EDUCATIVE VALUE OF THE BIBLE

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 5, 1 October 1929, Page 2

EDUCATIVE VALUE OF THE BIBLE

TOLSTOY’S DECLARATION

As progressive countries are reorganising thoir state education systems, the following extracts from the "Life of Tolstoy” by Aylmer Maude, are of interest. Tolstoy started schools in Yosnaya, in Russia, He personally devoted himself to the school at Yasnaya. . • Eleven similar schools were soon started, A knowledge of Sacred History was demanded both by the pupils themselves and by their parents. Tolstoy wrote: “Of all oral subjects I tried during three years, nothing so suited the understanding and mental condition of the boys as the Old Testament. The same was the case in all the schools that came under my observation. I tried the New Testament, I tried Russian History and Geography, I tried explanations of natural phenomena (so much advocated to-day), but it was all listened to unwillingly and quickly forgotten, But the Old Testament was remembered and narrated eagerly both in class and at home, and so well remembered that after two months the children wrote Scripture tales from memory with slight omissions. It seems to me that the book of the childhood of the race will always be the best book for the childhood of each man. It seems to me impossible to replace that book.

"To alter or abbreviate the Bible, as done in Sonntag’s and other school primers, appears to me bad. All—every word—in it is right, both as revelation and as art, Read about the Creation of tbe world in the Bible, and then read an abbreviated Sacred History, and the alteration of the Bible into the Sacred History will appear to you quite unintelligible. The latter can only be Jearnt by heart; while the Bible presents the child with a vivid and majestic picture he will never forget. The omissions made in the “Sacred History” are quite unintelligible, and only impair the character and beauty of the Scriptures. Why, for instance, is the statement omitted in nil the “Sacred Histories" that when there was nothing, the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters, and that after created. God looked on his creation and saw that it was good, nnd that then it was the morning nnd evening of such and such a day. Why do they omit that God's breathed into Adam’s nostrils the hrenth of life, and that, having taken one of his ribs. Ho with the flesh closed up the place thereof, and so forth ?

“One must read the Bible to unperverted children to understand how necessary and true it all is. Perhaps one ought not to give the Bible to perverted young ladies; but when reading it to peasant children I did not alter or omit a single word. None of then) giggled behind another’s back; but all listened eagerly and with natural reverence. The story of Lot and his daughters, and the story of Judah's son, evoked horror, but not laughter. . . . How intelligible and clear it all is, especially for a child, and yet how stern and serious! “I cannot imagine what instruction would be possible without that book. Yet when one has lenrnt these storjes only in childhood, and Ims afterwards partially forgotten them, one thinks: ‘What good do they do us? Would it not be all the same if one did not know them at all? So it seems till, on beginning to teach, you test jn other children the elements that helped to develop you. It seems as if one could teach children to write and read and calculate, and could give them gn idea of history, geography, and natural phenomena without the Bible, and before the Bible; yet nowhere is this done: everywhere the child first of all gets to know the Bible, the stories, or extracts from it. The first relations of the learner to the teacher are founded on that book. Such a general fact is not an accident. "My very free relations with my pupils at the commencement of the Yasno-Poly-

ana School helped me to find the explanation of the phenomenon. A child or. a man on entering school (I make no distinction between a ten, thirty, or a seventy-year-old man), brings with him the special view of things he has deduced from life and to which he is attached. In order that a man of any age should begin to learn, it is necessary that he should love learning: he must see the falseness and insufficiency of his own view of things, and must scent afar off that new view of life which learning is to reveal to him. “No man or boy would have the strength to learn, if the result of learning presented itself to him merely as a capacity to write, to read, and to reckon. No master could teach if he did not command an outlook on life higher than his pupils possess. That a pupil may surrender himself wholeheartedly to his teacher, one corner must be lifted of the veil which hides from him all tha delight of that world of thought, knowledge, and poetrv to which learning will admit him. Only by being constantly under the spell of that bright light shining ahead of him. will the pupil be able to use his powers in the way we require of him. What means have wo of lifting this corner of the veil? “As I have said, I thought as many think, that being myself in the world to which I had to introduce my pupils, it would be easy for msyclf to do thisl and I taught the rudiments, explained natural

phenomena, nnd I told them, as. the primers do, that the fruits of learning are sweet; but the scholars did not believe me and kept aloof. • “Then I tried reading the Bible to them, and quite took possession of them. The corner of the veil was lifted, and they yielded themselves to me completely. J. hey fell in love with the book, and with learning, and with me. It only remained for me to guide them on. Io reveal to the pupil a new world, and to make him, without possessing knowledge, love knowledge, there is no book but the Bible. 1 speak even for those who do not regard the Bible sis a revelation. There arc no other works—at least, I know none —which in so compressed and so poetic a form contain all those sides of human thought which the Bible unites in itself, wisdom, with the charm given by them , nf form, seize inv

childlike simplicity ot torm, mi nil’s mind for the first time. Not om» does th™ lyricism of David’s Psalms act on the minds of the elder pupilsi. but more than that, from this book e,ery one becomes conscious for the first t>n» e the whole beauty of the epos in.tsm comparable simplicity and strength. Who has not wept over the story of J osepß nnd his meeting with h >s brethre . has not with bated breath, told the sto.y of the bound and shorn Samson, «venging himself on his enemies and perishim, under the ruins of the palace he destroys, or received a hundred other impressions on which we were reared as on our mother’s milk? Let those who deny the educative value of the Bible say it is out of date, invent a book and st o or ’?? 1 .^ p }“m ing tbe phenomena of nature, jut“ JJ 1 general history or from the ‘maginat on. which will be accepted as the Bible stories are; and then we will admit that the Bible is obsolete. .... “Drawn though it may be from a onesided experience, I r epeat my conwtion. The development of a child or a ma ». our society without the Bible is as in conceivable as that of an ancient Greek would have been without Homer. The Bible is the only book to begin with, tor a child’s reading. The Bible, bo b form and m its contents, snouia ser e as 3 a nmdel for all vhiUren’s pnmers and all reading books. A translation of the Bible into the language of the 5 omnl ““ folk, would be the best book for the lie wifen pupils came from other schools where they had learnt portions of the Scripture by heart, or had been inculcated with the abbreviated school-primer

versions, Tolstoy found that the Bible had nothing like as strong an effect as it had on boys who came fresh to it. lolstoy says: “Such pupils do not experience what is felt by fresh pupils, who listen to the Bible with beating heart, seizing every word, thinking that now at last, all the wisdo-a of the world is about to be revealed to them. ESSAY CONTEST. The American Sunday School pmon, Philadelphia, is offering a prize of JOUO dollars for the best 60,000 word manuscript on “Religion in Public Education.” Th' conditions are that the manuscripts should show the educational worth of the Bible, and of religious teaching based upon if. and show the best way open for character building through such education.” . . . The. author must write with the conviction ' that religion Is vital part of education, and that rel.gious education has a fitting and lawful place in the American sys " tem. Entries close March 1, 1930.