Would that I could speak on this subject "as one having authority, and not as the scribes." Possibly this topic was assigned me by someone who thought I should know the very technique of Christian education, but alas! I do not. I only wish I did. While however none of us has his Master's degree in Christian education, every preacher of the gospel, every teacher of the Word, every one whom the Holy Spirit has made overseer, every church of the Lord, every true Christian parent is engaged in this great enterprise. This is a must. At the best we are just student-teachers, the while each is presumably striving for his Master's. Nor will it be bad for us to be mindful of the fact, the while we teach others, that our own Christian education is unfinished. Under the Master that we have we can indeed be of help to others; and even babes call help us. It is ours to appreciate the privilege and the honor of engaging in the greatest work oil earth, and a work that only consecrated children of God can effectively do. May all God's children believe in it.

      Now, the world is tremendously interested in education. Though the best it can offer is a secular [109] education, it believes in that, and has established great institutions of learning in which it has invested billions. Civilization, it believes, depends upon it. But secular education is not Christian education; Christian education is not secular--not one whit. Secular education, it is true, has taken on much of the by-products of Christianity, and of other religions as well. Our own great public school system, we are glad to say, has in times past taken on quite a bit of Christianity, and has in that measure been Christianized. Now alas! it is being more and more paganized. Time was when it was emphasized to teachers in training that the chief end of education was moral culture. Many teachers took this seriously, but being denied the indispensable Book for such training, what could they do but fail of this aim! Witness today the moral delinquency in the product of secular education and the unspeakable criminality!

      But secular education, or even a Christianized secular education is not my theme, neither a secularized Christian education, however much it has come into vogue even among disciples. With many I greatly fear it is about all they want, about as good as they want. Our surrounding is a secularized Christianity, nursing a secularized clergy that has professionalized preaching, success in which profession is measured in terms of the "good pulpit," which in turn is good as it is measured by the dollar sign. Secularized pulpits have produced our secularized churches, which are made up of secularized disciples representing secularized homes, interested at the best in secularized religious schools. Undeniably this is our present day situation. Note the Revelator's picture of the church [110] in Laodicea for a typical secularized church. And she is perfectly satisfied with herself though her professed Head is on the outside--knocking! But He is not satisfied, only nauseated, and what is Laodicean is destined to be spued out. Laodicea is not a product of Christian education.

      A mother who was a member where we once preached made choice of a certain famed college for her spiritually-inclined daughter. "There she can take on a bit of polish she needs; and she can learn to dance, which she must learn if she moves in the higher circles of society." That mother sold her daughter's spirituality for a bit of polish!

      Parents, many of them, are sending their children to religious schools for the sake of a little religious polish--not too much, but enough they hope, to enable them to avoid low society, enough Bible to save them from outright denial of the faith. Their conception of Christianity is little more than that of a nice veneer. They wish the School they choose to teach a little religion the while it majors in the secular. "My child must be fitted for a commanding position, must not be denied the privilege of 'a career.'" Then after preparation and the expense of it, should success attend in finding the paying position, even though at great spiritual disadvantages, the sacrifice is made (usually involving the soul) for the sake of the job. "Everybody's doing it," so it passes. "Wisdom is justified of her children." Secularized parents call hardly be expected to support better than secularized religious Schools. That type of education is not my theme.

      Christian education is Christ-ian. It has two [111] goals, set by the Master Himself: Make disciples, and teach them. This is authoritative, imperative. Christian education is indeed a must, and the goal is not a matter of choice. Christian education has to give due recognition of the fact of sin. The first goal is to bring souls to, into, Christ. To be in sin is to be out of Christ. To be out of Christ is to be in sin and under condemnation of sin. "The wages of sin is death." Where is the profit of educating a condemned man unless the condemned can be delivered? "But if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature," with the old things passed away, with sins blotted out, such a one having "passed from death unto life." This is the first goal of Christian education. Under our Master we must keep this goal ever in mind for all who have not reached it. We teach, He works, regeneration takes place, the Spirit gives life, a new creation, a new creature is the result. Secular education has no power to regenerate, does not recognize the necessity.

      The second goal of Christian education is "Christ in you." "My little children," Paul wrote to the Galatians, "I am in travail again until Christ be formed in you." That is it: "Christ formed in you." No less is required to be truly Christ-ian. Hence Paul's inspired prayer on behalf of the Ephesian saints: "That ye may be strengthened through his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." And more, "that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God." "Christ in you the hope of glory," he wrote the Colossians. Nothing else is, nor indeed can be. What will it profit a man to gain a world-famed "career" and fail to qualify for [112] the glory to be revealed? The big problem here, it is felt, is to live the Christian life. The Christian life is the life Christ lives in you--Christ living His life in you. "I live," said Paul to the Galatians, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." He lives in him who gives full and free consent, one who surrenders his life, his body--hands, feet, lips, tongue--to Him that He may live His life within and through him. Ideal, do you say? He who feels it to be impractical is too absorbed in the secular. "Your body as a living sacrifice.  . . . unto God" is but a reasonable (spiritual) service." Paul tells the Roman brethren. "He that hath the Son hath the life," says John. "Christ in you the hope of glory." Secular education can never reach this goal. Only Christian education can. If there are those in secular institutions who do have Christ formed in them it is because they have, despite the secular emphasis, been exposed to essential spiritual truth (in Christian home atmosphere likely) and have laid hold. Thank God for those who have.

      Secular education is the hope of the job, the hope of a career of glory here. So do the world and the worldly think. Secularized religious education does not disagree. Religious education has been secularized to that extent that it is not liable to jeopardize the "career" or the commanding position, the while it does (so it is hoped) safeguard against moral delinquency, the pitfalls of the baser society, and the dangers from the attacks of atheism. Preaching even, as a career, is not too objectionable if fame attaches and the dollar mark is not too little in evidence or prospect. But hold! What think ye of a profession that capitalizes on the old rugged cross and the very [113] sufferings of our Christ! Yet this very thing is observed in general as the product of a secularized religious education, whose Alpha and Omega must be Christ. "Christ in you;" "until Christ be formed in you." And the travail is not to be, cannot be, detoured. There is no painless bringing forth in Christian education. Its schools must know the meaning of travail, unceasing travail, "until Christ be formed in you."

      How many there are who think that the life of the Christian divides in two, the one part spiritual, the other and major part, alas! secular--thus a religio-secular life! Secularized religious education is built on this theory, a compromise resulting in a secularized Christianity. "Everybody's doing it," and so it passes. But the Christian's life is not thus to be divided; it is a unit. "Is Christ divided?" Nor does the spiritual compromise with the secular. It subdues it. The Christian life is not secular at all. It is one hundred per cent spiritual, else there is indeed a divinely disapproved compromise.

      It is owing the beloved J. A. Harding that I mention him as the one who first pointed out to me the Bible truth that the true Christian who, e. g., farms, farms for God; the true Christian merchant keeps shop for God; the true Christian teacher teaches school for God; the true Christian housewife keeps house for God. Of course, for "whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." And again, "Whether therefore ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." The Christian's farming is not secular, but spiritual. The Christian's occupation (always honorable, it should go without saying) is not secular, but spiritual. Otherwise he is himself [114] not wholly spiritual. As a Christian farmer profits greatly by a good course in agriculture, and as a Christian merchant profits by a commercial course, a Christian house-keeper by a course in home economics, and so on, such courses are properly a part of Christian education. It is the motive that determines.

      Turning our faces toward the goal, that which is set before us by the Master clothed with all authority in heaven and on earth, that which is to be travailed for, let us as student-teachers, and as those who would make sure of our Master's degree, press forward "toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Let us take Him seriously. Prayerfully indeed: "As thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they may be in us..  . . I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one." So prayed the Author and Finisher of our faith.

      The hymn writer, with insight himself, carries us in thought stepwise to our goal. First is expressed the secular, carnal bias: "All of self and none of Thee." Then the religio-secular: "Some of self and some of Thee. Compromise, that. Next the secularized Christian: "Less of self and more of Thee." Shall we continue "kidding" ourselves, imagining that God accepts that? But finally, all secularizing out, "None of self and all of Thee." That is it! The goal of Christian education must not, cannot, be short of that. So with every thought brought "into captivity to the will of Christ" shall we press on joyfully, triumphantly, to the goal and crown, the Master's degree--"Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." [115]

[LM 109-115]