Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go.
THOMAS MANTON (1620-1677): No age doth despise the Word of God so much as this, which hath most need of it…Corruption of youth is one of the saddest symptoms of approaching judgment.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): We may depend upon it, the one aim of the enemy is to set aside the authority of the Word of God, and…whether we look at the religion or the education of the country, we observe a fixed purpose to set aside the Bible—a settled determination, not only to cast it down from its excellency, but to fling it completely into the shade.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): Look at this attitude towards morality, towards law, and towards the ten commandments in particular…Take the much maligned and criticized ten commandments. God tells us to worship Him and not to bow down to images. What’s wrong with that? God tells us not worship idols—Is that a scandal? Is that a legalism binding us? Is it wrong to tell a man not worship a motor car? Is it wrong to tell a man not worship a football or a pop star? Is it wrong to tell a man not worship his money? That’s what the ten commandments tell you.
But wait a minute. Come on the practical details. Thou shalt not kill. Is that a restraint? Is that a grievous band and bond tying you down, and standing between you and a glorious life? Is it wrong to ask you not to kill? Thou shalt not steal. Is that some reprehensible prohibition? Telling you just not to steal. Do you want to have liberty to steal? Thou shalt not commit adultery. What’s wrong with that? Why do people hate God for saying thou shalt not commit adultery? Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. You mustn’t malign your neighbour’s character or say untruths about him. Thou shalt not covet, or desire thy neighbour’s wife, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant. Tell me in the name of God, what’s wrong with these ten commandments?
WILLIAM ARNOT (1808-1875): Let it be known and remembered that ‘secularism’ is the Latin for “this-world-ism,” and means, ‘Attend to the world that you are now in, and let the next alone’…Those seekers of knowledge, who limit their search to the earth on which they tread, profess great zeal in the question of education. I am not aware that they do more in the work of education than others, but they say loudly, and oft, that the young of the nation should be educated according to their views. The public schoolmaster should be entirely neutral on the subject of religion: he should give no judgment for or against any way of its doctrines…
[But] they prescribe to the schoolmaster a task that is palpably impossible. Revealed religion has touched the world, and has been the turning point of its history in all ages. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, claiming as they do to be the inspired record of God’s will, have in point of fact influenced the conduct and history of mankind more than all other books together. Jesus of Nazareth was, through the unwilling instrumentality of the Roman, put to death by the Jewish priesthood, because He made Himself equal with God; and this event has done more to cast the civilized world into its present mould, than any or all the revolutions of kingdoms since the beginning of time. How shall the teacher dispose of that Book, and that event, in his complete course of secular instruction? Must he teach history and leave these things out of it?
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Education without religion is like the solar system without the sun.
WILLIAM LAW (1686-1761): Many learned men, with all the rich furniture of their brain, live and die slaves to the spirit of this world.
WILLIAM ARNOT: The religion of Christ has grasped the world, and penetrated human history through and through. If you exclude these topics, your disciple comes out of your hands a barbarian; and if you introduce them, you are compelled to take a side. For or against Christ the teacher must be, and the scholar too. God has, in providence, not left it possible simply to pass the Bible by without letting it be known whether you believe it or not. The question, “What think ye of Christ?” was of old pressed upon the Jews, though they desired rather not to commit themselves to an answer; and by the same sovereign Lord, who rules over all, it is in these latter days pressed upon men so as to force an answer out of them whether they will, or be unwilling. No man can teach the history and condition of this world without indicating expressly, or by implication, whether he counts Jesus of Nazareth a blasphemer, or the Son of God. No man can live where the gospel is known without accepting or rejecting Christ’s claim to be the Redeemer of his soul, and the sovereign of his life. Such have been the effects of the Bible, and such is the place of Christ among men, that we must take a side. The decision cannot be avoided; all depends on making it aright.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Our education may teach us that Hell does not exist, but death is a surer and sterner master. How much will our degrees and diplomas avail us then? My friends, do let us return to the stern realities of life before it is too late.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): My advice to every person is, not to place his child where the Scripture does not reign paramount. Every institution in which the studies carried on lead to a relaxed consideration of the Word of God must prove corrupting; a weighty sentiment which governments, literary men, and parents in all ages would do well to ponder.
