These inst.i.tutions for higher education have trained men in history, philosophy, and the principles of government, who have become the right hand of strength to the nation. Their extensive knowledge and thoroughly disciplined and comprehensive minds have been largely instrumental in perfecting our system of government, and in elevating the nation to the rank of one of the greatest political powers.
The colleges have trained the intellect and conscience of the majority of students so that they have gone forth as leaders, and have exerted a prodigious influence among the people for right thinking and right acting. They have not only disciplined the powers of the masterly statesmen, but have fostered among them a sense of fraternity concerning our civil destinies. The students that have been gathered into the colleges from the different portions of the nation have become imbued with one sentiment, and entered upon public life linked together by the bonds of a common intellectual life and strong friendships, which have resulted favorably for the republic.
Some of the colonial colleges have richly repaid the nation for all the effort and sacrifice it cost to found them. William and Mary College has sent out twenty or more members of Congress, fifteen United States Senators, seventeen Governors, thirty-seven Judges, a Lieutenant General and other high officers of the Army, two Commodores to the Navy, twelve professors, seven Cabinet officers; the chief draughtsman and author of the Const.i.tution, Edmund Randolph; the most eminent of the Chief Justices, John Marshall, and three Presidents of the United States.
Harvard has furnished two Presidents, one Vice President, fifteen Cabinet officers, twenty Foreign Ministers, twenty-nine United States Senators, one hundred and four Congressmen, and nineteen Governors.
Princeton has beaten the Harvard record in everything except the first and fourth items. It has given to the country one President, two Vice Presidents, nineteen Cabinet officers, nineteen Foreign Ministers, fifty-five United States Senators, one hundred and forty-two Congressmen, and thirty-five Governors.
The collegians have ranked among the princ.i.p.al leaders in the political life of the nation. Fifty-eight per cent. of the chief national offices have been filled by them. Thomas Jefferson, author of the "Declaration of Independence," was a college man. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, who took such a prominent part in the framing of the Const.i.tution of the United States, were college-trained men.
Three-fourths of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were college graduates. These and other superior men in public life, at this period, were educated and possessed a scholarship that was in compa.s.s and variety more than abreast with the learning of the time.
George Washington was a self-made man, but he had recourse to America"s greatest statesman, Alexander Hamilton, a graduate of Columbia College, in preparing his state papers.
The counsellors of Abraham Lincoln, during the stormy days of the Rebellion, were men of trained minds. "All the leaders," says Professor S. N. Fellow, "in that Cabinet were college-trained men.
William H. Seward, the shrewdest diplomatist, who held other nations at bay until the Rebellion was throttled; Salmon P. Chase, whose fertile brain developed a financial system by which our nation was saved from national bankruptcy, and made national bonds as good as the gold in foreign markets; Edwin M. Stanton, that man of iron, who organized a million of raw recruits into an army equal to any in the world; Gideon Welles, who, almost from nothing, created a navy sufficient for our needs,--each of these, and every other member of Lincoln"s Cabinet, save one, was a college graduate. So, also, in the army. It was not until thoroughly trained and disciplined men filled the chief places in command that the Federal forces overwhelmed and destroyed the Rebellion. We repeat, the law is, and it is believed to be universal, that the higher the rank or position, the larger per cent. of college graduates are found in it."
Education was an important factor in deciding the issues of our Civil War. Thoroughly trained and disciplined men filled the chief places in command in the Federal Army. The Northern soldiers were better educated than those of the South. It has been said that "in the German Army that fought the battles of the Franco-Prussian war, those who could neither read nor write amounted to only 3.8 per cent., while in the French Army the number amounted to 30.4 per cent." According to the admission of the defeated, the universities conquered at Sedan.
Perhaps it is not too much to say that the great number of colleges in the Northern States conquered at Appomattox.
A large per cent. of the leaders in the American Congress, during the trying period of our country"s history from 1860 to 1870, were either college graduates or had taken a partial course in college and gained its inspiration.
The college graduates have furnished 33 per cent. of the Congressmen, 46 per cent. of the Senators, 50 per cent. of the Vice Presidents, 65 per cent. of the Presidents, 73 per cent. of the a.s.sociate Judges, and 83 per cent. of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Again, we are especially indebted to the colleges for encouraging private and public schools, through which we have become an enlightened people. It is impossible to estimate the indebtedness of popular to collegiate education. There is an intimate and vital relation between the college and the public schools, which differ not in kind, but only in the degree of instruction. "The success and usefulness of common schools," says Professor W. S. Tyler, "is exactly proportioned to the popularity and prosperity of the colleges, and whatever is done for or against the one is sure to react, with equal force and similar results, upon the other."
The colleges have been foremost in advocating that the education of the youth should not be left to those of meager attainments and narrow sympathies. They have maintained that, in order to reap the best advantages of our public schools, it is important to have wise, competent, Christian men and women to give instruction, as well as to prepare text-books, and to increase the appliances employed in teaching.
It has been a difficult task to bring our public school system to the present condition of progress. The work has proceeded slowly and steadily under the example and inspiration of great educational centers. The excellence and usefulness of our school system has advanced just in proportion to the culture and ability of the teachers. A collegiate education has always tended to foster and encourage higher standards of scholarship among teachers, and this influence has been diffused into the public school system. President Charles W. Super truthfully says: "That which leads up to the highest must always be supervised and directed by that which is at the top. A system of elementary and secondary education which does not culminate in the university, and make that the goal towards which its efforts are directed, is an absurdity. There must be good teachers before there can be good schools, and good teachers can only be formed in inst.i.tutions that are chiefly concerned with knowledge at first hand.
This has been a recognized principle in Germany for half a century, or longer; is now almost universally admitted in France, and is the goal toward which the whole civilized world is rapidly moving."
The efficiency of our public schools has been felt in every department of our social organization. They have been a strong bulwark against the influences of a raw and uninstructed foreign population, who, like a tidal wave, have flooded our sh.o.r.es. Some of these have not only been ignorant and infidel, but filled with monarchical ideas and un-American sentiment. The public schools have brought their children into accord with our American inst.i.tutions, and developed intelligent patriotism. They have taught the youth common rights and privileges, and helped to generate a union of sympathy and sentiment which leads to the consolidation of our society into a h.o.m.ogeneous body.
The colleges, working through the public school teachers, have likewise helped to educate the millions of the manumitted and enfranchised colored people, and to break up sectionalism, allay party strife, and make for the peace, prosperity, and unity of the nation.
Our political safety has called for a wise and vigorous effort to educate the ma.s.ses and to a.s.similate the heterogeneous elements into our body politic. The public schools and colleges, with their interdependence, have in a great measure met the demand, and given us a legacy of peace, prosperity, and intelligence enjoyed by all the people.
Likewise, the colleges have contributed largely to the general prosperity and material progress of society. They are the real centers of power of this enterprising and progressive age. "The revival of learning and the epoch of discovery ushered in the epoch of natural science, which has made possible the epoch of useful inventions."
College-trained men are the most practical and useful of men. They have been the creators of material wealth and prosperity. Their discoveries and inventions have revolutionized business and social life. Every department of life is teeming with the fruits of science and philosophy, which have been largely built up by colleges and college-trained men. Bacon, Newton and Locke were sons of the English universities. Watt and Fulton a.s.sociated with college men, and "derived from them the principles of science which they applied in the development of the steam engine and steam navigation. Professor Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, was not only a college graduate and professor, but made his great experiments within the walls of a university." Likewise, many other scientists, who have demonstrated the limitless possibilities of steam and electricity, and other valuable discoveries and inventions, were either trained in the colleges or received from them the working principles which were essential to their success. These human inventions are of priceless value to the people. The steam engine has contributed greatly to human welfare. It represents, in the United States alone, 20,000,000 horse power in the form of locomotives, or the steam power of 300 horses for each thousand inhabitants. Besides all this, 6,000,000 horse power in stationary steam engines manufacture goods for us. They give the vast force which toils for us, and the laborer furnishes only the guiding power. These inventions have enabled us to increase our wealth at the rate of $2,000,000,000 a year during the last decade, and helped to make our people sharers in the products of the world, and in all the blessings of civilization.
Professor Huxley was right when he said: "If the nation could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at a cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt cheap at that money." Fifty-two of the inventions now prized by the civilized world were made in Germany, and within the influence of her universities. All these discoveries are opening the doors for more wonderful disclosures. All the great industries of the country require men of trained minds and directive intelligence to organize and control them, and the colleges are recognized agencies to help produce them.
Our literature is also largely the fruit of college labor and tastes.
The colleges, as centers of intellectual life, have fostered literary tastes in those who have built up and enriched literature. Their libraries and lectures have gathered together men of literary aims and ambitions, so that the seat of the college has become the home of new and grand ideas, which at once encourage literature and science. This congenial intellectual atmosphere has incited many a young person to project n.o.ble literary plans.
The majority of great writers have spent years at the university. Lord Bacon outlined his gigantic plan for "the Instauration of the Sciences" during the four years spent in the University of Cambridge.
Milton laid the foundations of his cla.s.sical scholarship in the university. "Newton was matured in academic discipline, a fellow in Trinity College, Cambridge, and a professor of mathematics. He pa.s.sed fifteen years of his life in the cloisters of a college, and solved the problems of the universe from the turret over Trinity gateway."
The literary influences of our colleges were early manifest in our nation. The scholarship, cla.s.sical taste, and fine literary style of the superior men in public life led the Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords, in 1775, to pay "a tribute of eloquent homage to the intellectual force, the symmetry, and the decorum of the state papers recently transmitted from America, which was virtually an announcement that America had become an integral part of the civilized world, and a member of the republic of letters."
The colleges have nourished the conditions out of which a pure, cla.s.sical literature may grow. Such men as Edward T. Channing, of Harvard, and Webster, Worcester and Goodrich, of Yale, have performed an inestimable service in preparing the way for our mother tongue to be spoken in its purity.
In the line of history, the American colleges have given the nation such men as Bancroft, Parkman, Palfrey, Prescott, Motley, Winthrop and Adams. In the sciences, there are Dana, Gray, Cooke, Walker, Porter, Woolsey and Aga.s.siz. In law and political science, we have Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Evarts, Webster, Chase, Choate, Everett and Sumner.
These men have been the true architects of the state. The pulpit is represented by such men as Mather, Edwards, Dwight, Storrs, Warren, Beecher, Talmage, Cook, Thomson and Brooks.
Literary genius has been displayed by men like Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Holmes, Hawthorne, Mitch.e.l.l, Holland, Emerson and a host of lights scarcely less brilliant. These men, who have written in a terse and graphic style, received their stimulus and training in college, and are among the bright examples of cla.s.sical scholarship, and the results of their genius have enriched character and enlightened the world.
The periodical literature reflects the prevailing ideas, sentiments and spirit of the American people. The college-trained men have been especially quick to utilize this throne of power to guide the public mind to right principles and inspiring motives. The colleges must continue to be fountains whence shall flow a pure, earnest, and truthful literature, which will, in a great measure, determine the destiny of the present and future generations.
We are especially indebted to the colleges for the maintenance of the ascendency of the moral and religious principles which have done so much in unfolding and shaping our national life. The religious sentiment has been the controlling spirit of the nation, and our patriotism has issued from a meditative and religious temper, which the colleges have been foremost in fostering. Nearly all the great religious and reformatory movements have proceeded from the colleges and universities, whereby great good has come to society. "It was through the interchange of students between the Universities of Oxford and Prague that the teachings of Wycliff pa.s.sed over into Bohemia and issued in the splendid work of Huss. It was from college students of Florence that Colet, and Erasmus, and More caught somewhat of the spirit of Savonarola, and felt the power of truths that emerged in the Italian Renaissance, and made them contribute so grandly to religious liberty in England. It was in the presence of the college students of Germany that Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the doors, and burned the papal bull, and lit the watch-fire of the Reformation that has awaked an answering brightness from ten thousand hills. It was from a little circle of Oxford students that G.o.d led forth Wesley and Whitfield to shake the mighty pillars of unbelief in the eighteenth century."
President William F. Warren says: "By means of the great religious movement called Puritanism, the English University of Cambridge shaped, for nearly two hundred years, the intellectual and spiritual life of New England. Emmanuel College, the one in which John Harvard, Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, and many of the early New England leaders were educated, was founded for the express purpose of providing a nursery for the propagation of Puritan principles. Never were the hopes of founders more fruitfully fulfilled. The New World, then just opening, furnished a field of unimagined extent, with motives and social forces and ranges of opportunity which even yet are a marvel.
By founding a new England beyond the sea, and planting a new Emmanuel College in a new Cambridge, English Puritanism was enabled to transcend itself, to exchange the att.i.tude of a struggling ecclesiastical party for that of an Established Church. It gained the opportunity to originate a new social order, and to impress itself upon a new age, built upon new and democratic principles. The initial and fundamental covenant out of which grew the chief of all New England colonies--that of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay--was formulated and signed in ancient Cambridge. In fact, in American Puritanism, with its social, civil, and religious results, may be seen the high-water mark of the intellectual and spiritual influence which, in the whole course of history, have thus far proceeded from the banks of the Cam." The church, in harmony with the genius of Christianity, has always fostered education. It a.s.sumes to guard Christianity by directing education as one of its most powerful of organized forces.
The existence and support of colleges are largely due to the Christian Church. They are the offspring of a dominant desire to promote the cause of Christ, and make them powerful agencies for a positive and aggressive Christianity. In the middle ages the pious princes, Charlemagne and Alfred, established schools for the elevation of the clergy. Oxford, Cambridge and Glasgow Universities were established and fostered by the church to educate more fully the clergy. The founders of Harvard College thus described their motive: "Dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our ministers shall lie in the dust." Yale College was founded by preachers for a like purpose. Princeton College was founded "to supply the church with learned and able preachers of the Word." The fact is that prior to the eighteenth century there was no university founded save those established for the glory of G.o.d and the good of the church.
The chosen mottoes of the colleges indicate the spirit of the founders. That of Oxford is, "The Lord is My Light;" Harvard, "Christ and the Church;" Yale, "Light and Truth." Eighty-three per cent. of the colleges in our land were founded by Christian philanthropy, and are under denominational control. The spirit of infidelity does not lead men to make the sacrifices to found colleges. Perhaps there is not more than one in our nation.
The majority of colleges are positively religious. According to Dr.
Dorchester, even Harvard, the oldest college in the United States, that wishes to be understood as non-denominational, has been, for more than half a century, "under the direction of a Board of Fellows, all of whom have been Unitarians, except one elected within a few years; and, besides, the theological school of Harvard College is usually mentioned in the Unitarian Year Book as a Unitarian inst.i.tution."
Leland Stanford University is one of the youngest and richest of our American colleges. The regulations declare it to be the duty of the trustees "to prohibit sectarian instruction, but to have taught the immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise and benevolent Creator, and that obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man."
Both of these colleges, reported as "non-sectarian," generously provide buildings and pastors for religious services and lectures. Dr.
Dorchester believes that one-third of the State universities are under the presidency of evangelical divines. He further states that "in 1830 the students in the denominational colleges were 76.6 per cent. of the whole; in 1884, they were 79.2 per cent."
All the foregoing facts show the strong and enduring progress of Christianity in the United States; that it is "identified with the highest educational culture of the age; that the denominational inst.i.tutions are incalculably leading in number and students all the undenominational colleges, and that the great principles and blessed experiences of Christianity are voluntarily and intelligently adopted by a far larger proportion of college students than ever before."
The colleges have upheld the vital truths of the gospel by expounding the scriptures, and setting forth their ethical and religious teaching. They recognize that the divine order in saving men is through the inward working of the truth and spirit of G.o.d in their souls. Since knowledge is essential to salvation, it is a duty to enlighten men and bring them to understand the divine plan of salvation. The Bible has been communicated to us in foreign languages, and requires prolonged study and extensive knowledge in order that these oracles of G.o.d may be known and accepted among men.
The colleges have given a higher efficiency to the Christian ministry.
There are those who have obtained their training and knowledge outside of the college who have accomplished great good. There are pious and devoted men who are illiterate, but whose Christian work has been attended with more apparent results than some college-trained ministers. These, however, are the exception. The rule is that those who combine with their piety scholarly acquisitions exert by far the greatest influence for good. The history of Christianity shows how G.o.d has raised up a mult.i.tude of scholarly men to uphold the supremacy of the gospel over all its foes. Paul, Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Knox, Cranmer, Wesley and Fletcher were all college-trained men. These men, with others, endowed with mental vigor, great learning and executive force, have been used by G.o.d to accomplish His great task of building up His kingdom on earth.
The church has learned that there is no need of antagonism between knowledge and spirituality. Knowledge and intellectual training may work evil in an undevout mind, but when consecrated to the service of Christ, learning becomes the handmaid of piety. The strength and power of the Christian Church of to-day are attributable in no small degree to the Christian colleges, that have not only encouraged mental training, but have fostered refinement and humble evangelical piety.
The union of scholarly training and a holy life has raised the ministry in the public estimation so that it commands more respect and influence for good than ever before. The cause of Christ never took such hold on the popular mind, and its influence never penetrated so deeply the foundations of our social organism as it does in our day.
It is farthest from our aim to exalt and magnify the knowledge that "puffeth up," or unduly to glorify the human faculties, but we do plead that the widest opportunity be offered our youth to enlarge their knowledge, and strengthen and train their mental powers, and make the most of themselves, and that they may be consecrated to the Master"s service. Men and women thus trained in our Christian colleges, and eminent alike for learning and piety, will more and more esteem the divine revelations, and through them help to hasten the establishment of the Kingdom of righteousness on the earth.
The Students" Volunteer Movement began in 1876. It aims to awaken a deeper interest in foreign missions among college students, and to enlist their services. Within a brief period, more than 4,000 students consecrated their lives to this heroic Christian work. Already, since the movement began, 600 young men and women have entered the mission field, and thousands of others are waiting on a hesitating church to furnish the means to send them to work in foreign lands. Well did Ex-President McCosh say that the Christian Church had not witnessed such a spirit of consecration since the day of Pentecost.
The colleges have done another valuable service in awakening and strengthening in the national life a deeper sense of the value and importance of human knowledge. They are monuments of the dignity and worth of ideas, and the aspirations of the human soul.
In a new country, with its marvelous possibilities, the danger has been in having an excessive and exaggerated estimate of our national advantages, and our civilization has tended to take on a too mechanical and material character. We need to have more time to cultivate the n.o.bler nature, and, by Christian and scholarly a.s.sociations and more intimate friendships, discover and prize the fineness and sweetness of character in others, which may enrich our own life and incite us to worthy action. It is the province of higher education to help foster those conditions of mind and heart whose flexibility and natural apt.i.tudes lead the individual "to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming." Such wisdom and goodness are of the highest practical utility in the life of a nation. The colleges have helped to offset the material tendency of our civilization by holding up high ideals and emphasizing the supremacy of the unseen mental, moral, and spiritual forces in our life. Through their leadership in the schools, and through the press, platform and pulpit, they have introduced into the fomenting mind of the republic the n.o.blest ideals and the most generous incentives, which have, in a large measure, transformed public sentiment for the better. We have, at least, learned one great lesson in our history: that if we would have peace, contentment, happiness and prosperity, we must give the people a Christian education, and put all we can into character.
The college receives students from all ranks and conditions of society, and holds open to them its great opportunities, and worthily trains them to go forth into those professions and higher walks of life where their generous character and refreshing influences may be of larger service to the whole community. In the language of President Thwing, it may be said that "it is to the people that the college and university desire to give more than they receive from the people. It is not unjust to say that the people are debtors. The community has given to Yale, and to Princeton, and to Harvard, much, but Yale, and Princeton, and Harvard have given to the community more. For the college and the university are set to hold up the worth of things to the mind, and these things are the worthiest. In an age democratic and material, they are to represent the monarchy of the immaterial. In an age of luxuriousness, they are to declare the words of Him, homeless and pillowless, who said: "A man"s life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he hath." They stand for the continuity of the best life, intellectual, ethical, religious, Christian. In the realm of thought, they stand for the value of ideas; in the realm of morals, for the value of ideals; in the realm of being, like the church, for the value of character."
Next to the home, the college has been the ruling spirit in private and public life. The colleges have rigorously upheld the principles of piety, justice and sacred regard for truth as the best foundation of social order. The true wealth and power of the nation are the great and good men produced by the colleges whose example and influence have been to promote intelligence and good order in society.
We look over our vast territory, with its multiplied resources and growing population, and rejoice in our material possibilities and social privileges. But what is better and grander than all these, is the fact that more than 300 Christian colleges are scattered over our land as beacon lights in our national life, building up Christian character as the best legacy for present and future generations. Some of the colleges are yet weak and struggling, but they glory in their aspirations and prospects of future grandeur. The great fabric of our national life is radiant with the golden threads of good influences emanating from these centers of superior intelligence and instruction, where time is given for careful thought and reflection on the great problems of life.
Education by the Christian college is essential to the largest growth and progress of the state, the church, and all humanitarian movements.