Mount Penn Lower Alsace Joint High School - Penn Alma Yearbook (Reading, PA)

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therefore, say that one goes to school to develop right habits of thinking and right habits of acting. This is what we should be doing in our schools, and every year of study should more and more fix these habits and produce a character having the ability to grasp every situation, the faculty to discern and distinguish facts from unrealities and the power to solve the complex problems of life. Now, in most cases in our schools we are studying about the physical and material universe and about the life of man as he has lived it physically upon this earth. However, we must not forget in studying about the universe that it is God’s universe, and that men are and always have been His children. It was Alexander Pope, I believe, who said: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul.” In studying the various branches of the ordinary curriculum, we are studying about God’s body. Evidently a complete education requires that we know something about the soul of the universe, something about God Himself. After all, that is the final purpose of all study. We are all seekers after God. We all seek to know Him; and to know God requires something more than a scientific method. That requires a revelation. Science will develop right habits of thinking, but we need something more in order that we may develop right habits of living as God wants His children to live. We need a way of life as well as a method of thinking. That way of life is revealed to us in Jesus Christ. “I am the way,” He says. Jesus Christ shows us what God wants us to do. Science teaches us how to grasp every situation; Jesus shows us how to act in every situation with fidelity and loyalty to the will of the Father. Science may teach us how to discern realities; Jesus shows us how to be true to those realities. Science helps us to solve the problems of life. It is the Master of men who teaches us patience under all our difficulties and shows us how to help one another to solve these problems in the spirit of brotherhood, justice and love. Science furnishes a method of study; Jesus is the One who shows us the way of life. He is the Way, the Way to salvation, the Way to the Father. Let us next consider that phase of the school life which is concerned with facts. Of this perhaps little needs to be said, although the search for facts comprises the major portion of the active work of the school. In schools and colleges and in the greater school of life we all are busy seeking for truth. I have heard the late Nathan C. Schaeffer say that over the entrance of every institution of learning should be written in large letters the word TRUTH. The modern man refuses to give attention to unfounded speculation. It is only after he has resorted to every available source of knowledge without success that he is willing to accept a tentative hypothesis. He wants facts. He wants truth, pure, unadulterated truth. The same thing is true of religion, yes, most emphatically true. In seeking after God we want to know the truth and only truth. Some people are afraid of truth. They fear that truth will destroy their Bible. They are afraid that truth may take away their God; and I suppose truth will wipe out their half-tyrannical, half-heathenish God; but truth can only make shine to effulgence the glory and the majesty of the God and Father as revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ not only shows us the way to God. He shows us God Himself. Let the historian turn his searchlight upon the Bible. Let the scientist test everything written within the two covers. They can never destroy God’s Page Fifteen

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Baccalaureate Sermon By Rev. Frederick A. Sterner, Trinity Reformed Church, Mt. Penn Sunday Morning, May 13, 1923 Scripture—St. John 14:1-17. Text—St. John 14:6: Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” This world in which we live is an immense training-school. It is God’s great school house. He has decorated it with the sculptured rocks of the hills and moun tains and w ith the trees and fields. He beautifies its walls with the finest works of art. The songs of thousands of different kinds of birds and the voices of little children fill it with music. We are the students and the great Master Teacher is our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. The trials and the vicissitudes of life are the disciplinary agencies He uses to develop in us the Christly character that which must be the ultimate aim of every true educational system. Here He prepares us for life eternal just as every school prepares its students for this earthly life. Lverywhere and all around us He teaches us the facts of the universe. The stars and the planets of the sky teach us mathematics; the whole face of the earth is His laboratory; the rocks make for us His history book. God teaches us; He disciplines; He develops and He trains us, preparing us for that great life which He offers to all who ask and seek and believe. As in the public school, the work of God’s school resolves itself into three phases, namely, that of method, of fact and of result. In our modern schools and colleges the method is scientific and historical. Knowledge is organized and classified and due regard is given to origins and sources and the consequent development. This is practically true of every branch of study that you find on the curriculum. There was a time when speculation was accepted without much experimenting being done, but today even speculation must conform minutely with knowm facts and be subjected to the methods of scientific testing. Yes, in theology also we have come to use the methods of science and the unchangeable facts of history. Unfortunately, there still are men who spin out cobwebs of speculative thought at their firesides, thus complicating eternal truth and disturbing the faith of those who have only partly comprehended the great verities of God’s universe. However, those who go into God’s great laboratory of life and there through actual experiment follow the. method of the scientist learn how to extricate themselves from the medley of conflicting beliefs that so violently disturb many people today. For, after all, that is one of the great purposes of going to school. A person goes to school not primarily to become a walking encyclopedia, but to learn how to think and how, in this busy age, to pick out that which is vital, necessary and real. The difference between men who accomplish much and men w ho accomplish little is not so much a piatter of quantity of knowlege as it is a matter of a scientific method of thinking, a matter of being able to organize, classify and use properly wdiatever knowl edge may be possessed. Most people’s knowledge, their thoughts and ways of expressing themselves remind you of a large pile of sticks scattered promiscuously about a place. If you want a certain sized stick, it is rather difficult to find just what you want; but if you take those sticks and sort them according to size and pile them neatly, putting each size by itself, finding what you w'ant becomes a comparatively easy thing. It is the same with your thinking, and no man can ever hope to cope with the intricate and manifold duties of life today unless he knows how to think methodically and organize his work in an ordinary way. We may. Page Fourteen

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word. The real spiritual values found in the Old Testament and the Truth, the God and Father of all men, as revealed through the historical Jesus of Nazareth, the historian and scientist cannot affect, but their findings strengthen our faith and make us more certain of all things. With this quarrel that exists between certain scientists and certain theologicans we can have no patience. Both should work hand in hand. Both are seeking truth. Both are finding God, even though their point of departure may have been diametrically opposite. The radical scientist must cease ridiculing established religion or he will drive thousands of pious souls to the point where they will be afraid of facts. The conservative theologian must cease to deride science or he will drive thousands of educated people from the doors of the Christian church. The scientist and the theologian should compliment each other, coming together at the feet of Jesus Christ. In Him the scientist finds moralized and in living form the law, the order and the unity which he studies all about him; in Jesus the theologian finds in the flesh Him of Whom the prophets were inspired and to Whom the souls of men have intuitively looked in faith and hope. Now, when we consider the result of education, we feel that we can sum it up best in the one word—life. The school prepares for life. Life here is a preparation for the greater life. By life, however, we do not mean a mere existence. It is a great deal more than that. Possibly, no one has ever surpassed St. John in defining life. “And this is life eternal,” he says, “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jcssu Christ whom thou hast sent.” To know Gad and Jesus Christ is, therefore, according to this definition, life; and this is what all who have wisdom seek and for which they strive. Different people are, of course, governed by different motives and ideals. Some of you have gone to school, thinking that your studies would some day in the future enable you to command a princely salary; some of you may be hoping that your education will help you to become great lawyers; some, great physicians; some, great statesmen. Yes, various dreams and air castles spur you on; but rest assured that whatever satisfaction wealth, or power, or position can give to you will only be temporary. It is well to be ambitious and strive to rise in this world, but we need more than that. We need life, knowledge of God, unity and oneness with Him, and that we find in Jesus Christ. He is the life, and through Him we attain that life without which all material success and achievement becomes empty and vain. And so we hold up before you Jesus, the Christ. We do not ask you to follow Him blindly just because we have told you to do so. Rather do we challenge you to make a great experiment. Use the method which the scientist has taught you. Try Jesus Christ. Put Him to test. Give His gospel a fair trial. Experiment with His teachings. Try Him and see for yourself what will be the result. We throw out this challenge because we are confident of the result. We know you will find Him the Way, leading you to the Father; the Truth, revealing Him to you; and the Lite, developing Him within you. Of course, you may try other ways if you will, but rest assured that “no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” There is not a single branch of study, not a single science, not one system of philosophy that does not have a limit. Jesus Christ alone goes beyond everything and takes you to the Father to show Him to you and to make you to grow more and more in His image. And that must be the final outcome of all education and the ultimate result of all study and experience. I’nfre Sixteen