The Foundation of Education

Time never outdates the Bible; it is always modern because it is the very basis for education. Germany’s great writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, talked about education and the Bible. Goethe, one of the most eminent in all world literature, said: “I am convinced that the Bible becomes even more beautiful the more one understands it. Let culture and science go on advancing, and the mind progress as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it glistens and shines forth in the Gospels. It is to the intrinsic value that the Bible owes the extraordinary veneration in which it is held by so many nations and generations. It is not only a popular book, it is the book of the people. The greater the intellectual progress of ages, the more fully possible will it also become to employ the Bible both as the foundation and as the instrument of education—of that education by which not pedants but truly wise men are formed.”—The Supremacy of the Bible, p. xxviii.