Compass 
 
 FRANKLIN HAMILTON 
 
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LODESTAR AND 
 COMPASS 
 
 AN ADVENTURE OF THE IMMORTAL 
 PART OF US 
 
 ^ . JEdited by 
 
 FRANKLIN HAMILTON 
 
 So we are here setting up on this hill as npon a high pedestal once 
 more the compass of human life with its great needle pointing steadily 
 at the lodestar of the human spirit. Let men who wish to know come and 
 look upon this compass and thereafter determine wh ich way they wiU go! 
 — President IVoodrouiiVilsonatthe Openingof the American Vnitxraity. 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
c^ 
 
 
 Copyright, 1915, by 
 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 A^ 
 
 JUN -0 ISiS 
 
 ©C;i.A4(l6207 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Preface 7 
 
 Invocation 16 
 
 The Right Reverend Alfred Harding, Bishop of 
 Washington. 
 
 Without Haste, Without Rest 19 
 
 Bishop Earl Cranston. 
 
 A New Chapter in the Biography of the American 
 
 Scholar 24 
 
 Bishop William Fraser McDowell. 
 
 Lodestar and Compass 36 
 
 His Excellency, Woodrow Wilson, President of the 
 United States. 
 
 The New Learning for the New Day 43 
 
 Bishop John William Hamilton. 
 
 Pro Deo et Patria 68 
 
 Address Introductory to Raising the American Flag. 
 The Honorable Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the 
 Navy. 
 
 " But I Know a Name, a Name, a Name! " 81 
 
 The Honorable William Jennings Bryan, Secretary 
 of State. 
 
 Life-Girding 95 
 
 Franklin Hamilton, Chancellor of the American 
 University. 
 
 Working Plan for the American University 132 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Opening Day — PREsroENT Wilson Speaking . . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 College of History, The American IlNiVERsrry 19 
 
 McKinley College of Government, The American 
 
 University 36 
 
 Speakers at the Opening of The American Uni- 
 versity 43 
 
 Sofa of Abraham Lincoln; Civil War Desk of 
 
 Secretary Stanton 55 
 
 Secretary Daniels Speaking 68 
 
 Secretary Bryan Speaking 81 
 
 Table and Chairs of Senator Charles Sumner; 
 
 Historic Chair 87 
 
 Francis Asburt 95 
 
 Washington Letter 113 
 
 Old Fort Gaines; View from Fort Gaines 132 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 AS President of the Board of Education of 
 ^the Methodist Episcopal Church, at the 
 opening of the American University, Bishop 
 McDowell made a formal statement of the 
 proposed policy of the new institution. In an 
 address of rare lucidity and strength the 
 bishop commented on the plans that were in- 
 herent in the enterprise. One of the high 
 ideals and noble purposes of this notable ex- 
 periment in higher education, he declared, 
 would be ^^the making of a literature which, 
 in ample and steady stream, shall refresh the 
 life of the republic and the world.'' Of such 
 making of books this publication is the first 
 fruit. 
 
 Concerning those children of the brain for 
 which they stand sponsor, publicists are as- 
 sumed to be diffident. Is it shamelessness here 
 to confess that diffidence concerning this par- 
 ticular "adventure of the immortal part of 
 us" comes not so easily to heel? Where mis- 
 takes appear the editor perforce stands con- 
 
 7 
 
8 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 victed. But here is wide sweep of thought. 
 In utterances for which the editor is not re- 
 sponsible, the far, almost prophetic, range of 
 spirit which the compass needle reveals dis- 
 misses any fear of reproach for this particular 
 book. Through the pages which follow more 
 than once there will be seen gleams of the lode- 
 star of the human spirit that will cheer and 
 refresh many voyagers. If over some way- 
 farers clouds have gathered, or, at dubious 
 ways in spirit pilgrimage, other travelers have 
 not been able to determine which way to go, 
 here, perhaps, may be found a helpful chart. 
 
 To make clear what is involved in this first 
 book venture of the American University it 
 will suffice to repeat a statement concerning 
 the opening of the university which at the time 
 received wide dissemination through the public 
 prints. That statement herewith follows : 
 
 President Wilson Opens the American University 
 
 May 27, 1914, forever will be the historic day of the 
 American University. The plans of Chancellor Hamil- 
 ton for opening the University already had received the 
 unanimous approval of the Board of Education, the 
 College Presidents* Association, and the University 
 Senate. Not a few of the foremost educators in the 
 land to whom these plans had been submitted for 
 counsel and help had given their unqualified indorse- 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 9 
 
 ment. There now only remained to inaugurate the 
 plans for actual application and development. This 
 last has been done in a public function which will re- 
 main memorable in the minds of those who were privi- 
 leged to be present. The occasion, moreover, promises 
 to have no small significance in the new trend of modern 
 Christian training. 
 
 Every auspice was favorable. A cloudless day had 
 wrapped in beauty the noble westward slope whereon 
 lies the great university campus. On one side below 
 was the national capital, its snowy buildings framed 
 with green. Around the foot of the slope toward the 
 south and east rolled the Potomac in a picturesque 
 sweep toward the sea. The distant vista was of blue 
 stretching mountains. To this spot it was that on 
 May 27, in the afternoon, came President Wilson to 
 lend his own personal interest as an educator and his 
 official recognition as head of the nation to the university 
 whose true natal day it was. 
 
 It was to be an open-air assembly. Long before the 
 hour set for the formal exercises the people had been 
 gathering. Automobiles had been rolling out over 
 Massachusetts Avenue boulevard. The new electric 
 railroad which had been completed for this special day 
 had brought visitors in a steady stream. For a half 
 hour, while the seats were being occupied, the Marine 
 Band, sent by the Navy Department, gave a concert. 
 Twenty of the leading clergymen of Washington, rep- 
 resenting all denominations, under the leadership of 
 Dr. William A. Haggerty, as chief marshal, looked after 
 the ticket bearers. Soon all seats were exhausted. 
 When Bishop Cranston, as presiding officer of the day, 
 arose to call the assembly to order and to introduce 
 Bishop Harding, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Wash- 
 ington, to make the invocation, there was a vast ex- 
 
10 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 pectant throng centered around the speakers' platform 
 and on the lawns between the university buildings. 
 
 Bishop McDowell probably never spoke with more in- 
 tellectual vigor and reach than now as with characteristic 
 eloquence he voiced the hopes and purposes of the many 
 workers who had contributed to this hour. For among 
 these workers he had had no inconspicuous place. Wash- 
 ington people especially were grateful for his help and 
 presence. With striking apothegm, keen analysis, and 
 sympathetic vision of the new adventure, his classic 
 utterances served as a keynote for all that followed. 
 
 The national anthem now fittingly introduced the 
 President of the United States. President Wilson also 
 was in congenial atmosphere. His was an unaffected 
 personal interest. Sympathetically he expressed the 
 high significance of the occasion and of the undertaking. 
 Then with impressive utterance the Chief Magistrate 
 formally declared the university open for the work to 
 which its founders had dedicated it. The emphasis 
 which he placed on vision lifted the occasion to lofty 
 heights of spiritual significance. It is questionable 
 whether the President ever condensed into so brief a 
 compass thought that was at once rich, inspirational, 
 and practical in its application. 
 
 It was wholly fitting that the next speaker, Bishop 
 Hamilton, should have a leading part on the program. 
 He could not but make an address of rare persuasive- 
 ness and vision. For had he not contributed the first 
 dollar to the enterprise? He was the lifelong friend of 
 Bishop Hurst, the founder. Bishop Hamilton now is 
 endowing two lectureships for the university. He spoke 
 out of a sincere love for the enterprise and gave a 
 graphic word picture of the effort of the university to 
 adapt itself to the modern trend of thought in education 
 and life training. 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 11 
 
 A thrilling incident that followed was the flag raising, 
 which was in charge of the Secretary of the Navy, the 
 Honorable Josephus Daniels. The embodiment of pa- 
 triotism, gathering inspiration from the present outlook 
 in national affairs, this popular son of North Carolina 
 made a moving address on the university motto, "Pro 
 Deo et Patria" — For God and Country. Then at the 
 word of the speaker a great naval ensign, which together 
 with a lofty mast, had been presented by Mr. John B. 
 Hammond and friends, was flung out above the univer- 
 sity grounds and buildings. The band took up the strain 
 of the "Star Spangled Banner," while the people, spring- 
 ing to their feet, sang, under the contagious leadership 
 of Mr. Percy S. Foster, the immortal lines of Francis 
 Scott Key. 
 
 No better setting could have been found to rouse 
 William Jennings Bryan to one of those inimitable 
 utterances which have given the Secretary of State a 
 place unique in present-day affairs. Mr. Bryan was at 
 his best. A member of the Board of Trustees of the 
 university and of its Board of Award, the secretary felt 
 at home. His gracious words cheered every heart. A 
 cool breeze, which began to blow over the campus while 
 Mr. Bryan spoke, seemed to catch its refreshing and 
 stimulating vigor from his own spirit. 
 
 In the absence of Bishop Alpheus W. Wilson, Senior 
 Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Rev. 
 Dr. F. J. Prettyman, chaplain of the United States 
 Senate, pronounced the benediction. And the American 
 University had commenced its academic functions as the 
 youngest in the mighty fellowship of American institu- 
 tions of learning. 
 
 At a meeting of the trustees preceding the opening 
 exercises the report of Chancellor Hamilton was pre- 
 sented and showed a steady gathering of money, friends, 
 
12 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 and important forces to the help of the university. 
 Stated concisely, the new plans for the university are as 
 follows: First, fellowships for graduate study; second, 
 a director of research work for the service of students 
 wishing to avail themselves of the resources of Washing- 
 ton; third, lectureships in Washington on important 
 matters; fourth, lectureships at educational centers else- 
 where under the auspices of the American University; 
 fifth, the publication of significant volumes of lectures 
 and theses. 
 
 Dr. John W. Hancher, a member of the Board of 
 Award, read to the assembly a paper ordered by the 
 trustees at the morning session, voicing their apprecia- 
 tion and approval of the seven years administration of 
 Chancellor Hamilton, and pledging him their co- 
 operation and support for the future in terms and 
 phraseology so commendatory and so confident, as to 
 command his gratitude and to prompt his best endeavor 
 for years to come. 
 
 The opening of the American University, 
 as described in the foregoing words, challenged 
 attention. The utterances of the speakers on 
 that occasion attracted comment that uni- 
 versally was favorable. Everywhere it seemed 
 to be felt that, as President Wilson so felicit- 
 ously had phrased it, an adventure of the 
 immortal part of us had been undertaken 
 which could be made of vast service to human- 
 ity. The spirit and contents of the addresses 
 themselves evoked interest in widely sundered 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 13 
 
 lands. Many requests for copies of the 
 speeches were received. It was decided to 
 publish the addresses. All who were con- 
 cerned gave their permission. For this kind- 
 ness we record our appreciation and gratitude. 
 Especially do we desire to thank President 
 Woodrow Wilson. In the midst of most try- 
 ing circumstances, under conditions of unu- 
 sual strain upon him, with generous willing- 
 ness he gave of his time and strength to serve 
 us. The words which, out of the sincerity of 
 his heart, he uttered were noble and inspiring. 
 They are worthy of a permanent place in the 
 literature of Christian education. 
 
 To all others who shared in the ceremonies 
 of the opening day we express the feeling of 
 multitudes of friends of the American Uni- 
 versity when we say that theirs was an act of 
 faithful loyalty to the hopes and efforts which 
 had gone before. It was a meed of service for 
 which gratitude long will abide. Already it 
 has helped to give countenance to an enter- 
 prise which confessedly is not conventional 
 and which aims distinctively to partake of 
 pioneer endeavor. Each address here pub- 
 lished in some unusual, unique way supple- 
 ments all the others. Together they form a 
 
14 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 body of instructional and inspiriting truth 
 the influence of which will widen and deepen 
 through the years. For we have come to a 
 new day in matters of the mind and of the 
 spirit. Men and women no longer hesitate to 
 depart from the beaten track to follow the 
 gleam. New light is breaking on many paths. 
 
 For the paper on Life-Girding, which here 
 is reprinted, only one excuse can be offered. 
 It is that, for any satisfactory statement of 
 life and purpose in behalf of the American 
 University, there would be needed the incor- 
 poration into it of this particular study in 
 intellectual and spiritual motives. The work- 
 ing plan of the university which follows is a 
 natural corollary. 
 
 In conclusion we shall not crave the favor- 
 able consideration of "the gentle reader.'' We 
 have faith that the interest which these pages 
 will awaken may be trusted to do that. We 
 do not feel moved particularly to thank the 
 many editors who already have given kindly 
 notice to the addresses here brought together. 
 These molders of opinion have disarmed us of 
 this recourse of courtesy for they have proved 
 that they feel a partnership in the adventure 
 to which we have been called to dedicate our- 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 15 
 
 selves. To the friends who out of their finan- 
 cial store, and that ofttimes too slender, have 
 met faith by gift — even to them it is not now 
 in our heart to join in unusual ascriptions of 
 praise, though for all such help the remem- 
 brance is lasting and precious. No. In mak- 
 ing this first contribution of the American 
 University to that ample and steady stream 
 which, under Providence, is to refresh the life 
 of the republic and the world, we cherish only 
 the hope that the university itself may be 
 lifted up to fulfill that prophetic word con- 
 cerning it — ^'Nothing else, I venture to think, 
 so daring or so wise has been proposed by any 
 American church." If, thus far, we have pros- 
 pered and have justified the offerings and the 
 unforgetting memory of friendship and of 
 prayer, to Him be it ascribed — Laus Domino. 
 
PRAYER 
 
 Bishop Alfred Harding, Protestant 
 Episcopal Bishop of Washington 
 
 ALMIGHTY God, our heavenly Father, 
 xY. giver of every good and perfect gift, we 
 invoke thy blessing on the exercises of this 
 day, and upon this "new sowing for the Master 
 and for man," the American University, whose 
 doors are now opening. 
 
 We bless thy Holy Name that thou didst put 
 it into the hearts of thy servants who inaugu- 
 rated this enterprse to establish here, in the 
 capital of the nation, an institution to be de- 
 voted to the advancement of learning and to 
 the promotion of the religion of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. We thank thee, O Lord, 
 for thy blessing on the labors and thy answer 
 to the prayers of those who for a score of years 
 have labored and prayed for the consumma- 
 tion of this day. 
 
 Be graciously pleased to indue with heav- 
 enly wisdom those to whom is intrusted the 
 direction of this university. Guide them in 
 
 16 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 17 
 
 their policies, that the work may grow and 
 prosper, and that the courses of studies to be 
 pursued may be of such value as to place this 
 university in the forefront of the institutions 
 of learning in the world. Give to those who 
 shall be chosen to teach the guidance of thy 
 Holy Spirit, and to those who come to learn 
 such diligence and devotion as will result in 
 sending forth men well equipped for their life- 
 work, consecrated by the Holy Ghost, and 
 filled with the spirit of true patriotism, bring- 
 ing to the service of church and common- 
 wealth trained and disciplined minds, and a 
 willingness to give themselves to the uttermost 
 for the good of the nation and the well being 
 of their fellows. 
 
 We ask thy blessing in all things upon the 
 President of the United States and the mem- 
 bers of his cabinet and the Congress, beseech- 
 ing thee that all their deliberations and all 
 their acts and decisions may be for the safety, 
 honor, and welfare of thy people, and the bene- 
 fit of our most holy faith and true religion. 
 
 Grant, O Lord, that the founders, benefac- 
 tors, and all those who, to the furtherance of 
 the work of this university faithfully offer to 
 thee of their prayers, their labors and their 
 
18 LODESTAK AND COMPASS 
 
 substance, may come, together with all thy 
 saints, to those unspeakable joys which thou 
 hast prepared for those who unfeignedly love 
 thee. 
 
 Prosper thou the work of our hands upon 
 us : prosper thou our handiwork. 
 
 We ask all these blessings and mercies in 
 the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus 
 Christ who has taught us to pray. ( The audi- 
 ence joined Bishop Harding in the Lord^s 
 Prayer. ) 
 
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WITHOUT HASTE, WITHOUT REST 
 
 Bishop Earl Cranston 
 
 AS an organization the American University 
 ^ had its inception in 1891. It was char- 
 tered by act of Congress in 1893, twenty-one 
 years ago. Being of full age this corporation 
 to-day takes its place among the teaching insti- 
 tutions of the nation and of the world and 
 enters upon its life work. Back of every new 
 enterprise there must be a constructive and 
 determining mind. This institution was con- 
 ceived and projected upon the consciousness 
 and into the plans of the church of which he 
 was a bishop by the Rev. John Fletcher Hurst, 
 D.D., LL.D. By him this broad site was pur- 
 chased in 1890, and held until the corporation 
 was formed. Measuring his faith by his cour- 
 age, in that transaction we perceive the spirit- 
 ual quality of the foundation upon which 
 the university was established. God loves a 
 brave, true man who, once assured of the auto- 
 graph affixed to his orders, dares to the utter- 
 most venture of life or reputation. There are 
 
 19 
 
20 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 crises in the march of souls and in the ful- 
 filling of trusts, Mr. President, when it is 
 braver to stand still with all the enginery of 
 action tensely throbbing against the restrain- 
 ing Avill than it is to advance. In such a stress 
 God helps his man to stand firm, and God's 
 people know the quality of that type of hero- 
 ism. But Bishop Hurst's call was to action 
 until his strength gave away and he was sum- 
 moned to his rest. He had done his part. It 
 was to his successors in commission and to his 
 surviving associates in the great undertaking 
 that there came that period of brave inaction 
 which tries loyalty and beats down zeal until 
 patience may prove itself the greater virtue. 
 Even Bishop McCabe, who succeeded Bishop 
 Hurst as the leader of the movement, and 
 whose genius rioted in opportunity when 
 dollars were needed for God's work, balked in 
 his efforts to give new momentum to the enter- 
 prise and add to its list of active friends. 
 Meanwhile the public was left to wonder if at 
 last the Methodists had found a task too big 
 for them. 
 
 Bishop Hurst's first call was for f 10,000,000. 
 To a church that has expended approximately 
 ,000,000 annually in its multiplied activi- 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 21 
 
 ties that sum was not a staggering demand in 
 itself. But there were other church colleges 
 already upon the hearts of our people, and in 
 their life and administration colleges are hu- 
 man things. They do not welcome rivals or 
 more pretentious candidates for the favor of 
 their natural supporters. The last twenty 
 years have been wonderful years in church 
 expenditure. Besides the gathering of en- 
 dowments for growing church universities we 
 have had an era of church building. The peo- 
 ple have taxed themselves heavily for new and 
 costly temples. Under these conditions the 
 American University has had to bide its time. 
 Meanwhile all our important institutions of 
 learning have been rapidly advancing their 
 standards and the problem of the American 
 University has been one of shifting factors. 
 Some of Bishop Hurst's plans have been modi- 
 fied in the light of later educational develop- 
 ments. But the original purpose to create 
 here at the national capital a commanding 
 center of advanced teaching which shall be at 
 once reverently Christian and fearlessly pro- 
 gressive has never for one moment been aban- 
 doned. 
 
 We have now come to the beginning only of 
 
22 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 the realization of that purpose. Let not the 
 impressive program of this hour mislead any 
 one. We are going about our Master's work 
 in a very modest way. To-day's program is 
 prophetic rather than monumental. The pres- 
 ence of these distinguished churchmen and 
 statesmen not only indicates their apprecia- 
 tion of the importance of the kind of service 
 which is promised by this foundation, but sug- 
 gests also that in the training of the typical 
 American both the church and the state have 
 a legitimate part, and that loyalty to God and 
 his church and loyalty to the national govern- 
 ment so far from being incompatible virtues, 
 are indissolubly united in the best conception 
 of American citizenship. 
 
 We are cheered by the presence to-day of so 
 many of our faithful friends. We miss the 
 visible presence of the long honored President 
 of our Board of Trustees, Dr. David H. 
 Carroll, by whose generous bequest this 
 opening day was hastened, and we lament the 
 illness which confines Dr. Carroll's successor, 
 the Hon. Aldis B. Browne, to his home, while 
 his heart is here with us. But with God's 
 glorious sky above us, and the thrill of his 
 approving voice making jubilant our spirits, 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 23 
 
 we are ready to consecrate to the perpetual 
 service of God and the world for time and for 
 eternity, for men and for women who would 
 seek truth at its purest fountain and life at 
 its only source, the American University — 
 chartered by the American Congress and 
 pillared upon the one corner stone that can 
 support a holy church and a righteous and 
 abiding state — Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 
 the Saviour of Men, the Light of the World. 
 
 Among those by whose counsel the univer- 
 sity has been brought to its present plan of 
 going forward Avith its great work to which it 
 is committed — prominently among those who 
 have been foremost in this work — is Bishop 
 William Fraser McDowell, whose counsel to 
 us has been invaluable, and whose presence 
 here to-day certifies the profound interest of 
 one who has been an educator in our church, 
 and an administrator of our educational 
 affairs, in the office of the Secretary of the 
 Board of Education, and who later has admin- 
 istered the highest office of the church. Bishop 
 William Fraser McDowell, whom I have the 
 pleasure of presenting to you at this moment. 
 
A NEW OHAPTEE IN THE BIOGRAPHY 
 OF THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 
 
 Bishop William Eraser McDowell^ Presi- 
 dent OF the Board of Education of 
 the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church 
 
 IT is many years since Mr. Emerson, at Har- 
 vard, on the banks of the Charles, spoke 
 of the American scholar. Harvard College 
 and the republic itself were both young on 
 that long-gone August day. This event of 
 ours is related to that. Both terms in the old 
 subject have changed, both have become larger 
 and richer in their content, but here on the 
 banks of the Potomac, as yonder on the 
 Charles, we still have to do with the Amer- 
 ican scholar; we are still planning to "write 
 a new chapter in his biography." We count 
 ourselves happy that we can thus relate our- 
 selves to all the high ideals and noble purposes 
 of all our past. We especially rejoice that 
 our happy and auspicious festival, the inau- 
 guration of our new educational experiment, 
 
 24 
 
LODESTAK AND COMPASS 25 
 
 is honored by the presence of the President of 
 the republic, who embodies and illustrates in 
 his own culture, his character and consecra- 
 tion to public service, the finest traditions, the 
 fairest example and the holiest uses of scholar- 
 ship. 
 
 We are formally inaugurating to-day a not- 
 able experiment in higher education. Noth- 
 ing else quite like this has been planned or 
 tried on our soil. We propose at least four 
 unique, distinct lines : 
 
 1. The opening of the rich and varied mate- 
 rials of education and research, afforded by 
 the government, to the students of the Avorld, 
 under competent direction and guidance. 
 
 2. By a carefully devised system of scholar- 
 ships and fellowships, the opening of the grad- 
 uate instruction of the world to our select 
 young men and women. 
 
 3. The creation of a body of scholars, gath- 
 ered from everywhere, sent everywhere, united 
 here as Fellows, recognized and pledged to 
 humanity's service and the larger uses of the 
 largest learning. 
 
 4. The creation of lectureships for Wash- 
 ington and elsewhere and the making of a lit- 
 erature which shall in ample and steady 
 
26 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 stream refresh the life of the republic and the 
 world. 
 
 This is the simple outline of our large pur- 
 pose. It would be easy to grow prophetic and 
 to foresee the day not far off when there shall 
 be a thousand scholars, gathered out of all the 
 land, bearing the advanced degTees of the 
 world's universities and bound together as 
 Fellows of the American University. Nothing 
 else, I venture to think, so daring or so wise 
 has been proposed by any American church. 
 Happy the body that can hold fast to tradi- 
 tions ; happy the body that can also make tradi- 
 tions. This movement has due regard to those 
 English ideals in which our early roots were 
 struck, and those later German influences now 
 so profoundly affecting our entire educational 
 life. It remains true to both streams and sets 
 a new and living stream floAving in the world. 
 It has always been believed, for example, that 
 an institution must have a vast equipment in 
 the way of buildings and grounds, and a 
 strong teaching body of eminent scholars, or 
 it could not be a university. Our institutions 
 have had to be visualized, or they could not 
 get money either from private benefactors or 
 public treasuries. Brick and stone have been 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 27 
 
 thought imperative both for attracting dollars 
 and drawing students. Well, if to-day you 
 ask to see the American University, I ask you 
 to look beyond what is visible here, to the uni- 
 versities of the old world and the new, to every 
 place where a foremost scholar dwells and 
 teaches, to every laboratory and library hold- 
 ing truth for the eager student. The American 
 University exalts in its plans not the local but 
 the universal, not the provincial but the cos- 
 mopolitan, not the visible but the invisible. 
 And to him who has the eyes of his mind and 
 heart opened this high mount presents the ris- 
 ing vision of open doors in Berlin and Leipsic, 
 Oxford and Paris, Edinburgh and Glasgow, 
 Cambridge and New Haven, Columbia and 
 Princeton, Chicago and Wisconsin, and a 
 great host beside. And through this fair gate- 
 way opened this hour streams of youth are 
 starting to these open doors in all the learned 
 world, and hither soon they will be returning, 
 and the outgoers with hearts all eager will 
 meet the incomers with their hands full and 
 the light of purpose on their brows. 
 
 And never before, it seems to me, has there 
 been quite such an application of the democ- 
 racy and the cosmopolitanism of advanced 
 
28 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 learning. Yonder at the top of the world 
 sleeps England's foremost dreamer, Cecil 
 Rhodes, who opened the universities of Eng- 
 land to the youth of America. No finer plan 
 had ever been devised to make acquaintances 
 and friends of the youth who pretty soon will 
 lead the English-speaking peoples. Already 
 that plan makes mightily for the world's peace 
 and will make for it still more mightily in days 
 to come. And this in even larger measure will 
 serve like purpose. "Saxon, Norman, Dane 
 are we," says England's poet. Saxon, Nor- 
 man, Dane, and everything besides are we. 
 And that final federation of the world toward 
 which the whole creation moves, will come not 
 at the point of bayonet or mouth of cannon, 
 but at the hands of the clear thinkers, the 
 world-trained scholars, the brotherhood of 
 learning, the people — men and women who 
 study together in youth and in manhood, and 
 serve together for the common good. 
 
 The words have dropped out earlier than I 
 thought they would — the common good. The 
 common good is before our eyes this after- 
 noon, the common good not as interpreted for 
 Methodism or for America; but the common 
 good as interpreted for humanity. Goldwin 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 29 
 
 Smith's seat at Cornell contains the words: 
 "Above all nations is humanity." We shall 
 be smart enough in America and I think we 
 shall be rich enough, but if we ever break it 
 will be because we set our hearts on learning 
 and wealth and all that belongs to them, for 
 their own sake, and for our own sake, instead 
 of consecrating ourselves to the common good, 
 interpreted in world terms. Maybe this is not 
 what I was expected to say, but I am not 
 thinking chiefly of the American University 
 as opening a new gate of educational priv- 
 ilege for American youth. I am thinking 
 of it chiefly as opening a new chapter of serv- 
 ice for the American scholar, whose biog- 
 raphy we are always writing. We shall open 
 up and apply new and wonderful resources? 
 We shall push back the boundaries of the 
 unknown? We shall not be content simply 
 to learn what is already known? We shall 
 make lectures and theses and monographs? 
 We shall open the wealth of the world for 
 our eager and aspiring youth? All that surely 
 and proudly and gratefully. But our serv- 
 ices will not be final and perfect until we 
 have opened new resources of life to those 
 whose lives are barren; or until we have 
 
30 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 pushed back the boundaries of the unendur- 
 able. We shall defend the truth with many a 
 brave blow, but the scholar will strike his brav- 
 est blows for humanity. The wealth of the 
 world open for eager youth, the need of the 
 world open for the touch of the trained youth. 
 
 Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, 
 And the sun looked over the mountain's rim, 
 And straight was a path of gold for him 
 
 And the need of a world of men for me. 
 
 Path of gold opens for those we send to 
 Berlin and Paris and the rest; need of the 
 world of men for those whose faces turn this 
 way after Berlin. Wealth easily becomes sel- 
 fish, culture just as easily becomes selfish and 
 betrays itself in so doing — and both must be 
 saved by service. 
 
 Every year I pass through a noble campus 
 gateway bearing this inscription : "So enter 
 that daily thou mayest become more thought- 
 ful and more learned. So depart that daily 
 thou mayst become more useful to thy country 
 and to mankind.'' That is our thought in all 
 our plans. 
 
 There have been many theories of education 
 since Aristotle, who believed in education as 
 a training for good Greek citizenship. Many 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 31 
 
 have thought of it chiefly for its ecclesiastical 
 uses. In our time there is rather undue em- 
 phasis upon the demand for practical results. 
 Philosophy is being compelled both to bake 
 and butter the modern man's bread. One of 
 Mr. Howells's best known characters thought 
 all education was to train a man to exploit the 
 community for his own benefit. Nations have 
 sometimes had such ideals. In the face of this 
 intensely practical demand, one has an in- 
 creasing regard for those blessed old human- 
 ists who did not have the fear of a dollar before 
 their eyes, but just loved sweetness and light 
 because they w^ere sweetness and light. Many 
 of us w^ere brought up on the theory that the 
 end of higher education was character, but the 
 modern world has learned a better word and 
 enlarged the meaning of all these noble terms 
 by putting that better word into them. That 
 better word, now on scholars' lips, is service 
 and its example and interpreter is that one 
 world-citizen, head of the church, supreme 
 Teacher of mankind who came "not to be min- 
 istered unto but to minister.'' 
 
 Modern education has become very expen- 
 sive, but it has also become very necessary. 
 The world's machinery has become very com- 
 
32 LODESTAE AND COMPASS 
 
 plicated. The world's engineers must be very 
 competent. The people become increasingly 
 omnipotent. Their leaders must be ever more 
 capable. Learning is to be pressed into the 
 last fold of our life. Truth is not for the few 
 but for the many. Therefore our interest is 
 not in these highly privileged Fellows of the 
 American University to whom gates shall be 
 opened, but in that universal humanity whom 
 these Fellows will help to lead out of ignor- 
 ance. Our final concern is not the higher edu- 
 cation of the few but the highest possible edu- 
 cation of the many. It is not easy to keep 
 wealth democratic. Heaven save the world 
 from a scholarship that is not democratic. 
 Selfish and snobbish learning is intolerable. 
 Wealth will be asked for this as for other edu- 
 cational movements. Wealth ought to be so 
 asked for or given without the asking. One 
 wishes that the day might come that Professor 
 Mahalfy described when he was here and when 
 the first great gifts were being made and he 
 wrote that in America "The rich men are going 
 about like roaring lions seeking what they may 
 endow." What shall be asked of the Uni- 
 versity in return? Here again we must go 
 back to one of our oldest universities for an- 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 33 
 
 swer. When, in young manhood, Charles W. 
 Eliot was becoming president of Harvard he 
 said: "The University will make to the com- 
 munity rich return of learning, of poetry, of 
 piety, and of that fine sense of civic duty with- 
 out which republics are impossible." 
 
 Pasteur defined democracy in these words: 
 "Democracy is that order in the state which 
 permits each individual to put forth his ut- 
 most effort." But you feel the incomplete- 
 ness of that. The period came before the sen- 
 tence was finished. This utmost effort must 
 be like Abraham's election — you understand 
 that Abraham was a candidate for a long time 
 — that the nations of the earth may be blessed. 
 This American University thus takes upon 
 itself an immense responsibility in the very 
 name it bears. For it is to help make that new 
 American who shall help to make that new 
 America, which shall help that new world 
 which is the goal of history. It will take the 
 provincial and make him a cosmopolitan even 
 while it deepens his patriotism. Seated here 
 at the capital it will act as a unifying force 
 for a world group, making for peace and right- 
 eousness with all men of light and leading 
 and goodwill. Goldwin Smith declared that 
 
34 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 ^^democracy is not yet large minded." If not, 
 it must be made so. For the whole world needs 
 a large-minded America. I shall not soon for- 
 get a night in Calcutta when several hundred 
 native Indian students gathered about me 
 after an address and asked me to speak again. 
 One of them spoke for all, saying: ^'Tell us 
 about George Washington and Abraham Lin- 
 coln." To hear these names thus spoken in 
 the heart of that Eastern w^orld gave me a 
 new, keen sense of America's place in the 
 world. And that sense of our Avorld place is 
 upon me to-day as I speak these opening words 
 for this vast venture into the higher life. We 
 cannot make the world American, nor English, 
 nor German. We cannot make it republican in 
 form. The Master of our souls did not direct 
 us to go into all the world and teach the Eng- 
 lish language to every creature. We cannot 
 even whip the whole world, though some seem 
 to think we can, and ought. But we can unite 
 with the men and nations who keep the lamp of 
 truth aflame, and the love of men alive, to 
 reach the world : to train it in truth and peace, 
 sympathy and righteousness; to lead it in 
 paths of brotherhood ; to break down the caste 
 spirit everywhere. ^'The youth of a nation are 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 35 
 
 the trustees of posterity," and the American 
 University solemnly pledges itself to perform 
 its tasks in such spirit that the trustees of pos- 
 terity shall nobly fulfill their holy trust for 
 humanity's sake. We look for the time 
 
 When light shall spread and man be like man 
 Through all the seasons of the Golden year; 
 
 when the whole round world shall 
 
 Be bound in every way 
 
 By gold chains about the feet of God. 
 
 And upon this vast endeavor the Methodist 
 Church asks the favor of men and the blessing 
 of Almighty God. 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 37 
 
 My career in that respect was as adventur- 
 ous as it has been in some other respects. I 
 was cheered in that field, as I have been 
 cheered in another, by the contests of prin- 
 ciple. I suppose it is in my blood always to be 
 in some kind of a fight. And I do not know 
 of any fight which is more heartening than 
 fighting for the ideals of scholarship. 
 
 I have never pretended, of course, that in a 
 college you could make a scholar in four years. 
 A Yale friend of mine said that after teach- 
 ing for twenty years he had come to the con- 
 clusion that the human mind possessed infinite 
 resources for resisting the introduction of 
 knowledge; and it takes considerably more 
 than four years to break down the defenses 
 and begin the high enterprise of scholarship. 
 But I have at least fought to have the oppor- 
 tunity to begin it and to awaken the mind to 
 the seriousness of the undertaking. 
 
 Scholarship is the mastery, the exact mas- 
 tery and comprehension of great bodies of 
 knowledge; and the comprehension is more 
 difficult than the mastery. It is much easier 
 to know than it is to understand. It is much 
 easier to acquire than it is to interpret. And 
 yet all knowledge is dead which is not inter- 
 
38 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 preted. The vision of the scholar is worth 
 more to the world than his industry. 
 
 It is appropriate that a university should be 
 set upon a hill. It must be a place of outlook, 
 and there must be eyes in it that can compre- 
 hend the things that are seen, even the things 
 distant and vague upon the horizon. For the 
 object of scholarship is not to please the 
 scholar, is not to amuse the leisure of inquis- 
 itive minds, but to be put forth, to release the 
 human spirit from every kind of thralldom, 
 particularly from the thralldom of darkness, 
 from the thralldom of not knowing the path 
 and not being able to see the way as it treads 
 it. It is knowledge properly interpreted, seen 
 with a vision of insight, that is uniting the 
 spirits of the world. Charles Lamb made a 
 remark once which seems to me to go pretty 
 deep as a human remark. He was speaking 
 very ill of some man not present in the little 
 company in which he was talking, and one 
 of his friends said, ^Why, Charles, I didn't 
 know that you knew him.'' He said, "I-I-I 
 don't; I-I can't h-hate a man I-I-I know." 
 How profound and how human that is ! There 
 are races whom we despise, and it generally 
 turns out that we despise them because we do 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 39 
 
 not know them. We have not found the com- 
 mon footing of humanity with which to touch 
 them and deal with them. I have sometimes, 
 when sitting in the company of particularly 
 ably dressed people who were interested in 
 philanthropy, wondered whether they knew 
 how to be philanthropic. Philanthropy does 
 not consist in giving your money to pay for 
 what somebody else will do for mankind. It 
 consists, at the fountain head, of putting your- 
 self on the same level of life and comprehen- 
 sion with the persons whom you wish to help 
 and letting your heart beat in tune with their 
 heart so that you will understand. 
 
 The object of scholarship, the object of all 
 knowledge, whether you call it by the large 
 name of scholarship or not, is to understand, 
 is to comprehend, is to know what the need 
 of mankind is and to find that need in your- 
 self, so that you can interpret it without go- 
 ing to the books — merely by looking in your 
 own heart and listening to your own under- 
 standing. That is the reason, ladies and 
 gentlemen, why scholarship has usually been 
 most fruitful when associated with religion; 
 and scholarship has never, so far as I can at 
 this moment recollect, been associated with 
 
40 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 any religion except the religion of Jesus 
 Christ. The religion of humanity and the 
 comprehension of humanity are of the same 
 breed and kind; they go together. It is very 
 proper, therefore, that under Christian au- 
 spices a great adventure of the mind, a great 
 enterprise of the spirit, should be entered 
 upon. 
 
 There is no particular propriety in my being 
 present to open a university merely because 
 I am President of the United States. Nobody 
 is president of any part of the human mind. 
 The mind is free. It owes subservience and 
 allegiance to nobody under God. The only 
 thing that one can do in opening a university 
 is to say we wish to add one more means of 
 emancipating the human mind, emancipating 
 it from fear, from misunderstanding — eman- 
 cipating it from the dark and leading it into 
 the light. 
 
 I hope there may be lecturers in this uni- 
 versity who can interpret life. I have not met 
 many, but I hope you will catch some of them. 
 Carlyle had a fancy once of an old jDrofessor 
 who was the Professor of Things in General; 
 and I do not see how anybody can be a suc- 
 cessful professor of anything in particular 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 41 
 
 unless he is a professor also in some degree of 
 things in general; because unless he knows, 
 and knows with real vision, how that partic- 
 ular thing is related to all the rest, he does 
 not know anything about it. I have often 
 used this illustration : A man loses his way in 
 a desert, and we say he has lost himself. If 
 you will reflect for a moment, that is the only 
 thing he has not lost. He is there ; but he has 
 lost all the rest of the world. He does not 
 know where any other fixed thing in the world 
 is. If he did, he could steer by it and get 
 home, or get out of the desert, at any rate. 
 His whole validity as a man depends upon his 
 knowledge of the points of the compass and 
 where everything else in the world is. He 
 will run his head against a stone wall if he 
 does not know where the stone wall is; and 
 after he has run his head against the stone 
 wall his identity is of no particular impor- 
 tance. He has lost identity. He has lost his 
 life, not by not knowing himself, but by not 
 knowing where the stone wall was. That is 
 what the German scholar has in his mind when 
 he speaks of orienting ourselves — knowing 
 where the East is. We will not have to go 
 East, but if we know where the East is we can 
 
42 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 steer for any part of the compass by relating 
 ourselves properly to the East. 
 
 So we are here setting up on this hill as upon 
 a high pedestal once more the compass of hu- 
 man life with its great needle pointing stead- 
 ily at the lodestar of the human spirit. Let 
 men who wish to know come and look upon 
 this compass and thereafter determine which 
 way they will go ! 
 
(t) Harris and Ewiiis (f) D. D. Spellman 
 
 SPEAKERS AT THE OPENING OF THE AMERICAN 
 UNIVERSITY 
 Bishop John W. Hamilton, Bishop William F. McDowell, Bishop Earl 
 Cranston, Bishop Alfred Harding (Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Wash- 
 ington), Dr. John W. Hancher, representing Board of Education of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
THE NEW LEARNING FOR THE NEW 
 
 DAY 
 
 Bishop John William Hamilton 
 
 1MAY presume that I am here to-day be- 
 cause of a certain right of primogeniture 
 and hereditary association. I had the pecu- 
 liar privilege of giving the first dollar to found 
 the American University. My contribution 
 was so nearly nothing I was permitted as son 
 of none (Nun) to come up here with Bishop 
 Hurst to spy out the country. When he and 
 his associates had "returned from searching 
 of the land after forty days" they reported 
 that they had found the goodly land, the 
 "promised land'' — a forest primeval which 
 would grow grapes, pomegranates, and figs, 
 and with a view more transporting than that 
 of Pisgah or Nebo. Then, nearly twenty-five 
 years ago, when the Ecumenical Methodist 
 Conference which was in session in Washing- 
 ton came here to set apart the grounds for pur- 
 poses of Christian Education, I was invited 
 
 43 
 
44 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 with others to set forth something of the plan 
 of the University. 
 
 Again when the members of the General 
 Conference which met in Baltimore six years 
 ago came over to visit the grounds and build- 
 ings, I was invited to come, and came with 
 them. I ought to be here to-day to round out 
 my undergraduate biography in this institu- 
 tion. 
 
 I esteem it a most distinguished honor to be 
 present to-day, to share in the courtesy and 
 favor of the nation's official countenance. It 
 is most fitting for us, Mr. President, that you, 
 not only as the most distinguished resident of 
 this city, and in your high office our first 
 citizen of the world, but as primus inter pares 
 in your educational position among the dis- 
 tinguished Presidents of the great Univer- 
 sities of the United States, should grace this 
 occasion with your presence and approval. 
 And it is in like keeping with the appropriate- 
 ness of this hour, and the high calling of the 
 great school whose doors we open to-day, that 
 the honored members of your cabinet, who are 
 distinguished representatives of the Christian 
 Church as of the national government should 
 lend us their influence and encouragement. 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 45 
 
 The importance of this day will mark an 
 epoch in the history of the American Univer- 
 sity. But the importance of the occasion is not 
 to be measured by the present resources of the 
 institution : it is to be determined by all of its 
 future history. The great Aberdeen Univer- 
 sity of Scotland for four years consisted of a 
 single professorship. 
 
 Neither is the significance of these exercises 
 to be measured by the honor and distinction 
 of all these great representatives even though 
 they were unprecedented in their abilities, ex- 
 cellence of spirit, and great friendly environ- 
 ment. Our presence here will be magnified 
 or minified by what is to come. It is not the 
 pretensions of this day but the quality and 
 amount of work to be done down the long 
 years by this university which shall give sig- 
 nificance to what we say and do. 
 
 Who are the young men and women to be 
 who will enter these open doors and go forth 
 from them to help influence the nation and the 
 world? We are but the men of to-day; they 
 shall be the great men of to-morrow, the 
 greater men of the greater to-morrows after 
 to-morrow, and then again of the to-morrow^ 
 after that to-morrow. Say not that either 
 
46 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 privilege or achieyement is near to the finish. 
 The great men of all the past should be as 
 little men in contrast with the great men who 
 are to come. We have witnessed great intel- 
 lectual achievements, but we are far away 
 from the greatest and best of achievements yet 
 to be accomplished by the greatest and best 
 of men. We have often been told of the eccen- 
 tric headmaster in the German school who 
 never removed his hat when he met or stood in 
 the presence of the nobles and even princes of 
 the realm, but always accosted the boys of his 
 school when he met them by bowing to them 
 and lifting his hat. When he was reproached 
 for his disrespect of the nobility he answered 
 promptly, "I know who these men are, but I 
 do not know who these boys may be." And we 
 were told that it was one of the boys who were 
 then in his school whose words as a man 
 "shook the world.'' 
 
 "The task of the future," said an English- 
 man who was interested in the education of 
 India, "is gigantic but not impracticable." 
 And the task is one, the world over and the 
 world under. Education has not yet arrived 
 at the age of definition. There have been 
 innumerable attempts at definition, but they 
 
LODESTAK AND COMPASS 47 
 
 all have been spiral movements reaching out 
 after something beyond their grasp. They 
 have been for the most part efforts in the dark. 
 The teachers have been blind leaders of the 
 blind, seeking after something if haply they 
 might feel after it and find it though it be not 
 far from any of them. The whole system of 
 education has been like the ship styled King 
 of Cork in a fantasy of Mediterranean travel : 
 
 The King of Cork was a funny ship 
 
 As ever plowed the main. 
 She kep' no log, she went where she liked, 
 
 So her Cap'n warn't to blame. 
 
 We have started with our youth as if they 
 were so many dolts with so many cubic inches 
 of vacuum in their heads, which had to be 
 filled with so many cubic inches of a certain^ 
 kind of filling. And we have gone to a single 
 gravel bed or two for the material with which 
 to fill all alike, principally to a town of Phocis 
 in Greece where ^^the oracles were given forth 
 by a priestess, the Pythia, who (according to 
 a late tradition) seated herself upon a golden 
 tripod above a chasm whence issued mephitic 
 vapors. Inspired by these she uttered words 
 which were then arranged by prophets espe- 
 cially educated for the purpose.'' When the 
 
48 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 vacuum was supposed to be filled, the psy- 
 chosis reached total consciousness at a given 
 moment, the student was turned out of the 
 schools at the period ironically named Com- 
 mencement, a finished product, in most cases. 
 
 The bookful blockhead ignorantly read 
 With loads of learned lumber in his head, 
 
 a "mere machine of memory." He was then 
 expected to start out and learn his lesson all 
 over again in trying to find his place in life 
 Avhere for the substance of his success he was 
 to engage in what has been vulgarly called 
 "making a living. '^ To be a bit more explicit, 
 it may be said these Delphian oracles were 
 reduced to a system, in a mechanical factory 
 known as the college where so much Greek — 
 and to modernize it a little, considerable Latin 
 — was added, with occasionally only enough 
 chemistry to make a solution and every kind 
 of so much boy was mixed up for four years, 
 and when the drugs were all gone, the finished 
 product was turned out to be selected and 
 labeled. By the process very often of unnat- 
 ural selection the first collection was deemed 
 good enough to be set aside for the ministry, 
 the second only good enough for the law, and 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 49 
 
 the third would just about do for the prac- 
 tice of medicine. After that what was left was 
 known as cullings, and they were thrown in 
 a heap for the schools, the trades, and the labor 
 unions generally to pick out as they came 
 along, and set to work as occasion might re- 
 quire. The carpenter was at liberty to set 
 aside the brashy timber from the sound, and 
 the fishmonger to cull the small oysters from 
 the large. The outcome of such schools was 
 more misfits than fits. And the result has been, 
 the professions with here and there an excep- 
 tion have gone along "jargoning like a for- 
 eigner at his food,'^ and the tradesmen have 
 had a happy-go-lucky time of it, or have been 
 playing at a game in which from the very 
 start it was evident to the skillful mind, that 
 they were sure to lose. Hence ninety to ninety- 
 five per cent of all the men who have "gone 
 into business" have made failures of it: full 
 as large a percentage as the professions should 
 show. The unfortunates have clamored, and 
 made their own matters worse by seeking to 
 correct the deepseated error with revolts and 
 strikes. And the whole country has been wild 
 with panics which, like the seasons, have come 
 in cycles, one about every nineteen years. 
 
50 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 Whether it is because the education has been 
 so misfitting, or many parents and guardians 
 have no care for the welfare of their children, 
 we have now whole sections of the country 
 which provide no kind of schools for their 
 youth except when and where the saloon and 
 other liquor interests supply the funds. And 
 there are whole States where ignorance is such 
 bliss, and learning such a luxury that the rul- 
 ing class furnish only such schools for the 
 most ignorant as the taxes on the poverty of 
 the most indigent poor can pay for. What 
 would be the enlightened world's opinion of 
 the intelligence of this country if no schools 
 should be provided for the children of the im- 
 migrants until the taxes on the immigrants 
 themselves were sufficient to erect the school- 
 houses and hire the teachers for the schools? 
 
 President Eliot of Harvard University has 
 described conditions which must not be 
 allowed to continue. He says : "The efficiency 
 of legislatures and the respect in which they 
 are held have declined. The courts are, as a 
 whole, less efficient and less respected to-day 
 than they were a generation or two ago. Rev- 
 erence for law is not maintained at its old 
 level." And he includes the church in his 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 51 
 
 description of delinquencies, in its unwilling- 
 ness to "rely on the fundamental teachings 
 of Christ." "Legislature, court, and church 
 then," he says, "seem to be passing through 
 some organic transition which temporarily 
 impairs their powers." He turns to the 
 schools for his hope of their recovery from 
 these conditions and concludes that "in our 
 country education is the one great agency for 
 promoting intelligence and righteousness, 
 which unquestionably has gained power in the 
 United States during the last half century." 
 
 But it is quite evident that a better educa- 
 tion or a different dissemination of it is needed 
 to correct the spirit of the age: for it is the 
 public spirit which needs the schooling. The 
 definition of education yesterday will not do 
 for to-day, and the definition of to-day will not 
 do for to-morrow. 
 
 We must lift our eyes to a larger vision: 
 we must lift our age to a nobler living. We 
 have come to the verge of the old learning. We 
 must cross the chasm to the school and the era 
 of the New Learning. We must seek for and 
 acquaint ourselves with new definitions. The 
 old no longer will do. 
 
 "Education," said Emerson, "should be 
 
52 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 broad as man." This it must be to keep 
 abreast of all his needs and all his aspirations. 
 And what the one man needs and feels all men 
 need and feel. Individual education must be 
 made national, and the national education 
 must provide for the needs and feelings of 
 every individual until the blight of ignorance 
 is lifted from every mind under its sway. As 
 an eagle stirreth her nest, it must awaken 
 sluggish minds, and where there is no imjiulse 
 in the community it must incarnate one, to 
 make provision for the two needs of knowing 
 and loving. Ignorance, like slavery, is a 
 prison, and no nation is wholly free so long 
 as there remains an ignorant person in it. No 
 man is a good citizen who can look with the 
 least degree of allowance on the ignorance of 
 his fellow man. By so doing he endangers his 
 own freedom. Like the English in India we 
 are committed to the education of the whole 
 population for our own safety. There are 
 many things in common in the relation of the 
 English government to the Indian people and 
 the American government to the American 
 people. For its own safety and the well being 
 of the Indian people, the English government 
 is committed to the English education in the 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 53 
 
 English language, and not the Oriental learn- 
 ing in the Asiatic tongues. The government 
 policy of education at first and until the time 
 of Macaulay was the revival and encourage- 
 ment of Sanskrit and Arabic learning. Ap- 
 propriations were made for this purpose and 
 the money was expended in printing Sanskrit 
 and Arabic works and in paying stipends to 
 teachers and students. But there were two 
 other factors at work which soon gave ^^quite 
 other directions to educational enterprise. 
 These were first Christian missionaries; and 
 second, a spontaneous demand for liberal edu- 
 cation on the part of the more advanced think- 
 ing members of the Hindu community in Cal- 
 cutta." It was Raja Ram Mohan Roy more 
 than any other of his race who incarnated the 
 impulse which led thinking Indians to desire 
 and work for "English education." This he 
 did, he said, that "the ideas and science of the 
 West should liberate the minds of his country- 
 men and bring new light." It was not long 
 before the policy of the government was 
 changed. It was Frederick the Great who 
 said: "An educated people can be easily gov- 
 erned." Lord Macaulay soon saw that uni- 
 formity of language was necessary to unity 
 
54 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 of government, and it is to Mm the govern- 
 ment owes the English education, as it has 
 since been developed all over India. He had 
 ^^no difficulty in showing that English is the 
 key to more useful knowledge than Sanskrit 
 or Arabic''; "his energetic rhetoric was de- 
 cisive." If there is unrest there now, what 
 would there have been without the schools for 
 the study of the English language, with the 
 "147 vernacular languages of extraordinary 
 variety, and these languages spoken by nearly 
 or quite 300,000,000 persons"? 
 
 There are 3,424 spoken languages or dia- 
 lects in the world, and 1,624 of these in Amer- 
 ica, while there are only 937 in all Asia, 587 
 in Europe and 276 in Africa. Can there be 
 any argument framed therefore which would 
 not select the English language for all Amer- 
 icans? There is more room in the language 
 than any other for the freedom of all other 
 tongues. It contains approximately 600,000 
 words. The vocabulary of one of our standard 
 dictionaries aggregates about 450,000 words. 
 No obstacle or contrivance can hinder the 
 much wider usage of English than by Amer- 
 icans only. It is the language of business and 
 travel already around the world. It is now 
 
SOFA OF ABR\HA-M LINCOLN 
 
 Used by ^Martyred President throughout his term in The White 
 House. Now owned by the American University. 
 
 CIVIL WAR DESK OF SECRETARY STANTON 
 
 Now owned by the American L^niversity. 
 
LODESTAE AND COMPASS 55 
 
 spoken by more than 27 per cent of all the per- 
 sons who speak respectively all the European 
 languages combined, and by more than one 
 tenth of the world's population, or more than 
 160,000,000 persons. The number of persons 
 who speak the language now is eight times 
 the number who spoke it at the beginning of 
 the last century, and it is spoken by nearly 
 as many persons as speak the French, Italian, 
 and Spanish all taken together. Time was 
 when it was widely rumored that no great 
 scholarship could be contained within the 
 English language, and scholarship generally 
 was supposed to consist mostly of familiarity 
 with the dead languages. ^^ Scholars," so 
 called, "could feed their minds only on the 
 classics much as the vultures crave and find 
 their food. But scholarship is no longer con- 
 fined to things which are past and dead." 
 ''Experience to most men," said Coleridge, "is 
 like the stern lights of a ship which illumine 
 only the track it has passed." The thorough, 
 scholarship needed in our day must be at- 
 tained and given through the living to the liv- 
 ing and not through the dead to the dead, "for- 
 getting those things which are behind and 
 reaching forth unto those which are before." 
 
56 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 Garrick was right when he said we are obliged 
 to our imagination for three fourths of our 
 importance, if the ambiguity of the saying 
 includes such use of the imagination as to clear 
 the way and help on to whatever it is import- 
 ant that we should know. Such scholarship 
 demands a living vehicle of expression, and if 
 ever the English language was too limited for 
 scholarship it has gotten bravely over it, for 
 its life gives it scope. ^'Wherever language is 
 alive," said Lowell, "it grows." 
 
 Our education must not only be a national 
 one but it must be American — our own. Our 
 life is distinct from every other; it is its own 
 type; it must be thoroughly furnished with 
 its own equipment. Its kind of freedom, ag- 
 gressive movement, and sphere of action are 
 all peculiar to itself. There is nothing immo- 
 bile here: everything is in transition. We 
 have outrun the rest of the world in many of 
 our achievements. Our possessions are not all 
 of the best, but there are more of them and 
 some of them very desirable. Our opportu- 
 nities are greater, so also are our responsibil- 
 ities, and doubtless our dangers. We must 
 therefore school ourselves to our own task. 
 Come here who may, they must adapt them- 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 57 
 
 selves to our way. There is no such process of 
 assimilation going on anywhere else in the 
 Avorlcl. We are the crucible in which is melted 
 the outcome of all nations. We calcine and 
 oxidize until the balance is complete. To this 
 end we must use our own methods. We must 
 Americanize all our foreign peoples. The 
 largeness of the task must appear when we 
 class one third of all our ninety millions and 
 more as foreign born, and still add a million 
 more each year. 
 
 As I said, when this ground was consecrated 
 to the New Learning, we were making history 
 fast, but faster now than then. We have seen 
 since then a half dozen nations born in a day. 
 Mr. Stead was strictly accurate when he wrote 
 his book on the Americanization of the world. 
 Our prodigal expenditure of money in travel 
 has opened hostelries in foreign lands which 
 cater to Americans and are found all around 
 the globe. Our academies, colleges, and uni- 
 versities are frequented by students from the 
 backward nations in the Eastern hemisphere 
 as well as the Western. The uprising in Mex- 
 ico is inspired and fostered by the influence of 
 agitations in the United States. Japan and 
 China and Korea are all indebted to our 
 
58 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 Western civilization for their awakening. Our 
 form of republican government is copied in 
 Avhole or in part by the republics of Argentina, 
 Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa 
 Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, France, 
 Guatemala, Hayti, Honduras, Liberia, Mexico, 
 Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Salvador, 
 Switzerland, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Under 
 pressure of the same powerful influence the 
 limited monarchies watching and waiting 
 stand with fear and trembling. The whole 
 British Empire quakes with the forebodings 
 of a woman scorned and the Ulster militia. 
 
 And no other government is so set for the 
 peace of all nations. It has often been said 
 that England, Germany, and the United States 
 can compel the peace of the world. The time 
 is not far distant when the United States can 
 do it alone. The German Imperial Command- 
 ant Lazarus von Schwendi spoke from expe- 
 rience when he said, "To carry on war three 
 kinds of things are necessary : Money ! Money ! 
 Money V If the story told of the Rothschilds 
 is true, they held back a European war a few 
 years ago by refusing the loan of money for 
 war purposes; this country can soon check 
 any great war in the same way. We are al- 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 59 
 
 ready the wealthiest of all nations ; the balance 
 of trade has crossed to this side of the seas, 
 and we shall not stand long waiting for the 
 balance of money. But we now have the better 
 way of putting an end to war, and that is by 
 our preaching and practice. Our example can 
 do more than our money. So long as we can 
 bear slight and injury without anger and re- 
 sentment, and when we have been wronged 
 turn to international courts for recourse, the 
 other nations sooner or later will imitate us. 
 We have held back already "the iron cure of 
 humanity" in more instances than one, and we 
 have taught victorious nations to settle with 
 their defeated enemies, by i)aying them sat- 
 isfactorily for the damage they have done them 
 and in sending back tribute money after it has 
 been handed over. It is our privilege to teach 
 mankind 
 
 Peace hath her victories 
 No less renowned than war. 
 
 It behooves us therefore to look well to our- 
 selves as the world's example. 
 
 If education, as President Eliot assures us, 
 "is the one agency for promoting intelligence 
 and righteousness,'' it must be so defined as 
 to meet the need of every unlearned person. 
 
60 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 keep abreast of the aspirations of the learned, 
 and secure the welfare and usefulness of all the 
 social organism by bringing the greatest good 
 within the reach of each and every individual 
 to promote his well-being and usefulness. The 
 Pythia, then, not of mephitic vapors, but the 
 priestess of inspiration to noble living and 
 well doing, 
 
 Shall sit at the gates of the world, 
 Where nations shall gather and meet, 
 
 And the East and the West at her bidding 
 Shall lie in a leash at her feet. 
 
 The object of education is not only the diffu- 
 sion of the improved arts, science, philosophy, 
 and literature of America and Europe which 
 are only means to an end, it is not only cul- 
 tural and vocational, to be conformed to the 
 world, but for the higher and holier purpose 
 of being transformed by the renewing of the 
 mind to exert a right influence on the manners, 
 the conduct, and the character of mankind. 
 
 We have given more attention to the making 
 and teaching of books than to the study and 
 development of the students — "The proper 
 study of mankind is man." Experimental psy- 
 chology is comparatively a new study, and a 
 psychological laboratory is a purely modern 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 61 
 
 invention. It is only the New Learning which 
 has discovered that the school is less for tui- 
 tion than ignition, and that the teacher is 
 more a torchbearer than a cotton press. Edu- 
 cation is more an awakening of inborn and 
 embrjonate faculties than the filling of a help- 
 less vacuum, whether applied to the individ- 
 ual or the nation. It is an in-look for the call- 
 ing forth of an out-look. We do not educate 
 the man by ^'telling him what he knows not, 
 but by making him what he was not and what 
 he will remain forever.'' It is not, then, simply 
 the intellectual side of education which is 
 needed — there need to be no underestimate of 
 its importance — it is essential to all learning. 
 And there is inestimable value in education 
 for itself alone. But the supreme import- 
 ance of education is in the creating and 
 strengthening of character which alone gives 
 certain steadfastness and permanent prestige 
 to the whole man and the whole nation, and 
 this has not been done and cannot be done by 
 intellectual attainments only. How this is to 
 be done is the great question engaging the 
 minds of the strongest educators everywhere. 
 During the year 1910 there were 462,530 
 admissions or commitments to the prisons of 
 
62 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 this country, and on the first day of that year 
 the prison population was 109,311. The num- 
 ber of juvenile delinquents reported during the 
 same year was 22,903. By far the larger pro- 
 portion of these numbers is not chargeable to 
 our foreign-born population. Five sixths of 
 the total number of prisoners in the United 
 States reported by the Commissioner-General 
 of Immigration for 1908 were native born, and 
 for the most part had at some time been in our 
 schools. The average number of murders an- 
 nually during the twenty years from 1885 to 
 1904 was 6,597. In 1896 the number was 
 10,662. In Germany the convictions equaled 
 95 per cent and a fraction; in the United 
 States 1.3 per cent. We are the most criminal 
 nation upon the face of the earth. The civil 
 prosecutions are similar games of chance, prob- 
 ably with 95 to 1. The plaintiff and defendant 
 both will give the lawyers all they have in it 
 and possibly all they have besides. A case 
 was settled a short time ago in New York 
 which had been in the courts twenty-five years 
 and cost the litigants from a quarter to half a 
 million of dollars, and the total amount in 
 dispute went for costs long years ago. The 
 courts are merely a travesty of Justice — spec- 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 63 
 
 tacular debating societies to try the wits of 
 men for the support of the court officials 
 and the attorneys by a burdensome taxation 
 of disinterested persons who seldom go near 
 them. 
 
 If the schools are to reduce and finally 
 eliminate these lamentable statistics and make 
 over these trifling tribunals, "the task" may 
 seem "gigantic/' but is it impracticable? It 
 certainly becomes us to look into the char- 
 acter of our schools and the kind of instruc- 
 tion which is given. If the mere filling process 
 is to continue, it would seem at least prudent 
 to change from the pits whence the kind of 
 gravel has been taken. Little wonder that 
 Bishop Wellden, who knew something of 
 India and much of education, should declare 
 that he held with an intensity of conviction 
 which it was difficult to express "that secular 
 education, wherever it was given and by whom- 
 soever it was given, was a lamentable failure." 
 One of the members of the Madras Council of 
 Education said more than a half century ago, 
 "Education without moral culture is probably 
 as often injurious as beneficial to society." 
 
 It must be admitted that "the education of 
 character, which is presumably what is meant 
 
64 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 by moral education, is something very deep- 
 lying and depends on a number of factors of 
 which school life is only one." Education 
 compasses all development in the home, the 
 school, and the apprenticeship of every voca- 
 tion. Doctor Duncan, Principal of the Presi- 
 dency College, Madras, well says: ^^Morality 
 must be taught in schools, in the way in which 
 it is taught at home and in the social life of 
 the young.'' If such education is beset with 
 so great difficulty in State schools as to make 
 it impracticable because of the traditions and 
 religious differences of the people, then some 
 school must be found in which such education 
 may prevail. It is not impracticable, and no 
 other safeguard has been discovered for hu- 
 man conduct and private character. And 
 such tuition does avail in preventing crime 
 and securing integrity. But it must be a reli- 
 gious instruction which obtains. Education 
 which is not rooted in religion has no safe- 
 guards. But it is not enough that it should 
 be religious only. There is a religion that 
 teaches that a common water snake is the em- 
 bodiment of the god of the floods, and a little 
 while ago the prime minister of the country 
 in which such belief prevails went in to the 
 
LODESTAE AND COMPASS 65 
 
 temple into which one of the snakes had 
 crawled and worshiped it. In this Christian 
 country we accept the statement of Mark Hop- 
 kins that '^religion without morality is super- 
 stition and a curse, and anything like an ade- 
 quate and complete morality without religion 
 is impossible." Because the water snake reli- 
 gion with numerous others is in this country 
 we have been driven into the churches for both 
 our religion and morality. And it is the per- 
 sons who elude the church schools that fill our 
 prisons. Judge Faucett of Brooklyn stated 
 recently that of the 2,700 boys charged with 
 crime who had come before him during his five 
 years as judge not one of them attended Sun- 
 day school. During the eight years that I was 
 in charge of the more than fifty secondary 
 schools and colleges of the church, among both 
 the white and colored people in the South, 
 which for so many generations had been the 
 schoolless section of the country, not a single 
 student of all those schools was lynched or 
 charged with the crime for which the sav- 
 ages pretensively claimed to lynch their vic- 
 tims. And what was true of our schools was 
 true of all the students in the schools of the 
 American Missionary Association. 
 
66 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 But Christian schools without Christian 
 teachers are like a ship at sea whose captain 
 has "crawled in through the cabin window." 
 When Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, who later 
 was twice Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta Uni- 
 versity, was addressing a Convocation in Ma- 
 dras in 1868, "he singled out as the man to be 
 named first for greatness of character in the 
 nineteenth century not any statesman or sol- 
 dier or man of letters, but Dr. Thomas Arnold 
 of Rugby.'' 
 
 The baffling nature of the hindrances led 
 the English government in India to divorce 
 the higher education from government control. 
 And such will be the American policy when all 
 the higher education sets up its only essential 
 aim and assumes responsibility, for, as Renan 
 said, "The question of education is for the 
 modern world a question of life or death on 
 which depends the future." The fear of the 
 Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the con- 
 clusion of the whole matter is "Fear God, and 
 keep his commandments, for this is the whole 
 duty of man." To this end we open this uni- 
 versity to-day with full confidence that the 
 blessing of the Immanent Presence shall rest 
 upon all its teachers and all its students al- 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 67 
 
 way, for "religion and education are not a 
 match for evil without the grace of God." 
 
 I was present in the meeting of a ministerial 
 association at Plymouth, Massachusetts, dur- 
 ing the erection of the great Faith Monument. 
 The association was invited to visit the monu- 
 ment, and they went in a body. They hap- 
 pened to be there at the very hour when the 
 builders had the great granite basal figure en- 
 titled "Education" swinging by the ropes. The 
 master mason, evidently a man of much senti- 
 ment, said, "Education ought to be set by 
 religion," and he called to the preachers to 
 take the ropes, which they did, and lower the 
 great stone symbol of the nation's presiding 
 genius, to its final resting place on one of the 
 four significant corners of the monument. 
 
 In no other city of the world than Washing- 
 ton should education in like manner be set, 
 so certainly, so firmly, so permanently upon 
 the one foundation of the Christian faith. 
 
PRO DEO ET PATRIA* 
 
 JosEPHus Daniels^ Secretary of the Navy 
 
 (This address marked the raising of the American flag 
 over the grounds and buildings of the American Uni- 
 versity. ) 
 
 IT is my good fortune to be at the head of 
 the biggest university in America. That, 
 no doubt, accounts for my invitation to have 
 a place on the program this afternoon. It may 
 not be generally known that the United States 
 Navy is our foremost educational institution, 
 with schools and colleges afloat and ashore, 
 giving instruction from the three R's to the 
 most abstruse learning for diplomats and the 
 most practical lessons in mechanics and tech- 
 nology. Every day fifty thousand sailors 
 answer the call "to books" and combine edu- 
 cation of the head with education of the hand. 
 A few months after the American people 
 elected a school teacher to be President, every 
 officer in the American Navy became a school 
 
 *Pro Deo et Patria is the motto of the American Uni- 
 versity. It was that of Mazzini. 
 
 68 
 
o 
 
 I— t 
 
 < 
 
 CO 
 
 m 
 
 H 
 
 1—4 
 
 Q 
 
 o 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 69 
 
 teacher. I come, therefore, to bring greetings 
 from the University of the Navy to the Amer- 
 ican University, and welcome it to a high place 
 among the educational institutions of our 
 country. 
 
 Religion and Patriotism have been twins 
 from the day they united to lead the children 
 of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land. 
 It has been said that the trekking from the 
 Nile to the Jordan was God's first university, 
 and that in forty years it gave the world but 
 two graduates — Joshua and Caleb. But what 
 graduates they were ! "For God and Country" 
 has been the shibboleth of every notable con- 
 test in the history of the world. I will not 
 say there is no patriotism separate from reli- 
 gion, but it is within the truth to say that in 
 every decade the noblest patriotism has bur- 
 geoned forth from homes where religion pre- 
 sided and the household worshiped God. 
 
 As our fathers looked to God to help them 
 both in settling and freeing our country, so 
 must we remember that the Bible, which must 
 be the standard for national as well as indi- 
 vidual well-being, says, "Righteousness exalt- 
 eth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any 
 people." Washington upon being congratu- 
 
70 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 lated in that remarkable correspondence from 
 every church denomination npon his accession 
 to the presidency, said the first and last word, 
 as to the country's dependence upon God, when 
 he wrote in answer to the letter from one 
 church: "While I reiterate the professions of 
 my dependence upon Heaven, as to the source 
 of all public and i^rivate blessings, I will ob- 
 serve, that the general prevalence of piety, 
 philanthropy, honesty, industry, and economy 
 seems, in the ordinary course of human affairs, 
 particularly necessary for advancing and con- 
 firming the happiness of our country. While 
 all men in our territories are protected in 
 worshiping the Deity according to the dictates 
 of their consciences, it is rationally to be ex- 
 pected from them in return that they will all 
 be emulous of evincing the sanctity of their 
 professions by the innocence of their lives and 
 the beneficence of their actions; for no man 
 who is profligate in his morals, or a bad mem- 
 ber of the civil community, can possibly be a 
 true Christian, or a credit to his own religious 
 society." 
 
 And again he said to another faith, "May 
 the same wonder-working Deity, who long 
 since delivered the Hebrews from their Egyp- 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 71 
 
 tian oppressions and planted them in the 
 promised land, whose providential agency has 
 lately been conspicuous in establishing these 
 United States as an independent nation, still 
 continue to water them with the dews of 
 Heaven, and to make the inhabitants of every 
 denomination participate in the temporal and 
 spiritual blessings of that people whose God 
 is Jehovah." 
 
 Our flag must mean as much to us as it did 
 to Washington, and if we are to continue 
 strong and great, and fulfill our missions in 
 the earth, we must realize that what Webster 
 said must be true nationally as well as indi- 
 vidually, when he remarked: "The greatest 
 thought which has ever come to me is as to my 
 personal responsibility to God.'' May this 
 great university impress upon the youth of 
 the land the truth that the nation must exist 
 for the glory of the Lord of the Universe, and 
 that education must be the handmaid of reli- 
 gion. 
 
 Methodism was born in a university. The 
 new and vitalizing faith that transformed the 
 lives of John and Charles Wesley and their 
 associates, came to them as they pursued their 
 studies at Oxford. But the religion that made 
 
72 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 them living epistles did not stop in the uni- 
 versity or in its environs. It gave them a 
 vision of duty to mankind that enabled John 
 Wesley to declare, "The world is my parish." 
 The impulse of Methodism was given direction 
 and organizing capacity by the training of the 
 college, but its inspiration came from a divine 
 source. Its mission was to preach a living 
 gospel to dying men. The godly zeal of the 
 early Methodists did not revolutionize Oxford, 
 for, like many educational institutions in our 
 day, formalism and bookishness often choke 
 out simple faith in the Word. The Wesleys 
 and Whitefield were learned in the classics, 
 but they soon heard the call to go into the 
 highways and publish the good news. Denied 
 admission into pulpits, they made pulpits in 
 God's first temj)les and carried their messages 
 to the forgotten men and women in crowded 
 factory centers and to the toilers wherever 
 they could secure a hearing. With what result? 
 More men and women in America hold to the 
 creed of Methodism than any other Protestant 
 Church. It has been often said — and some- 
 times truly — of Methodists what the Irish 
 school master said of the pioneer Wesley ans 
 in Ohio: "The Methodists are a very narry 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 73 
 
 people. I could never belong to that church. 
 I could never bear to have to feel my spiritual 
 pulse every morning to see if my religious 
 temperature was normal. No, I could never 
 be a Methodist. They are a very narry people. 
 But/' added the Irishman, "I have observed 
 that a narry stream runs strong." Under the 
 auspices of this strong church, broad in every- 
 thing except where it thinks the Ruler of the 
 Universe has narrowed the way from earth 
 to heaven, the doors of this institution are 
 opened to promote learning and research. 
 May it fulfill its high mission and be a leading 
 factor in the agencies working to make the 
 national capital a Mecca for education as it is 
 the Mecca for statesmanship ! 
 
 In a very few moments we are to raise the 
 Stars and Stripes over a great university 
 about to be dedicated to the glory of God and 
 service of mankind. It is appropriate that on 
 such an occasion the flag of our country should 
 be hoisted. The flag is the symbol of our love 
 of country and our worship of God. From the 
 most ancient times men have been swayed by 
 symbols. There has always been a craving in 
 the human heart that its fathomless feeling, its 
 inexpressible emotions, shall find some out- 
 
74 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 ward representation. Unable often to inter- 
 pret the passions and longings of its own 
 breast, the soul has craved some object in 
 which they might be concentrated, crystal- 
 lized, and visualized. The Almighty recog- 
 nized this instinct of the human nature when 
 he put the bow in the skies. Man's need of 
 symbol is therefore doubtless the reflection in 
 himself of his Maker's image. 
 
 Our flag is the proud confession to the 
 world, in the laconic but eloquent speech of 
 symbolism, of the principles, faith, and history 
 of the nation. Designed partly by the Father 
 of his Country, shaped originally by the soft 
 hands of woman, originated in the City of 
 Brotherly Love, dedicated by poesy, bathed in 
 the blood of patriots, tattered with the bullets 
 of enemies, and glorified with the forty-eight 
 stars of a perfect Union, the Stars and Stripes 
 is the most beautiful symbol of nationality the 
 world has ever seen. 
 
 God has, through the whole history of the 
 earth, saved up the most beautiful of all the 
 flags for our own nation. There is no doubt, 
 viewed from the standpoint of art alone, that 
 the Stars and Stripes is the most exquisite 
 ensign that ever fluttered in a breeze. The 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 75 
 
 reason is not far to seek. Beyond the western 
 waters was raised np this giant republic with 
 its kindly message of liberty to all the world 
 for all time. To it was committed this price- 
 less pearl, and it was but fitting that the 
 national emblem should reflect and reecho 
 something of the value of the gift itself. 
 
 The beauty of our flag has had just tribute 
 paid to it by the late Senator Hoar, of Massa- 
 chusetts, to whom it was given to be spokes- 
 man for the nation, when he said : 
 
 I have seen the glories of art and architecture, and of 
 mountain and river. I have seen the sun set on Jung- 
 frau and the full moon rise over Mont Blanc, but the 
 fairest vision on which these eyes ever looked was the 
 flag of my country in a foreign land. Beautiful as the 
 flowers to those who love it, terrible as a meteor to those 
 who hate it, it is the symbol of power and glory and the 
 honor of seventy million Americans. 
 
 Seventy millions then, nearer one hundred 
 millions now. 
 
 It is a symbol which stands for liberty : The 
 men of the Thirteen Colonies, who first set- 
 tled this country, came here that they might 
 find liberty — that freedom which was not 
 theirs under the ancient governments of 
 Europe, and Old Glory to-day never flies down 
 the street above the tatoo of the drums and 
 
76 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 the flare of the trumpets but that we hear in 
 her fluttering the heartbeat of man from the 
 time he first yearned for liberty — liberty of 
 person, liberty of conscience, liberty of speech, 
 liberty for the exercise of genius and the 
 development of talent. For the inalienable 
 rights of man, ^'for life, liberty, and the pur- 
 suit of happiness," the Stars and Stripes stand 
 as no ensign ever stood before. It speaks to 
 us of Concord and Bunker Hill, of Trenton 
 and King's Mountain, of the Declaration of 
 Independence and the Constitution. 
 
 It speaks for hope. When the Committee 
 of Congress decided that the flag should have 
 thirteen stars and thirteen stripes, there 
 seemed to be something prophetic in the de- 
 sign. The star always speaks for hope; it 
 tells the mariner that the midnight storm is 
 passed; the stripe speaks for suffering from 
 the blow of fate. Our country has had its 
 share both of national joy and national chas- 
 tening. It has been made perfect through suf- 
 fering. We came to Yorktown by way of 
 Valley Forge. We came to a perfectly ce- 
 mented union through the shedding of fra- 
 ternal blood. We have come through the time 
 of stripes to the time of stars. We can never 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 77 
 
 again believe that even in the woes of panic 
 we shall not emerge into prosperity again. 
 Our experience has taught us that the black- 
 est cloud has its silver lining. We may not 
 expect that the republic will not again have 
 its problems to confront, its perils to pass 
 through, its evils to correct, but we may never 
 believe with Old Glory as the emblem of our 
 national ideals that this republic shall ever 
 crumble in the dust among the wrecks of time. 
 It stands for shelter. There has been 
 wrought in its texture something of the tears 
 and blood and sacrifice of the exiles from other 
 lands who came here when our shores were 
 bleak and our wilderness primeval in order to 
 find a refuge from persecution and tyranny. 
 The new world was to them a shelter in the 
 time of storm. Since the erection of our re- 
 public, since Old Glory was first flung out to 
 the winds, half the monarchies of the world 
 have become republics, as if those who could 
 not come to our shores would follow our ex- 
 ample and seize for themselves the blessings 
 which America insured to her sons and 
 daughters. Secretary of State William H. 
 Seward relates the following interesting inci- 
 dent of his travels in Egypt : 
 
78 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 One day our party, made up of ladies and gentlemen 
 on horseback, were ascending a hill when we observed 
 one of the war parties that infest the country closely 
 following us; and when we reached the top of the hill 
 we met another one of these war parties, and they were 
 enemies about to engage in mortal conflict. Here we 
 were, a party of Americans, between these two contend- 
 ing forces. What to do, none of us at first knew, but 
 what we did do was this : we took from a portmanteau the 
 American flag, and, riding a little way to the side of the 
 road, we threw that flag over the limb of a tree, and it 
 was instantly recognized by both of those contending 
 war parties, and we sat down beneath it as safe as if we 
 had been sitting in the shadow of our old capitol in 
 Washington. 
 
 The flag has always stood for protection 
 of the weak and for refuge for the distressed. 
 Does it stand for that to-day as much as it did 
 when its splendor enraptured Washington, or 
 when it inspired Jackson to drive back the 
 red-coated veterans of Wellington from our 
 shores? Is it possible the time can ever come 
 when it shall be planted over a conquered 
 people, when it shall ever be carried by our 
 armies in a war of aggression? Will it ever 
 stand for any such principle as government of 
 an annexed and alien people without the con- 
 sent of the governed? God forbid! We do 
 not believe that it will ever float over another 
 foot of annexed territory. It must stand as it 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 79 
 
 has always stood, for shelter, for protection, 
 for refuge and rest. 
 
 In its very essence it stands for patriotism. 
 Patriotism has its beginning in attachment 
 for locality. It grows; it has a healthy and 
 normal development. It is the man who loves 
 the home of his boyhood who makes the patriot, 
 w^ho volunteers in time of war. 
 
 It stands for all the ideals of the American 
 people, and one of the greatest of these is for 
 an educated citizenship. Will our citizenship 
 measure up to the country's needs? In a 
 large measure the answer to this question 
 depends upon whether our educational insti- 
 tutions educate for service and illustrate the 
 highest ideals. Only this week, a distin- 
 guished preacher in New York declared that 
 "our universities are controlled by capital and 
 do not heed the call of struggling humanity.'' 
 If that should become true, to what source 
 could Ave turn for Leadership and Light? 
 Your university, fortunate in its environment 
 and fortunate in its broad scope, cannot fail 
 to hear the call to serve humanity. It will 
 hear the clear call that Wesley heard at Ox- 
 ford, and put all learning and science under 
 contribution for the opening of doors of help 
 
80 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 and opportunity to struggling men and women. 
 In this high service it will marry Religion and 
 Education, a union necessary for the highest 
 development of our race. Because Education 
 and Patriotism in America are one, it is fit- 
 ting to-day that we raise the flag to float over 
 this great school of learning which we are 
 establishing in our nation's capital. 
 
"BUT I KNOW A NAME, A NAME, 
 A NAME !" 
 
 William Jennings Bryan^ Secretary 
 OF State 
 
 IT is worth while waiting fifty-four years to 
 hear a Methodist bishop say that "we are 
 all Democratic." I am glad to be here, al- 
 though it seems that my presence more than 
 my speech is necessary. We can all help by 
 our presence, but none of us can add much by 
 speech to what has already been said. I am 
 glad to participate in this extraordinary occa- 
 sion, and if I have any right to participate, 
 it is not due to the fact that I am holding a 
 high of&ce. I do not emphasize as much as 
 some do the value of an office. Sometimes it 
 comes by accident, and sometimes, as in my 
 case, by favor. And if it comes rightfully, it 
 ought to come more as a result than as a cause. 
 On this occasion to-day, and at this time, 
 we are dealing with matters so important that 
 the mere holding of an office does not justify 
 participation in this program. The President 
 
 81 
 
82 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 was here, but he had a higher claim to the 
 invitation and the opportunity you gave him 
 than because he was President. He repre- 
 sents, as no other President has ever done, the 
 union of learning and religion in this country. 
 He is the first of our Presidents taken from 
 an educational career ; the first chief executive 
 who in his life work was an exponent of our 
 educational system. And no President has 
 brought more spiritual consecration to his 
 work than President Wilson. And Secretary 
 Daniels is here, not primarily because he is 
 the Secretary of the Navy — that might entitle 
 him to a place at a Baptist meeting; but that 
 would not justify his coming to a Methodist 
 meeting. You might invite him because he is 
 a Methodist; he represents the reunion of the 
 two churches. I might creep in on my rela- 
 tionships, for my mother was a Methodist 
 when I was born, my wife was a Methodist 
 when we were married, and the only one of my 
 children who will carry my name down to 
 posterity is a Methodist. Our only son is a 
 member of this church; I am thus hedged 
 about on three sides by Methodists ! 
 
 And yet I think I have even a better claim 
 to a place on this program; while I place but 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 83 
 
 little emphasis upon those lines that separate 
 the chnrch into different groups, I have a firm 
 grip on the fundamentals of Christianity that 
 underlie all our faiths. And these good men 
 of the Methodist faith who have laid the 
 foundation here of the American University 
 are not more interested than I am in all that 
 the university stands for. I have not made 
 the sacrifices for it that some of them have, 
 and my name cannot be linked with it as the 
 names of some of them are. I imagine that 
 the Hamilton brothers will be to the Amer- 
 ican University much what the Wesley broth- 
 ers were to the early Methodist Church. But 
 even the Hamilton brothers do not appreciate 
 more than I do the importance of bringing 
 higher education under Christian influence. 
 
 It is not necessary for me to make a speech 
 to-day. I think I am down for an "address," 
 and there is a difference between an "address'' 
 and a "speech." I learned it in the campaign 
 of 1896. I found they were overworking me 
 and I told them that, as a matter of self- 
 preservation — in order that I might have as- 
 surance that I would live until election day — 
 I must limit my speeches to three each day. 
 And so a few days after that, after I had 
 
84 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 spoken about ten times, I looked upon the pro- 
 gram, and I found that I was then about to 
 make my first "speech.'' They had put me 
 down for three "speeches" and twenty-six "ad- 
 dresses," by which they meant that an "ad- 
 dress" was to be only of short duration, while 
 a "speech" was a longer effort. I am down 
 for an "address" this afternoon, and I could 
 not, without violating the proprieties of the 
 occasion, venture to make a "speech," after all 
 that we have heard this afternoon. 
 
 1 did not know what my text was until after 
 I reached the grounds. I tried to find by 
 inquiry last night what I was expected to talk 
 about, but I inquired of those who Avere going 
 to talk, and they seemed afraid to tell me, for 
 fear I might speak before they did; and so it 
 was not until to-day, after lunch, as we were 
 preparing to come to the platform that I found 
 my text. Bishop Cranston was going with me 
 through this splendid building, and we came 
 to the chair that you will find up in the As- 
 sembly Hall. It is a chair that was presented 
 to this Institution by the Wesleyan Methodist 
 Conference of Great Britain, and is made from 
 timber taken from the old church in which 
 Wesley preached and near which he lived. We 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 85 
 
 saw carved on the top of the chair these words : 
 "Unite the Pair so Long Disjoined — Knowl- 
 edge and Vital Piety." That is my text this 
 afternoon — "the union of knowledge and reli- 
 gion.'' 
 
 My friends, I have no doubt of the future of 
 this great university. Why? Because it is 
 building on solid rock, and it is prepared to 
 do a work that is important, not to this 
 church only, nor to this nation only, but to 
 the world ! 
 
 What the world needs to-day is the union of 
 the head and heart in life's work, and the 
 great fault of education, as we have sometimes 
 found it, is that it trains the mind, but does 
 not train the heart at the same time. If I 
 understand the weakness of education, it is, 
 first, that it sometimes weans man away from 
 sympathy with his fellows. When you unite 
 the Christian religion with it, you teach 
 brotherhood along with mental development. 
 And the second weakness is that the mind is 
 sometimes so enlarged that the possessor of 
 the mind forgets that "the fear of God is the 
 beginning of wisdom." It is the purpose of 
 every school with a religious impulse behind 
 it, to secure to the individual the intellectual 
 
86 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 training that he needs without weaning him 
 from sympathy with his fellows, and without 
 making him forget God. And never have we 
 needed such influences more than to-day. We 
 ought to teach the doctrine of brotherhood. 
 Why? Inventive genius has so multiplied the 
 strength of a human arm that aggregations of 
 individual wealth that tend to classify so- 
 ciety, tend to separate the extremes, so that a 
 part of the world does not know and, there- 
 fore, cannot sympathize with the rest of the 
 world. Unless there is some force constantly 
 teaching the doctrine of brotherhood, we will 
 find society disrupted, because of the breaking 
 of the bonds of sympathy. 
 
 Tolstoy says that the great need of the world 
 to-day is sympathy; that back of every wrong 
 and injustice of which man complains you will 
 find a lack of sympathy. He has suggested 
 what is known as ^^bread labor" as a remedy, 
 and he insists that man must toil himself if he 
 would remember his brother who toils. His 
 belief is that only by constant contact with 
 manual labor can the heart of man be kept 
 linked to the heart of other men. Whether he 
 is right in his remedy or not is a matter for 
 discussion, but I have no doubt that he is right 
 
TABLE AND CHAIRS OF SKN AlOK ( IIARLES SUMXER 
 In the senator's house the plans for the American University were 
 formulated after the house had become an annex of the Arlington Hoteh 
 The table and chairs now belong to the American University. 
 
 li ^^^%#' I 
 
 ■li ^H ! ft I 
 
 HISTORIC CHAIR 
 
 Carved from oak timbers of City Road Chapel, Lon- 
 don. Presented by Wesleyan Conference of Great Bri- 
 tain to the American University. 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 87 
 
 when he says that what mankind needs most 
 is sympathy. 
 
 What mankind needs is a response from the 
 heart of his fellow man, a love broad enough 
 to take in all mankind, and if I understand the 
 Christian religion, its hope rests upon the 
 bringing of all the world into a universal 
 brotherhood. 
 
 Wendell Phillips complained of the scholar 
 when he said that he did not interest himself 
 as he ought in the affairs of his country. He 
 said, "The people make history, and the 
 scholars write it, half truly and half as colored 
 by their prejudices." We need to-day an edu- 
 cation that will have a spiritual impulse be- 
 hind it, an education that Avill send out its 
 graduates, not to sit idly upon the shoulders 
 of the multitude, but to get down with the 
 multitude and help bear the burden of the 
 world. There is nothing else that will make 
 a man willing to bear burdens. The difference 
 between the selfish man and the unselfish man 
 is easily described. The selfish man wants 
 somebody else to bear his burdens, and the 
 unselfish man is looking for burdens to bear. 
 Nothing but religion teaches a man to want 
 to bear burdens. This is the change that 
 
88 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 Christ can bring in a human heart. He can 
 change that heart from a stagnant pool into 
 a living spring, overflowing with that which 
 refreshes and invigorates, and an institution 
 like this will live in proportion as it makes 
 springs out of those who go forth from it, in 
 proportion as it gives an impulse that will 
 make life worth living. 
 
 A man will not love his brother unless he 
 loves God. I am not a preacher. That was my 
 first ambition, but I was only six years old 
 when I abandoned it for the law. I am not a 
 preacher, but sometimes I feel tempted to 
 preach, and I cannot tell how long I shall be 
 able to resist the temptation. But if I ever do 
 preach, my text is already selected, and here 
 it is. The language is stronger than I would 
 use, for I am very conservative of statement; 
 but I don't like to change the Bible; and this 
 is what the Bible says, "If a man says he loves 
 God and hates his brother, he is a liar." Now, 
 that will be my text, if I ever preach. And it 
 will be a long sermon if I attempt to show how 
 many there are. It will be a long sermon, if 
 I attempt to show in how many different ways 
 a man can prove that he hates his brother. 
 Therefore, before you can educate a man to 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 89 
 
 love his brother, you must educate a man to 
 love his God. And if this great university 
 lives up to its possibilities, lives up to the ideas 
 and ideals of those who brought it into exist- 
 ence, every man and every woman who goes 
 out from its doors with a diploma will go with 
 a fixed relation established between himself or 
 herself and God. 
 
 Religion has been defined as "the relation 
 that man fixes between himself and his God." 
 And to make you understand how practical 
 a thing religion is, the man who gave us that 
 definition added that "morality is the outward 
 manifestation of that inward relation." In 
 other words, religion is the basis of morals, 
 and I know of no other foundation upon which 
 morality can be built. I can understand how 
 a man can borrow his morality ready-made 
 from some one who built upon that founda- 
 tion ; I can understand how a man in a crowd 
 may lean upon some one else when he cannot 
 stand alone ; but I know of no foundation for 
 a moral code except religion. And when this 
 university attempts to put the impulse of reli- 
 gion back of the scholars who go forth from it, 
 it renders a service to all mankind. 
 
 We need not compare what scholars can do ; 
 
90 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 some can do more than others ; but there is no 
 scholarship that the world has ever known 
 which can, without a moral impulse and a spir- 
 itual vision, equal the work of the ignorant 
 man whose heart has been touched by the love 
 of God, and who has brought himself into sym- 
 pathy with all humanity. 
 
 The boy who never entered a school, but 
 whose heart is aflame with brotherly love will 
 do more good than the man who leaves college 
 with all the learning that a college can give, 
 but who thinks that he has reached a point 
 Avhere there is no intellect greater than his 
 own. 
 
 The struggle to-day in the intellectual world 
 is the struggle in the Garden of Eden — the 
 struggle between Faith and Reason. Faith 
 said, "Obey," but Reason said, "Why should 
 we obey? Why should we not follow our 
 reason?" The struggle is just the same with 
 every human being. It is between Reason 
 and Faith, and the man who tries to walk by 
 Reason will stumble. The man who goes no 
 faster than he can see goes slowly. The man 
 is not far-sighted who walks without faith. 
 "The heart," said Pascal, "hath reasons that 
 the mind cannot understand, because the heart 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 91 
 
 is of an infinitely higher quality." And so 
 faith is higher than reason. Faith is that 
 quality of the heart that reaches out toward 
 the throne of God, and takes hold upon the 
 verities that the mind cannot grasp. Let the 
 scholars who are without religion go forth, 
 and do what they can; but the world moves 
 through those who go out inspired by faith to 
 do more than they can see. You cannot tell 
 what can be done by calculation. I suppose 
 people thought when Bishop Hurst talked 
 about ten millions of dollars that it was a 
 dream; but when we can give more than ten 
 million for one battleship, is it dreaming to 
 think that the time will come when you can 
 give as much for such an institution of learn- 
 ing as this — an institution intended to uplift 
 the world — as for one battleship? Compare 
 their influence. One man, educated in this 
 university and sent out with a passion for 
 service, can do more for the peace of the world 
 than any hundred battleships ! 
 
 The nations that have rested for their hope 
 upon their material strength have gone down. 
 The path of history is strewn with the wrecks 
 of nations that thought they were omnipotent. 
 
 Why did they go down? Because "the God 
 
92 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 who reigned over Babylon is the God who is 
 reigning yet." It is because God has so made 
 this world that only moral forces are the per- 
 manent forces; and this institution is build- 
 ing for the future and without the danger of 
 failure when it is striving to send people forth 
 with a desire to put their shoulders under 
 heavier loads and bear the burdens that are 
 grievous to be borne. 
 
 What can this institution do? Estimate, if 
 you can, the combined service of those who 
 will feel its influence. Measure, if you can, 
 that which will be accomplished by the faith 
 that will be inspired here. 
 
 I have never heard a better illustration of 
 faith than that given by a colored preacher. 
 He said that faith was a Avilliugness to do 
 what God told him to do without asking any 
 questions. To illustrate it, he said, "If God 
 tells me to butt my head through a stone wall, 
 I butt. That's my part. Going through the 
 wall is the Lord's part!" A homely illustra- 
 tion? Yes; but it is true. The great things 
 of this world have been done by those who 
 had the faith to attempt the seemingly impos- 
 sible, and by attempting, proved what man 
 could do. 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 93 
 
 I used to wonder how Sodom could have 
 been saved by a few righteous men ; I wonder 
 no longer. There isn't a community in this 
 world that cannot be saved by a few righteous 
 people who have the faith to put God to the 
 test. I remember hearing a great churchman 
 from Canada, speaking in New York a little 
 more than a year ago, quote some lines that 
 you may have heard. They thrilled me when 
 I heard them : 
 
 I know of a land that is sunk in shame, 
 
 Of hearts that faint and tire; 
 But I know a Name, a Name, a Name 
 
 That can set that land on fire! 
 
 The men and women who go forth from this 
 university rely upon the brain alone ; they will 
 go forth with a faith which, like a consuming 
 fire, nothing can withstand. 
 
 Faith does not ask what the results are to 
 be to the individual. We were reading at 
 family worship the other day the life of 
 Joseph, and when we read how he was put into 
 prison because he would not surrender his 
 virtue, I wondered if anybody could find a 
 better illustration of the fallibility of human 
 reason than could be found there. If there 
 ever was a time when a man might have felt 
 
94 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 justified in saying that it did not pay to do 
 right, it was then; but it was through that 
 prison that he reached a place by the side of 
 Pharaoh, and was able to save a land from 
 famine. And so the Christian knows that the 
 very trials through which he passes may be 
 the steps by which he ascends to higher serv- 
 ice. The Christian knows that it was the death 
 of the martyrs that made the Church; and 
 when he remembers that they could smile amid 
 the flames because they had faith that they 
 would accomplish more by their death than 
 they had been able to accomplish by their lives 
 — when the Christian remembers that, he does 
 not ask whether he is to live for the truth or 
 to die for it. He is as ready to die for it as 
 to live for it, if that is to be his lot. In other 
 words, if I understand the purpose of this in- 
 stitution, it is to make men indifferent as to 
 what comes to them, but tremendously inter- 
 ested in contributing to the welfare of the 
 world. Because that is the purpose of this 
 institution, and because I believe that that is 
 the way that an individual, a university, or a 
 nation, can become great, I am glad to be with 
 you to-day. 
 
FRANCIS ASBURY 
 A painting from life now in possession of the American University. 
 
LIFE-GIRDING 
 
 Franklin Hamilton^ Chancellor of the 
 American University 
 
 (Reprinted from the Methodist Review.) 
 
 AN old Arab woman on the River Nile in 
 ^ Egypt was looking for top soil for her 
 melon patch. Scratching at a mound by the 
 river side, she uncovered some clay tablets. 
 These tablets, when deciphered, furnished 
 authentic historical data for a period in Egyp- 
 tian history which had been understood but 
 little. The mound was Tel-el-Amarna. It 
 marked the spot where the Pharaoh x\khen- 
 aten had built his capital and had reared his 
 temple for the worship of the true God as a 
 spiritual deity over against the materialistic 
 animal worship of the time. But the new 
 departure was too high for that day. The 
 Pharaoh died overwhelmed. His body was 
 hidden away in a dishonored tomb. Temple 
 and city fell into ruins and became heaps for 
 the bittern and the jackal. But in time the 
 
 95 
 
96 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 tablets rehearsing the story were found. And 
 now Egyptologists pronounce Akhenaten "the 
 world's first idealist and the world's first indi- 
 vidual.'' 
 
 John Fletcher Hurst was an idealist. He 
 belonged to the Brahmin caste of scholarship 
 and refinement. All the more keenly, perhaps, 
 did he feel the certain condescension among 
 scholars, even in his day, concerning the 
 people called Methodists. He recalled that 
 Warburton, in the earlier days, had said of 
 Methodism that it was the social waste which 
 had been cast aside and by spontaneous com- 
 bustion took fire. He lived to hear the fling 
 of Matthew Arnold that Methodism might be 
 emotionalism tinged with morality, but it 
 lacked sweetness and light. Himself an ap- 
 proved scholar, welcome in any circle of intel- 
 lectual exclusiveness, John Fletcher Hurst 
 determined to claim for his church that lead- 
 ership in the realm of the mind which long 
 since she had won in the life of the spirit. As 
 the location for his venture he selected the 
 capital of this country. Here he sought to 
 found a university of loftiest pretension. 
 Through the medium of the same undertaking 
 he purposed, moreover, to unite the two, so 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 97 
 
 long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety. 
 Against the glow of his own enthusiasm there 
 soon arose the inevitable shadow of reaction. 
 He himself was misunderstood. His scheme 
 was deemed "a dream," "a white elephant," 
 a "flash in the pan," a "Gargantuan Franken- 
 stein which must fall apart through its own 
 unwieldiness." And so he died. Many dis- 
 cerned not the signs of the times. Of the 
 American University they said, "It is heaps 
 for the bittern and the jackal." 
 
 They did not understand. Nor little 
 wonder. He himself must be an idealist to 
 understand that word of Nietzsche, "It seems 
 that in order to inscribe themselves upon the 
 heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all 
 great things have first to wander about the 
 earth as enormous and awe-inspiring carica- 
 tures." Again was this paradox an actuality. 
 For, while the enterprise of a university at the 
 national capital seemed only to be wandering 
 about the earth as a caricature, in reality it 
 was inscribing itself with everlasting claims 
 on the hearts of multitudes. "The Whirligig 
 of Time," says the clown in Twelfth Night, 
 "brings on his revenges." The emphasis in 
 human events and in human interest has been 
 
98 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 shifting since that earlier day of Hurst the. 
 dreamer. Joseph's dreams always come true. 
 The spirit of the times, even now under our 
 own eyes, is changing. To us is being revealed, 
 through the American University idea itself, 
 the opening of a great and effectual door for 
 service in enlightenment and Christian learn- 
 ing. Changes, almost spontaneously, step by 
 step unfolding themselves, are obliterating 
 one by one the grounds of objection to the 
 enterprise. The question of competition, for 
 example, already has been eliminated. The 
 query as to how extraordinary advantages for 
 higher learning could be provided for through 
 this undertaking, without the raising of some 
 Croesus-like, impossible sum of money, has 
 been answered. The fear that the plan itself 
 has been outgrown is seen now to be only a 
 mental quickening to a different angle of 
 approach. Closet philosophers remind us that 
 this is a wonderful age and that if we are to 
 do our day's task worthily in this new world 
 of thought and life-girding, it must be no ordi' 
 nary contribution that we shall make to the 
 guidance of men. Aye, verily. But here we 
 find the very clue from the labyrinth for 
 which we have sought so long. 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 99 
 
 This is a new day, not only in the life of 
 the spirit, but also in the practical affairs of 
 men. And it is this vision of the new day 
 that has lighted us to a new faith in the Amer- 
 ican University undertaking. For under the 
 new light it is seen that within the bosom of 
 this very enterprise there lies slumbering the 
 one norm of life which can adapt itself effica- 
 ciously to the altered needs of the time and 
 through this very adaptation thrive. Let us 
 pause for a moment and see what are the 
 needs which thus must be met. 
 
 Three characteristics mark the thought life 
 of our time. The first is the search for ulti- 
 mate reality. The human spirit seems be- 
 witched in its eagerness to find the ultimate 
 explanation of things. This attitude of spirit 
 expresses itself in research work of every char- 
 acter. Our industries and trade, manufac- 
 tures, our inventions, methods of transporta- 
 tion and communication, our food production, 
 our agricultural conservation, even our fish- 
 eries, all are revealing our increasing depend- 
 ence on science and discovery. The social 
 fabric is involved in the outcome of research 
 investigations now being conducted in labor- 
 atories, research stations, experimental plants. 
 
100 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 observatories, weather bureaus, and hospitals. 
 Remedial agencies for the race in unfathomed 
 richness are found to inure to research work- 
 ers. Radium and mesothorium project their 
 light of hof^e into medicine. Serum therapy 
 reinforces the fight against contagion. The 
 anopheles maculi pennis, the dread yellow- 
 fever bearer, is caught on the wing. And these 
 results are merest sparks or scintillations 
 from the fires of the toiling research bene- 
 factor. At last we have come to see that hu- 
 manity itself is to get on largely through the 
 discoveries and ventures of such pioneers as 
 Harvey, Jenner, Lord Rayleigh, Sir William 
 Crookes, Edison, Madame Curie, Stiles, Major- 
 Surgeon Reed, Pasteur, Richet, Carrel, Bur- 
 bank, and their like. As a consequent upon 
 this is the fact that these verv investisfations 
 and results are revealing a hitherto undreamed 
 of partnership between research and the train- 
 ing of youthful minds. Louis Agassiz fore- 
 saw this. In his university work long ago 
 he combined the two ideas. His students at 
 the outset were put at research work as the 
 best method of developing their own powers. 
 A second characteristic of the thought life 
 of to-day is the vitalizing of truth when once 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 101 
 
 discovered. This vitalizing of truth we find 
 made possible through the dissemination of 
 educative information at first hand to the 
 people. The effort to prevent disease, igno- 
 rance, and immorality by enlightenment 
 through channels that shall reach the hum- 
 blest classes, such as health exhibits, warning 
 signs, picture displays, and various other mor- 
 ally instructive objective demonstrations, is 
 one of the marks of the day. The new vision 
 of social service, the uplift of the people 
 through organizations directed toward public- 
 ity and instructional ends, the ever-widening 
 utilization of the printed page, the pulpit, and 
 reform campaigns, with their frank discussion 
 of subjects hitherto tahu^ the bringing of new 
 facts and inspiration through Chautauqua 
 circuits to communities where the common 
 people live, the enormous popularity of the 
 problem novel, and the new utilization of the 
 stage for informing the careless — all such 
 tendencies, to one who understands, mark a 
 supreme trend of present-day life. 
 
 A third characteristic of our time is the 
 development of individualism. The secret of 
 the present vogue of Dr. Maria Montessori 
 is that through her method of training child- 
 
102 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 hood she is endeavoring to answer a demand 
 aroused by the psychologic and biologic re- 
 rearches of the past two decades. She says, 
 ^^The fundamental principle must be, indeed, 
 the liberty of the pupil." In this doctrine of 
 liberty the Montessori method is based upon 
 the individual. 
 
 No longer is there any thought of molding 
 all individuals alike in life training. Now it 
 is sought to find the capabilities of each indi- 
 vidual and to develop those capabilities. The 
 principle is being accepted that the selection 
 of particular individuals of unusual powers 
 for special development will secure to the 
 race its most rapid advancement through 
 properly equipped leadership. This may ac- 
 count for the revival of interest in the work 
 of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel. Certain 
 it is that there is a well-defined evolution for- 
 ward from the work of the great forerunners 
 in education — Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Herbart, 
 and Froebel. And there is a new emphasis 
 given to individual divergence from type. So 
 we have increasing specialization in study and 
 more and more emphasis laid on vocational 
 training. 
 
 Now, what is the inevitable conclusion to 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 103 
 
 be drawn from all this? Is it not that any 
 institution which to-day aims to minister to 
 the modern needs must adjust itself to these 
 new tendencies and interests in life? Gone 
 forever is the day when human learning can 
 be summed up in the old academic trivium and 
 quadriviuni — Lingua^ Tropics ^ Ratio, Numerus, 
 Tonus, AnguluSy Astra. Gone forever the day 
 when a university doctor can lecture on all 
 fields of knowledge, or a medical professor 
 can occupy, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said 
 that once he did, not a chair in the profes- 
 sional school, but a whole settee. This is be- 
 cause we are coming to realize that the old 
 saying that knowledge is power is not true. 
 Useless knowledge has no relation to power. 
 And it is power that we must have as girding 
 for the life of the new day. For, as De 
 Quincey suggests, the difference between 
 knowledge and power is of celestial diameter. 
 Every step that we take in knowledge only gets 
 us further along on the same plane. But the 
 very first step in power is a step upward as on 
 an ascending Jacob's ladder stretching from 
 earth to things above the earth; it is a flight 
 upward into another sphere where earth is 
 forgot and angels come and minister unto us. 
 
104 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 With the problem thus frankly stated, is 
 there any way by which the American Uni- 
 versity can be put into functioning existence, 
 so that it can meet the needs which are char- 
 acteristic of the life of our time? Is there any 
 field which this institution can enter, bring- 
 ing the gift of power, and yet be saved from 
 useless or destructive competition Avith other 
 existing institutions? Is it possible to retain 
 the ideals of the founders and yet at the same 
 time enable the university to enter on a be- 
 neficent career of bringing to other existing 
 schools, not rivalry in the struggle for funds, 
 students, and prestige, but cooperation, ele- 
 ments of assisting strength and quickening, 
 wider scope of life and a projected efiiciency? 
 Is it possible! In this day and generation of 
 grueling fight for one's own, can such things 
 be? Again the answer is, "Aye, verily!" As 
 ground for our answer, let me hasten to call 
 attention at once to unique conditions exist- 
 ing to which the American University has 
 access. It is not so much what this institu- 
 tion has as what now it is able strategically 
 to do. 
 
 All the world knows that over a century ago 
 George Washington called the attention of 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 105 
 
 the American people to the extraordinary 
 advantages that would inure to the whole 
 country through the right utilization of the 
 government resources for education and schol- 
 arly research. These resources are massed in 
 the government archives, departments, bu- 
 reaus, museums, libraries, and similar insti- 
 tutions. It often has been recited how George 
 Washington in his will made provision for the 
 actual founding of a national university at the 
 capital of the country, which should carry out 
 this plan of putting the government depart- 
 ments to distinctively educational use. It may 
 not be so familiar to all, however, that 
 "Washington was not alone in his purpose. 
 Directly or indirectly, the first six presidents 
 favored with a greater or less degree of ear- 
 nestness the foundation of a national univer- 
 sity." 
 
 Nothing came of it all, however, while the 
 government treasures themselves kept heaping 
 up and multiplying, until now they represent 
 an almost unparalleled storehouse of riches. 
 "Every branch of human knowledge has a lit- 
 erary deposit in Washington." 
 
 It is to this educational equipment of the 
 national government, which for a century thus 
 
106 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 steadily has been accreting, that we propose 
 to turn for the means of enabling the Amer- 
 ican University to do some of the things to 
 which allusion has been made. 
 
 Certainly will the university be enabled, 
 through this Federal treasure house of edu- 
 cational material, to attempt her first task, 
 that of helping to answer the call to a search 
 for ultimate reality. This will be done 
 through the organization of an institute for 
 research to be operated in connection with the 
 government departments and bureaus and yet 
 be a component function in the life of the 
 American University. This institute will not 
 be intended to carry on research work of its 
 own. Rather will it be simply a nexus, or con- 
 necting link, by means of which students may 
 be introduced to the opportunities for research 
 now existing in the government departments. 
 It is designed to make available what already 
 exists, but is not being put to its maximum 
 educational use. This institute will have a 
 director of research. He will have a thorough 
 knowledge of the opportunities for research 
 in the government offices. The primary func- 
 tion, therefore, of the director of research Avill 
 be to open the door to those channels of new 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 107 
 
 discovery and scientific suggestion which exist 
 under government auspices. 
 
 What is involved in this proposal may be 
 gathered from a remarkable statement by 
 President Hadley concerning research facil- 
 ities now existing in the government depart- 
 ments at Washington : President A. T. Hadley, 
 Facilities for Study and Research in the 
 Offices of the United States Government at 
 Washington, p. 9. 
 
 It would be time wasted to seek to demon- 
 strate the research opportunities open in 
 Washington. Professor Balfour, of Oxford 
 University, declared: ^'There is no city in the 
 world where scientific study can be pursued 
 to so great advantage as in Washington.'^ In 
 learning and enlightenment Washington will 
 take the place which Paris has held. She will 
 be what the Greeks called Athens, the omplia- 
 loSy the world's center. 
 
 It is easy to see a thing after it is done. 
 Here the statesman is he who, like Francis 
 Asbury, foreseeing the great future of this 
 country, is wise enough to desire to preoccupy 
 its most strategic points with centers of Chris- 
 tian light, but in a larger day than that of the 
 apostolic circuit rider shall not forget the na- 
 
108 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 tional capital, where in balance hang the issues 
 of life and death for many peoples. The Ro- 
 man Catholic Church, which so wisely, for 
 her purposes, maintains in this country 321 
 newspapers and public prints, counts it worth 
 her supreme effort to build at Washington a 
 great school of learning, which with vision 
 she calls The Catholic University of America. 
 And his Holiness, who has taken this univer- 
 sity under his own special watch-care and for 
 it cherishes unending solicitude, announces to 
 the world that the institution is to be the chief 
 training station of Catholicism for the western 
 hemisphere. One is reminded even now of 
 those earlier lines of the poet Wordsworth : 
 
 The ancient thrones of Christendom are stuff 
 
 For occupation of a magic wand, 
 And 'tis the Pope that wields it: whether rough 
 
 Or smooth his front, our world is in his hand. 
 
 At such a center as the national capital, 
 therefore, none ought to feel that such direc- 
 tion of effort as is contemplated by the Amer- 
 ican University is unwise or ill advised. The 
 research work of the Rockefeller Institute 
 alone would demonstrate the wisdom of the 
 initial part of the plan. But in Germany re- 
 search work distinctively is carried on under 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 109 
 
 the auspices of the universities. And there 
 notably, while with us increasingly, there is 
 a remarkable development in industrial re- 
 search as a recognized function of universities 
 and technical schools. 
 
 Such an attempt upon our part, moreover, 
 answers the desire recently expressed by the 
 University of Pennsylvania to set apart cer- 
 tain of her professors for purely research 
 work. The kind of work which we have in 
 mind has been done at the government depart- 
 ments with high success by post-graduate stu- 
 dents from West Point and the Naval Acad- 
 emy. Students of the Catholic University of 
 America at Washington now are putting to 
 valuable use the same resources. Such an 
 institute as we intend to operate can become 
 an intermediary and intellectual clearing 
 house between other American institutions of 
 learning and the government offices. In time 
 it could become a bureau of information for 
 foreign scholars and institutions. As such the 
 scope and value of its life would be measure- 
 less. 
 
 How clear the field is may be gathered from 
 the fact that national legislation has provided 
 for the free use by students of all that the gov- 
 
110 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 ernment has in the way of educational equip- 
 ment. The expense of the adventure, there- 
 fore, would be nominal. The institution, 
 moreover, which puts into operation this plan 
 will not be encroaching on the field or work 
 of any other existing institution. For such 
 an undertaking could be possible at no place 
 but at Washington. The government collec- 
 tions which have been gathered and massed 
 at the national capital, by the very nature of 
 the case, can have no duplicate. They must 
 remain unique. 
 
 Again, this is the accepted time. Events 
 each day make more evident the growing feel- 
 ing that the time has come when the educa- 
 tional resources of the government at Wash- 
 ington ought to be put to practical ends. We 
 arrogate not to ourselves or to our enterprise 
 that which is beyond our capabilities or our 
 proper scope — none the less, we fully are 
 minded now to make the high adventure, to 
 break through the hedge, and to lay virile and 
 quickening hands on these resources. 
 
 What wealth of material, what matchless 
 opportunities are ours ! Authorized and justi- 
 fied by the spirit and the letter of two acts of 
 Congress, one can say, "Here is the equipment 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 111 
 
 of The American University. Here are our 
 laboratories, our libraries, our museums, our 
 experiment stations, our art galleries, our 
 botanical gardens. They are ready and wait- 
 ing. Have they not dignity and promise? 
 Where on earth can they be surpassed?" 
 
 The second step in the development of the 
 life of the American University will consist 
 in an attempt to assist in the vitalizing of 
 truth that once has been discovered. This 
 will be done by means of a system of lecture- 
 ships. The dissemination of knowledge 
 through lectures, as a defense for its dignity 
 and value, does not need to cite the lectures 
 of Plato in his garden or the discussions by 
 Aristotle in the shady walks around the 
 lyceum. Aberdeen University for four years 
 existed on lectures alone. Illustration of the 
 power that can be exercised through a wise 
 system of lectures is found in the Bampton 
 lectures in Oxford University. These dis- 
 courses on theological and philosophical 
 thought, made possible by the beneficence of 
 John Bampton and delivered in Saint Mary^s, 
 Oxford, where John Wesley preached, have 
 had not a little to do with changing the course 
 of higher thinking in the Anglo-Saxon world. 
 
112 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 Mark also the delightful labors of enlighten- 
 ment revealed in the work of the Lowell Insti- 
 tute of Boston. Whether it be the young poet, 
 Noyes, picturing the sea in English poetry, or 
 the learned Von Dobschtitz explaining the 
 influence of the Bible on civilization, or that 
 wizard of speech George Herbert Palmer dis- 
 coursing on Edmund Spenser — tell me, is 
 there any one element more distinctive and 
 helpful in the higher education of the Amer- 
 ican people than is provided by the choice 
 spirits summoned to noble task and utterance 
 through the call of the Lowell Institute? 
 
 Exchange professorships and popular uni- 
 versity extension lectures are assuming more 
 and more an earnest and permanent char- 
 acter. Institutions of learning are coming to 
 feel that diversified series of attractive free 
 lectures are a fitting part of university life as 
 related to the community life of the people. 
 No undertaking of any university in the 
 country is attracting more widespread inter- 
 est, perhaps, than are the jDicturesque but 
 highly satisfactory traveling tent exhibitions 
 and peripatetic platform demonstrations for 
 instructing rural populations now being con- 
 ducted by the University of Minnesota. Out 
 

 \i 
 
 ^' 
 
 1 \ \ % ;^ K1 -1 ^VN^ ^% i ^ 
 
 Hi 'J 
 
 y 4 
 
 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 113 
 
 in his own State the farmers affectionately 
 call the scheme ^'George Vincent's Circus." 
 And when were farmers or farmers' boys ever 
 backward about attending a circus? Such 
 lectures as are proposed in the American Uni- 
 versity need not necessarily be confined to 
 Washington. Lecturers can be secured and 
 sent to such points as will oft'er largest oppor- 
 tunity and most fruitful field for the message. 
 Such of the lectures as may deserve permanent 
 form will be published. Thus, like the Bamp- 
 ton lectures, these discussions can be made a 
 continuous contribution by the university to 
 the advancement of knowledge, and they will 
 be conveyed through that channel which 
 carries to the largest numbers and the most 
 ready minds at the least possible cost. 
 
 The third and final provision in the pro- 
 posed inauguration of work by the American 
 University will be an attempt to meet the de- 
 mand for a higher development of individual- 
 ism. This will be done through the mainten- 
 ance of a comprehensive system of fellowships. 
 On the nomination of other universities, col- 
 leges, technical and professional schools, 
 proper students will be selected and granted 
 fellowships for study at agreed-upon univer- 
 
114 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 sities or places of investigation in America and 
 abroad. The selection of these fellows and the 
 academic oversight of their work will be lodged 
 in a board of award of ten members, who 
 will be given the right to employ for special 
 needs the services of approved scholars. The 
 university convocation day will be the set time 
 for public functions in connection with the fel- 
 lowships, and indeed for all public work in- 
 volved by academic degrees or distinctions. 
 These fellowships will provide for the pay- 
 ment of satisfactory stipends to assist the stu- 
 dents to unique opportunities for the devel- 
 opment of themselves as instruments for the 
 higher development of others. Fellows who 
 have pursued satisfactory work will be invited 
 to embody the results of their study in popular 
 lectures to be delivered on the convocation day 
 at Washington, or at such other places and 
 times as the university may direct. Lectures 
 which are deemed worthy will be published 
 as a part of the permanent educational output 
 of the institution. 
 
 The fellowship provision will be found, at 
 certain points, to coalesce with the research 
 idea, since it will permit a wider distribution 
 of research work than can be carried on at 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 115 
 
 Wasliington, or, indeed, at any one given 
 locality. It is interesting to see how the fel- 
 lowship plan is beginning to ramify through- 
 out the whole field of higher university work. 
 The formulation of such a plan will be recalled 
 as characterizing the initial efforts of our own 
 Federal government for educating the Fili- 
 pinos. In connection with a proposed ex- 
 change of professors between South American 
 institutions and Harvard, the republics of 
 Chile and Uruguay are planning to send stu- 
 dents as well to study at Cambridge, while 
 Argentina proposes annually to send to the 
 United States from 50 to 100 students of high 
 grade to carry on post-graduate work in their 
 varied fields. 
 
 In making his presidential address to the 
 Chemical Section of the British Association 
 this year (September 15, 1913), Professor 
 W. P. Wynne declared that "he who is able 
 to convert education committees and private 
 donors to the view that a far better return for 
 the money can be assured if part of the large 
 expenditure on scholarships for matriculated 
 or non-matriculated students were diverted to 
 post-graduate purposes, would have done a 
 service to science and the state the value of 
 
116 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 which, in my opinion, cannot be overesti- 
 mated." This advice is being followed by some 
 of the women's colleges in England. Newn- 
 ham College, Cambridge, for example, has been 
 putting increasing stress on fellowship work, 
 with the result that several brilliant young- 
 women recently have been enabled to do work 
 in which they have contributed vitally to the 
 advancement of science. ( The Englishwoman, 
 November, 1913. Women and Scientific Re- 
 search, by E. Eleanor Field, p. 153-4.) 
 
 The present activity of the Carnegie Institu- 
 tion of Washington is an attempt at the de- 
 velopment of the field of knowledge through 
 the work of approved scholars who make re- 
 searches and experiments or collect material 
 for subsequent w^ork by other matured schol- 
 ars. We, on the other hand, shall concentrate 
 our efforts on the training of the human instru- 
 ment itself. We shall do this through the 
 molding of young men and women who as yet 
 have not "arrived,'' to borrow the French 
 phrase. May we not, therefore, be doing a 
 more vital work than the Carnegie Institution 
 in the degree that trained manhood and wo- 
 manhood and potently developed youthful life 
 transcend in importance for future usefulness 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 117 
 
 the mere addition to the sum of human knowl- 
 edge or the heaping up of material for future 
 exploitation? The world moves by great per- 
 sonalities. There is no substitute for the con- 
 tagion of personality, and it is into the radiant 
 arena of the possible achievement by person- 
 alities brought to flower and fruitage through 
 our efforts that we make our venture and take 
 our chance. 
 
 The Rhodes Scholarship plan is a most 
 interesting contribution to the better good- 
 fellowship of the English-speaking races. But 
 Cecil Rhodes was an Englishman. Some very 
 admirable and highly competent English- 
 men are va little predisposed — dare we say 
 it? — to be insular. They have such excel- 
 lent and thoroughly satisfactory reasons for 
 being insular in the glorious life history of 
 their own ^^ tight little isle." None the less, 
 insularity does interfere somewhat with that 
 Welthlicky that world- vision, on which a very 
 good friend of mine, Herr Hegel, was wont to 
 insist as the prerequisite for a right under- 
 standing. Was not Cecil Rhodes, the empire- 
 builder, touched a little with insularity when 
 he provided that his scholars must study at 
 Oxford University alone? Who would utter 
 
118 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 other than reverence for Oxford University, 
 that sweet mother nurturer of English culture 
 — Alma Mater y fortunata, illuminata^ heata? 
 But are there not other spots than Oxford 
 where angels do come and minister unto men? 
 Is it heresy to suggest that the Pane degli 
 Angeli of Dante's dream may be distributed 
 to even better advantage for mental assimila- 
 tion and soul-quickening elsewhere than at 
 Oxford if that venerable mother possesses only 
 in mere fragments or possesses not at all, some 
 particular portion of the bread of the angels 
 which the heart doth covet? He who would 
 know the science of the Romance languages 
 wisely might prefer the Sorbonne even to the 
 towers and halls which do hold such purple 
 charm in the gloaming on the meadows of the 
 Isis. For some reason best known to them- 
 selves, have not medical men beaten a path to 
 Vienna? Why should a young architect over- 
 look the Ecole des Beaux Arts at Paris, or 
 wherefore should a young engineer of any race 
 neglect our own Massachusetts Institute of 
 Technology? Out of what varied races have 
 come the ardent souls who now recall the plain 
 rooms and hard benches where in Jena, per- 
 haps, or Leipsic, or beside the Spree, through 
 
LODESTAK AND COMPASS 119 
 
 metaphysical mists more wonderful that any 
 English fog, spirit spoke to spirit and the soul 
 made answer and followed the gleam! The 
 Oxonian John Wesley, desiring a change, went 
 to Herrnhut and there found Zinzendorf. So, 
 by extending the privileges of the fellowships 
 of the American University to allow the fel- 
 lows to pursue their studies at any university 
 or in any place where the opportunities are 
 greatest, may there not be accomplished work 
 more significant for the future than can be 
 done by any method which restricts the study 
 to one university or one environment alone? 
 
 The Chinese government saw great possibil- 
 ities in the Boxer indemnity money which was 
 returned to China by the United States. Act- 
 ing under the best expert advice that the world 
 affords, the Chinese authorities have devoted 
 the income from the indemnity fund thus re- 
 turned to the support of a national university 
 fellowship system. By means of this fellow- 
 ship system Chinamen of unusual promise are 
 being sent each year to America to be educated 
 at American colleges and universities. Bishop 
 Lewis informs me that, through intelligent 
 administration, the funds and the usefulness 
 of this fellowship plan itself constantly are 
 
120 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 expanding. The plan is becoming of increas- 
 ing leavening power to the whole Chinese 
 nation. The last report of the indemnity uni- 
 versity fellowship fund certainly is a com- 
 manding proof that the Mongolian spirit is 
 awake to the cumulative advantage which by 
 this means Avill endow the Middle Kingdom 
 more and more with a true Avorld vision and 
 world feeling. 
 
 To add one last personal note of interest to 
 this picture, take, as a concrete illustration 
 of the thought, the case of a young physician 
 who for several years was on the staff of th^ 
 Wuhu General Hospital in Wuhu, China, and 
 who now is on the staff of the Harvard Med- 
 ical School in Shanghai, China. During hi§ 
 service in the Far East there has come to this 
 earnest medical worker an insistent need for 
 instruction in his special branch of research 
 in parasitic diseases, especially the diseases 
 incident to residence in that part of the Orient. 
 But there are only two men who can furnish 
 this physician what he requires. One man is 
 in Europe, in London, at the School for the 
 Study of Tropical Diseases; the other man is 
 in the University of Illinois. Or, as a comple- 
 ment to this case, take the experience of a 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 121 
 
 young man who, after studying at Wesleyan 
 University, had determined on a course of 
 study Avhich must take him to the famous Dr._ 
 Koch, in Berlin, Germany. It was a hard 
 struggle to reach that goal, but the way was 
 conquered. The young man gave himself to 
 the opportunity. Personally I recall him now 
 as I saw him in those student days in the Prus- 
 sian capital, laboring as an unknown toiler 
 with such devotion at his self-appointed task. 
 But not in vain, for there that young man re- 
 ceived the direction and impulse which later 
 issued in a priceless service to the world 
 through his discovery of the cause of the hook 
 disease. As a friend and counselor suggests, 
 ^^How much simpler and better to seek out and 
 find men like these and give them opportunity 
 for study under those specialists in the whole 
 wide world who can teach them Avhat they need 
 to know, than to undertake the duplication of 
 grounds, buildings, and faculties already in 
 existence." 
 
 Thus, in the American University, as now 
 projected, we have a plan that is at once irenic 
 and practical. It can be worked from the 
 plant as now we have it. But far more vital 
 than this is the fact that this proposition cov- 
 
122 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 ers the latest modern needs in life-training. 
 We are not rash, therefore, we believe, in ex- 
 pressing the hope that as this plan is consid- 
 ered it will come to be accepted as the natural 
 starting point for an undertaking in the higher 
 life-training which can be made of far-reach- 
 ing scope and importance. If there are ob- 
 jections to the plan, let us not forget the old 
 saying, "Nothing will ever be attempted if all 
 possible objections must be first overcome.'' 
 The late William Stead was appealing to all 
 hearts when he said, "My idea is that every- 
 thing wrong in the world is a divine call to 
 use my life in righting it." Such a thought 
 absorbed into the soul would find a holy and 
 transforming use for criticism. It would 
 change the critical attitude at its very source 
 into a yearning to help. 
 
 "Very good," says some one, "but some perti- 
 nent questions will have to be answered. May 
 not this plan be a plausible makeshift for 
 simply opening the institution? Will not re- 
 course be had later to the more commonly 
 accepted and traditionally distinctive univer- 
 sity faculty work? By and by will there not be 
 founded an ordinary academic college? Thus 
 competition, crowded out at the door, may 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 123 
 
 climb in later at the window accompanied by 
 seven more dreadful attendants?" In all 
 frankness we answer that no action by the 
 present board of trustees of the American Uni- 
 versity can be made binding upon any subse- 
 quent board of trustees. Only the provisions 
 of the university charter granted by the United 
 States government itself are immutable, save 
 as changed by act of Congress. Moreover, who 
 can forecast or foresee what a generation or 
 two may bring forth of change in the life of 
 any American school of high standing? Pro- 
 fessor Bowne somewhat facetiously was ac- 
 customed to say that we ourselves dwell in a 
 constant razzle-dazzle in the life of the spirit. 
 Things change rapidly in this land. The plan 
 of Bishop Hurst, for example, only a quarter 
 of a century ago, without question was the last 
 word in higher education at that time. But 
 within these twenty-five years the whole spirit 
 of education and the emphasis of the educated 
 life itself have shifted. And so the original 
 plan of Bishop Hurst — let us be frank — is 
 outgrown, and we are forced into a new ad- 
 justment. This same process may be true con- 
 cerning the working basis of our own present 
 initial effort. Undoubtedly the present plan 
 
124 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 will require constant shifting and steady vital 
 readjustments, but, notwithstanding all this, 
 this plan, as now laid bare, hides nothing. In 
 itself it is the whole enterprise so far as, with 
 our present light, w^e are able to compass it. 
 We do not intend to open an undergraduate 
 college. We have no intention whatever to 
 have recourse later to any hidden schemes 
 which for the moment are held in the back- 
 ground. On the contrary, we distinctly are of 
 the opinion that this present plan in itself is 
 an undertaking calling for all attention and 
 effort. If worked unitedly by us all, it can be 
 made a great achievement, not so much for the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church as for the whole 
 country, where now the battle of Protestant- 
 ism and the Light again is being fought out 
 for humanity. Only this time it must be 
 fought to the finish. We can flee no further 
 to escape it. 
 
 The great thing, the truly momentous issue 
 here involved, which does not, at the first cur- 
 sory hearing, appear on the surface, is this: 
 The provision which admits all other schools 
 to all the benefits inuring from the undertak- 
 ing of the American University itself is truly 
 of far-reaching significance. If the provision 
 
LODESTAE AND COMPASS 125 
 
 is correlated properly, if the work itself is car- 
 ried out in a generous spirit of mutual con- 
 sideration, if, for the sake of the larger hope, 
 we will hold in abeyance some of our own 
 questions, the enterprise can be made a natural 
 working out to fitting conclusion of the theory 
 of Christian education as understood and pro- 
 pounded by the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 ^'But,'' says Mr. Worldly-Wise-Man, "are 
 you not overvaliant for the truth? Who will 
 pay for all this? Whence will come the 
 money?" The answer is that the financial 
 plan under which now we are working is a 
 proposition that the American University 
 shall raise |1,500,000, in three units of |500,- 
 000 each. The first unit of |500,000 when 
 raised, shall be used for the opening of the 
 institution. After the university has been 
 opened, the general plan will be continued 
 through the effort to complete the whole fund 
 by raising the additional two units amounting 
 to a million dollars. We have raised the first 
 unit of 1500,000. Thus we hope to have in 
 hand for our initial operations a working en- 
 dowment fund of 1500,000 clear of all encum- 
 brances. And this amount is the exact sum 
 which by a bill now in Congress has been asked 
 
126 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 of the United States government as the pre- 
 liminary foundation for establishing the pro- 
 posed Federal University at Washington. 
 Toward the subsequent additional million- 
 dollar endowment fund which we propose, we 
 already have subscriptions amounting to $200,- 
 000, without mentioning certain other depend- 
 ent funds. But, without thought of any fu- 
 turities of asset, let there not be forgotten, in 
 considering this project, that wise word of 
 Professor Faulkner, "The history of educa- 
 tion is the best commentary on the question of 
 the sacred prophet, ^Who hath despised the day 
 of small things?' " 
 
 "But that Federal University proposition," 
 says Mr. Faintheart, "is not that, after all, to 
 be the effective stop to all your hopes and 
 plans? What need will there be for the Amer- 
 ican University when the great Federal Uni- 
 versity at last is founded at the national cap- 
 ital? Will not such a national school of learn- 
 ing, supported by the Federal Government, 
 render futile the hope of activity upon the part 
 of such an institution as you are trying to 
 establish? Would it not be wiser to sell to the 
 promoters of the Federal enterprise your site 
 and buildings and use the proceeds in some 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 127 
 
 practical way for educational work or institu- 
 tions already existing?" We shall enter upon 
 no discussion of the proposed Federal Univer- 
 sity. Such an institution may be founded; 
 and again it may not be founded. We, like 
 the hero of traditional fiction, have a heart 
 prepared for any fate. Lest we may be charged 
 with trifling, however, let it be said that the 
 present proposed plan for the American Uni- 
 versity has thoroughly in mind the possibility 
 of a national university at the national capital. 
 But this possibility of the future establish- 
 ment at Washington of a Federal university 
 only adds to the availability of our plan. In 
 the event that a Federal institution is organ- 
 ized, this plan assures such conditions that the 
 existence of the American University will not 
 be disturbed thereby. Rather will the call for 
 its activity be the clearer and more insistent. 
 For now mark clearly two consequences that 
 would spring out of the existence, side by side, 
 of the American University and the proposed 
 Federal institution. The only changes neces- 
 sitated in the scholastic life of the American 
 University through the existence of its neigh- 
 bor would be the shifting of the center of 
 emphasis in the American University. Not 
 
128 LODESTAE AND COMPASS 
 
 only would the American University be af- 
 forded a heightened ability to accomplish its 
 distinctive work through a proper affiliation 
 with the Federal institution — some such role, 
 perhaps, as is filled by Mansfield College at 
 Oxford — but also it would have committed to 
 it a new duty, a vast opportunity, unique and 
 priceless. 
 
 If the proposed Federal institution is 
 founded, it will be weak and practically atro- 
 phied at one point. By the nature of the case 
 the Federal University must resemble in char- 
 acter all of the similar American institutions 
 supported by the State. One of the signifi- 
 cant features in connection with our State 
 universities is the need that is emerging for 
 influences outside of the State university to 
 supply to its students that religious instruc- 
 tion and care which the institution itself does 
 not offer. This condition is one of the crucial 
 problems in our national life. More than one 
 half of our Methodist students are in State- 
 supported institutions, and the increase in the 
 number of students thus situated is so rapid 
 that at the present rate of increase it will be 
 but a few years before the proportion will be 
 three quarters. In meeting the problem of 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 129 
 
 supplying religious care and instruction to its 
 students, the Federal University would re- 
 semble the State universities. Because of this 
 fact, in the selfsame hour that recorded the 
 foundation of a Federal university at Wash- 
 ington there would be opened to the American 
 University a great and effectual door of spir- 
 itual usefulness. 
 
 The devoted labors of the Christian workers 
 who now at four State universities are push- 
 ing a campaign of constantly growing effec- 
 tiveness and triumph for their Lord is a sug- 
 gestion of what is meant. These spiritual 
 masters of men, at these most vital centers of 
 life for all the States involved, are laying the 
 sweet persuasions of the Christian Church, 
 like the healing shadow of Peter, across the 
 hearts of receptive multitudes. These are pro- 
 phetic workers. They have caught the vision 
 of a great opportunity for community centers 
 bringing community leadership. They are 
 holding open channels of supply of ministers 
 for the altars of God. Through activities of 
 like character with these so singularly blessed 
 of the Master, the American University could 
 become the pilot-flame of the spiritual life of 
 the National University at the national cap- 
 
130 LODESTAE AND COMPASS 
 
 ital. As such the American University would 
 possess always a unique field of loftiest influ- 
 ence. For to all our science there is a vital 
 doctrine of final causes that "articulates us 
 back from the halls of learning to the seething 
 life of humanity." And there we could furnish 
 a spiritual note to a materialistic time. 
 
 The supreme culminating virtue, says the 
 poet of the Faerie Queene, is the virtue of mag- 
 nificence. To see large, to mark the end from 
 the beginning, to behold the glory where others 
 see only the mean or the commonplace — that 
 is the culminating virtue of life. It is this 
 virtue of magnificence that distinguishes, we 
 believe, the American University. As yet her 
 glory is the glory of the imperfect. But face 
 to face with her opportunity, would it not be 
 a sad thing indeed, would it not be evidence 
 of dethronement from any right to divinely 
 granted power, if this undertaking, freighted 
 with such vicissitudes and also with such 
 prayers, did not seek to have in its plans some 
 fore-gleam at least of what the future may 
 bring? This is an adventure not for a day. It 
 claims the far-off increase of the years. Other 
 men, other generations must have a part in 
 molding this work, which we shall commit to 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 131 
 
 their hands as only our beginning. Then, by 
 the faith and vision of the fathers, by the toil 
 and sacrifice that have been the hidden foun- 
 dations of the present existence, by the assur- 
 ance that comes from the consciousness of high 
 purpose, let us build worthy of the early hopes., 
 The supreme fact of a right direction at last is 
 secure. Have no fear of the outcome. Here 
 are involved elements and interests that will 
 compel success. Only let us meet the divine 
 testing as it was met by Seneca's pilot in the 
 storm : "O Neptune ! you may save me if you 
 will ; you may sink me if you will ; but, what- 
 ever happens, I shall keep my rudder true !" 
 
WOEKING PLAN FOR THE AMERICAN 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 Board of Award 
 
 1. There shall be a Board of Award con- 
 sisting of ten members. This Board shall have 
 authority to employ the temporary services of 
 approved scholars and advisers in order the 
 better to fulfill the appointed functions of the 
 Board. The Board shall order its own pro- 
 cedure and meetings. 
 
 2. The Board of Award shall be nominated, 
 annually by the Chancellor subject to con- 
 firmation by the Board of Trustees. 
 
 3. The Board of Award, on nomination by 
 some scientific school, college, or university, 
 concurred in by the officers of the American 
 University, shall select the Fellows of the 
 American I'niversity. In fulfilling this duty 
 the Board shall take into account the general 
 qualifications of each candidate, his prepara- 
 tion and health, his powers of leadership and 
 promise of highest service, as well as his 
 scholastic standing. The Board shall have 
 
 132 
 
1 "^4 
 
 
 ■ ^^^rl ' «*, 
 
 >li>s?^;;;j^jiLts/5=^/^4^. U}/fLk^'rLL^\,'.^^::^Mi^iii^t^i^ 
 
 OLD FORT GAINES 
 A Civil War defense of the National Capital on the grounds of the 
 American University. 
 
 VIEW FROM FORT GAINES 
 Looking out over the grounds of the American University. 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 133 
 
 authority to order such special examination 
 of candidates for selection to Fellowships as 
 it may prescribe. 
 
 4. The Board of Award shall pass upon the 
 qualifications of any student who is a candi- 
 date for a degree from the American Univer- 
 sity. The Board shall pass also upon any 
 other proposed academic distinction that is tq 
 be granted. 
 
 II 
 
 Institute of Research in Washington 
 
 There shall be an Institute of Research in 
 Washington. "Not to arrange so as to utilize 
 to its highest efficiency the vast wealth of ma- 
 terial for scientific research at Washington is 
 nothing short of improvident and reckless 
 waste of great opportunities." The pro]30sed 
 Institute of Research, therefore, is "to make 
 available for the advancement of knowledge 
 the unparalleled facilities of Washington to 
 graduate students.'' It will provide a general 
 registry office for advanced students where 
 they can register on coming to Washington 
 and can receive advice and assistance as to the 
 facilities open to them in the different depart- 
 ments of the government. 
 
134 LODESTAE AND COMPASS 
 
 The Institute shall be in charge of a Director 
 who shall be nominated by the Chancellor sub- 
 ject to confirmation by the Board of Trustees 
 for a term of three years. The duties of the 
 Director shall be to advise students in the util- 
 ization of the facilities and materials for study 
 and research in the various historical, liter- 
 ary, scientific, artistic, and technological de- 
 partments and collections of the United States 
 Government as provided by acts of Congress 
 of 1892 and March 3, 1901. He also shall 
 familiarize himself with "all of the scientific 
 possibilities of the various departments and 
 bureaus and prepare announcements of the 
 courses of instruction which may be given with 
 descriptions of the material available for such 
 courses." The Director also shall have gen- 
 eral supervision of the Institute of Research 
 and the development of the same. He shall be 
 a member of the Board of Award. 
 
 Ill 
 
 University Lectures 
 
 There shall be provided each year courses of 
 lectures by eminent specialists. These lectur- 
 ers shall be invited to discuss vital themes that 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 135 
 
 will exercise the highest influence for scholar- 
 ship and the advancement of human knowl- 
 edge. Arrangements will be made with the 
 lecturers whereby the University can publish 
 such of these public dissertations as it may 
 choose. All legal rights to the published lec- 
 tures shall inhere in the University, thus as- 
 suring an annual output for the University of 
 real and permanent value. 
 
 IV 
 
 Students 
 
 To be admitted to matriculation in the 
 American University a student must have re- 
 ceived a regular academic degree such as is 
 conferred by colleges, universities, and scien- 
 tific schools of recognized standing in this 
 country. In the working plan of the Univer- 
 sity, as at present provided, there shall be no 
 charge to students except a matriculation fee 
 and a diploma fee in the event that a degree is 
 taken. 
 
 V 
 
 Fellowships 
 
 In order the better to utilize the financial re- 
 sources of the University for academic work 
 
136 LODESTAE AND COMPASS 
 
 there shall be applied to the University funds 
 the policy of distributed efficiency. This 
 policy shall be put into operation through the 
 medium of University Fellowships. 
 
 So far as practicable such fellowships shall 
 be established and supported from the Uni- 
 versity funds. To students who thus are 
 granted fellowships there will be opened at 
 once the highest academic opportunities; for 
 a fellowship will enable a student to pursue 
 work at the institution and in the environment 
 which for his purpose shall offer the largest 
 possible advantages. 
 
 1. Fellowships of Two Classes 
 
 (a) Fellows who pursue their studies at 
 seats of learning or at places of study and in- 
 vestigation within the United States. A fel- 
 low of Class A shall receive a stipend of |600 
 per annum. 
 
 (b) Fellows who pursue studies at foreign 
 seats of learning or at places of study and 
 investigation abroad. A fellow of Class B 
 shall receive a stipend of |800 per annum. 
 
 2. Admission to Fellowships 
 Students shall be admitted to fellowships 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 137 
 
 upon the nomination of the school, college, or 
 university from which the candidate holds a 
 baccalaureate or higher university degree. 
 The nomination, however, is subject to con- 
 firmation by the officers of the American Uni- 
 versity and by the Board of Award as pro- 
 vided in paragraph 3 of Section 1. 
 
 3. Tenure of Fellowships 
 
 Appointment to a fellowship shall be for 
 one year, subject to renewal for a second year. 
 In special cases a fellowship may be held for 
 a third year, but no longer. The officers of the 
 American University shall decide upon the 
 length of the term of each fellow. 
 
 4. The Work op a Fellow 
 
 A fellow shall pursue study in such subject 
 or subjects and at such seats of learning or at 
 such places as shall be recommended by his 
 nominating school, college, or university, sub- 
 ject to the approval of the officers of the Amer- 
 ican University. During the pursuit of such 
 study the student shall be classified as a Fel- 
 low of the American University, and he must 
 make a semiannual report to the authorities 
 of the American University concerning his 
 
138 LODESTAR AND COMPASS 
 
 work. Where the study is made under the 
 auspices of some other academic institution 
 each report from the fellow shall be accom- 
 panied by an official statement from that insti- 
 tution. The second semiannual report must 
 be in the hands of the officers of the American 
 University thirty days before the date of the 
 University Convocation. 
 
 VI 
 
 Degrees 
 
 A candidate for a degree shall give evidence 
 to the Board of Award that he is worthy of 
 such degree. He shall present a thesis which 
 shall be satisfactory to the Board of Award. 
 This thesis, the University, in its discretion, 
 shall have the right to publish. All legal 
 ownership in the thesis shall inhere in the 
 American University. 
 
 VII 
 
 University Convocation 
 
 On the last Wednesday of each calendar 
 month of May there shall be held a Convoca- 
 tion of the American University. At this pub- 
 lic function there shall be : 
 
LODESTAR AND COMPASS 139 
 
 (a) A Convocation of the fellows of the 
 American University. In this Convocation 
 the fellows shall deliver addresses on sub- 
 jects of importance worthy of publication. 
 These addresses the University, in its discre- 
 tion, shall have the right to publish. All legal 
 ownership in each address shall inhere in the 
 American University. 
 
 (b) There shall be presented a Report from 
 the Institute of Research by the Director giv- 
 ing a statement of what has been done and 
 what results have been accomplished which 
 are of interest to the advancement of human 
 knowledge. 
 
 (c) There shall be conferred such degrees 
 or such other academic distinctions as have 
 been authorized by the Board of Award. 
 There also shall be announced the appoint- 
 ments to fellowships for the ensuing year.