1873 
 Copy 
 
 1 
 
 — ■ " - '•=■■ --^ ^ 1 
 
 
 '.A-IDIDI^EISSES 
 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE 
 
 
 IN AUGU RATION 
 
 
 Mm. Charles Henry Fowler^. 3.^ 
 
 
 AS 
 
 President of the Northwestern University, 
 
 
 CTTJIsr-Fl 26, 1873. 
 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 H. R. McCabb & Co.. Peinters, .57 Washinrton St. 
 
 1874. 
 
.A. ID ID :R.E S S E S 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE 
 
 INAUGURATION 
 
 ]R:>e¥, Chmies Heerj Fowler, 33, 
 
 AS 
 
 Preside/]/! of the I\Ioi^thwester/\i U/\i/vers/ty, 
 
 CrXJnSTE 26, 1873. 
 
 ■a Hi 
 A 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 R. R. McCabis &, Co., Printers, 37 Wasuin&ton iSx. 
 
 1874. 
 
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 6 
 
 (^.^ 
 
 1 
 
 lOBTfflWESTEKS IJlIVBBSIfT, 
 
 CHARTERED JAN. 38, 1851. 
 
 PRESIDENTS 
 
 Kev. C. T. HINMAN, D.D., 
 
 Rev. R. S. FOSTER, D.D., LL.D., . 
 
 Rev. E. O. HAVEN, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 Rev. C. H. FOWLER, D.D., . . . , 
 
 iW BXCHANrfr 
 K. Hostel 1 by 
 
 Elected June 33, 1853. 
 
 " 25, 1856. 
 
 '• 23, 1869. 
 
 Oct. 33, 1873. 
 
* CONTENTS 
 
 I. Tkustees, 4 
 
 II. Statement, 5 
 
 III. Presentation Address, on Behat^f op the Board of 
 
 Trustees, by Robert F. Queal, Esq., (5 
 
 IV. Charoe, on Behalf of the Church, by Rev. Edmund G. 
 
 Andrews', one op the Bishops op the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church, ^> 
 
 V. Inaugural Address, by Rev. C. H. Fowler, D. D., President 
 
 op the Northwestern University, 15 
 
TRUSTEES 
 
 FIRST BOARD. 
 
 RICHARD HANEY, 
 PHILO JUDiSON, 
 S. P. KBYBS, 
 A. E. PHELPS. 
 HENRY SUMMERS, 
 ELIHU SPRINGER. 
 DAVID BROOKS, 
 ELMORE YOCITM. 
 H. W. REED, 
 I. I. STEWART, 
 D. N. SMITH, 
 GEORGE M. TEAS. 
 
 Rock River. 
 
 Wisconsin. 
 
 Iowa. 
 
 A. G. SHERMAN, 
 GRANT GOODRICH, 
 ANDREW J. BROWN. 
 JOHN EVANS, 
 ORRINGTON LUNT, 
 J. K. BOTSPORD, 
 JOSEPH KETTLE STRINGS. 
 GEORGE F. F08»ER, 
 ERI REYNOLDS, 
 JOHN M. ARNOLD, 
 ABSOLOM FUNK, 
 E. B. KINGSLEY. 
 
 ('hieago. 
 
 PRESENT 
 
 W. H. BYFORD, M.D., Chicago. 
 
 WIRT DEXTER, 
 
 Hon. GEORGE F. FOSTER, " 
 
 Hon. HARVEY B. HURD, Evanston. 
 
 WILLIAM H. LUNT, 
 
 SAMUEL Mccarty. Aurora. 
 
 Rev. PHILO JUDSON, Evanston. 
 
 Hon. JOHN W. SPENCER, Rock Island. 
 
 ALBRO E. BISHOP, Cliicago. 
 
 JAMES G. HAMILTON, 
 ORRINGTON LUNT, 
 ROBERT F. QUEAL, 
 ABNER R. SCRANTON, 
 WILLIAM WHEELER, 
 
 KLEGTED BY 
 
 Rev. N. H. AXTBLL, A.M., Rock River. 
 
 Rev. H. L. martin. Rock River. 
 
 Rbv. ZADOK hall. Central 111. 
 
 Rev. WM. M. hunter, Central 111. 
 
 Rev R. SAPP, Michigan. 
 
 BOARD. 
 
 JABEZ K. BOTSPORD, Chicago. 
 Hon. JOHN EVANS, M.D., Denver, Col. 
 LUTHER L.GRBENLEAF, Evanston. 
 Rev. RICHARD HANEY, Monmouth. 
 T. W. HARVEY, Chicago. 
 
 THOS. C. HOAG, Evanston. 
 
 D. D. L. McCULLOCH, Kankakee. 
 Rev. WM. P. STEWART, ; Chicago. 
 
 Hon. JAS. B. BRAD WELL. Chicago. 
 
 CHARLES BUSBY, 
 
 GEORGE C. COOK, 
 
 Hon. JOHN V. FARWELL, 
 
 Hon. grant GOODRICH, 
 
 E. O. HAVEN, D.d'., LL.D., New York. 
 J. R. LEMON, Freeport. 
 
 Rev. ANDREW J. ELDRED, Michigan. 
 
 CONFERENCES. 
 
 Rev. a. EDWARDS, D.D., 
 
 Rev. W. W. WASHBURN, 
 
 Rev. S. T. COOPER, 
 
 Rev. AARON WOOD, DD., 
 
 Bishop E. R. AMES, D.D., 
 
 Rev. R. D. ROBINSON, 
 
 OFFICERS OF THE BOARD. 
 
 JOHN EVANS, President. 
 
 JAMES 6. HAMILTON, Vice-President. 
 
 THOMAS C. HOAG, 
 WILLIAM H. LUNT, 
 
 Detroit. 
 Detroit. • 
 N. W. Ind. 
 N. W. Ind. 
 North Ind. 
 North Ind. 
 
 Treasurer. 
 Secretary. 
 
 JOHN EVANS, 
 JAMBS G. HAMILTON, 
 J4.BEZ K. BOTSFORD, 
 
 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 
 
 ORRINGTON LUNT. 
 ROBERT F. QUEAL, 
 GEORGE C. COOK, 
 
 THOMAS C. HOAG, 
 ERASTUS O. HAVEN. 
 WILLIAM H. LUNT. 
 
STATEMENT. 
 
 At a meeting of the Board ofTrustees of the Northwestern University, 
 held Oct. 23, 1873, pursuant to a special call, President E. O. Haven, 
 having been elected Secretary of the Educational Society of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, tendered his resignation as President of the North- 
 western University, and it was accepted. Rev. Charles H. Fowler, D. D., 
 was unanimously elected President of the University. The Executive 
 Committee was instructed to arrange for the inauguration, in case of Dr. 
 Fowler's acceptance. In consultation with the President and Faculty, 
 the inauguration services were ordained to transpire on the 26th day of 
 June, 1873, at 10 o'clock a. m., in the University grove, between University 
 Hall and the lake. In the absence of the President of the Board, Hon. 
 Gov. John Evans, the Board, in session June 24, 1873, appointed Robert 
 F. Queal, Esq., to preside on the occasion and make the presentation 
 address. At the time and place appointed, in the presence of the Governor 
 of the State of Illinois, Hon. John L. Beveridge, and of the Board of 
 Trustees, and of the Faculties of the University, and of visiting clergymen. 
 Dr. Fowler was formally inducted into the office of President of the 
 Northwestern University, in the service as follows : 
 
 Music by the Band. 
 
 Prayer, By Eev. L. Hitchcock, D. D. 
 
 Music. Singing-. 
 
 Presentation Address and Transfer of the Keys of the Uni- 
 versity, By Robert F. Queal. 
 
 Music by the Band. 
 
 Address-Charge, . . | %^^^- ^^~^^- Andrews one of the 
 ' l Bishops of the M. E. Church. 
 
 Music. Singing, 
 
 Inaugural Address, - By President Fowler. 
 
 Benediction, By Rev. H. Bannister, D. D. 
 
Presentation ^^ddress 
 
 On Behalf of the Board of Trustees 
 BIT I^^OBEI^T IP. Q^TJEJ^Xj, ESQ;. 
 
 Tlie Board of Trustees of the Northwestern University, in the 
 presence of its faculties, students and friends, have met to inau- 
 gurate and formally invest with the dignity and responsibilities 
 of the place, their unanimous choice for President of this 
 Institution. 
 
 The day is one of marked interest to us, and, doubtless, will 
 be memorable in the history of the institution. Twenty years 
 ago' the foundations of the institution were laid by a band of 
 noble, self-forgetting, far-seeing men, to whom, in connection 
 with education here, all after time will be a debtor. 
 
 From small beginnings, by sagacity in accumulating, by 
 frugality and patient husbandry of resources, by a wise blending 
 of progress and caution, aided from time to time by generous 
 o-ifts, there has been ^gathered here, under control of and belong- 
 ing to the University, for educational uses, in buildings, grounds, 
 miiseums, libraries, apparatus, endowed professorships, pro- 
 ductive and unproductive property, an aggregate value of one 
 and one-half million of dollars. Including the appliances and 
 property of the Garrett Biblical Institute — a separate institu- 
 tion for theological training, but closely allied in some depart- 
 ments of its educational work with the University, — an estate in 
 value of tw^o million • dollars is held here in trust for higher 
 educational uses. 
 
 No day of its past has seemed so auspicious for this institution 
 as this. 
 
 It has an efficient and largely attended Preparatory or Academ- 
 
ical department ; a College of Literature and Science, thoroughly 
 organized and ably manned ; a Medical department in the Chi- 
 cago Medical College, with an able faculty and many years of 
 honorable history. Through the influence and efforts prominently 
 of its recently elected President, a College of Technology for the 
 teaching of the applied sciences, has just been ordained by the 
 trustees, and arrangements have been substantially completed 
 for a Law department conjointly with the Chicago University, the 
 school to be located in Chicago. And responding to its own 
 broad and generous impulses, and to the growing sentiment of 
 the age, several years since it opened its college classes to women 
 on the same terms as to men, and it has now attached to itself 
 the Evanston College for Ladies, which is henceforth to be " The 
 Woman's College of the Northwestern UniA^ersity," and it has 
 placed in its own governing board and in its faculty of instruc- 
 tion women with the same prerogatives as men. 
 
 Thus established, endowed and organized, bold in its provisions 
 for the broadest culture, inflexible in its adherence to Christian 
 learning, its pl-omise of usefulness seemed never so great, an 
 assured and beneficent future never so certain. May we not 
 restrain our impatience "and pause for a moment before we 
 advance to the pleasant duty and entertainment of the hour, to 
 refer to those who have in this high office preceded him who 
 honors us and whom we honor this day with a formal investiture 
 of the dignity of the Presidency of this Institution. 
 
 In the flush and beauty of a generous, richly endowed man- 
 hood, by overwork before his prime, the University's first Presi- 
 dent — the sanguine, silver-tongued, saintly Clark T. Hinman — 
 fell in the work to which he had dedicated his life. His suc- 
 cessor, Randolph S. Foster, blending all sweetness and gentleness 
 of spirit with a mind of keen, incisive, controversial, crushing 
 power — with winning, wonderful pulpit gifts, now serves the 
 church through her wide fields in episcopal supervision. 
 
 His successor, Henry S. Noyes, though never elected to the 
 Presidency, was for many years the executive officer of the 
 faculty, as well as industriously devoted to the material interests 
 of the University. With a noble presence, with rich intellectual 
 and manly endowments, with a love for the University that knew 
 no abatement, living or dying, he has passed from his labors to 
 the rewards of the faithful beyond our sight. 
 
8 
 
 Other members of the Board of Instruction still holding 
 honored and useful relations thereto, have, at different times, 
 acted with efficiency as executive officers of the faculty. 
 
 The recently retiring President, Erastus O. Haven, with well 
 rounded, fine equipoise of character, came to us crowned with 
 success as preacher, editor and educator, giving to us his ripe 
 experience and judicious management, and has now been placed 
 by church authority in charge of her general interests of 
 education. 
 
 Without haste, without hesitation, there is one now before us 
 ready to formally receive the Presidential authority held so ably 
 by others before him. 
 
 A young man of thirty-five ; but one whose whole public life 
 has been before our own eyes ; one with regal intellectual gifts 
 improved by severe mental discipline, and with great power of 
 physical endurance ; one who for more than ten years has been 
 an earnest, laborious, successful Christian minister, with pulpit 
 power known and recognized throughout the land ; one whose 
 defense of the public schools and unflinching advocacy of social 
 and moral reforms have left a deep impression on the public 
 thought and conscience ; one who at -twenty-seven pronounced 
 an eulogy upon the martyred president — the most illustrious name 
 of this century, — with an analysis of character so accurate and 
 complete, with such fitting words, as to be declared by Justice 
 Porter, of the New York Court of Appeals Bench, worthy a per- 
 manent place in our national annals and literature ; one who now 
 for nearly a year has with marked success discharged the duties 
 he is to formally assume to-day. The name you all know — Charles 
 H. Fowler. 
 
 The pleasure and duty alone remain, on behalf of the trustees, 
 to hand to him, as I do, these keys, as symbols of the dignity, 
 responsibility and authority of the President of the Northwestern 
 University, with which jbe is now declared invested. 
 
Charge 
 
 ON BEHALF OF THE CHURCH 
 
 BY I\EV. EDy^UND G. ANDi\EWS, 
 
 One of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
 He to whom it would naturally have fallen to speak on behalf 
 of the church a word of welcome to this newly-inaugurated 
 President, is at this hour, as we suppose, sailing on the Pacific. 
 By the West he seeks the East. He will soon, so please it God, 
 be in the presence of the great Oriental civilizations, and become 
 familiar with educational systems, which though comparatively 
 narrow in range, and mechanical in method, are nevertheless of 
 venerable antiquity and of great power. But he will look on no 
 scene like the present. He will join no body of religious people 
 who, out of loyalty to their invisible Head, gather to mark and 
 assist the progress of a great University, founded by the liberality 
 of faith, and consecrated to the pursuits of all knowledge under 
 the auspices of religion. Nowhere but in Christendom will he 
 find religion originating and guiding great systems of popular 
 instruction, and crowning them with the college and the 
 university. 
 
 I. 
 
 Let no one wonder that the Christian Church has been and is 
 the foster-mother of education, the chief patron of the highest 
 culture. It could not be otherwise, and yet be true to itself. 
 
 In so far as education improves man's outward condition, 
 stimulates his practical faculties, makes him master of the secrets 
 and forces of nature, multiplies his resources, improves and 
 
10 
 
 delights his taste, and brings him into harmony with natural law, 
 Christianity, the great philanthropy, must approve and assist it. 
 Even so the Divine Lord, journeying to the Atoning Cross, 
 turned aside to touch blind eyes, to heal diseases, to console 
 sorrow, to increase festal joy. Because the Earth and all that it 
 contains are the Lord's, and because man is by that Lord set to 
 know, subdue and appropriate this wonderful creation, and 
 therein find, in part, his well-being, the church rejoices in the 
 increase of useful knowledge, and the invigoration of the prac- 
 tical faculties. It deems it not beneath the aim of the faith to 
 encourage the study of all nature — of the soils and rocks which 
 yield food and mineral treasures; of the atmosphere on whose 
 condition physical health and the delights of vision depend; of 
 the laws of vegetable and animal life; of mechanical and chemical 
 forces which may be subsidized to grind in man's mills, or drive 
 his chariots, or convey his thoughts; of astronomical truth; of 
 history, language, social and economic law; and, in fine, of all 
 science and literature, as gratifying a laudable curiosity, affording 
 practical guidance, purifying the taste, and elevating the thoughts 
 of mankind above coarse and brutal pleasures. 
 
 But man himself is more important than his surroundings and 
 accessories. He is the image of God. He may know God and 
 be in conscious harmony with Him. His faculties, now infantile 
 and weak, are destined to unlimited growth and range. Immeas- 
 urable good or evil is before him. What outset in life such a 
 being shall have is a question to which Christianity cannot be 
 indiiferent. Itself has alone revealed the value of man — child of 
 God, heir of eternity;^ and it cannot fail to commit all its intelli- 
 gent disciples to such educational labors as will give to this 
 embryo immortal the most hopeful beginning of his endless 
 career. Its own immediate work is indeed with the moral 
 nature — with conscience, faith, and love; but it would have 
 these give law to intellectual faculties of the utmost vigor and 
 sweep. It seeks, primarily, goodness, but it would have good- 
 ness sway to God-like ends, the highest forces of which man is 
 capable. Its ideal of character is not innocence, but positive 
 and efficient benevolence. It does not admit the maxim of a 
 perverted church: ."Ignorance is the mother of Devotion." On 
 the contrary, it instinctively asks for light, the spread of knowl- 
 edge, the discipline of faculty, as the condition of its own 
 
11 
 
 permanent acceptance among mankind, and of the proper display 
 of its own authority. It would not be king among pigmies. 
 
 And further, Christianity is commissioned to rule the world. 
 Not by force, by new political arrangements, by wealth or social 
 influences ; but by the truths the truth clearly discerned and 
 powerfully declared, defended and enforced. How shall this be 
 but by the aid of educated mind! Education, therefore, is the 
 indispensable auxiliary of Christianity. Not among the fisher- 
 men of Galilee, but in the schools of Tarsus and of Gamaliel was 
 trained \}[\& Great Apostle of the Gentiles, the Expounder of the 
 Faith, the Author of nearly one-half of the Apostolic books. 
 The Reformation was born in a German University, and was made 
 possible only by a preceding revival of letters. From Oxford 
 came the leading agents of the great revival of the eighteenth 
 century. In an American College began, for America, the 
 foreign missionary movement. These are but instances of the 
 instruments which Christianity elects for its chief conquests. It 
 summons to its aid all the resources of the schools. By History, 
 by Science, by Philosophy, by Criticism, with Logic, with 
 Rhetoric, with Eloquence and with Song must its truth be 
 asserted and established. It does not disdain but rather wel- 
 comes all helpers ; but the chief agents of its success are men 
 whose ample natural endowments have been trained and invigor- 
 ated in the schools. And hence, as for the reasons before men- 
 tioned, it might be expected that the church would demand and 
 create schools, and nurture them with loving, jealous care. 
 
 II. 
 
 "What might thus be expected of the church, it has not failed 
 to do. Its history has no brighter page than that which records 
 its sacrifices and success in this field. It rightly claims the honor 
 of first instituting schools for the children of the people. As 
 early as the third century, wherever the church was planted there 
 rose also the parochial school. Successive synods and councils 
 took them under its nurture, opened them freely to "all the children 
 of the faithful," and made them a charge on the Cathedral funds; 
 so that everywhere the public school was " the olispring and 
 companion of the church." 
 
 Luther urged on the Elector of Saxony and on the Municipal 
 Councils of Germany the duty of providing schools and skillful 
 
12 
 
 teachers for all the youth, in . order to secure both the safety of 
 the state and the promotion of true religion, and he advised that 
 the monastic funds be appropriated to this their original purpose. 
 In conjunction with Melancthon he devised the " Saxon School 
 System " and thus laid the foundation of that magnificent 
 organization which is now recognized as the glory and strength 
 of the German Empire. His work as a Reformer of Religion 
 went hand in hand with his labor for popular education. 
 
 In America the higher education is peculiarly the child of 
 Religion. The seal of Harvard University, the oldest in the 
 New World, bore the legend " Christo et Ecclesice " — to Christ 
 and the Church. Yale began in the gifts of a few Connecticut 
 clergymen, who, bringing each a few books from his library, said, 
 " I give these for the founding of a college." Nor has the 
 American Church in the lapse of years relinquished its purpose 
 in behalf of education. Very instructive are the statistics 
 furnished by the Commissioner of Education for the year 1871. 
 Of the three hundred and sixty-eight colleges enumerated in his 
 report, thirty only are known to be secular in their origin and 
 management, while two hundred and sixty-one are known to be 
 under the care of diiferent churches. 
 
 But it may be asked whether the time has not come that the 
 College and University, as well as the Common School, should 
 be remitted to the nurture of the state, or at least to simply 
 secular guidance. And this question is often asked with strong- 
 implications upon church schools as being of necessity narrow, 
 sworn to traditional error, and unfavorable to the truest culture. 
 Leaving the implication to be resisted by facts that all may 
 recall, we answer that Christian men will not be persuaded to 
 relinquish the trust received from their fathers. Uniting with 
 their fellow-citizens on the common secular school, they will con- 
 tinue to found, endow, and govern colleges and universities in 
 the interest of religion. 1. They will use the common school 
 even though simply secular, because its work may be supple- 
 mented by the home and the home-church, and thus the educa- 
 tion of the child be far from a "godless education," a thing 
 everywhere and always to be reprobated. But when they send 
 their youth from home for higher studies, then they will insist 
 that the college be neither hostile to Christianity nor neutral, but 
 eminently fitted in its constitution, its teachers and its teachings 
 
13 
 
 to develop a Christian manhood. 2. The studies of the uni- 
 versity, unlike those o£ the common school, lead directly to the 
 questions most vexed between Christianity on the one side and 
 unbelief on the other. These questions must rise in the class- 
 room when the laws of Physical Nature, Psychology, History, 
 and Ethics are discussed. And the Christian must be pardoned 
 if he insist that his son shall not seek answer to them under the 
 tuition of men who ignore the greatest of all facts and forces — a 
 personal God and a supernatural revelation, and in institutions 
 so little in harmony with Christian -aims that they would not b'e 
 out of place in a heathen city. 3. Moreover, to the college the 
 church must largely look for the preparation of its ministry. In 
 so far as it values learning and culture in its teachers and leaders, 
 it is pledged to the sustentation of schools from which these 
 shall come forth equipped for their great work. 
 
 III. 
 
 It is from such convictions, more or less clearly entertained, 
 that this noble University foundation has been laid. It is from 
 such convictions that this occasion of the inauguration of a new 
 President commands the eager interest of so large and dis- 
 tinguished an assemblage. We cannot be otherwise than deeply 
 interested in the result of this hour's work. Gathered on this 
 fair summer day in the presence of these noble structures, under 
 the shadow of these academic oaks, with the gentle murmur of 
 this inland sea breaking at our feet, we are thankful, hopeful, 
 and yet gravely anxious. 
 
 We congratulate you, sir, that you have been deemed worthy 
 to receive the keys of an University so nobly begun and so full 
 of promise. We congratulate you on its fair site by these waters 
 and in the vicinity of the wonderful City of the West. We con- 
 gratulate you on the amplitude of its endowments, the range of 
 its plan, the results of its past work. We congratulate you on 
 the indications recently given of a still existing liberality which 
 will, we trust, be sufficient for all the demands which extending 
 knowledge and multiplying courses of instruction may hereafter 
 urge. We congratulate you that, as you enter this Presidency, 
 the University admits the claim of woman to all opportunities of 
 culture, and incorporates the Woman's College as an integral 
 part of its educational system. 
 
14 
 
 May I add that the church implores your utmost fidelity to the 
 trust this day confided to you. It expects that so far as in you 
 lies you will maintain this University as a seat of the broadest 
 and truest Christian culture. Through a succession of years, it 
 will demand from you and your co-adjutors bands of young men 
 and women, disciplined in faculty, abundant in knowledge, and 
 "strong in the faith which is in Christ Jesus." It gives to no 
 man a more noble or conspicuous field of labor ; it will only be 
 content with results proportioned to the dignity and power of 
 the opportunity which it this day confers. And it invokes on 
 you at this hour wisdom and strength from the one only Fountain 
 of Good, even from Him to whose honor this University is 
 reared. 
 
NAUpURAL AlDDRESS 
 
 President of the Northwestern University. 
 
 Time-honored custom requires of me, as I stand this hour 
 upon the threshold of this vast enterprise, some statement of 
 views concerning the work here undertaken. It becomes us to 
 leave boasting to him that taketh off the armor, yet in putting 
 on the armor it also becomes us to spy out the land — measur- 
 ing the giants and counting the cities which the Lord, the 
 church, and the public judgment expect us to possess. An 
 institution in a community, that is to occupy the time and 
 thought of scores of cultivated laborers, to control capital by 
 the millions and expend its income by the hundred thousands, 
 to build its walls for the centuries and plan its campaigns by 
 the thousand years, to furnish a home for multitudes of the 
 sons and daughters of the land in a critical time of their life, 
 and furnish character for scholars and scientists, preachers and 
 philologists, physicians and philosophers, jurists and states- 
 men — an institution thus purposed and intrusted has a right 
 to the public ear. 
 
 Inducted by you into this honorable and responsible calling 
 and office, and for the hour poised between the right of the 
 public to hear and the right of the University to speak, I will 
 sketch some of the reasons justifying the existence of the 
 University — - some outlines of her work, some of the agencies 
 and appliances by which she seeks to meet her obligations ; 
 some of the results accomplished and some of the demands of 
 the pressing future. 
 
16 
 
 1. REASONS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 1. By way of approach to this subject it may safely be 
 affirmed that Universities are the fruit of advanced cmilization. 
 Like abstract terms in a language, they imply much antecedent 
 cultivation. 
 
 It is a long journey from the Digger Indian taking his 
 breakfast from an ant's nest with a sharp stick, up to the 
 Christian philanthropist founding and maintaining a university. 
 We ascend by many shining steps from savagery to the age of 
 the earliest universities. But for the inspiration and guidance 
 of the great school-masters, Thales, Anaxagoras, Democritus, 
 Pythagoras, and Zeno the Elean, we had never wandered with 
 the unsandaled Socrates, or lounged in the academy with Plato, 
 or contended in the lyceum with the subtile and resistless 
 Aristotle. The great schools are the growth of centuries. In 
 raising them from the seed there is no short cut to maturity, 
 but we may transplant or engraft and so condense the work of 
 ages into a few generations. We took all the experiences and 
 histories and theologies and literatures of England and Europe, 
 and planted them in our new- world soil. The dews of a single 
 night falling upon them gave us a rich civilization. So we 
 can take the scholarship of the old empires and the faith and 
 activity of the new republic and. hasten with them into the 
 public squares to find the great institutions there before us. 
 They seem the growth of an hour but they trace their pedigree 
 through many centuries. Like great ideas, they must make a 
 footing in the public conviction before they can become great 
 centers of power. Some education, low in degree and narrow 
 in extent it may be, pertains to intelligent existence. The 
 knowledge of the simplest industries is within the common 
 j-each. Fishing and hunting with the simplest devices; agri- 
 culture with the crudest implements; architecture limited to 
 the construction of wigwams and tents; navigation conducted 
 on bark and skins — all these make up a part of education. It 
 is only the foundation, but it is something. This becomes the 
 common property by being a common necessity. Widening 
 horizons, extending commerce, contact with other neighbor- 
 
17 
 
 hoods, varierd experience, wars, dense populations, general 
 interests elevate the scholarship. Then the front rank can be 
 reached and held not by cunning but by patient calculation. 
 Organized and premeditated education is then a fact. Ele- 
 mentary knowledge perpetuates itself as it is forced into 
 existence by the solution of the universal problems of bread 
 and raiment. It descends from father to son with the certainty- 
 of existence. Higher knowledge comes through two channels: 
 first spasmodically, by gifted souls, prophets, poets, philoso- 
 phers, or great thinkers. These come one or two in five or 
 ten centuries as samples of the coming generations. They let 
 the light down into the lower levels and set them on struggling 
 up toward the larger measure. Second, persistently, by the 
 wise appointments of organized, systematized, far-reaching 
 educational plans that mature into great institutions. 
 
 The germs of these in different stages of development are 
 found among all thoughtful peoples. The light from the East. 
 comes down to us in feeble and broken rays, yet strong enough 
 and clear enough to indicate that the races at the foot of the 
 Himalayas and in the valley of the Ganges had some great 
 institutions before Jacob went down into the land of the Nile, 
 or Abraham received the covenant. For these races had 
 mathematics, and astronomies, and philosophies, and theolo- 
 gies, and literatures probably centuries before Cadmus brought 
 the fifteen fragments of Phoenecian and Assyrian characters 
 into Greece, which in the next thousand years were built into 
 the perfect alphabet and the wonderful literature. The Hebrew 
 law-giver was trained in the schools of the priests of the Sun 
 in Heliopolis six hundred years before blind old Homer, 
 wandering along the shores of the Mediterranean, sang of 
 Hector and Achilles. The compass of this Egyptian instruc- 
 tion is indicated with some uncertainty indeed, but indicated, 
 by the fact that Moses is said by tradition, according to 
 Manetho, to have attained great proficiency and to have made 
 discoveries in navigation, hydraulics, hieroglyphics, grammar, 
 music, war, astronomy, surveying, political economy, linguist- 
 ics, histories, and theology. He studied botany on Horeb's 
 side, and geology on the summit of Sinai, and social science 
 
18 
 
 in the wilderness. This was twelve hundred years before the 
 Museum at Alexandria, the oldest state university in the world, 
 had a manuscript, or a student, or a professor, or a foundation- 
 stone. The school at Alexandria, on Egy]3tian soil, but niade 
 out of the most splendid results of Greek genius and culture, 
 was crowded with chairs in all the known languages and 
 literatures and philosophies of the world, from Phoenecia to 
 India, from Ethiopia to Rome. Here the Hebrew scriptures 
 broke out of the sacred language into the tongue of the Greek, 
 three centuries before Paul preached the risen Messiah on 
 Mars Hill; and this center furnished scholars for the early 
 church till nearly all European knowledge was consecrated to 
 the cross. We have only to open our eyes on the past or the 
 present, on the old world or the new, to see that the great 
 centers of learning are centers of civilization; and we soon 
 feel that 
 
 2. Universities are essential to civilization. It may be 
 claimed that Athens reached her glory without such instru- 
 mentalities. But then, Athens herself was little less than a 
 university; her youth were kept in the society of her scholars 
 and statesmen, her philosophers and warriors. There is not, 
 nor has there been, a university under the sun which would 
 not be honored to count among her professors such minds as 
 Aristotle, and Plato, a,nd Socrates. In her marts and along 
 her streets her youth were taught philosophy by these great 
 schoolmasters of mankind. Along her docks they were taught 
 navigation, commerce, and naval war. In her streets they 
 were trained to the highest taste in architecture. In her 
 temples they were molded by the chisel of Phidias. In her 
 theaters they were roused by the great tragedies and songs of 
 Sophocles and ^schylus. In her assemblies they were trained 
 in statecraft and oratory by Pericles and Demosthenes. Surely 
 nothing was wanting in culture, in art, in learning, in patriot- 
 ism, in poetry, in song, in precept, in society, in surroundings, 
 to make the youth of Athens scholars by birth and philoso- 
 phers by inheritance. 
 
 ' It is a significant fact that every people that has made a 
 luminous spot in history has generated its light in the halls of 
 
19 
 
 colleges and universities. Rome had the Athenaeum as the 
 head of the schools she scattered with her eagles. Italy, once 
 the mother of letters and of genius, ranked as queen among 
 the nations till her schools lost their power by losing their 
 liberty. In the thirteenth century a school flourished in 
 Bologna. This university was founded by Theodosius in 425, 
 and restored by Charlemagne. Roger Bacon, the good friar 
 known as the admirable doctor who ventured to study natural 
 science and spend his fortune and that of his friends in experi- 
 ment and in alarming the church with what they called witch- 
 craft and the black art, who stood as the foremost man of the 
 universities at Oxford and Paris in natural science for more 
 than three centuries, till his great namesake, Sir Francis, 
 came — this man tells us that in 1262 there were in Bologna 
 over twenty thousand students. Be it said to the credit of 
 Bologna that a woman, ISTovilla Andrea, in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, was professor of canon law, and Clotilda Tamproni was 
 professor of Greek in our century. 
 
 The university at Paris was started as a monkish school in 
 792, and made over and widened into greater usefulness in 
 1200. It had at one time in the sixteenth century thirty 
 thousand students. Oxford was bom in the ninth century, 
 and Yienna in the fourteenth. These have carried France and 
 England and Austria up to the summit of their glory. The 
 honor of Grermany to-day is not chiefly in the victorious march 
 from Berlin to Paris, but rather in the great universities, from 
 Prague to Berlin, which have been fostered by the national 
 spirit, and have in turn fostered that spirit, and have thus 
 made Germany a synonjan for greatness. 
 
 Italy to-day has twenty-one universities and two hundred 
 and seventeen seminaries. 'No wonder that Popery has lost its 
 advantage, and in the light of these cities which cannot be hid 
 poor Italy finds her way back to unity. Spain has no great 
 school. The dust of oblivion is a yard deep and a hundred 
 years old upon her ancient universities. Importing her 
 scholars, she must also import her liberties, if she find them. 
 Russia has seven great growing universities. Already the 
 great Northern Bear plays to win. Yitalize that great host 
 
20 
 
 with inventive manufacturing brains, and nothing will be 
 impossible for Russia. Switzerland supports three universities, 
 Holland three, Belgium four, and Denmark two. England 
 and Scotland remind us of Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. 
 
 The United States has scattered the seed of universities so 
 thickly over this continent that a Yankee emigrant can hardly 
 stop his wagon to camp for the night but there will spring up 
 from the warm earth where he slept a university, or at least a 
 college. A civilization without great schools would be as 
 impossible as saints without virtues or angels without songs. 
 
 It inheres in power to gravitate to centers, and thus, by a 
 law as old as the universe, it draws all things to itself, either to 
 conquer or assist. Turn such a soul as Saul of Tarsus into a 
 city or state, and he will soon find Stephen and the synagogues 
 and the Sanhedrim. Luther could not break out of his cloister 
 and straighten up under the open sky without seeing Melanc- 
 thon and the giants of the earth. Great men and great ideas 
 become centers of power up to which all the ambitions and 
 aspirations in the nation turn their hurrying feet. Then you 
 have a school, call it as you may. Mankind will never dream 
 of crediting any people with civilization unless they bring 
 forth the fruits meet for such character. There must be litera- 
 ture; pure, vigorous, masterly, elevating. There must be art 
 and art's refinement in taste and manners; humanities that 
 illumine the dungeon of the convict, and sweep the alleys of 
 the outcast; charities that light up the wretched at home and 
 give them ideas with which to conquer their wretchedness, and 
 that reaches the sinking, no matter how far off, and gives them 
 truths and revelation with which to transform their characters. 
 All this requires cultivated brain. It is impossible to have 
 high civilization without great universities. 
 
 3, Universities are rendered necessary hy the general intel- 
 ligence. There remains the same demand for leadership, if 
 there is to be advancement. 
 
 The sage-brush desert, though far above the sea-level as the 
 summit of Mt. Washington, is none the less a flat, monotonous 
 and weary waste. The army of lions must have the supreme 
 lion to lead. The herds of wild horses, fleet as the wind, must 
 
21 
 
 somewhere find a leader swift as the lightning on the morning 
 breeze. Fill the land with schools, and books, and presses, and 
 free pulpits, and somewhere you must have universities. 
 Power must gravitate to centers. The republic has, according 
 to the census of 1870, 507 colleges and 2,209 schools for higher 
 education, and 125,059 common schools, employing 221,042 
 teachers and teaching 7,209,938 pupils. These vast figures 
 only put a fraction of the world of education. These children 
 come from all the homes of the country; they return from the 
 school-room to kindle on the hearth the fires of holy ambition 
 borrowed from the public luminaries. A quarter of a million 
 of teachers turned loose among forty millions of people must 
 revolutionize every community. Add to this work the faith 
 and heroism of 72,459 preachers, and you have an army beneath 
 whose tread the continent trembles from sea to sea. Put into 
 the hands of all these workei's 45,525,938 books and 1,508,- 
 548,250 copies of periodicals, and you have transformed the 
 republic into a literary society and the nation into a reading- 
 room. It is the glory of this country that science shines into 
 our common homes and philosophy flourishes in our shops and 
 factories. The path to power runs by the pooi* man's cot, and 
 the honors of scholarship may be carried ofiT by hackmen. All 
 this renders almost imperative the demand for universities and 
 colleges. The school-room, the pulpit, the editor's chair, the 
 senate chamber and the supreme bench must be filled with 
 highest culture and profoundest scholarship, or leaders must be 
 found elsewhere and the scepter pass from the tribes of Judah. 
 We are at the confluence of the great races; streams of 
 ancient blood are flowing into our veins, and all the literatures 
 of the most varied civilizations meet and mingle in our atmos- 
 phere. The invading multitudes disembark in the darkness 
 of each night and by the light of each new day. They hourly 
 land in every bay and bayou of our ten thousand miles of water 
 front. Capital comes for investment, poverty for bread, light 
 for a candlestick, and ignorance comes for light. We have 
 room enough for them; they cannot run down our wild herds 
 for many a year yet, and we have single vales that can feed 
 mankind for a thousand years. But the press and the pulpit 
 2 
 
22 
 
 and the school-house must be manned by trained and, tireless 
 minds, "fhis means training-camps, universities, somewhere. 
 4. The controlling minds of history h<Mie heen trained in 
 the schools. True, there are many noble exceptions to this 
 rule. There stand Franklin and Marshall and Washington, 
 who make the republic honorable by their histories. But all 
 these were strengthened and sustained by scholars and books 
 of scholars. There are self-made men who may well feel proud 
 of their work. Indeed, I think that no man is more than half 
 made who does not make himself. But not more than one 
 man in a million can do a good job with poor tools. You can 
 get flour out of wheat with a mortar. But I prefer a grist- 
 • mill — it grinds finer, faster, and more economically. Thus it 
 happens that nearly all the undying literature comes from pol- 
 ished pens — from the Addisons and Miltons, from the Pitts 
 and Sheridans, from the Popes and Whateleys. Take out of 
 our own literature the work of our scholars and you open a sad 
 gulf. All but ten of the signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence were trained in universities and colleges. More than 
 one-fourth of the mem])ers of the ISTational Congress from the 
 beginning to thie day have been graduates of colleges. This 
 fact, taking the ratio of population and graduates, shows that 
 the colleges have given their graduates more than thirty chances 
 to one. The histories of the White House and of the depart- 
 ments of government, and of the supreme bench, add emphasis 
 to this statement. Jhese facts call to the aspiring youth, " so 
 run that ye may obtain." 
 
 5. Universities stimulate thought. They create an atmos- 
 phere in which a dictionary or a blackboard or a compound 
 blowpipe is necessary to a peaceful existence. They make all 
 the gales and breezes blow toward books and brains. Make 
 pul)lic sentiment and you can kindle or quench the iaggots, 
 build or destroy the inquisition, perpetuate or exterminate the 
 despotisms. Human nature is weak and takes readily to rest; 
 men are lazy. The spur of competition and the sting of 
 threatened defeat help flagging zeal and so quicken thought. 
 
 6. Universities are the friends of true religion. They 
 increase and disseminate light, and the truth seeks the light - 
 
23 
 
 it needs exposure; it has nothing to dread. These schools turn 
 the attention more toward the higher nat^^re. In the struggle 
 waged in everj bosom they are for the immortal instead of the 
 animal, on the side of the angel against the tiger. There is 
 little trouble about keeping up the lower industries; there is 
 no shirking them, they must be carried on. I^ature guards 
 them under penalty of death. Men will eat and seek eatables 
 urged by no other argument than that nature has lodged in 
 the stomach. But to lift them to higher aims and inspire them 
 with noble purposes is not so easy and is something toward 
 exalting their character. It makes larger footing for the truth. 
 Open a library or a school in a community and you transform 
 the amusements and the industries and the markets. The 
 bull-fight and the tournament give way to the reading-room 
 and the lecture-hall and the sanctuary. The arrow maker and 
 the tent maker are superseded by the architect and the engineer. 
 Men are set on restraining their lower propensities. They see 
 the day-after-to-morrow and plan for it. Soon this checks 
 worldliness and sets them in pursuit of eternal results — tones 
 up society. Thus let one boy or girl in a community start up 
 toward knowledge and soon a goodly procession will be moving 
 that way. Every step up brings them' more clearly within the 
 reach of truth. 
 
 In a more definite but not more certain way tbe university 
 furnishes the great defenders of the church. Providence may 
 use weak instruments, but they cannot remain weak — the 
 very use builds them into greatness; so God prepares great 
 workers for and in great work. The schools of Tarsus were 
 not second to those of Alexandria, and the school of Gamaliel 
 was well fitted to continue the training of the great apostle to 
 the Gentiles. Clement and Origen studied in Alexandria; 
 Luther was a professor in the University of Wittemburg; and 
 Melancthon was a noted professor of Greek. The reformation 
 was committed to the foremost scholars of the age. Calvin 
 was quite a university in himself. Beza was no mean scholar. 
 John Knox graduated at St. Andrews. The late reformation 
 that gave the world a new evangel was marshaled by such 
 scholars as Wesley and Fletcher. Their song was taken up by 
 
24 
 
 the Clarkes, the Bensons and the Watsons. A multitude rose 
 up, and, fired by heavenly zeal, ran down to the battle almost 
 as they were when they heard the first blast of the bugle. And 
 there they did valiant service and the slain of the Lord were 
 on every hand. 
 
 True these men did not stop to dig the oi'e out of the moun- 
 tain and smelt and fashion it in their own furnaces. But they 
 did take the weapons furnished by Wesley and Clarke and 
 Watson and the great leaders. But for these equipments they 
 would have been scattered in the first hour of battle like down 
 before a whirlwind. 
 
 7. TJniveTsities lighten the hiwdens of mankind. Most of 
 our heavy lifting and wearisome carrying has come from our 
 dullness and ignorance. We have been forever taking hold in 
 the wrong place. It is beyond all computation how we have 
 aggravated our inherited disability. We have thrust around 
 in all directions as if hunting for the laws of our well-being 
 simply, or chiefly to violate them. If any one can doubt our 
 fall in our great ancestor it must be because the multitude of 
 our falls since leave no demand for a first fall to account for 
 our deformity. 
 
 Doubling the channels of inheritance by each generation as 
 we go backward it only takes a few centuries to tap all the 
 races and drain in large supplies of distemper and leprosy and 
 scrofula and insanity and perversity. I do not wonder that we 
 have dwarfs, and cripples, and idiots, and criminals. It seems 
 a greater wonder that we do not have more. But for the 
 remedial agencies set at work by infinite mercy we might not 
 have had anything else long before this. As it is we have 
 reduced our life from nine or ten hundred years to thirty years 
 and in heathen lands to fifteen years. Just of late by studying 
 and keeping the laws of our well-being we have turned back 
 toward longer life. The great schools have added fifty per 
 cent, to our life and thus doubled our work day. This has 
 been achieved by three economies: First, by stopping the 
 violation of nature's laws and so diminishing the waste; 
 second, by lessening the strain upon the vital force and so 
 husbanding our strength; and third, by creating greater sup- 
 
26 
 
 plies of vital force in the more skillful use and production of 
 nutritives. All these economies are the products of cultivated 
 brain. They are born of scientific investigation and experi- 
 ment. Since the medical schools introduced the rational 
 system of investigation, and forsook the empirical methods 
 that prescribed by streets instead of by individuals, and bled 
 all in one street and physicked all in the next, without the 
 least reference to the disease, age, or symptoms of the patient — 
 since this change, medical sciQnce has revealed the secrets of 
 our constitutions, and has put us in a way to resist waste and 
 destruction. 
 
 The results of careful thought are now abundant in the sub- 
 stitution of machinery for muscle. In Great Britain each 
 individual has the average service of nineteen servants. ISTo 
 wonder tliey can have better food and raiment and more culture 
 than the Hottentot who has only his empty hands. Peasants 
 have more comfort to-day than could have been found in the 
 palace of good King Arthur. In the age of Bacon and Shake- 
 speare there was only one pair of silk stockings in England, 
 and they were kept as sacredly as the crown jewels. Yesterday 
 a respectable copy of the Bible cost twenty-five thousand dol- 
 lars, and could be owned only by wealthy cathedrals and peers 
 of the realm ; to-day you can get a plainer and better copy for 
 twenty -five cents, and the poorest man in the country can have 
 one if he wants it. Thought has entered every field of industry, 
 from the pantry of the house-wife to the navy -yard of the 
 nation, from the chamber of the sewing-girl to the cabinet of 
 the president. It has seized upon all toil, from heading a pin 
 to heading a locomotive boiler, from cutting the eye of the 
 needle to cutting the Mont Cenis tunnel. Where is the speed 
 of Mercury compared with the lea23 of the lightning? Samson 
 is weaker than a babe when contending with a jackscrew. 
 What is Hercules' lifting against gun -powder? What show 
 would there be for David's sling against a needle-gun? This 
 vast multiplication of machinery prepares the way for the 
 multiplication of products. While the earth can produce 
 game and berries only for one ten thousandth of its inhabit- 
 ants, the valley of the Mississippi, under the brain of genius 
 
26 
 
 and in the hiand of skill, can keep in luxnry all the sons and 
 daughters of Adam. It was a long journey in the manufacture 
 of raiment from the fig leaves of Eden to the seamless garment 
 of the Nazarene; but it was inconceivably further to the 
 weavers from Brabant who settled in York — of whose art 
 King Edward said, " It may prove of great benefit to us and our 
 subjects." The Indian cotton cloth mentioned by Herodotus 
 cost nearly as much as the same number of square feet 
 of the Holy Scriptures before the days of printing. But Gray, 
 and Hargreaves, and Arkwright put their brains at work, and 
 now it is mach cheaper to wear cotton than to wear nothing. 
 Attach a bench of sewing machines to those factories, and then 
 throw in your wool and your cotton, and by the time you can 
 wash your hands from the shearing and the picking you can 
 find whole suits of the finest fiber and the fairest fabric, fitted 
 to your every wrinkle. Meantime your wife, instead of spin- 
 ning, like the wife of Tarquin, who made a garment for Servius 
 TuUius that was preseiwed in the Temple of Fortune; or like 
 the wife of Csesar, who clothed the world's emperor in " home- 
 spun," but was " above suspicion" — your wife can give her 
 time to the government and inspiration of her sons and 
 daughters. 
 
 Yesterday it required whole years to get word from Africa or 
 Asia, and an infinite faith in the sailors, who described lands 
 without touching them, and in the map-makers, who scattered 
 mountains and deserts according to fancy and regardless of 
 fact. But to-day, let a duke smite a serf anywhere in Russia, 
 or let an Arab's horse stumble on the desert, or let a servant 
 take the plague in Egypt, or let a Modoc shout one note above 
 the regulation in America, and nearly every family in the civ- 
 ilized world has all the particulars before the next breakfast. 
 
 Communications make communities. This must soon em- 
 brace mankind. When we get so close together that no two 
 can fight without endangering all the rest, the rest will not let 
 the two fight. 
 
 The great thinkers have taken hold of the problems of bread 
 and raiment, and distance and time, and government and des- 
 tiny, and have so solved them that we now have room to grow. 
 
27- 
 
 and right to spread, and time to think. Thus the outside avoir- 
 dupois burdens have been lifted from our shoulders by the 
 forces generated in universities and institutions of culture. 
 But the great relief has been in unloading the soul from igno- 
 rance and superstition, and bad theology and bad government. 
 
 Individual culture has made room for individual character. 
 This has brushed away the priests of superstition and the sacri- 
 fices of guilt and the veil of ignorance, so that each man in the 
 V temple of the universe has been taught to come, in the priest- 
 hood of his humanity, with the offering of his faith and affec- 
 tions, to the open and accessible mercy-seat. To describe the 
 work of the schools in lifting the burdens of the race would be 
 to write a. history of mankind. 
 
 8. Universities are the friends of the republic. They are 
 the fountains of intelligence. They are the great reser- 
 voirs that supply the common schools with teachers and 
 text-books, and the result of scientific experiment and philo- 
 sophical research. Trained teachers are more necessary 
 than trained carpenters or artisans. We do not let a man bore 
 a board or drill an iron until he has served an apprenticeship, 
 lest he bore or drill in the wrong place. What shall we not 
 require of him who bores or drills the minds of our children'^ 
 Without universities, institutions of high training in some 
 form, we cannot long maintain common schools; without com- 
 mon schools we cannot maintain general intelligence; without 
 general intelligence we cannot maintain our liberties. The 
 universities of th'e colonies gave us Jefferson and Adams and 
 Hancock. While we owe mucli for such men, we owe more for 
 the ideas and schools that came with them. 
 
 These underlie our liberties. Scylla offered Rome freedom ; 
 but she chose a despot. Cromwell tried to plant a republic; 
 but England wanted another Stuart. France cannot maintain 
 a republic until she educates her peasantry. And our republic 
 will not survive our intelligence. 
 
 The power of these institutions is comprehended by the des- 
 pots of the earth when they attach to the sovereignty the 
 control of education with the power to coin money, issue 
 currency, levy taxes, declare war, accept peace, and make 
 
28 
 
 treaties. The study of the history of the United States was 
 suppressed by royal edicts in the universities of Europe. As 
 late as 1858 Prof. Luigi Philippi was imprisoned for com- 
 mending the study of our constitution. The legates of the 
 Pope conditioned JSTapoleon's advancement to the empire on 
 his swearing on the cross and gospels to maintain an army in 
 Rome for the defense of the Pope, to appoint as Minister of 
 Education the nominee of the Jesuits, and to suppress the 
 study of philosophy in the University of Paris. Kapoleon 
 took the oath, the confessionals were opened for him. The 
 coup d'^etat followed, and the Pepublic went down under the 
 Empirp. This indicates how the world's great intriguers and 
 men who cause things to come to pass have estimated the 
 power of universities. 
 
 9. Universities qualify men for the learned professions. 
 This is done in \NfO ways : First, directly, by furnishing instruc- 
 tion and advantages in the specialties of these professions (to 
 this we may refer again). Second, by preparing and develop- 
 ing the mind to enter upon intellectual labors worthy of Intel- . 
 lectual leadership. It is the old and eternal question of 
 preparation — Can the eagle mount above the storm without a 
 practiced pinion ? There is indefinite and infinite fluttering 
 between the eagle beating about in the nest and the eagle 
 tracing secants on the circle of the whirlwind. The camel is 
 born in the desert. Bred in the valley of the Mississippi, his 
 posterity might not be more enduring than the ox. The racer 
 that wins is petted and practiced, and pruned and pushed. The 
 Arab says, " Steeds are made of barley and the road between 
 Medina and Mecca;" that means the best food and the longest 
 run, 180 miles in one day — preparation and practice. Profes- 
 sional success lies beyond the stormy desert; he who would 
 reach it must soar'like the eagle above the storms. Life is not 
 a holiday trip ; the only sure help is ability. Professional men 
 are employed, not for friendship, but for results. The ministry 
 is the most nearly an exception. And even this becomes a 
 matter of business. If you can succeed, you can stay; if you 
 cannot, you must make room for some other man with an 
 equally divine and more human call; for the individual is 
 
29 
 
 nothing, the cause is everything. Lawyers are engaged only 
 when we cannot help it, and few people amuse themselves with 
 doctors and ipecacuanha. Therefore you must beat against the 
 storms. To win in any substantial sense you must mount like 
 the eagle, endure like the camel, and run like the racer. The 
 increase of intelligence will intensify the competition. The 
 great work will be given to the great workers. Men will make 
 more careful preparation. I know a youth with rare gifts as a 
 mathematician, and he has gone quite thoroughly into German 
 and French, simply to have access to the German and French 
 mathematicians. He must win. What men must have in 
 professional life is victory. What is .fiye or six years additional 
 study compared with having the chances all on your side ! for 
 it is the last inch that makes the tallest man. 
 
 10. Unwersities are jprofitable in dollars and cents. What- 
 e,\<di' improves the grade of civilization increases the security of 
 society. Whatever increases the security of society enhances 
 the value of property. In another line the measure of profit is 
 the value of thinking industry. A man with a first-class shovel 
 earns two dollars per day; with a first-class pulpit, twenty dol- 
 lars per day; with a first-class newspaper, fifty dollars per day; 
 with a first-class railroad, two hundred and fifty dollars per 
 day. This is for management, outside of capital. Wlio can 
 estimate the commercial value of such a brain as Beeclier's, or 
 of such a head as Mrs. Stowe's! She so enriched the Southern 
 soil that it will produce one hundred bales ol cotton instead of 
 one, and it shall grow school-houses instead of shackles, 
 churches instead of slave-pens, asylums instead of auction- 
 blocks, college professors instead of criminals. Put all the 
 seaboard cities under contribution to an ironclad war ship, or 
 lay them in ashes at the will of the foe, and you fix some crude 
 estimate of the financial value. of the brain of Ericsson. But 
 who can compute the value of Di'. Olin, or Horace Majui, or 
 John Quincy Adams, or John Wesley, or John Banyan? 
 Wliat shall we say of the multiplied arts and sciences and 
 inventions of civilized life, and of the liberties and institutions 
 of free government! When we rise into the fellowship of these 
 forces, it seems almost blasphemy against the moral sense of 
 
30 
 
 mankind to suggest mere commercial estimates. But here 
 stands the great fact: All that a man hath can he give for his 
 higher life. We conclude this branch of the subject, reiterating 
 the facts that universities are the fruits of advanced civilisation; 
 that they are rendered necessary by general information; that 
 they have trained the controlling minds of history; that they 
 stimulate thought; that they are friends of true religion; that 
 they lighten the burdens of mankind; that they are the friends 
 of the republic; that they qualify men for learned professions, 
 and that they are profitable in dollars and cents; 
 
 II. WHAT THE UNIVEESITY IS TO DO. 
 
 1. We answer in brief — teach all knowledge. Possible 
 knowledge is so vast, and approachable ft-om so many sides, 
 that we hardly feel enlightened by the answer. It takes nar- 
 rower form in the process for self-development in all depart- 
 ments of our feeing. There are two kingdoms over which man 
 must be enthroned — the inner kingdom of powers and facul- 
 ties and possibilities; this must be subdued, organized, devel- 
 oped — made into the aggressive army for the subjugation of 
 the outer kingdom of facts, forms and relations. The vast 
 amount of knowledge that must in some substantial wa,j be 
 made accessible and available by a university seems too pro- 
 digious even for enumeration. Single departments have 
 grown larger around the waist, and taller in cubits, and deeper 
 in foundation, than were all the departments two centuries ago. 
 
 The University of Paris in the sixteenth century, with all 
 her thirty thousand students and corresponding army of pro- 
 fessors, would not come up to a first-class preparatory school 
 in the variety and extent of its requirements. They crowded 
 some kinds of work to excess. Think of twenty thousand stu- 
 dents, as at Bologna, studying the canon law and solving the 
 profound question of precedence! There is more power in a 
 single Why? that may prostrate a class or teacher in the ele- 
 ments of philosophy, than in all the old curriculum. They 
 backed a student up into a corner of his cell and opened his 
 mouth and crammed him with decretals and anathemas and 
 
31 
 
 legends and saintly miracles, packing them down with the 
 ramrod of anthoritv, till his soul was dead and his heart was 
 dead. There was no room to question but in the dungeon, 
 and no chance to grow hut at the stake. A single Wliy? 
 which would only encourage a professor in yonder citadel of 
 freedom, would have split the civilized world and have ruined 
 the theologies of a dozen centuries. 
 
 To-day the idea of a university reaches the outer verge of 
 knowledge. Standing on this green sod, beneath these brave 
 old oaks, by day or by night, any man or woman can face uj) 
 to the sun or to the stars, or to Him who sits beyond both sun 
 and stars, and ask Why? concerning any fact or precept on 
 earth or in heaven, in this world or in all worlds, for time and 
 for eternity, and no leaf nor speck of mist will fall in wrath, 
 and no blade of grass nor tenderest violet will wither in dismay. 
 Here, standing on this open page of God's great work, we can 
 call Him father and ask Him Why? and He will take our 
 trembling hands in his and gladly lead us into all truth. If 
 the question were what shall a particular student study, it 
 would be necessary to elect for him. For one mind in the 
 short day of this life could no more master all knowledges than 
 one mouth could eat all food. A general acquaintance with 
 the whole range of knowledge is consistent with an intimate 
 knowledge of some parts. Because it is general it need not be 
 vague. It may comprise the leading features and be definite 
 and positive. But when the question is what shall be furnished 
 for all minds, then the answer comes without seeking'. 
 
 A college may be built about a single department of truths ; 
 but a university must embrace all colleges, and so seek all 
 truths. It is easy for some men to poise on a point and swing 
 around like a girl making a " cheese," till, inflated, they think 
 themselves supported on all sides; but venturing, they fall 
 down into emptiness and expose their folly. Think of a scholar 
 described by Sidney Smith, whose great ambition was to 
 " detect an anapaest in the wrong place, or restore a lost 
 dative!" Think of the sweep of a soul like the vain and osten- 
 tatious Dr. Parr's, who listened to the great Pitt as that states- 
 man in one of his memorable speeches defended the coustitu- 
 
32 
 
 tion and very existence of Britain, and when asked how it 
 impressed him, replied, "We threw our whole grammatical 
 mind upon it and could not discover one error!" One Dr. 
 George declined to admit the greatness of the Frederick of 
 Prussia, because he "• entertained considerable doubts whether 
 the king, with all his victories, could conjugate a Greek verb 
 in {iiiA)r He did not see that the king knew how to illustrate 
 upon the stage of royalty the verb eimi — to be — and bring 
 out its full meaning amid the rout of armies and the ruin of 
 empires. 
 
 A university must make accurate men, but she must seek to 
 make them men of the century and of the latest telegram — 
 men able to interpret events, and plan on the field of action; 
 men whom circumstances cannot desert, who can read the hand- 
 writing on the wall and dare to translate it in any court. The 
 university cannot become a partisan in the controversies of 
 competing studies, but like a mother she must cherish them all, 
 giving each the security of a fair chance, and let results and 
 advancing judgment of the age settle all questions of superiority. 
 
 It is consistent with this impartiality to state the reasons 
 sustaining the several families or classes of studies. 
 
 2. The Classics demand our first attention. There are 
 worthy scholars and experienced educators who would not ad- 
 mit this question as a debatable one. They say that " the 
 memory of man runs not to the contrary," and that " the 
 usage has been sanctified by time." But it is sufficient answer 
 that the old laws of granite give way when the earthquake 
 comes. Nothing is exempt from the law of revolution. Un- 
 less the ancient customs can show better reasons foi- continuing 
 than mere antiquity, they must cease. The classics have held 
 the position of power for centuries ; but that may be a question 
 of age rather than merit. At the revival of knowledge after 
 the dark ages, Latin was the vernacular of the church and of 
 scholars. There was not much else to teach. There was no 
 science beyond the physical works of Aristotle even as late as 
 the sixteenth century. Clinging exclusively to the classics now 
 because they were once adopted when there was little else to 
 adopt, is like clinging to the crooked stick of (yincinnatus be- ' 
 
33 
 
 cause he chose it for a plow when there was nothing else to 
 choose. It may further be stated that objections have been 
 urged against the study of the classics in every country where 
 they are studied, and often by men familiar with them. In 
 Germany they were for a time excluded from the schools. 
 They have been reinstated. As long ago as 1827, Yale College 
 appointed "a committee to report on the expediency of dis- 
 pensing with the study of the dead languages^ They reported 
 adversely, but they reported. Essays and books have been 
 written and published on both sides of the question. To-day 
 the modes of instructing and the extent of instruction are be- 
 ing modified. But the controversy is not a losing one for the 
 old culture. Classics are in more danger from over-zeal than 
 from all other causes. The test that must determine this ques- 
 tion is utility. If the study of the classics is useless as an in- 
 strument of education in completing the character and outfit 
 of a scholar, then it cannot hold its place. The danger, then, 
 is in urging it for purposes for which it is useless. 
 
 To crowd the classics upon every student without regard to 
 age or his aims; to hold a smattering of Greek and Latin 
 before a knowledge of English, in cases where only a limited 
 amount of that can be taken ; to hold that it is better to decline 
 the Greek article or a Latin adjective than to understand the 
 principles of political economy — better to recall the history of 
 the growth of the Greek particle than the history of the repub- 
 lic; better to measure a line of Homer or of Horace than to 
 measure the resources of the continent — all this is folly, and 
 must work against the classics. To maintain that there is no 
 door into the world of thought but through these dead tongues ; 
 that the highest mental powder cannot be approximated in any 
 way except by the study of the remains of these two peoples, 
 is asking too much, of the countrymen of Marshall and of 
 Franklin and of "Washington. To refuse the honor of scholar- 
 ship to a man who is familiar with the "' unread manuscripts of 
 God," because he is unread in the manuscripts of Plato; to 
 withhold credit from him who can analyze the soil on whifeh 
 we walk,- and the food on which we liA^e, because he cannot 
 analyze a sentence in the preface of Livy, or a chorus of 
 
34 
 
 Sophocles, are decisions that will hardly be maintained by the 
 judgment of this century and of the American peoj)le. Danger 
 of error lies in the reaction from those overstatements. Here 
 as in most controversies. the truth lies between the extremes. 
 The objections may be reduced to a few general statements: 
 
 {a) That the classics are Pagan. Yes; but that is only a 
 name. They are from human sources, and full of human 
 power. It is not a question oi origin, but of contents; not 
 whence 'i but what ? The light of the Star of Bethlehem fell 
 first on Pagan eyelids; and the supreme blessing came upon 
 Abraham, the father of the faithful, from the hands of a 
 wandering high-priest of heathenism, (li) That they are 
 imjyare. Yes, in places, but not as a law. There are but few 
 passages worse than some passages of Shakespeare, or than 
 some statements in the Bible. The classics as encountered in 
 modern text-books and courses of study are not open to this 
 objection, and scholars roaming at large in the fields of litera- 
 ture can find sewers and Gehennas if their taste leads them 
 that w^ay. "■ To the pure all things are pure." (c) That they 
 are of no %ise. This depends upon what you mean by use. If 
 you mean that you will not care to handle them in the count- 
 ing-room, nor in the factory, nor yet the drawing-room, then 
 they are not of use. But very little else is of use, measured by 
 that standard. Beading and spelling, and writing and grammar, 
 aud arithmetic through interest and proportion, are all that 
 are required. Pat having these usable elements, with his 
 shovel or whip is as well qualified for life as the man in the 
 office or counting-room. The fallacy lies in what is meant by 
 use. Thinking that only those rules which you repeat are of 
 value is no wiser than the street gamin who wants half-raw 
 potatoes because they do not digest and do stay in his stomach. 
 The food that is of use is that that comes out in bone and 
 muscle and tissue and blood and brains. The knowledge that 
 is of use in training is that which gives compass and vision 
 and judgment- and patience and persistence and power. 
 (c?) That few students lihe the classics. Possibly; but all like 
 play.. "Would it do to substitute base-ball, boating, etiquette, 
 and twilight rambles, as more popular pursuits? Then those 
 
35 
 
 who do like the classics have rights which a university is bound 
 to respect, (e) That the classics have only to do with vjords 
 instead of things, and make word reTneTnhereTS. Yes; but 
 words are also things. Corner-lots, sewers, tunnels, ships, 
 homes, breadstuff's, shovels, and shanties are no more certainly 
 things than Homer's battles about Troy, or the navigation at 
 Salamis, or the " Epitaphs on the plains of Marathon," or the 
 spirit that broods over Thermopylae. To remember the mean- 
 ing of words in a Latin history or poem is no more an act of 
 memory than holding tlie names s^nd classifications in science. 
 The man who reads and understands the orations of Cicero 
 against Catiline, or of Demosthenes against Phillip, is no more 
 a word remembei'er than he who reads and understands the 
 oration of Webster against Haynes, or Sumner against slavery. 
 The limited amount of time and attention given to the classics 
 in American colleges removes all ground of objection based 
 upon the practice of English universities. 
 
 The time for study in all our schools is too short. We 
 are in too great haste, to succeed in making great scholars. 
 The Greeks in the days of their glory kept their sons 
 in training thirteen years. The Jews under Divine com- 
 mand kept their sons in school eighteen years, not counting 
 the preparatory work of the first twelve years of their 
 life. It is not uncommon for European universities to re- 
 quire twelve years in Greek and sixteen in Latin. There is 
 a line of argument defending the study of the classics that 
 may justify to the impartial mind at least as much study as 
 we require, whi(^ is not more than seven years, including the 
 preparations, and this not to exceed one third of the time in 
 those seven years. This justification will be the more certain 
 when it is remembered that the scholar is not limited to tlie 
 classics, but is urged from these and with the power they give 
 into all the fields of knowledge. (<») The use of the classics 
 in discipline is one of their strongest defenses. They are 
 adapted to the earliest stages of mental life. Philosophy, met- 
 aphysics, and the generalizations of natural science, all require 
 more strength than the beginnings of language. Our earlier 
 efforts after observations are in acquiring language. The 
 
OD 
 
 classics take hold upon us with a gentle but fii-m hand, and 
 lead us up into vigor. The variety of action gives strength 
 and nimbleness to the faculties; fitting the square words into 
 the square holes, and the round words into round holes, devel- 
 ops judgment. The transferring the thought into good English 
 gives accuracy and taste; commanding the meanings of the 
 words and the principles of their government, strengthens the 
 memory. Memory is one of the divinest gifts; it underlies all 
 scholarship, and progress, and identity, and accountability. Its 
 cultivation is no mean part of education. It is not all of it, 
 but it is involved in all of it. The Latin and Greek are so 
 wonderfully framed together, so complex and logical, that 
 handling them operates on the thought as exercise in the gym- 
 nasium on the muscles. There are certain qualities of drill 
 that can be reached better by Latin and Greek than in any other 
 way. Mathematics tends to give the faculties point ; languages 
 breadth. Mathematics asks the exa,ct point of intersection. 
 Languages ask a dozen questions concerning varied meanings, 
 rules and exceptions, gender, number, case, person, government, 
 and the like. This work is not so fully done by modern lan- 
 guages because they are not so compact, logical, fixed, and dis- 
 similar from our own. The order' in which the languages are 
 of service in discipline, it seems to me, is this: Latin, Greek, 
 German, and French, and so down the simshiny and moonshiny 
 tongues of the warmer zones. While mathematics drills to 
 the point of attention, natural sciences as a study, as sciences, 
 require more discipline to undertake them profitably. The 
 matter of observation, mere gathering of matterial, the begin- 
 ning of natural science, precedes all other training, but it is 
 feeble as a means of discipline. It is shared with the sheep 
 that hunts the gum weed, or the ox that retraces his steps to 
 his master's crib. Language comes in between the extremes 
 of natural science, i. e., after its instinct of observation, and 
 before its generalizations and discoveries as science. We can 
 hardly overestimate the value of discipline. It is like strength 
 to the productive industries; it is better than mere knowledge, 
 as the ability to create a fortune is greater than the ability to 
 own it when it is given to you. As " goodness is better than 
 
37 
 
 good acts," so mental power is better than mental furniture 
 Prof. Davies, a distinguished instructor in mathematics, long 
 at West Point, and author of a series of text-books on the sub- 
 ject, after an experience in Columbia College, said " that in his 
 judgment those young men who had been trained in the classics 
 could master the mathematics as satisfactorily in' two years, as 
 others without the training could in four years." Julian the 
 Apostate forbade the study of classics in the schools of Chris- 
 tians, that the defenders of the faith might not be trained 
 scholars. These are windows through which you can get 
 glimpses of their training power. C]ilture is a good in itself, 
 even though you cannot realize on it in Wall street. Yet in 
 the market of eternity it shall lack no bidders. It is like per- 
 ' fection of muscle or of organization that never comes to con- 
 sciousness till some weakness or irregularity manifests itself. 
 A good digestive apparatus never reports its existence because 
 it never reports anything. If it cries out, it is because it can- 
 not help it. The more perfect our health, the more unconscious 
 we are of its existence and value. ISTevertheless, health is a 
 good jper se. So it is with culture — it is a good per se. It is 
 like beautiful scenery about a city. You may not be able to 
 grow potatoes or barley on the hillsides, yet they are worth 
 having. Go back twenty miles into the level of this over-rich 
 and productive prairie, drop down a mountain with rock and 
 rivulet and with gorge and chasm, and place at its foot a laugh- 
 ing little lake to mirror its majesty and double its beauty and 
 altitude. Or bring the Yosemite valley into this county. 
 Though " El Capitane," and the " Dome of Liberty," and the 
 " Cathedral rocks " never produce a blade of grass or a spear 
 of wheat, though the " Bridal Yeil " falling nine hundred 
 feet, and the " Ribbon fall " leaping thirty-five hundred feet, 
 never turn a wheel or drive a spindle, yet I will insure you a 
 city there. It will charm the world like the eye of the desert 
 — that oldest city of the world — Damascus. Men will be 
 drawn there by the magnetism of its beauty. So go into the 
 dead level of our productive industries and create a spirit of 
 advanced culture, plant the graces of beauty and of taste, culti- 
 vate the virtues of peace and domesticity, and even though yOu 
 3 
 
cannot grow potatoes in your parks, or Avheat on yonr lawns, 
 yet 1 will insure you a city and society there. Men will come 
 for the fragrance that floats on the evening breeze, and for the 
 peace that stands guard over their children. 
 
 The culturing qualities of the classics, not only in giving 
 mental discipline, but also in enlarging the student, widening 
 his horizons, making him consciously the heir of all the ages, 
 justify large expenditures of time and money in their study. 
 If Socrates had not forbidden us to put truth to a vote, this 
 view could be supported by such men as Victor Cousin, Sir 
 William Hamilton, and Dr. William Whewell. But I must 
 pass on, only indicating other arguments developed by the long 
 controversy. 
 
 (h) The Classios open out way into valuable knowledge of 
 the earlier stages of human society. Words are often embalmed 
 customs. An adage may contain whole theologies. An axiom 
 may preserve whole systems of government. In the search 
 for pre-historic man, as we stand on the most ancient records 
 and peer back into the darkness of savagery, any fable or myth 
 floating by may give us a hint of truth; any song coming out 
 of the gloom may direct us to the secret of our search; any 
 custom or social habit or crystalized prejudice that lies beyond 
 may be of great service. Whoever would search the old regions 
 must take the torch of old languages to read the epitaphs. He 
 must have eyes to see the old monuments, and ears to hear the 
 voices from the old sepulchers. For he searches for secrets 
 which none but God and the mighty dead can reveal. 
 
 (c) The Classics enable us to note the origin and descent 
 and growth of ideas. This is the marrow of history and the 
 juice of philosophy. The force of the New Testament doctrines 
 is vastly augmented by giving them the advantages of their 
 historical growth. The spring that oozed out of the garden of 
 Eden where Abel offered his lamb, grows into a brook, then a 
 river — a resistless tide bearing up the Lamb of God and all 
 mankind. 
 
 (cZ) The Classics gwe us insight into Greeh and Roman 
 forces that largely mold otir civilization. This is a Christian 
 civilization, but in doctrine it is grown upon a Hebrew root. 
 
39 
 
 Its tone is from the Qi^eks, and its form still shows the mold 
 of the Romans; the old wooden plow has now a steel point, 
 and the coat of mail has grown into a casement for a whole 
 crew. Legislation and government at home and abroad are in 
 the old lines. Greek and Roman thought is woven into all 
 our customs ; it makes up a large per cent, of our culture. An 
 English statesman might as well be ignorant of the rights that 
 took root on the field of Hastings as for an American scholar 
 to be ignorant of our inheritance from the old civilizations. 
 
 {e) The Classics help us to a knowledge of our own tongue. 
 Trench says that thirty per cent, of the words used in our lit- 
 erature are derived directly from the Latin; probably as many 
 more are derived indirectly from the same source. Let u§ not 
 have foreign and unexplorable regions in our own tongue. 
 Our literature is full of classical allusions that can l)e under- 
 stood only from the forum near the Tiber, and from the Acro- 
 polis at Athens. 
 
 {f) The old dead tongues give us finest inodels and stand- 
 ards of taste. The fathers of English classics lived on Greek 
 roots and wore Roman clothes. Go to the Yatican, compare 
 modern statuary with the fragments and specimens of the aft 
 that have come down to us from the age of Phidias - that will 
 illustrate a higher fact in letters. We can learn perspicuity 
 from Livy, compactness and vividness from Tacitus, simple ele- 
 gance from Csesar, life and light from Homer, majesty and dig- 
 nity from Yirgil, and the perfection of art from Demosthenes. 
 He who would perfect himself in English must have access to 
 these ancient fountains. 
 
 {g) The Classics lead us furthest vnto the philosophy of all 
 languages. Thus it happens that the knowledge of Latin gives 
 us the secret of all the modern languages. With this start a 
 student can acquire a modern language in one fourth of the 
 time he could without this knowledge. If I had to furnish a 
 lad with four or five modern languages, I would prepare him 
 for application by drill in Latin. In building a great temple 
 the best investment is in derricks. I know an extensive con- 
 tractor for painting and frescoing who makes his margins out 
 of his complete system of scaffolding. For he says that " a 
 
40 
 
 ten-dollar workman soon wastes a scaffolding in clambering up 
 and down ladders." In finishing off thi^ living temple with 
 modern tongues it pays to hold the workmen at advantage with 
 a broad footing in classical culture. 
 
 (A) The study of the Classics aids in mastering many other 
 hranohes. Strength to handle sacks of wheat can be used to 
 handle sacks of coffee. Every added church in a city full of 
 material helps all the other churches. Every branch of industry 
 developed in a community makes work and chance for other 
 branches. Every hundred thousand people added to the popu- 
 lation of a city adds another layer of greenbacks to the busi- 
 ness property. Almost every science is labeled in Latin or 
 Greek. The very names of classification involve this knowl- 
 edge. As in the days of the Csesars all roads led to Rome, so 
 in knowledge if you would go into any field the shortest route 
 is by the way of Rome. 
 
 \i) The Classics lie on the threshold of the learned profes- 
 sions. The lawyer can hardly enter or open his case without 
 encountering terms that have refused to be translated. The 
 physician can hardly write a prescription without plunging out 
 of sight in an unknown tongue. No matter if the writ of the 
 officer is not more terrible, or the mixtures of the physician 
 more abominable, on account of the dead languages used in the 
 process, there the facts remain. Whoever will get the kernel 
 out of the nut must break the shell. The theologian is sealed 
 up to these languages for his authority. The words he is to 
 repeat and the good news he is to tell, fall from heaven in a 
 strange language. However little he may care to display the 
 original he ought to have the key to its secrets. It was not 
 enough for me that a fellow student should read to me my 
 father's letters; I wanted to read them first. It seemed to my 
 young heart, so far and so many years ffom home, that I could 
 see his form more distinctly while following the lines his aged 
 hand had traced. Now and then my eye caught a dash or a 
 blister on the paper that told me the great truth as nothing 
 else could. I knew as I choked down the unutterable longing 
 and turned again to my work, that though I might be shoving 
 up out of boyhood, and he might be bowing toward age, still 
 
41 
 
 his love followed me morning and evening, and his prayer car- 
 ried my name iftto the holy of holies. So with the letters 
 from our great Father; the preacher ought to read them first 
 hand. There are signs, accents, silent letters, finger-marks, that 
 tell the story as nothing else can. They open the gates and 
 expose to our longing eyes the streets of gold and the palaces 
 of fire and thrones of light. We gaze upon the King in His 
 glory. He embraces us as a father. Our hearts feel the new 
 life, and our lips touch the holy fire. 
 
 {j) The study of the Classics is of effi^cient service in per- 
 fecting the orator. This theme impresses me more profoundly 
 as I advance in years. Speech is a divine gift, the chief char- 
 acteristic of the human animal. It is the chosen instrument 
 for the evangelization of the world. " By the foolishness of 
 preaching" is the inspired order. While the church lives and 
 men and women are assembled once or twice a week to hear, it 
 can never be a secondary matter hoM^ the speaking is done. 
 Horace says, " The poet is born, not made." I say of the orator, 
 he ought to be born twice at least and then made. It is a sig- 
 nificant fact that all the great orators have been great students 
 and deeply versed in the classics. Demosthenes struggled more 
 to master his disabilities than would be required to master any 
 curriculum in the land, and his orations show a thorough 
 acquaintance with all the knowledge of his time. Cicero made 
 oratory his chief study, secured the ablest instructors, studied 
 all. the models from the past, practiced daily in Greek oratory 
 as well as his mother tongue. Pitt and 'Fox were both trained 
 by wise fathers who were themselves orators, with special 
 reference to public speaking. They were steeped in the classics 
 from early childhood. Both were almost as familiar with 
 Greek and Latin as with English — reading, criticizing, study- 
 ing the masterpieces of the ancients all through their years. 
 Webster, wlio has extorted the honor of being the prince of 
 orators, committed Cicero's orations to memory and kept him- ' 
 self familiar with the best classical culture. 
 
 The habits and studies of these men indicate on what the 
 great orators feed. In this republic, where all interests of 
 society are to be determined by popular assemblies, it is of the 
 
42 
 
 utmost importance that Christians and patriots qualify them- 
 selves to control these assemblies. I tarry to add emphasis to 
 the value of this power. I know that its public and ostenta- 
 tious character has brought it into disfavor among many 
 scholars. But I am thankful that the Northwestern has made 
 special provision in this department in a way not surpassed, if 
 equaled, by any of the institutions of the country. As we 
 must have a vast amount of speaking, and increasingly so since 
 the women have found the rostrum, let us see to it that it has 
 the best foundation and divinest inspiration. 
 
 This argument is sufficient to indicate that large room must 
 be made in a university for the ' study of the classics. Not 
 every young man is adapted to these studies, nor will every 
 young man be greatly profited by them. There is a large 
 demand for cultivated brain and skilled labor in every depart- 
 ment of life, and only part of the workers would be advantaged 
 by the study of Greek and Latin. But there are large fields of 
 mental activity where this training and knowledge are indis- 
 pensable. When the age and circumstances and gifts of a 
 student will admit of such a course, I would train' him in the 
 classical course as a mere cult are and preparatory course. 
 After that let him enter upon his professional or special course. 
 Few men have any ability or culture to spare. The great work 
 of life is untouched because no one is found worthy to open the/ 
 sealed book. Men worry about place when they ought to 
 worry about ability. There is no lack of opportunity. There 
 are fifty pulpits in the land as good as the Plymouth pul- 
 pit. But where are the Beechersf Where are the men? 
 There is room enough under this western sky for the tallest 
 scholars of the age. But where are the men? Where is the 
 material out of which to make them? There is no lack of 
 demand and opportunity. There is too much room at the top. 
 Brother, fit yourself for the kingly work, and Grod will send 
 the anointing prophets. Humanity stumbles on in the dark- 
 ness. The good cause languishes, and God patiently waits. 
 Where are the workers? I wish I could sound this question into 
 every home in the land, till the dreaming youth and slumber- 
 ing maidens would leap from their repose, and make everlast- 
 
43 
 
 ing covenant with heaven, saying each one for himself, " Come 
 what may, wall, or wave, or mountain parapet, or fiery gorge, 
 or rushing flood, or devouring death; come what can, I will 
 obey the divine command, and move forward with the pioneers 
 and scouts along all the lines of thought and up all the sum- 
 mits of knowledge." 
 
 The world is full of babes and children. We want men — 
 
 GREAT, STALWART, IRON-.JOINTED, BROAD-SOULED, FATHOMLESS, 
 
 summiitless, diA)inely -anointed, God STmtten, hingly men, to 
 whom death or failure shall be forever impossible. This will 
 take time, and it cannot be done by a short cut. It means 
 patient and weary years. But what of that? Have we not all 
 the future? Are we not immortal? We start out of the 
 preparation of these years to march along the eternal ages in 
 association and comparison with powers, and principalities, 
 and dominions, and thrones of heaven. When I think of mj-- 
 self poised on my purpose, encased by my freedom, inspired 
 and vitalized by the Eternal Spirit, standing up before God 
 among the ancient ranks of being that rally around His throne 
 and support the pillars of His government, then the chances 
 of this life and the toil of time put on new majesty, and I rise 
 to my kinship with God, and believe nothing impossible to him 
 that willeth and believe th. 
 
 • 3. ISText after the classics it may not be amiss to mention 
 the Modern Languages as having a right to a place in the 
 appointments of a university. While they are hiferior to the 
 classics for drill and in perfection of structure, they still have 
 certain compensating advantages. They are the tongues of 
 living people. We meet them in the street and in the mart, 
 and in the caucus and convention. But more than this, they 
 are crowded with the richest results of research and science. 
 Charles Y. said, "So often as I learn a language, so often I 
 become a man." Happily there is no need to prepare the pub- 
 lic mind for these studies. 
 
 4. Mathematics claims an ancient inheritance in the uni- 
 versity. It would be difficult to exclude this science, if we 
 would. We could find no weapon to smite either student or 
 professor that did not involve the science itself, for it enters 
 
44 
 
 into all our living. Building is preceded by the study of pro- 
 portions and quantities and strength of materials. Machinery 
 (and everything except breathing is done by machinery) is only 
 solved and illustrated problems. The drill in this study, from 
 addition to the computation of the orbit of the double stars, is 
 unequivocal. The student who cuts a paraboloid of revolution 
 from a given cone will not need watching while his work lasts. 
 
 5. The Natural Sciences have crowded themselves into the 
 curriculum, and have maintained the struggle for existence 
 with marked success. They are of nature, and are in league 
 with events. You might as well argue against shadows, object 
 to earthquakes, forbid eclipses, and anathematize comets, as to 
 resist natural sciences. The i-eal question is not whether we 
 will admit them to the course, but rather will they leave any- 
 thing else in the course. Protestantism cannot oppose any 
 science, but superstition may well do it. Like God's revealed 
 Bible, natural science will put down superstition unless super- 
 stition puts it down. If her people study science, that will 
 ruin the saints and the decretals. If they do not, that will ruin 
 them, for tliey cannot compete unless they have equal chance 
 in discoveries and appliances. Thus in either case the doom 
 of superstition is fixed. The physicians, next after the restless 
 and robbed heart of mankind, have been the great enemies of 
 superstition. The new-culture men are now in the field as their 
 allies. The only course for Christian intelligence is to accept 
 the situation, welcome all light, walk down into the new field, 
 and find God back of the last analysis. 
 
 6. The Technological courses are the consummation of these 
 advancements in science. They are schools of knowledge 
 instead of culture. They aim to apply the sciences; they not 
 only tell how it has been done, but they do it; they rely upon 
 experiments ; they claim to fit a man for life. As a chemist he 
 can verify all the theories by experiment. In physics and in 
 all departments the student must test by appliances all the 
 theories of science. In natural history he is expected to be 
 familiar with every rock, and stick, and weed, and to have an 
 acquaintance with every bird that flies and fish that swims; to 
 know intimately, or to have been introduced to, every kind ol 
 
4.5 
 
 reptile and insect. Such an acquaintance cafinot be gained in 
 the half-hours of the old-culture course. Days and years in 
 the midst of the best appliances, under the inspiration of truth, 
 hunting on the fresh track of some new law skulking in some 
 neighboring thicket or glen — these are necessary to give this 
 department an insurance of results. 
 
 This cause needs an advocate no more than the almighty 
 dollar needs one. Courses of training that deal wholly with 
 the arts of living, with* the production and manufacture and 
 transportation of the necessities and comforts of life, can 
 always justify their existence in a practical community. You 
 cannot go into your house or into your office without the 
 ministration of these senses. The proportions of beauty and 
 of strength that make your home safe from accident and attrac- 
 tive to your eye, come from the appliances of science. Every 
 article of raiment, every mouthful of food, every tint of beauty 
 and form of use, every appliance of comfort and article of 
 luxury, comes from scientific skill. Wherein it succeeds it is 
 of science — knowledge of nature's laws. Wherein it is outside 
 of this knowledge and these laws, it always fails. There is not 
 one question of our well-being in the whole field of our activity 
 that is not touched and determined by science applied. It is 
 estimated that nature unaided would support only one in ten 
 thousand of her cliildren. Think of the machinery that toils 
 for us and carries the burdens of humanity. Yonder island 
 shivers under the motion of six hundred millions man-power of 
 unconscious industry. Not a wheel goes round, nor a punch 
 comes down, nor a hammer falls, nor a saw starts, nor a knife 
 cuts, nor an auger bores, nor a tool moves, nor a shuttle flies, 
 nor a spindle sings, but it is an illustrated principle in science. 
 Do you telegraph to your office, to your factory on the branch, 
 or to your consumer on the other side of the world? That is 
 the perfection of science. I never send a dispatch but I feel as 
 if we were leaping the impassable gulf between us and the 
 infinite. But telegraphing is not the whole of science. Your 
 morning paper that brings to your table every part of the 
 known world and reports of the slumber and safety of almost 
 every individual on earth (for if they are not mentioned we 
 
46 
 
 know that nothing has happened to them) needs something 
 beside the telegraph to actualize it. The paper must come by 
 machinery that hears and obeys our wishing. Foundries must 
 toil on every hand. Laboratories must experiment and ana- 
 lyze and combine for given ingredients of this result. Power 
 presses, things of life that could take a distinct piece from each 
 postoffice under our flag and still be short by several hundreds 
 of pieces, these great presses must be fitted into perfection. 
 Then, too, all the gigantic machinery *of the railroads must be 
 in perfect order to consummate the enterprise. Let a switch- 
 man oversleep or a wheel leave the track, and all the other 
 appliances are frustrated. In short, your morning paper is a 
 late blossom on the stalk of civilization, and but for the inven- 
 tions and victories of science it would not be possible. The 
 college of technology concerns itself altogether with the knowl- 
 edge of these sciences and their application to the questions of 
 life. It also touches life in a most vital way. "We are in the 
 midst of mysteries that are ready to be solved, and are sur- 
 rounded by powers that are waiting to be used. All that we need 
 is to wake the magician that can break the spell of our blind- 
 ness, and we shall see more helps than we have ever yet 
 mustered. There is fuel in the air; somebody must cord it up. 
 There are railroads and steamships in this sea above us; some- 
 body must build the depots and the docks. There is air for us 
 in the sea; somebody must make us as good chemists as the 
 fish. Provide auvand fuel, and the vales and glens of the 
 ocean might make good summer residences. The great 
 truth is this — we are only at the threshold of possible 
 knowledge. 
 
 This college of technology purposes to furnish the keys and 
 lanterns for further discoveries. It can also do great service 
 to the state — now requiring more natural science to be taught 
 in the pUblic schools — by opening its laboratories during the 
 summer vacations and giving seasonable opportunities for the 
 great company of teachers to perfect themselves for their duty. 
 The college of technology offers a course of studies sufficiently 
 protracted and searching to justify the bestuwment of the. honors 
 of the university. 
 
47 
 
 7. School of Theology. This has always had a place in the 
 university. Universities are the out-growth of more ancient 
 schools for religious instruction. Kot only have these teachers 
 been abreast of their times, but in all early ages they have 
 monopolized and controlled the learning. To-day the advance- 
 ment in knowledge gives the ministry no alternative; they 
 must study or go under. 
 
 8. Department of Law. This needs no defense in theory, 
 though it may need emphasis in practice. This profession has 
 always been held in high esteem, and facilities for its improve- 
 ment are seldom wanting. But at no period in the history of 
 our civilization has there been greater need of exalting and hon- 
 oring this profession. Possibly the pulpit and the press do 
 most to mold public sentiment, and so make free government 
 possible. But next in power stands the bar. The honor of 
 the country is quite as much in their charge as in any other. 
 The legislatures of the country in its different parts are con- 
 trolled by the bar. The final appeal is always to the bench, 
 and without an honorable and learned bar it will be impossible 
 to maintain a worthy and unimpeachable bench. The weak 
 place, the place of final trust and authority in our government 
 is not in the second term nor in the third term of the executive, 
 nor is it in the conservative senate nor in the volatile house. 
 But it is in the supreme court. "We have witnessed legislation 
 changed, nullified, extended in the interest of localities and 
 prejudices, by opinions of the bench. We can illy afford to 
 lower the tone of this supreme authority. The streams that 
 fill this sea must be purified and exalted in character and honor. 
 The bar — not second in manliness and honor to any other 
 profession — must be reinforced by scholars and Christian men, 
 men with views of public interest broader than personal am- 
 bition and wiser than selfish schemes. ' Christian patriots can 
 well afford to put their treasures into a college for law in a way 
 to secure the most exalted and honorable management. A 
 man great in his profession and great in his character, from the 
 head of a law faculty could make a great impress upon these 
 Northwestern commonwealths, and render incalculable service 
 to the republic. From such a throne he might call into being 
 
48 . 
 
 a body of learned men who would so mold the public mind 
 that financial lobbying would be understood to be what it is — 
 not professional service, hut hrihery,' and special legislation 
 would rank not as statesmanship, hut as treason. All honor 
 to an honorable bar! Let the university come to its steady and 
 persistent support. 
 
 9. The Department of Medicine is one of the essential ele- 
 ments of a university. Even when it had few of the character- 
 istics of a science ; when it merely observed and guessed, seek- 
 ing for arbitrary remedies; when no small part of professional 
 power was vested in semi-incantations and charms ; and when 
 the wiser men of the profession relied upon nature and nurses 
 on account of their helplessness, knowing that they really knew 
 next to nothing — even then the schools were founded, and 
 flourished. It is the interest in this science, and these the 
 goodly thinkers that have illumined the profession, that have 
 made this science what it is — one of the foremost philan- 
 thropies of the age. Though medicine has an ancient and hon- 
 orable place in the very idea of a university, yet I cannot dis- 
 miss this branch of university work without adding my 
 appreciation of a class of men who endure all hardships, 
 sacrifice all personal liberty and brave all dangers for 
 the comfort, and well-being of others. Their work allies 
 them to One who went into soul-healing through body- 
 healing. 
 
 10. Dejpartm^ent* of Philosophy. This is germane in its 
 construction and history, but is more general in its character. 
 Philology, in which, it has been sarcastically said, " the vowels , 
 are nothing and the consonants not much more," is growing 
 into large proportions. History is enjoying a revival. It is 
 turning its searching glare, not chiefly to what a few kings did 
 and said, but to what was dotie and said by the people. It is 
 becoming a narration of their customs and codes, a description 
 of their food and raiment, an insight into their houses and 
 temples. Here, too, must be classed English literature, that is 
 forever rapping at the doors of the university, asking to be al- 
 lowed to crowd out the older studies. Political science, called 
 thus because it usually involves neither politics nor science, is 
 
49 
 
 studied in every government, and by every man who trades, be 
 it ever so little. 
 
 Moral and intellectual philosophies, challenging the world's 
 thought ever since the world had any thought, still plunge on 
 in fathomless seas, and the fine arts, in all their old and new 
 phases touching the elegancies and melodies and rythms of 
 life, giving a finish and perfection to civilization, are only in 
 their infancy. All these and many others that might be enu- 
 merated make up the department of post-graduate studies and 
 investigations that must find a home and advantages in the 
 university. 
 
 III. THE MOKAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTEK OF THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 This concerns either man or God, and this part of the sub- 
 ject may be arranged about these two centers: 
 
 1. The university v%ust he no respecter of persons. Her 
 advantages cannot be conditional upon complexion, blood, or 
 sex. America has outgrown all doubts on color and race. 
 There may linger some concerning gender. These cannot long 
 remain in the increasing light of this age. Nature is older 
 than the oldest American university, and when it becomes an 
 issue between these parties the friends of fair play need not be 
 in doubt as to what will be the result. This week we have a 
 rumor, which, true or false, will prove a prophecy, that Nature 
 has triumphed, and the women enter old Harvard. Co-educa- 
 tion begins by God's plan in the family, and is continued in 
 the public school, and no one objects. It is folly to fear more 
 as danger diminishes. Without creating distinctions which do 
 not exist except in our thought or in our customs, we will be 
 safe in assuming that there is no danger that our daughters 
 will know too much. We do not need to legislate against their 
 intelligence. With the doors open before all, there will follow 
 without regard to sex the endeavor of the most aspiring, and 
 the " survival of the fittest." Opportunity is often ability; a 
 chance is often a victory. Without reference to the old doctrine 
 of appetency, experience demonstrates that motive and oppor- 
 tunity for a given activity in any class or community develops 
 
50 
 
 capacity for that activity. This law holds over the education 
 of women. In 1863 the University of Cambridge reluctantly 
 consented to admit Englishwomen to university examinations 
 with a view to give them definite standing as teachers. At 
 the first examination ninety-one candidates presented them- 
 selves, of whom fifty-seven failed ; two years later one hundred 
 and thirty applied, of whom only twenty-eight failed. This 
 succeeding ratio' has steadily increased till now the examiners 
 nearly always accredit the girls with the most thorough acqui- 
 sitions. The demand for a fair and equal chance hardly needs 
 argument. The republic says "any one that can, may;" ex- 
 perience says intelligent men must have intelligent wives. 
 The mother more frequently than the father transmits the fiber 
 and character; nature requires that great men should be pre- 
 ceded by great mothers. A slave mother in Tennessee by in- 
 dustry and ability purchased her own and her children's liberty. 
 She went to the Methodist preacher in the town and said, " I 
 am free; I have three sons; where can I make men of them?" 
 He said, " In Liberia." She went; one of the sons return- 
 ing to America graduated in medicine in 'New York and be- 
 came the ablest physician in the republic of Liberia; a second 
 son became the first colored bishop of the M. E. Church-; the 
 third son became the first president of the republic of Liberia,. 
 There was a vast amount of stock in that " old black woman." 
 I recall but two other fountains so full of greatness: one on 
 the island of Corsica, — the mother of the Bonapartes, that 
 gave to Europe revolutions and emperors; the other on the 
 island of Great Bi-itain — the mother of the Wesleys, that 
 gave to mankind new hope and a new evangel. I crave for my 
 country more than all things else, mighty mothers ; given these, 
 and Columbia shall stand a thousand years and nothing shall 
 be impossible to her. 
 
 2. The university must he a Christian institxition. Chris- 
 tianity presents a vast array of facts. With but few exceptions 
 it has written the histories, inspired the books, sustained the 
 schools, and developed the civilizations of the world. Its sacred 
 books are the noblest and oldest classics, and its conscious ex- 
 perience is as much a subject of investigation as any other class 
 
' • 51 
 
 of facts. The reports of cousciousness concerning conscience 
 and spiritnal comfort and spiritual testimony are as worthy of 
 thought as the reports of consciousness on any other state of 
 mind. The facts of prayer are as well established as the fact 
 of gravity. The fact of transformed character, of kindled 
 affection, of exalted purpose, of heroic living, of triumphant 
 dying, are as much facts as the growth of vegetation or the 
 circuit of the stars. A university must give these great classes 
 of facts a fair chance. ^Vliile it is demanded that the church 
 must accept facts and abide by results, it is not too much to 
 expect the same from universities. On the supreme subject 
 there is no excuse for evasion or ambiguity. The trumpet must 
 give no uncertain sound. "While we welcome all facts and all 
 light we accept Christianity as a fact and Christ as the light of 
 the world. We do not arraign the apostles before the bar of 
 the university and keep them on trial for perjury ; but we send 
 them about their work. The university stands for the defense 
 as well as for the discovery of truth. In virtue of her charter 
 she is under obligations of loyalty to the interests of the re- 
 public. These are the interests of a Christian nation, for such 
 we have been from the beginning. We were born out of the 
 struggles of conscience. We came here exiles for conscience. 
 The Declaration of Independence recognizes our inalienable 
 rights as from God. We hold days of thanksgiving to Grod. 
 Public officers take oath in the name of God.* Legislative 
 assemblies have chaplains. The army and navy have chaplains 
 as commissioned officers. The state exempts church property 
 from taxation, and protects the sanctity of the Sa*bbath. Black- 
 stone says, " Christianity is a part of the common law of Eng- 
 land," and our state enacts the common law of England. And 
 Daniel Webster, in the Girard will case, said, " Christianity is 
 the law of the land." This Christian nation has a right to ex- 
 pect that the educational institutions will be Christian, It is 
 difficult to understand how universities can be anything else. 
 They take the youth of the land from family altars in the form- 
 ative period of their lives. They are under most solemn obli- 
 gations to shield them as far, as may be from the floods of 
 temptation that threaten to overwhelm them. And more than 
 
52 
 
 this, the youth need the partial support of the gospel. For in 
 this land, in the light of the Sun of Righteousness, mere mo- 
 rality divorced from religion has no more warmth than a painted 
 fire, and no more life than a mummy. God's Son came as the 
 revealment; Christianity aiid knowledge were joined by eternal 
 decree, and it is too late in the centuries to divorce them. 
 Learning has always been the friend of Christianity. The 
 e-reat torches that illumine the centuries behind us were kindled 
 by the fire on the holy altar. I would rather lay our founda- 
 tions on a southward floating iceberg, or on the crest of a vol- 
 cano, or on the heaving bosom of an earthquake, than to con- 
 secrate them to irreligion, immorality, and skepticism. Under- 
 stand me — I lift my voice for Christianity, not for sectarianism. 
 I regard sectarianism as disguised skepticism ; it doubts the 
 truth; it rends the seamless garment; it is a whited sepulcher. 
 Denominationalism has its place in providence, but not in a 
 university. Inside the university the religious convictions of 
 every student must be sacred. The different Christian churches 
 must be able to send their children here without endangering 
 either their faith or their virtue. 
 
 IV. THE COMPONENT PARTS OF A UNIVERSITY. 
 
 These may be briefly sketched as the agents and the instru- 
 ments — 
 
 1. The agents comprise the individuals that make up its in- 
 telligent force. , 
 
 {a) The Trustees precede and underlie the other agents. In 
 the simpler forms of civilization and in more genial climes a 
 solitary old philosopher sitting in the shade of a tree, or wan- 
 dering by the banks of a stream, constituted an institution — a 
 university in a very limited range of the idea, and a very 
 poetical and extended use of the word philosopher. But in 
 this civilization there must be organized and actual and death- 
 less corporations, touching all sides of society and life. This 
 something called a university is incorporated and lodged in a 
 board of trustees. This board receives power and funds in 
 trust for educational purposes. They do their work through 
 
53 
 
 delegated bodies under general directions. They commit busi- 
 ness to an executive committee that centers around an agent. 
 They do their instruction by another committee known as the 
 faculty that centers around the president. The trustees are no 
 small part of a university. They may be open to advice from 
 the president, but the final power of action is with them, and 
 in this power inheres the responsibility. If the university fails 
 they are to blame. If it succeeds to them will belong the 
 praise. Their committees may do the work, but they are the 
 instruments of the board. Another fact supporting this view 
 of the responsibility is this. The final force under God is 
 money. With money competent professors can be secured, 
 suitable buildings can be erected, and all helpful and needful 
 apparatus procured. This money power is vested in the board. 
 They must then be men who know how to create and how to 
 use money. They must call it out of the air, or dig it out of 
 the earth, or pull it out of their pockets, or resign. It must 
 come from somewhere; and they have no more right to hold 
 the post of trustees and not furnish the funds to the extent of 
 their ability, than the professors have to hold their places and 
 not do the teaching. They must be men of courage and faith 
 and ambition ; courage to undertake great enterprises, the faith 
 of Columbus, and ambition to achieve results worthy of this 
 age and of this latitude and longitude. The first question is 
 money. Brothers, this we must create. There is money enough 
 in the church and in the patronizing territory. We are to com- 
 mand it. While it is an honor to be a trustee, it is more than 
 honor, it is a holy trust from the church, which must be met 
 under her supervision and under the eye of God. 
 
 (i) Professors are an indispensable part of a university. 
 Tutors and instructors may do for certain work, but they can- 
 not take the place of professors. The Professor must be a man 
 with the sixth sense that will help him always in advance. As 
 Melchizedeck met Abraham returning from the slaughter of 
 the kings and blessed him, so the student must meet the pro- 
 fessor returning conqueror fi'om advanced fields and so con- 
 strained to bless him. He must have but one all-absorbing 
 purpose, and that his work. He must have the light of a single 
 4 
 
54 
 
 eye. He must have the vision of a prophet, thus to surprise 
 the secrets of the king's bed-chamber. He must have the scent 
 of a bloodhound, that neither rock nor air and hardly flood can 
 foil, thus to pursue truth. He must be able to live on promises, 
 for not more than once or twice in a score of years will he find 
 a kingly germ. Like a saint he must grow richer as he declines 
 in fortune. Like a lunatic he must grow happier as he recedes 
 farther from his goal. Like gravity he must be incapable of 
 wearying, and sleepless as the tall angels around the throne. 
 It is not necessary that he should go to his recitation-room like 
 iSTeander with a servant following him with his pants; or that 
 he should go into his "lecture-room like Dempster with his collar 
 wrong side before; or that he should crush his hat in his desk 
 and put his manuscript on his head like Thompson. But should 
 any of these things transpire, the man, the soul and brain, must 
 project so far that it shall fill up the omission. 
 
 (<?) The students are the thii-d class of agents. The ideal 
 student never comes, the actual student is what we want. He 
 is a compound of opportunity, application and ambition. The 
 chief element in this part of the agency is numbers. Then out 
 of a thousand some will be tall enough to be seen round the 
 world. This tallest one fixes the reputation. This question of 
 numbers is largely in the reach of the trustees. It is under 
 the great law of supply and demand. Make appointments for 
 a thousand students and soon they will crowd into your halls. 
 It is like any business — the great fortunes are made by whole- 
 sale dealers. The margins in real estate have been on acre 
 property. You can handle a large church more easily than a 
 small one. You can handle a great university more easily than 
 a small one. 
 
 2. The instruments only need enumerating. Foremost is 
 that which is most difficult to command — money. This is as 
 necessary as air. The blessing of God is above all else; with- 
 out that we had better disband. But the blessing of God is a 
 fixed factor. He comes into all open hearts and upon all help- 
 ful institutions. God is all right, waiting for a chance for 
 something to bless. He comes upon universities as certainly 
 as water seeks the sea. This constant factor being present the 
 
65 
 
 first contingent element is money. There can be no progress 
 without it. It is the stimulus of this war. But it should 
 always be remembei-ed that it is of value only as a means and 
 not as an end. It is a trust fund— a fund in trust for an ob- 
 ject. And its only value is in procuring the appliances for that 
 object. This includes hmldings. There must be provision 
 for recitation and lecture rooms and laboratories and dissecting- 
 room and observatories and art galleries and conservatories and 
 museums and libraries and chapels and dormitories and other 
 necessary buildings — not last or least among which is an 
 American gymnasium. All these buildings need furnishing 
 and this includes a vast amount of illustrative apparatus. 
 Where in the haste of this hour I have failed in asking, the de- 
 liberate wisdom of the trustees must not fail in giving. Thus 
 far I have considered some of the reasons for the existence of 
 the university — the work she is to do, the spirit in which she 
 is to do it, and her component parts. Much of the argument 
 has been so condensed as to be but little more than a table of 
 contents. Though the details have hardly been touched, yet a 
 university puts on vast proportions. Only God can measure 
 the privileges and the responsibility. 
 
 V. WHAT THE NOKTHWESTEKN UNIVERSITY HAS ALEEADy REALIZED. 
 
 We cannot avoid asking- this board of trust, these professors 
 and this great company of /riends. What has the Northwestern 
 done? Is it justifying its claims to univeisity honors? Let 
 me pause here long enough to say that my sympathies are with 
 weak institutions where noble and godly men are toiling and 
 starving in the interest of the ca,use of God. Knowingly I 
 would not add a feather to their burdens. I only ask in the 
 interest of young men and of the church that confides in them, 
 that they will push up their standards to the highest point, and 
 when a man graduates that he shall have had a full chance. 
 An institution has a right to be a college even if it has but 
 one course of study, but one idea; more than this, it has a 
 right to be a university, provided its faith sees in the future 
 the various departments of instruction. Institutions are usually 
 born both young and small; time corrects the first mistake, but 
 
 .L.fvfC. 
 
56 
 
 tlie otlier is too apt to become chronic. I pray God to deliver 
 them all from this calamity. Every institution that honestly 
 does its work helps so much. Every torch and taper helps to 
 confound the darkness. Yet I must ask, Is the Northwestern 
 justifying her university honors ? In reply, I will only state 
 what she has accomplished. Her history is brief, measured by 
 the pointers of thie clock. It is only eighteen years since she 
 opened her doors to students. There are other measurements 
 more just as well as more imposing. The first notable accom- 
 plishment was heing horn. There is hardly a state in the 
 Union that has not great institutions whose first trouble is in 
 failing to be actually born. The Northwestern, carried for 
 years in the brain of the president of trustees, and in the hope 
 and courage of the men I see here to-day, came to individuality 
 in the ofiice of Judge Goodrich, in the city of Chicago, on the 
 31st day of May, 1850. She was consecrated by praying and 
 devout men to the cause of God, and from that hour has been 
 pushing steadily up into her plans. 
 
 2. She has also a site. Once in the world, the university 
 had to be somewhere, and here she has been for years. If the 
 foresight of the founders had been as good as their judgment 
 and experience, they would not have gone anywhere else. Here 
 all things converge. Just out of the great city, and so out of 
 its dust and din and saloons and great temptations, yet near 
 enough to command the springs of being and the ^inews of 
 war, we are in the center of the church and of the continent 
 on this highway of the nations — in this great valley that could 
 feed mankind and yet shall hold populations by the hundred 
 millions. Our climate is cool enough for a summer watering- 
 place. Our little city is both healthful and accessible. Every- 
 thing in the site is realized. 
 
 3. Foundation. This means in all departments about two 
 million dollars. The ground has grown to such proportions 
 that gravitation, shifting, turns toward the university. It is 
 too large to disintegrate. It has now the support of the word — 
 "to him that hath shall be given." 
 
 4. The prof essors and instructors seem quite respectable, 
 both in number and ability. Already the staff contains 
 
more than fifty experienced educators — men cultured and 
 experienced in the leading institutions of America and 
 Europe. 
 
 5. The departments or colleges already in vigorous operation 
 or inaugurated this anniversary are the first indications of our 
 title. Foremost is the College of Literature and Science^ 
 with a full corps of able professors, with an honorable history 
 among educational men, and with a wide variety of culture- 
 courses. 
 
 6. Garrett Biblical Institute. Resting on a distinct foun- 
 dation, and under a distinct board and separate management 
 but most intimate relations and interchange of work, it is to 
 the university all that could be asked in theology. It gives the 
 church work of the highest order. 
 
 . 7. The Medical Dejpartment (the Chicago Medical College) 
 has established a right to first rank of medical schools in this 
 or in any land, by the number and ability of its professors, by 
 the extent and thoroughness of its curriculum, by the genuine- 
 ness and accuracy of its instructions, and by the variety and 
 richness of its auxiliaries. 
 
 8. The College of Technology, organized and ordained by 
 the board at this session, starts out with liberal appointments, 
 with a body of eleven professors and instructors, and with all 
 the provisions and appliances in laboratories and instruments 
 necessary for its successful operation. 
 
 , 9. The Preparatory Department also deserves mention. Its 
 size, the vast amount of work it is doing, and its importance 
 in its relations to all the other departments, make it in itself in 
 many respects not inferior to many institutions of the land 
 with much higher titles. 
 
 10. The Woman's College is an added grace as well as virtue. 
 Their accommodations and achievements entitle them to large 
 credit. This day this fair daughter of the church comes to this 
 maternal mansion, raps gently on the door, and behold! the 
 door swings round on its hinges, and the Woman's College 
 takes her seat gracefully among the colleges of the university. 
 She comes with a good dowry. N^ow the homes of the North- 
 west can feel that their sons and daughters are cared for in our 
 
68 
 
 literary home. This is a vast and significant movement. It 
 is a prophecy of conquest. 
 
 11. It is onr privilege to chronicle still another department, 
 long in the plan of the university, indorsed by special resolu- 
 tion at the meeting that organized the first faculty, but now by 
 the first realized as a fact. It is an important school for the 
 maintenance of a most learned and honorable profession — The 
 Department of Law. This is achieved by a union with the 
 University of Chicago, thus dividing the expenses and increas- 
 ing their prospects. I hail this as the dawning of a better 
 day in the relations of our institutions. I believe the dignity 
 and force of this law-school, a maid nourished by two mothers, 
 will justify the experiment. 
 
 12. The Library of the University forms another argument 
 in vindication of our title. With the largest library west of 
 the Hudson river, and an actual annual income for the library 
 already surpassing that of any college or university in this 
 country, and with funds so adjusted and secured as in four or 
 five years to double the present income, and with provisions 
 just ordered for handling this force, the libraries seem to us a 
 department of no mean proportions. 
 
 13. The Museum,., containing more than fifteen thousand 
 specimens selected with special reference to use for instruction, 
 is another indication. It is rich in typical specimens of the 
 large groups of animals and plants. The national reputation 
 of the scholar who ts the living soul of this large collection. 
 Prof. Marcy, now dean of the College of Technology, explains 
 its completeness in every department of natural history. 
 
 14. Here must be added cabinets, and consei-vatories of art 
 and music. 
 
 15. It may not be amiss to mention six large buildings for 
 the use of the scholars — four of which are equaled by but few 
 other educational edifices in America. 
 
 16. The fullness of our courses of study and the thorough- 
 ness of its work in every department — on this group of col- 
 leges and this foundation, and these faculties of instruction, 
 and these honorable actualities, I base our defense and rest our 
 case before the bar of public judgment. 
 
59 
 
 VI. WHAT ABE THE WANTS AND RES0UBCE8 OF THE UlS'rVERSITY? 
 
 The first want is to develop the existing departments. We 
 have heen foundation laying. The trustees have been toiling 
 on patiently underground; they have planned deeply and widely. 
 The basis is certain. The time has come to push forward to 
 larger results. The church has intrusted us with great inter- 
 ests and opportunities, and she Mali not allow us to return the 
 intrusted talents without increase — she has a right to demand 
 fruit. She has found that of her children committed to schools 
 outside of positive religious influence she received back into 
 her bosom and for her use less than one-third of one per cent. 
 Kot one in three hundred has come back to her with the 
 fruits and culture needed for her use. She is aware of this, 
 and now demands of religious institutions such energy and 
 activity as shall furnish her with skilled workmen. This in- 
 volves more professorships, more assistants to chairs already 
 filled and overworked. It involves more buildings, such as 
 dormitories, libraries, observatories, chapels, and gymnasiums. 
 There is no reason for rest or doubt. As I see it, we are in the 
 pass, the strategical point which must be held. Christian cul- 
 ture cannot surrender this point. Yonder is the amazement of 
 the civilized world — a city built in a day, burned in a night, 
 and rebuilt in an hour. In this community absolutely nothing- 
 is impossible. Any great manly enterprise that comprehends 
 the future and embraces the interests of the people in that lati- 
 tude never lacks defenders. It is only the timid that are routed ; 
 ships are wrecked on shoals and coasts, not often on the open 
 sea. With this stout hulk and well-laid beam and live oak 
 knees we have nothing to fear but fear. Qur resources are not 
 easily computed. The basis or the actual body of our resources 
 is easily comprehended; but outside of these eighteen or twenty 
 hundreds of thousands of dollars there are other forces not a whit 
 less actual, though less measurable. There are our graduates, 
 no small force, all believing in us, all sending here their repre- 
 sentatives. Beyond these is that shadowy something called 
 public sentiment; that atmosphere that fills tlie public eye and 
 the popular lungs. This is no inconsiderable force. It is the 
 
60 
 
 support of the workers, for no man, however great the girth of 
 his brain or chest, can do anything without an atmosphere. 
 That is what ails France and Spain to-day. There is too much 
 oxygen in the air for the health of the despots, and at the bot- 
 tom of society there is too much carbonic acid gas for the 
 health of free institutions. Public sentiment is the third 
 hoase. You may improve and direct it, but you cannot dis- 
 pense with it or resist it. Institutions, like garments, must fit 
 the spirit and mind of the age. Fitting thus, they are as 
 omnipotent as the tide of history. Once in league with events, 
 triumph is only a. question of time. Look at this great l^orth- 
 west, teeming with the life and energy of all lands, and see our 
 field. Look at yonder city blazing at one end and rebuilding 
 at the other; sending in the same message the news of the loss 
 of all millions and orders for new millions ; striking speechless, 
 and so beyond protest, the timid and hesitating, commanding 
 as by absolute authority the approval of the wisest judgment 
 and adding spurs and wings to the progressive and great for- 
 tunes to the dauntless — look at yonder city and take your 
 key-note. This is the age of great enterprises. "Wooden shoes 
 and ox-teams have passed away. We ride on the morning 
 light, and whisper in every human ear with one breath like the 
 kinsmen and heirs of the Infinite. We martial soldiers by the 
 millions; we build railroads by the thousand miles; we go to 
 war in palace cars ; we fight great battles in the war offices, 
 thousands of miles'from the smoke of the battle, and order on 
 maps and by telegraph each charge and change. This age does 
 everything on the most magnificent scale, whether it is to settle 
 a wilderness or control a government. There is no advantage 
 for small enterprises. In the field of education men invest in 
 great movements, and the spirit of the age is seen in 
 great gifts. In the year 1871, $8,435,090 were given to 
 this cause by a few men. Two men gave over a million 
 each, and twenty-three men gave over one hundred 
 thousand dollars each. I rejoice that our friends are in- 
 spired with this spirit, as seen in the new departments 
 which the trustees have this week launched for an endless 
 voyage. 
 
61 
 
 The College of Technology, the Law School, and the purchase 
 of the Woman's College are land-marks, signals to the centuries ; 
 high testimony to men and angels that the university is on the 
 march into the future with undaunted spirit. Here, too, I am 
 permitted to mention another sign of hope — the noble gift 
 from a young man, Geo. H. Sisson, Esq., who has established 
 the "Allen-Sisson Chair in Physics" as a monument to the 
 memory of his father, saying: "He was an upright, modest, 
 devoted Christian. If I have any character or religious experi- 
 ence, under God I owe it to him. It seems to me only fitting 
 that this monument should be erected to his memory by a son 
 who love.s him and whom he loved." This must be pleasing 
 to good men, to angels, and to God. There are other sires and 
 mothers whose names might be sent down the future on an 
 everlasting mission of blessing by worthy sons. In such an 
 age there is no hope for us except in keeping step with this 
 lofty music. If we cannot do it here, where can it be done? 
 Men whom neither wars can slay, nor floods drown, nor fires 
 consume — men who are doing all things else ip a heroic way, 
 are the men to do this work in a royal way. 
 
 The day that New England crowded the summit of Bunker 
 Hill to see the monument founded and hear Daniel Webster, 
 the multitude swayed up toward the platform till those in front 
 were nearly crushed. The marshal ordered the crowd back, 
 when the cry came up from the multitude: " It cannot be done. 
 It is impossible." When Webster, stepping to the front, said: 
 "Nothing is impossible on Bunker Hill;" and before the 
 motion of his hand the crowd surged back. Standing here this 
 hour, and in the faces of the men of the Northwest, I say that 
 " Nothing is impossible on this soil." The age, the latitude, 
 the patronage and the magnitude of the enterprise make success 
 almost as certain as it is necessary. The university rises before 
 us in distinct outlines. A figure of power and of beauty, the 
 daughter of the church and of our civilization, she stands 
 among our free institutions to preserve our common schools 
 from stagnation and poverty; to multiply our inventions and 
 perfect our machinery; to stimulate our industrial and aug- 
 ment our productive power; to develop mines and command 
 
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6^ 
 
 their precious treasures; to deepen our channels and lengthen 
 onr livers; to improve onr thoroughfares and increase onr 
 transporting capacity; to dredge onr harbors and signal our 
 coasts and illumine our cities; to save om* ballot-box ti'om 
 brutality and our juries from bribery; to deliver our courts 
 from partisanism and our legislative halls from corruption; to 
 protect our sick-chambers from empiricism and om- bar from 
 venality; to exalt our reasons above skepticism and our faith 
 above superstition — thus I • see her. with the beauty of the 
 morning on her cheek and the glory of eteiTdty on her brow, 
 quickening our sons and daughters into kings and queens by 
 the light of her eye, by the inspiration of her smile and the 
 fragrance of her presence. Coming into this work I have 
 little to say that is personal. I stand among my fi-iends. 
 I could not tell you anything new, for I have been in yom* 
 midst ever since I was here as a student. I am here by choice 
 and with the fullest approval of my judgment. I have no other 
 work or ambition than to do at my best the work given me in 
 the order of providence. I expect success, for I am surrounded 
 as I know by a faculty of wise and prudent counsellors, and 
 sustained by a board of ti'ustees whose character years ago I 
 learned to emulate, and I know that God always lives and 
 oives wisdom to them that ask. He knows mv needs and that 
 I cling to Him. I hesitate to put on a mantle worn by such 
 men as Hinman.'Foster, and Haven — men whose names fill 
 the church; and I am oppressed with a care of the youth. 
 Thev are in my heart as if they were my own sons and daugh- 
 ters. Mv best advice and time shall be given to them indi- 
 vidually. This care shall be the last neglected. As I enter 
 the solemn responsibility. I implore the prayers of the church 
 and the blessing of Almighty God. 
 
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