Jón Bjarnason Academy - 01.05.1935, Page 12

I am convinced—and that is, that one of the finest things any
young person can have, as a foundation in preparing for life
work in any sphere, is education received in a Christian insti-
tution. I should therefore like to speak to you of “Christian
Education and Modern Life”—
Christian education is the most desperate need of the world
today! The Chicago American recently presented a very illum-
inating symposium on crime, its cause and cure. A Judge,
a police official, an indictment expert, a doctor and a student
of criminology were the authors of the report. They all agreed
on one great fact,—“the underlying cause of crime and general
disrespect for laws and conventions, is the absense of religious
training of the youth,—and conversely the most potent force
for the cure of these ills, is a return to the teaching of religious
principles.” The late Thomas R. Marshall made this com-
plaint,—“The trouble with our modern education is that it has
too much materialistic science and not enough God hunting.”
According to statistics given out by the American Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Atheism, that organization has a
stupendous work afoot to undermine the spiritual life of this
rising generation. In a new catechism they have published
and which bears the title “The Church of Humanity”, they flatly
declare there is no God, no soul, and no life hereafter. They
claim to have organizations in more than 20 colleges and uni-
versities in the United States and Canada. The spirit of revolt
in modern youth, which has so alarmed many good Christian
parents, makes the work of such an organization much easier.
They have organized “A Junior Atheist League” for those rang-
ing in age from 10 to 17—and have groups with these unusual
names:—“God’s Black Sheep”, “The Damned Souls”, “The
Legion of the Damned”, and “The Hedonistic Host of Hell Bent
Heathens.”
The “Anti-Bible Society”, organized in New York City,
aims to discredit the Bible and to destroy Gideon Bibles in
hotels. In the year 1928 this organization spent $83,000.00 in
tracts and literature of an anti-Bible nature. The political
chaos of the world has also been a help to those endeavoring
to break down religion. In both the United States and Canada
the more radical Communist organizations, following the lead
of Russia, stress the denial of God as a necessary premise for
the realization of true Marxism.
Atheism is taught in many of our schools and no longer
shocks. Ingersoll in days gone by shocked the world with his
ridicule of the Bible, but today blashphemies no less terrible
couched in the language of science and philosophy are heard
by practically all young people in our universities and the shock
does not register. Subjects such as psychology, biology, anthro-
pology, and zoology are taught in an absolutely atheistic man-
ner in the great majority of cases. In many cases, however,
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