A.A. Hodge On The Public School System

The prevalent superstition that men can be educated for good citizenship or for any other use under heaven without religion is as unscientific and unphilosophical as it is irreligious. It deliberately leaves out of view the most essential and controlling elements of human character: that man is constitutionally as religious (i. e. loyally or disloyally) as he is rational; that morals are impossible when dissociated from the religious basis out of which they grow; that, as a matter of fact, human liberty and stable republican institutions, and every practically successful scheme of universal education in all past history, have originated in the active ministries of the Christian religion, and in these alone. This miserable superstition rests upon no facts of experience, and, on the contrary, is maintained on purely theoretical grounds in opposition to all the lessons which the past history of our race furnishes on the subject.

It is no answer to say that the deficiency of the national system of education in this regard will be adequately supplied by the activities of the Christian churches. No court would admit in excuse for the diffusion of poison the plea that the poisoner knew of another agent actively employed in diffusing an antidote. Moreover, the churches, divided and without national recognition, would be able very inadequately to counteract the deadly evil done by the public schools of the State with all the resources and prestige of the government. But, more than all, Atheism taught in the school cannot be counteracted by Theism taught in the Church. Theism and Atheism cannot coalesce to make anything. All truth in all spheres is organically one and vitally inseparable. It is impossible for different agencies independently to discuss and inculcate the religious and the purely naturalistic sides of truth respectively. They cannot be separated; in some degree they must recognize each other and be taught together, as they are experienced in their natural relations.

I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.

VI. The allegiance we owe is not to a doctrine, but to a Person, the God-man, our mediatorial King. We are bound to obey the Bible in all our actions and relations as citizens as well as church-members, because it is the law he has promulgated as the rule of our action, and because he is our supreme Lord and Master. The foundation of his authority is not our election, but the facts that he is absolutely perfect and worthy of absolute trust and obedience, and that he has created us, continues to uphold us in being, supplies us with all that makes existence desirable, and that he redeemed us from the wrath of God by his blood. His authority therefore does not depend upon our faith or our profession. It binds the atheist and the debauchee as much as the believer or the saint. No man can plead immunity because he is an unbeliever. Nor can we who are believers be excused from the consistent ordering of our whole lives according to his revealed will because the majority of our fellow-citizens disagree with us. Let others do as they will; as for us and for our houses, we will serve the Lord.*

 *Hodge, A. A. (1887). Popular lectures on theological themes. (282–284). Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication.