ways at hand, to limit the production and hamper the development of individual genius, though commonly contemporary genius may be trusted to look out for itself-or to be looked out for by an age uncommonly on the lookout for it. But for curtailing the production and development of those who have a genius for what has been called "the delight of pure oppugnation," the synthetic forces certainly deserve the thanks of the civilization which prizes distinction. Incidentally, where these forces are themselves diverted to the end of producing eccentric typesas in the various forms of anti-social socialism from Brook Farm to Greenwich Village--they still evince their inherent power, malefic only when its scope is narrow and its field, like a well-known tonic, "peculiar to itself." on the one hand, diversifies its original uniformity into fitting survivals and, on the other, through co-operative intelligence, welds its varieties of idiosyncrasy into an instrument of binding force and acknowledged power. It was early discovered that it was not good for man to live alone. Neither was he combined with his fellow men on the principle of mere aggregation. Of him and them a third unit, equally intrinsic, equally definite, was engendered which for "the uses of this world," if not for "Divine, Everlasting Night with her Silences and Star Diadems," has been very likely the most important as well as the most imperious of the triad-the organic spirit, namely, of its own elastic combination, the spirit of society. With all our worship of public opinion have we ever made any particular obeisance to this our social genius which, nevertheless, so far as pertinent to its own sphere, inspires and moulds, arms and directs public opinion, and enables it to curb, to counteract, and to transform the individualism of extravagance, of eccentricity, and, above all, of levity? [Another article, "Humor and Sentiment," by Mr. Brownell, will appear in an early number.] On any scale adequate to illustrate the formations and march of civilization, it is not its guerilla contingents any more than its camp-followers that count in its progress. And it is the spirit of society which creates, differentiates, organizes, develops and enthrones public opinion, which, A Statue of Washington, in the North BY NANCY BYRD TURNER VALIANT he rides, here where the spring comes slow- East wind at stalwart shoulder, bitter spray Of sea-wrought mist on rein and saddle-bow; That way lies boyhood. Through a scented rain J BY CHARLES HAVEN MYERS IMMIE possesses no extraordinary gifts or talents. He has frisked through eleven shining summers without displaying a predilection for serious inquiry. His teachers have never associated him with precocity, nor does his I. Q. place him in either the supernormal or the subnormal classification. His father is self-made, "whittled out with his own jack-knife." His mother-a Wellesley graduate sacrificed a career for a home. The above is precautionary preface lest the reader, unwarned, draw the summary conclusion that Jimmie is unusual. Jimmie goes to Sunday-school. In fact, he has been a punctual and regular attendant since his fourth year when he entered the kindergarten of Bolton Square Church, a fairly representative Protestant institution. The last decade has witnessed an evolution in the system of lessons in Bolton Square. First, the old Berean lessons were scrapped for graded lessons. Then two years ago the graded lessons were regarded by the supervising committee as unsatisfactory, resulting in the adoption of a text-book system. Forthwith parents were asked to purchase books for their children. The change was successfully defended on grounds of thoroughness and continuity in the lessons. A new director of religious education-Phineas Markham -was employed and the differentiating title of church-school was adopted. Bolton Square suddenly achieved a reputation. It was about this time that Jimmie Ryder overheard Judge Knowlton remark to his father: "That chap Markham certainly knows his berries. At last we seem to be acquiring sense about teaching Sunday-school lessons. The children are actually learning something about the Bible." Jimmie's conclusion was that if Judge Knowlton said it, it must be so. But just what and how much he had learned he could nct write down upon paper. But anyway, he thought, Bolton Square had the best scout troop and a winning ball-team. There floated through his immature brain a vague idea that Bolton Square church-school was an important institution. This year the curriculum-all properly diagramed in approved fashion-announced in bold letters that Jimmie and other boys of his age would study "The Heroes of Israel." Upon examining the new text-book, Jimmie's dad had a brainstorm of furious proportions. What he discovered was a collection of graceless patriarchs whose misdeeds far outweighed their noble qualities. He read the book through to the last chapter and then fumed! He had expected to find a lot of worthies with stories of commendable adventure. What he did find, as he read the appended Scriptural references chapter by chapter, was a veritable rogues' gallery of Israelitish petty-kings, freebooters, bushrangers, smugglers, pious thimble-riggers, and plunderers. Of course, from the text that Jimmie was to use, the grosser passages, those unfit for reading aloud in the living-room, had been neatly expurgated. Then there were sugar-coated editorial comments apologizing for moral lapses of the heroes, interlarded with a generous amount of Christian admonition! But Ryder was not convinced that these half-mythical brigands should be held up before Jimmie as illustrious examples of moral leadership. Dad, "all het up," jumped into his car and drove over to the home of the director of religious education. He handed the text-book to Markham with the question that came like an explosion. "Do you think this book contains the proper lessons to be taught to our boys?" Markham was nonplussed. Most parents seemed to care little about what was taught on Sunday. He could not understand Ryder's agitation. "Why, it's the best text we can find on Old Testament heroes, Mr. Ryder." Mr. Ryder was ready with his come-back. "What's the big idea, anyway, of this hero-stuff?" By this time Markham had arranged his ideas. He launched into a discussion of adolescent psychology. It was a bit academic and muddy. Ryder couldn't "follow through" on all the points. But he had gained respect for Markham, aware that he had done a great deal for the boys. He listened patiently. He was being told that religious psychologists had discovered through much research in the "human laboratory" that the early years of a boy's life made up the "hero-worshipping period." "Yes, Markham, I'll admit some of that but"-Markham was now well launched on his pet subject and could not be checked. He continued. "We see the boy at this period idealizing the strong man, the brave man, the skilful man. Why, Mr. Ryder, James has his lariat and his boxing-gloves, his canoe and snow-shoes. These are only symbols of his ideals." Ryder nodded. "At this period the boy is thrilled by the clang of the fire-truck, or the sight of the speeding locomotive. He reads pirate tales and, if unguided, cheap detective stories." Here Ryder stopped Markham with a real upper-cut. "Believe me, Markham! My boy will get racy reading this winter if you use that text-book. I would rather he'd sneak out into the garage with a copy of "The Demon of the Danube' or 'Forty Buckets of Blood,' knowing that it's all fake, than to read about these unconscionable scoundrels, imagining that God Almighty directed the participants from the celestial side-lines." But Markham had his speech as well learned as a book-agent. He had to go through to the end. Ryder listened. "This is the age when the boy looks wistfully at pictures of Babe Ruth and Red Grange, lives in a dream world of adventure, and selects as his favorite movies the exciting 'Western' pictures. Now! We have carefully selected the Old Testament heroes as the most interesting characters for this period of a boy's life." "But," Ryder interjected, "they're not moral; they're not even decent. They lie, they kill, they plunder, they take whatever they see 'in the name of the Lord,' they cheat-I think, Markham, pardon me if I seem sacrilegious-I think they're a rummy lot of heroes." "But they are all a part of the early period of Hebrew history that is so necessary to understand if the New Testament is ever to mean anything." "Let them stay where they belong with all the rest of the doers of dark deeds. I don't care whether my boy ever learns about them or not. He'll find out how crooked they are, according to our standards, soon enough." So the talk continued, battle dore and shuttle cock, for half an hour. At last Ryder, having gotten this off his chest, rose to go. He had been convinced of nothing, rather more confirmed in his opinion. But he had registered his protest. Markham gave him a parting assurance as he laid his hand on his arm: "Have no fear, Mr. Ryder, about James being misled. Jack Martin, the principal of Eastbourne School, is to teach this subject this winter and he will make these lessons, with applications from modern life, so thrilling that he'll have the boys sitting on the edge of the seats. James will lose a lot if he should drop out." "Well, we'll see." And with a hurried "good-night" Ryder drove home slowly. As he entered the living-room, Mrs. Ryder was reading. "Mary, where is that volume of Carlyle that we read together the first year we were married? Don't you remember? The one about heroes." His wife looked up-"Heroes and Hero Worship'? Why it's over there in the bookcase in the sun-room." John Ryder was soon lost in Carlyle and at last came to the sentence he himself had marked and forgotten. Perhaps, after all, it was his subconscious self that had been talking to Markham. Here it was. "And what therefore is loyalty proper, the lifebreath of all society, but an effluence of hero-worship, submissive admiration for the truly great?-["truly great" had been underscored]. Society is founded on hero-worship." Ryder dropped his cigar in the ash-tray and spoke aloud for the first time in half an hour. "Just what I thought! Hero-worship belongs to every age of life. It is no more the property of the boy than wearing pants is. It is a part of life." John and Mary Ryder spent the rest of the evening dissecting the text-book on Israel's heroes and discussing what was best for James Ryder; whether it was fair to teach any boy that God inspired men to do wrong that good might come, and whether a wrong ethical twist in the plastic period might not do irreparable damage, or whether boys would draw sensible and right conclusions after all. John Ryder and his wife went to bed that night realizing that the short hour that children spend at Sunday-school was far greater in its influence than they had surmised. Was not this rather hard-boiled business man doing a bit of sound reasoning? Should we not rightfully protest against confining hero-worship to one brief period of a boy's life? Is a young man of twenty any less a hero-worshipper than his younger brother of eight? All of us are hero-worshippers. And the rotogravure section of the Sunday supplement brings photographic reproductions of the present-day heroes and heroines-explorers, chemists, sailors, labor-leaders, miners, engineers, physicians, scientists, orators -a study in brown of an amazing array of those who have achieved something distinctive. Next week we shall have another crowd. There is no end to the supply. It is perennially flowing-this stream of human accomplishment of a high order. Amundsen, Ellsworth, Byrd, Rogers Hornsby, Gertrude Ederle, Tyrus Cobb; Fosdick, Darrow; Mussolini, Baldwin; Einstein, Millikan, Edison; Fordbut why pile up the names? No there is no age-limit for this human phenomenon. It is truly the spur of effort. Hero-worship is the solace to the struggling will for expression. It is the spirit that keeps society from somnolence and inertia. Ryder had stumbled upon a very vital problem. He was striking out, half-blindly, in defense of his boy. He was unable to analyze it all clearly, knowing that tradition and custom were set against him and half-hoping that, after all, James would come out with enough discrimination to distinguish the good from the bad. But he was not sure of it. Herein is found the crux of all Biblical instruction of youth. Let us face the question fairly and frankly. How and when shall we teach the legendary and mythical tales of the Old Testament? The random conclusion is that they shall be taught at the age when the boys and girls are learning about Hercules and Mer cury, Atlas, Vulcan, and Odin. But we have completely overlooked one vital difference between the "hero-tales" of the Old Testament and the stories of classic mythology. The child approaches the Bible with a subconscious feeling that whatever comes from the "Sacred Book" is divine truth and his immature mind throws a certain mystical sanctity about it. The Sunday-school teacher supplies the necessary emotional appeal to make the tragedy complete. Consequently, to the average child the tales of Greece and Rome are legends, the folk-lore of the Old Testament is religious truth. The experience of the youth of Edgar Lee Masters is not unlike that of many American boys, not only in the past but in this glorious present. "Such being the nature of my mind, I looked upon the tales of wonder in the Bible as I did on the myths of Greece, but with the difference that while I saw beauty and significance in the myths I saw mostly brutality and absurdity in the tales, and that valuation was sharpened by the fact that tales are thrust upon youths as divine utterances.” * Herein lies the source of a colossal outrage perpetrated year after year-the superstitious reverence for anything and everything contained in Holy Scriptures. The Sunday-school teacher often lacks ethical discrimination and is, perhaps, completely ignorant of the results of historical criticism and the evolution of religious ideas. Facing this dilemma the teacher resorts to equivocation and subterfuge or finds himself violating the traditions that linger in the stuffy atmosphere of the Sunday-school room. When the teacher is confronted with a lesson from Kings, for example, that bears not the remotest relation to social conditions of to-day, possibly reeking with unseemly, primitive practices, he will have a tendency to employ a familiar but inexcusable method. He will seize upon some one sentence that seems to contain a lurking suggestion of truth, twist it from its context and with pietistic language make a practical accommodation of it. This, supposedly, redeems the chapter. The text has become a pretext. But this method, practised every Sunday by misguided teachers, is a palpable imposition "In Search of a Better Religion," McNaught's Monthly, June, 1926. if not a direct insult to the intelligence of the pupil. It is a fair shot that of the 17,510,830 boys and girls enrolled in American Sunday-schools a goodly share receive this kind of Scriptural instruction every week. Now let us return to Jimmie. Mr. and Mrs. Ryder decide to let Jimmie continue with his class. Jack Martin was red-blooded, sane, and, withal, a boylover. Surely Jimmie would not go far astray under such tutelage. But, alas, Jack Martin found this galaxy of heroes a motley crowd. He had a desperate time finding virtues worthy of emulation. Jimmie had been taught in the kindergarten that "God is love." The kindergarten age is beautiful. Then, too, the teachings of Jesus were fascinating. But on the very first Sunday with the new text-book they had the story of the Flood. Jimmie shuddered (just a little shudder, for it was so long ago and it seemed a little unreal), when Martin described how God had sent the flood and wiped out all the people on the earth, saving only eight people. He couldn't reconcile, in his small mind, this story with Jesus saying that "we should love our enemies." He asked his mother: "If God is love how could he get so angry as to want to kill the people he had made?" Dick Ballentine was one year older than Jimmie. He asked Mr. Martin if Noah didn't get drunk when he was six hundred years old. Dick said his father said so. Dick's father was called an agnostic. Mr. Martin said laughingly "he did, but that was long before prohibition." But Jimmie was considerably upset. His hero had tumbled from his pedestal. It was funny that God should choose Noah as his special pet when he knew he would get drunk. That night Jimmie lay awake, thinking about it and trying to straighten it out in his young mind. He told his mother next morning that he "dreamed of the ark floating about on a sea of red wine, that Noah was drunk and all the animals were drunk too, and that the giraffe and the zebra did a Charleston on the upper deck of the ark and the monkeys and baboons made up the orchestra." Leaving Freud aside, have we fully evaluated the dreams of our children? There were three lessons about Abraham. Jimmie liked these stories about the long trek out of Ur of the Chaldees, and Mr. Martin told them so many things about the caravans and the moon-gods and how courageous Abraham had been to cut loose and follow the voice of God. In reality Martin did a dexterous piece of elimination and omitted the chapter readings which he had been assigning for home-study. We defend Martin. One needs only to read these tales to appreciate their unfitness in teaching them to boys. Abraham is a mercenary, selfaggrandizing sheik who puts into the mouth of God words conveniently suited to his super-ego. Though the Canaanites occupy the country God says to him: "I give this land to your descendants." This man Abraham did not hesitate to practise deception. His ethical code did not scruple to expose his wife to the peril of being seduced if thereby he could save his own skin. Here is the way he put it up to Sarah: "Come, I know you are a handsomelooking woman; when the Egyptians see you they will say: "This is his wife' and they will kill me, and let you live. Do say that you are my sister, that I may be kindly treated for your sake and that my life may be spared on your account."* Again, later, Abraham tries the "sisteract on Abimelek-the King of Gerar. When Abimelek discovers the deception, Abraham falls back upon a clever, legal equivocation saying: "She is my sister, really. A daughter of my father but not of my mother."* (Marrying half-sisters was permissible.) Abraham practised the barbaric necromancy of that period. On one occasion he cut into pieces a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-yearold ram, and placed a turtle-dove and a young pigeon beside the pieces of fresh meat. After the sheik had fallen into a trance beside this gruesome covenant the desired effect was produced. The fire and flaming torch passed between the pieces and he heard the Eternal say to him that all the land was his, with the inhabitants thereof, Kenites, Hittites, Jebusites, and all the rest of the -ites. Martin considered long whether he would tell this story. The boys had heard of negro voodooism and knew the magic of the words "eerie, orie, ickory, ann." But here was a piece * Doctor Moffatt's translation. |