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IT HAS BEEN suggested by a prominent clergyman that the training of children in Sunday school ought to conform to the teachings of modern science so that the “accurate and solid instruction,” as he terms it, received in the day schools may not be counteracted by inaccurate and misleading statements. A glance at the text books may serve to show how solid and accurate some of the information imparted to the child in the school room really is. One of his first lessons in geography teaches him that the earth revolves on its axis once in twenty-four hours. No qualifications are made.* The child accepts it for a fact, together with the whole Copernican system—a gigantic assumption. He never dreams, poor innocent, that the book and the teacher, his supreme court of appeal, can mislead him. The only accurate statement comes from Copernicus himself when he wrote in no uncertain words: “Neither let anyone so far as hypotheses are concerned, expect anything certain from astronomy, since that science can afford nothing of the kind.” Let this sentence be incorporated into the text books so that the child may understand when he reads that the earth is convex, that astronomers merely surmise it to be so, their guess being founded upon appearances. In reality they know no more about the form and function of the universe than he does.
To learn the accurate and solid instruction which modern science has to impart, it is only necessary to question her. What about the origin of life? Why, one of the latest theories supposes that the germs of organic life may have descended upon ‘this plant,” brought by meteors from some other system far remote. So exceedingly plausible a theory was projected by one of the greatest “authorities.”’ Unfortunately nobody has yet explained how these germs could escape the culinary process in their rapid transmission through interstellar space. The germs of organic life always develop from life of the same kind. If any form of life be found today, it is because the parent life was here before and gave it birth.
If the Sunday school teacher wishes to keep pace with the day school, she must tell the children how good God is to keep the inhabitants from falling off the surface of this convex ball as it goes whirling through space at the rate of nineteen miles a second. Let her tell them too, that nobody knows why it does not fall into the sun around which it is circling at that rate of speed, so that is another mercy for which they must thank God. To be sure, if He be an all-pervading Spirit without body or parts, self-existent from eternity, unknown and unknowable, thanks and praise from the lower creation would matter little to him.
Text books cite as proof of the earth’s convexity, the circular shadow supposed to be cast upon the moon’s disk by the earth during a lunar eclipse, but they fail to inform the youthful student that there are fifty-two recorded instances where the eclipse occurred when the sun and moon were both above the horizon.
If she is to fill her responsible post with credit the Sunday school teacher will do well to take occasion now and then to show the children how the sun is growing hotter and colder at the same time. This is according to one of the best authenticated and most popular of present theories of the solar constitution. It might also be well to touch upon the attenuated ether, showing just what it is and how far it extends. Everything connected with the subject is so accurate and positive! Having shown herself perfectly familiar with the proven and authenticated facts of “science,” the teacher will be able to exposit the Scriptures from this basis. The youthful mind will then be saved the confusion arising from an attempt to reconcile Genesis with Prof. Shaler, —a world made in six days with the discoveries of paleontology.
The child who will cavil with the higher critics and persist in asking disagreeable questions after hearing their clear and logical expositions of the miracles is incorrigible and should be suitably disciplined. If he will use his reason let him be given a copy of the CELLULAR COSMOGONY. He is ripe enough to profit by its contents.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 17, No. 14 · Feb 20, 1903 · PDF p. 6