Machen's early education

Like many heroes of the faith J. Gresham Machen owed much to the godly training of a Christian mother. Machen's mother Mary (pictured at left) saw the value of catechesis and memorization at an early age. Shannon and I have been reading together through Starr Meade's excellent book Training Hearts Teaching Minds: Family Devotions based on the Shorter Catechism. We're doing this first to train ourselves, and second to prepare for using it with Samuel when he gets older. We might even try this.

In Baltimore I attended a good private school. It was purely secular; and in it I learned nothing about the Bible or the great things of our Christian faith. But I did not need to learn about those things in any school; for I learned them from my mother at home. That was the best school of all; and in it, without any merit of my own, I will venture to say that I had acquired a better knowledge of the contents of the Bible at twelve years of age than is possessed by many theological students of the present day. The Shorter Catechism was not omitted. I repeated it perfectly, questions and answers, at a very tender age; and the divine revelation of which it is so glorious a summary was stored up in my mind and heart. When a man has once come into sympathetic contact with that noble tradition of the Reformed Faith, he will never readily be satisfied with a mere "Fundamentalism" that seeks in some hasty modern statement a greatest common measure between men of different creeds. Rather will he strive always to stand in the great central current of the Church's life that has come down to us through Augustine and Calvin to the standards of the Reformed Faith.

My mother did more for me than impart a knowledge of the Bible and of the Faith of our Church. She also helped me in my doubts.

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity in Conflict

To be continued...