Qa3s__LIliiU_ 
 Book_____JIl_ 
 
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THE NEW WEST 
 
 AS RELATKD TO 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE AND THE HOME-1-^ 
 MISSIONARY. 3 ^ I 
 
 E. P. TENKEY. 
 
 Second Kdition. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 Pcintcb at tljc 15i\jer^iDe ^tt^^* 
 
 1878. 
 
^ 
 
THE NEW WEST 
 
 AS BELATED TO 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE AND THE HOME 
 MISSIONARY, 
 
 E. P. ten:ney. 
 
 Seco7td Edition. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 grintcti at tf)c i!!i\jcriefitie ^tt^^* 
 
 1878. 
 
3^ 
 
 % 2 ^ 
 
 : o 
 
 23235 
 
THE NEW WEST. 
 
 Between the valley of the Mississippi — the Old West 
 — and the Pacific slope lies the New West, a mountain 
 plateau from three to six thousand feet high, upon which 
 rise the Rocky Mountains. Take Wyoming, Colorado, 
 New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Mon- 
 tana ; then add a minute fragment of fifty thousand 
 square miles from western Dakota, comprising the 
 Black Hills region, and you have the New West, — 
 one third part of the United States, — as large as all 
 that portion of our country east of the Mississippi. 
 Colorado is equal in size to Switzerland, New England, 
 New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Maps of Penn- 
 sylvania and New York would need to add Maryland 
 and Rhode Island to cover Colorado. .Ohio could lie 
 down twice within the boundaries of the Centennial 
 State, and then leave room enough for West Virginia 
 and Connecticut. Kansas and Iowa toQ;ether are not 
 its match in square miles. Colorado is equal in size to 
 Old England and New. Men team goods from Colo- 
 rado Springs through Ute Pass, following a longer road 
 than that from Boston to Philadelphia, and yet they 
 do not go out of their own State. 
 
 The topography of the New West may be in general 
 described thus : — 
 
 The valley of the Mississippi extends four hundred 
 
4 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 and fifty miles west of the river ; we then cross the 
 elevated buffalo plains, seven hundred miles long and 
 three hundred miles in width ; then the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, — in parallel ranges from twelve thousand to four- 
 teen thousand feet high, inclosing parks at an eleva- 
 tion of eight or nine thousand feet, — three hundred 
 and fifty miles wide ; then a width of seven hundred 
 miles to the Sierra Nevada. The Great American Des- 
 ert is upon the western verge of the last described belt. 
 It is from seventy-five to two hundred and fifty miles 
 wide. No east and west line can cross arable land all 
 the way from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra.^ 
 
 Men who forecast the future of America will be in- 
 terested in a statement of those elements of wealth, 
 which indicate the capacity of this mountain plateau to 
 sustain population. 
 
 Aside from Idaho, which is, like Oregon, admirably 
 adapted to sustain a large agricultural population, the 
 New West is not unlike California in its general char- 
 acteristics. 
 
 One of the prime industries, when it is fully devel- 
 oped, will be grazing. In the northern portion of this 
 region it is necessary to make some provision for win- 
 ter ; but beef-cattle and sheep graze all the year round 
 without cut feed or shelter in southern Colorado, New 
 Mexico, and Arizona. The pasture grounds of Colo- 
 rado and New Mexico comprise seventy million acres. 
 The grama grass is so nutritious that stock and dairy 
 men who have had many years experience in the val- 
 ley of the Mississippi and also on the great plains, are 
 now moving to the New West. The profit is estimated 
 at about fifty per cent, where the business is under- 
 stood. It is an interest of more promise than all the 
 gold mines in the country. In the future, when the 
 
 ^ Vide Wheeler's Prelimmary Report on Nevada, etc. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 5 
 
 slopes of both oceans are crowded, and the valley of 
 the Mississippi is a garden, the great herding ground 
 of the continent will be on the plains of our New West. 
 The present value of the hay crop and pasturage of 
 the United States — including dairy products, wool, 
 and the increase of live stock, — is nine hundred and 
 seventy-three million dollars, which exceeds in value 
 fill the cotton, corn, wheat, and other farm products of 
 the country.^ As an element of national wealth, these 
 vast pastures, which have fed the buffaloes for ages, are 
 likely to contribute quite as much to the country as 
 any other equal area not occupied by a manufacturing, 
 mining, or commercial population. Those who know 
 the manner of life most frequently led by herdsmen 
 will tremble for the future, unless the principles of the 
 Gospel obtain strong hold in the New West in its form- V 
 ing period, and Christian education exerts its elevating- 
 influence, growing with the growth of the people. 
 
 Agricultural operations in this region promise to 
 be very profitable. Portions of Colorado and New 
 Mexico, to the amount of four million acres, are watered 
 by rains, and the same is true of no small areas, here 
 and there, in the mountains or near them, throughout 
 the New West. But, in the main, irrigation is neces- 
 sary, and the farms are planted on the borders of 
 mountain streams fed by melting snow. This is every 
 w^ay an advantage. The crops are not injured by rain, 
 or its withholding. Drought spoils one fourth of the 
 crops of the world. Farming carried on by irrigation 
 is miich more profitable than in the ordinary process, 
 and the land is kept in good heart by it through cen- 
 turies.^ Chemical analysis of the soil of the New West 
 
 1 Stewart's Irrigation, page 18. 
 
 2 See Stewart's valuable work on irrigation, which is a standard author- 
 ity. A foot of water is needed over the whole soil while the ci'ops are 
 
6 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 shows that it is of a remarkably good qiiahty, needing 
 only the touch of water to produce the best crops in 
 the country, notably of wheat. It will, on this account, 
 support a large population in proportion to the surflice 
 cultivated. In estimating the agricultural resources of 
 this region, the area of farming land may be, in respect 
 to ability to support population, doubled or nearly so 
 on account of the advantages of a good soil under irri- 
 gation. It will also support a larger population than 
 the same land east, since it can be used mainly to raise 
 vegetable food for man. In the eastern States a former 
 must set apart acres to raise hay and cattle to keep the 
 rest of his farm in good condition ; and in the valley 
 of the Mississippi hay must be raised to keep cattle 
 through the winter ; in general, neither of these neces- 
 sities exists in the New West. The whole area of 
 farm lands can be used for man's garden or granary. 
 
 growing. Three fourths of our rain-fall runs off or comes at the wrong 
 time of year for crops. The English derive more advantage from less 
 rain-fall than we have, because it comes a little at a time during the season 
 when it is most needed. American farmers, east and west, raise less per 
 acre than they would by partial irrigation. The average crop all over the 
 country might be largely increased by the systematic distribution of water 
 from streams. Market gardening often suffers for want of water at a 
 critical time. " Growing plants contain from seventy to ninety-five per 
 
 cent, of water The solid portion of the plant consists of matters 
 
 which enter into it only while in solution in water No water, whether 
 
 it be in the state of liquid or vapor, can enter into any other part of a plant 
 
 than its I'oots The summer rain-fall in our climate is rarely, if ever, 
 
 adequate to the requirements of what would be a maximum crop, consistent 
 with the probabilities of the soil." [Stewart, page 9.] Water, when used 
 in irrigation, " brings within reach of the plants a largely increased amount 
 of nutriment. Water is the universal solvent. No water in its natural con- 
 dition is pure. The water of springs and streams holds in sohition or 
 suspension a quantity of mineral and gaseous matters, that possess high 
 fertilizing value." [Page 18.] Irrigation has been used on the same soil 
 two hundred years in New Mexico, without other fertilizing properties 
 than that brought by the water. 
 
 The Britisli government has recently expended seventy million dollars in 
 irrigating works in India. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 7 . 
 
 This consideration alone would be equal to adding, 
 perhaps, one third to the amount of arable land in the 
 New West. While, therefore, that which can be irri- 
 gated is little compared with the whole surface, it is 
 practically enough to support a vast population. It is 
 estimated that Colorado and New Mexico have agricul- 
 tural resources to maintain ten million inhabitants. 
 
 Farminci^ in Colorado is at this time a decided success. 
 There will be always a good market for garden and 
 field produce among the mining and grazing people, 
 on account of th. limited area suitable for cultivation 
 and the distance from competition. The farm lands 
 will, therefore, have a comparatively dense population 
 at some future time. But it will for the most part be 
 scattered along the borders of streams ; and the Gospel i- 
 message will need to be borne to every door by a min- 
 istry trained upon neighboring soil and adapted to the 
 field. 
 
 This region has a considerable quantity of timber in 
 the mountains, enough for the use of the country. 
 The river bottoms are lined with scrub-oak, box-elder, 
 and Cottonwood. 
 
 Inexhaustible store of excellent iron ore is found in 
 southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Near 
 the iron, is the best coal west of Pennsylvania. For 
 coking, it is pronoimced by experts to be equal to the 
 Connellsville coal. Furnaces and rollino; mills will 
 abound in this region in the future. That this industry 
 will be developed at no distant day is certain, since 
 there is no coal for four hundred miles east, no good 
 coal in Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, or California. The 
 coal is now sent to Nevada for smelting. If any Chris- 
 tian college is to be planted in the New West, the one I 
 In Colorado is well located, in proximity to this coal 
 and iron region. 
 
8 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 It is hardly needful to speak of the gold and silver 
 mines, whose fame has gone out to all the world. One 
 hundred millions of gold have been sent from Montana 
 alone. The annual yield of Colorado is eight millions, 
 which is more than California produced in 1870. The 
 passion for mining is the instrument of Providence in 
 transferring populations to new seats of empire. The 
 history of California and Australia is now repeating it- 
 self in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Ari- 
 zona, and New Mexico, — the richest region m the world. 
 
 The climate will, however, do more than all other 
 agencies towards settling the New West. " The em- 
 pire of climate," says Montesquieu, "is the most pow- 
 erful of all empires." West of the valley of' the Miss- 
 issippi the lan(jl rises, sloping like a wdde roof toward 
 the Rocky ridgepole of the continent ; so that this part 
 of the country is too high and dry for malarial diseases, 
 asthma, bronchitis, or consumption. Consumption may 
 be prevented by moving to Colorado ; those who go 
 with quick consumption fixed upon them find that the 
 disease is accelerated by the rarity of the atmosphere ; 
 but chronic consumption is cured by the climate. Col- 
 orado soil and air are so dry that an axe left out of 
 doors will not rust, if it be covered from snow and rain. 
 Save in the mountains and in their near neighbor- 
 hood, there is very little snow and a general absence 
 of rain. Warm currents from the South Pacific touch 
 the mountains, modifying the air. I have seen men 
 plowing in February eight thousand feet above the 
 sea near Central. In the vicinity of Colorado Springs 
 sheep graze all winter, six thousand feet above the sea, 
 in the latitude of Washington. Parties have indulged 
 in picnics out of doors upon a given day each week for 
 ten weeks of December, January, and February. A 
 weather record of two years at Colorado Springs gives, 
 — in one year three hundred and twenty-two fair and 
 
THE NEW WEST. 9 
 
 clear days, and forty-four cloudy ; the year following, 
 three hundred and twelve fair and clear, and fifty-three 
 cloudy. 
 
 One third of the population of Colorado are recon- 
 structed invalids. Asthmatic conventions meet in this 
 favored country to invite all America to breathe this 
 healing atmosphere. Tough, rugged people — who 
 coughed ten years in the east — are now calling on all 
 dwellers in fog banks and low lands to move to this 
 mountainous plateau. The whole New West is a sani- 
 tarium ; the northern part mild in winter, and the 
 southern part cool in summer. Families with the seeds 
 of early death in them will fly for refuge to these great 
 central mountain resrions. The invalids of the United 
 States comprise not a small part of the population ; and 
 many of those who have property will, as they become 
 acquainted with the facts, move into one of the beauti- 
 ful towns at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 The scenery is unique. The length of the main 
 range of mountains and the spurs of the main range 
 within the limits of Colorado is twelve hundred miles, 
 averaging twelve thousand feet high ; nearly a score of 
 peaks rise to a height of more than fourteen thousand 
 feet. The White Hills of New England, set down in 
 one of the parks, would make no great addition to the 
 scenery, Switzerland, so far as size is concerned, could 
 be placed in a pocket of Colorado. 
 
 Under the shadows of the Sierra Madre are already 
 growing up some of the most home-like and attractive 
 towns in America, well watered and shaded, with 
 comely houses standing amid grass plots and flower 
 gardens. Colorado Springs has a population of thirty- 
 five hundred people, upon a spot where antelopes were 
 feeding six years ago, and where the Indians were tak- 
 ing scalps only a little before that. This town has 
 twenty-one miles of trees, upon streets a hundred feet 
 
10 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 wide, or avenues of one hundred and forty. Four rows 
 of trees upon one street extend two miles. A school 
 building costing twenty thousand dollars, and comfort- 
 able houses of worship, indicate the character of the 
 Y people. This colony and the one at Grreeley, are the 
 only ones in the State where liquor selling is forbidden 
 in every deed of land, and in the policy of ttie local 
 government. Pike's Peak rises not far off, and smaller 
 mountains plant their feet within a mile or two of the 
 town. The unsurpassed wonders of Glen Eyrie, Queen's 
 Canon, the Garden -of the Gods, Manitou Mineral 
 Springs, Ute Pass, and Chiann Canon — all within five 
 miles of the town — attract tourists from all the world. 
 Any one of these famous resorts would make the for- 
 tune of a watering place in the east. Professor Hayden 
 says that he never saw so wonderful a combination of 
 grand scenery in the neighborhood of medical springs. 
 The rocky spires and changing shadows of Chiann 
 mountain, seen four miles to the southwest of the town, 
 give constant delight to every eye. It is not far to 
 walk or ride into quiet glens, with flowing fountains, 
 rocky streams, abundant foliage, and flowers, with 
 mountain walls and massive peaks rising on every side. 
 
 May we not anticipate an honorable future for a lit- 
 erary institution, established as a fountain of Christian 
 influence, in this enchanting spot ? " Most earnestly I 
 believe," says a writer whose eyes are never weary in 
 beholding the forms of these mountains, and whose 
 fame is known to all literature, " that there is to be 
 born of these plains and mountains, all along the great 
 central plateaus of our continent, the very best life, 
 physical and mental, of the coming centuries." 
 
 The population of the New West is, probably, at this 
 time, not far from seven hundred thousand, — 
 
 " The fiist low wash of waves, where soon 
 Shall roll the human soa." 
 
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THE NEW WEST. 11 
 
 In the ten years before the hist census the seven 
 States east of this region, having twice the area of Col- 
 orado and New Mexico, increased their popuhxtion by 
 three milhons. Emigration will soon occupy by hun- 
 dreds of thousands, and then by millions, the eastern 
 border of the New West. The laws which govern the 
 westward movement of population are now well un- 
 derstood. Not many years can pass before the ter- 
 ritories will become States. Whenever the Indian 
 difficulties, which have stood in the way of settlement, 
 are adjusted, homes on this uplancj plateau will be 
 sought for wdth the same eagerness that has character- 
 ized our westward bound population throughout Amer- 
 ican history. The Indian question is so far settled in 
 Colorado, that there is now no more danger from red 
 men than there is in Massachusetts or New York. Col- 
 orado is, therefore, now increasing rapidly in popula- 
 tion. 
 
 It is not, however, needful to ask whether this third 
 part of the United States will be largely peopled within 
 ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred years. These periods 
 are brief in the upbuilding of States, as in the life of 
 the human race. We need not ask whether or not our 
 statisticians are correct, who reckon on a population 
 of a hundred millions in the year 1900 ; or whether 
 there will be two hundred millions at the bi-centen- 
 nial. Nor need we examine the grounds of the state- 
 ment in the new edition of the British Encyclopaadia, 
 that, if the natural resources of x^merica were fully 
 developed, it would sustain a population of thirty-six 
 hundred millions, and that it is not improbable that 
 this number may people America w^ithin three or four 
 centuries. We need not ask how soon Colorado, New 
 Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and 
 Wyoming will number ten millions, twenty, or forty, 
 
12 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 since it is only a question of time when these regions 
 will be practically filled with a grazing, farming, min- 
 ing, manufacturing population, — a New West, less 
 densely crowded than the Atlantic seaboard, or the 
 Pacific shore, or the swarming valley of the Mississippi, 
 yet supporting no small share of the American people. 
 It is enough for the purpose of this paper to state 
 that there is now a population of a quarter of a million 
 in Colorado and New Mexico ; and that emigrants are 
 now pouring into almost every part of the New West 
 every year ; and that the most practical business men 
 in the country, who are conversant with the move- 
 ments of population in America, are taking most posi- 
 tive action with reference to the immediate occupancy 
 of Colorado, and the developments of a growing trade 
 in this new western country. Important railways 
 have been built, upoij the ground that the region is 
 already a very remunerative one for traf&c, and that it 
 will be soon occupied by a prosperous population. The 
 result, in the most notable instance of far-sightedness 
 and economical management, is fully justifying the 
 3onfidence of those who have engaged in the work.^ 
 
 1 The Denver and Rio Grande Railway. 
 
II. 
 
 What sort of an element will the New West make 
 in the Republic of the future ? 
 
 We shall find a very large population of widely scat- 
 tered and wandering herdsmen, enrolled in sparse vot- 
 ing precincts ; and of farmers, up and down reaches of 
 creeks and ditch ways ; and of miners, located here 
 and there in mountain camps ; and a few large towns 
 and cities, not unlike the surrounding population, — a 
 people not easily brought under Gospel influences at 
 this time, in which the character of these great States 
 of the future is shaping itself. Men apparently 
 thoughtless as their cattle, drift to the border, wherever 
 that shifting boundary may be, " floating along on the 
 edge of colonization like weeds borne forward by the 
 waves of sea." Many are the herdsmen, ranchmen, 
 miners, traffickers, who move from one lonely point 
 to another, everywhere at home under the bright sky, 
 and little more mindful of spiritual development than 
 the Indians who roamed the plains, or wandered over 
 the mountains before them. Not a few of those who 
 have higher aims in life, are restlessly chasing the roll- 
 ing dollar, or engrossed in the heavy cares of very un- 
 certain business, and others are coining money, — all 
 too busy to heed the voice of God. As the years go 
 by, the population becomes more fixed ; but their gen- 
 eral characteristics are very different from those which 
 obtain in older States. It is not strange, therefore, 
 that it is difficult to find home missionaries adapted to 
 
14 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 the people, in sufficient numbers to meet the wants of 
 these growing communities, and that the principles 
 which underlie social morality, and national success, are 
 neglected by no small portion of the population. 
 
 The bright-eyed young men now perched upon the 
 tops of Colorado mountains, or nestling in deep basins 
 walled in by peaks of gold, are not easily led into the 
 paths of spiritual peace. There are, perhaps, men of 
 no small culture in their neighborhood, who reject 
 Christianity ; and they hear no presentation of the 
 Gospel, or, hearing it, have no respect for it in the 
 shape in which it comes to them. Mining populations 
 comprise some of the most intelligent men in the coun- 
 try, often those educated in the best schools of America 
 or Europe ; and if they are not Christian men, their 
 influence tends to undermine the faith of those easily 
 shaken. It requires only a small acquaintance with 
 life in the far west, to recognize the elements for up- 
 building a godless empire, if the power of the Gospel 
 does not make itself felt through a Christian education, 
 so broad, manly, thorough, as to win the respect of the 
 leaders of public opinion, and to influence the masses 
 through men trained upon the ground for this special 
 work. There is no section of the country where it is 
 so needful to plant a Christian college, and to endow it 
 generously, as in the neighborhood of the richest mines 
 of our New West. Unless the Christian people in the 
 older States, who cry unto God day and night for the 
 coming of His kingdom, and who love to give, and to 
 sacrifice, for this end, will establish Christian educa- 
 tion in these regions ; and unless, as the years go by, it 
 becomes equipped at every point, and able to furnish 
 the very best culture, - — the New West will certainly 
 array itself in opposition to Christian faith and life. It 
 is impossible to present this point so sharply as it ought 
 
THE NEW WEST. • Jo 
 
 to be made. There has been nowhere in the experi- 
 ence of the nation any such condition for the founding 
 of new States as we have seen in the gold countries. 
 The settlement of the valley of the Mississippi wit- 
 nessed no such reckless career as that which has ex- 
 isted in the very early planting of these new regions. 
 If, therefore, there be added to this disadvantage an 
 anti-christian influence on the part of the scientific lead- 
 ers of a society in which all are more or less interested 
 in mining, it will be very difficult to win the people to 
 Christian faith and life, unless Christianity has firm hold 
 of the higher, education of the youth in these regions. 
 The mining industry of Colorado is not only at present 
 more important than that in any other part of the 
 country, save California and Nevada, but it is likely to 
 be so. This point, therefore, ought to be strongly for- 
 tified with a Christian college. Infidelity is often based 
 on a misconception of Christianity. It is disarmed by 
 any work that manifests light and love as they appear 
 in the Gospel. An intelligent and loving Christianity 
 has nothing to fear ; but it must be intelligent. 
 
 Without the sharp intellectual training of our colleges, 
 the leaders of society would be shorn of their power, 
 or wield it in the fashion of semi-barbarians. But if 
 the college be infidel or Jesuitical, morality is under- 
 mined, and the republic cannot stand. Unless there is a 
 positive Christian influence in our higher schools, Chris- 
 tianity will go to the wall, and our nation will become 
 weak through wickedness. Civilization perpetuates it- 
 self through tlie higher education. The culture of the 
 college permeates society. If the college is godless, the 
 civilization will be half pagan. If Christianity is fun- 
 damental in elevating the race, the Christian college is 
 the instrument through which to advance Christian civ- 
 ilization. Give to irreligion and infidelity the training 
 
16 ' THE NEW WEST. 
 
 of the most promising youth in our country for one or 
 two generations, and the fountain of our positive Chris'- 
 tian influences for the renovation of the world will be 
 dried up. 
 
 There will be no lack of education in the far West ; 
 whether it will be Christian, is for Christian men to de- 
 termine. Infidelity will not hesitate to ally to itself 
 the best of scientific and literary culture. Suppose 
 that young men master the problems they undertake, 
 even if they pay no attention to the question of the 
 truthfulness of Christianity and the basis of its claims, 
 still they think themselves equal with all their intel- 
 lectual acumen, to pronounce upon the highest spiritr 
 ual themes, concerning which they have heard more oi 
 less since boyhood. And if they do not accept Chris- 
 tianity, they hardly admit that they have not given 
 attention to it. Allow every claim except the claims 
 of God to be urged in school days, and the voice of 
 God will go unheeded. 
 
 A Christian education is not, however, likely to de- 
 velop itself in frontier society without the direct inter- 
 position of the men who have a purpose to do it. If no 
 attention is given to it, irreligion and skepticism will 
 educate the children. Allow the higher education of a 
 frontier State to become the football of the average pol- 
 itician, and Christianity will find no quiet abiding place 
 in it. The leading Christian men who have lived in the 
 vicinity of these experiments are clear in their testi- 
 mony, that it is almost impossible to develop and carry 
 forward a wise plan for the higher Christian education 
 in connection with State institutions. The State man- 
 agement is at an early stage put upon guard against the 
 interest of various sects, and, on the other hand, anti- 
 Christian influences stand pressing against the door ; so 
 there is likely to spring up a lack of sympathy with the 
 Christian element in society, which indeed, often mani- 
 
THE NEW ViEST. 17 
 
 fests itself at the outset. Yet there is no one instru- 
 mentahty for the world's moral advancement so impor- 
 tant as the Christian training of youth, who are to be 
 the leaders of the world in the years next ensuing. It 
 is on this account, that many parents, whose own lives 
 are failures morally, are anxious to secure education 
 under Christian teachers for their own children, at the 
 time when they most need the restraining influences of 
 religious faith and precept. 
 
 Unless the Christian men of America who propose 
 to energize Christianity with their own business energy, 
 establish the Christian college in the New West, it will 
 be in vain that they try to plant here and there a 
 Christian church. One college of infidel tendencies, 
 well manned, will — in the absence of a Christian 
 institution of powerful influence — do much toward de- 
 stroying their churches. There is at present no lack 
 of unbelief on the check list of our border States ; rein- 
 force this element by an influential college, and the 
 hands of feeble churches will be soon paralyzed. Un- 
 less we can found the Christian college, and in every 
 generation imbue some portion of the leaders of the 
 State with the principles of Christian faith and life ; 
 and train a ministry upon the ground adapted to the 
 wants of the country ; and train them so thoroughly, 
 intellectually, and spiritually, that they can win a hear- 
 ing and a following, — we shall be pouring water into 
 the sand to try to establish churches in the New West. 
 The Christian college is an " institution for perpetuat- 
 ing Christianity in the w^orld." ^ 
 
 The grand missionary movements of the world are 
 doing the work whose spring is in the Christian school. 
 Leaving out of account the vivifying influence of a 
 
 ^ J. P. Thompson, D. D., College Society Address. 
 2 
 
18 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 Christian college upon the men and women who are to 
 make the future of new States, it must be said that for 
 the purpose of ministerial training the college is funda- 
 mental. Men will not trust sheep to herdsmen ill- 
 fitted to their work. An illiterate ministry is notunfre- 
 quentlj the bane of Christianity in the border country. 
 A clergyman well adapted to the condition of society 
 in an old State, may in the far West fail utterly to ex- 
 ercise the power which one of the sons of the soil 
 trained to work on that soil will have, though of less 
 intellectual vigor. The Church can never gain control 
 without an efficient pastorate in every section of these 
 new regions. 
 
 The very pressure for more Christian work, the 
 world over, calls for the upbuilding of consecrated 
 schools. There are Christian colleges in the country 
 that can be easily counted on one's fingers, which have 
 educated the men who have done the most to push for- 
 ward home and foreign missionary work. The king- 
 dom of Christ would move far backward, if we were to 
 leave out of account the Christian influence of these 
 colleges. The Christian college for training the lead- 
 ers of society, and for educating an efficient ministry, 
 is the instrument chosen of God, and used age after 
 age. He chooses to work through organizations; he 
 has honored and indorsed the Christian college. His 
 instrument is fitted to do His work. The history of 
 this country proves it, and shows the wisdom of found- 
 ing such colleges for creating a Christian civilization. 
 If we are wise, we shall put this renovating power into 
 the far West. 
 
 " Old experience doth attain 
 
 To something like prophetic strain." 
 
 There is no Christian duty more clearly pointed out by 
 Providence than that of founding the Christian college 
 
THE NEW WEST. 19 
 
 on home missionary ground. The college will endure, 
 although individual teachers and graduates fall like 
 leaves. Churches will rise and fall in the chan(»:ino: 
 camps among the mountains ; but the college will 
 prove a perpetual power, influencing every generation 
 of the state, growing through the centuries like some 
 gigantic tree on the slopes of the Sierra, whose life 
 is continued by a foliage constantly perishing and con- 
 stantly renewed. 
 
 The Christian interests of the New West cannot be 
 secured beyond peradventure in any other way than by 
 the establishment of a Christian college for the young 
 people who will, in their maturity, mould the state. 
 If large-hearted givers will furnish a permanent sup- 
 ply of well trained men for the Gospel ministry, and 
 exercise a constant influence for good upon the flower 
 of the youth, in a State whose population will be num- 
 bered by millions, they will take rank with the noblest 
 benefactors of their race. Those men are shortsighted 
 who will only do and die to-day. The Church of God 
 knows nothing of months and years. A thousand 
 years are as one day. The conflict between good and 
 evil will go forward century after century, until the 
 perfect reign of peace ; and God's peace on the earth 
 will never be maintained except through the reign of 
 principles that accord with the most enlightened rea- 
 son. One generation must, then, join hands with 
 another in buildino- those seminaries of learnino; which 
 will train the leaders of the world for Christ. Unless 
 Christian men have the forethought, enterprise, and 
 patience to do this, the Church of God cannot be car- 
 ried forward. 
 
 Are there not to-day two million sheep feeding on 
 the Rio Grande ? One might as well build a mill in 
 southern Colorado without water power or steam to 
 
20 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 manufacture their wool, as to try to build up a Chris- 
 tian civilization on the frontier, — amid a half Mexican ^ 
 pojDulation, wandering herdsman, scattered ranchmen, 
 rough mining camps, and towns with a population 
 gathered from the four winds, — without a Christian 
 college. He who builds a church in a new country is 
 dealing wisely, but he w^hose money founds a college is 
 planting the Christian pleader, physician, pedagogue, 
 press, pulpit, platform, over a vast area of country 
 through all ages of time. He who puts his money 
 into Christian enterprises upon a foreign shore is a 
 good servant of Grod ; but he who will be the honored 
 instrument in planting a Christian college in the 
 New West where it is imperatively needed to-day, will 
 have mercy upon his own countrymen, and deserve the 
 gratitude of uncounted generations. He will in this 
 way exert an influence for raising to the heights of a 
 Christian life the foreign element in the region of the 
 college, and bestow a benediction upon the shining 
 shores of far-off seas in distant ages. The time will not 
 soon come when men will cease to send out mission- 
 aries ; but there will not be so long the golden oppor- 
 tunity to become the founders of Christian colleges at 
 points in the West where they are beyond doubt 
 needed at this hour, and where they will wield a com- 
 manding power till time shall be no more. 
 
III. 
 
 It has been the first instinct of the Gospel ministry 
 to perpetuate itself by providing the means of clerical 
 training*. Those who have derived advantao-es from 
 Christian colleges appreciate most highly the import- 
 ance of providing like privileges for others. The first 
 legal foundation for a college at Oxford was the work 
 of a bishop, who was followed by clerical founders of 
 eleven other colleges at Oxford. Since, however, a 
 broad and manly education is needed for the clergy- 
 man, the English universities have proved of as much 
 advantage to all the leaders of public opinion as to the 
 Christian ministry. No one is fit for the most sacred 
 calling among men unless he has received a well pro- 
 portioned education as a man. What the minister 
 needs, in his general training, is what is needed by all 
 who are liberally educated. Library, cabinet, labora- 
 tory, living teachers, quickening contact with fellow 
 pupils, are good for parishioner as well as parson. 
 
 Harvard and Yale were founded by clergymen to 
 train men for the pulpit. But it is now more than 
 twenty-five years since the Alumni of Yale College 
 enrolled four signers of the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, three members of the convention forming the 
 Constitution of the United States, a vice-president, 
 seven members of the cabinet, four foreign ministers, 
 eighty-four judges of the United States or of State su- 
 preme courts, one hundred seventy-eight members of 
 Congress, forty governors and lieutenant-governors. 
 
22 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 and one hundred forty-one presidents and professors of 
 colleges. There are now above eight thousand grad- 
 uates. 
 
 Harvard was called the " School of the Prophets " 
 for a hundred years. That the college has been of 
 some use to the world besides educating " prophets," 
 is proved by such names as Otis, Warren, Hancock, 
 Samuel Adams, President Adams — father and son, — 
 Prescott, Bancroft, Motley, Emerson, Sumner, Phillips, 
 and a host of those who have kindled the fires of pa- 
 triotism and given life to the Republic. 
 
 Dartmouth College furnished thirty-five hundred 
 and fifty graduates in ninety-six years, among whom 
 were thirty-one judges of the United States or of State 
 supreme courts, seventy-six members of congress, two 
 United States cabinet ministers, four ambassadors to 
 foreign courts, fifteen governors, and one hundred 
 thirty-one presidents or professors of colleges. Web- 
 ster and Choate have been worth incalculably more to 
 America than all the money given for the endowment 
 of Dartmouth College. 
 
 Princeton College in its first century not only edu- 
 cated nearly four hundred fifty ministers, and fifty-four 
 presidents and professors in colleges, but it trained for 
 public service a president and vice-presidents, mem- 
 bers of the cabinet, judges of the United States or of 
 State supreme courts, members of Congress, governors., 
 of States, — not less than one hundred sixty-eight per- 
 sons occupying the highest positions in our country. 
 Twenty-seven hundred graduates left Princeton in its 
 first hundred years, making their influence felt in every 
 corner of our country. 
 
 These colleges, founded by clergymen to give a well 
 proportioned culture to the Christian ministry of all 
 generations, have, also, trained the leading public men 
 of America. Let no man, therefore, despise the prac- 
 
 ,/ 
 
THE NEW WEST. 23 
 
 tical wisdom of that Society which has sought to estab- 
 lish Christian colleges at strategic points in the Old 
 West, and which aims to do the same work in the New 
 West. The donors to the American College and Edu- 
 cation Society will do more in shaping the distant fu- 
 ture of the United States than any other band of the 
 same number in the nation. It will be impossible to 
 plant a Christian college in Colorado, without doing 
 much, thereby, toward modifying the future of New 
 Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and every rising 
 State in that region. 
 
 Remove from America the influence of the seventy 
 thousand persons who graduated at American colleges ., 
 before 1856, and you would put out the light of Church 
 and State. The statisticians of thirty years ago, pre- 
 pared lists enumerating, — six hundred thirty mem- 
 bers of Congress, four hundred judges in supreme 
 courts, two hundred governors and lieutenant-govern- 
 ors, one hundred sixty presidents and four hundred 
 professors of colleges, among the thirty-five thousand 
 graduates of America at that date. The bearing of this 
 statement upon the argument of this paper is made 
 clear by the fact that of the forty-two thousand grad- 
 uates before 1850, thirty-six thousand of them were 
 trained in colleges under the leading management of 
 Congregational and Presbyterian Christians.^ One 
 hundred and four, of the first one hundred and nine- 
 teen colleges established in the country, are of a de- i 
 cidedly Christian character and faith.^ 
 
 It is, therefore, absolutely certain that colleges in 
 America have been in the main founded by Christian 
 people for the sake of educating a ministry, and train- ^ 
 ing the leading minds of the nation. And it is abso- 
 
 ^ Eighth Report of the College Society. 
 2 Thirteenth Report of the College Society. 
 
24 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 lutely certain that the American College and Education /^ 
 Society, which has been engaged for many years in 
 building Christian colleges in the West, is working in 
 the historic line, the line of certain success, and that 
 it will accomplish what it undertakes to do. It is the 
 organ of a Christian sentiment, as prevalent and power- 
 ful as Christianity itself. The founding of Christian 
 colleges is essential to the propagation of Christianity ; 
 this is proved by the history of the progress of the 
 kingdom of God in the world ; this work will, therefore, 
 be carried forward. And it is now the very hour for 
 planting a strong Christian college in the New West, 
 which includes territorially one third of the United 
 States, and contains at this hour a vigorous population 
 busily laying the foundation of future States. The foun- 
 dation of one State is so far laid, that it has been received 
 into the Union ; and a Christian college ought to be 
 planted there at once by the Christian men who intend 
 to take and to hold that part of the continent for Christ. 
 Does not the Christian College bear the same rela- 
 tion to the leaders of Church and State that the common 
 school does to the average mind ? Does it not educate 
 certain men, who in turn become colleges to the people 
 whose school-days are short? He who founds a Chris- 
 tian college is training Christian merchants, editors, 
 teachers, lawyers, physicians, statesmen, and establish- 
 ing Christian instrumentalities innumerable ; and his 
 work will continue till day and night cease. No lights 
 houses on the coast are so useful as these Christian lights 
 planted on the borders of civilization ; no artesian wells, 
 irrio-atins!: arid wastes, of such service to mankind as 
 these fountains of Christian hfe ; no seeds so fruitful as 
 these Christian colleges for hundreds of generations. 
 Do not trained intellectual forces rule society ? Is there 
 no demand for mind in this world ? Are not the insti- 
 
THE NEW WEST. 25 
 
 tntions whose business it is to develop mental power 
 vital to civilization ? And is it not essential that they 
 be under Christian management, if Christ is to conquer 
 the world ? Shall our Christian workers relinquish their 
 hold on the centres of power? If the principles of the 
 Gospel are to pervade the New West, and control its 
 destinies, there is no way in which Christian men can 
 aid so efficiently as by founding a Christian college 
 early in the development of that region. If the think- 
 ers of that wild, beautiful country, of promise so vast in 
 the future, are trained under Christian teachers, their 
 thoughts will develop into Christian States. Is it not a 
 a noble thing to aim for, to direct the formative powers, 
 to bring the leading mental forces of awakening empires 
 into captivity to Christ. The men who give their 
 money to this work touch the sources of Christian prog- 
 ress in our country in the near and distant future. If 
 it is wise to clothe and feed America, it is Christian 
 wisdom to use a part of the money made in the busi- 
 ness, for endowing the educated men of America with 
 the thoughts of God. 
 
 This is not a petty question, as to giving a little in- 
 struction in Latin grammar, algebra, and rhetoric. 
 The Jesuits would, as soon as not, do that; and all / 
 irreligious powers w^ould be glad to combine to do it. 
 But it is a question, wdiether or not the men of an 
 earnest and aggressive Christian foith and life are 
 quick sighted and far sighted enough to seize on the 
 instruments of education, for no dull and narrow secta- 
 rian ends, but for the ]3urpose of filling the minds of 
 wide-awake young men with principles of morality 
 and faith, which are the true foundation of the Repub- 
 lic and of all good to the human race. Shall this 
 work be neglected or delegated to those whose spirit- 
 ual vision is clouded by the haze of old superstition or 
 
20 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 of new unbelief? Shall we lay up beams of silver and 
 gold to glisten in the eastern sun, or shall we use our 
 silver and gold for laying the foundations of many 
 generations in some Christian temple of learning, 
 which will be illumined by the Spirit of God, which will 
 send its light into every mountain valley and along the 
 borders of every stream, and across every wide plain, 
 in a third part of our continent ? 
 
 Could we for a moment examine, somewhat in de- 
 tail, the Avork already inaugurated by the colleges un- 
 der the care of the College Society, we should see that 
 the planting of Christian colleges in home missionary 
 fields is second in importance to no work we undertake 
 for Christ. Its relation to the future of our country 
 is that of the heart to the body. If the name and 
 power of Christ are to be honored in coming ages, we 
 must train the men of the future for the Master, in 
 their school-days. Pour Christianity into the fountain, 
 and it will flow out in life- sri vino; streams. God's chan- 
 nel of mercy to the earth runs through the Christian 
 college. 
 
 It is already a matter of history that the schools fos- 
 tered by our College Society have been fountain heads 
 of Christian life in the West. And is not this in the 
 historic line ? Did not one hundred and seventy young 
 men become Christians in six revivals in Dartmouth 
 College ? Did not five hundred devote themselves to 
 Christ in fourteen out of the twenty revivals in Yale 
 College during its first century ? Were there not three 
 hundred conversions in Amherst College within thirty 
 years ? What, then, ought to be the response from the 
 West? In Illinois, Wabash, and Marietta colleges, 
 there were twenty revivals recorded in eighteen years 
 before 1848. One hundred fourteen of the first one 
 
THE NEW WEST. 27 
 
 hundred thirty-one graduates were Christians. In Ma- 
 rietta, seventy-five per cent, of the four hundred four 
 graduates in thirty-eight years have been Christians, 
 one third of them converted in college. Did not Major 
 Williams, of New London, do good service to the di- 
 vine kingdom, in his annual donation toward the ex- 
 penses of Marietta during ten years, at a critical tune 
 in the history of the college ? Without him, or some 
 man like him, there would have been no college. Wa- 
 bash was established by a handful of poor home mis- 
 sionaries kneeling in the forest on a November day, 
 dedicating the frozen ground and its cloak of snow to 
 Almighty God. Three thousand students on that 
 ground havG been trained under Christian teachers. 
 Fourteen years witnessed nine revivals. Four fifths of 
 the graduates of Beloit College have gone out to the 
 world as Christian men. Oberlin has grown up in a 
 constant revival. Its light is like that of the sun, illu- 
 minatins: a vast area of the West and South. Chris- 
 tian students have gone out like an army to take the 
 kingdom of heaven by force. The Western Reserve 
 College, founded by home missionaries to train home 
 missionaries, has had in all departments not less than 
 five thousand students. It has been not uncommon to 
 find from two thirds to four fifths of the whole number 
 of pupils at any given time enrolled as men of Chris- 
 tian character and influence. 
 
 These colleges have aided Christian 'families in edu- 
 cating their children, and they have, also, proved a 
 very positive power in making known the claims of a 
 religious life to students who have not previously 
 heard the Gospel message. The number of graduates 
 from the colleges that have been aided by the College 
 Society is now nearly three thousand ; it is probable 
 that thirty thousand students have been in attendance 
 
28 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 for a greater or less length of time.^ John Todd said 
 that we had every evidence of the divine approval of 
 this noble work, except that no archangel had yet 
 thrust down a trumpet to blow the approbation of God 
 into our ears.^ 
 
 Does it need to be said that no such spiritual results 
 have been known, or are likely to be known, where 
 Christian people neglect to plant the Christian college, 
 and leave the youth to be cared for by unbelievers or 
 by Jesuits ? 
 
 If it be true that American colleges have been 
 founded, in the first instance, like those of the Old 
 World, for maintaining an educated ministry,^ it is in 
 point to inquire concerning the relation of the Chris- 
 tian college to clerical ranks, since it is mainly upon 
 this ground that the college is early planted in the 
 home missionary field. 
 
 The religious influence of the college has a vital 
 bearing on this. Revivals in colleges increase the 
 number of Gospel heralds. It is estimated that one 
 quarter of our ministry become Christians in college. 
 One half of the ministers from those colleges aided 
 by the College Society, commenced their Christian 
 course in term time.* John Robinson, the leader of 
 the Pilgrims, John Cotton, Jonathan Edwards — father 
 and son, — Samuel Hopkins, Ebenezer Porter, Moses 
 Stuart, B. B. Ed^vards, E. E. Cornelius, B. B. Wisner, 
 
 1 Dr. J. E. lioy, Congregational Quarterly, January, 1877. 
 
 2 Plain Letters. 
 
 8 The emphasis placed upon an educated ministry is shown by the state- 
 ment in Tyler's Prayer for Colleges, — upon the authority of John Kilborn, 
 A. M., — that all but thirty-three of nine hundred Congregational minis- 
 ters in Connecticut before 1832 were college graduates ; and that only fifty- 
 eight of the eleven liundred alumni of Andover Seminary before 1851 had 
 not received a college education. Revised edition, p. 316. 
 
 4 Lyman Whiting, Address College Society. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 29 
 
 E. N. Kirk, and a host of the most useful ministers in 
 America, began a Christian hfe in college.^ 
 ' Tlie Christian college, designed to train Christian 
 preachers, creates an atmosphere favorable for recruit- 
 ing the ministry. The colleges of America have met 
 the demand, furnishing most ministers when most 
 needed, in the early settlement of the regions where 
 they are located. When Harvard was two hundred 
 years old, more than one fourth of her graduates were 
 enrolled as ministers; during the first sixty years, more 
 than one half became pastors. Yale has given above 
 two thousand graduates to this work, — about one 
 fourth of all. During the first- twelve years, three 
 fourths of her alumni entered the ministry, and during 
 the first thirty years nearly one half. The New Eng- 
 land theology has been shaped in no small degree by 
 thinkers trained in this college. Forty-six out of nine- 
 ty-nine of the first graduates of Dartmouth entered 
 the ministry ; ten years ago the list showed seven hun- 
 dred. Up to the year 1857, forty-three per cent, of 
 the alumni of Middlebury College were preachers ; 
 the proportion varied little from this at Amherst. 
 One fourth of the graduates of Brown University have 
 become ministers, and nearly one half of the eleven 
 hundred sent out by Wesleyan University. Thirty- 
 four per cent, of the graduates of ten New England 
 colleges previous to 1845 were pastors.^ Out of thirty- 
 five thousand alumni of the colleges of the United 
 States, thirty years ago, between eight and nine thou- 
 sand were ministers of the Gospel. The first college 
 west of the Alleghany mountains, Jefferson, numbers 
 nearly seventeen hundred alumni ; of whom more than 
 half have been preachers. 
 
 ^ Sixteenth Report, College Society. 
 2 Thirteenth Report, College Society. 
 
30 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 The colleges nurtured by the College Society have 
 trained great numbers of home missionaries. More 
 than one third of the alumni of Western Reserve be- 
 fore 1868, were pastors. Of the first ninety-four grad- 
 uates of Illinois College, forty-five became preachers, 
 rendering invaluable service in the West. Wabash 
 gave forty-five of the first sixty-five. Marietta sent 
 sixty-five from the first one hundred thirteen ; at this 
 day her ministers have made a record in more than 
 twenty States of the Union. In 1868, Beloit had fur- 
 nished fifty-two men from one hundred thirty-four 
 graduates. Two hundred fifty churches have been sup- 
 plied from this college. Iowa college has given forty 
 per cent, of her graduates to the ministerial office. 
 The sun never sets upon her sons and daughters en- 
 gaged in missionary w^ork.^ The Western colleges, 
 aided by the College Society, have already trained 
 from seventeen to eighteen hundred pastors.^ The 
 Congregational churches west of the eastern line of 
 Ohio, comprising only twenty-nine per cent, of the 
 whole membership of the country, are now furnishing 
 forty-eight per cent, of our candidates for the minis- 
 try.^ The six interior States furnish only one candi- 
 date less than the six New England States, although 
 the latter have twice the church membership of the 
 former.* 
 
 Does it need to be inquired whether the average 
 Western State university can be relied upon to train 
 home missionaries? Michigan University, in 1876, 
 with three hundred fifty-two professors of religion 
 among more than a thousand students had only nine 
 
 ^ Tyler, Prayer for Colleges, rev. ed., p. 284. 
 
 2 Dr. Roy, Cong. Quarterly, January, 1877. 
 
 3 Thirtieth Report, College Society. 
 ^ President Chapin. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 31 
 
 candidates for the ministry.-^ In 1872, seven years' 
 record of our theoloo-lcal seminaries showed that sev- 
 enty-eight per cent, of the students from the West 
 came from colleges nourished \yy our College Society.^ 
 If the West is left to be supplied with a Christian min- 
 istry by State universities, the people will perish by a 
 famine of the words of the Lord. Born of no distinc- 
 tively Christian purpose, and no self-sacrifice ; not un- 
 frequently with instructors who are little imbued with 
 the spirit of the Gospel ; subject more or less to politi- 
 cal intermeddling, — the State university is not likely 
 soon to enter into competition with the Christian col- 
 lege for the training of missionaries. Kill out the 
 Christian college, and the supply of home and foreign 
 missionaries will be cut off. 
 
 Unless the Christian college is built upon the ground 
 where it is needed, it fails to do its work. While it is 
 true that one live college will make itself felt to the 
 ends of the world, it is not true that it will be so 
 largely useful at the Antipodes, as it will be to give 
 the graduate of the primal college money enough to 
 build another school in that strange, wild country, 
 where he has located. The divine command — Go 
 preach — leads through training schools. But our 
 home missionary Secretaries find it difficult to man the 
 front ; and the future years are calling loudly as the 
 present. " It is the sons of the West, educated on her 
 own soil, who must preach the Gospel to the West." ^ 
 
 Poverty in youth is likely to lead a clergyman to 
 habits of self-denial, and to adapt him to the average 
 man. But the poor young man of the West cannot 
 
 ^ Tyler, Prayer for Colleges, rev. ed., p. 282. 
 2 Twenty-ninth Report, College Society. 
 ^ Lyman Beecher. 
 
32 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 come East to be educated ; and if he does, the East 
 may keep hhn. Three fourths of the pupils of our 
 country are of slender means, or poor.^ The college 
 must be planted in the inexpensive West, near the men 
 to be benefited by it. Would a poor widow in New 
 England send her son to Colorado to be educated ? It 
 is only a little further to send him to England. Our 
 fathers sent a few pupils to Oxford and Cambridge, but 
 they quickly decided to build a Cambridge at their 
 own doors ; and to send beggars to England to raise 
 money for their college : and Old England gave it 
 most generously. 
 
 " We cannot expect that a university at Brunswick 
 or Burlington will diffuse the same healthful glow 
 among the inhabitants of Wisconsin and Iowa, as 
 among the population closely encircling it. We might 
 as well expect that the flowers which bloom in Maine 
 or Vermont would sweeten the air of the prairies ; 
 that one forest, one mountain range, would purify the 
 atmosphere of our entire land. The Western waters 
 cannot be navigated by steamers all whose engines are 
 kept at the east. Our higher schools must be near to 
 the communities which they would attract w^th a mag- 
 netic power." ^ 
 
 The rich are few. It is, therefore, not strange that 
 the majority of those who enter the most self denying 
 service are not from rich families. A widow in Vermont 
 reads the life of Harriet Newell, and, having no money 
 for missions, she gives her four sons to the service. 
 Another woman asks, who among her eleven children 
 will preach the Word in foreign lands ; and, when one 
 volunteers, she sells her gold beads to buy classical 
 books for him. The need of missionaries ten years 
 
 1 Professor Haddock, CoZ^e^e Society Address. 
 
 2 Professor Edwards A. Park, College Society Address. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 33 
 
 hence should lead us to plant the Christian college 
 within reach of self denying Christian families in the 
 West. The colleges nourished by the College Society 
 have already sent abroad one hundred and twenty-five 
 men, and many women, as foreign missionaries.^ This 
 is more than Avere sent by Dartmouth, Amherst, Wil- 
 liams, and Middlebury, before 1856. 
 
 Colorado College, at Colorado Springs, is more than 
 five hundred miles from any other Christian college. 
 The three nearest are those noble and needy enter- 
 prises, Drury, Washburn, and Doane. Colorado Col- 
 lege is further by rail from Doane than it is from An- 
 dover to Oberlin ; more distant by rail from Washburn 
 than from Vermont University to Hudson's Bay ; as far 
 from Drury as from Williams College to Lake Superior. 
 If the children of the more than one hundred and 
 twenty-five Christian churches in Colorado are ever 
 trained for home or foreign missionary service, they 
 must have a Christian college in Colorado. No gifts of 
 money to foreign shores, or to any other instrumental- 
 ity for Christian labor than that of the College Society, 
 will supply the men needed for the whole work of the 
 Church. Christian colleges must be planted — not too 
 remote from each other — in the very neighborhood of 
 the young men who desire to bear an honorable part 
 in bringing in the reign of God, and who will band to- 
 gether to carry the Gospel to every hamlet on plain or 
 mountain, and to far countries. The business of rais- 
 ing up the men is fundamental to tlie growth of Chris- 
 tianity, and the Society which is doing this ought to 
 receive the hearty support of our churches. It cer- 
 tainly will receive generous gifts from the most thought- 
 ful men in our churches ; the more generous, if the 
 inconsiderate give little. 
 
 1 Joseph E. Roy, D. D., Congregational Quaiierlg, January, 1877. 
 .3 
 
34 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 It can require only a slight knowledge of the condi- 
 tion of the New West, to determine that the founding 
 of a Christian college in Colorado is the first thing to 
 be done in pushing Christian work in that region. Col- 
 orado is sufficiently developed to warrant establishing 
 a college ; other localities in the New West will not call 
 for similar work for some years. But these are the 
 very years in which a home missionary training school 
 is needed, in the region where so many new churches 
 will be soon founded. The distances are magnificent, 
 and if Santa Fe is three hundred fifty miles from Colo- 
 rado Colleo:e, it is at least two thousand miles nearer 
 than it is to Harvard and Andover ; and it is much 
 more likely that the Christian students of Colorado 
 Springs will be ready to act as home missionaries in 
 Arizona than that Harvard and Andover men will go 
 there. It is practically easier to obtain home mission- 
 aries from the West than from the East. The Western 
 man belongs to a moving family. The grandfather 
 lived in Connecticut ; the fiither in Illinois ; the son is 
 in Colorado ; the great-grandson will certainly go to 
 Arizona, or crowd into Mexico to preach the Gospel ; 
 and the chances are that he will be a better missionary 
 than if he had been born in Connecticut. 
 
 Colorado College is a thousand miles from any the- 
 ological seminary. What shall we do about it? The 
 time is not at hand, but it is not distant, when a strong 
 theologian must be planted upon the Rocky Mountain 
 plateau, to grapple with unbelief as he finds it in the 
 New West, and to train young men there for Christian 
 enterprise. A student from Holsteinborg in Green- 
 land, within the Arctic circle, would not have to travel 
 so far to Andover as a student from Colorado Springs. 
 A student from Vancouver's Island moving in an air 
 Une, will reach Colorado College almost as soon as a 
 
THE NEW WEST. 35 
 
 Colorado student can reach Chicago Seminary. Some- 
 time between now and the perfect reign of Christ, there 
 will be opened upon this mountain plateau a fountain 
 from which will flow home missionary influences ; and 
 the day cannot be put far off, unless the millennium is 
 to dawn late in the New West. 
 
 Are there not eitrlitv thousand Mormons to be con- 
 verted?^ Is it not likely, also, that there may be a few 
 Indians left after the government gets through killing 
 
 1 Mormon separation from civilization has been broken up by the advent 
 of the railway and the Gentile. It is only through Christian education that 
 the Mormons will be separated from polygamy. The way is now open for 
 introducing this instrumentality. A progressive spirit is leading a large 
 part of the people to desire education for their children, that they may 
 equal their Gentile neighbors. There are no free schools in Utah, and the 
 establishment of Christian instruction of advanced grade will win a large 
 Mormon patronage. It is at this moment possible by a judicious system to 
 introduce Christian teachers of private schools at various points in Utah. 
 The way may be thus prepared for free schools within a few years; and 
 this territory will be ready to become a State. A comparatively small 
 amount of money would go far towards maintaining scores of teachers, who 
 would nearly earn a livelihood by tuition. But this work cannot be done 
 to the best advantage without means of supplementing the pay of teachers, 
 at this time, when the Mormon prejudice is first yielding. 
 
 Rev. Walter M. Barrows is at the present time attempting to establish a 
 Christian Academy at Salt Lake. There are persons in Utah who will do 
 much toward founding this enterprise. Generous friends have already ap- 
 peared in the East. Any one who knows the commercial resources of Salt 
 Lake, and of the region of which it is the natural center, must consider the 
 future of such an institution as one of great promise. There are already 
 twenty-five thousand people gathered here, of whom perha[)s five thousand 
 are Gentiles. The ability of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains to 
 maihta,in population is very great, and it is only a question of time when 
 the Christian College will grow up fi-om the Christian Academy. Those 
 {)ersons who invest money in providing Christian instructors for Utah will 
 not only do missionary work among the Mormons, but lay the foundations 
 for a noble Christian State in the near future. The Presbyterian educa- 
 tional work in southern Utah is eminently successful. It will not be long 
 before the many sons of Mormon parents will avail themselves of Christian 
 schools at their own doors, and some will take advanced studies in Colorado 
 College. It is to-(hiy of the utmost importance to establish academical work 
 in Utah, and to hasten the time when a Christian College, well endowed, 
 will rise near the present site of the Mormon Endowment House. 
 
36 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 the most vicious ? It will be only fair treatment of the 
 Gospel to test its power on the wasting remnant of red 
 men, who will for a long time linger in those great cen- 
 tral mountain regions. The results already achieved 
 justify no small expectation of good to those savage 
 tribes in the future. There are, also, at this time thirty 
 thousand Spanish-speaking Eomanists in southern Col- 
 orado participating in the political life of the nation ; 
 and one hundred thousand more in New Mexico voting 
 in a Territory, and wondering that they cannot vote as 
 a State. And Arizona has a few more. These ele- 
 ments are in addition to the usual difficulties incident 
 to a border country, — - the wild excesses of new min- 
 ing camps, religious indifference and unbelief in village 
 and city, the moral disadvantages of sparse farming 
 settlements, and the strange life of the " cow-boys." 
 
 It is indeed true, that the power of Christianity — 
 what there is of it — is nowhere more fresh and life- 
 giving than in the New West. As good society can be 
 found at the base of the Rocky Mountains as anywhere 
 on the planet. But the Christian people there will 
 need constant reinforcement from the East, in order to 
 conquer and hold this region. And there is no way in 
 which they can be so effectually aided as by the estab- 
 lishment of a Christian College. 
 
 Is not Colorado College at this moment an important 
 point in Christian strategy ? It is beyond the great 
 plains, in the immediate neighborhood of Mormon and 
 Indian, and the Mexican element of our Republic, as 
 well as in contiguity with regions that will be the front 
 of the home missionary field for the next fifty years. 
 
 If our Protestant faith makes less of forms than of 
 the interior life, it is more necessary that we emphasize 
 the college and a thoughtful Christianity, and plant 
 
THE NEW WEST. 37 
 
 Christian schools among the Spanish-speaking popula- 
 tion of southern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, 
 to train the youth of strange tongue for citizenship in 
 a Christian republic. The Church has been praying 
 for the foreign mission field. One way in which God 
 has answered these prayers, has been by taking a large 
 section of the foreign field and planting it close to our 
 houses, as if we could look over our garden fences and 
 see China, Africa, Rome, and a race of red men crying 
 at our back-doors. We little heed their cry, consider- 
 ing how much we prayed for them before they became 
 so common among us. 
 
 It is now twenty-eight years since a large population 
 of Spanish Catholics became a part of our nation, and 
 the prevailing church polity of New England has not 
 yet so much as looked at them, any more than it has 
 sent Christian explorers into the mines of Montana. If 
 other denominations have had more mission zeal in 
 recent years, we thank God for their energy, enter- 
 prise, and Christian patriotism.^ 
 
 Rome in America has nearly ten thousand young 
 men in colleges and seminaries to-day, under seven 
 hundred fifty professors, Jesuits for the most part ; 
 and half a million pupils in schools of a lower grade. 
 This work is organized under seven religious orders of 
 men, and thirty-six religious orders of women .^ There 
 can, then, be no question as to the policy that Rome 
 will pursue in the New West. Already the Jesuits are 
 stretching out their hands after Protestant children. 
 
 In California, the Romanists have one "sixth of the 
 population ; but one quarter of the churches. In 1870 
 
 1 In 1874, there were twelve Methodist churches in Montana, five Pres- 
 byterian, three Episcopalian, three Roman Catholic, no Congi-egational, 
 and no Baptist. 
 
 2 Vide Murray's History of Roman Catholics in the United States. 
 
38 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 a State normal school, State university, military acad- 
 emy, schools for the higher education under manage- 
 ment EjDiscopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciples, and 
 Baptist, reported less pupils by a thousand than the 
 Catholics in 1876. A hundred and four papal profess- 
 ors give instruction in live colleges for young men, and 
 two academies for young women. All the colleges and 
 academies under distinctively Christian Protestant in- 
 fluences had, in 1870, only three tenths as many pupils 
 as Romanist schools of the same grade in 1876. It 
 need not be said that the papists do not lack for Protes- 
 tant patronage. 
 
 The Jesuits are quite ready to educate the New 
 West. They have a good basis for operation in South- 
 ern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. We need not 
 lift a hand to build a Christian college. The gigantic 
 machinery of the Society of Jesus is silently getting 
 under way at this moment. Protestant children in 
 southern Colorado are already falling under the influ- 
 ence of papal schools. The Romanists are doing far 
 more than all other Christian denominations for educa- 
 tion in Colorado. One school has an income of nearly 
 six thousand dollars. 
 
 We need to learn of Rome. If Protestant Christian- 
 ity has not so much ingenuity as the Jesuitical ; if An- 
 glo-Saxon perseverance is not equal to the Roman ; if 
 those who love an open Bible are not as ready to put 
 money into Christian schools in the New West as our 
 papal neighbors, — then the Pope may have the New 
 West, and He will certainly take possession of a fair 
 share of it. Those who are acquainted with the Jesuit 
 policy need not be told that their leading aim is to con- 
 trol the future by the present education of youth. 
 
 It ought not to be said that we are asleep, but when 
 we wake up we shall know that we have been asleep. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 39 
 
 We starve and pinch the American Missionary Associ- 
 ation, giving httle more than two hundred thousand 
 dollars a year towards founding Christian schools and 
 planting Christian pulpits among four million freedmen 
 in the pit of ignorance and degradation ; we do little 
 to sjDcak of among the Celestial pagans on the Pacific 
 slope ; and our labor among the Indians is light. But 
 our Romish friends are now said to be spending six 
 hundred thousand dollars a year among the freedmen, 
 among whom they have one hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand pupils under priestly schools.^ There are one 
 hundred thirty-seven Catholic missionaries and teachers 
 among the Indians. We can but commend their zeal, 
 which has been so signally manifested in the mission- 
 ary work of all ages ; and which illumined the dark 
 forest abodes of the red men in the early history ot' 
 America. Protestant service among the Indians has, 
 indeed, proved a great power ; and with a new policy 
 on the part of the government, vastly more will be 
 achieved within a few years for the elevation of the 
 race. It will greatly facilitate a forward movement in 
 missions amoni»: the Indians, if a strono- Christian col- 
 le^e is established in Colorado in near neii>-hborhood to 
 the large Indian population of the New West. 
 
 Practically we do not do much missionary work 
 among the Spanish-speaking people of America. Mex- 
 ico has not been long open to the Gospel message. 
 Presbyterian and Methodist missions, and the labors of 
 the American Board in that country, are eminently suc- 
 cessful ; but comparatively little is attempted among 
 the eight or nine millions of our neighboring State, 
 although thousands are throwing off the papal yoke, 
 and the people are eager for the Word of life. In all 
 the years in which New Mexico — three times as large 
 
 ^ James Powell, D. D. 
 
40 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 as New England — has been a portion of our domestic 
 heritage, we have hardly intimated to her people — a 
 fraction of whom are sun- worshippers, as well as good 
 Catholics, — that they are any part of a Protestant or 
 Christian nation. The Presbyterians and Methodists 
 have opened school and mission work at two or three 
 points in New Mexico, and an Episcopal bishop is now 
 appointed to visit that country and Arizona. Other 
 denominations ignore the work altogether. 
 
 We shall do well to learn of Rome, which proceeds 
 calmly in carrying forward plans, century after cen- 
 tury, for the conversion of the nations. We may wisely 
 imitate them in their zeal for education, at least so far 
 as to furnish a Christian college for Protestant children 
 in Colorado. Unless our Christianity has faith to pre- 
 pare the way for the millennium in Spanish America, 
 whose faith will do it ? Shall New England Christians 
 wait till Old England, or even Micronesia, sends mis- 
 sionaries to New Mexico ? Is it not possible to train a 
 few teachers and preachers in a Christian college near 
 the work to be done ? It will be more easy to secure 
 men than from the East. If the Spirit of the Lord de- 
 scends with tongues of fire on a Christian college in the 
 New West, it is likely that one of the tongues will be 
 Spanish. 
 
 There are, among the Spanish-speaking people of 
 America, persons of great intelligence, culture, and lib- 
 erality of spirit. They are Catholics, but they desire 
 a reformation. They welcome Protestant ideas and 
 any instrumentality that will elevate their people. 
 There is no doubt that the school work which the au- 
 thorities of Colorado College are now organizing for 
 the Spanish-speaking population will have a good re- 
 ception. It certainly will, if it be carried out with 
 practical wisdom and the spirit of Christ, without con- 
 
THE NEW WEST. 41 
 
 fcroversy. It is absolutely certain that if, within a 
 few years, we can find a few Spanish-speaking youth, 
 who will obtain a Christian education and then give 
 themselves to mission work, we can do good work for 
 Mexico ) and between now and the dawn of perfect 
 light in that country, the Catholic colleges will become 
 seminaries for the study of the Bible. Fourteen out of 
 nineteen colleges now at Oxford were founded by Pa- 
 pists. A religious reformation in Mexico can be best 
 aided through Spanish-speaking young men from the 
 United States, trained in a Christian college in their 
 own neighborhood, founded by Christian men deter- 
 mined to carry the world for Christ at the earliest pos- 
 sible moment. These young men have it in them to 
 reform their country. There are already native help- 
 ers of apostolic zeal in Mexico. But some of them at 
 least should be educated in a Christian college. 
 
 The Denver and Rio Grande Railway, already a de- 
 cided success as a business enterprise, now stretching 
 far south, is chartered to the southern line of New 
 Mexico and is aiming for the city of Mexico, which can 
 be reached by easy grades ; a line sure of large profits 
 by an immense business. This railway is now awaken- 
 ing the drowsy Spanish American people ; and Chris- 
 tian men of enterprise ought to enter, at this very 
 moment, upon the work of throwing into these Mex- 
 ican villages positive religious influences, which will at 
 least seize upon the most vigorous young men amono- 
 them, and prepare them for citizenship in a Christian 
 country. 
 
 If we send the Gospel to Old Spain, let us send it to 
 New Spain within our own borders. That the New is 
 not unlike the Old is easy to believe. We have medi- 
 aeval Spanish Catholicism voting in Southern Colorado 
 In the "Atlantic Monthly" for June, 1877, " H. H." 
 gives some account of these dwellers in adobe houses : — • 
 
42 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 " There still exists among the Roman Catholic Mexicans of 
 Southern Colorado an order like the old order of the Flagel- 
 lants. Every spring, in Easter week, several of the young 
 men belonging to tliis order inflict on themselves dreadful 
 tortures in public. The congregations to which they belong 
 gather about them, follow them from honse to house, and spot 
 to spot, and kneel down around them, singing and praying 
 and continually exciting their frenzy to a higher pitch. 
 Sometimes they have also drums and fifes, adding a melan- 
 choly and discordant music to the harrowing spectacle. The 
 priests ostensibly disapprove of these proceedings, and never 
 appear in public with the Penitentes. But the impression 
 among outsiders is very strong that they do secretly counten- 
 ance and stimulate them, thinking that the excitement tends 
 to strengthen the hold of the church on the people's minds. 
 It is incredible that such superstitions can still be alive and in 
 force in our country. Some of the tortures these poor crea- 
 tures undergo are almost too terrible to tell. One of the most 
 common is to make in the small of the back an arrow-shaped 
 incision ; then fastening into each end of a long scarf the 
 prickly cactus stems, they scourge themselves with them, 
 throwing the scarf ends first over one shoulder, then over the 
 other, each time hitting the bleeding wound. The ' leaves of 
 the yucca or " soap weed " are pounded into a pulp and made 
 into a sort of sponge, acrid and inflaming ; a man carries this 
 along in a pail of water, and every now and then wets the 
 wound with it to increase the pain and the flowing of the blood. 
 Almost naked, lashing themselves in this way, they run wildly 
 over the plains. Their blood drops on the ground at every 
 step. A fanatical ecstasy possesses them ; they seem to feel 
 no fatigue ; for three days and two nights they have been 
 known to keep it up without rest. 
 
 " Others bind the thick lobes of the prickly pear under 
 their arms and on the soles of their feet, and run for miles, 
 swinging their arms and stamping their feet violently on the 
 ground. To one who knows Avhat suffering there is from 
 even one of these tiny little spines imbedded in the flesh, it 
 seems past belief that a man could voluntarily endure such 
 pain. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 43 
 
 " Others lie on the thresholds of the churches, and every 
 person who enters the church is asked to step with his full 
 weight on their bodies. Others carry about heavy wooden 
 crosses (eight or ten feet long), so heavy that a man can 
 hardly lift them. Some crawl on their hands and knees, 
 dragging the cross. Crowds of women accompany them, 
 singing and shouting. When the penitent throws himself 
 on the ground, they la}" the cross on his breast and fall on 
 their knees around him and pray ; then they rise up, place 
 the cross on his back again, and take up the dreadful journey. 
 Now and then the band will enter a house and eat a little 
 food, which in all good CJatholic houses is kept ready for 
 them. After a short rest the leader gives a signal, and they 
 set out again. 
 
 " Last spring, in the eighteen hundred and seventy-sixth 
 year of our merciful Lord, four of these young men died from 
 the effects of their tortures. One of them, after running for 
 three days under the cactus scourge, lay all Easter night 
 naked upon the threshold of a church. Easter morning he 
 Avas found there dead." 
 
 There are some who would pity these people if they 
 lived -on some distant continent ; but as it is, they 
 think little more about them than they do about the 
 pagan temples the Chinese are erecting in America, or 
 the ignorance of millions of blacks deaf with the crack 
 of the slave whip. For the most part, however, we 
 believe, that, where the facts are known, men have 
 pity upon their own neighbors. That a pure Gospel' 
 should .be preached in Mexico, and in New Mexico, is a 
 duty near at hand. In fulfilling this duty, it is a prac- 
 tical step to aid in founding Colorado College ; which 
 is not far distant ; and which is already making defi- 
 nite plans to enter on this missionary field by such in- 
 strumentalities as fjxll wibhin its proper province, — 
 preparing the Avay for teachers and preachers, both 
 American and of Spanish descent, and training the 
 men for their work. 
 
44 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 Colorado College is not only upon the very verge of 
 the frontier, in the first battle line of the Home Mis- 
 sionary Society, but there is no college in the country 
 so near foreign missionary service as this, with thirty 
 thousand neighbors in the same State, speaking a for- 
 eign tongue, practicing the rites of a strange religion, 
 with lives little guided by the principles of the Gos- 
 pel ; and in territory a little farther south — made near 
 by business connections, — a hundred thousand more, 
 clamoring to become a State. Let us put money into 
 foreign missions, but not forget this foreign fragment 
 of our own Republic. 
 
 There are men now studying for the Christian 
 ministry, in Colorado College. Is there not money 
 enough to put a strong home missionary force into 
 these papal sections ? Are the sons, of the Pilgrims 
 lacking in enterprise ? Providence opens the door ; 
 do we fumble in our pockets, think we cannot afford to 
 pay the fee, or send the money somewhere else, and 
 keep out of the best missionary work in the country 
 at the very moment in which our labor will tell the 
 most for our Master ? 
 
 " Civilization must go as yeast, not as bread," says 
 an eminent preacher. Plant a Christian college in the 
 New West, and it will raise new life in an effete civili- 
 zation, where men plow with crooked sticks, thresh 
 wheat by driving goats over it, and put their teeth to 
 a stone in place of the bread of life. There is just as 
 good prospect that the Spanish-speaking people of 
 America will be prepared for Christian citizenship as 
 that the promises of God will be fulfilled. We shall 
 not always hear men asserting that Mexico has had 
 fifty-six revolutions in fifty-six years.^ If there is in 
 America a Christian republic, it ought to carry the 
 
 1 Rev. Arthur Mitchell, in S. S. World. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 45 
 
 Bible into Mexico, and erect the Christian school. The 
 essential instrument is the one God has always used, — 
 Christian education to kindle the holy fire. Has the 
 fire so far gone out that we cannot illuminate the dark 
 corners of our own land ? We send men to every part 
 of the world, and they prove great powers for the re- 
 generation of nations. Cannot all the Christian force 
 in America redeem America ? May we not at the least 
 establish a small Christian college, which will grow into 
 a great power for good at the front of our home mission 
 field, and in the immediate neighborhood of foreign 
 populations needing the Gospel ? 
 
 In every age of history God has used young men in 
 their school days for achieving great results. The early 
 prophets received instruction. Paul was a learned man ; 
 the church Fathers were good students. The enthusi- 
 asm of their youth was tempered by careful studies, and 
 they became men fit to sit on thrones in the kingdom 
 of our. Lord. D'Aubigne affirms that the German Refor- 
 mation was born in the universities. The English Ref- 
 ormation W'as cradled in colleges, and nurtured by 
 scholarly men. Ranke's " History of the Popes" states 
 that Austria was at one time nearly Protestant, but the 
 Jesuits obtained a hold in the universities and swung 
 back the nation to papal influence. The most vital 
 movements of the modern world have begun in Chris- 
 tian seminaries. 
 
 John Wesley — who was God's instrument to set 
 strongminded and consecrated shoemakers and black- 
 smiths to preaching the Gospel to the poor — had also 
 the discretion to remain ten years in his Oxford fellow- 
 ship, that he might fire the young men with his own 
 spirit. " Is it not," he asked, '' a more extensive bene- 
 fit to sweeten the fountain than to purify a particular 
 
46 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 stream ? " The American Home Missionary Society 
 began in the conversations of Anclover students. May 
 not the students of some Western college, obscure as 
 Andover was once, inaugurate new enterprises for the 
 Master ? The American Board of Foreign Missions was 
 begun by the students of a very small college, praying 
 under a haystack. May not the students of a feeble 
 college, who pray nightly under the shadow of the 
 Colorado mountains, achieve pomething honorable ? 
 Ever}^ Christian college ought to become a fountain of 
 holy fire, illuminating the third part of a continent ; 
 and it will, if it is sufficiently endowed with the money 
 and the prayers of God's people, and the Power from 
 on High. George Fox said that every true Quaker 
 ought to shake the country for ten miles around hi m. 
 If Colorado College is true to its position and to its 
 consecration, is it too much to hope that it will make 
 itself felt, not only in Colorado, but in the region south 
 and southwest of it, and that it will aid in preparing 
 the way of our Lord ? 
 
 Agesilaus the Great, being asked how far the bounds 
 of Sparta extended, shook his spear, and answered, 
 '' As far as this will reach." The true heritage of the 
 Church depends on how far its spear can penetrate. 
 There must be an enterprising, aggressive policy. 
 There are Christians not a few, who, in respect to re- 
 ligious work, never heard of Idaho and Montana. New 
 Mexico and Arizona. And their knowledge of Ne- 
 vada, Utah, and Wyoming is little derived from new 
 church records. Dr. Wayland says of Judson : " He 
 believed that a bold and aggressive polioy was de- 
 manded of the conductors of missionary efforts, and 
 that no other course will either arouse or keep alive 
 the benevolent spirit of the churches." 
 
 The American Board has taken a bold, aggressive 
 
THE NEW WEST. 47 
 
 policy. This policy has money in it. Any other policy 
 than this will be perpetually poor. The Presbyterian 
 Church is at this day in the front of home missionary 
 enterprise. They are doing apostolic work. They 
 are not excelled by the Methodists, who push with 
 great vigor in their fir western missions. The Epis- 
 copal Church is also very active in its missionary la- 
 bors in the New West. The Baptists and the Congre- 
 gationalists appear to have little money and few men 
 at the front.^ The men on the border are usually 
 
 1 The lack of enterpi-ise has been in the donors and not in any Home 
 Missionary Society. The Congregational churches have not furnished the 
 means of advancing their work on the border. The Anferican Home Mis- 
 sionary Society would have pushed the'work if money had been at hand. 
 It is now nearly twenty years since Colorado was opened, and thei-e has 
 been no general missionary of the American Home Missionary Society lo- 
 cated in the New West, save that a few months' labor has been given re- 
 cently by two men. Appreciating most heartily the work of the Society in 
 its wide field, and its beneficent results in Colorado, it is suitable also to 
 urge the claims of the New West for more men, and especially for a mis- 
 sionary Superintendent. The population of Colorado is a hundi-ed and 
 forty thousnnd, and there is a population of more than half a million more 
 in the neighboring territories, among whom a Superintendent would be 
 likely to explore. There are only eleven Congregational churches in Colo- 
 rado to-day, three of which are practically dead and a fourtli of doubtful 
 life. In an economical point of view, it would have prevented loss, if there 
 had been a Superintendent in the field. Ten years ago there were four 
 Congregational pastors; now that the population has increased by a hun- 
 dred thousan<l, we have five ; the Home Missionary Society aids three of 
 those now upon the ground, the same number as ten years ago. The So- 
 ciety has averaged four men. There are two self-supporting churches. 
 Every other leading denomination has been represented by local superin- 
 tendents. " The Presbyterians were not so strong as the Congregationalists 
 ten years ago, but they now have m.ore than three times the force in the 
 State, and are pushing energetically in other parts of the New West. The 
 kingdom is to the strongest. The kingdom is to a bold, aggressive policy, 
 which is less likely to lack means than the more timid. If Congregational 
 churches desire to do more -vVork in the New West, let them take decisive 
 action through the contribution box. 
 
 A comparison of the population of the districts of western Superintend- 
 ents of the American Home Missionary Society with the population of the 
 New West, will justify the appointment of a Superintendent for this region. 
 And if the ])opulation of the United States be divided by the number of 
 
48 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 clear cut and of decided character, and there is some- 
 times a lack of comity in carrying on church work ; 
 but upon the whole the Christian people stand shoul- 
 der to shoulder in earnest work, and make common 
 cause for the Master.^ 
 
 The Christian people of Colorado entertain a strong 
 conviction that trained bands must be sent into every 
 part of the New West, in the early deve;lopment of 
 the regions beyond. Without extended missionary 
 journeys, the highway will not be opened for the King 
 of Glory to come in. But the country cannot be pen- 
 etrated everj^where by preaching tours, unless men 
 adapted to the work are trained upon the field. This 
 is evident from the fact that there are so many re- 
 gions that have not been explored by men from the 
 East. The plan of the American Board is to establish 
 a few churches, and then a training school as a centre 
 of light and influence. This has been substantially the 
 course on the home missionary field. No other plan 
 will do the work ; first a handful of churches, then the 
 
 missionaries employed by our Home Missionary Society, it will be seen that 
 the number of missionaries in the New West ought to be increased, if the 
 distribution is pro rata. That the New West has been neglected by Con- 
 gregationalists is not creditable to the missionary enterprise of the denomi- 
 nation. Although it be true that the need of work is apparent in Wiscon- 
 sin, we should not hide our eyes from the woes of Wyoming. In this age, 
 when Asia is near us, we ought not to' think of Arizona, and the mines in 
 Utah, as far off. Arizona now needs the Gospel as much as Colorado did 
 ten years ago, having as large a population as Colorado had then. The 
 wants of the New West are as urgent as those of districts nearer, and they 
 should not be neglected. Nothing would make the managers of the Amer- 
 ican Home Missionary Society so glad as the sight of money by which to 
 advance this work. The patrons who know so well the noble record of this 
 Society will certainly give more largely when they know the imperative 
 necessity for an increased bount\'. 
 
 1 I wish to bear testimony to the good work of Rev. Sheldon Jackson, 
 the Presbyterian Superintendent of Missions. That he has sometimes erred 
 in judgment in the formation of churches where Congregationalists have 
 
THE NEW WEST. 49 
 
 Christian College. This course is absolutely essential 
 in the New West. Professor Stowe compares the 
 Christian College to an engine, so essential is it to 
 move the machinery of a Christian civilization. Padclle 
 wheels are of no use without the engine. The Church 
 will stand still without the engine.^ And the enofine 
 to do the work of the New West will do no srood if 
 
 o 
 
 set up on the banks of the Connecticut. 
 
 There are great numbers of villages in the New West 
 where there is a liquor saloon for every one or two hun- 
 dred inhabitants, and one or more dance-houses to 
 every five hundred, and preaching of the Gospel at very 
 rare intervals. Apply this rule to any eastern village, 
 and the result will be easily forecast. The barbarians 
 who destroyed Rome were multiplying and growing 
 strong in the North of Europe, during the same centu- 
 
 had a right of way, he will, no doul)t, admit. That he has, however, 
 proved to be one of the most energetic, self-denying, useful men in the far 
 West is, clear to unprejudiced Congregationalists upon the ground. They 
 would be very glad to have a Superintendent half so eflicient.- If he 
 sometimes trenches upon ground sufficiently occupied by others, the most 
 of his work is in building upon no other man's foundation, pushing into 
 the open field where his work is truly apostolic. Mount Franklin, in the 
 edge of the open Polar Sea is nearer New York than the distani'e Dr. 
 Jackson travels in passing from the southeastern corner of his parish to 
 Sitka in the northwest. When he mounts his horse at Denver, he is not 
 so far from the equator as he is from the most neglected part of his dis- 
 trict. It is needless to say that this man, inured to hardship and more en- 
 terprising than any commercial traveller, looks carefully after every part 
 of the work committed to him, and that there will be less need of appoint- 
 ing any Congregational Superintendent after a few years. As it is now, 
 however, the field is still ample, and its needs are pressing. There are, in 
 all this re<>-ion, so many communities destitute of the Gospel, that they will 
 not be easily supplied by the united labors of all Christian men engaged in 
 this service. It is impossible for men in the East to appreciate the elements 
 of evil in the far West, and the crying necessity for planting the principles 
 of the Gospel in tliese new States. If a Congregational Superintendent is 
 set to the work, he will be warmly welcomed by the Presbyterian brethren, 
 and by none more warmly than by Sheldon Jackson. 
 ^ College Society Address. 
 
50 THE NEW WEST, 
 
 ries in which the Romans were rolling up wealth on the 
 shores of the Tiber. We can, if we will, rear ignorant 
 and powerful States in our wild Western country ; and 
 some day they will destroy the nation. 
 
 This business of planting Christian churches and the 
 Christian College must be done at once \ they cannot 
 wait one for the other, " any more than one leg can 
 be waiting for the other, when a man is on a rapid 
 march." ^ 
 
 1 Professor Stovve, College Society Address. 
 
IV. 
 
 The American College and Education Society, which 
 has adopted Colorado College as one of its beneficiaries, 
 needs the gifts of Christian men and women for its up- 
 building. This Society has a noble history, and merits 
 the confidence of the Christian public. It has been 
 already honored by the churches in being made the 
 channel through which they have given nearly a mil- 
 lion and one fourth for colleges, and half a million dol- 
 lars more than that to aid young men. The amount 
 invested is small, the result large, — aid rendered seven- 
 teen Christian colleges and seminaries, and between 
 six and seven thousand young men assisted in their 
 preparation for the ministry. 
 
 " Each institution which applies for aid is subjected to 
 rigid examination as to its origin and location, the princi- 
 ples upon which it was founded, its means of self-support, 
 its relations to similar institutions, and its prospective 
 usefulness." ^ The refusal of the Society, based on good 
 reasons, to indorse a Western college, hinders the Chris- 
 tian public from being imposed upon. It aids no col- 
 lege excejDt under conditions which careful business men, 
 acting with extreme caution, consider to be wise. As 
 a rule no Eastern money goes into buildings. The 
 College must be begun without the aid of the Society ; 
 it must territorially occupy a sufficient field, without 
 near neighbors. The College is pledged to maintain for- 
 ever a Christian character and influence in considera- 
 tion of the aid rendered. Aid is continued long enough 
 
 1 Fifth Report; Collec/e Society. 
 
62 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 to put the College into such a condition as will insure 
 an honorable future, if the management of its affairs 
 continues to commend it to the Christian public. The 
 colleges under the care of the Society, had, in 1872, 
 increased their net resources from three hundred thou- 
 sand to three millions of dollars. The plans of the 
 Society ^' admit of neither waste nor failure. It takes 
 up no doubtful institution. It leaves none half able to 
 take care of itself. Its cooperation is pledge of char- 
 acter and success." ^ No worthy institution is pre- 
 maturely abandoned, any more than wise men would 
 leave an arch without a key-stone, or a temple without 
 a roof.^ 
 
 We submit that this work is not second in .impor- 
 tance to any in the country, and that it ought to re- 
 ceive the hearty and systematic support of all our 
 churches and private Christians. And we are confident 
 that, so far as the facts are known, Christian men will 
 delight to use this Society in doing good. Many have 
 not given much thought to it. and, therefore, little 
 money to it. If they once weigh the work, they will 
 be glad to give liberally through this channel. The 
 establishment of any one college, however important, is 
 not any considerable part of its work. It is making a 
 chain of them in the West. Without the sound of ham- 
 mer to attract the attention of the world, it is silently 
 building temples of Christian learning, whose glory will 
 appear in after ages. This Society can, says Dr. Hop- 
 kins,^ " appeal only to thoughtful men of large views, 
 and willing to wait. It is the glory and hope of the 
 country that there are in it so many such men who 
 can be thus appealed to. In my judgment, the coun- 
 
 1 Thirtieth Report, College Society. 
 
 2 Sixteenth Report, College Society. 
 8 College Society Address. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 53 
 
 try has no greater benefactors than those who have 
 thus aided in erecting " these fortresses of Christianity 
 and civilization, so that the two niav march on tog;ether 
 and take secure possession of the hind. I know of no 
 better use of money than to secure instruction for all 
 time in some great branch of study that shall enter in 
 as a part of the best system that can be devised for 
 traininsi: men. Nothino; on earth is so hio-h as man, 
 and the grandest work we can do, and the best for the 
 country, is to lift him up to a higher manhood." 
 
 Colorado Colleo;e has had the fortune not uncom- 
 monly incident to the beginning of important enter- 
 prises. The school was opened in 1874, under a very 
 enthusiastic, hard-working financial agent, and first one 
 excellent teacher, then another. It was then suspended; 
 and it lived only in the prayers and hopes of a handful 
 of Christian people. This was the first endowment, the 
 prayers of God's people. By the timely gifts of a few 
 men in Massachusetts, who were also praying for the 
 coming of the divine kingdom, new life was put into 
 the work. 
 
 The Colorado Springs Company has made a royal 
 gift of more than fifty acres of their best land to the 
 College, and they reserve forty acres more to be given 
 when a certain endowment is secured. The land is in 
 part for" the campus, but enough may be sold for the 
 endowment to net from twenty to twenty-five thousand 
 dollars. What has been already done by the Colorado 
 Springs people, in the land and in a building subscrip- 
 tion, falls little short of fifty thousand dollars. The 
 townspeople — with one generous friend in Chicago — 
 are erecting a stone structure, which when completed 
 will be one of the most comely and convenient college 
 buildings in the country. It will be of a pink volcanic 
 
54 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 limestone, with white trimmings. The central portion 
 was begun upon the Fourth of- July, 1877, and it will 
 be completed before the Fall Term of 1878. The re- 
 mainder of the building will be erected as soon as the 
 wants of the pupils require it. The most careful and 
 most enterprising business men in the State are active 
 members of the board of trustees. The grade of stud- 
 ies is equal to that in the best eastern colleges. The 
 professors engaged in teaching, or preparing to give 
 instruction in some specialty, are eminent for scholar- 
 ship, as well as men of earnest Christian life. Young 
 men and women from all the resrion are entering; the 
 classes, and the needs are pressing for additional facil- 
 ities for giving instruction. 
 
 There are twenty-five thousand children of school age 
 in Colorado, and they need a Christian college.^ In that 
 part of the State south of the Divide — an upland ridge 
 that makes out eastward from the mountains a little 
 south of Denver, — a population, probably numbering 
 seventy thousand, has no public school of high school 
 grade, according to the Eastern standard. They need 
 the advantages offered by the Preparatory Department 
 of Colorado College. The public schools are, however, 
 rapidly improving, and several schools that now rise 
 little above grammar grade, will soon be in condition to 
 fit pupils for college. The Episcopalians have a board- 
 ing-school of high school grade for boys at Golden, and 
 for girls at Denver. The State University has recently 
 opened with a Normal Department, at Boulder, a hun- 
 dred miles north of Colorado College. The Christian 
 people of the State will cooperate with this work in 
 in every way possible. They are, however, very clear 
 m the conviction and expression that there must be a 
 
 ■^ There are as many more in New Mexico; and they need the influences 
 that will flow out from a Christian coUesre. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 55 
 
 college under distinctively Christian influence. There 
 is a strong feeling in favor of uniting upon one college. 
 The policy of the American College and Education 
 Society is recognized as broad and liberal, and its col- 
 leges as unsectarian as any in the country .-"^ Colorado 
 College, in its management, commends itself to leading 
 Christian men of different denominations iu the State, 
 and it will receive their hearty support. Its aim is to 
 meet the wants of all Christian families, and to merit 
 the patronage of the more than six score Christian 
 churches, for the higher education of their children. 
 
 ^ The unsectarian policy of this Society is shown by a brief extract from 
 a valuable paper published by the honored Secretary of the Society in the 
 Congregaiionalist, February 6, 1878: — 
 
 " The American Education Society, orf:fanized sixty-tino years ago, and which lias 
 done a larger work in this department, probably, than any other among us, has been 
 unsectarian from the beginning unto this day. Though its funds and its students are 
 drawn chiefly from Congregational sources, there has never been a j'ear since its origin 
 that tt has not had upon its lists young men of other denominations — Baptists, jNIetho- 
 dists, Presbj'terians, German iieformed, Lutherans, etc. A young man was graduated 
 from Amherst College last summer, the son of a Methodist minister, himself preparing 
 to be a Methodist minister, and known to be so, who was helped through his whole col- 
 lege course by this Society. Nor was this a strange and isolated case. There are sev- 
 eral hundreds of similar cases. Rev. Baron Stow, U. D., one of the more prominent 
 Baptist ministers of the country, now deceased, was aided through his education by tljis 
 Society. Heidelberg College, Ohio, is a German Reformed institution. But because 
 the religious body to which it belonged was not rich, the American Education Society, 
 oetween thirt\- and forty ^-ears ago, took it upon its list, and has continued to this day 
 to help young men tliere needing assistance in their studies for the ministry. This was 
 a purely charitable, Christian work, from which no financial return, or denominational 
 return, has ever been expected. In other words, the Society has been concerned in 
 raising up thoroughly-educated ministers, without stopping anxiously to inquire 
 whether they should turn out Congregational ministers, or should be of some other 
 religious order." 
 
 The same catholicity of spirit has manifested itself in the collegiate de- 
 partment of the Society. Presbyterian and Lutheran colleges have been 
 aided by this Society. If others have not shared its bounty, it has been 
 because they have not sought it. And, in accord with this breadth of 
 Christian benevolence, the colleges built up by this Society have made it a 
 point to place the representatives of different denominations upon boards 
 of trust and in chairs of instruction. It is a part of their working theory 
 that a liberal policy is more likely to win the respect of thoughtful men and 
 result in building up colleges which will meet the wants of the public, than 
 if a narrow sectarian course is pursued. 
 
It cannot be safely affirmed that it is too early to 
 plant a college in the New West, since we are never 
 weary of boasting that Harvard College was begun 
 when there were only from twenty to thirty houses in 
 Boston. We glory in the men who said that they could 
 " not subsist without a college," when they had not 
 more than twenty-five beginnings of towns in Massa- 
 chusetts. We cannot " subsist without a college " 
 in Colorado. Thirty-nine years after Harvard was 
 founded, the population of all New England was only 
 thirty-nine per cent, of the present population of Col- 
 orado ; and the population of all the colonies was only 
 twenty-six per cent, of the population of the New 
 West. If our fathers could '' not subsist without a col- 
 lege," Colorado has nearly three times the need Massa- 
 chusetts had of Harvard forty years after it was 
 founded ; and the New West to-day has four times as 
 much need of a Christian college as all the colonies 
 had when Harvard was two score years old. The only 
 way for Colorado and the New West to found a Chris- 
 tian college is to do as the men of Massachusetts did 
 for Harvard. They went to England to beg money, 
 and the Englishmen gave it. To-day the New West is 
 a beggar at the doors of those who are now reaping 
 the benefit of English benefactions two hundred years 
 ago. Let gratitude for the past take substantial shape 
 nt this hour in planting Colorado College. 
 
 Harvard College was established only eighteen years 
 
THE NEW WEST. 57 
 
 after the landing at Plymouth, and six years after the 
 founding of Boston. Colorado has been settled more 
 than eighteen years. Massachusetts had a college be- 
 fore it had a grammar school. It was eleven 3'ears 
 after the college began that provision was made for 
 grammar schools to fit pupils for the university. 
 
 Yale College was founded when the population of 
 Connecticut was only twenty-one per cent, of the pres- 
 ent population of Colprado, and the population of Mas- 
 sachusetts was only one half that of Colorado. But 
 those wise men said they must have another college, 
 and they went to England begging ; and the men who 
 had grown up under the shadows of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge gave them money. Colorado needs a college 
 five times as much as Connecticut did Yale at the time 
 it was begun. For nineteen years Yale College had 
 no building of its own. Colorado College has already, 
 shown energy enough to erect a wooden building and 
 outgrow it, and the people on the ground are, at this 
 moment, expending more than ten thousand dollars on 
 the main block of a beautiful building for the infant 
 colleo;e. 
 
 Yale College was begun by the gathering of a hand- 
 ful of books by a few pastors, who desired to perpetu- 
 ate an educated ministry. Dartmouth was a charity 
 school established in the woods. Amherst not long 
 since had a senior class of two. Those men are wise — 
 the founders of a noble Christian influence to be per- 
 petuated as long as the earth wheels around the sun — 
 who give the money needful to establish the feeble 
 beginnings of those Christian colleges fostered by the 
 American College and Education Society. 
 
 The fathers of New Eno-land thouo-ht it best to 
 found colleges when the population was sparse, and 
 when the people were poor ; and they did it with little 
 
58 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 idea of the future growth of the nation. The Massa- 
 chusetts Bay men decided that the popnhition was 
 never likely to be very dense west of Newton. The 
 founders of Lynn exploring ten or fifteen miles, doubted 
 whether the country was good for anything further 
 west than that. I suspect that they loved the sea, and 
 deemed life of no value out of the sight and the sound 
 of it. But they wanted a college ; and Old England 
 said they ought to have one, and paid cash down on 
 the words. We go to men, to-day, who believe that 
 our country is likely to be settled west of Newton ; 
 and they believe in the manifest destiny of the nation ; 
 and they know that the New West will have a large 
 population in the near future ; and they know that the 
 planting of a Christian college is the only possible 
 power by which to fortify a Christian stronghold in 
 ^that region, — and they will give most generously the 
 small amount that is needed in these first years of Col- 
 orado College. 
 
 The extent to which our early colleges depended on 
 the aid of the mother country is not commonly known 
 by those who refuse to give to a college two thousand 
 miles west of them, although they are themselves in- 
 debted to men three thousand miles east of them for 
 the higher education which now illuminates the path- 
 way of their children. It would be possible to fill 
 pages with the record. The name of Thomas Hollis is 
 not less honorable than that of the scholars who de- 
 rived advantage from his princely gifts. The worship- 
 pers in the chapel built by Madam Holden, were be- 
 holden to her as truly as to the preacher. Hugh Peters 
 did valiant service for Harvard Colleo-e as he did for 
 Cromwell. William Pennoyer is not in itself a name to 
 attract notice ; but he has been aiding poor students at 
 Harvard for more than two hundred years, as if he 
 
THE NEW WEST. 59 
 
 were living in Cambridge, century after century, and 
 dealing out money to help worth}'' young men through 
 college. When Lady Moulson gave a hundred pounds 
 to this college over sea, she purchased for herself the 
 gratitude of students during two hundred thirty years 
 past, and thousands of years to come. Henry Henley, 
 of Dorsetshire, might have given twenty-seven pounds 
 for a gravestone, and it would have crumbled ; but his 
 name is now read and honored, after two hundred 
 years, by most scholarly men in America, and it will 
 be transmitted till the world grows old, and Harvard 
 Square makes room for Mount Auburn. 
 
 The first printing press of America, north of Mex- 
 ico, was the gift of certain gentlemen in Amsterdam to 
 Harvard College ; and Joseph Glover, of England, gave 
 the type. 
 
 Very few persons know that Elihu Yale was Gov- 
 ernor of the East India Company, but there is no part 
 of the civilized world that fails to honor him for his gifts 
 to the college in New Haven. Among the most pre- 
 cious gifts, to this college in the wilderness, were books 
 from Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Richard Steele, Rev. Mat- 
 thew Henry, Dr. Isaac Watts, Bishop Berkley, John 
 Erskine, and other eminent men. 
 
 The College of New Jersey obtained very large sums 
 in England, beyond all expectation of the parties in- 
 terested; The treasurer's books are lost, but President 
 Davies collected in one visit twelve hundred pounds. 
 
 Dr. Wheelock, of Dartmouth, obtained funds from 
 the Prince of Orange, and officials in high station in 
 the Netherlands. The Earl of Dartmouth, and other 
 Englishmen, took the deepest interest in his work, and 
 gave largely. 
 
 Our colleges have been from the beginning a set of 
 learned bego-ars. There is a Brotherhood of Mendi- 
 
60 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 cants at this time in America, hailing from the West, 
 pleading at the doors of the rich and the large-hearted 
 in the East. My friend Dr. Morrison, of Drury, says, 
 " Do not call us Presidents, but Beggars, — College 
 Beggars." 
 
 The Lord of Hosts is not weary of hearing the pite- 
 ous cry of beggars on the earth. We are all suppliants. 
 God give us what we need, and let us turn no deaf ear 
 to any who come to us as we go to Him, Christ is not 
 impatient of perpetual prayers. Dr. Kirk loved to be 
 called upon by Christ in the person of his poor. As a 
 matter of honor, let us at the least be patient if a col- 
 lege beggar rings the door-bell, and asks us to do for 
 some Western college what our ancestors asked Old 
 EnglanH to do for them. 
 
 There is a perpetual law of increase, which puts 
 great dignity upon small gifts to a worthy institution 
 of learning. A handful of poor students gathered in a 
 barn at Cambridge, and the University has flourished 
 century after century ; lines of kings have reigned a 
 little while and given place to others, but the line of 
 scholars, earnestly searching for truth and nobly con- 
 tendino- for it, has not failed, nor will until the brine of 
 British seas ceases to be salt. When a university is 
 once rooted, if it has in its own character the right to 
 live, it is little more likely to be torn up than the 
 Church of the living God. 
 
 " Every founded institution, especially every one 
 which is founded on a principle and not on a tradition, 
 which holds an idea within it, and does not simply 
 shelter an interest, shows a tendency to grow; to be- 
 come developed from a less to a larger, and to grow 
 compact aud copious with years. If it be reared to 
 consult mere commercial or political advantage, this 
 
THE NEW Wt:ST. 61 
 
 may not be. If it be founded to gratify pride, to put 
 the crown upon personal ambition, or even to subserve 
 the mere convenience of society, tliis will not be. But 
 if it be founded on a permanent demand of human 
 nature itself, and be intrinsically adapted to that, this 
 tendency is as certain as that of the date-fruit to grow 
 into a palm, and will be as permanent as the fitness of 
 the institution to accomplish its ends. And in no case 
 is this exemplified more fully than in that of the Col- 
 leo;e." ^ 
 
 Princeton College would not, however, have received 
 the munificent gifts wliich have made her so rich in 
 recent years, if she had not had a definite beginning in 
 a log-hut a hundred and forty years ago.^ For more 
 than a hundred years the College was poor, a charity 
 fund of twelve thousand dollars being its only endow- 
 ment. If the Christian people of the East will put in 
 the foundations of a Christian College in the New West, 
 it will be in position to receive benefit from the law of 
 increase, and the little wooden building where the stu- 
 dents now meet will become historic. 
 
 The Congregational churches in Colorado are poor ; 
 but they give ibr Christian purposes on a scale of gen- 
 erosity quite unknown by the average cliurch member 
 in the east. There are not more than one or two men 
 of property enrolled in the membership, and they are 
 heroic in bearing heavy burdens and aiding every good 
 cause. There are no Christian churches of any denom- 
 ination in the New West which do not have a severe 
 struggle in carrying on their work. Very few churches 
 
 1 R. S. Storrs, LL. D., College Society Addres^s. 
 
 2 The learned historian of the College of New Jersey may deny Prin(;e- 
 ton's connection with the logs, — and most likely he is right, — but that hut 
 twenty feet square has a place in the popular imagination ; and it will be as 
 hard for him to remove it from the history of this revered college, as it is 
 to displace AVilliam Tell from the minds of men. 
 
62 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 are self-sustaining. There is no denomination upon the 
 ground able to build up a college without Eastern aid. 
 All will hail with gladness any gifts which will make it 
 possible for the poor to educate their children in Col^ 
 orado, and to train the men needed for this vast mis- 
 sion field. " Ships are first built, and then sent on 
 voyages," says Mr. Beecher, " but Western States are 
 as if men were rafted to sea with materials, and were 
 obliged to build the ship under them while they 
 sailed ; yea, and to grapple in desperate conflict with 
 piratical errors and red rovers of ignorance, while yet 
 they are laying down the decks and setting up the rig- 
 ging." ^ Nearly all the ready money in a new State is 
 used in developing the country, in making the phys- 
 ical basis for society. This is necessarily so. But as 
 the years go by, many of the investments will return, 
 and churches and seminaries of learning will be less 
 dependent upon the older civilization. 
 
 The amount of money needed to put a Christian 
 college upon a good foundation, and to place it in po- 
 sition to take advantage of the law of increase, is not 
 relatively large. Williams College has made itself felt 
 with great power in the moral world, and her fifteen 
 hundred graduates in sixty years have borne an hon- 
 orable part in national history. Yet her capital was 
 not during any part of that time more than fifty thou- 
 sand dollars.^ With one or two hundred thousand 
 dollars cash capital a college can do good work ; and, 
 as the years go by, it will grow under the law of in- 
 crease. It is the privilege of donors to the American 
 College and Education Society to render such aid that, 
 with the gifts of local friends, the college will certainly 
 go forward with increasing power in future ages. The 
 
 ^ College Society Address. 
 
 2 Dr. Hopkins, College Society Address, 1852. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 63 
 
 pledge of the trustees binding their successors, in con- 
 sideration of these early gifts of Christian men, to 
 maintain a Christian institution, is a pledge of far 
 reaching influence, since, after the first generations, the 
 college will from time to time by the law of increase 
 receive the appointments of a university. 
 
 The silver and the gold belong to Him who rules 
 the world, and it is not difficult for Him to honor in- 
 strumentalities that honor Him. Consecrated gold from 
 the Colorado Mountains will enlarge and beautify her 
 Christian Colleg-e. Oxford and Cambridu:e have been 
 built up by private gifts. The capitalists who coin 
 money in the New West will gladly aid in upbuilding 
 institutions of learning. In the first four years of the 
 present decade, thirty-three million dollars were given 
 by private donors to the higher education in the United 
 States. Men who are enriche^l by scientific research, 
 love to bestow money on deserving colleges. Colorado 
 College, which now rejoices greatly over a few pounds 
 of butter or one or two sheep, as Harvard was formerly 
 made glad by pecks of corn, will, we believe, some day 
 become rich as Harvard with money by the million. 
 
 The endowment papers of Colorado College have 
 been most carefully drawn by that princely founder 
 of a Christian college, Henry F. Durant. They are 
 guarded at every point, to make sure that the money 
 is used as the donors desire. An agreement is entered 
 into between the College and the American College and 
 Education Society and the donors, by which the money 
 is given to the Society in trust for the College, to be 
 used to promote Christian education in Colorado. The 
 Society reserves the right to guard the investments of 
 the money given to the College in trust by the Society. 
 The teachers are to be Christian men. Biblical instruc- 
 
64 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 tioii is to be furnished. The scope of the College con- 
 templates the highest and broadest culture. It also 
 nia,kes provision for the gradual growth of a training 
 school for home missionaries. Two thirds of the trus- 
 tees must be of Christian membership. One of the offi- 
 cers of the American College and Education Society 
 must be a perpetual trustee of the College. If the Col- 
 lege property is turned over to any differently char- 
 tered institution, or loses its franchise, or is not faithful 
 to this trust, the money reverts to the American Col- 
 lege and Education Society. Although the work of 
 the College Department of the American College and 
 Education Society may not be needed in a distant 
 future, there will still be necessity for aiding young 
 men in preparing for the ministry ; so that this corpor- 
 ation is likely to exist as long as the College. Money 
 given to the American College and Education Society 
 for Colorado College will be as sure to accomplish the 
 end sought by the donors as any foresight can make it. 
 Divine Providence is just as likely to take care of the 
 trust, if the legal instruments are well drawn, as if they 
 were prepared carelessly or not prepared at all. 
 
 If any investments are solid and lasting they are 
 found in gifts to this Society. " It is putting money 
 where the safeguards of law will surround it forever." ^ 
 "The boards that control such institutions are ordi- 
 narily selected for their capacity, intelligence, honesty, 
 practical wisdom, and interest in the cause of learning. 
 .... The individuals in question are put under the 
 guardianship of law and of a watchful community, and 
 under all the sanctions that come from the sacredness 
 of the trust committed to them, a trust that touches 
 upon the highest welfare of Church and State, and bears 
 not only on the interests of the living age but of gen- 
 
 1 H. Q. Butterfield, D. D., Coll. Soc. Rep. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 65 
 
 erations to come." ^ Yale College has never lost a " dol- 
 lar committed by any donor for permanent investment." 
 So, too, not the smallest donations made to Harvard Col- 
 lege in its infancy have been lost sight of; they " are 
 at the present moment as secure and remunerative as 
 those of yesterday." ^ God does not cease to preserve 
 property when it is funded for education. Can we not 
 trust Him out of our sight ? 
 
 Nor can it be said that college foundations are liable 
 to much perversion. In view of the changes which 
 centuries have made in the great universities of Eng- 
 land, the Parliamentary Commission expresses its con- 
 fidence in the wisdom of these permanent foundations 
 by recommending their large increase. The schools are, 
 by the law, kept true to the spirit, if not always th(; 
 letter, of the founders. The experience of ages has 
 shown that the ideas of the founders have been, to a 
 remarkable degree, perpetuated ; nor does any tempo- 
 rary change indicate that the trust will not be fulfilled 
 as the years go by. '• The spirit of the founders of an 
 institution is a permanent spirit. . . . The promise is 
 not more sure to parents in the training of their children, 
 than is the providence of God in regard to the pious 
 founders of institutions of learning." ^ The character 
 of a Christian college, as it is formed age after age, 
 becomes the best security for the right use of donations 
 made to it. 
 
 "If it include Christianity at the outset, and be 
 framed to express that, then will that probably reign 
 in and inspire it, with a power more apparent at some 
 times than at others, but real all the time, even unto 
 the end. It is not so much the provisions of charters, 
 
 1 Twenty-firat Report College Society. 
 
 2 Twenty-fourth Coll. Soc. Report. 
 
 3 Fourteenth Report College Society. 
 
66 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 enforced by courts, that will secure this. The self- 
 evolving life of the college itself, in the long run, insures 
 the result. And, as thus vitally and permanently asso- 
 ciated with such centres of power, Christianity will have 
 a hold on our country that cannot be paralleled, and 
 that 7iever can be shaken. You might as well shake the 
 mountain from its base, which is bolted by columns 
 and shafts of granite to the centre of the earth." ^ 
 
 •' All things considered," says President Eliot, " there 
 is no form of endowment for the benefit of mankind 
 more permanent, more secure from abuse, or surer to 
 do good, than the endowment of public teaching in a 
 well organized institution of learning." 
 
 Sir Henry Maine, in an address before the University 
 of Calcutta, gives it as his " fixed opinion that there is 
 no surer, no easier, no cheaper road to immortality — 
 such as can be obtained in this world — than that 
 which lies through liberality expending itself in the 
 formation of educational endowments." 
 
 There is no way in which a friend of Christ and a 
 lover of the human race can so certainly perpetuate 
 his influence in some definite form, easily traced and 
 recognized, as by the founding of a Christian college 
 in a region and under circumstances where it will be- 
 come a great power for good. When men's lives are 
 perpetuated in a definite charity, so that they can be 
 hailed by name by those who are benefited by it in 
 distant ages, their lives at once seem to us the noblei 
 while they are with us, and their names are taken at 
 once out of the obscurity of the common check list or 
 tax list and placed upon enduring tablets, which gener- 
 ations to come will rise up and honor. " It is only a 
 few men of rare discernment .... who can 
 look beyond immediate and temporary issues to re- 
 
 1 Dr. R. S, Storrs, College Society Address. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 67 
 
 mote and permanent results. It is, therefore, simple 
 even-handed justice to bestow rare honor on men of 
 such rare wisdom and virtue ; to perpetuate their mem- 
 ories by making them commensurate with the duration 
 of the institutions which they have founded ; to mete 
 out to them a height of renown, a breadth of esteem, 
 and a depth of veneration corresponding with the 
 breadth and length and height and depth of their 
 foundations, and the comprehensiveness of views and 
 elevation of sentiments by which they were distin- 
 guished ; it is right and proper that those who have 
 studied and labored and prayed and denied themselves, 
 and sacrificed themselves to educate and enrich the 
 minds and hearts of many generations, should be en- 
 shrined in the grateful and affectionate remembrance 
 of men from ao;e to ao;e." ^ 
 
 There are single famihes that could equip a Chris- 
 tian college in the West, and set it forward upon a ca- 
 reer of usefulness, so long as grass will spring on the 
 prairies or snow melt on the sides of the mountains. 
 " Never lay up money," said the missionary Judson, 
 " for yourselves or your families. Trust in God from 
 day to day, and verily you shall be fed." It is impos- 
 sible to make provision for families, which will hold for 
 any great length of time in America. Even in Eng- 
 land, where the descent of property is made a study 
 and hedged aboi^t by law, the experience of centuries 
 shows that the term of a wealthy house is short. It is 
 better that the sons of the rich should be self reliant; if 
 they are not, they are not competent to care for prop- 
 erty, and soon lose it. There is no such spur as ne- 
 cessity. Are there not many households scattered 
 
 ^ Professor Tyler, Discourse Commemorative of the Hon. Samuel Wil- 
 liston. 
 
68 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 througliout the country, which could easily found a 
 Christian college, and then have abundance left for the 
 next generation of their own kin, so much at least as 
 would serve as a capital to be increased if well man- 
 aged. If ill managed in the second generation it is 
 well if there be not too much to waste. 
 
 A country minister, accustomed to strong language, 
 once asserted, that, when the bosom of charity should 
 beat a little stronger, men would be found to sell houses 
 and farms to promote the salvation of the heathen. 
 " The child w^ill sit down and w^eep, who may not say, 
 that his father and mother were the friends of missions. 
 And what parent would entail such a curse upon his 
 children, and prevent them from lifting up their heads 
 in the millennium. I w^ould rather leave mine toiling 
 in the ditch, there to enjo}^ the luxury of reflecting, 
 that a father's charity made them poor. Poor ! They 
 are poor who cannot feel for the miseries of a perishing 
 world ; to whom God has given abundance, but who 
 grudge to use it for His honor. Teach your children 
 charity, and they can never be poor." '^ Still, when 
 we handle the Word of God, and pray over it, we can 
 but rise from our knees and devise charities ; and, if it 
 is possible to provide spiritual blessing for half a con- 
 tinent through all ages of time, we welcome the privi- 
 lege. " I cannot tell you what I have enjoyed. It is 
 like being born into the kingdom again." So said one 
 who had given fifty thousand dollars cash to found a 
 Christian college in a needy Western field. That was 
 an hour for mutual congratulation, when a family gath- 
 ered to pray over the gift of twenty-five thousand dol- 
 lars, invested in a Christian college as a perpetual 
 bounty to coming ages.^ 
 
 1 Daniel A. Clark, D. D. 
 
 2 First Report, American College and Education Society. 
 
THE NEW WEST. 69 
 
 It is natural for parents to feel that their property 
 belongs of right to their children. They have, per- 
 haps, struggled for years to earn means for their 
 maintenance. Or they have inherited property, which 
 they feel it to be a duty to transmit. Providence has 
 put it in their power to place their children above care, 
 and give them capital for doing business. Their habits 
 of caution have been formed by years of anxiety and 
 careful saving. They have, moreover, had little defi- 
 nite knowledge of the good to be accomplished by 
 given charities, and the certainty of bringing about the 
 desired result. On the other hand, it seems clear that 
 their children will not misuse the property. It is also 
 true that the mere habit of holding whatever they get 
 is firmly fixed. It is not then strange that a large sum 
 is often bequeathed to relatives, who do not really 
 need it, which would, if otherwise bestowed, prove a 
 fountain of good to the poor of the world during end- 
 less generations. 
 
 We are permitted to bear an honorable part in the 
 world's salvation. It is possible for any one to multi- 
 ply his personal influence, as if he were to become the 
 spiritual and intellectual parent of thousands of stu- 
 dents in future years. Permanent charities, carefully 
 guarded, will perpetuate the character and good deeds 
 of the donors so long as ships sail the sea. Do we not 
 read of a devout man in an Arabian desert, who gave 
 a cup of cold water to every man who passed his door ? 
 It w^as to him a precious moment. He delighted in 
 doing all the good he could every day. But it was 
 suggested to him. that, if he would dig a well, his 
 beneficence mi^ht extend to caravans, which would 
 pass that way hundreds of years after his death. Trav- 
 elers ready to perish now bless his memory, as they 
 quench their thirst at the well-side. Will not those 
 
70 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 families, whose wealth is consecrated to Christ, and 
 whose life it is to do good deeds, set apart a portion of 
 their property to open a fountain of spiritual life in 
 the New West, where it will satisfy the thirsty until 
 the mountains crumble ? 
 
 Sir Matthew Holworthy's bequest of more than 
 twelve hundred pounds to Harvard College, two cen- 
 turies since, is making glad the students of to-day ; 
 they rejoice in it as in the light of some distant star, 
 whose beams have been making their way to the earth 
 through ages. It is possible for us to light up the dark 
 lives of children in New Mexico in the next genera- 
 tion, by gifts to Colorado College to-day. The Gospel 
 light will go forth from our charities, so long as God's 
 mercy to the earth endures. 
 
 Every Christian institution, whose fame and influ- 
 ence now fills the world, had a definite beginning in 
 the life of him who first put money into it. The found- 
 ers of Oxford and Cambridge, of Harvard, Yale, Dart- 
 mouth, Princeton, were men who could have thrown 
 their silver into the sea, or they could have spent it in 
 building more barn room for their goods. It would 
 have been easy for them to have missed immortality. 
 It is not difficult to neglect noble deeds. But those 
 men are to be envied, who, having it in their power 
 to gather wealth, have also the sagacity to seize rare 
 opportunities for usefulness. The Venetian merchants 
 of the thirteenth century stamped the image of Christ 
 upon their coin. There are men in these days who 
 do business by steam and by lightning, whose team 
 horses I love to see upon the streets. I listen for the 
 sound of their sweet bells, which make music unto the 
 Lord. " The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness there- 
 of," is written in their counting rooms. " See, my 
 
THE NEW WEST. 71 
 
 lord/' said a general of the Society of Jesuits, " from 
 this room — from this room I govern not only Paris, 
 but China ; not only China, but the whole world, with- 
 out any one knowing how it is managed." So, these 
 Christian men rule no small part of the world from 
 their counting rooms. Among their employees are 
 men who organize Christian colleges. 
 
 A man is manufacturing shoes, and he buys leather 
 and hires men to do this and to do that. As one in- 
 cident of his beneficent life, he hires a man to go West 
 and found a college for him ; he pays skilled teachers 
 to educate needy young men in the border country. 
 He is shaping States as well as shoes ; and his work 
 will go forward so long as rivers run to the sea. Here 
 is a man buying and selling goods. He hires clerks 
 to draw golden syrup, or to measure tape, and he also 
 hires men to teach Greek and the English Bible in 
 the New West. Does a man handle grain, and feed 
 the horses of half a State ? Those horses pour money 
 into uncounted channels for doing good to men. A 
 Christian man studies the divine Word, and renews his 
 consecration to God ; then goes to his counting room, 
 and gives a hundred directions as to bags of liieal, or 
 the buying and selling of cotton stuff, or he orders a 
 new lot of shoe pegs ; and he also directs in the estab- 
 lishment of some Christian college, whose fame will 
 perpetuate his influence and will never allow his name 
 to die. A young man in thrifty business will give 
 within a lifetime enough to found a professorship : 
 or, if he is early called into a higher sphere of life, his 
 name will be honorable as that of John Harvard, who 
 dying at thirty, erected for himself a monument which 
 will last so long as sun and moon endure ; and whose 
 influence as a benefactor of his race will extend 
 throuo;h immeasurable aojes. 
 
72 THE NEW WEST. 
 
 Those were memorable words which still ring in my 
 ears, — " The Lord either means to make me poor, or 
 He will give me more money. But I propose to keep 
 on giving in these hard times when givers are few." 
 The man witnessed with joy his diminishing store of 
 earthly goods, and was glad to open the eyes of the 
 poor and to cheer the hearts of those who had long 
 moaned in bondage. " I must give while I can, if the 
 Lord is taking away my property," said one who 
 trebled his donation to Christian work, when he learned 
 of a heavy loss in his business. A very successful and 
 clear minded man declares that he will give more than 
 he can, since he wants to do business leaning hard on 
 God and leading a life of faith ; and he gives largely 
 when ordinary business foresight would hardly justify 
 it, affirmino; that he believes the Word of God, in which 
 it is written and sealed that the Lord will prosper those 
 who devote themselves to Him. 
 
 A noble record comes to us from the English Univer- 
 sities, in which scholarships are called to this day by 
 the names of the working-men of London. Salters, 
 Skinners, Leather Sellers, Haberdashers, Clothmakers, 
 Merchant Tailors, Carpenters, Cordwainers, Cutlers, 
 Goldsmiths, Grocers, and Fishmongers, — all aided in 
 building up those schools of learning which are the 
 glory of the world. 
 
 "Never count any sacrifice too great for Christ," said 
 Mary Lyon. Saeah Hosmer, of the Eliot Church in 
 Lowell, supported a student in the Nestorian Seminary 
 who became a preacher of Christ. Five times she paid 
 fifty dollars, earning the money in a factory ; and 
 sent five native pastors upon their errands of mercy. 
 Living in an attic when she was more than sixty years 
 old, she took in sewing ; and did not try to lay up cash, 
 or live easily, as she might have done. She said that 
 
THE NEW WEST. 73 
 
 she wanted to furnish another minister of Christ for 
 Nestoria ; and she did it. Living only for Christ, she 
 pHed her needle for Him. The pride of dress or pride 
 of purse in that whole city will have no more honora- 
 ble record in the last day than her's, although she was 
 obscure, and was never richly clad. " There is many 
 a martyr spirit," said Judson, " at the kitchen fire, over 
 the wash-tub, and in the plow field ; many obscure 
 men and women make personal sacrifices, beside which 
 ours will appear in the great day very small indeed." ' 
 Whenever Colorado College becomes an honor to the 
 Christian charity of the country, — and we believe that 
 the decrees of God have given it a noble future, — there 
 will be found engraven upon its walls the names of a 
 multitude of givers, the rich and the poor, who have 
 added unspeakable dignity to their lives by founding 
 this Christian enterprise, and thereby hastening the 
 reign of Christ. Is it not worth the while to toil pa- 
 tiently, to give largely, and to sacrifice for this work, 
 during the first generation of the life of this College, to 
 prepare it for its ages of service ? " If a rare oppor- 
 tunity comes," says a sacred book of the far East, " let 
 a man do that which is rarely done."