XII

THE LARGER EDUCATION

"But go ye and learn what this meaneth."—ST. Matt. ix: 13.

W

HEN our Lord speaks, the universities of

the world may becomingly stop, look, and listen. For, if men are not in His path of truth, they are in peril; if they see not with His sun-glorious vision, they are blind; if they hear not His soulful symphonies of spiritual reality, they are deaf indeed. Now, spiritually speaking, these Pharisees were blind enough and deaf enough. What a pity that they were not dumb enough! Yet the secret of religious deafness and blindness is its monumental loquacity. Usually, men are diffident in expressing opinions on subjects with which they are unfamiliar. Is it not so of the wise doctor, lawyer, scientist ? In chemistry, men listen to Levoisier; in astronomy, to Herschel; in pottery, to Wedgewood; in poetry, to Shakespeare; in philosophy, to Plato; in music, to Beethoven. Each science, each branch of learning, has its recognized authority.

But in the imperial subject of religion, every man has his fling. Pathetic and foolish as it often is, the situation is at least suggestive. It asserts, in

the first place, that man is "incurably religious.” Aristotle called man a political animal; but it were far truer to say that man is a religious being. And this, I take it, is why men who are loath to express opinions upon subjects they know nothing about, are quite willing to speak freely and foolishly upon the synthetic interest of our lives-religion.

But the second and deeper thing of this propensity to discuss religion comes very close to the innermost secret of Christianity. Being constitutionally religious, Christ proposes to make every man an authority on His religion. Not, mark you, an authority on theories, or ethics, or philosophies about His religion-interesting and worthful as they undoubtedly are-but upon the thing itself; upon the vital, pulsing, quivering reality, which beats its music out in manifold expressions, yet rests its throbbing activities down upon the central, basic, elemental life of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Can you imagine a finer, vaster, more glorious, more satisfying freedom than that? Freed by Christ's truth, man's soul transmutes the flames of hell into perfume. Knowing Christ's truth, and the consciousness of ultimate reality He gives, man has the freedom of the universe. All goodness, all beauty, all hope, all love, all high and sweet societies, all time, all space, all worlds are his, though the ages to come may be necessary to bring their complete realization.

"I spoke as I saw.

I report, as man may, of God's work-all's Love, yet all's Law.

Now I lay down the judgeship he sent me. Each faculty tasked,

To perceive Him, has gained an abyss where a dewdrop was asked."

And is it not always so? We ask for a dewdrop; He gives an abyss of wonder and beauty. We ask for a ray of hope; into life's sky He flashes Love's unfading rainbow. We ask for dear human friendships; He gives the society of angels, of the noble living and the noble dead-yea, the very life of God Himself.

Thus, because the Pharisees carped when the Son of God proved Himself the true Son of Man in mingling with publicans and sinners, He said: "Your education in the great things is inadequate. I am not after the whole, but the sick. You have not learned the a b c of the larger education. God desires mercy, not sacrifice. I came not to call the righeous, but sinners. But go ye and learn what this meaneth."

Our subject, then, is "The Larger Education" -our School-house, our Teacher, our Diploma.

I

The first factor in the larger education is this world in which we live and love and work and weep and laugh and die. For in no mere figurative sense,

the world is our school-house. Nothing short of this vast, mystic, wondrous world justifies the institutions of learning throughout our own land, throughout all lands. The little red school-house on the hillside, the log cabin at the country crossroads, the pile of buildings emphasizing the importance of the modern college and university, the dream of a Brooklyn University which is to come true, and gloriously true-all exist for the purpose of showing students how to find their way, physically, mentally, socially, and morally, about this great school-house named the world.

Emerson had this truth in mind when he said: "He who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man." Ah! the world is packed with enchantments, and education is the magician whose golden hammer breaks down the four walls of the class room, sending the scholar forth to behold the limitless horizons of the world, and all that is within them. Education naturalizes us as citizens of the universe. Shame on the man who is so local as to be purely national or international, when God wants him to be universal! As the mystic expressed it: "The universe, vast and deep and broad and high, is a handful of dust which God enchants." Ours is an enchanted universe, and oh, what unspeakable splendours lie hidden within this handful of dust!

Let me use an illustration with which the twentieth century student is familar. Standing here in this teeming world, the imagination flashes back to the time when our globe was a fiery mass of nebulous matter. The next stage "consists of countless myriads of similar atoms, roughly outlined in a ragged cloud-ball, glowing with heat, and rotating in space with inconceivable velocity." Then we behold the transformation of this cloudmass into a solid earth. But how? Well, the Divine Artificer, through mutual attraction and chemical affinity, caused two of the myriads of atoms to fall in love with each other. And sober science assures us that with that atomic romance-the very moment those two atoms were married-the victory of our earth's evolution was won. As you see, all the human romances through all the human years, owe their origin to that first pair of romantic atoms, indissolubly joined in wedlock by the priestly hand of Infinite Love and All-Wise Intelligence!

If the cornerstone of our school-house was laid in that far-off dawn of time, evidently Someone has been at considerable patience and pains to equip our Alma Mater. But the simple truth is, we never could have known the varied magnificence of our school-house, had not the Angel of Education come and said: "Follow me, and I will show you the grandeurs of your world-home." The furniture was all here, but no man to admire it, no woman to adorn it. Stars sparkled in the blue roof above;