[Rev. Thomas Anderson, in the Chicago Herald and Examiner, Illinois]

Secular education's great lack was identified by Theodore Roosevelt, who said, "The most dangerous man in society is the educated man without a soul!"

Calvin Coolidge uttered the truth when he declared, "We do not need more government, nor more laws—we need more religion." A noted seer said, only a few days ago, "If the world is to be saved, the church must do the saving." Supreme among the factors deciding where we go from here, economically, socially, internationally, is religion. Thoughtful men recognize this.

The churches as the stewards of religion stand responsible for what happens to civilization as no other unit in society today. They dare not longer expend their energies in maintaining creeds and priesthoods dealing only in other-world-liness.

This tremendous responsibility will only be met when organized religion labors with the sword of righteous indignation, against all exploitation, in the one hand and the trowel of faith in God and humanity in the other. Their leaders must guide and inspire as Nehemiah did those who rebuilt Jerusalem. Because of the dynamic of his vision and leadership, "the people had a mind to work," and the broken city was reconstructed.

Experiences of the present and observations of the past declare that if civilization goes anywhere, other than to destruction, its main vehicle will be that kind of religion taught by the man of Nazareth.

Hear again the words of the prophet, Turn ye, Turn ye, Why will ye die?

[From the Free Press, London, Ontario, Canada]

It is a cause for serious thought that in this age of enlightenment we have so many serious problems unsettled, while modern learning seems to offer little or no solution. Alongside of the intellectual culture of our day there coexists every imaginable physical, moral, and social evil. This ought to suggest to our leaders of higher learning food for serious thought. We spend millions of money on our colleges and universities without a murmur, because we desire our youth to be well advanced in knowledge; but we might fittingly ask, Are our higher schools of learning frankly facing the problems of our day? Are they increasing or decreasing the faith, the pity, and the power of our youth? To impart an accomplishment is one thing, but to assure its proper use is another....

What attention is higher learning giving to the souls of our youth today? If its attention is confined to the intellect, and the filling of the mind with facts, then its function fails. Knowledge alone "puffeth up," and it is possible for the intellectual mind to be at "enmity against God." If students are to leave our universities and colleges with their minds not warped by conceit and mental pride, and not blighted by insincerity; if they are to face the world with minds that reflect character, quality, and tone; if they are to go forth in the spirit of reverence and humility, with clarified faith in God and His purposes in this ever-expanding universe, then mind and soul must be taught to accord well; learning must be linked with love, and knowledge must be associated with spiritual discernment. Education must be Christian.

The Apostle Paul was not the man to disparage education. Before he ever met Christ, he had sat at the feet of professors in Tarsus and Jerusalem. Few men in his day were better equipped intellectually to serve their generation, but he did not truly serve his generation until his mighty mind was convinced of the reality of Christ, the efficacy of his redemptive mission, and the excellency of his eternal love. It was then and only then that St. Paul's "mind and soul accorded well," and the music has become vaster with the passing of the centuries. It was this same Paul who said, "Though I ... understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity [love], I am nothing."

If in the intellectual culture offered by our colleges, this much desired learning can be vitally linked with the necessity of love and reverence toward God ... then we shall have a unity that spells true education. It is a wedlock for which the world anxiously waits, amid its antagonisms of classes, racial enmities, and international tensions. The real security for our day is not to be found in the arming of our frontiers, but in the changed, spirit of the people. If that change is to come our educational institutions must become more positively Christian and crowned with reverence, and our churches must be baptized afresh in the spirit of learning and of love.

[From the Metropolitan Church Life, New York, New York]

We shall not build a Christian world in a day. But we are determined to be led by our faith and not our fears, to use the experience of the past, where it will help, and to become pioneers.... We are called upon to abandon petty aims and to lose ourselves in the glorious adventure. The kingdom of Love will not be built by those whose hearts are filled with hate and envy. We feel our need for a new heart and a new mind. We are determined, so far as possible, to live henceforth as if the kingdom were now here.

We are not alone in the task. The strength of Christ is ours. Divine resources flow through us, and human fellowship sustains us as we give ourselves to the task. He that loses his life shall find it.

For us there is no alternative; we give ourselves, and invite others to join us—Christian youth building a new world.

[From the Daily News, Santa Barbara, California]

Unalloyed happiness is the possession of the man who has incarnated in himself the real spirit of Christ. To him the joys of heaven are not a dream, but a present reality; for him the sorrows, disappointments, and trials of the world have passed away. Living, walking daily with God, with Christ, he basks in the sunshine of love, and beauty and strength and wisdom are his.

[From the Daily News, Sandusky, Ohio]

The movies have always been a commercial exploitation of the emotions in terms of entertainment. Their manufacture has ... been one of made-to-order expediency; and there are intelligent persons in number who discount their hurried evidences of reform in the conviction that their surface conformity to good taste and morals reflects no inculcated sense of moral or artistic responsibility, but only the restraining pressure of box office logic.

In their belief, it is not the movie makers who are to be inspired or reformed, but the thinking consciousness of the generation whose patronage makes the film industry possible as a business venture.

A pointed proposition along this line is that advanced by the Rev. Thomas L. Harris, rector of the Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany in Philadelphia, who submits that, in effect, purity begins at home.

"If you parents and youngsters took seriously your responsibility to make spiritual things real and vital," suggests Mr. Harris, "we shouldn't have to bother about black lists and white lists and censorship and boycott."

A negative attitude toward things that are noisome and immorally offensive will never be adequate, in the case of the individual, to withstand the appeal of the degrading things of this world. A positive conscientiousness in the matter is needed, a developed sense of spiritual integrity with a scale of judgment in which attractions of immoral context will be well outweighed by a cultivated evaluation of wholesome, spiritual considerations.

In this sense, purity begins in the home, in the hearts of the supervisors of home. Adults who are not honest with themselves about the pursuit of happiness in the nature of proper pleasures, cannot expect to control the human appetites of the younger generation with negative restrictions, if their own lives lack true spiritual motivation.

But to develop and to instill in younger minds ... a liking of the incomparably worth-while standards of life, a sincere appreciation of such mental views and moral ways of living as make for spiritual health of personality, this is a responsibility of parents and adult guardians of youth.

To this end, education in morality is well directed to the spiritual consciousness of heads of families; that they hand down to their children that moral honesty and fastidious predilection for life's purer, better things, ensuring a spiritual balance of contentment in mind and heart.

[E. Sharwood Smith, in "The Faith of a Schoolmaster," as quoted in Public Opinion, London, England]

Mr. E. Sharwood Smith was for over twenty years headmaster of Newbury Grammar School, and one of the most interesting chapters in his book describes how he abolished "punishments" of every kind in his school, and at the same time also abolished all "rewards." In an epilogue, in which he sums up his conclusions after a lengthy career, he writes:

"There is no base metal to be changed. Every child of man, however degraded he may be, has in him a particle of what we mean by the divine.... but all metaphors are misleading. What I believe in wholeheartedly are the splendid potentialities, the rich veins of treasure, at present hardly touched, that lie, unrecognized by our rulers, in what are called the common people. If democracy has come to stay in our country, as I feel certain it has, it behooves us to see to it that the democracy is an educated one, a democracy which will not fall a ready prey to words....

"For an educated democracy will realize, not that every Tom, Dick, and Harry, or even every Elizabeth, Susan, and Jane is fit to hold power, but that every Harry, Dick, and Tom, and every Jane, Susan, and Elizabeth must be made fit to choose for their rulers the best men and women in the country.

"They must learn to think for themselves, to look beyond the present advantage and the immediate profit; they must no longer be cajoled by the astute agents of a particular party. They must be educated to choose the men and women who are not deflected from their purpose by the fashion of the passing moment, or by the breath of popular favor, but who will be wise enough and strong enough to tell their fellow countrymen the truth, however unpalatable it may be."