wisdom. It was but the glare of the demon, as the tiger’s gaze at night.
For Egypt itself, it blotted out all individual rights, placing the masses as a common herd writhing in superstition under the hands of a tyrannical king and a scheming priesthood. It was indeed “an iron furnace,” as God had called it, and as Israel had found by sad experience. It was tyranny in government; it was still more bitter tyranny in education and religion. As well might one strive to move the pyramids, or get words from the silent sphinx, as to hope to change the life in Egypt by means of anything presented in Egypt.
Of Egyptian education, Jahn says: The “priests were a separate tribe, ... and they performed not only the services of religion but the duties of all civil offices to which learning was necessary. They therefore devoted themselves in a peculiar manner to the cultivation of the sciences.... They studied natural philosophy, natural history, medicine, mathematics (particularly astronomy and geometry), history, civil polity, and jurisprudence.” Place this course of study by the side of Jewish education, and you notice in the latter the Bible and such subjects as tended to develop spirituality, those things which faith alone could grasp; while the education of the Egyptian had an entirely intellectual basis, and dealt with those subjects which appeal to the senses and to human reason.
When this system as a system is traced in other countries, especially in Greece, this characteristic becomes startling in the extreme; and if reference is made to it often in contrast to the Jewish system, it is because herein lies the pivot upon which the history of nations revolves. It is either faith or reason to-day, as it has been faith opposed to reason throughout the ages. In place of reason use the word philosophy, for that was a favorite expression among the pagans.
The gospel has stood opposed to the philosophy of the world since the beginning; hence we read, “For the reason of the Cross is certainly folly to the reprobate, but to us, the saved, it is a divine power; for it is written, ‘I will destroy the philosophy of the philosophers, and upset the cleverness of the clever.’ Where is the philosopher? where is the scholar? where is the investigator of this age? Has not God made the philosophy of this world folly? For when in the divine philosophy the world did not perceive God through the philosophy, it pleased God to save the faithful by means of the folly of preaching. As, however, Jews demand a sign, and Greeks seek after philosophy, we now proclaim a crucified Christ, a certain offense to the Jews, and joke to the heathen, but to the called, whether Jews or Greeks,—Christ a divine power and a divine philosophy.... For observe your calling, brothers, that there are not many fashionable philosophers, nor many powerful men, nor many of high birth.”[35]
It is this divine philosophy which the spiritually minded grasp, and which is the sum and substance of their education. It is this human philosophy, or natural philosophy, which in the sight of God is folly, that Egypt and her followers adopted. Minds delving into human philosophy never find God, nor do they approach the realms of divine philosophy. There is a divine philosophy, and it is grasped by faith; and there is a human philosophy, a creation of the human mind, a science formulated from deductions which appeal to natural senses. But the man, wisest in human learning alone, remains still a fool in the eyes of God, for the inner man has not been reached.
Our study of pagan education is not, however, confined to the Nile Valley. Indeed, some of the most interesting phases, some of the strongest features of the system, were developed elsewhere. Egypt was the cradle, but Greece and Rome were fields in which these ideas gained strength. We read: “The ancients looked upon Egypt as a school of wisdom. Greece sent thither illustrious philosophers and lawgivers—Pythagoras and Plato, Lycurgus and Solon—to complete their studies.” “Hence, even the Greeks in ancient times were accustomed to borrow their politics and their learning from the Egyptians.”[36]
Of the four men mentioned, we look upon Lycurgus as the founder of the Spartan government, noted for the physical training it gave and the utter subjection of the individual to the state. Every historian recognized this as due to the system of education introduced by Lycurgus, and followed out by his people. The newborn babe was adjudged worthy of life or death by a council of the state, the decision being based on the physical condition of the infant. At the age of seven the child became the property of the state, and so remained until sixty. It was more exclusively a physical or purely secular education than that offered elsewhere on earth.
The prosperity of Athens, where was “wrought out the most perfect form of heathen civilization,” dates from the time of Solon, who, as we have already learned, finished his education in Egypt. In these two men we see the leaning toward the physical side, made so prominent in pagan education. “The course of study in the school of Pythagoras embraced mathematics, physics, metaphysics, and medicine. Especial prominence was given mathematics, which Pythagoras regarded as the noblest science.” Here is revealed the inclination of the pagan education toward the purely intellectual. Of Plato we shall read later.
If Egypt offered ground for the germination of the seed of pagan education, Greece brought the plant to its seed-producing state; and Rome, acting as the wind with the thistle down, scattered pagan education broadcast. Of Rome we read: “It gathered into its arms the elements of Grecian and Oriental culture, and as its end drew nigh, it scatters them freely over the rest of Europe. Rome has been the bearer of culture to the modern world.”[37]
In order to understand the fertility of the seeds of pagan education, it is necessary to regard with care the master mind of that system, and this we find in Plato. Emerson, in his “Representative Men,” defines his position and the position of his philosophy in the pagan and in the so-called Christian world, making the teachings of this Greek, schooled in Egypt, crowd out the Word of God itself. He says: “Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.... The Bible of the learned for twenty-two hundred years, every brisk young man, who says in succession fine things to each reluctant generation ( ... Erasmus, Bruno, Locke, Rousseau, Coleridge) is some reader of Plato.”
That is saying that for twenty-two hundred years Plato and his educational system, known everywhere as Platonism, have taken the place of the Bible to the leading minds of the world. “Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,—at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories,” continues Emerson. “No wife, no children had he, and the thinkers of all civilized nations are his posterity, and are tinged with his mind. How many great men nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to be his men,—Platonists!”
Then he gives a list of illustrious names who have stood for learning in the various ages of the world’s history, and continues: “Calvinism is in his [Plato’s] Phædo: Christianity is in it.” How little this writer knew of the power of the truth as given by Christ! Doubtless he formed his judgment from professedly Christian teachers. But he continues: “Mahometanism draws all its philosophy, in its handbook of morals, ... from him [Plato]. Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts. This citizen of a town in Greece is no villager nor patriot. An Englishman reads, and says, ‘How English!’ a German, ‘How Teutonic!’ an Italian, ‘How Roman and how Greek!’” And to show that the recognition of Plato is not stopped by the Atlantic, our versatile New England writer says: “Plato seems, to a reader in New England, an American genius.” Has the reader any suspicion that our American educational institutions may have recognized the universality of this master of philosophy, and adopted into their curricula his system of reasoning? One traces, without the aid of magnifiers, the thread of pagan philosophy throughout the American schools.
“As our Jewish Bible has implanted itself in the table talk and household life of every man and woman in the European and American nations, so the writings of Plato have preoccupied every school of learning, every lover of thought, every church, every poet,—making it impossible to think, on certain levels, except through him. He stands between the truth and every man’s mind, and has almost impressed language and the primary forms of thought with his name and seal.... Here is the germ of that Europe we know so well, in its long history of arts and arms; here are all its traits, already discernible in the mind of Plato.... How Plato came thus to be Europe, and philosophy, and almost literature, is the problem for us to solve.”[38]
One ceases to wonder that, surrounded as was the Corinthian church by this philosophy and in daily touch with these ideas which have swayed the world, Paul wrote to it against accepting the philosophy of men in place of that divine philosophy which he and other apostles were preaching through the cross of Christ. “When I came to you, brethren,” writes the apostle, “I came not proclaiming the testimony of God with grand reasoning or philosophies, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and He was crucified.... And my thought and my statement was not clothed in captivating philosophical reasons; but, in demonstrated spirit and power, so that your trust might not be in human philosophy, but in Divine power.”[39] “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements [margin] of the world, and not after Christ.”[40]
Seeing, then, that the Platonic system of education has exerted, and is still exerting, such an influence over the minds of men, it behooves us to ascertain the basic principles of his system. What did the man believe, and what did he teach? Quotations have already been given showing that he is the father of modern philosophy. Emerson defines this philosophy. He says: “Philosophy is the account which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world.” All attempts, then, to account for the constitution of the world when a “thus saith the Lord,” is refused, is philosophy. And philosophy is Plato.
“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”[41] But Platonism is the mind trying to account to itself for the constitution of the worlds. How, think you, did the author of this philosophy go about to account for things which can be grasped by faith alone? “To Plato belongs the honor of first subjecting education to a scientific examination,” says Painter. Here began the laboratory studies which have been continued by Huxley, Darwin, and others. And thus from Plato Europe and America have gained their ideas of evolution. Plato brought these ideas from Egypt and Babylon, and the schools of to-day follow this man-made philosophy. Our men of intellect write text-books which they place in the hands of youth, teaching them to account for the constitution of the worlds according to the reasoning of men’s minds.
A few more thoughts concerning Plato, and we shall see what evolution is, and where it is now found. Aristotle, the illustrious pupil of Plato, “created the science of logic,” “the science of exact reasoning,” as Webster puts it. Says Emerson: “The balanced soul came.” “His daring imagination gives him the more solid grasp of facts.... According to the old sentence, ‘If Jove should descend to the earth, he would speak in the style of Plato.’” This last, the Christian can readily believe; but the Son of man used an entirely different speech, although Plato antedates his birth over four hundred years, and was, at the time of the advent of Christ, the ruler of the intellectual world.
“In reading logarithms, one is not more secure than following Plato in his flights.” Plato himself is given credit for saying: “There is a science of sciences—I call it Dialectic—which is the intellect discriminating the false and the true.” There is indeed a science of sciences—the science of salvation. There is verily a way of judging between the false and the true, for the Spirit of truth will guide you into all truth. But the human brain can never do this. It was this same logic, Plato’s “science of sciences,” which was given such prominence in the papal schools and all medieval education. Here stand the two systems side by side, the one guided by human reason, the other by the Spirit of the living God. Remember that the world bows to Plato; and, raising its hands in an attitude of worship, lays at his feet its tribute, its dearest idol,—its educational system. Chambers’s Encyclopedia, art. “Plato,” shows conclusively that this Greek philosopher holds still his exalted position in literary circles and among educators. It says: “Since the French Revolution particularly, the study of Plato has been pursued with renewed vigor in Germany, France, and England; and many of our distinguished authors, without expressly professing Platonism,—as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning, Ruskin, etc.,—have formed a strong and growing party of adherents, who could find no common banner under which they could at once so conveniently and so honorably muster as that of Plato.”
Christians are to be gathered under the ensign of Christ;[42] but many educators of to-day find “no common banner under which they could so conveniently and so honorably muster as that of Plato.” Christianity or paganism, which shall it be in the education of Protestant children of to-day? How did it happen that the ideas of Plato were so generally accepted throughout Europe? The article in Chambers’s Encyclopedia, from which the foregoing quotation is made, tells in the following words how the early Christian church became contaminated by the teachings of Plato: “The works of Plato were extensively studied by the Church Fathers, one of whom joyfully recognizes, in the great teacher of the academy, the schoolmaster who, in the fullness of time, was destined to educate the heathen for Christ, as Moses did the Jews.” If the early church adopted the educational system of Plato, one does not wonder that by the Middle Ages Europe was ready for Greek philosophy.