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Why Benjamin Rush Wanted The Bible Taught In Classrooms · The American Soul: America's Christian Heritage

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 11 verse 18 through 21.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land of the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American of America's Christian Heritage Podcast.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I hope y'all are doing well, wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, sure do appreciate you giving me a little bit of your time.
• 0:55
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• 0:59
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• 1:08
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• 1:16
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• 1:27
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• 1:29
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• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for today.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for you, Father, and your son Jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit.
• 1:39
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• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive us when we go astray, Father.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive us when we choose our own path.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive us our stubborn hard hearts.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive us when we put other things before you, when we refuse to follow the commands of your Son Jesus Christ, when we don't love you with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: When we don't love our neighbors as ourselves.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive us our cowardice and our unbelief.
• 2:16
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• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Be with those listening to the podcast, Father, please.
• 2:23
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• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Comfort those who have anxiety, fears, depression, suicidal thoughts, who are alone, who feel abandoned, who are abused, who feel weak and helpless, the widow and the orphan, the poor and the needy, help us to care for all of them.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Comfort these people listening, Father, help them to feel your presence, your joy, your peace, to know that we can trust you with our souls to bring us all the way home to you.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what a great joy and a great hope that is, Father, because of your Son Jesus Christ.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Be with our leaders in the pulpit and in the state, please help them to lead and rule in fear of you.
• 3:30
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• 3:34
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• 3:38
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• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Our pastors and our priests, please, Father.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Keep their families safe and bring us all home to you in your timing.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: In your son's name we pray.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I talked about this uh briefly on the American Soul podcast, or I will soon, but uh Florida has passed a law.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: They passed it a couple years ago, Senate Bill 1264.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in it, it requires instruction on communism, the history, the consequences, atrocities of communism.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: It includes communism here in the United States and in Latin America, uh, as well as around the rest of the world, communist revolutions, the atrocities again by communist regimes such as Mao and China, uh, the cultural revolution there, and the persecutions and mass killings, which you'd have to keep going to today because it's still going on there.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: But you can go back and look at the Soviet Union.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um you see the tie there immediately with socialism, right?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's really just what's in the name?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Socialism, communism, Nazism, fascism.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're all just different shades of the same evil, and they all go hand in hand with the same with the evil of Islam.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a great deal in Florida that we're starting to teach that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: We we should be teaching constantly throughout the year, each year, about the atrocities of Muslims, in addition to that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we we ought to put God and Jesus Christ and the Bible back in the center of public education.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I know there's some people out there that are immediately gonna go with, well, uh what about the atrocities of the Christians?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you really ought to teach that because it shows when people who claim to be Christians aren't following Christ, and you ought to particularly show which denominations in particular perpetrated, perpetrated those atrocities.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that that would definitely get some people riled up in the United States.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they wouldn't like that too much.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a great thing.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought I would go back and read through uh Benjamin Rush, one of our preeminent founders.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote in 1798, he put together a collection of some of his writings and republished them in uh a work titled Essays Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, right, by Benjamin Rush.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to read from the essay, A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a school book, addressed to the Reverend Jeremy Belknapp of Boston.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we've gone over this piece on the American Soul podcast a number of times, but kind of in pieces.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um I just thought it'd be easier here to kind of put it all together.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's important today because we've taken the Bible out, and it it ought to be the center of our education.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Dear sir, it is now several months since I promised to give you my reasons for preferring the Bible as a school book to all other compositions.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I shall not trouble you with an apology for my delaying so long to comply with my promise, but shall proceed immediately to the subject of my letter.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Before I state my arguments in favor of teaching children to read by means of the Bible, I shall assume the five following propositions.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: One that Christianity is the only true and perfect religion, and that in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts, they will be wise and happy.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: two, that a better knowledge of this religion is to be acquired by reading the Bible than in any other way.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Three that the Bible contains more knowledge necessary to man in his present state than any other book in the world.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Four that knowledge is most durable and religious instruction most useful when imparted in early life.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And five, that the Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: My arguments in favor of the use of the Bible as a school book are founded one in the constitution of the human mind.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: The memory of the first faculty which opens in the minds of children.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Of how much consequence then must it be to impress it with the great truths of Christianity, before it is preoccupied with less interesting subjects, as all the liquors which are poured into a cup generally taste of that which fruit filled it, so all the knowledge which is added to that which is treasured up in the memory from the Bible, generally receives an agreeable and useful tincature from it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: 2.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: There is a peculiar aptitude in the minds of children for religious knowledge.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I have constantly found them in the first five or seven years of their lives, more inquisitive upon religious subjects than upon any others.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And an ingenious instructor of youth has informed me that he has found young children more capable of receiving just ideas upon the most difficult tenets of religion than upon the most simple branches of human knowledge.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: It would be strange if it were otherwise, for God creates all his means to suit all his ends.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: There must, of course, be a I don't know fitness between the human mind and the truths which are essential to its happiness.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Three.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I grant that many men have rejected the prejudices derived from the Bible, but I believe no man ever did so without having been made wiser or better by the early operation of these prejudices upon his mind.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Every just principle that is to be found in the writings of Voltaire is borrowed from the Bible, and the morality of the deus, which has been so much admired and praised, is, I believe, in most cases, the effect of habits produced by early instruction in the principles of Christianity.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: We are subject by a general law in our natures to what is called habit.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the study of the scriptures, if the studies of the scriptures be necessary to our happiness at any time of our lives, the sooner we begin to read them, the more we shall be attached to them, for it is peculiar to all the acts of habit to become early, strong, and agreeable by repetition.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: 5.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is a law in our nature that we remember longest the knowledge we acquire by the greatest number of our senses.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now a knowledge of the contents of the Bible is acquired in school by the aid of the eyes and the ears.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: For children, after getting their lessons, always say them to their masters in an audible voice.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, there is a presumption that this knowledge will be retained much longer than if it had been acquired in any other way.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: 6.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: The interesting events and characters recorded and described in the Old and New Testaments are accommodated above all others to seize upon all the faculties of the minds of children.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: The understanding, the memory, the imagination, the passions, and the moral powers are all occasionally addressed by the various incidents which are contained in those divine books, insomuch that not to be delighted with them is to be devoid of every principle of pleasure that exists in a sound mind.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: There is a native love of truth in the human mind.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Lord Shafterberry says that truth is so congenial to our minds that we love even the shadow of it.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Horace, in his rules for composing an epic poem, establishes the same law in our natures by advising the fictitious in poetry to resemble truth.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now the Bible contains more truths than any other book in the world.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So true is the testimony that it bears of God in his works of creation, providence, and redemption, that it is called truth itself by way of preeminence above things that are only simply true.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: How forcibly are we struck with the evidences of truth in the history of the Jews, above what we discover in the history of other nations?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we find a hero or a historian record his record his own faults or vices except in the Old Testament?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, my friend, from some accounts which I have read of the American Revolution, I begin to grow skeptical to all history except to that which is contained in the Bible.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if this book be known to contain nothing but what is materially true, the mind will naturally acquire a love for it from this circumstance.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And from this affection for the truths of the Bible, it will acquire a discernment of truth in other books and a preference of it in all their transactions of life.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: 8.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: There is a wonderful property in the memory which enables it in old age to recover the knowledge it had acquired in early life, after it had been apparently forgotten for forty or fifty years.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Of how much consequence then must it be to fill the mind with that species of knowledge in childhood and youth which, when recalled in the decline of life, will support the foul the soul under the infirmities of age and smooth the avenues of approaching death.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is the only book which is capable of affording this support to old age, and it is for this reason that we find it resorted to with so much diligence and pleasure by such old people as have read it in early life.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I can recollect many instances of this kind in persons who discovered no attachment to the Bible in the meridian of their lives, who have notwithstanding spent the evening of them in reading no other book.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: The late Sir John Pringle, physician to the Queen of Great Britain, after passing a long life in camps and at court, closed it by studying the scriptures.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So anxious was he to increase his knowledge in them that he wrote to Dr.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Michaelis, a learned professor of divinity in Germany, for an explanation of a difficult text of Scripture a short time before his death.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: My second argument in favor of the use of the Bible in schools is founded upon an implied command of God, and upon the practice of several of the wisest nations of the world.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: In the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy we find the following words, which are directly to my purpose.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: It appears, moreover, from the history of the Jews that they flourished as a nation in proportion as they honored and read the books of Moses, which contained a written revelation of the will of God to the children of men.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: The law was not only neglected but lost during the general profligacy of manners which accompanied the long and wicked reign of Manasseh.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the discovery of it in the rubbish of the temple by Josiah and its subsequent general use were followed by a return of national virtue and prosperity.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: We read further of the wonderful effects which the reading of the law by Ezra after his return from captivity in Babylon had upon the Jews.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: They hung upon his lips with tears and showed the sincerity of their repentance by their general reformation.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: The learning of the Jews for many years consisted in nothing but a knowledge of the scriptures.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: These were the textbooks of all the instruction that was given in the schools of their prophets.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was by means of this general knowledge of their law that those Jews that wandered from Judea into our countries carried with them and propagated certain ideas of the true God among all the civilized nations upon the face of the earth.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was from the attachment they retained to the Old Testament that they procured a translation of it into the Greek language after they lost the Hebrew term by their long absence from their native country.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: The utility of this translation, commonly called the Ho Septungent, Septungent, I know I should know that, folks, but I don't, in facilitating the progress of the gospel, is well known to all who are acquainted with the history of the first age of the Christian church.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the benefits of an early and general acquaintance with the Bible were not confined only to the Jewish nations.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: They have appeared in many countries in Europe since the Reformation.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: The industry and habits of order, which distinguished many of the German nations, are derived from their early instruction in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: The moral and enlightened character of the inhabitants of Scotland and of the New England states appears to be derived from the same cause.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: If we descend from nation, nations to sects, we shall find them wise and prosperous in proportion as they become early acquainted with the scriptures.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is still used as a school book among the Quakers.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: The morality of this sect of Christians is universally acknowledged.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Nor is this all.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Their prudence in the management of their private affairs is as much a mark of their society as their sober manners.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I wish to be excluded for repeating here that if the Bible did not convey a single direction for the attainment of future happiness, it should be read in our schools in preference to all other books from its containing the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public temporal happiness.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: We err not only in human affairs, but in religion likewise, only because we do not know the scriptures.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: The opposite systems of the numerous sects of Christians arise chiefly from their being more instructed in catechisms, creeds, and confessions of faith than in the scriptures.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Immense truths, I believe, are concealed in them.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: The time, I have no doubt, will come when posterity will view and pity our ignorance of these truths, as much as we do the ignorance of the disciples of our Savior.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Who knew nothing of the meaning of those plain passages in the Old Testament, which were daily fulfilling before their eyes?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever that time shall arrive, those truths which have escaped our notice, or, if discovered, have been thought to be opposed to each other, or to be inconvenient.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: It inconsistent with themselves, will then, like the stones of Solomon's temple, be found so exactly to accord with each other that they shall be cemented without notice or force into one simple and sublime system of religion.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: But further, we err not only in religion but in philosophy likewise, because we do not know or believe the scriptures.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: The sciences have been compared to a circle of which religion composes a part.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: To understand any one of them perfectly, it is necessary to have some knowledge of them all.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Bacon, Boyle, and Newton included the scriptures in the inquiries to which their universal geniuses disposed them, and their philosophy was aided by their knowledge in them.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: A striking agreement has been lately discovered between the history of certain events recorded in the Bible and some of the operations and productions of nature, particularly those which are related in Whitehurst's observations on the Deluge, in Smith's account of the origin of the variety of color in the human species, and in Bruce's travels.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: It remains yet to be shown how many other events related in the Bible accord with some late important discoveries in the principles of medicine.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: The events and the principles alluded to mutually establish the truth of each other.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: From the discoveries of the Christian philosophers whose names have been last mentioned, I have been led to question whether most harm has been done to revelation by those divines who have unduly multiplied the objects of faith, or by those deists who have unduly multiplied the objects of reason in explaining the scriptures.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: I shall now proceed to answer some of the objections which have been made to the use of the Bible as a school book.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we're about halfway through this essay of Benjamin Rush's that he, this collection, this particular essay from his collection from 1798.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think we'll come back on the next podcast and finish up the other half of it.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see how I put that together.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: But at any rate, uh some great stuff here, folks.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you go back and listen to it, if you can ignore my voice and really just focus on the content, uh he makes some wonderful arguments about why we should have the Bible as a primary text in our schools, which we so desperately need today.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: So hope you at least got a little bit out of it.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you enjoyed it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of things like this that we need to go back into more.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why why don't we teach this?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of our preeminent founding fathers.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why isn't this part of our history in English classes?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: At least in schools, at some point in 12 years of public school.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Give us this daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: God bless y'all.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: God bless your families, your marriages if you're married, your children if you have them, your nation, wherever you are around the world listening.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: God bless America.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk to y'all again real soon, real soon, folks.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to it.