The teacher-training campaign is on. It has already borne fruit unto God. If given half a chance, it will prove its right to the kindly consideration of every disciple.

      We now stand at the threshold of an era in aggressive church work when, by virtue of its better knowledge of God's unfailing word, a congregation will no longer be the possessor of a preacher and an assistant, perchance, but of a score or more of intelligent preachers and teachers of the truth. What is to hinder it from being said of any congregation willing to pay the price of preparation, "It is scattered throughout the city and is found preaching and teaching the Word"?

      A glimpse of the moral, spiritual and intellectual condition of the people in former days makes the heart sick. It has been truly said that the sectarian spirit was rife and the church for which Christ died made no progress. Slavery flourished unrebuked. The clergy and laity alike drank to excess and differences between reputable gentlemen were settled by duels. Great Britain, before the war of independence, would not permit the publication of a single copy of God's word within her territory in the United States.

      While the French exhibited a kindly spirit in aiding the unfortunate [549] colonies in their struggle for liberty, they sowed the seed of infidelity in the hearts of the people that yielded an abundant harvest, and it was not long before the educated and uneducated were in the thralldom of doubt. At the close of the war of 1812 one is astonished at the low ebb of religion, and is led to wonder whether God had representatives among the sons of men. But he had, and the leaven in the hearts of the few was a guarantee of the ultimate triumph of the truth. The fathers of the Restoration stepped upon the platform with their positive declarations, their earnest entreaties and exhortations that were to meet the infidelity and unrest of that day. "To the law and testimony." "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent." "Let us call Bible things by Bible names," they said. How well they succeeded can be judged by the records of the past. The century-long campaign has given us much for which we devoutly thank our heavenly Father. Its closing years have granted us, among other things, a

B. S. FERRALL.

splendid vision of the power and glory of the Bible school, when well organized and taught by fathers. I marvel at our slowness in those who are true to the spirit of our discovering the real greatness of this important department of the church's activity. When one remembers that the Bible school is the church of God and her friends studying the word of God for salvation, growth and greater usefulness, the importance of this work is no longer doubted.

      Our education is incomplete without a working knowledge of the Bible. Christianity stands for a symmetrically educated citizen. We talk much these days about higher education, and think it can be secured at a State university or college, yet thousands of young men and women are completing courses prescribed by the largest and best equipped institutions of our country with credit to themselves whose education is far from complete since by the privileges of substitution they have eliminated from the course the world's greatest text-book, the Bible. The public school represents education; the college and university, higher education; Christianity and the teacher-training movement represent the highest education.

      A Salvation Army lass asked a distinguished-looking gentleman in a fashionable restaurant whether he was a Christian, and upon being told in a rather emphatic way that he was a professor in the university hard by, replied, "You shouldn't allow a trifling thing like that to keep you from becoming a Christian." I have known men who, while able to lead their students in secular studies, within the classroom, possessed no religious qualifications for higher leadership without. Do you mean to tell me that such teachers are educated in the highest sense? A study of the Bible, with its marvelous unity of revelation, "will bring any student more than a study of Homer with his golden harp or Plato with his golden mouth can of the culture of the ancients." I would rather know of the plan and scope of God's book that tells me of his Son and the life I may live through faith in him, than to sit at the feet of the bard of Greece and hear of the rise and fall of Illium, or the account of Ulysses upon the seas. Oh, the tremendous educational value of the study of the Bible in the teacher-training class! Our Centennial secretary has said that with nothing to study but the Bible and nothing to do but to study it, we should be a happy people. We have no time to waste in defining theological terms, in defending sectarian peculiarities, in committing humanly formulated confessions of faith or reciting the "Apostles' Creed." Our time should be spent in the mastery of "the Book," since it alone contains the rules for human action. We are fast learning that Christianity is absolutely good for nothing while remaining as a theory. Truth must be hid in the heart as seed in the soil and glorified in fruit-bearing.

      A larger measure of God's spirit coming from a more intimate knowledge of [550] his truth will furnish the impulses for such work. We are beginning to realize that nothing under the skies has such dynamic destructive power or such divine reconstructive power as the gospel of Christ--God's truth concerning his Son and our "Elder Brother." The church would have far more active disciples and less "adherents" could its membership be persuaded to enlist in teacher-training classes.

      Is this true? Ask any one having to do with the splendid movement. Ask the happy pastors in the teacher-training churches who are enjoying a perennial ingathering of souls. Ask the church officers of such congregations who have had occasion to note the growing number of efficient workmen in the kingdom of Christ. Ask those who have been won to the better life by a more intelligent conception of God's book and its Christ. The world has long known the Christ of theological system, of Chalcedon, Heidelberg, Trent and Westminster. It needs to know of the Christ of God, "of whom to know aright is life eternal." God help us in meeting this need through the exaltation of his word.

[CCR 549-551]