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EDUCATIONAL JOTTINGS 225
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due to radically different ideas as to the relation between
God and man. If our Creator is really and truly imparting
to us the Hjgher Life without which we should infallibly
sink, then obviously children must be brought up to realize
that such is the fact. For the term " Higher Life " embraces
all that is " lovely and of good report " as well as
moral goodness. If, on the other hand, our Creator has
placed us in this world to make ourselves as comfortable
as we can for a few years, and leaves us alone in presence
of this problem, there can be no unity of aim as to the
main purpose of the training of a child. For the only
alternative to surrendering of self to the will of God is the
pursuit of a phantom, temporal happiness.
Undoubtedly a broad view of God's Revelation of Himself,
such as is here suggested, gives some unity of aim
to the teachers of such subjects as History, Science, Mathematics,
Art, Literature, and also social service. But the
unity disappears when there is any haziness as to the
Theistic background of them all. Incomparably difficult
though it clearly is to keep the Theistic background always
as the setting of each subject, it can be done ; and if the
attempt is abandoned, chaos supervenes. Thus History
is one thing if God is conceived of as giving man the
conditions of his true development. Then the squalid
facts of history are seen to be man's refusal to accept the
conditions. But it is a totally different subject if man is
conceived of as blindly blundering after a bettef state of
existence without any notion of why he so constantly
goes astray.
The Theistic view of training the young sheds light on
the difficult question why we rate knowledge so highly.
All knowledge worth discussing is of truth: and profoundly
deceptive though the world is, we are aghast if
a child grows up quite ignorant ; feeling sure that what
comes through Science, Art, Literature, etc., has something
divine in it, as coming from the Source of all Life
and Truth. But the more we present it to the child as