Part 14

College-trained men are the most practical and useful of men. They have been the creators of material wealth and prosperity. Their discoveries and inventions have revolutionized business and social life. Every department of life is teeming with the fruits of science and philosophy, which have been largely built up by colleges and college-trained men. Bacon, Newton and Locke were sons of the English universities. Watt and Fulton associated with college men, and "derived from them the principles of science which they applied in the development of the steam engine and steam navigation. Professor Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, was not only a college graduate and professor, but made his great experiments within the walls of a university." Likewise, many other scientists, who have demonstrated the limitless possibilities of steam and electricity, and other valuable discoveries and inventions, were either trained in the colleges or received from them the working principles which were essential to their success. These human inventions are of priceless value to the people. The steam engine has contributed greatly to human welfare. It represents, in the United States alone, 20,000,000 horse power in the form of locomotives, or the steam power of 300 horses for each thousand inhabitants. Besides all this, 6,000,000 horse power in stationary steam engines manufacture goods for us. They give the vast force which toils for us, and the laborer furnishes only the guiding power. These inventions have enabled us to increase our wealth at the rate of $2,000,000,000 a year during the last decade, and helped to make our people sharers in the products of the world, and in all the blessings of civilization.

Professor Huxley was right when he said: "If the nation could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at a cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt cheap at that money." Fifty-two of the inventions now prized by the civilized world were made in Germany, and within the influence of her universities. All these discoveries are opening the doors for more wonderful disclosures. All the great industries of the country require men of trained minds and directive intelligence to organize and control them, and the colleges are recognized agencies to help produce them.

Our literature is also largely the fruit of college labor and tastes. The colleges, as centers of intellectual life, have fostered literary tastes in those who have built up and enriched literature. Their libraries and lectures have gathered together men of literary aims and ambitions, so that the seat of the college has become the home of new and grand ideas, which at once encourage literature and science. This congenial intellectual atmosphere has incited many a young person to project noble literary plans.

The majority of great writers have spent years at the university. Lord Bacon outlined his gigantic plan for "the Instauration of the Sciences" during the four years spent in the University of Cambridge. Milton laid the foundations of his classical scholarship in the university. "Newton was matured in academic discipline, a fellow in Trinity College, Cambridge, and a professor of mathematics. He passed fifteen years of his life in the cloisters of a college, and solved the problems of the universe from the turret over Trinity gateway."

The literary influences of our colleges were early manifest in our nation. The scholarship, classical taste, and fine literary style of the superior men in public life led the Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords, in 1775, to pay "a tribute of eloquent homage to the intellectual force, the symmetry, and the decorum of the state papers recently transmitted from America, which was virtually an announcement that America had become an integral part of the civilized world, and a member of the republic of letters."

The colleges have nourished the conditions out of which a pure, classical literature may grow. Such men as Edward T. Channing, of Harvard, and Webster, Worcester and Goodrich, of Yale, have performed an inestimable service in preparing the way for our mother tongue to be spoken in its purity.

In the line of history, the American colleges have given the nation such men as Bancroft, Parkman, Palfrey, Prescott, Motley, Winthrop and Adams. In the sciences, there are Dana, Gray, Cooke, Walker, Porter, Woolsey and Agassiz. In law and political science, we have Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Evarts, Webster, Chase, Choate, Everett and Sumner. These men have been the true architects of the state. The pulpit is represented by such men as Mather, Edwards, Dwight, Storrs, Warren, Beecher, Talmage, Cook, Thomson and Brooks.

Literary genius has been displayed by men like Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Holmes, Hawthorne, Mitchell, Holland, Emerson and a host of lights scarcely less brilliant. These men, who have written in a terse and graphic style, received their stimulus and training in college, and are among the bright examples of classical scholarship, and the results of their genius have enriched character and enlightened the world.

The periodical literature reflects the prevailing ideas, sentiments and spirit of the American people. The college-trained men have been especially quick to utilize this throne of power to guide the public mind to right principles and inspiring motives. The colleges must continue to be fountains whence shall flow a pure, earnest, and truthful literature, which will, in a great measure, determine the destiny of the present and future generations.

We are especially indebted to the colleges for the maintenance of the ascendency of the moral and religious principles which have done so much in unfolding and shaping our national life. The religious sentiment has been the controlling spirit of the nation, and our patriotism has issued from a meditative and religious temper, which the colleges have been foremost in fostering. Nearly all the great religious and reformatory movements have proceeded from the colleges and universities, whereby great good has come to society. "It was through the interchange of students between the Universities of Oxford and Prague that the teachings of Wycliff passed over into Bohemia and issued in the splendid work of Huss. It was from college students of Florence that Colet, and Erasmus, and More caught somewhat of the spirit of Savonarola, and felt the power of truths that emerged in the Italian Renaissance, and made them contribute so grandly to religious liberty in England. It was in the presence of the college students of Germany that Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the doors, and burned the papal bull, and lit the watch-fire of the Reformation that has awaked an answering brightness from ten thousand hills. It was from a little circle of Oxford students that God led forth Wesley and Whitfield to shake the mighty pillars of unbelief in the eighteenth century."

President William F. Warren says: "By means of the great religious movement called Puritanism, the English University of Cambridge shaped, for nearly two hundred years, the intellectual and spiritual life of New England. Emmanuel College, the one in which John Harvard, Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, and many of the early New England leaders were educated, was founded for the express purpose of providing a nursery for the propagation of Puritan principles. Never were the hopes of founders more fruitfully fulfilled. The New World, then just opening, furnished a field of unimagined extent, with motives and social forces and ranges of opportunity which even yet are a marvel. By founding a new England beyond the sea, and planting a new Emmanuel College in a new Cambridge, English Puritanism was enabled to transcend itself, to exchange the attitude of a struggling ecclesiastical party for that of an Established Church. It gained the opportunity to originate a new social order, and to impress itself upon a new age, built upon new and democratic principles. The initial and fundamental covenant out of which grew the chief of all New England colonies--that of Massachusetts Bay--was formulated and signed in ancient Cambridge. In fact, in American Puritanism, with its social, civil, and religious results, may be seen the high-water mark of the intellectual and spiritual influence which, in the whole course of history, have thus far proceeded from the banks of the Cam." The church, in harmony with the genius of Christianity, has always fostered education. It assumes to guard Christianity by directing education as one of its most powerful of organized forces.

The existence and support of colleges are largely due to the Christian Church. They are the offspring of a dominant desire to promote the cause of Christ, and make them powerful agencies for a positive and aggressive Christianity. In the middle ages the pious princes, Charlemagne and Alfred, established schools for the elevation of the clergy. Oxford, Cambridge and Glasgow Universities were established and fostered by the church to educate more fully the clergy. The founders of Harvard College thus described their motive: "Dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our ministers shall lie in the dust." Yale College was founded by preachers for a like purpose. Princeton College was founded "to supply the church with learned and able preachers of the Word." The fact is that prior to the eighteenth century there was no university founded save those established for the glory of God and the good of the church.

The chosen mottoes of the colleges indicate the spirit of the founders. That of Oxford is, "The Lord is My Light;" Harvard, "Christ and the Church;" Yale, "Light and Truth." Eighty-three per cent. of the colleges in our land were founded by Christian philanthropy, and are under denominational control. The spirit of infidelity does not lead men to make the sacrifices to found colleges. Perhaps there is not more than one in our nation.

The majority of colleges are positively religious. According to Dr. Dorchester, even Harvard, the oldest college in the United States, that wishes to be understood as non-denominational, has been, for more than half a century, "under the direction of a Board of Fellows, all of whom have been Unitarians, except one elected within a few years; and, besides, the theological school of Harvard College is usually mentioned in the Unitarian Year Book as a Unitarian institution." Leland Stanford University is one of the youngest and richest of our American colleges. The regulations declare it to be the duty of the trustees "to prohibit sectarian instruction, but to have taught the immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise and benevolent Creator, and that obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man."

Both of these colleges, reported as "non-sectarian," generously provide buildings and pastors for religious services and lectures. Dr. Dorchester believes that one-third of the State universities are under the presidency of evangelical divines. He further states that "in 1830 the students in the denominational colleges were 76.6 per cent. of the whole; in 1884, they were 79.2 per cent."

All the foregoing facts show the strong and enduring progress of Christianity in the United States; that it is "identified with the highest educational culture of the age; that the denominational institutions are incalculably leading in number and students all the undenominational colleges, and that the great principles and blessed experiences of Christianity are voluntarily and intelligently adopted by a far larger proportion of college students than ever before."

The colleges have upheld the vital truths of the gospel by expounding the scriptures, and setting forth their ethical and religious teaching. They recognize that the divine order in saving men is through the inward working of the truth and spirit of God in their souls. Since knowledge is essential to salvation, it is a duty to enlighten men and bring them to understand the divine plan of salvation. The Bible has been communicated to us in foreign languages, and requires prolonged study and extensive knowledge in order that these oracles of God may be known and accepted among men.

The colleges have given a higher efficiency to the Christian ministry. There are those who have obtained their training and knowledge outside of the college who have accomplished great good. There are pious and devoted men who are illiterate, but whose Christian work has been attended with more apparent results than some college-trained ministers. These, however, are the exception. The rule is that those who combine with their piety scholarly acquisitions exert by far the greatest influence for good. The history of Christianity shows how God has raised up a multitude of scholarly men to uphold the supremacy of the gospel over all its foes. Paul, Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Knox, Cranmer, Wesley and Fletcher were all college-trained men. These men, with others, endowed with mental vigor, great learning and executive force, have been used by God to accomplish His great task of building up His kingdom on earth.

The church has learned that there is no need of antagonism between knowledge and spirituality. Knowledge and intellectual training may work evil in an undevout mind, but when consecrated to the service of Christ, learning becomes the handmaid of piety. The strength and power of the Christian Church of to-day are attributable in no small degree to the Christian colleges, that have not only encouraged mental training, but have fostered refinement and humble evangelical piety. The union of scholarly training and a holy life has raised the ministry in the public estimation so that it commands more respect and influence for good than ever before. The cause of Christ never took such hold on the popular mind, and its influence never penetrated so deeply the foundations of our social organism as it does in our day.

It is farthest from our aim to exalt and magnify the knowledge that "puffeth up," or unduly to glorify the human faculties, but we do plead that the widest opportunity be offered our youth to enlarge their knowledge, and strengthen and train their mental powers, and make the most of themselves, and that they may be consecrated to the Master's service. Men and women thus trained in our Christian colleges, and eminent alike for learning and piety, will more and more esteem the divine revelations, and through them help to hasten the establishment of the Kingdom of righteousness on the earth.

The Students' Volunteer Movement began in 1876. It aims to awaken a deeper interest in foreign missions among college students, and to enlist their services. Within a brief period, more than 4,000 students consecrated their lives to this heroic Christian work. Already, since the movement began, 600 young men and women have entered the mission field, and thousands of others are waiting on a hesitating church to furnish the means to send them to work in foreign lands. Well did Ex-President McCosh say that the Christian Church had not witnessed such a spirit of consecration since the day of Pentecost.

The colleges have done another valuable service in awakening and strengthening in the national life a deeper sense of the value and importance of human knowledge. They are monuments of the dignity and worth of ideas, and the aspirations of the human soul.

In a new country, with its marvelous possibilities, the danger has been in having an excessive and exaggerated estimate of our national advantages, and our civilization has tended to take on a too mechanical and material character. We need to have more time to cultivate the nobler nature, and, by Christian and scholarly associations and more intimate friendships, discover and prize the fineness and sweetness of character in others, which may enrich our own life and incite us to worthy action. It is the province of higher education to help foster those conditions of mind and heart whose flexibility and natural aptitudes lead the individual "to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming." Such wisdom and goodness are of the highest practical utility in the life of a nation. The colleges have helped to offset the material tendency of our civilization by holding up high ideals and emphasizing the supremacy of the unseen mental, moral, and spiritual forces in our life. Through their leadership in the schools, and through the press, platform and pulpit, they have introduced into the fomenting mind of the republic the noblest ideals and the most generous incentives, which have, in a large measure, transformed public sentiment for the better. We have, at least, learned one great lesson in our history: that if we would have peace, contentment, happiness and prosperity, we must give the people a Christian education, and put all we can into character.

The college receives students from all ranks and conditions of society, and holds open to them its great opportunities, and worthily trains them to go forth into those professions and higher walks of life where their generous character and refreshing influences may be of larger service to the whole community. In the language of President Thwing, it may be said that "it is to the people that the college and university desire to give more than they receive from the people. It is not unjust to say that the people are debtors. The community has given to Yale, and to Princeton, and to Harvard, much, but Yale, and Princeton, and Harvard have given to the community more. For the college and the university are set to hold up the worth of things to the mind, and these things are the worthiest. In an age democratic and material, they are to represent the monarchy of the immaterial. In an age of luxuriousness, they are to declare the words of Him, homeless and pillowless, who said: 'A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he hath.' They stand for the continuity of the best life, intellectual, ethical, religious, Christian. In the realm of thought, they stand for the value of ideas; in the realm of morals, for the value of ideals; in the realm of being, like the church, for the value of character."

Next to the home, the college has been the ruling spirit in private and public life. The colleges have rigorously upheld the principles of piety, justice and sacred regard for truth as the best foundation of social order. The true wealth and power of the nation are the great and good men produced by the colleges whose example and influence have been to promote intelligence and good order in society.

We look over our vast territory, with its multiplied resources and growing population, and rejoice in our material possibilities and social privileges. But what is better and grander than all these, is the fact that more than 300 Christian colleges are scattered over our land as beacon lights in our national life, building up Christian character as the best legacy for present and future generations. Some of the colleges are yet weak and struggling, but they glory in their aspirations and prospects of future grandeur. The great fabric of our national life is radiant with the golden threads of good influences emanating from these centers of superior intelligence and instruction, where time is given for careful thought and reflection on the great problems of life.

Education by the Christian college is essential to the largest growth and progress of the state, the church, and all humanitarian movements. "The progress grows more rapid," says William T. Harris, "as the Christian spirit which leavens our civilizations sends forward, one after another, its legions into the field; for great inventions, as well as great moral reforms, proceed from Christianity."

No one can afford to be indifferent to the power and influence for good of the Christian college. These are immeasurable. The Christian Church and all the friends of human progress and welfare must, more and more, emphasize the lesson that, if we educate in our colleges the leading minds of the nation, we will be able so to control the prevailing habits and modes of thought throughout the country as to secure the permanency and glory of Christian liberty and religious institutions.