BAKER ON GREATER ATTENTION TO THE SCIENCES. 121 



scriptures; we need also ministers of the recent writings concerning man's 

 complex relations to his fellowmen. In order to fit ns for right living, 

 in all our various re-lations, the training must not stop with the stimula- 

 tion of the emotions toward right conduct; it must extend to the settle- 

 ment of questions of what actions are right, and what actions are wrong. 

 In order to be most useful to humanity, the training should extend still 

 further, and show kIhj certain actions are wrong and why certain 

 actions are right: We ought to have science, and also philosophy. To 

 my mind such training is religious training; and it ought to be entered 

 upon by the churches. This knowledge, of good and evil, of right and 

 wrong, is needed with reference to man's proper relations to, and actions 

 toward every class of jtersons, male and female, rich and poor, healthy 

 or sick, maimed or defective, capitalistic classes and laboring classes^ 

 and under all ordinary combinations of circumstances. 



The labor question^ the questions of trusts, of taxation, of inter-state 

 and international trade and commerce, of the spreading of devastating 

 plague, intiuenza and fevers; these are all questions of right conduct of 

 individuals and of })eoples, to make possible right action in relation to 

 which every per.sou who intluences their control sht)uld have the guidance 

 of science, that is to say, of exact knowledge systematicall}' organized. 



How easy it would be to give the inhabitants of this world, or at least 

 to all Christendom, a powerful impetus in the direction I have indicated! 

 Much of the machinery is already planned and prepared. Think of the 

 immense educational value of the present Sunday school system, if only 

 its teachings could be extended so as to include the latest and best 

 revelations of the divine laws which govern the universe! 



There is no religious or other training which so broadens and deepens 

 our conceptions of the infinite Creator as do the studies of the sciences, 

 which convey exact knowledge of the exceedingly numerous, wonderful 

 facts found in every direction which scientific research follows, through- 

 out the universe, material and intellectual. 



The Sunday school work has been less useful than the pulpit preach- 

 ing, for stimulating and propagating emotions toward right actions; al- 

 though its system of work has been wonderfully evolved, its teaching is 

 still primitive. It lacks Cod's later revelations to man, as chronicled 

 by Sir Isaac Newton, by Faraday, Helmholtz, Darwin, Tyndall and other 

 earnest and successful seekers after the eternal truths. 



Unless there can be a modification of the Sunday school literature, so 

 as to utilize the best work in all the sciences (and this may be a very 

 difficult undertaking) I hope you will join with me in pleading for a copy- 

 ing of the methods of the Sunday school literature and the adoption 

 of Sunday school methods, to the end that it shall be possible to teach, 

 at least Sunday afternoons, interesting and valuable practical results 

 of the work of leading scientists in every branch of exact knowledge. 



Why should not religious training, why should not the church regain 

 the position of the writers of the bible, who set out to give rational 

 views of man's relations 1o man, to God, and to all his creations, from 

 the beginning, as given in the first chapter of (Jenesis? 



Why not reconstruct our conceptions of the creation, according to the 

 latest revelations? 



Why not listen to the teachings of leaders of thought, and construct 

 16 



