Book . .W^ CopyiigfaH " COPYRIGHT DEPOSm THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE BY HERBERT WELCH President of Ohio Wesleyan University HENRY CHURCHILL KING President of Oberlin College THOMAS NICHOLSON Secretary of the Board of Education of the Methodist Episcopal Church With Introduction by WILLIAM H. CRAWFORD President Allegheny College THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 1916, by THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN /^ AUG 21 1916 ©CI.A437304 CONTENTS chap. page Introduction 5 I. The Ideals and Aims of the Christian College 11 President Herbert Welch, Ohio Wesleyan University II. The Importance of the Christian Col- lege AS A Factor in the Making OF America 28 President Henry Churchill King, Oberlin College III. The Product of the Christian Col- lege IN Men and Movements ^9 Rev. Thomas Nicholson, Secretary of the Board of Education INTRODUCTION The three chapters which make up this Uttle book are papers which were specially prepared for the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of Allegheny College. The open- ing day of the celebration was given over to Christian education. Bishop William Fraser McDowell preached in the morn- ing and eloquently told the story of Christ in education. A Missionary Conference was held in the afternoon, at which Bishop William Burt presided. The speakers were Allegheny alumni from the foreign field — Bishop James M. Thoburn, Bishop William F. Oldham, the Rev. George S. Miner, Miss Laura Temple, and others. In the evening the theme was "The Christian College — Its Ideals and Aims, Its Product in Men and Movements, Its Importance as a Factor in the Making of America." 5 6 INTRODUCTION The men invited to discuss these three phases of the theme were President Her- bert Welch, of Ohio Wesley an University; Dr. Thomas Nicholson, General Secretary of the Board of Education of the Method- ist Episcopal Church; and President Henry Churchill King, of Oberlin College. Pres- ident Welch was detained at the last moment, but his paper was forwarded. The impression made by the addresses was powerful and far-reaching. Large num- bers who listened went away with a new conception of the transcendent importance of the Christian college in American life. The function of the Christian college is to encourage and perpetuate that form of higher education in which deep learn- ing and fervent piety are forever united. In such a college religion will be regarded as a necessary factor in education and the development of the spiritual life — a fundamental part of the educational process. It is not enough that the Christian col- lege shall teach religion. Religion may be taught in such a way as to prejudice INTRODUCTION 7 the student against religion. There are a few of us still left who remember, not with gratitude either, the barren wastes we journeyed through in the formal in- struction we received in Butler's Analogy, Paley's Evidences, and other studies of a similar nature. We may teach all the religion we please in our colleges; we may ofiFer courses in the Bible, the Old Testa- ment and the New, with a course in early church history thrown in; we may include Christian ethics and philosophy of religion, theism and missions, but if we do not do more than this we shall fall far short of reaching the Christian ideal in education. We must come back to this, that it is not the intellect of a man which is to be educated, nor is it the heart, but both heart and intellect. The man is to be educated. The one fine and high ideal all through college ought to be manhood. The age of the student makes this of vital importance. The four years in college come while the boy is developing into the man and the girl into the woman. The 8 INTRODUCTION boy enters college at seventeen or eighteen. He graduates at the age of twenty-one or twenty-two, when the state regards him as a man and gives him the right of fran- chise. During these crisal years it is vitally and transcendently important that the Christian ideal of manhood and woman- hood shall be kept constantly before the student. It is the function of the Chris- tian college to see that this is done. My own conviction is that the Christian college, call it by whatever name you will, was never more necessary than now. With secularism at full tide, with the multiplied complexities of our modern life reducing more and more the time which may be given to things eternal, with the gospel of service preached in many quarters in a way to almost exclude the gospel of manhood, with the ozone of moral earnest- ness and triumphant moral leadership much less in evidence than we could wish, with the state universities and some other uni- versities giving a considerable portion of their elBFort to vocational and professional INTRODUCTION 9 training, with commercialism and the com- mercial spirit dominating altogether too largely the life of the nation, it is of the utmost importance that we give serious and earnest attention to that type of higher education which will yield largest results in moral and spiritual leadership. The critics who say that the state will take care of education, or that the money of the church is needed for missions and other benevolences, or that the colleges have already had enough money and ought to take care of themselves for the future, are looking only on the surface. Con- structive Christian statesmanship makes it necessary that we should look beneath the surface. Looking beneath the surface we shall find that up to the present time no institution has been established which will quite take the place of the Christian college. We need this type of college for the sake of efficient leadership in the church, for the sake of the home and social life of our people, and for the sake of the great cause of education in America. 10 INTRODUCTION If the Christian college shall be true to its traditions as described in the fol- lowing chapters, and if it shall function as a real Christian college, it will, in the future as in the past, make tremendously rich contributions to the Christian leader- ship of this nation and to Christian leader- ship in lands beyond the seas. William H. Crawford. Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania. CHAPTER I THE IDEALS AND AIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE President Herbert Welch What is a Christian college? Chris- tianity is broader than any of its institu- tions; in education, as in society and politics, it is a pervasive force. The term "Christian college" is surely not to be limited to those colleges whose name or charter or denominational control gives outward evidence of a religious motive — "by their fruits ye shall know them." It is doubtless true that, just as the church is the chief pattern and instrument of the kingdom of God, so the denominational college is the typical form of the Christian ideal operating in education. But any college founded and conducted for a Chris- tian purpose is obviously to be included among Christian colleges, whatever its 11 12 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE formal rejation to a religious body. The Christian college, in short, is one whose ideals and aims are determined by the great conceptions of life which we count distinctively Christian. The first of such aims is culture. The ideal of a liberal education is really a Christian ideal, since it is based on the Christian conception of personality. It has spread far beyond the institutions which by title and organization claim to represent the Christian Church and the Christian cause, but in its origin and essence it is Christian. And in this day of specialized training the old ideal of a liberal education still needs defense. A higher education is possible which is ma- terialistic in its view both of nature and of life; and such a view is clearly inad- equate and misleading. Training for occu- pations, for example, is by no means to be decried. Vocational, technical, profes- sional studies, whether in the lower or the higher school, may have an intellectual and moral as well as a financial value. But THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 13 it is easy just now to be swept away by the demand that every study shall be of ''practical," that is to say, of business worth. Vocational training may be mate- rialistic, whether it be for the carpenter, the engineer, the lawyer, or the preacher. If specialization be too close, if aims too narrowly utilitarian, we may sacrifice breadth and freedom to efficiency — and this would be the shame of education even in an industrial democracy. Or, to take an illustration from a differ- ent field, let it be granted that the biologist is right in claiming that the perfume and beauty of the flower are advertisements of need, flaunting signals to bees and butter- flies to gather the pollen which will carry life to other blossoms; is the only purpose of beauty to make possible the perpet- uation of itself? Is there no higher meaning to the flowers than this? How fearfully "practical" we often come to be! We complain of the Creator because some farm sticks up perpendicular into the air, because the rocky hillside will break the 14 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE plow that is driven against it or wash out the crops that are sown upon it. As if there were no use for any piece of ground except to bear our foodstuffs! Beauty man needs as well as food, and more. Nature must never be interpreted in terms merely of yield. Let all the earth be tilled and part of man shall starve: he is soul as well as stomach. Trees are for more than lumber; the sea for more than ships. Have the sunsets any efficiency value? But have the poppies among the wheat, or the silences of a lonely wood, or the wild flowers of a stony field no mission and worth? The supreme purpose of life is not to keep itself going. Why should it go at all? Have the poets all been mistaken who have fancied that the soul was made for beauty, and beauty for the soul? Have the philosophers erred who have asserted that any ideal of the Infinite and Absolute must contain the beautiful with the true and the good? Has the God been wrong who lavishly made flowers before fruit? THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 15 The scientist and the eflSciency expert have not exhausted the facts between them. God's world is not made that way. Man must work to keep ahve, to be sure; but the only reasonable justification for his keeping alive is that he shall have a life worth living — a life that is more than mere physical existence. The things which make life rich must always and everywhere be held more significant than the things which make life long. Art, philosophy, literature, society — all that tends to the appreciation of beauty with the knowledge of truth, all that enlarges the circle of intellectual interest, that kindles the imag- ination, that brings power, breadth and balance, is a part of the race's heritage. The total personality has its rights; the man has a claim to a complete develop- ment. But this is a distinctively Christian conception; this estimate of personality which lies at the base of democracy and of culture alike, came from Jesus Christ. "Culture" may be used to cover much that is vague and inert; but nevertheless 16 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE the tone of campus life ought to be created by that ideahsm which belongs to a genuine culture, and of this the college, the Chris- tian college, is the best exponent. It believes in the cultivation of feeling as well as reason, heart as well as will, imag- ination as well as memory. It must aim first not to make the bread-winner but the life-winner — not the engineer or the law- yer or the preacher, but the man. Curric- ulums may change; the very content of the term "liberal education" may differ widely in the twentieth century from the thought of the fifteenth century; the classics may be a diminishing, though not a van- ishing, power; the newer humanities and the natural sciences may gain their right- ful place; but all must be fitted into a general cultural scheme — a plan to grow symmetrical and rounded personalities — if the college is in any fair fashion to repre- sent the Christian ideal. Moreover, this Christian ideal of a full- orbed education must include character as well as culture. If the entire nature of THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 17 man is the proper subject of education, then conscience, loyalty, aspiration, rever- ence — all that enters into the moral and religious life — must receive adequate recog- nition in our educational plan. Moral standards must be established, moral in- struction must be given, a dynamic must be discovered equal to the high task of moral victory, and (most weighty and most difficult of all) those who are being "educated" must somehow be won to ad- herence to these standards and be filled with this power. Our educational literature to-day is alive with the emphasis on moral needs. It is everywhere being discerned, more clearly perhaps than at any time within the last hundred years, that an education which Ignores the moral nature is fundamentally defective. And no educational problem is now regarded as more urgent than that of the best method of imparting moral instruction and of making it effective. Public school experiments of great variety are being tried; new attention is being 18 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE given in college fraternity councils, in State and independent universities, to moral problems and their religious solution, for it is increasingly admitted that apart from the restraints and the inspirations of re- ligion our morality is likely to make a sorry showing. Now, this has from the beginning been the contention and the emphasis of the Christian college. It has held that char- acter is more than all fortune or fame, all intellectual or aesthetic development, and that the life which has found its springs in God through Jesus Christ is at once the safest, the sanest, the happiest, and the mightiest — in a word, presents the sound- est character. It would be a pity of pities if now, when others, to some extent be- cause of its influence and example, are coming to the same position, the Christian college should in any degree lose the faith which has been its ancient glory. No increasing prosperity, no social refine- ment, no intellectual superiority, no shame of piety, no lust for an easy popularity THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 19 should lure it from the ground on which its banners were long ago planted! The Christian colleges are by no means a unit in their choice of ways to reach the desired result. What rules should be made concerning the physical and social and devotional habits of students, and how effective such rules are in character-build- ing, are still points of discussion rather than of general agreement. But when we go below the mechanics to the more vital questions involved, we are much nearer to unity. For instance, we should probably agree that the Christian college should be marked by the personal interest of the faculty in the students, by a frank ac- ceptance of the fact that they must not be dealt with simply in masses, but that individually their intellectual and their moral problems as well are the business of college officers and teachers. Even the dreaded word "paternalism," even the im- portance of avoiding either mental or religious coddling, must not frighten us from a genuine and deep and personal 20 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE concern, and an endeavor to express that concern in personal helpfulness. Again, in a Christian college one has a right to look for a Christian background to the teaching of the course. Not that every lesson is to have a moral appended, not that every lecture is to be turned into a preachment, but that behind science and history and literature and philosophy should be felt the throbbing of a Christian faith. Again, in a Christian college, I take it, there should be a spirit of humility and reverence which will respect the crudest forms of faith, which will take no joy in disturbing cherished beliefs, however blun- dering, but, while seeking to create new and more intelligent forms, will always count the substance greater than the form. Once more: the Christian college will find a place for evangelism; that is, for the direct effort, in which students and faculty may unite to make Christians out of non-Christians, and (not less urgent) to render real and controlling the religion of many who are nominally, superficially. THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 21 mechanically Christian. The methods of college evangelism may not be those of the rescue mission; the age, the temper, the environment, the peculiar needs of those concerned must all be taken into account. But there is no apology needed for college campaigns against sin, whether that sin be individual or social, internal or external, respectable or criminal; and cam- paigns for righteousness — righteousness of speech, of act, and of collective life, right- eousness stalwart, militant, enthusiastic, righteousness expressing itself in worship, in study, in sport. To win its students from sin to righteousness is, when every- thing has been said, the highest achieve- ment of the Christian college. Of course all this implies a Christian faculty. More immediately than the trus- tees, more continuously than the students, the instructors give tone to the college life. A president's most delicate and most important duty is the selection of his faculty. Unless the type of character which the college desires in the students 22 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE is well represented in the faculty, the effort is hampered, if not altogether de- feated. Unless something of the Christian sacrificial spirit be found in the faculty, how can professionalism be avoided and the students fail to be infected with the notion that a place and a salary and a chance to do congenial work are the sole end of life? A Christian college without a Christian faculty is unthinkable; but a really Christian faculty will inevitably build a school for Christian character. One other word should be plainly uttered, though it may seem to be involved in the last — ^I mean the word service. The Christian character which does not find expression in service is scarcely worthy of the name. Besides promoting that almost instinctive love of native land which we call patriotism, and that loyalty to Alma Mater which has been nicknamed "matriot- ism," the college should foster an inter- nationalism like that of Jesus Christ, a love of man overflowing all barriers of social distinction, color, nationality, and a THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 23 love for men (to many more difficult of attainment than the love of man) which shall draw the lover straight through the open door of service. Education for its own sake is as bad as art for art's sake; but culture held in trust to empower one better to serve one's fellow men, the wise for the ignorant, the strong for the weak — this is an aim than which none can be higher. To believe in personal freedom and responsibility, in immortality, in brother- hood, in Christ, so profoundly that one can despise mere material rewards and be- come the unpaid, because unpayable, serv- ant of men — this is to be a fit alumnus of a Christian college. The service which can be fully paid for is hardly worth its wages. But the trained and consecrated man will find channels, in church or state or trade, through which to convey some gift that is beyond all price. Lincoln could never be paid in money by the American people. The world will never, can never, recompense in any fullness its great sol- diers, its great artists, its great preachers. 24 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE its great inventors. The big financial re- wards often miss those who most deserve them, but who, after all, do not most covet them. Many of the graduates of the Christian college are likely to go into the altruistic professions of teaching, the min- istry, and the like. They may not make their college rich, but they may help to make it glorious. The relation of the college to service is threefold: it may help the student dis- cover his field of service; it may inculcate or impart the spirit of service; and it may train for service. The college course, if it be wisely proportioned, will give at least a glimpse into many fields of interest and activity. It ought to bring the student to a genuine self -disco very. Perhaps the largest assistance it can render in the way of vocational guidance is to enable him, by contact with many forms of knowledge and by discussion of many forms of work, to find out the particular thing for which he was made. And it should so interpret all occupations in terms THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 25 of human need that he shall be able to see that farmer and manufacturer and physician and teacher and author and artist — every man who is following a legit- imate business, is the servant of his brother, is filling a useful place in the human family, and may therefore make his call- ing holy. His prevailing purpose, then, in his daily toil may be not to make a living merely, but to make a life. His occupation becomes the sacrifice which he lays upon the altar of humanity; his labor is dig- nified and sanctified and purified. This will come to pass if he has caught the spirit of service — if in the choice of his occupation and the pursuit of his occu- pation, he has learned that '*it is more blessed to give than to receive"; if as he faces the world he asks, not "What can I get from you.^" but "What can I give to you.^" The natural generosity and daring of youth need to be transformed into a steadfast purpose that will control the life, that will make work more important than wages, and service synonymous with 26 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE success. If in the golden years the Chris- tian college cannot inspire its students with this passion for the investment of life where it will be most productive for man and for God, vain has its teaching been! But the horses of the sun need always to be harnessed and trained. The passion for service may be futile if it be not wisely guided and carefully prepared for effective- ness. What the world needs to-day is good will, to be sure, but good will joined with intelligence and efficiency. Never were our moral and political problems more complicated. Never in our international relations had we greater need of sagacity, to get the Golden Rule put into operation. Never were prophets so precious — men who have surveyed the past and studied its im- plications, but men also of vision, of far- sighted statesmanship, who are able to apply Christian principles to the difficult situations of the times, men with the ability to be leaders and the will to be servants. Where shall we find such men, balanced and powerful and true, consecrated to the THE CHRISTIAJN^ COLLEGE 27 highest ideals and trained for the largest service, if not in those colleges where Jesus Christ is honored as King and loved as Comrade, and where in his name the treasures of learning are opened for the enrichment of his brothers? The world needs the man who knows, the man who loves, the man who can do, that its prob- lems may be solved, its wrongs righted, its happiness fulfilled. The church for its great advance movements in theology, in missionary expansion, in evangelism, re- form, and social service, has a right to look to the Christian college for its chief supply. But whether in ofiicial station or in obscurity, in professional or in business life, the Christian college would fain see its sons and daughters standing everywhere in the spirit of Him who said, "I am among you as one that serveth." They are its pride. To them, broadened and informed by their culture, clean and strong in their character, devoted in their service. Alma Mater will surely say, "Well done! Hail, and godspeed!" CHAPTER II THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CHRIS- TIAN COLLEGE AS A FACTOR IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA President Henry Churchill King Into the later years of the Christian colleges of America have come the move- ments of a new world of thought, reflecting itself externally in a great increase of sub- jects and courses offered, in the elective system, and in the laboratory and seminar methods. In the inner life of the college the new world of thought has meant a definite and conscious facing, in the open- minded spirit of the first beatitude, of the facts of natural science and evolution; of the historical spirit, with its application in comparative religion and the historical 28 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 29 criticism of the Scriptures; of the new psychology; of the new science of sociology, and of newer developments in philosophy and theology — and all these with their educational, ethical, social, and religious applications. The last twenty-five years have been revolutionary to a degree seldom true in the history of the race — a peculiarly transition time in all spheres of thought and ideals. But I believe it can be truth- fully said that for the best Christian col- leges, certainly, the transition has been made, not indeed without change, but without breach with the very best in their past, and without sacrifice of truth, of ethical ideals, or of religious faith. The scientific spirit and its evolutionary out- look, the historical spirit with its recog- nition of the historical interpretation of the Bibje, and of the religious history of the race; the social consciousness with its new ethical and social insistence in civic and religious life; and philosophical and theolog- ical interest and emphasis are all at home in the best Christian colleges. For many 30 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE of these things, indeed, our past naturally prepared us. Thus the departments of theology are not only at peace, but, with clearing thought, have been increasingly in hearty cooperation with the departments of the sciences, of history, of sociology, and of philosophy, not because the theological is dominating the others, but because all desire the truth and are ready to follow it to its fullest consequences, taking into account the full breadth of the nature of men and the long sweep of human history. We live in a larger, more unified, more evolving, more law-abiding world than that in which our fathers seemed to live; but we find in all this not less but greater reason for faith in God and in our possi- bilities of sharing in his purposes. This outcome, already largely achieved at our best Christian centers, and increasingly to be achieved in all our Christian colleges, is one of the most important points at which the Christian college is proving now a factor in the making of a better America. We have a right to rejoice in this out- THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 31 come of a positive and rejoicing Christian faith, facing serenely the modern age. II The material inheritance of the earlier years of our Christian colleges was not large, but the ideal inheritance has been great indeed. The later years have very largely increased the material inheritance of the Christian colleges, and they have had their own manifest contribution upon the ideal side of the life of the colleges. First of all, the Christian colleges have stood for something — for positives, not negatives. They have had convictions and genuine individuality. And this element in the inheritance of the Christian college demands men with courage to be them- selves, to stand against the merely con- ventional. Most men are pitiful cowards in the face of convention, even when con- vention is plainly foolish or wrong. There are many weak and timid souls who dread nothing so much as to seem peculiar, and think the whole line of progress lies in 32 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE becoming just like all the rest. Doubtless it is not pleasant to seem peculiar, and peculiarity is not to be sought for its own sake. But if peculiarity follows from fidelity to one's own vision and task, it cannot be scouted, without scouting all duty at the same time. Christian colleges must be willing to sacrifice something for their Christian principles. And as a whole there can be no doubt that they have stood for the all-around education of the entire man. They have stood for an education looking preeminently for service. They have stood for an education that was national and world-wide in its out- look. And in all this they have profoundly influenced the life of our time. They have been furnishing good leaven for the na- tional life, men and women who are to be in very truth the "salt of the earth," living seed of the great oncoming kingdom of God. Ill The inheritance of the Christian college too gives it the right to stand in the broad- THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 33 est and most untrammeled way for the great historic ideals of the race; for truth, for character, for Christ, for the church. For the truth, for we can be fearless in the conviction of its unity; for character, as the supreme interest in Hfe; for Christ, as the supreme revelation, both of man and of God; for the church, as the one great world organization for ideal ends. The Christian college is bound to no narrow interpretation at any of these points, but can throw itself with all its power into fellowship with the ideal forces everywhere. As a persistent witness to these great historic ideals of the race, and as an institution peculiarly designed to train men and women into these great historic ideals, the Christian college has proved its importance as a factor in the making of America. This means, in turn, that Christian col- leges have, if they will but use it, a price- less, double inheritance: on the one hand, the right to recognize the legitimate and inevitable place of the moral and religious 34 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE in education — not apologetically, but avow- edly and earnestly, as the only normal and logical thing — a position increasingly taken by the thoughtful everywhere to- day, and a position that the whole world situation emphasizes anew; on the other hand, freedom to think within the broadest Christian lines. There can be no doubt that, with entire loyalty to denominational connections, where these exist, the Chris- tian college has come increasingly to stand on a Christian basis broader than any one denomination. Open-minded discussion has tended more and more to be a prime means; denominational tests have been less and less narrowly applied; the door to the church has increasingly been regarded as wide as the door to the kingdom of heaven; heresy-hunting has declined, and the prime emphasis has been laid upon a Christlike love as the one all-embracing virtue in God or man. The whole work of the Christian college has more and more been regarded as a trust to each generation in turn, as guided by the living Spirit of God. THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 35 There has been less and less attempt, therefore, to tie the hands of successors. Paul's principle, laid down to Timothy, has more and more ruled: "The same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." To this position the Christian college could but come, since both the fathers and their successors be- lieved in a living God. In this ability to couple an earnest moral and religious em- phasis in education with freedom to think within the broadest Christian lines, the college has once more proved itself a large factor in the making of the best in American life. And no less certainly does the inheritance of the colleges, and through them the nation, call to a constantly truer democracy and to a new Puritanism. IV The Christian college has stood, on the whole, with marked persistence against the aristocracy of sex, of color, of wealth. 36 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE and of the exclusive clique of every order and it cannot here go backward. It is called to draw more fully than they have ever yet been drawn the inferences from Christ's principle of every man as a child of God. That will ultimately mean social readjustments more far-reaching and sig- nificant even than the abolition of slavery. The principle here involved is that which is to guide in the whole progress of the race. A genuinely Christian democracy men have never yet seen. But I speak my sober conviction when I say that I do not know where more freely than in an avowedly and aggressively Christian college a man could stand for that dawning Christian democracy when we shall have fully awak- ened to the self-stultification of our placid assumption that whole classes of men should exist primarily for our greater com- fort or ease. The Christian college needs to be jealously on its guard that it does not in any way become identified with those who demand unearned privileges. Its constant need of money makes it THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 37 liable to this temptation, and it must resist it with all its might, for the Chris- tian college must be standing unmistakably for a genuinely Christian democracy in the face of the entire life of the nation. Here, again, it is an important factor, and must be a still more important factor in the making of America. V Both the later and earlier inheritance of the Christian colleges call them also to a new Puritanism} We should be able to do justice now to our national inher- itance in Puritanism. We should be able to see both its strength and its weakness, and add to the great positives of the Puri- tan spirit — so well shown in the earlier spirit of the Christian college — the positives of the social consciousness of the modern world. And face to face with the enor- mous material development of the modern 1 In this discussion of a new Puritanism, I have ventured to reproduce in substance a small part of the chapter on that subject in my The Moral and Religious Challenge of Our Times. 38 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE world and its dangers for the ideal life, we shall feel again the stern call to such simple living and such self-discipline as the Puritan could bear. The time for this has not gone. We shall not make again the mistake of asceticism, of regarding self-denial as an end in itself, but we shall take on understandingly and whole- heartedly all that self -discipline that is valuable for the individual himself, as physical, mental, and moral hygiene; all that self-discipline that, though the indi- vidual himself may not feel its need, is fairly demanded by the good of the whole community; and all the self -discipline that is further involved in the full subordination of all the lesser goods to the greater, and in the clear recognition that a man is made for heroic service, and cannot himself be largely and finally satisfied in passive self-indulgence. Man is made on too large a plan for him to rest in that. From all these various points of view we shall hear again the challenge of the ancient voice: "Take thy part in suffering hard- THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 39 ship as a good soldier of Christ Jesus." And this for three reasons. In the first place, all efficiency — of which we are talking much in these days — goes back finally to personal efficiency, and there are many things to indicate that it is still true that the individual is nowhere counting to his full capacity. Probably most of us, by the practice of a more scientific and earnestly moral self-control, have a distinctly higher type of life and a larger and finer service within our reach. This is what we may all well covet for the college men and women of our day. This was what the fathers were seeking in their early Puritanical insistencies. From this point of view alone I cannot doubt that the common stand of the Methodist Church against liquor and tobacco has been thoroughly justified. As simply an ab- normal use of the nervous system, it is difficult to believe that these intoxicant and narcotic habits are to hold the future; and they will do so the less, the more insistent becomes the scientific demand 40 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE for avoidance of waste — of money, of time, of nerve, of energy, of high quality of work. For personal efficiency, then, first of all, there must be this new Puritanism. In the second place, if the community has the right to demand from its locomotive engineers, for the greater protection and more efficient service of the public, total abstinence, then it can hardly be denied that it has a like right to demand from its great financial, political, and social engineers a similar freedom from befuddling condi- tions. The fabric of national life is a seamless robe. The connections are mar- velously close and are becoming more so with every year. The community may suffer less immediately and obviously by the selfish intemperance of financial or educational magnates than by the be- fuddled brains of the locomotive engineer, but in the end the danger is likely to be greater. The best brains and the most unselfish purposes are none too good for the tasks which confront the modern state. And it is one of the standing disgraces of THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 41 the educational world at many points that in the discernment of the personal need of temperance it should not only have been in general no leader, but should have lagged far behind great industrial cor- porations. Because of the community trust, therefore, in the second place, a new Puritanism is to be urged. In the third place, if it belongs to the college to fit for living — to furnish in pe- culiar degree those who are to be the social leaven of the nation and the world — then the college may least of all forget the full meaning of life, of man, and of man's heroic mold. And they must awaken the deepest and the best in young men and women, and enable them to respond with joy to that heroic service for which, after all, human nature craves. It is a mean and petty education in which deep calls not unto deep. And the standards of self-indulgence with which some college communities seem content are a disgrace to the name of education, to say nothing of religion. The simple fact is that there 42 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE is still a widespread willingness to condone and defend college dissipation and lawless- ness that must be regarded as thoroughly illogical and out of date. The true situa- tion is this: in its college and university students the nation sets large numbers free from productive labor, for the high and special privilege of long training for leadership. Every obligation of honor binds these to be not less, but more, scrupulously law-abiding and self-controlled than others. Special privileges in the world's democracy have just one possible justification — a corre- spondingly great special fidelity and special service. If the teachers or students of Christian colleges ever forget this, they stultify themselves and their whole better inheritance. This is not an exalted stand- ard, but the minimum of obligation. In standing thus for the great positives of the Puritan spirit — ^for the new Puritan- ism — the Christian colleges are proving a real factor in the making of America, and should prove a still greater factor in the years just ahead. THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 43 VI And it is especially true that no supposed heights of moral enthusiasm and aims may excuse a college from proving to be rigorously just what it pretends to be — an educational institution, making teach- ing and study its main business. It is quite true that the intellectual is not the only nor the chief end in education. And we are not to confuse — as some seem to do — the fact that courses of study ought rightly to take the largest part of the time of a college student, with the mis- taken inference that they constitute, there- fore, the end and aim of college education. They are a very important means, and take the largest part of the time; but they are not, in themselves, end and aim. The end of education is preparation for living. We know to live, not live to know. But nevertheless study must make the largest demand on the student's time; and he cannot meet his primary obligation as a student without meeting this demand. He is to live up to his label — student. And we 44 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE may all well covet for the college men and women ability to think; to think clearly, rigorously, and exhaustively. And the college must do what it pretends to do — it must teach, and teach well. It must honestly furnish what it pretends to furnish. It may not expatiate on the college's preparation for life, and have at the same time no real assurance that it is reaching its goal, no clear discern- ment of the laws of life, and no manifest power to stir the desire and gird the will of men for obedience to these laws. Col- lege men and women in particular must make sure that they Begin — continue — close the work For which they draw the wage. There is always an element of treachery somewhere in failure to do honest, square work. It is intolerable in any education. It is most of all intolerable in Christian education. For to try to cover with the word "Christian" slovenly work is to reject Christ's fundamental demand for absolute THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 45 integrity, in the pretended name of Christ. The Christian college has a permanent obhgation here that it must never evade if it is to prove the factor it ought to be in the making of America. Thus the task of the Christian college of to-day is an inherited task, with peculiar obligations, because we stand in just this line of descent and no other. For our individual task is never an isolated frag- ment. It partakes largely of our past. And yet our task is ours, and not that of our fathers. It is easy to see that, even when they tried narrowly to interpret the will of God, they could not direct the movement to these ends but were swept on irresistibly to the far larger ends of the providence of God. Doubtless it will be so with us also. We may attempt — and we must attempt — to define to ourselves as precisely as possible the present needed applications of the will of God. But God will bring to us larger possibilities than any of those of which we have dreamed. I have tried thus to indicate some of the 46 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE applications to which it seems to me the will of God for the college now points. But I would not if I could confine the Christian college to those insights and tasks. We are often bidden to follow the fathers. But in the sense in which the advice is meant, no one of us who would be true can follow the fathers. For we can- not truly follow the fathers, by saying what the fathers said, or doing what the fathers did, but only by evincing a like spirit, by striving to meet as open-mindedly, as earnestly, as loyally, and as fearlessly as they met the problems of their time, those of our own. And the later college past also brings to Christian educators everywhere its chal- lenge — the challenge of a revolutionary and transition period that has called pre- eminently for discrimination — for proving all things, and holding fast to the good, and for pressing on continually for that larger light that God certainly has for the diligent seekers after truth, and for using that light for still greater service. The THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 47 difficult transition for faith and moral ideals is, for very many, still to be made. May it be given to the college educators of to-day, whether with serenity or by struggle, to make the transition for them- selves and to give deep help here to others also. For the world never needed more than to-day the educator of religious vision and conviction, who "would not make his judgment blind," who can fuse the prophet's sense of the spiritual world with the scientific spirit and the social con- sciousness of the modern age. Thus the lesson of the history of the Christian college, as I see it, is nowhere servile imitation, but truth to oneself, loyalty to conviction, the earnest pursuit of the truth, the obligation of growth, and the constantly expanding applications of a genuinely Christian love in all the social, national, and international relations of our time. For we shall not long hold on to a Christian standard in our individual relations which we are not rigorously and with all our souls ready to apply in the 48 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE relations of larger groups and in the rela- tions of nation to nation. If we Christian educators, therefore, are to be true to our birthright, we must believe in a living God, with whom we have growingly to do. We think perhaps that we can believe that God was with Amos and Isaiah, with John and Paul, with Augustine and Luther and Wesley, and Finney; but all this will not avail. Can we believe he is with us and with those about us.^^ Others have labored, and we are entered into their labor. May we be worthy of our heritage and be able to glory, not only in the importance that the Christian college has had as a factor in the making of America, but by our vitality insure its still greater importance in the years to come. CHAPTER III THE PRODUCT OF THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE IN MEN AND MOVEMENTS Secretary Thomas Nicholson The power of a nation, the influence of a community, depends not upon the number but upon the quahty of its men. Litchfield County is a group of hills and vales in northwestern Connecticut. It is not much larger than the ranch of many a cattle king in New Mexico or Texas, for it is only thirty-three miles long and twenty-seven miles wide; but the influences for good which have radiated from that httle Greece are immeasurable. The county furnished the American Revolution with men like Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, gave the Civil War movement Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown; gave 50 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE many colleges their presidents, among them Finney to Oberlin, Day to Yale, Babcock to Colby, and Sturtevant to Illinois. It produced Professors N. W. Taylor for Yale, Ebenezer Porter for Andover, and William Thompson for Hartford. It gave the American pulpit Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, John Pierpont, and numerous others of nation-wide fame. The first law school in America was there opened, and it sent out many of the most prominent statesmen and lawyers of the last century. In 1831 the Vice-President of the United States and one eighth of the United States senators were either born or educated in that county, and in 1850 one seventh of all the senators had been educated within its confines. In the parsonage at Torringford, in this same Litchfield County, Samuel J. Mills was born. He was the central figure in the famous Haystack Prayer Meeting, and the spot in a field on his father's farm where young Mills dedicated his life to God and to the cause of foreign missions THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 51 has been called "The Birthplace of Amer- ican Foreign Missions," for it was Mills who started the influences which led to the formation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and who enlisted men like Adoniram Judson in the cause. Volumes could not ad- equately tell the story of the gracious influences which have reached the world from those Litchfield County hillsides. Our colleges, where their spiritual life is sound and where their ideals are correct, are just such reservoirs of power. The wonderful history of Litchfield County could be paralleled by the story of the output of more than one small college. In fact, it was Williams and Yale, Dart- mouth and Wesleyan, Harvard and Am- herst which trained these Litchfield County boys. It was the colleges of New England which made this Litchfield County history possible. In recent years college men have shown great ingenuity in the invention of methods for discovering and exhibiting the value of 52 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE these institutions to the republic. It is difficult to present anything new. Each new investigation, however, makes it more certain that the American college, which at first was chiefly concerned with the training of ministers, has rapidly become an agency for the training of citizens in every walk of life. It is our most efficient agency for the training of those men of broad vision, of cultivated powers, of judicial temper, and of symmetrical man- hood who furnish our best and noblest leadership; who furnish the inspiration and form the directorate of the greatest civil, philanthropic, and religious movements of modern times. We have been told for generations that it has trained a very large percentage of our noblest clergymen in all denominations, but its contribution to the churches in an intelligent laity is as great as its gift of clergymen. It has also given an ever- increasing percentage of our most high- minded statesmen, our best authors, our most distinguished physicians and lawyers, THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 53 and by far the largest percentage of our most conspicuous educators. The American college represents the enlarged and enlarg- ing intellectual life of the American people. We are a republic. We believe that the best government rests on the people, not on a limited aristocracy; on persons, not on property; on the free development of public opinion, not on authority. The public happiness and the public welfare are secured when the masses of mankind awaken, get knowledge, and assume the care of their own interests. Political action has never been so constant and unwaver- ing as when it has resulted from a feeling and a principle diffused through society. The leaders of the American Revolution came from the masses, not from the classes. So with the French Revolution. This is strikingly illustrated in such a field as art, where one might least expect to find an illustration. In Athens the arts were carried to perfection when "the fierce democracy" was in the ascendant. The temple of Minerva and the works of 54 THE CHRISTIAlSr COLLEGE Phidias were planned and perfected to please the common people. When Greece yielded to tyrants and dictators, her genius for excellence in art expired. When, after long eclipse, the arts again burst into a splendid existence, it was under popular influence. It was so in the Middle Ages. During the rough contests and feudal tyrannies of that period religion opened in the church an asylum for the masses, and it was the sons of the common people who made the churches the great art galleries of the world. Giotto, the wool- worker's apprentice, made art the vehicle of the most powerful dramatic story-telling painting has ever known. Moved by an infinite sympathy with the common people, the souls of Perugino and Raphael dipped their pencils in living colors and decorated the churches where men adored the living God with those divine conceptions of beau- tiful forms which made them famous. In a later age art passed under the control of the wealthy. It gave itself to the adorn- ment of the palaces of the rich nobles. THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 55 Instead of the brilliant works which ap- pealed to the people, the banqueting halls came to be covered with grotesque forms such as float before the imagination when excited and bewildered by sensual in- dulgence. Instead of Holy Families, the enduring faith of martyrs, and the blessed fellowships of evangelical love, we behold the motley groups of fawns and satyrs, pictures of voluptuous beauty and all the forms of licentiousness. Humanity frowned on this desecration of art, and painting lost its greatness. If our arts, our literature, our statesmanship, are to have a brilliant history, the inspiration must spring from the vigor of our com- mon people. Genius will not long thrive on the flattery of the personal humors of patrons or the decoration of gilded palaces. The glory of America is preeminently her common people, and the American college has been the chief factor in arous- ing, inspiring, and making them intelli- gently efiicient. We remember George William Curtis' stirring words on the lead- 56 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE ership of educated men. He said: ''The great political contest in England inspired by the Reformation was directed by uni- versity men. John Pym in the Commons, John Hampden in the field, John Milton in the Cabinet — three Johns and all of them well-beloved disciples of liberty — with the grim Oliver himself purging Eng- land of royal despotism and 'avenging the slaughtered saints on Alpine mountains cold,' were all of them children of Oxford and Cambridge. In the next century, like a dawn lurid but bright, the French Revolution broke upon the world. But the only hope of a wise direction of the elemental forces that upheaved France vanished when the educated leadership lost control, and Marat became the genius and the type of the Revolution." We know what kept England from the extravagances of the same burning pas- sions. Was it not Burke and Chatham on the one hand, and on the other that group of ever-to-be-remembered Oxford scholars, John and Charles Wesley, George THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 57 Whitefield, and the leaders of early Method- ism? It was men of this spirit and lineage who came to America and founded her colleges almost concurrently with her civ- ilization. Dr. Thwing says that "among the twenty-one thousand people who came to New England between 1620 and 1640 and among their descendants for the following fifty years, there were as many college graduates as could be found in any population of similar size in the mother country. At one time in Massa- chusetts and Connecticut every group of two hundred and fifty people had one graduate of old Cambridge. In addition to the Cambridge graduates, there were also several from Oxford." These colonists founded and fostered the early American colleges, and their graduates became the apostles of the liberties of the common people. Consequently, Mr. Curtis is able to continue: "It was a son of Harvard, James Otis, who proposed the assembly of an American Congress without asking the king's leave. It was a son of Yale, 58 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE John Morin Scott, who declared that if taxation without representation were to be enforced, the colonies ought to separate from England. It was a group of New York scholars — ^John Jay and Scott and the Livingstones — which spoke for the col- ony in response to the Boston Port Bill and proposed the Continental Congress. It was a New England scholar in that Congress whom Rufus Choate declared to be the distinctive and comprehensive orator of the Revolution — ^John Adams, who, urg- ing every argument, touching every stop of passion, pride, tenderness, interest, con- science, and lofty indignation, swept up his country as into a chariot of fire and soared to independence." It is not strange, therefore, that the col- lege man should have been the leader in creating that gem of our American civiliza- tion, the American public school system. The world knows the work of Horace Mann, a graduate of Brown University and the founder of Antioch College. If we are thinking of the elegant buildings THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 59 and rich endowments of the Brown Uni- versity of to-day, let us remember that in his day the name was changed from the College of Rhode Island to that of Brown University by the gift of five thousand dollars from Nicholas Brown. The educa- tional system of Indiana is the product of the influence of Caleb Mills, a professor in Wabash College; that of South Dakota chiefly owes its origin to General Beadle, a graduate of Michigan University when it was a small college, and these were but types of the pioneers of the West. The contribution of the college to the public and high schools in the way of trained and competent teachers is remark- able. A study of the alumni record of Ohio Wesleyan University for 1910 showed twenty-one presidents and deans of univer- sities and colleges, one hundred and sixty- eight professors and instructors, eighty- five superintendents of public schools, one hundred and one principals of high schools, and three hundred and sixty teachers in the graded high schools — a total of seven 60 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE hundred and thirty-five. De Pauw Uni- versity has had twenty-five thousand men and women for a part of or all of the college course. One third of them have entered some branch of the teaching pro- fession. Here is the record of a small western college, showing that eighty-one per cent of its graduates have been teachers in our schools for a longer or shorter period. These graduates of colleges have founded other colleges in the newer terri- tory. Alumni of Oberlin founded Olivet and Benzonia in Michigan and Grinnell in Iowa. Men of Wesleyan founded and fostered Northwestern. Such men and such institutions have spread light and knowledge among the common people. They have kept the Commonwealth demo- cratic, for the records show that approx- imately two thirds of all the men who have been students in our American col- leges have been the children of comparative poverty. The democratic influence of such a force is seen in a statement of Edward A. Steiner THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 61 regarding Russia. He tells the romance of his trip through Russia as a runaway boy, of his visit to Count Tolstoy, and how his influence made him a Christian. In his Immigrant Tide he discusses the Russian people and predicts that when the Slav comes to himself he will produce one of the greatest civilizations of the ages. But he points out the fact that up to this time the Slav has developed no compact middle class. There are the so-called "masses" at the bottom. They are burdened with taxes; they are kept in ignorance; they are hewers of wood and drawers of water that the upper fifth may enjoy music and art, poetry and literature, and the finer things of civilization. Above is the aristocracy, with all its privileges and immunities. But he says their middle- class people, their bankers and their shop- keepers are Jews and Italians, Greeks and Englishmen, men from foreign lands, and he further avers that the Slav never will come to his best until he bridges the age- long chasm between the masses and the 62 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE classes and develops this compact middle class. Now, what Dr. Steiner points out as the outstanding weakness of Slav civilization has been the overmastering greatness of our American civilization. We have seen the man from the tanyards become the leader of our victorious armies. It was Allegheny College which trained William McKinley, the boy from the ranks of the common people, to be the beloved Pres- ident of the republic. It was this same institution that trained James M. Thoburn, the farmer's boy, and William F. Oldham, the engineer's son, to be the mighty strat- egists of modern missions. Our greatest leaders have been developed from this middle class. Above every other force working to dis- cover and develop leadership has been the college, and preeminently the small college. How often have we been told that every chief justice of the United States has been a college graduate, except John Marshall, and that he was a student THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 63 at William and Mary until the outbreak of the Revolution took him to the war? How often have we held that the great leaders of our public life have come from our college halls? Pick up the alumni record of any one of them and you will find the same story. Here is one with two thousand alumni, but it has among them five governors, three lieutenant-gov- ernors, two Cabinet officers, twenty-six federal and State judges, thirty-six other federal officers, fifteen civil service men, eighty army and navy officers, and five hundred and forty-seven professional men. When Willamette University had only about one hundred in its college depart- ment, the chief justices of the supreme courts of the three States of Oregon, Wash- ington, and Idaho were among its grad- uates, while two others of the supreme court judges had been among its students, and the Portland Oregonian said editorially that Willamette University had exerted a greater moral influence in Oregon than all other forces combined. The record of one 64 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE is the record of all. It is only a question of the names and the number of men, the respective institution has given to enrich our public life. But more. The Christian ideals of this small college, founded and fostered as it has been chiefly by the church, have given a peculiar type of statesmanship. Bismarck is reported to have said, ''Such is the state of diplomacy in Europe that when I wish to deceive a man I tell him the exact truth." It was John Hay, whose Alma Mater commemorates him in a mag- nificent memorial building, who became the apostle of a new diplomacy based on truth and candor. It was this same John Hay who, in the spirit of American fair play, proposed and made eflFective the open- door policy in China, and it is noble souls like James W. Bashford, Wilson S. Lewis, G. Sherwood Eddy, and John R. Mott — men trained in our American colleges — who are shaping "the whisper to the throne" in China to-day, and who are guiding that mighty nation into a con- THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE ^5 sciousness of power which is to lead it into an unparalleled field of usefulness. This noble Allegheny College, whose guests we are, has a marvelous honor roll. I have gone over the Alumni Record fre- quently only to be convinced that we could make several lists, each enrolling a half dozen alumni whose combined service would have abundantly paid the world for every dollar invested in this college. In- deed, would it be too much to say that such an honor crowns the lifework of single individuals like William McKinley and James M. Thoburn, and others per- haps equally worthy .^^ In the palace of the great Iron Chan- cellor, at Friedrichsruhe, in a room whose walls were decorated with the portraits of European sovereigns, there hung the pictures of George Bancroft, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton. This grew out of the fact that when Bismarck was a student at the University he became, as he tells us in his Reflections, a pantheist and well-nigh 66 THE CHRISTIAX COLLEGE an atheist. John Lothrop Motley and a group of New England students exercised a powerful influence upon him at this time, and when in later years Motley became envoy of the United States at Vienna and London, and the historian of the Dutch Republic, he became the intimate friend of the great German chan- cellor. The world knows how Bismarck passed from an almost mediaeval devotion to monarchical and aristocratic forms of government to be an advocate of con- stitutional liberty; from a hatred of par- liamentary institutions and of the admis- sion of the people to power to be the advocate of a federated government with a broad, democratic representation. In fact, like Gladstone, he made a complete change in his political opinions during his progress from youth to full manhood. He broke with his old political associates. He became the greatest advocate of what he had formerly opposed. Andrew D. White, citing these facts, shows that chief among the forces contributing to this THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 67 change was the influence of that group of respected Americans, and particularly the influence of the ideas of that great historian and diplomat, George Bancroft, then American minister to Germany. Mr. White estimates the influence of these Americans on Bismarck as the most po- tent of his whole life. With no legal or political power, by the sheer force of character, personality, and ideas, a group of very able and fascinating Americans contributed in a large degree to the making of the greatness of modern Germany. And will anyone doubt that if that in- fluence had persisted and had become even more potent after Bismarck's death, some phases of the present catastrophe might have been different.^ I always view with a thrill of pride that poem in stone called "The Boston Public Library." But more impressive than its great stacks of books, its marvelous array of magazine literature, and its won- derful mural art decorations, is the simple record in the vestibule of those thirty 68 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE men whose names are carved in the arches of the columns: Charles Sumner and Wen- dell Phillips, William EUery Channing and Phillips Brooks, Agassiz and Asa Gray, Longfellow and Emerson, Webster and Story, Motley and Bancroft, Theodore Parker and Cotton Mather, Choate and Adams, Parkman and Prescott — thirty of them in all. Any five of them would have made Boston and New England great and world-renowned. But with only one or two exceptions, they are the product of the great New England colleges. They show what Harvard and Yale, Dartmouth and Williams, Amherst and Bowdoin meant to civilization, and in the main they were the developed children of the common people. And the spirit of social service persists to our day. Who can measure the magnitude of the service of William H. Taft and Dean Worcester to the new civilization which we are developing in the Philippines! This leads me to mention briefly what, on the occasion of the Thoburn Jubilee THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 69 I ^ had the privilege of treating at length here at Allegheny College, namely, that the college has been the birthplace and the nursery of foreign missionary move- ments. We at that time recounted the story of the Yale Band of 1898, of the great Student Volunteer Movement which has now actually sent nearly five thousand men among all the nations of the world; of the Harvard Mission Band; of the Hay- stack Prayer Meeting and its wonderful results; of the fascinating story of Oberlin and its one thousand alumni devoted to some form of home or foreign missionary service. We showed that the college man has been the typical foreign missionary leader, because he, of all men, had the widest vision and the foremost grasp of the far-reaching world principles revealed in the Bible and embodied in the teachings of Jesus; because the attitude of mind and heart begotten by the college had been conducive to leadership; because he had been quick to recognize a sense of social obligation and to realize that he was 70 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE blessed that he might be a blessing. We showed how the training of the college had fitted men for leadership by develop- ing the power to see things as they are and to do things as they ought to be done; by inspiring the statesmanship which formed policies commending themselves to the judgment of thinking men; and cul- tivating the ability to create that enthusi- asm which disposes large companies of men to follow the chief. We recounted how the college man had been the chief factor in shaping the Christian ideals which have conquered the heathen world, and pointed out that the long lists of mission- ary leaders when examined revealed the fact that ninety per cent of the missionary leadership of the world had been con- tributed by the Christian colleges. It appeared that these trained missionaries had promoted the reconstruction of laws and the reform of judicial procedure; had aided in the reconstruction and the ame- lioration of administrative methods; had elevated the standard of government serv- THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 71 ice; had furthered proper international relations, and had made large and unique contributions to the world's store of knowl- edge. They had performed tasks requiring genuine scholarship such as the publication of hundreds of volumes, monumental con- tributions to lexicography and the reduc- tion of languages which existed only in confused spoken idioms to written forms. They had created many a literature, had made important contributions to compar- ative philology. This same college-trained missionary had proven himself an explorer and a geographer of the first rank, an archaeological discoverer, a student and pioneer in many fields of science, a physi- cian able to make medical studies of world-wide significance; while, above all, he had been a most important factor in international diplomacy and in political movements of world scope. The record of these achievements enlarges with every passing month. Look now in the home field. Take an illustration of this college man in social 72 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE development and moral uplift. The Anti- Saloon League is doing a monumental work in the temperance reform. At the great National Convention at Columbus, Ohio, November, 1913, Howard Russell, its founder, an Oberlin graduate, told the story of the struggle of its earlier days. He said: "We started in 1893, just when the terrible financial panic began. At first it was hard going. We rented a low- priced house in northern Columbus and Mrs. Russell changed her routine and became herself the servant of the house. My first office was in my valise. Then we hired a dark back room upon an alley at three dollars a month. Making dates was expensive. A man had to be sent ahead and the clerk in the office sent out the literature. These and other necessary ex- penses, though small, caused us bitter hard times. One day before I left for my Sunday appointment I put my watch in pawn to get a little money for groceries for the family. At the end of thirty days I recovered the timepiece on payment of THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 73 the principal and interest at the per annum rate of one hundred and twenty per cent. Once the children in the grammar school were told to bring a potted flower for Decoration Day exercises. My wife had the flower-pot but no dime to buy the flower for our little girl. She found a weed with a pretty blossom in the back- yard. She thought that better than none, so she trimmed the pot neatly and my daughter took this to school. Some of the children discovered it and laughed at it. The little girl was heartbroken, but when I came home I told her I was poor only because I was sacrificing for the many children who were barefooted and hungry because of the drink traffic. She bravely dried her tears and said, Tapa, then we will fight on together, even if it is hard sometimes.' But in the deeper darkness of the panic days the hardships of my loved ones led me almost to give up the struggle. I concluded, however, first to go back to Oberlin and confer with President Fairchild before I did it. 74 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE I told him my difficulties and asked him if he thought I could be 'let off.' He asked me questions and then said, *Let us seek God's counsel.' We went into his private office. We knelt together. He prayed, and such a prayer! He told God the whole story. Then we were silent for a while. Then we rose; he looked into my eyes and said, 'Howard, my boy, we cannot let you off. God will not let you off; but I will double my subscription.' And after that God raised up financial relief. Metcalf of Elyria and the Roots and John Calvert held a serious confer- ence, and God's Spirit moved them to send our treasurer two checks for five hundred dollars each to save the day. Oberlin was always steadfast in prayer and in sacrifice, and soon it was Oberlin College which sent that vigorous young graduate, fresh from college, Wayne B. Wheeler, who has never heard any other call for his splendid talents than God's command to lead the conflict." How shall this nation sufficiently thank God for a THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 75 president of Oberlin who knew how to pray and who knew how to hold men of mettle like Howard Russell and Wayne Wheeler to the task of overthrowing the infamous and impudent liquor traffic in this country. But when God's record books are opened similar stories will astonish the saints. How many hundreds of missionary de- cisions have been made, how many thou- sands of life purposes have been formed, how many noble consecrations have been consummated in just such prayer sessions between president or professor and student in our Christian colleges! Scores of us who have been professors know some of these things from personal experience. And go into the field of philanthropy. It was Cornell College that gave New York Edward T. Devine, the head of its School of Philanthropy, and Frank Persons, the head of its charity organizations. It was the colleges of the Middle West which gave Homer Folks to the New York Char- ities Organization, Wilbur F. Crafts to the 76 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE International Reform Bureau, Josiah Strong and Walter Rauschenbusch to their honor- able work, and Shelby Harrison to the Sage Foundation. And what shall we more say, for time fails us to tell of the contributions of these colleges to the elevation of the spirit of our public life, to the thorough discipline and finer culture of our people, to the broadening of our national sympathies, and to the perpetuation of the ideas of democ- racy. It fails us, moreover, to show the immense contribution of these colleges to the elevation of womanhood. I think I could prove that a very large part of the forces which are bringing woman to her queenly position in our generation began with her admission to the colleges of the country about the middle of the last century. In our day colleges are acquiring beau- tiful landscapes, elegant buildings, costly equipments, great endowments, but there is some danger that we shall have an experience similar to that which has come THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 77 to many a family when newly acquired wealth has enabled it to move out of the little old village or farm home into the elegant city mansion. Habits of frugality, simplicity, domestic fidelity, and piety have been abandoned until the house has been left unto them desolate of all that constitutes a real home. The spirit which made the home and the fortune departs before the sirocco of selfishness and sin. We rejoice in the increasing material equip- ment. We hail with joy the wisdom of adopting methods adapted to the new conditions of our wonderful age; but let the colleges beware! It is only the spirit that giveth life. Hence we close with a sincere wish that these colleges may keep so close to God, may remain so true to the high ideals which have inspired them in their earlier history that they may continue to give us men of sober minds, of close thought, of ample and critical knowledge, of scientific spirit, of high purpose, of wide vision, of devoted pa- triotism, of pure lives; men cheerful with- 78 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE out frivolity, courageous without rudeness; men who love their fellow men; men who are in love with everything which touches life with an upward tendency; and, above all, men with that spirituality which makes the essence and the relations of human life divine. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 020 775 971 5