RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Evening Star, Issue 22026, 11 May 1935, Page 4

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

[By Forward.] “ The greatest thing in the world is a human life. The greatest work in the world is the helpful touch upon that life.” - MOTHER’S DAY. The second Sunday in May is now universally recognised as Mothers’ Day, a day when a tribute is paid to all •the mothers of the world, and to their influence ’upon the lives of all generations. Who can estimate the value of the mothers in the earlj; training of our young people? If it is true, as educationists say, that “ what goes into the first of life goes into the whole of life,” the responsibility that rests upon parents, and particularly upon the mother, is very great. To them is entrusted the early training which can do so much to make or to mar the future character of .the children. The purpose of the observation of the day in our- Sunday schools and churches is to revive dormant filial love and gratitude, to strengthen the home ties, to brighten the lives of mothers by some appreciation, to create a brotherhood through the wearing of the white flower, and to make us all better children. In some churches the day is a Parents’ Day or a Home' Day, the fathers being included in the remembrance. The. love of a mother, How tender and sweet, With care and with duty How rich and replete! A gift from the angels, A gem from the skies. Which has in its keeping The holiest of ties. The value that the great men of the world have placed upon their mothers is shown in the tributes giveh below TRIBUTES TO MOTHERS. All that 1 am my mother made me.— John Quincy Adams. No state is greater than its mothers. —Theodore Roosevelt. Oh, the love of a mother, love which none can forget ! —Victor Hugo. One good mother is .worth 100 schoolmasters. —George Herbert. To a man who has had a mother all women are sacred for her sake.—John Paul Richter. If I were hanged on the highest hill, I know whose love would follow me still, mother o’ mine.—Kipling. “ Mothers, good mothers,” said Napoleon, in answer to the question of what France needed most.

I owe a great deal to my mother. She was seamstress, cook, washlady, and never until late had a servant in her house. And yet she was a cultivated lady. She kept up the literature of the day. When 1 was a little tot she used to read good‘•books to me. —Andrew Carnegie. 0 pious mother, kind mid good, brave and truthful a soul as ever 1 have found in this world, your poor Tom has fallen very lonely, lame, and broken in this pilgrimage of his. But from your grave m Ecclefechen Kirkyard you bid him trust in God, hnd that he will do, for, verily, the conquest of this world, and death, and hell lie that way.—Thomas Carlyle. 1 did not have my mother long, but she cast an influence over me which has lasted all my life. The good effects of her early training I can never lose. If it had not been for her appreciation and her faith in me at a critical time in my experience I should likely never have become an inventor. I was always a careless boy, and with a mother of different calibre I should probably have turned out badly- But her firmness, her sweetness, her goodness were potent powers to keep me in the right path. "My mother was the making of me. The memory of her will always be a blessing to me.— Thomas A. Edison.

All/that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother. —Abraham Lincoln. A mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.—Coleridge. Youth fades, love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them All.—-Oliver Wendall Holmes. FAITH OF OUR MOTHERS. Faith of our Mothers, living still in all that’s beautiful and brave, How nobly will we work God’s will, and seek from sin our souls /to save., Faith of onr Mothers; living faith; wo will be true to thee till death. Faith of our Mothers! Living faith ;in hearts of love and songs of praise We gladly join with one accord to sing to God our sweetest days; * Faith of onr Mothers! Constant faith; we will he true to thee till death. Faith of our Mothers! Living- still in love and life that ne’er shall die, And children’s children, ever dear, shall hold the faith that rends the . sk y; Faith of our Mothers! Holy faith; wo will be true to thee till death. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. The only sure foundation for educational work is the firm conviction that it is worth while and capable of realising the ends it sets out to achieve. Quintilian begins his discussion of elementary education by saying; “ I would have a father conceive the highest hopes of his son from the moment of his birth. If he does so, he will bo more careful about the groundwork of his education.” If, the church is to develop a conscientious care for the education of those committed to her, she must conceive the highest hopes of them from tbo beginning. Not hopes that are simply forecastings of a remote day and of an ultimate winning them for Christ, but hopes based on the primary fact that already they belong to Christ, so - that onr task consists in discovering to them their native allegiance, and in fostering it towards conscious aim. If this is not the drift of our Lord’s teaching, it is difficult to regard His language save in the light of hyperbole. “ Their angels do always behold the face of My Father, which is in heaven.” Wordsworth’s ode on the ‘ Intimations of Immortality ’ probably supplies the best commentary on such words, t suggesting the hopefulness of the task of the Christian educator who begins with a creature'“round whom heaven lies, as well as his responsibility to prevent tire shades of the prison house from closing upon him he ho grows up. Bushnell found the true idea of Christian education in the proposition: “ That the child is to grow up a Christian and never know himself as being otherwise.” This is the true idea of Christian education, though Bnshnoll was careful to add that he did not affirm that every child may, in fact and without exception, be' so trained that he certainly will grow up a Christian! It might seem to some that the view outlined belittled the Divine agency, ns if it were a matter of training only, and not of spiritual renewal. Far from it. There is not a single stage, not a moment in the soul’s upgrowth towards God, which is not absolutely dependent upon His own gracious furthering. To conceive of education as something that can he done for the child by human agency alone is utterly to misconceive the process.

Every virtue we possess, And every victory won. And every thought of holiness Are His alone. . In no sphere is onr co-partnership with God more visible than in the sphere of Christian education. The efforts of the most loving parent or of tho most skilful' teacher are only by way of seconding the work of the spirit within the developing of character. In defect of that august activity nothing avails. How significant the whole aspect of Christian education becomes when it is conceived as an alliance of human love and patience and skill with a love and a patience and a skill far excelling them because of God!—P. T. Thomson.