Background

Horace Hall Cummings was born in Provo on June 12, 1858, and died in SLC on Aug 1, 1937. As a young adult, he worked as a printer's devil at Deseret News, quarried granite for the Salt Lake Temple, and working for Deseret Woolen Mills.

Eventually, he found his niche as an educator when he took a job teaching at Mill Creek. He quickly moved his way up the educator's ladder from teaching at local schools and seminaries, to teaching at the University of Utah, and finally being called to be the General Superintendent of the Church Schools.

Controversy at BYU

Toward the end of his life, Horace wrote an autobiography entitled, Gems From My Journal: Culled for My Children that was posthumously published in 1982. The following is chapter 26, "False Doctrines in Church Schools", which detailed the controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution at BYU from Horace Cummings' perspective. For an excellent overview perspective of the controversy, see Gary James Bergera's essay "The 1911 Evolution Controversy at BYU."

Chapter 26
False Doctrines In Church Schools

From the earliest days in Utah, many of the young men who went east to study lost their faith in the gospel. Their previous faithfulness and good character was no assurance against this result. This was so general that careful parents, though appreciating the education acquired, dreaded to send their sons to eastern colleges. This feeling, I was told, was why President John Taylor withheld his approval when the B.Y. College Board wished to send me east for three years to prepare me to be the president of that school in 1881.

Since one truth cannot antagonize another truth, the truths taught in science, history, and philosophy should not conflict with any of the principles of the gospel. And they will not when both are rightly understood.

So much has already been written to harmonize so-called "religion" and science, that I do not care to add here my views, other than to express some reasons that occur to me for this result upon so many of our young people.

1st - Absence from Church activities, instructions, and environment allows the religious ideals and beliefs to lie dormant, while all the other powers of the mind are greatly stimulated and grow, wonderfully fast. This causes an unbalanced development much to the disadvantage of the religious side. In such an unfavorable environment, religious notions and ideals of youth gradually pass with Santa Claus to the realm of myth.

2nd - Both science and philosophy reject all recognition of the miraculous, which is the cornerstone of religion. Since the textbooks, the teachers, and the college atmosphere all breathe this spirit, our boys gradually adopt it, too. Their minds are not sufficiently mature and trained to overthrow the age-old, cunningly devised, and carefully arranged arguments that they meet. Unable to successfully resist, they finally, though often unwillingly, yield and accept these errors.

3rd - History gives many instances where the strongest religious tenets of both Christian and pagan religions have been disproved by science. This gives great prestige to "science" as something to be absolutely relied upon, while religion is regarded as something made up of myths, having no solid foundation of reliability. Nor do they take our religion out of that class.

No one seems to counter with the fact that so called "science" has had more of its "principles" proved false by later experience than has "religion," so called. Not one principle taught by Christ has ever been disproved, but only man's notions. Dogmas of men have been disproved but not things revealed by God.

The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that God is governed by law as well as man, and all that He does is according to law. With Him there are no miracles. During the last half century, so many of God's laws have been revealed to and applied by man that our fathers knew nothing about, that we now perform hundreds of real "miracles", as they would call them. The passing of the Israelites through the Red Sea was no more of a miracle to King Pharaoh than it would have been for him to see a squadron of airships flying over it as we might do in our time. What will man not accomplish in another half century if he keeps on? And what cannot God do who knows all these laws of which we know so little? Is it sensible to doubt miracles? Moses seems to have overcome gravity in one way, modern man, in another. Because we do not understand how a thing is done, is that just grounds for disbelieving it?

4th - The growth of the theory of evolution, especially as applied to the origin of man, and the rapid spread of the cunning arguments of so-called "higher criticism," greatly increased the danger to our young people. But these things disturbed other churches before they reached us. They attack the fundamentals of all Christendom, and the controversy still rages.

But no serious complaints of these doctrines in our local schools occured until shortly after I was called to supervise the Church schools. It seems that a number of teachers who had been east and become converted to these doctrines were engaged to teach in the B. Y. University at Provo. Being among the strongest and best educated men in the faculty, and sufficiently numerous to form a coterie having the same views, they were not easily turned from their errors. On the contrary, they converted many other teachers, and most of the students, to their views.

Complaints soon began to come to me against these teachings. I visited the school and explained to the faculty and student body the complaints that were coming to me from patrons of the school and stake presidencies and begged them to keep to themselves such views if they believed them. That school was established to teach the gospel of Christ and not to destroy faith in it.

Time passed, the teachers became bolder and bolder, and the complaints became louder and louder. Teachers in other Church schools began to follow their example, and the situation became quite alarming to me. Several times I took up the matter with the presidency of the school and the teachers concerned, but they seemed to think no harm was being done. More than a dozen stake presidencies visited me and complained about the false doctrines eminating from the BYU. They threatened to boycott the school.

At last I determined to carry the responsibility no longer and laid the matter before the General Board of Education. I mentioned in detail some of their objectionable doctrines, and the nature and source of the complaints received, and told how that spirit was spreading among the other schools.

Members of the General Board were thunderstruck. They could not believe such doctrines could be taught there. They instructed me to go to Provo and make a thorough investigation of conditions there, and bring them a written report of my findings.

Accordingly, I spent about nine days in this school, visiting classes, talking with teachers and students, and in the evenings I visited some of the parents to see what they thought of the situation. I tried to get at the real condition and to present it in an unbiased way. I included nothing in the report that I did not see and hear myself, so there was no hearsay evidence in it.

The report was quite lengthy and is written in full in my journal, but I will give only a brief summary of some of its leading bad features:

1. The Bible is treated as a collection of myths, dramas, folk-lore, etc. and contains some inspiration. Its miracles are mostly fables or accounts of natural events recorded by simple people who injected the miraculous element into them, as most ignorant people do when things, strange to them, occur, e.g.:
1. The flood was only a local inundation of unusual extent.
2. The confusion of tongues came about by the scattering of the descendants of Noah when they became too numerous for the valley they originally occupied. Having no written language, their speech soon changed, each tribe's in a different way. There was no sudden or miraculous change in their language.
3. The wind blew the waters back, making a bare ridge across the Red Sea, so that the Israelites crossed it.
4. Christ's temptation is only an allegory of what takes place in each of our souls. There is no personal devil to tempt us.
5. John the Revelator was not translated. He died in the year 96.


2. The theory of evolution is treated as a demonstrated law, and their application of it to gospel truths gives rise to many curious and conflicting explanations of scripture. Its relations to the fall, the atonement, and the resurrection, are, perhaps, the most important and damaging to the faith of the students. It does away with the fall, and therefore, with the Redeemer from the fall, as well as the resurrection.


3. Philosophical theories are often carried to a ridiculous extent, and destroy faith, e.g.:
1. Sin is the violation of a law resulting in pain. Righteousness is pursuing a course that brings happiness. No intelligent being would sin if he knew the full consequences. Hence, sin is ignorance, education or knowledge is salvation. Sinners should be pitied and enlightened and not blamed and punished. The criminal code and courts should be abolished and all prisoners released and put into schools. Gospel ordinances have no value except as props to weak mortals. Education is the only essential thing.
2. We should never agree. God never made two things alike. Only by taking different views of a thing can its true nature be known.
3. All truths change as we change. Nothing is fixed or reliable. As we grow or change our attitude toward any truth, that truth also changes.
4. Memory gems are immoral, since fixing the words fixes the thought and prevents growth. One teacher thanked God that he could not repeat one of the Articles of Faith, and another took his children out of the Primary Association because they were taught to memorize scripture.


4. Visions and revelations are mental suggestions. The objective reality of the visit of the Father and Son to Joseph Smith was most strenuously denied. To get the real truth of any vision or revelation, ancient or modern, the mental and physical condition of the prophet receiving it must be known. After eliminating the personal equation, the remainder may be regarded as inspiration or divine.


5. Religion, like science, must be expressed in terms of KNOWLEDGE. FAITH was regarded with pity as superstition and is not characteristic of the intellectually trained.

The general attitude was not to accept anything pertaining to religion that could not be demonstrated in the laboratory. But not so with their explanations against religious beliefs. They did not question the explanation of the landslide as the cause for the waters of the Jordan stopping for the children of Israel to cross, but President A. H. Lund who has travelled through Palestine said there are no hills or ground steep enough in the Jordan Valley to permit a landslide. They likewise took for granted that a ridge, reaching almost to the surface of the Red Sea crosses that body of water where the Israelites crossed, and any strong wind from the right direction would uncover it so anybody could cross it on foot. In thus accepting things that were so contrary to all their former training and belief, many of both teachers and students confessed to me that the change they underwent was most painful indeed — they could neither eat nor sleep at first. I suggested that getting new light, especially on the gospel, was always a joy to me. But they compared it to the pain a child feels at first to learn that there is no Santa Claus, but afterwards learns that real parents are much better. Their new light now made them much more happy and satisfied than they were before.

Teachers urged the students not to let their parents or the authorities at home know what a change was taking place in their faith as they could not understand it and would blame the school. Likewise, they said if they were to be investigated, they wanted men of similar education to theirs, since none others could understand their views and judge them rightly. The Apostles were good men, but utterly unfit to judge them.

As the object of my visit became understood, the friendly, respectful spirit heretofore always shown me changed to one of opposition and fault finding. They said I wanted to destroy the "academic liberty" of some of their best teachers, and would kill the school. Theological work had never been so interesting and well patronized. The "new thought" was making a new school for the B.Y.U.

Realizing that the whole matter would be examined and decided on its merits, I avoided needless antagonisms and only replied that the school was maintained for the express purpose of instilling into the minds of the students faith in the gospel, and that the leaders of the Church had a right to determine what those principles are.

By the time my report was ready to present to Brother Brimhall, the President was united with me and thought I had handled the matter very gently. My report was considered in detail by the General Board of Education, who then referred it to a committee of six of the Apostles with President Brimhall and me associated.

The three leading teachers in this matter, Joseph and Henry Peterson and Frank Chamberlain appeared before that committee for a full day and admitted teaching everything I had charged in my report. It was decided that, since they would not promise to refrain from such objectionable teachings in the future, "their services be dispensed with." The other teachers promised to conform to the instructions of the School Board in that matter and were retained.

To illustrate the evils that grew out of those doctrines, one student said to me, "O, my! I could make my dear mother cry in a minute by telling her of the change that has come in my faith here."

Students ceased to pray, and the teachers did not pay their tithing as before. One or two left off their garments and denounced their faith. I heard of one father who came to the school in a rage and told of the loss of his son's faith and the change in his life that this caused. He had gone completely to the bad, and the father cursed the day he had let his son come to that school.

I copy the following from my journal:

"As the train passed through Provo, Dr. Taylor, a son of President John Taylor got aboard. He was a special teacher in the B.Y. University. I asked him if any of the teachers had resigned since I left home. (A number had threatened to resign if any were removed, and I rather wished a few of them would). He replied,

"None have resigned, and it would be a great calamity if they should."

In the conversation which followed he asked me if I believed the miracles of the Bible, and was greatly surprised to find that I did.

"Do you, with your knowledge of science, believe the story of Jonah and the whale?"

"There is nothing in that story more opposed to science," I replied, "than there is in the story of the death and resurrection of the Redeemer, of which he declared it was a type. I can believe one just as well as I can the other."

"So can I," he replied. "Both are fables."

"Well, I am surprised at you," said I, "and right here is where you and I differ absolutely. I not only believe that Christ was crucified, buried, and after three days raised from the dead, but also I believe that he appeared to the Nephites on this continent as described in the Book of Mormon. I believe all that the Bible and Book of Mormon say on this matter to be true literally - that those events took place actually as described."

He looked upon me in pity if not derision. This illustrates the attitude of the professors in the BYU against whom I made the complaint.

The spirit of "higher criticism" or modernistic philosophy, so prevalent among other denominations and in institutions of higher learning, had crept into the BYU so gradually that the presidency of the school scarcely recognized it and were loath to admit the damage being done.

But when President Brimhall, in doing block teaching, came upon BYU students who frankly told him they had quit praying as they had learned in the school that there is no real God to hear them, he began to worry. He had a dream also which threw light on the situation. As I remember, it was somewhat as follows:

He saw several of the BYU professors standing around a peculiar machine on the campus. When one of them touched a spring, a baited fish hook attached to a long, thin wire rose rapidly into the air. He marveled at this "fishing in the air" and wondered what could be caught in that way.

Casting his eyes around the sky, he discovered a flock of snowwhite birds circling among the clouds and desporting themselves in the sky, seemingly very happy. Presently one of them, seeing the bait on the hook, darted toward it and grabbed it. Instantly one of the professors on the ground touched a spring in the machine, and the bird was rapidly hauled down to the earth.

On reaching the ground, the bird proved to be a BYU student, clad in an ancient Greek costume, and was directed to join a group of other students who had been brought down in a similar manner. Brother Brimhall walked over to them, and noticing that all of them looked very sad, discouraged, and downcast, he asked them:

"Why, students, what on earth makes you so sad and down-hearted?"

"Alas, we can never fly again!" they replied with a sigh and a sad shake of the head.

Their Greek philosophy had tied them to the earth. They could believe only what they could demonstrate in the laboratory. Their prayers could go no higher than the ceiling. They could see no heaven, no hereafter.

These experiences seemed to awaken in President Brimhall a realization of what was going on in the school, and he gave me the most enthusiastic support thereafter in setting things right.

Long and intense study of the highly intellectual theories of ancient philosophers often give our students a too-exalted view of their abilities and value. One of the leading teachers of Greek philosophy in our state University gave his class this question to debate: "Resolved, that Socrates brought more new truth to mankind than did Jesus Christ," and he seemed to think that the two individuals ware about equal.

As wonderful and skillful as were those old theories, neither pagan nor so-called Christian philosophy ever prepared a people to meet God. For centuries Egypt was the seat of learning for the ancient Greeks and Remans, but its philosophy made it impossible for Moses to get the Israelites fit to see God. Enoch, after 300 years of hard work, succeeded wonderfully.

This generation must be prepared to meet Christ who will reign on the earth for 1,000 years, and we have not got 300 years to prepare them. God will "cut his work short in righteousness," and with the aid of wonderful modern inventions will spread truth over the earth, and perform the great work quicker than ever before; but I feel sure that pagan philosophy will not contribute to the desired end like revelation from God. The unadulterated, inspired truth, if not so handsomely dressed nor skillfully presented, will accomplish results far better than the theories of men.