^^^^^^^« OF 'FHE i I I 1-^ fRC i»i^^»^ aass_LC5S5_ Coijyright]^" COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. THE MESSAGE OF THE COLLEGE TO THE CHURCH A COURSE OF SUNDAY EVENING ADDRESSES IN LENT, 1901 DELIVERED IN THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON BOSTON CHICAGO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Two Copita Received OCT. 3 1901 COPVHIGHT ENTRY CLASS (^ XXc. No. o^O O S?_ O COPY B. Copyrighted, 1901 By J. H. Tewksbury Contents I The Religion of a College Student 9 II The Definition of a Good Man 39 III The Development of a Public Conscience.... 67 IV The College and the Home 85 V The Mutual Dependence of the College AND the Church iiS VI The College Graduate and the Church 145 Forewords The eminent names attached to the several addresses which compose this book are suf- ficient introduction to the reader, and abundant assurance of the high quality of the work. Nevertheless, it has seemed to the publishers that a few words indicative of the purpose in which these addresses originated might be of some interest, and perhaps enable the general reader to approach them in the right spirit. For the last twelve years it has been the cus- tom in the Old South Church in Boston to give a course of Sunday evening lectures dur- ing Lent. All save three of these courses have been given by the pastor of the church. Of the courses given by speakers other than the pastor, the third and last is contained in this volume. In arranging this course of lectures the ob- ject was to gain from the college its outlook upon the faith and work of the Church. The colleges and universities of New England are the creation of the Congregational churches of New England. In the first instance they were 6 Forewords founded to provide a pious and learned minis- try to the churches. In the Puritan concep- tion of the essentialness of the college to the Church there is a wisdom and a boldness worthy of all admiration. These churches have made and they have hitherto largely sus- tained the colleges. The colleges are the chil- dren of the churches. It is well, therefore, diat the elder should learn from the younger; the parent institution from the filial. The sins of the college are not the subject of this volume, nor its limitations, nor the wisdom and adequacy of its ideals, nor the success or failure attending their pursuit, nor the neces- sary infallibility of its advice to the Church. This book is a candid and manly response to a serious question: What has the college to say to the Church about its faith and work? How do the Church's conception and adminis- tration of Christianity appear to the college world, and to the men who come from that world into the great communion of citizenship ? According to the college, as churchmen what are our real and our unreal problems, our gen- uine and our imaginary dangers, our solemn Forewords 7 vocation and our mere play r.t religious living, our deepest sources of strength and our para- lyzing ignorance, our misplaced confidence and our radical weakness? Has the college any clear, brave, wise words to say to the Church to help it out of its childish fears into the power and hope of essential Christianity ? Is anything gained when pastors and their people seriously entertain the college man's perspec- tive of life and faith ? What are the supreme values as tested by intellectual competence, candor and freedom? Thus may be indicated the mood to which the addresses in this volume are the response. The interest in these addresses when given in the Old South Church, during Lent of the pres- ent year, was extraordinary ; and they are now published to meet a wide and persistent de- mand. The several authors have long been known to the public as men to whom it is wise and good to listen, and this book is issued in the assurance that they will value it most who are awake to the perils and the possibilities of the Church to-day. George A. Goiidon. Old South Parsonage, Boston, Mass. THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE STUDENT PROFESSOR FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY, D. D. THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE STUDENT We have heard many appeals to the college student concerning his duty to the Christian Church. He should be, it is urged, a more constant attendant at its worship; he should commit himself more openly to its cause ; he should guard himself against the infidelity and indecision which attack him with such strategy under the conditions of college life. May it not be of advantage, however, to consider this relation from the opposite point of view? May it not be instructive to inquire what the Christian Church must provide in order to meet the needs of an educated young man, and what the college student demands that the Church shall teach and illustrate? What has a young man the right to demand as a condition of his loyalty and devotion? What is there which the Christian Church must learn concerning the character and ideals of a normal, educated, modern youth before it can hope to lead the II 12 The College to the Church heart of such a youth to an unconstrained obedience? What is the rehgion of a college student ? There are, of course, certain limitations to such an inquiry. We must assume on both sides open-mindedness, teachableness, serious- ness and good faith. We cannot take into account either a foolish student or a foolish Church. There are, on the one hand, some youths of the college age whom no conceivable adaptation of religious teaching can hope to reach. They are self-absorbed, self-conscious, self-satisfied, self-conceited. There is little that the Church can do for them but to pray that, as they grow older, they may grow more humble, and, therefore, more teachable. On the other hand, there are some methods of re- ligious activity which cannot reasonably an- ticipate the cooperation of educated men. Here and there an imaginative young person may be won by emotional appeals or ecclesias- tical picturesqueness ; but the normal type of thoughtful youth demands of the Church so- berness, intellectual satisfaction and verifiable claims. We must dismiss from consideration Religion of a College Student 13 both the unreasoning youth and the unrea- sonable Church. We set before ourselves, on the one hand, an alert, open-minded, well- trained youth, looking out with eager eyes in- to the mystery of the universe; and, on the other hand, a thoughtful, candid, sensible Church, resting its claim not on tradition or passion, but on its perception and mainte- nance of verifiable truth. How shall these two factors of modern life — the chief factors of its future stability — the life of thoughtful youth and the truth of the Christian religion come to know and help each other? and what are the traits of Christian teaching which must be unmistakably recognized before it can commend itself to the young student of the modern world? To these questions it must be answered, that the religion of a collgee student is marked, first of all, by a passion for reality. No efifort of the Church is more mistaken than the attempt to win the loyalty of intelligent young people by multiplying the accessories or incidentals of the religious life — its ec- clesiastical forms, its emotional ecstasies, its 14 The College to the Church elaborateness of organization, its opportuni- ties of sociability. The modern college stu- dent, while in many respects very immature, is extraordinarily alert in his discernment of anything which seems to him of the nature of indirectness or unreality. He has a passion for reality. The first demand he makes of his companions or his teachers is the demand for sincerity, straightforwardness and sim- plicity. He is not likely to be won to the Christian life by any external persuasion, la- boriously planned "to draw in young people," and to make religion seem companionable and pleasant. These incidental activities of the Church have their unquestionable usefulness as expressions of Christian sentiment and service, but they are misapplied when con- verted into decoys. They are corollaries of religious experience, not preliminaries of it; they are what one wants to do when he is a Christian, but not what makes a thoughtful man believe in Christ. The modern young man sees these things just as they are. In- deed, he is inclined to be on his guard against their strategy. He will nibble at the bait, Religion of a College Student 15 but he will not take the hook. He will con- sume the refreshments of the church, he will serve on its committees, he will enjoy its esthetic effects, but he still withholds him- self from the personal consecration which these were designed to induce. He will ac- cept no substitute for reality. He wants the best. He is not old enough to be diffident or circuitous in his desires ; he does not linger in the outer courts of truth ; he marches straight into the Holy of holies, and lifts the veil from the central mystery. Thus the Church often fails of its mission to the student, because it imagines him to be frivolous and indifferent, when in reality he is tremendously in earnest and passionately sincere. And suppose, on the other hand, that the Church meets this candid creature just where he is, and, instead of offering him accessories and incidentals as adapted to his frivolous mind, presents to him, with unadorned and sober reasonableness, the realities of religion. What discovery is the Church then likely to make? It may discover, to its own surprise, and often to the surprise of the youth himself. i6 The College to the Church an unanticipated susceptibility in him to re- ligious reality, and a singular freshness and vitality of religious experience. A great many people imagine that the years from seventeen to twenty-two are not likely to be years of natural piety. The world, it is urged, is just making its appeal to the flesh and to the mind with overmastering power, while the experience of life has not yet created for itself a stable religion. Fifteen years ago it was determined in Harvard Uni- versity that religion should be no longer re- garded as a part of academic discipline but should be offered to youth as a privilege and an opportunity. It was then argued by at least one learned person that the system was sure to fail because, by the very conditions of their growth, young men were unsusceptible to religion. They had outgrown, he urged, the religion of their childhood, and had not yet grown into the religion of their maturity ; so that a plan which rested on faith in the in- herent religiousness of young men was doomed to disappointment. If, however, the vol- untary system of religion applied to univer- Religion of a College Student ly sity life has proved anything in these fifteen years, it has proved the essentially religious nature of the normal educated young man of America. To offer religion not as an obliga- tion of college life, but as its supreme privi- lege, was an act of faith in young men. It assumed that when religion was honestly and intelligently presented to the mind of youth it would receive a reverent and responsive recognition. The issue of this undertaking has serious lessons for the Christian Church. It disposes altogether of the meager expectation with which the life of youth is frequently regarded. I have heard a preacher, addressing a college audience, announce that just as childhood was so assailed by infantile diseases and mishaps that it was surprising to see any child grow up, so youth was assailed by so many sins that it was surprising to see any young man grow up unstained. There is no rational basis for this enervating skepticism. The fact is that it is natural for a young man to be good, just as it is natural for a child to grow up. A much wiser word was spoken by one of my i8 The College to the Church colleagues, who, having been asked to ad- dress an audience on the temptations of the college life, said that he should devote him- self chiefly to its temptations to excellence. A college boy, that is to say, is not, as many suppose, a peculiarly misguided and essential- ly light-minded person. He is, on the con- trary, set in conditions which tempt to excel- lence and is peculiarly responsive to every sin- cere appeal to his higher life. Behind the mask of light-mmdedness or self-assertion which he assumes, his interior life is wrestling with fundamental problems, as Jacob wrestled with the angel and would not let it go until it blessed him. "Your young men," said the prophet, with deep insight into the nature of youth, "shall see visions." They are our natural idealists. The shades of the prison- house of common life have not yet closed about their sense of the romantic, the heroic, the noble. To this susceptibility of youth the Church, if it be wise, must address its teaching. It must believe in a young man, even when he does not believe in himself. It must attempt Religion of a College Student 19 no adaptation of truth to immaturity or in- difference. It must assume that a young man, even though he disguises the fact by every subterfuge of modesty or mock de- fiance, is a creature of spiritual vision, and that his secret desire is to have that vision in- terpreted and prolonged. When Jesus met the young men whom he wanted for his dis- ciples, his first relation with them was one of absolute, and apparently unjustified, con- fidence. He believed in them and in their spiritual responsiveness. He disclosed to them the secrets of their own hearts. He dis- missed accessories and revealed realities. He did not cheapen religion or make small de- mands. He bade these men leave all and follow him. He took for granted that their nature called for the religion he had to offer, and he gave it to them without qualification or fear. The young men, for whom the ac- cidental aspects of religion were thus stripped away and its heart laid bare, leaped to meet this revelation of reality. "We have found the Messiah," they told each other. They had been believed in even before they believed 20 The College to the Church in themselves, and that which the new sense of reahty disclosed to them as real, they at last in reality became. Such is the first aspect of the religion of the student — its demand for reality. To reach the heart of an educated young man the mes- sage of the Church must be unequivocal, un- complicated, genuine, masculine, direct, real. This, however, is but a part of a second qual- ity in the religion of educated youth. The teaching of the Church to which such a mind will listen must be, still further, consistent with truth as discerned elsewhere. It must involve no partition of life between thinking and believing. It must be, that is to say, a rational religion. The religion of a college student is one expression of his rational life. To say this is not to say that religion must be stripped of its mystery or reduced to the level of a natural science in order to commend itself to educated youth. On the contrary, the tendencies of the higher education lead in precisely the opposite direction. They lead to the conviction that all truth, whether ap- proached by the way of science, philosophy, Religion of a College Student 21 art or religion, opens before a serious student into a world of mystery, a sense of the unat- tained, a spacious region of idealism, where one enters with reverence and awe. Instead of demanding that religion shall be reduced to the level of other knowledge, it will appear to such a student more reasonable to demand that all forms of knowledge shall be lifted into the realm of faith, mystery and idealism. It is, however, quite another matter to dis- cover in the teaching of religion any funda- mental inconsistency with the spirit of re- search and the method of proof which the stu- dent elsewhere candidly accepts ; and we may be sure that it is this sense of inconsistency which is the chief source of any reaction from religious influence now to be observed among educated young men. Under the voluntary system of religion at Harvard University we have established a meeting-place, known as "The Preacher's Room," where the minister conducting morn- ing prayers spends some hours each day in free and unconstrained intimacy with such students as may seek him. This room has 22 The College to the Church witnessed many frank confessions of religious difficulty and denial, and as each member of our staflf of preachers recalls his experiences at the University he testifies that the most fruitful hours of his service have been those of confidential conference in the privacy of the Preacher's Room. But if one were further called to describe those instances of religious bewilderment and helplessness which have seemed to him in his official duty most pathetic and most superfluous, he would not hesitate to admit that they were the by no means infrequent cases of young men who have been brought up in a conception of re- ligion which becomes untenable under the conditions of university life. A restricted denominationalism, a backward-looking ec- clesiasticism, an ignorant defiance of Biblical criticism, and, no less emphatically, an in- tolerant and supercilious liberalism — these habits of mind become simply impossible when a young man finds himself thrown into a world of wide learning, religious liberty, and intellectual hospitality. Then ensues, for many a young mind, a pathetic and even Religion of a College Student 23 tragic period of spiritual hesitation and recon- struction. The young man wanders through dry places, seeking rest and finding none ; and it i^ quite impossible for his mind to say : "I will return into my house from whence I came out." Meantime his loving parents and his anxious pastor observe with trembling his defection from the old ways, deplore the influence of the university upon religious faith, and pray for a restoration of belief which is as contrary to nature as the restora- tion of the oak to the acorn from which it grew. Now, in all this touching experience, where is the gravest blame to be laid? It must, no doubt, be confessed that among the condi- tions of college life there are some which tend to encourage in a young man a certain pert- ness and priggishness of mind which make the old ways of faith seem old-fashioned and primitive. Indeed, it seems to some young men that any way of faith is superfluous to a thorough man of the world, such as the average sophomore ought to be. But these cheerful young persons, for whom the past 24 The College to the Church has no lessons and the future no visions, and for whom the new ideal of self-culture has for the moment suppressed the earlier ideals of self-sacrifice or service, are not a type of student life which need be taken seriously. They are the lookers-on of the academic world, the dilettante and amateur minds in a community of scholars. The strenuous game of real learning goes on; and these patrons of the strife sit, as it were, along the side lines and wear the college col- ors, but do not participate in the training or the conflict or the victory. We are thinking of that much more significant body of youth who are in deadly earnest with their thought, and who find it an essential of their intel- lectual peace to attain some sense of unity in their conception of the world. For this type of college youth — the most conscientious, most thoughtful, most precious — the blame for inconsistency between the new learning and the inherited faith lies, for the most part, not with the college, but with the Church. There was once a time when these young minds could be secluded by solicitous parents Religion of a College Student 25 and anxious pastors from most of the signs of change in modern thought. They could be prohibited from approaching great tracts of literature ; they could be hidden in the cloistered life of a strictly guarded college; their learning could be ensured to be in safe conformity with a predetermined creed. There is now no corner of the intellectual world where this seclusion is possible. Out of the most unexpected sources — a novel, a poem, a newspaper — issues the contagion of modern thought ; and, in an instant, the life that has been shut in and has seemed secure is hopelessly affected. And how does the young man, touched with the modern spirit, come to regard the faith which he is thus forced to reject? Some- times he regards it with a sense of pathos, as an early love soon lost; sometimes with a deep indignation, as the source of skepticism and denial. For one educated youth who is alienated from religion by the persuasions of science, philosophy or art, ten, v/e may be sure, are thus affected by the irrational or impractical teaching of religion. It is not an 26 The College to the Church inherent issue between learning and faith which forces them out of the Church in which they were born ; it is an unscientific and re- actionary theory of faith. It is not the col- lege which must renew its conformity to the Church ; it is the Church which must open its eyes to the marvelous expansion of intellect- ual horizon which lies before the mind of every college student to-day. There is another aspect of the same ex- perience. This process of intellectual growth is often accompanied, not by a reaction from religion, but by a new appreciation of its reasonableness. In a degree which few who represent the Church have as yet realized, the expansion of the sphere -of truth is at the same time an enlargement and enrichment of re- ligious confidence. There is going on, with- in the college, often without the knowledge of the Church, a restoration of religious faith through the influence of intellectual liberty. I have seen more than one student come to college in a mood of complete antagonism to his earlier faith, and then I have seen that same youth in four years graduate from col- Religion of a College Student 27 lege, and with a passionate consecration give himself to the calling of the Christian minis- try which he had so lately thought superfluous and outgrown. It was the simple conse- quence of his discovery that the religious life is not in conflict with the interests and aims of a university, but is precisely that ideal of con- duct and service toward which the spirit of a university logically leads. "I beseech you, therefore, brethren," says the apostle who knew most about the relation of philosophy to faith, "that ye present ... a reasonable service." It is a charge which the Christian Church still needs to hear. The service of the Church which is to meet the religion of a col- lege student must be a reasonable service, con- sistent with all reverent truth-seeking, open to the light, hospitable to progress, rational, teachable, free. The church which sets itself against the currents of reasonable thought, and has for great words like Evolution, Higher Criticism, Morality, Beauty, Law, only an undiscerning sneer, is in reality not the defender of the faith, but a positive con- tributor to the infidelity of the present age. 28 The College to the Church The church which asks no loyalty that is not rational, no service of the heart that is not an offering of the mind, comes with its refresh- ing message to many a bewildered young mind, and is met by a renewed dedication to a reasonable service. So far, however, I have described the re- ligion of a college student as it appears in every thoughtful age. There remains one aspect of the religious life which is peculiarly characteristic of a college student in our own generation, and of which the Church in its re- lation to the young must take fresh account. Protestant teaching, from the time of Luther, has laid special emphasis on the Pauline dis- tinction between faith and works. It is not a man's performance, either of moral obliga- tions or ritual observances, that justifies him in the sight of God. He must offer that total consecration of the heart, that conversion of the nature, which makes him find his life in God. This teaching was a necessary protest against the externalism and ecclesiastical practices which had been for centuries re- garded by many as of the essence of the re- Religion of a College Student 2g Hgious life. "We are justified by faith;" "the just shall live by faith" — these great words give to religion a profounder, more spiritual and more personal significance as a relation between the individual soul and the living God. But suppose that this touch of the life of God is felt by the soul of man, and that the soul desires to express its religious life — what is to be its channel of utterance? The history of Protestantism for the most part answers : "The organ of religious expression is the tongue. When the life is moved by the Holy Ghost, it is led to speak as the Spirit gives it utterance. It tells rejoicingly of its new birth; it confesses Christ before its fellows; it preaches to others the message which has brought it hope and peace." Here is the basis of a large part of the organization of the Protestant churches — their meetings for free expression of prayer ; their association for re- ligious utterance; their test of faith through spoken confession. It is obvious that this channel of expression is legitimate and often inevitable. The fulness of religious emotion 30 The College to the Church which descends from God to man leaps out of many lives into forms of speech, as natural- ly as the water which descends from the high hills leaps out from its conduit into the air. What the present age, however, is teaching us, as the world was never taught before, is that another and equally legitimate channel of expression is open to the life of faith. It is the language of works. We have come in these days to a time devoted in an unpre- cedented degree to the spirit of philanthropy. It is the age of social service. No life can yield itself to the current of the time without being swept into its movement of passionate fraternity and social justice. But what i» the attitude of the Christian Church to this modern phenomenon of social service? It is quite true that the Church is one of the most active agents of this philanthropic renais- sance. The sense of social responsibility is manifested by the prodigious increase of par- ish charities, parish organizations, institution- al churches, and general benevolence. The Church, however, has failed adequately to recognize the legitimate place of action as a Religion of a College Student 31 trustworthy witness of faith. To do for others has seemed to the tradition of the Church a superadded and secondary effect of religion, not one of its essential and original factors. First, one is to be religious ; and then, as a consequence or ornament of his re- ligion, he is to concern himself with the bet- ter ordering of the human world. A much deeper relation between faith and works is indicated by those solemn words in which Jesus sums up, as he says, "the whole law, and the prophets." There is, he teaches, a kinship of nature between the love of God and the love of man. The second command- ment is like the first. Both are parts of a complete religion. When a modern life, that is to say, is moved by the spirit of philan- thropy, that impulse is not something which the Church may stand apart from and com- mend as of another sphere. It is, in fact, one legitimate expression of the religious life ; uttering itself not by the tongue, but by the hand, as though there had been heard the great word of the apostle: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can 32 The College to the Church he love God whom he hath not seen?" In other words, the Church has permitted this modern movement of philanthropy to proceed as though it were not an essential part of the Christian life, when in reality this whole vast enterprise is the way in which the modern world is actually uttering that faith in the possible redemption of mankind, to accom- plish which the Church of Jesus Christ was expressly designed and inspired. I stood one day in the house of a woman's settlement, set in the most squalid conditions of the life of a city and purifying the neighborhood with its unassuming devotion, and a minister of the Christian Church who was present looked about him and said : "This is a very beauti- ful and noble work, but I wish there were more of Christ in it." One felt like asking, How could there be more of Christ than was already there? Would technical confession or oral expression add any significance to such a work in his eyes who said : "Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, . . . but he that doeth the will of my Father ?" Was there ever, indeed, a work more full of Christ? Religion of a College Student 33 Might not Jesus, if he should come again on earth, pass without notice many a splendid structure reared in his name, and, seeking out these servants of the broken-hearted and the bruised of the world, say to them : " Inas- much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me"? Why is the Church not far-sighted enough to claim for herself what is justly her own? She clings to the test of faith by a single form of expression, when in fact the Spirit of God is manifesting itself at the pres- ent time by another way of expression. And so it comes to pass that the most immediate problem for the Church is to find a place within her religious experience for the new manifesta- tion of self-effacing philanthropy, and to claim the age of social service as at heart an age of faith. Now, at precisely this point, where the first expression of the Spirit of God takes the form of the service of man, the Christian Church meets the religion of the college student. The normal type of a serious-minded young man at the present 111 34 The College to the Church time does not talk much about religion. Sometimes this reserve proceeds from self- consciousness and ought to be overcome, but quite as often it proceeds from modesty and ought to be reverenced. At any rate, such is the college student — a person disinclined to much profession of piety, and not easy to shape into the earlier type of expressed dis- cipleship. Yet, at the same time, this young man is extraordinarily responsive to the new call for human service. I suppose that never in the history of education were so many young men and young women in our colleges profoundly stirred by a sense of social re- sponsibility and a passion for social justice. The first serious question which the college student asks is not, " Can I be saved ? Do I believe?" but, "What can I do for others? What can I do for those less fortunate than I ? " No one can live in a community of these young lives without perceiving a qual- ity of self-sacrificing altruism so beautiful and so eager that it is akin to the emotions which in other days brought in a revival of religion. What is the dutv of the Church to a mood Religion of a College Student 35 like this ? The duty of the Church — or rath- er the privilege of the Church — is to recognize that this is a revival of religion; that in this generous movement of human sympathy there is a legitimate and acceptable witness of the life of God in the soul of the modern world. It may not be that form of evidence which other times have regarded as valid; it may, perhaps, not be the most direct way of re- ligious expression; but none the less it hap- pens to be the way through which the Holy Spirit is at the present time directing the emotional life of youth to natural utterance. " I am not very religious, " said one frank youth to me one day, " but I should like to do a little to make of Harvard College something more than a winter watering-place." But was not that youth religious? Was it not the Spirit of God which was stirring his young heart? What, indeed, is the final object of religion if it is not to include the making of that better world which he in his dream de- sired to see? In this quality of the religion of a college student the Church must believe. It must take him as he is, and let him testify 36 The College to the Church by conduct if he will not testify by words. If the student might be assured that the re- ligion which the Church represents is a practi- cal, working, ministering faith ; if he could see that the mission of the Church was not the saving of a few fortunate souls from a wrecked and drifting world, but the bringing of the world itself, like a still seaworthy ves- sel, with its whole cargo of hopes and fears, safe to its port; if he could believe that in the summons of the time to unselfish service he was in reality hearing the call of the Living God ; then he would see in the Church not, as he is often inclined to see, an obstinate de- fender of impossible opinions, or a hothouse for exotic piety, or a cold storage warehouse to preserve traditions which would perish in the open air, but the natural expression of organized righteousness, the body of those who are sanctified for others' sakes, and to such a Church he would offer his honest and practical loyalty. These are the tests to which the Church must submit if it would meet the religion of a college student — the tests of reality, reason- Religion of a College Student 37 ableness and practical service. A religion without reality — formal, external, technical, obscurantist; a religion without reasonable- ness — omniscient, dogmatic, timid; a religion which does not greet the spirit of practical service as the spirit of Christ — a religion of such a kind may win the loyalty of emotional or theological or ecclesiastical minds, but it is not acceptable to the normal type of edu- cated American youth. Such natures de- mand first a genuine, then a rational, and then a practical, religion, and they are held to the Christian Church by no bond of sentiment or tradition which will prevent their seeking a more religious life elsewhere. And what is this but a wholesome challenge to the Church of Christ to renew its vitality at the sources of its real power? The intellectual issues of the present time are too real to be met by artificiality and too rational to be in- terpreted by traditionalism; the practical philanthropy of the present time is too absorb- ing and persuasive to be subordinated or ig- nored. It is a time for the Church to dismiss all affectations and all assumptions of au- 38 The College to the Church thority, and to give itself to the reality of rational religion and to the practical redemp- tion of an unsanctified world. This return to simplicity and service will be at the same time a recognition of the religion of a col- lege student and a renewal of the religion of Jesus Christ. II THE DEFINITION OF A GOOD MAN PRESIDENT WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE, D. D. THE DEFINITION OF A GOOD MAN "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good" — Micah 6:8. Too long we have been content to urge men by emotional appeals to be good. The time has come to show men in clear intellectual terms what a good man is. For goodness does not consist in doing or refraining from doing this or that particular thing. It de- pends on the whole aim and purpose of the man who does it, or refrains from doing it. Anything which a good man does, as part of a good plan of life, is made thereby a good act. Anything that a bad man does, as part of a bad plan of life, becomes thereby an evil act. Precisely the same external act is good for one man and bad for another. An example or two will make this clear. Two men seek political office. For one man it is the gate of heaven ; to the other it is the door to hell. One man has established himself in a business or profession in which he can earn an honest living, and support his 41 42 The College to the Church family. He has acquired sufficient standing in his business so that he can turn it over temporaril}^ to his partners or subordinates. He has solved his own problem ; and he has strength, time, energy, capacity, money, which he can give to solving the problems of the public. Were he to shirk public office, or evade it, or fail to take all legitimate means to secure it, he would be a coward, a traitor, a parasite on the body politic. Hence public office is for this man the gateway of heaven. The other man has not mastered any busi- ness or profession ; he has not made himself indispensable to any employer or firm ; he has no permanent means of supporting himself and his family. If he gives up his job, he cannot get it again, and has no prospect of getting another as good. He sees a political office in which he can get a little more salary for doing a good deal less work than is possi- ble in his present position. He seeks the office as a means of getting his living out of the public. From that day forth he joins the horde of mere office-seekers, aiming to get Definition of a Good Man 43 out of the public a living he is too lazy, or too incompetent, or too proud to earn in private employment. Do n't you see that the very same external act which was the other man's strait, narrow gateway to heaven, is for this man the broad, easy descent into hell? Two women join the same women's club, and take part in the same program. One of them has her heart in her home; has ful- filled all the sweet charities of daughter, sis- ter, wife or mother: and in order to bring back to these loved ones at home wider inter- ests, larger friendships, and a richer and more varied life, has gone out into the club. No angel in heaven is better employed than she in the preparation and delivery of papers, and her attendance on committee meetings and at af- ternoon teas. The other woman finds home life dull and monotonous. She likes to get away from her children. She craves excitement, flat- tery, fame, social importance. She is rest- less, irritable, out of sorts, censorious, com- plaining, at home; animated, gracious, affa- ble, complaisant, abroad. For drudgery and 44 The College to the Church duty she has no strength, taste or talent ; and the thought of these things is enough to give her dyspepsia, insomnia and nervous pros- tration. But for all sorts of public func- tions, for the preparation of reports and the organization of new charitable and philan- thropic and social schemes, she has all the energy of a steam-engine, the power of a dynamo. When this woman joins a new club, or writes a new paper, or gets a new office, though she does not a single thing more than her angel sister who sits by her side, she is playing the part of a devil. It is not what one does ; it is the whole purpose of life consciously or unconsciously expressed in the doing, that measures the worth of the man or woman who does it. At the family table, at the bench in the shop, at the desk in the office, in the seats at the thea- ter, in the ranks of the army, in the pews of the church, saint and sinner sit side by side; and the keenest outward observer cannot de- tect the slightest difference in the particular things that they do. The good man is he who, in each act he does or refrains from do- Definition of a Good Man 45 ing, is seeking the good of all the persons who are affected by his action. The bad man is the man who, whatever he does or refrains from doing, leaves out of account the inter- ests of some of the people whom his action is sure to affect. If there is any sphere of human welfare to which you are indifferent, if there are any people in the world whose interests you deliberately disregard, then no matter how many acts of charity and philan- thropy and industry and public spirit you perform — acts which would be good if a good man did them — in spite of them all, you are an evil man. A man is either wholly good in the purpose of his life, so that he can say with the old Latin poet, "I am a man; and nothing human is alien to me" ; or else there is some good which he disregards and de- spises ; in which case he is an evil man. He that sinneth at any one point in this universal sympathy with human good, is, as St. James and the Stoics tell us, guilty of all. It mat- ters not whether you throw a brickbat through a plate-glass window, smashing out a big, ragged hole, or shoot a rifle-ball 46 The College to the Church through it, cutting a small, round hole. In either case the pane of glass is spoiled, its market value is destroyed, and you must put in a new one. Precisely so, no man is a good man unless he makes all good the object of his will ; or, in religious language, unless he wills the will of God. Good acts, unless they are all good, and have the universal good as their conscious or unconscious aim, do not make a good man. But the good man, who wills the universal good in all his actions, makes whatever act he does intelli- gently from this motive, a good act. Now we know the form which the good man's will must take. He wills the good of all who are affected by his action; counting nothing human alien to himself. If man were omnipotent and infinite, that would be the end of our task. All the good man would have to do would be to make sure that he willed the good of all men, and then that good would be accomplished. But we men and wo- men are not omnipotent. We are very finite and feeble. Of all the good we will, we can ac- complish but an infinitesimal part. Hence, Definition of a Good Man 47 out of all the good we would like to do, and would do if we had power, we must choose which tiny part we will actually set ourselves to accomplish. To do one thing we must give up doing a hundred other things. Hence the first part of the good life, which we have thus far gained, is the easiest and simplest part of it. The harder part is to choose wisely what part of the universal good we shall undertake to do, and what we shall leave undone. For the attempt to do in a promiscuous way all the good which comes within reach, in a blind attempt to play the role of Omnipotence, inevitably ends in physi- cal breakdown, nervous wreck, financial im- poverishment and general uselessness. The good man is good for something; and in order to be good for something he must deliberately refuse to do a multitude of things which are all well enough in their way, but have no supreme claim upon him. If the first aspect of the good life is a widening of sympathy and devotion until no human interest is alien to us, the second step in this same good life is a strict narrowing 48 The College to the Church dov/n of the range of our action to the very definite and particular channel through which our tiny strength can be put forth to the high- est advantage. A man's energy is like the power of a river. Left to flow at its own sweet will through the meadow, it is broad, beautiful, but impotent. It becomes power- ful and useful only when dammed up and compelled to run through a narrow raceway. Just where to build dams in our lives and how to turn the current into the raceway, is the second great problem of the good life. There are four principles by which the lim- itation of effort should be guided. The first principle of such selection is that the nearest duty is presumably for us the highest and best. In the cases we have cited, the family is the nearest duty to woman. No amount of promiscuous activity in clubs and conven- tions, in church and charity and settlement work, can ever atone for neglect of those ten- der family ties which bind her most closely to the life of the race. To sacrifice the duties of daughter, wife or mother to the grandest career ever opened to woman, is to sacrifice Definition of a Good Man 49 the higher to the lower, the essential to the superficial, the real to the merely apparent. Not until these first duties have been faith- fully fulfilled, is any woman at liberty to seek for a larger, more congenial or more con- spicuous sphere. The same principle of nearness is what keeps our young man at his profession or business until he gets well established. For as the internal life of the family is woman's first duty, so the outward support of the family, and the power to earn money in some honest vocation, is the most fundamental duty of man. Until this is achieved, all other at- tractive careers should be put aside as tempta- tions. There are, indeed, persons who are disengaged from the family in which they were born, and have not yet entered families of their own, on whom these primal obliga- tions may not rest. They are free from these calls of duty. But for those who are in close family relations, the nearness and in- timacy of these ties constitute the first, fore- most and supreme claim on their service and devotion. Whatever such a person does, or IV 50 The College to the Church refrains from doing in the outside world of so- ciety, politics, literature, art, recreation, must be done or left undone because through the do- ing it or leaving it undone, he or she best ful- fils this primal obligation to home. Defined, then, in terms of our main insight, supplemented by this first principle of selec- tion, our good man or woman is the one who wills the good of all who are afifected by his action, but when compelled to choose between the good of different persons, always chooses the good of family and kindred first, and re- luctantly, yet firmly, gives up the good of such other persons and interests as are incon- sistent with this primal devotion to home. The second principle of selection between competing goods is individual aptitude. As has already been said, the amount of good the best disposed individual can do is a very small proportion of that which needs to be done, and which he would like to do. In selecting what his special contribution shall be, the man who desires to do all the good that he can will select the line for which he feels special inclination and fitness. A man can do five Definition of a Good Man $i times as much good in the Hne of his special endowment and training, as he can in Hnes for which he has no special quahfication. Every man and woman can do something bet- ter than any one else who is available at that time and place ; hence, to leave any portion of this specific work undone for the sake of do- ing things which other people can do just as well, is to diminish the total worth of one's contribution to the world. If a woman is a teacher, for instance, and has special gifts for molding the minds and hearts of young children, then she owes to her profession and to those children the best teaching it is in her power to give. But good teaching depends first of all on abundant vitality, a cheerful and healthful outlook on life, eager and hearty interest in all sorts of objects. Hence the teacher must at all costs keep herself in prime physical health, and must have opportunity for seeing the sights and hearing the lectures and reading the books which will keep her mind and heart full of fresh, natural and human interest. For such a teacher to waste time and strength 52 The College to the Church in household drudgery or dressmaking, or anything else which other people can be hired to do just as well, is a wrong to herself, to her profession and to the children entrusted to her care. Housekeeping and dressmaking are most useful and honorable employments. They are the very best things that a great many people can do, and they should be left, as far as possible, to be done by those people ; but for a person who has gifts in a different direction to diminish the power of doing well the work of her special vocation, in order to do these other things which some one else can do just as well, is to sacrifice the specific in the name of serving the general good. The man who has large administrative business ability, who can direct the industry of thousands of people into useful and profit- able employment, likewise makes a tremen- dous mistake when he burdens himself with petty details which he can hire a clerk to do for a thousand dollars a year. Keeping books and filing away letters and the routine of an office are excellent things in themselves, the very best things that a great many people Deiinition of a Good Man 53 can do. But when the man of great admin- istrative ability spends his time on these petty details, he is sacrificing his specific contribu- tion to a service which he ought not to render. Let each give the best that he can, and let no man descend from the best he can do to compete with others on any plane below that of his own specific excellence. Every man who has any artistic, scholarly, administrative or financial power above that of the average man, is thereby placed under obligation to give his whole energy to doing the one thing he can do best, and leave all the things that other people can do equally well, to be done by those other people. So long as there is work to be done in the line of one's specific capacity and training, it is almost a crime to spend time and strength in doing what it is possible to hire any one else to do. If now we put together our main insight and our first two principles, our definition of the good man will be. The man who seeks the good of all who are affected by his action, putting those claims which come nearest to him first, and second, those which are in line with his specific aptitude and training. 54 The College to the Church The third principle of selection is urgency. If the control of events were in our hands and we could take our own time to do things, the first two principles would be nearly all we should need. But the worth of many kinds of work depends on its being done at the right time. Many things must be done at the time they are needed or else they can never be done at all. When a house is on fire we cannot postpone our efforts to put it out to some more convenient season. If a friend is sick, we cannot wait until he gets well before pro- viding the attendance he needs. When a political campaign is at its height we cannot postpone our contribution to public discussion until we have taken account of stock in our store or read the proof-sheets of our treatise. We must strike while the iron is hot. We must make our hay while the sun shines. Hence temporary sacrifice of family life and business interests must be cheerfully made, and even the most delicate phases of our chosen professional work must often be put ruthlessly aside, in order to give undivided attention to some call of humanity or philan- Definition of a Good Man 55 thropy or country. We must do these things in concert with others. When others are ready to take hold of them, we must make ourselves ready to take hold too. The readi- ness to be interrupted is an indispensable quality of the wisely good man. This readiness to be interrupted, however, is a very different thing from having no plan at all. Of all the worthless people in the world, probably the least useful are those who, having no work of their own on hand, are ready to fall in with every fad and craze that is current. By readiness to be inter- rupted we do not mean this passive and empty condition of mind. Being interrupted im- plies that there is something to interrupt. The man who is faithful to our first two prin- ciples every day of his life will have on hand plans of his own which he is strenuously push- ing ahead. Every available hour and minute will be devoted to work of this self-chosen kind. He will, however, recognize that the plan of the world is more important than any private plans of his own. He will thrust his own plans temporarily into the background in S6 The College to the Church order to take his part, as need may be, in the urgent issues of the day and hour. Such readiness to be interrupted is no sign of an aimless and purposeless life. It is merely the surrender, when occasion demands it, of one's private personal aims, to accept the larger duties which the movements of human society from time to time press upon us. We admire the ancient mathematician who was so absorbed in his geometrical problems that when the city was captured and the soldiers came rushing in upon him, he bade them not disturb his diagrams. But we should admire him more if, so long as his city was besieged, he had laid aside his mathematical instru- ments and taken his place with javelin and spear in defence of his city's walls. The best life cannot escape these interruptions and would not escape if it could. Woman's life, especially, seems to be but one series of inter- ruptions, so urgent and pressing are the per- sonal claims made upon her. In proportion as our lives are enlarged, the amount of in- evitable interruption will increase. A man at the head of a great institution said to me, Definition of a Good Man 57 not long ago, when I asked him how he stood the strain of the work, "It is not the regular work that wears on one; it is the unexpected things. This institution," he said, "is so big, that something fearfully bad happens in it every day." Putting our main insight and our three principles, then, together, we get for our definition of the good man. One who wills all human good in each choice, but when he must choose between what he shall serve and shall not, takes : first, the thing that lies near- est ; second, the thing for which he has special aptitude and training ; and third, is ready to lay both these things aside cheerfully and promptly, when some urgent call of truth or duty or country or wide human welfare must be met now or never. The fourth principle of choice is size. This is one of the more obvious of the principles, and one which is most tempting. It is a real principle, but yet the last of them all. It is better to command a regiment than a com- pany; and when the colonel is shot, the lower officer must assume command of the regi- 58 The College to the Church ment. This is the principle underlying all promotion. A man who can fill a larger place, other things being equal, has no right to stay in a smaller place. To do so would be to prefer a smaller to a larger good ; in other words, to prove false to the general good altogether. This principle of promo- tion applies everywhere ; and nothing is more wide of the mark than the criticism which is always made upon men when they leave a small place for a larger. It is said they are actuated by greed for a larger salary or am- bition for a greater reputation. All sorts of unworthy motives are attributed. Well, a small man may make the change from small motives, and a selfish man may make the change from selfish motives. It is true, however, that the good man, who is guided by a sincere desire to do all the good he can, other things being equal, must take the larger place every time. I say, "other things being equal" ; for we have already seen that other things are far more important. If the larger thing is not quite in one's line, if it is too large for one's physical strength, then its Definition of a Good Man 59 mere size is no good reason for its acceptance. To go back to our first illustrations. The fact that the club is larger than the home does not constitute a reason why the woman should sacrifice home to club. The fact that politics is a larger field than business does not justify a man in giving up his business alto- gether to make politics his sole means of live- lihood. To recognize the rightfulness of this claim of size, and yet to hold it strictly sub- ordinate to the other principles which come before, is the fourth mark of goodness in man. Putting all we have gained together, we get for our definition of the good man, One who makes the good of all whom his action affects the aim of each choice, and who limits the good that he does, first, by the closeness of the claim to himself and his family life ; second, to the line of his special aptitude and training ; third, who turns aside readily to re- spond to urgent claims from without ; and, fourth, who, so far as he can consistently with the foregoing principles, prefers the larger to the sm.aller sphere of work. Such is our definition of goodness. In 6o The College to the Church sympathy and spirit and purpose, the good man is one who works with God in the serv- ice of all human good ; yet because he is finite, not infinite, because his powers are limited, much of the good which he would do he is compelled to leave undone; yet he leaves it not in indifference, not in hardness of heart, not in pride, not in irritation and anger, but simply because, being finite, the great mass of what he would do he simply must leave un- done. And since so much must be left, since so little can be done, he is careful to be wise in his choosing. He seeks as far as possible to do the thing which no one else would do, were he to leave it undone ; the thing which no one else could do as well, were he to leave it for them to do ; the thing which could be done at no other time, if not done at the time when it comes ; the thing which would be less completely and successfully done, were he content to be doing some smaller and easier task. From this rather long and complicated defi- nition of the good man or woman we may draw three short, clear, practical lessons. DeHnition of a Good Man 6r First: How clearly Christ stands before us as the supremely good man ! His meat and drink were the doing of God's universal good will. All he did or refrained from doing, all his pleasures and joys, all his trials and sorrows were sought or accepted as parts of his one supreme devotion to God's will for man's highest good. From this supreme de- votion to God's glory in man's highest good no pleasure could allure him away, and no pain could turn him aside. Whether he went to the Pharisee's feast, or whether he faced crucifixion, in each and every case it was God's good will for man which he steadfastly sought to accomplish. He began with his own people and nation, seeking first the lost sheep of the house of Israel : and he bade his apostles begin their work at Jerusalem. To be sure, his work did not permit him to have a home of his own. While the foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, the Son of man had not where to lay his head. Yet his recorded life begins with filial obedi- ence as a child, and one of his last thoughts on the cross was to make provision for his 62 The College to the Church mother in the home of his dearest and most intimate friend. From the outset of his pubHc career, from the early struggle in the wilderness on to the last scenes at Jerusalem, he firmly refused to do what other people expected of him, and advised him to do, but held strictly to the specific method and mission which his own genius marked out for his course. To all so- licitations to do aught else, or leave any part of this undone, he replied with the stern re- buke, "Get thee behind me, Satan." Yet he was ever ready to respond to the call of the mourner for comfort, or the sick man for healing, or the honest inquirer for light, or mothers for the blessing of their little chil- dren. For it was God's work, not his own, he was doing; and the time when a child of God needed help was the time he stood ready to give it. And, lastly, though he began modestly in his own little province, and refused to be hur- ried into larger spheres before his hour had come, yet when the hour came when he must choose between a quiet, inoffensive but com- Definition of a Good Man 63 paratively uninfluential life with a little group of devoted disciples, or a brief, bitter contest with the authorities at the nation's capital, then, knowing- that the larger work meant re- jection, suffering, death, he set his face steadfastly to go up to Jerusalem. This Lenten season commemorates the consecra- tion and courage of this supremely good man, in placing his great work of revelation of God and salvation of man on a national, world- wide, universal basis, at the cost of his own crucifixion. He suffered himself to be lifted up because that was the way in which he could draw all men unto him, and make his work of redemption as wide as the earth and as endless as time. If we have been correct in our definition of the good man, as one who makes God's whole will and man's complete good the object of his every choice, and who begins in small, in- tfmate ways with the few who are nearest himself, follows strictly the bent of his gen- ius, yet welcomes each offered occasion for serving an urgent human need, and, finally, throws his whole soul and life into the largest 64 The College to the Church work God gives him to do, then our study is but one more confirmation of the moral and spiritual perfection of him whom all Chris- tians call Lord. Second : What a goodly fellowship our definition includes ! — the miner who is cheer- ful and faithful in the dark ; the sailor who is the last to leave the ship that must sink ; the soldier who fears not to die at his post ; the workman who does his best work whether he gets more pay or less ; the employer who cares for his workmen as well as his profits ; the fathers and mothers who toil early and late to give their children the chance they missed themselves ; the philanthropist who gives time and thought and love with every cent of his money ; the reformer who proclaims un- popular truths at his own expense ; the peni- tent prostitute who would shield young girls from her own life of shame ; the man who will not treat the daughters or sisters of other men as he would resent their treating his own; the merchant who gives the money's worth in whatever he sells ; the editor who makes a paper he is pleased that his children Definition of a Good Man 65 should read ; the lawyer who discourages liti- gation; every man and woman in the whole wide world — and these men and women num- ber millions to-day — who does a work no one else could do so well, and takes every chance to make the work as useful and large as it can be — this is the goodly fellowship our definition includes ; this is the true Church of Christ ; of such are the kingdom of heaven. Third, and lastly: This fellowship with Christ and all good men and women in a life devoted to all human good, and expressed in the wise choice of what is nearest and most specific and most urgent and most influen- tial, is a fellowship which every man knows he ought to join. To love and cherish and pray for the good of mankind everywhere is not too much to ask of a man who is made in the image of God. Neither is it too much to ask that out of this universal love we select for our actual service what God has placed next to us, and given us special fitness for doing; what he thrusts in our pathway or presses on our immediate attention; and that in our ultimate choice we take the largest 66 The College to the Church work that comes in our way, even though for us, as for our Master, that larger work take the form of a cross. That is what it means for us to be good men and women. That is what it means to be Christians. Thai is v'hat we all know we ought to be. That is what Christ will make of us all, if we take his yoke upon us and learn the great lesson of his life and death. Ill THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PUBLIC CONSCIENCE PRESIDENT ARTHUR T. HADLEY_, LL. D. THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PUBLIC CONSCIENCE "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth" — Luke 12 : 15. In the ordinary meaning which is given to this text, we are led to contrast the unimpor- tance of mere worldly possessions as com- pared with the vastly greater importance of the spiritual life. But there is another mean- ing, and I believe a truer one — a meaning where the emphasis is laid not on the word "things," but on the word "possesses;" a meaning in which exception is taken to selfish ideals of life, however lofty, as compared with those wider ideals of the man who works pri- marily for others. The difference between these two types of men is forcibly illustrated in the college world. There are among our students two sharply distinguished groups ; the men who go to college for what they can get out of it, and the men who go to college for what they 69 70 The College to the Church can put into it. Of course there are wide variations of character within each of these groups. Those who are trying to get what they can out of college life fall into various methods of self-seeking. One man pursues pleasure for the sake of personal enjoyment; another pursues athletics for the honor which it will bring him as an individual ; a third takes up the social organization as a means of personal advancement ; a fourth studies for rank in his class, and for the honor and ad- vantage which that rank will bring; a fifth shuts himself out from the world in order to live a life which he conceives to be one of self- improvement. Yet diverse as are the out- ward aims of all these men, they are charac- terized by one common error — the error of selfishness. The evils of this may be more obvious in the lower forms of its manifesta- tion than in the higher ones. We see the fatuous folly of the man who takes his enjoy- ment in eating and drinking and worse kinds of self-indulgence. We can condemn the short-sightedness of the man who plays for a record or who studies for marks. But the Development of Public Conscience 71 higher forms of selfishness, though less obvi- ously suicidal than the lower ones, are for that reason perhaps all the more dangerous. So many a man seems to gain social success by its unscrupulous pursuit, or to lay the foundations for success in professional life by a system of self -development at the expense of others, that we sometimes lose sight of the effect which this process has in undermining character and public spirit. "Virtue," says a French writer, "is more dangerous than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the restraints of conscience." The habit of self-improvement furnishes a good example of this danger. Just because the individual actions to which it leads may be commend- able, its devotee loses sight of the evil educa- tional effect of doing these things in a wrong spirit. There is another reason why the higher forms of selfishness, as manifested in the col- lege life, are worse in their effects than the lower forms. The man whose temptations lead him to a life of pleasure is, as a rule, one whose possibilities of service to the commu- 72 The College to the Church nity are limited. As he goes out into after life he finds his power for good and evil alike restricted by that mass of conventions with which civilization has guarded the doings of the ordinary man. But the one whose temp- tations to selfishness concern things of the spirit is a man who in after life has wider possibilities, and who, if he -has started him- self in the wrong direction, may lead society astray by the wrong exercise of those trusts which no law can control, and concerning which public sentiment has not as yet learned to frame its judgment and exercise its penal- ties. It is perhaps the greatest excellence of the American college that it exercises a powerful influence against selfishness, whether physical or intellectual, and in favor of the develop- ment of a community life. It does not do homage to the man who is aiming to make a record for himself, whether in athletics or in studies. The majority of those who attend our universities are ready to enter into the spirit of the place, and they demand that their fellows shall do the same thing. Man is a Development of Public Conscience 73 political animal ; and the boys entering into a group of this kind at an impressionable age become part of a close community whose pub- lic sentiment and code of ethics take powerful hold upon them. This code may be good or it may be bad. Usually, under the imperfect materials of human character with which we have to work, it is a mixture of the two. And yet it has this result : that the boy, at a most impressionable age, forms a conception of a public conscience and a code of honor which carries him outside of himself, and which leads him to do, not by physical compulsion but by the influence of public sentiment, things in which consideration of personal con- venience and personal advancement are purely secondary. The college is, in short, a living instance of the possibility of developing men out of the lower and into the higher ideals of life; out of aims which are bounded by self-interest, and into those which are inspired by loyalty to their fellows and regulated by the sentiments and conscience of the community as a whole. But what of the world outside of the col- 74 -^ /"-' College to the Church lege — of that larger community, with its manifold commercial and political activities, for which the college life is but a preparation ? Here, too, we find the same division of types. There are some who pursue their success self- ishly, whether it be in gaining pleasure or po- sition, money or office. Side by side with them there are others who pursue these ob- jects unselfishly; who find their pleasure in the pleasure of their fellow men; who gain social position as an incident in the improve- ment of society ; whose business success is obtained by organizing the work of the com- munity in such a way as to do good to hun- dreds and thousands of others ; whose politic- al life is occupied with the exercise of public trusts, where personal ambition is at most a secondary and incidental element. Men are always divided more or less clearly into these two types : those who recognize that life is a trust, and those who fail so to recog- nize it. It happens, however, that with con- ditions as they exist at the present day, the distinction between the two types is more sharply marked than usual. In some ages Development of Public Conscience 75 men have been so bound by rules and tradi- tions that he who wished to be selfish was compelled to subordinate his own convenience to that of the public, while he who was ready to be unselfish had but scant opportunity for the exercise of his power of serving his fel- low men. On the other hand, there are ages of liberty, when old conventions are broken down and new methods are in process of in- troduction. At such times there is an oppor- tunity for the self-centered man to misuse a freedom which the community has not learned to regulate ; and there is corresponding oppor- tunity for the public-spirited man to employ that same freedom in giving the world new enjoyments which were impossible in an ear- lier age, and new ideals which will serve to regulate its conduct for generations to come. It is in such a time as this that we are now living. The developments of modern science have given new means of enjoyment. The breaking up and re-forming of social ties has given new opportunities of influence in soci- ety. The growth of industrial combination on a large scale has freed our commercial 76 The College to the Church leaders from the restraints of competition, thereby allowing them an almost unmeasured power for good or evil. The growth of im- perialistic ideas has extended the sphere of action of our politicians and statesmen from those domestic problems where they were subject to well-defined restraints of constitu- tional law, into a field of international deal- ings where precedents are undefined, and where in default of such precedents the peo- ples with whom we come in contact have in- adequate opportunities of self -protection. This has been called an age of trusts. The phrase is applicable in a sense much pro- founder than that in which it is generally used. Our large industrial monopolies have indeed ceased to be corporate trusts in the legal sense. No longer is the voting power of the stock of the independent companies placed in the hands of a common body of trustees. The legislation of Congress has been sufficient to put a stop to this particular form of organization. But it has in no wise checked the tendency to combine; and our large combinations are become fields for the Development of Public Conscience yy exercise of a public trust even more than they ever were before. The day is past when the automatic action of self-interest was sufficient to regulate prices, or when a few principles of commercial law, straightforwardly applied, could secure the exercise of justice in matters of trade. The growth of large industries and of large fortunes allows their managers to do good or evil without adequate restraint from law, because all law which is intended to stop the evil stops the good even more surely. This impossibility of legal control, and the necessity which goes with it for unselfish ac- tion on the part of those in charge, is what constitutes the very essence of a trust, private or public. The same impossibility and necessity are felt in our new matters of foreign policy. We cannot, in our legislative halls at Washington, attempt strictly to regulate the conduct of those who are charged with representing us in the Philippine Islands. Our ignorance of the conditions in those islands makes all such regulation likely to be ineffective or suicidal. Of necessity we must leave our representa- y8 The College to the Church tives in distant countries a freedom which permits of abuse, unless we can have some control, outside of law and beyond it, which shall make them accept their several offices as trusts instead of means of gain — using every such office not so much for what they can get out of it for themselves as for what they can put into it for those entrusted to their charge. But can we hope for the development of a sentiment of honor and of such a public spirit sufficiently strong to take the place of law? To this question we need not hesitate to give an affirmative answer. We are indeed pa- triotically bound to give this answer. The man who shrinks from the problem because he does not believe that it can be solved is a disbeliever in the future of American democ- racy. If our citizens as a body should con- fess themselves incompetent to accept public trusts because they had not the necessary basis of unselfishness, we should be safe in predict- ing the coming of an empire at Washington in twenty-five years. If the people had not the basis of character sufficient for dealing Development of Public Conscience 79 with the affairs entrusted to their charge, the power would be taken out of their hands and would fall into those of individual leaders. But all the evidence goes to show that Americans have this necessary basis of moral character. Our standard of personal moral- ity is on the whole probably higher than that of any other nation. Nowhere else do we find the same degree of consideration for the weak. Nowhere else do we see the same sympathy between man and man. Nowhere else is the spirit of personal courtesy so wide- spread. If we can thus subordinate our in- dividual convenience to the needs of others, there is no reason why we cannot do the same thing in our corporate and our public capaci- ties as soon as the necessity is brought home to us. The evil is not one of character ; it is one of understanding. We are not suffering from bad morals but from defective ethics. We have been taught to regard business and politics as games, to be played by a certain set of rules, and with no obligations higher than those rules. This may have done very well in the old times, when business was so small 8o The College to the Church that competition set a limit to arbitrary con- duct, and when political activity was kept within such a narrow sphere that the re- straints of constitutional law and of repre- sentative government were sufficient checks upon abuse of power. But when the Ameri- can people see that new conditions make these restraints inadequate, and demand the volun- tary assumption of self-restraint and self- sacrifice, they can be trusted to apply in the new and complicated problems which are be- fore us that same subordination of individual convenience to public good which is at once the fundamental characteristic of a gentleman and the fundamental necessity of a leader who would claim the right to administer a trust in behalf of the weak. That we shall learn these lessons may be in- ferred from the experience of England in handling her colonial empire and in dealing with the peoples that are subject to it. There was a time when England's administration in India was worse than ours is likely to be in any country that comes under our charge ; a time when men of standing and character, like Development of Public Conscience 8i Hastings or even like Clive, allowed them- selves to be led far astray. But these days are long gone by. Whatever may be the de- fects of English colonial rulers, it nevertheless remains true that they take up their work in a spirit of devotion to those who are entrusted to their charge ; and that the whole sentiment, at home and abroad, is such as to stimulate good conduct and prevent abuse far more ef- fectively than could be done by any system of legislation, however well devised. What England has learned in the last century America can unquestionably learn in the open- ing years of the coming one. We have seen how our colleges give their men a training in just this sort of public spirit which is so necessary to our welfare as a nation. What the colleges do in early life I believe that the Church can help to do in af- ter life. The importance and the feasibility of this development of public spirit seems to me the great message of the college to the Church at the present day. This is an age when our churches are looking earnestly for a mission. In this field they have one directly VI 82 The College to the Church before them. We are in the midst of difficul- ties that cannot be checked by law — difficul- ties that grow greater as the years go on. In- dividual efforts at reform seem helpless and hopeless. We need a sound public opinion to meet them. We must have large bodies of men who individually and collectively will accept and insist upon the principle that we are members one of another. The socialist indeed preaches this principle already ; but by his reliance on governmental machinery for its enforcement he shows that he has lit- tle understanding of what it really means. In the Christian Church we have an organization that is committed to this idea, and which, un- like the socialists, is committed to its applica- tion from the right end — making it a duty which each individual will impose upon him- self rather than a burden which he tries to im- pose upon others. Let us not content our- selves with preaching sermons on personal morality which are based on principles that the bulk of good men now accept, whether in the Christian Church or out of it. Let us not even content ourselves with going into the Development of Public Conscience 83 work of social settlements and other things intended to give a little more light to those who walk in darkness. These are all good in their way; but they only touch the very fringe of the social problem. To meet that problem our churches must find a way of unit- ing the people in a sentiment of self-devotion to ideals outside of themselves. This cannot be done by mere words. It cannot be done by specific remedies for individual evils. It can be done only by awakening a public con- science. For this work we need men in- spired by high ideals of duty and understand- ing at the same time the conditions under which modern duty is done. We need to find men who can organize our sentiment on such a scale that the influence which the col-, lege in a small way exercises upon its mem- bers shall be made effective in the life of the nation as a whole. For leaders who are able to do this, and for a church that is ready to work under such leaders, there is room in America to-day as there never was before. When once this lesson of public trust shall have been learned, we shall have reunited 84 The College to the Church Church and State, not by those material bonds which proved so destructive to them both, but by a spiritual bond which may come near- er than ever before toward realizing the Christian ideal of the Church universal. IV THE COLLEGE AND THE HOME PRESIDENT FRANKLIN CARTER, LL, D. THE COLLEGE AND THE HOME The New England college is largely the product of religious enthusiasm. The earliest colleges, humble as they were, were the offspring of faith in God and faith in man as worthy and able to know Him, his works and his dealings with humanity, as well as man's own achievements and searches after true good. They were the creation of the Church, primarily for the Church, but also for the State as a divine in- stitution ordained by God. If the West- minster Catechism represented more perfectly the age of the birth and early growth of these colleges, their most ardent friends still believe that the motto of Harvard, "For Christ and the Church," expresses more correctly than any later formula the meaning of their mis- sion. They believe that these words have the widest significance, that what is for Christ is for the ideal and divine man ; that what is for the Church is for men and women strug- 87 88 The College to the Church gling after that ideal, and that every college and every university reasonably meeting the demands for fine training does, even if not unfurling that distinctive banner so fully as it might, under the power of Christ to-day, cooperate with those which do unfurl that legend and work constantly in the recognition of its sublime and supreme importance as an end. Just as surely to-day as two hundred years ago, the New England college should stand for the enthronement of Christ in the hearts and minds of those whom it educates and through them in the hearts and minds of other men and women in the world. The colleges in this important way should in- fluence the thought of the time, but they are themselves largely affected by the thought and activities of the period. In an age of wonderful scientific achievement, an age of devotion of the highest talent and intensest energy to business and commerce largely as a result of the applications of science to pro- duction and distribution, an age of the fiercest competition, an age which needs above all things the conservative sanitary restraints of The College and the Home 89 spiritual conceptions and ideals, there is dan- ger that those frequenting the colleges may lose something of that steady allegiance to eternal truth, of that supreme faith in the supremacy of goodness and redemption by vi- carious suffering that marked a quieter age. A boy growing up in the atmosphere of a home where the agitations of modern busi- ness leave little time for the personal inter- change of thought and affection, and the con- templation by the family of religious truth, will scarcely carry to his college the true per- spective of temporal and eternal realities. Many such boys entering a college at once will be pretty likely to smother for some others the finer aspirations in an atmosphere of worldliness. Is it not true that the intense devotion to business in the present time does imperil in the home those finer sentiments, the growth of those wiser perceptions and tender emotions, the full expression of that faith sorely needed to lead the boys and girls into a persistent loyalty to Christ and his ethics, to the cross and its sacrifice? If the manifest end of all this effort and agitation of 90 The College to the Church life is only to accumulate dollars that are not held as a trust for God and humanity, but held either for selfish enjoyment or display, or, worse yet, for the pleasure of the miser's clutch, can wc expect that our boys and girls under such influences will get a clear grasp of the fundamental principles of Christianity, will come into a living devotion to the suf- fering Christ? In another way the home is in this time ex- posed to loss. An acute writer has said "that the family has not been strengthened but rather weakened by the sociological tendency of the age whose drift is to set forth humanity as one great whole." Certainly in some families where the materialism of the age does not thwart the sacred mission of the home, which is to train children into the very life of Christ, the distracting effects of too many outside activities, of membership in too many societies, most of which exist for good purposes, may leave little time for the inter- change with one's children of thoughtful words on the personal relations to God and Christ. It is a period of much bustle, of Tke College and the Home 91 hurrying hither and thither, of health-seeking in different cHmes, of marvelous reductions of time and space, and, one may admit, of mag- nificent opportunities for consecrated men to serve the Master. Never were such huge gatherings of Christian men and women as we see to-day; never were such vast spaces of territory traversed that Christians might get their hearts softened by pentecostal in- fluences ; never were there so many organi- zations, conventions, conferences, congresses, retreats, all for the development in those who attend these unions and through them in others of the Christian life. Nor is it all in vain ; but have we not yet learned that the kingdom of God cometh not by observation ? Are not the words of the great Bushnell, pub- lished over fifty years ago, even more ap- plicable to the Christian life of to-day than to that of his generation? "With all our activities and boldness of movement there is a certain hardness and rudeness, a want of sensibility to things which do not lie in ac- tion, which cannot be too much deplored or too soon rectified. We hold a piety of con- 92 The College to the Church quest rather than of love, a kind of public piety that is strenuous and fiery on great oc- casions, but wants the beauty of holiness, wants constancy, singleness of aim, loveli- ness, purity, richness, blamelessness and, if I may add another term not so immediately re- ligious, but one that carries by association a thousand religious qualities, wants domestic- ity of character." In a truly Christian home, Christ must be regnant as a sovereign over the father and mother not on certain im- portant solemn occasions but at all times, and through this continued and recognized pres- ence over all the others, bending them by love into submission both to parental and divine authority. It may not be true, as an eminent professor in a great university has recently affirmed, that "the young men of to-day do not feel their responsibility as the young men of a generation ago ;" but is it not true that the primary call in the Church of to-day is for the Christian home to attain to its ideal util- ity and ideal beauty as a training-place for all the children into an appreciation of the im- measurable superiority of the things eter- The College and the Home 93 nal over the things temporal and the joyful acceptance of self-denial for the sake of others in the home ; into such graces and aptitudes as shall lead them imperceptibly but surely into the Church ; into the noblest sense of re- sponsibility and fullest service to others? If the home is composed of equal units, if there are no gradations of honor and authority, if each member does what is right in his own eyes to the neglect of the rest, will not rever- ence be a dwarfed and stunted product, or even be reduced to a rudimentary virtue? I think the college may rightly appeal to the Christian home and the Christian Church for a hearty cooperation in this matter of reverence. The old conception under which our fathers lived exalted the authority of God. Emphasis laid on the decrees of God, on pre- destination, on his will sometimes to the actual destruction of man's freedom, has given place to the exaltation of God's reason and his love. That this has been an immense gain in the conflict with scientific unbelief and in the pre- sentation of the purest Theism there can be no doubt, but that "the will of God eternally 94 The College to the Church in harmony with his reason" is still will, still retains authority over all the thoughts and feelings of men, still commands with the majesty of omnipotence and that disobedience to this authority still entails ruin, we some- times forget and rarely enforce. If we dwell chiefly on his condescension and pity as re- vealed in the incarnation and life of Christ, if as the world with the new scientific inven- tions becomes a great whispering gallery, and the notes of sorrow constantly reach us from all sides of the globe and daily appall us so that we must steady ourselves by repeating and claiming that "God is love," we must not forget that the everlasting "I am" is not less on the throne because he is also on the cross. If we hold that our wills are free in a larger and nobler sense than was held by the New England preachers two centuries or even half a century ago, it is not necessary, but it is perhaps natural, that we lose something of that reverence for the divine will which in al- most pantheistic breadth seemed to our fa- thers to embrace and underlie all human activi- ties. The College and the Home 95 Whatever may be the cause, it cannot, I think, be questioned that the expression of reverence for God's authority and sover- eignty has decHned, I will not say in con- gregational worship, but in New England generally, and that into modern society and the colleges has come, with boys even from New England families, an indifference to the expression of reverence and a carelessness with regard to sacred things not so apparent fifty years ago. Some of the changes in modern education have encouraged the tendency to irreverence. I will not deny that these changes were called for by the condi- tions of the time, but it is true, I think, that reverence and acceptance of authority are qualities less conspicuous among young men than fifty years ago. There is nothing more beautiful than reverence; nothing more en- nobling than the Puritan virtue of obedience. Does not the family exist to develop in the sons and daughters the respect for obedience, an appreciation of the beauty of reverence and worship, the significance of self-denial, and through these qualities the supreme worth 96 The College to the Church of cooperation for noble ends? Was not the family designed to be an organic unity ; the home a place where tender authority and rev- erence, the fear of God as well as the love of God, that fear which is and ever must be "the beginning of wisdom" should make the at- mosphere? Why do boys come from Chris- tian homes who think reverence is servile and mistake wilfulness for manliness? Is the home, instead of being the nursery of loving thoughts and gratitude to God, a place where- in forgetfulness of God, querulous com- plaints, derogation of neighbors, censure for the minister, envy of the rich, craze for dis- play, constantly excite the sensitive nerves of the growing boy or girl ? In this equal country, where speech is free and criticism general, where the loftiest responsibilities and anxieties seem sometimes rather to invite dis- trust than to command sympathy, there may be especial need that from the home censor- ious faultfinding be excluded. But what- ever ought to be, certain it is that the colleges contain many young men quite ready to judge hastily and harshly, and not backward The College and the Home 97 about expressing such judgments even in the earHer years. Nothing is more beautiful than family pray- er. Even in homes where imperfect sympa- thies and jarring diversities exist, I hope it would tend to keep in check the miserable ex- pressions of selfish life. But family prayer maintained with rigid formality in a home where certain currents of thought and expres- sion flow unrestrained may send a boy out into the world not merely with indifference, but positive dislike for formal religious ser- vices. Such processes are going on, and going on in spite of the ever in- creasing honor that is paid to Christ by the nobler thinkers of the age. He stands forth as never before illustrating the love of God and throwing the splendor of that love over all creation's travail ; as never before exhib- iting the loftiest perfections of human char- acter, teaching the meaning and the glory of voluntary suffering; and yet, may we not ask, are Christian homes showing not more but less appreciation of the great secret of his life, that only he that loses his life shall find it unto life eternal? vii 98 The College to the Church When Bushnell uttered his historic and prophetic warning that the home, the Chris- tian home, must be the nursery of Christian Hving, was it more needed than it is to-day? Are not the influences that envelop and per- meate the lives of our boys and girls in the fermenting period of adolescence more di- verse and more bewildering than they were a quarter of a century ago? Have we not seen in the college an almost total disappearance of revival epochs, and are we not far surer than we were that the character which a boy or girl brings to the college will be strengthened and deepened, not greatly changed, in the years of college life? If finer examples of Christian manhood have never been seen in the Ameri- can college than in the last decade, will not those who have known them bear witness to the fact that from the first day of their col- lege life to the last day they bore upon them the seal and influence of Christian training in a Christian home? Exceptions there may be, but the excitements of college life, the greater luxury, the intenser intellectual and physical competitions, the absence of quiet <«► The College and the Home 99 months for calm reflection, leave less op- portunity for admitting all at once the gracious authority of the still, small voice. God forbid that I should limit the power of his spirit; God forbid that I should intimate that there may not be, nay, will not be in the future, religious revivals of power in our col- leges. Through what alternatives of spiritual desolation and refreshment his Church is to pass no one can foresee, but the natur- al, the normal place for young people to learn to rejoice in the companionship of God as manifested in Christ is in the home, and the normal process is by the loving influence of mothers and fathers, and more and more, I think, it will be true that only those thus trained will wholly consecrate themselves to the divine Christ. Was it ever fitting that a boy and girl trained in a Christian home should wait for a social convulsion in which to begin to follow Christ ; should be trained in the idea that the loving grace of God is not always operative, that the acceptance of Christ as a Saviour is not a duty from the date of L.efC. lOO The College to the Church the first consciousness of sin? If it ever was fitting under the conception that a man can do nothing, and God must do everything to bring him into the kingdom, when and where and how he will, it is no longer fitting. We may believe that revivals still have their place in God's economy and that some will be brought into the kingdom in the time of refreshing who would not otherwise come. But in the increasing complexity and intensity of modern life there is new reason for emphasiz- ing the supreme value of home training in all the formative years ; for exalting the ef- ficiency of an embracing love and wisdom ; for believing that the babe in the mother's arms may open intelligence to the presence and love of God, and that the future of the college and hence of the Church and of the State depends as truly as ever primarily on the fidelity with which, year in and year out for fifteen, eighteen, or twenty years. Christian fathers and Christian mothers flood the lives of their beloved with Christian light and Christian love. The Christian home is the normal place in which to anchor a soul in God. The College and the Home loi We do not hold that every Christian col- lege graduate should go into the clerical pro- fession, though I hope that we all hold that every Christian should be a minister of Christ. It is, however, not without significance that from our best colleges and universities so few in these days become distinctive ministers of the gospel. I have recently examined the catalogue of a great university and counted the ministers in the five classes from 1890 to 1894, inclusive. There were thirty-two out of a total of nine hundred and twenty-two Bachelors of Arts; 3>4 per cent. Then I turned back forty years to the five classes be- ginning with 1850, and found out of a total of four hundred and seventy-five graduates, one hundred ordained ministers of the gos- pel; 21 per cent; six and one-half times as many fifty years ago as ten years ago. An equal, I fear a greater, decline in per cent will be found to mark the smaller colleges which half a century ago were the great source of candidates for the ministry. It is not pos- sible that the diminution in the number of those ablest and best equipped students who 102 The College to the Church consecrate themselves to the Christian min- istry has its chief origin in the college. It is in the time, in the conditions which affect the home as well as the college. I cannot be- lieve that there is less loyalty to the Master now than fifty years ago, but I suspect that there is need of greater wisdom for the prob- lem of training boys and girls, complicated as it is by problems that were not serious, by forces that were not potent half a century ago. It seems to me that this loyalty is much less, far too little, concentrated in the home ; that it is expressed more by the philanthropic and benevolent work of the time ; and that, where- as this may be desirable, there will be much empty talk, much idle running hither and yon, unless the fountain of home piety is pure and undefiled, and the supreme effort be directed to the Christian nurture of all the young life within its circle. It is possible that our piety is more one of love, of general comprehensive love, than when Bushnell wrote ; but that it shines brighter in the home or pervades it more warmly, contemplates with more stead- iness tlie first duty of training children in The College and the Home 103 faith, may not be true. One still sees beauti- ful homes, homes where faith glows in the keen eyes of the children and answers the smile of the positive but loving father ; where the mother is the acknowledged and beloved center of all activities ; where God's Word and truth seem to govern every thought; where every voice is heard in the Lord's Prayer ; where central authority governs with but lit tie sign of authority ; where self-denial is taught by every movement ; where the peace of heaven is undisturbed by the conflicts of a selfish world, except that each child is taught that the blessing of a Christian home is to make him or her ready to relieve the suffering and help the struggling when the time comes. These are the homes which make the noblest college friendships possible, and the largest attainments certain. Let no college in these days boast that a larger percentage of its graduates is going into the ministry than from some other col- lege. The influences in the colleges are more similar, more identical than once. That a larger percentage study theology in any year I04 The College to the Church or in any decade from one New England col- lege than from another or, if that be possible, from the graduates of one college now than formerly, means probably that for a year or for ten years a larger percentage of boys have come into that college from homes where the Christian nurture was potent and irresistible, and followed the boys through the entire col- lege life. Making all allowance for the new careers which the adaptations of science have opened and for the new charms which these adaptations have given to old professions, making all allowance for the difficulties which we are told discourage candidates for the min- istry, it is not to the honor of Christ's Church, nor is it altogether creditable to our Christian homes, that the noblest profession, the pro- fession that furnishes the largest opportunity to follow the Christ whom we honor and to enter into the fellowship of his redemptive suffering and to attain the divinest manhood, secures so few of those who have the most to lay at his feet. Many have been reading the biography of the most efficient minister of this generation. The College and the Home 105 Some who used to wonder at his power, for he seemed so unique and so lofty as to suggest no genesis, and in a measure so broad as to suggest no affinities, have found the bio- graphy worthy of the man. To learn that this transcendently useful and transcendently beautiful life had its origin in a Christian home was inevitable. The glimpses that we get of that home seem to make his wonderful life a little less mysterious. May I read you a sentence or two? "In this family where Phillips Brooks grew up, the nobler aspect of family life was predominant and unsullied ; the father and the mother ruling with dili- gence and unquestioned authority, while be- neath their authority was the eternal princi- ple of self-sacrifice, till they seemed to live only for the welfare of the children. It need hardly be said that this was a religious family. The usage of family prayer was religiously observed in the morning before going forth to the work of the day, and again in the evening at nine o'clock. This home for the children was interesting, but not monotonous or dull. The boys did not fret at exclusions from io6 The College to the Church richer interests outside, nor long to escape the narrow routine. The home became to the children their choicest treasure to which they fondly reverted in after years when its diviner meaning was more apparent." Home in- fluence made Brooks' college and seminary life productive and noble. Dr. Vinton says of him "that he was made by his mother." That is, of course, only partially true, but the beautiful words of Brooks himself written just after her death may be accepted without reservation : "My mother has been the cen- ter of all the happiness of my life : thank God she is not less my pride and treasure now." We may all thank God that there has been one such fertile Christian home in this city, and one such superb efflorescence from its soil. Remember, he had three brothers who entered the Christian ministry. Some of us are per- haps too far along to study that record with reference to the training of our own children, but it is quite worth while for any parents with young children to make the traces in that book of home influence the subject of the deepest study. "How she loved to talk to us The College and the Home 107 of Henry Martyn," wrote Phillips Brooks from India to one of his brothers. That was a mother whose zeal for foreign missions filled the home with the breadth and beauty of Christ's love for a dying world, and from that quiet fireside stirred English-speaking people of every rank from the Queen to the shop-girl all over the world to better living, to nobler imitation of the suffering Christ, through her beloved son. With the increasing wealth of the Church, with the increasing power of edu- cation and the increasing honor that sound doctrine pays to the suffering Christ, are we not to see, not here and there a poor young graduate asking a society to let him carry the good news to perishing races, but bands of well-educated young men going with their own inherited wealth to found settle- ments and build hospitals and schools in the populous centers of the Orient? Not to compete with, but to cooperate with missions already established and living and dying with and for the degraded ones to show that at last under the leadership of the cruci- fied Redeemer some from American Christian io8 The College to the Church homes zvith riches make a glorious entrance into the kingdom of God. To be the mother of a PhilHps Brooks, a James Hannington, or a Reginald Heber; tq be the father of an Adoniram Judson, a David Scudder or a John Paton ; is there any comfort or joy or splendor that can rest on any Chris- tian home comparable to the knowledge that a son has entered into such a fellowship with the Master? It is in such lives that college and Church reach the zenith of their glory, but it is in the Christian home that such lives must take their impulse ; in the Christian home that the heart must be so filled with and the eye so fixed upon Christ, the true goal, that love for men and women shall at last know no bounds. Martineau says : "As your child leaps into your arms, you embrace him less for what he is than for what he is to be. You see in him the casket of immortal powers whose guardian you are to be under the eye of God." Who will limit the attainments of the bright- eyed boy whose beauty and candor seem mar- velous, who looks into your face with tender glance, who searches the depth of your being The College and the Home 109 with his question? You consecrate him to the care and service of God. It does not seem reasonable that a boy growing up in the brac- ing atmosphere of love, hope, patience, in whose heart Christian faith has taken root, should lose in college his faith in the Master, if it has been a genuine growth in the years at home. There may not be behind him the ancestry of a Brooks or a Heber, but God with you can make of his earthly life a glorious service; a truly Christian home can send a boy to college to be an attractive and mo- mentous force for good for all who know him ; to be cheerful, but not flippant ; gen- tle, but not compromising; loving, but not yielding; pure, but not austere; reverent among the careless, serious among the friv- olous, and studious among the distracted, self- denying among the self-indulgent. Why should he ever lose the consciousness that he is the child of God? Why should he not at last reach the lofty height of some of those whose names always bring back to us the thought of God as dwelling and working in and exalting a human soul, and thus blessing all the world? no The College to the Church If the loss comes, if the boy grows cold and hard and indifferent before or after entering college, too often the remembrance of certain scenes awaken in the parent's mind a deeper pathos. Recalling the expression of too much anxiety, too much depression, too much sensitiveness, too little confidence, will not the thought sometimes rise : "Oh, that I had been able to control my feeling; to show peace and joy instead of fear; to measure words with greater accuracy ; to encourage the good in him rather than to be discouraged by the evil, rather than to have him feel that I expected little good !" There are, I suppose, instances withm the circle of our acquaintance where the life and thought of a profligate or agnostic son is in startling contrast to the con- spicuous and even distinguished service to the kingdom of God rendered by a father. The strange threads of heredity, the almost impos- sible coordination of certain ancestral forces, the quiet but imperious voices of past lapses, God wall make all just allowance for these things in us and others who we fear are lacking in true Christian Tlie College and the Home m fatherhood and motherhood. But shall we not all agree that the holiest, loftiest suc- cess in life is that enjoined by these relations; that no failure in all the reach of effort or knowledge can be compared to that which may be unfolded within the circle of a Chris- tian home? Oh, the dull perceptions, the misapprehensions, the strange oversights, the hasty judgments, the rasping words of loving, anxious, even self-denying parents ! In this age when so many outside allurements make it so easy for boys and girls to neglect the home, what need of steady patience, of gentle confidence, of wise, tender thoughts, of de- light in sacrifice, of supreme love for the Mas- ter that the unconscious influence through God's grace may soften the effect of mistakes in judgment and action, and make the home an attractive center of piety and love! This is after all the true secret, the full studious companionship with the mind of Christ; not any series of carefully directed injunctions or entreaties ; not formal prohibitions or re- quirements ; no elaborate system of rewards and punishments ; no cunning psychology of 112 The College to the Church child-life ; no complicated method, but a heart that throbs with warm love for the Master's sinlessness and sacrifice, and invests loving self-denial with heavenly beauty, that throbs as his did with tenderest sympathy for the helplessness and wonder of the child and dif- fuses the radiance of a cheerful, hopeful, hap- py, wise spirit, and never clouds with harsh and stormy utterance "the heaven that lies about us in our infancy." I must end. Let me repeat here from the Old Testament perhaps the finest expression in all literature of the reasonable pride of a fatlier over the pure and honorable life of a son. V\'e may see how language is strained to utter the transcendent joy, the prophetic rapture that rises tumultuously in the father's mind over the boy's pure, sweet, manly and heroic life. "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well ; whose branches run over the wall : the archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him: but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the miq-hty God of Jacob; (from thence is The College and the Home 113 the shepherd, the stone of Israel:) even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee ; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb: the blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills : they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren." The college has a grave responsibility for the guidance and development of the moral life of those entrusted to it — a responsibility which I fear many instructors do not proper- ly feel (college management has many perils to-day) — but to-night, as I address those who represent the collection of Christian homes that make the Church, let me reiterate that it is impossible for the college teachers to re- verse the bent of a life fixed in the home. It is only possible for God. Let me urge you then so to surround with the sweetest poten- cies of Christ's love and holiness that boy who is to be the educated and influential man of vni 114 The College to the Church the future that in the temptations and conflicts of college and later life, "when the archers sorely grieve him and shoot at him," his bow may abide "in strength and his hands be made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob," that possibly like Joseph, the mission- ary statesman, he may be a blessing to multi- tudes, and multitudes may consciously or un- consciously thank God for the Christian train- ing that surrounded him in his boyhood's home. V THE MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH PRESIDENT GEORGE HARRIS, LL. D. THE MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF THE COLLEGE AND THE CHURCH The Church and the college were in this country from the beginning. A few years passed, indeed, before the first college was actually established, but the ministers who came over from England were university men, as were some of the laymen. In Eng- land these institutions had long stood side by side, so that the streams of culture and re- ligion were flowing from the time our English ancestors landed at Plymouth. The early colleges of New England, and also the later ones, were founded with a re- ligious purpose which found expression in their charters and seals. The principal ob- ject of some of them was the education of ministers, although none were confined to that. The Church founded colleges to pro- mote broad and liberal education. The col- leges always had, however, an independent 117 Ii8 The College to the Church existence and were not under the control of the Church, although a certain proportion of the trustees of some colleges must be clergy- men. Since Church and college are distinct as in- stitutions, the relations existing between them can be measured and their influence upon each other estimated, as comparison can be made between Church and State, or between State and family. Although the very same person may be in both institutions, yet each stands for something characteristic, and each con- tributes something to the other. If the re- lation of the college to the State were to be considered, little would be said about religion, for the relations are not exclusively nor pre- dominantly religious. When one considers the mutual dependence of the college and the Church, it is from the religious point of view, for the Church is exclusively a religious so- ciety. Our inquiry pertains, then, to the giv- ing and receiving of each from the other in respect to religion. We will not go over the entire history of the colleges and universities of Christendom Mutual Dependence 119 in this aspect, but will take our own period only, to note changes of thought, faith and life which have occurred within the recollec- tion of nearly all of us, changes due in part to the higher education which, while it has af- fected, has at the same time been affected by vital Christianity preached and practiced in the churches. After tracing these influences of knowledge and belief, I shall speak of an educated ministry. In considering the college in relation to the Church, we think first of widening knowledge in its effect upon religious beliefs and life. Although belief and life cannot be sharply separated, yet emphasis can be laid now on one, now on the other. Knowledge of the physical universe, which has teen presented in the college, has un- doubtedly had a considerable effect upon re- ligious beliefs. As the enormous extension of the spatial world, perceived by astronomy, influenced man's conception of God, by re- ducing the earth to insignificance, yet ulti- mately exalted the God of a universe compre- hended by human reason as under law ; so il- 120 The College to the Church limitable extension of the time in which life on the earth has been slowly developing from lower to higher forms, perceived by geology and biology, for a time bade fair to reduce man to a mere animal, of the earth, earthy, and to threaten belief in the existence of God, only later to exalt man as the crown of the culminating process, and to magnify the power and wisdom of God, to whom a thou- sand years are as one day, who is from ever- lasting to everlasting. The real interest of scientific discovery was its bearing on concep- tions of God and man. It could no longer be held that God has worked from the outside by special interventions, nor that man was called into being by a sudden, independent creation. Yet there really was no loss, but, rather, a gain; for a God who works within and is working even until now is greater than a God who did his work from outside and finished it long ago. The theory of evolution, in- stead of removing God to an inconceivable distance, brought him near. It is seen that the derivation of man from animals is as con- sistent with a purpose as is his separate, in- Mutual Dependence 121 stantaneous, recent creation ; indeed, more consistent with purpose. A universe advanc- ing- from inorganic to organic, from matter to life, from plant and animal to rational creat- ures able to discern the vast movement and capable of unlimited self-improvement is not accident nor blind necessity, but is best under- stood as a purpose, not interjected into a meaningless universe, but interwoven into its very fiber, into the warp made for the woof, and showing a wondrous pattern. And every one now sees that the conditions under which man became what he is do not make him other than he is. He is a creature of intelligence, reason, sense of obligation, consciousness of God, expectation of immortality. The fact that man is organically related to the pro- longed process is accepted without question, but the difference of man from other orders, the uniqueness of man in intellectual, moral, spiritual endowments, is recognized also. If we could imagine adults who had never seen infants and had completely forgotten their own childhood, and then should bring a baby among them and should assert that every 122 TIic College to the Church one of them was once just such a creature, un- able to walk or speak or understand, the as- tonishment and resentment would be no less than ours when we were told that we descend, or ascend, from animals — perhaps more, be- cause from baby to man is only a score of years, while from animal to man is thou- sands of centuries. When the fact became in- disputable, they might at first conclude that adults are still babies, but ere long, the dif- ferences being patent, would perceive that there are wonderful, mysterious potencies in babies, since they do become men and women. Just such reasoning and just such final con- clusion has followed from evolution. The difference between the most intelligent br.ute and the least intelligent man is radical. No wonder the time has been long, the differences are so great. Only differences of degree, indeed, but a million of them ; and we know that a sufficient difference of degree amounts to a difference in kind. It is also seen that evolution itself is not one simple process, working in the same iden- tical way with all orders, but that peculiar fac- Mutual Dependence 123 tors are concerned in human evolution, that there is one flesh of man and another flesh of beasts, that the flesh of man contains some- thing, a spark, a flame, an endowment, a po- tency, unique in glor)?^, essentially differentiat- ing him from other creatures, and coming to Its own by a path of its own. It is found that the controlling forces in human evolution are ideas, thoughts, inventions, arising mysteriously in some mind by origination or initiative, and imitated by others till we have customs, laws, religions. Now, not to follow in detail the evolution of man, is it not evident that we have got our bearings again, that we have come back to ourselves as rational spirits, and to a deeper, surer belief in God who is above all and through all and in all? The gain to religion may fairly be attributed to the college, for science has been studied and taught chiefly in the higher institutions and by educated men. The Church waited, opposing new views for a time, since they seemed to strike at fun- damental religious beliefs, as, indeed, the early crude theory did. But the Church no 124 The College to the Church longer rejects the truth. No intelHgent per- son refuses to beheve that God has worked through the ages to carry out his great pur- pose, to produce man, upon whom the ends of the ages meet. It is seen also that the method of God's working is but a secondary interest that does not touch, except to strengthen, faith in God the Father Almighty, whose children we are. While science was doing its work independently, and the young generation of students was learning the les- son, the Church kept right on praying and gospeling in the world. The college was looking outwards in space and backwards in time ; the Church was looking upwards and forwards. The college was sailing by the log ; the Church was sailing by the fixed stars. The college pondered the actual ; the Church pondered and produced the transformed ideal. The greatest service of the college in respect of scientific research has been the nourishing of the love of truth, has been intellectual hon- esty. She helps the Church to be honest, to discard the irrational, to stand squarely with the truth which makes men free. Mutual Dependence 125 The scientific interest, which had to do with the physical universe and with origins, was the commanding interest of the seventh and eighth decades of the nineteenth century, from i860 to 1880. It is not too much to say that in the ninth and tenth decades interest swung back from the universe to its noblest inhabi- tant, from the natural to the human sciences. The absorbing studies of scholars were, and still are, anthropology, ethnology, sociology, philosophy, ethics, history, literature and re- ligion — studies concerning man. That pro- found scientific interest was, in the last analy- sis, a human interest, for it was seen, as I said, that the physical sciences touch directly the origin, nature and destination of man. Nor was there at any time suspension of direct in- terest in the human. The colleges clung to the classics, to the languages which contain the history and literatures of those ancient peoples that attained the highest in art, phil- osophy and law. The best poetry of the cen- tury was struck out by Browning and Ten- nyson at the very time when science was changing the conception of man and God, 126 The College to the Church partly, indeed, by reason of that change. In the colleges that poetry was and is eagerly studied. English literature and the modern languages and literatures of Europe took a foremost place. Economics became a favor- ite study. The historical method was estab- lished. The religions of the world were in- vestigated, and the Bible, recovered by criti- cism as the literature of Judaism and Chris- tianity, the greatest literature of the world, gained a worthy place in the college curricu- lum. This regaining of human values the Church has shared. The Church no longer regards man as totally depraved, worthless and wicked, but, in view of his greatness, sees "him as incomplete and imperfect, and directs, guides, inspires into the ideal life. Tiiis in- spiration has come in large part from knowl- edge of many-sided man, of the history of men, of their attainments, of their possibilities. What has the Church been doing in this re- spect? What service in this sort has she done the college, yes, the world and herself? A service which cannot be measured in Mutual Dependence 127 words. She has recovered the humanity of Jesus. What was the Church asking down to fifty years ago? She asked, concerning Christ, How can the divine be human ? Christ was divine, was God, was deity, to the Church. She looked with suspicion on any recogni- tion of his real humanity. She regarded him as omniscient and omnipotent. She divided the divine from the human, thinking, or try- ing to think, that he acted now in his divine, now in his human nature, as though when he worked miracles he was divine, and when he was hungry and weary and when he prayed he was human, like two spheres having external contact only. For centuries the Church had been struggling to save the divine at the ex- pense of the human, and had made the human unreal, incidental, a mere sem- blance. Towards the middle of the nine- teenth century a book which startled and alarmed the Christian world was published. It was Strauss' Life of Jesus, a biography like the biography of any great man. But it led Christian scholars to investigation of the story. Volume after volume, entitled 128 The College to the Church The Life of Christ, The Life of Jesus, ap- peared. Preaching presented the human in place of the theologic Christ. To-day the question is reversed. We ask now. How can the human be divine? How can a man be God ? Yet it is not a question, for we know the divine through the human. God can re- veal himself best in a perfect man. Jesus is God manifest in the flesh. Thus college and Church have been mov- ing on parallel lines, the college studying actual humanity and exalting it at the very time when the Church has been regaining the ideal man who is the head, the type, the creator of true humanity. This is not mere coincidence. The same influences that en- throne man afifect us all, giving the natural man and the spiritual man. We are led one step farther in our compari- son. Knowledge of man in his nature, his works and his ways, with which the college is chiefly occupied, is knowledge of man in so- ciety. The old philosophy and even the old ethics presented the individual, were sheer individualism. But now philosophy and Mutual Dependence 129 ethics, as well as history and economics, are social. The newest science is social science. Tribes, peoples, nations, the family, the class, the State, the school, the Church, constitute humanity. There are no individuals apart from society. In the college is a mighty impulse to social service. The university settlement is one expression of it. Training for intelligent citizenship is another expres- sion. The college itself is a community, a society, with common interests, traditions and enthusiasms. No man there liveth to himself alone. The American college has always stood for the preparation of young men for great service in the world. Ediicated men may be selfish, but a broad education is always understood to be not for its own sake, not for personal culture merely, but to make teachers, leaders, minister? in society. The strongest impulse to social, political, philan- thropic service, an impulse felt in the Church, has come from the college. And the Church, on her part, has contributed in this generation to the very same tendency. For, with the recovery of the humanity of IX 130 The College to the Church Christ — in consequence of it, no doubt — there has been another marked change. Could there be a vaster change than that from the salvation of the individual, whether to heaven or from hell, but the salvation of the individ- ual, from that to the kingdom of God on earth? Yet such a change, speaking large- ly, has occurred within a half-century. The individual is saved, it is true, but he is saved by entering into the kingdom of God. The Son of man came at first preaching the king- dom. He has come again preaching the kingdom. The Church is now dominated by this idea. The children of God are a society beautifying the earth with righteousness and love. The interest, now, of all this is, not so much that the idea is true, as that it is preva- lent, is domesticated, is universally accepted, is everybody's way of thinking. We can see our fathers following the Pilgrim's Progress, fleeing the world, making hairbreadth es- capes from ruin, and plodding most of the way alone to the celestial city. But now, while there may be tumultuous experience in passing from the kingdom of darkness to the Mutual Dependence 131 kingdom of light, yet it is into a kingdom on earth, a renewed society, a city come down out of heaven from God, in which we live and work and love and worship. For theology the central principle is rapid- ly becoming, we may almost say has become, the kingdom of God here and now. The latest German theology, which some look at askance, but which is having a great currency over there, and is accepted by evangelical people as a preachable and workable gospel, is the gospel of the kingdom on earth, the la- test, the newest, the oldest, the truest gospel. The missionary movement significantly marks this change. At first and for a time the motive of missions was to save the heathen from perdition. We were told how many were going down into everlasting death each year because they did not have the gospel, and were told also that the nerve of missions would be cut if it should be surmised that there is any hope of their salvation after death. The stress of missionary work was evangelistic preaching. But now education is about as important as preaching. Schools 132 The College to the Church and even colleges are established. We see that for all men salvation is not for the future only, but also for the present, that it is future be- cause it is present. And the nerve of mis- sions has not been cut. Another sign is the waning of revivals, or, when they are promoted, a broadening of the object. Our distrust of manufactured re- vivals is less by reason of spasmodic interest followed by reaction than because they im- press the narrow idea of saving one's soul through that which is something other than personal righteousness and social service. On these broad lines of thought, belief and life, the Church and the college have been moving, in a kind of independence of each other, yet in reality under the same influences, for the spirit of the times affects all thoughtful men and so affects institutions which are sim- ply men organized for certain purposes. The college has gained knowledge of nature and has regained God the almighty and all-wise Father. This has affected the Church in some measure, but only in secondary measure, for religion has to do with God in his moral Mutual Dependence 133 character and in his moral purposes, which find only an incidental expression in physical nature. The Church has done more in this respect than the college, for she has kept alive a conception of God who is al- mighty, as the God of love. The college has exalted the human, gaining knowledge of man in his nature, wants and history. The Church at the same time has recovered the humanity of Christ, the ideal man, and has been presenting that ideal, till we all come unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The college has passed from individualism to society, to the philosophy of history, to a just economics, to the family and the State. The Church has recovered the kingdom of God, the ideal society, and has been establish- ing it in the world. Other points of view might have been taken, but some such view must be held as we ponder the marvelous extension of knowledge and the wonderful change of religious thought which have marked the last half or quarter 134 The College to the Church century. And it is difficult to say which has done more in these respects, the Church for the college or the college for the Church. It really is this : on the one side we have the in- tellectual man, on the other side the spiritual man ; yet they are one and the same man, no more to be separated than the light and the heat of the sun. If you should sit Sunday after Sunday in a college congregation, this would become real to you. Students will listen to preaching on the real, human Christ and on the service of men. Sermons are ethical and social, not theological. Preach- ers of the several denominations instinctively bring the same message to a college. In- deed, it is pretty much the same in all pulpits. The preaching that is real to us is the hu- manizing of man after the pattern of Christ. We might stop here with this measurement of the mutual indebtedness of Church and col- lege. But something should be said of a specific, immediate relation of college and Church — the Christian ministry. What has been indicated concerning thought, belief and life bears directly upon the ministry. Mutual Dependence 135 The vast majority of preachers in the Con- gregational churches, as well as in some other great communions, have been graduates of colleges. An educated ministry has been de- manded, and, for the most part, thus far, has been supplied. The Church is dependent on the colleges for ministers of culture and learn- ing. There was never greater need of intel- ligent and cultivated Christian men in the pul- pit than to-day, since the level of intelligence in the laity is higher than it ever was before. Zeal is no substitute for knowledge. Should the pulpits be filled with untrained men, the churches would lose immeasurably. But are Christian students of gifts and culture entering the ministry? Frankly, I am obliged to admit that the brightest, ablest men are more inclined to enter other profes- sions and pursuits. I do not mean that no men of that quality become clergymen, nor that those not so gifted who embrace that profession are not useful pastors, but that the great majority of those I have described turn to law, medicine, theology, teaching, or busi- ness. Many a young man on whom I should 136 The College to the Church like to lay hands of ordination chooses some other occupation. The reasons are, not the hardships of the minister's life, nor the desire to gain material goods, for many enter the teaching profession which, neither in the best positions nor on the average, is as well paid as the ministry, while as many deprivations are entailed. What, now, are the reasons that gifted men are not attracted to the min- istry ? One reason, undoubtedly, is theological. An educated young man does not believe what he supposes a preacher must believe. He doubts whether he can meet the challenge of creeds and councils. He would like to be a preacher, and therefore has some beliefs of the most positive character, preachable beliefs — the love of God to men, the human, sympa- thizing, self-sacrificing Christ, the inevitable consequences of sin, the redemption and eleva- tion of man by the gospel in the kingdom of Christ on earth. But in respect to the Bible, while he believes it contains the word of God, he does not believe that all of it is the Word of God. He does not believe that Jesus had Mutual Dependence 137 all divine attributes. He may not believe in the Trinity according to the Nicene Creed. He has a hope and, indeed, an opinion that no soul will be so lost as to suffer pain everlastingly. He cannot believe, at any rate, that this brief earthly life determines the eternal destiny of every man. Yet it appears to him that he may not be ordained unless he assents to some or all of these dogmas. A council or presbytery will meet him at the threshold and will examine him, chiefly in respect to his theological opinions. There are councils and councils, to be sure, but there is considerable liability that he will be challenged at the point of his doubts and denials. Councils are kind- ly, it is true, but it is difficult to imagine a council or presbytery that is not theological. Emphasis should be placed on character, abil- ity, fitness for the place, on the Christian spirit, the common sense, the sanity of the youthful servant of Jesus Christ. Can forty men, with the best intentions, ascertain all that in an hour or two concerning a man they never saw before? They can only ascertain his opinions on certain doctrines. The proper 138 The College to the Church course is this ; let the local church satisfy itself by knowing and hearing the man, by taking the judgments of his teachers and friends, and by setting him at work, and then, in due time, ask the neighboring churches to welcome him to the ministry. There is little danger that skeptics, agnostics, atheists or non-Christian men will press into the pulpit. The gate should be wide open, not fastened with a rusty padlock. In our hearts we ap- plaud a young man who will not be a minister at the expense of intellectual honesty. I be- lieve, however, that the freedom which pre- vails more and more in the churches, that the changed conceptions of Christ and of human- ity, of which I have spoken, will remove en- tirely, as they have removed in part, this ob- stacle, so that devoted Christian youths will not be deterred from the ministry by a chal- lenge to honesty. There are other reasons more influential than the theological reason in keeping able Christian men from becoming clergymen. There is a feeling that the ministry is inferior in influence, opportunity and power, and in Mutual Dependence 139 general estimation, to other professions and to what it used to be. In former times no posi- tion was more influential and honorable than the clergyman's position. The pulpit was a place of power. The minister was the trust- ed counselor and friend of all the people. But now a multiplicity of duties, social and temporal, devolve upon the minister, en- croaching on the time he should give to study and to preparation for preaching. To a large extent he is obliged to serve tables. Boys' clubs, King's Daughters, charitat)Ie as- sociations, missionary organizations, improve- ment classes, committees on this, committees on that, Christian Endeavor Societies, and I know not how many more associations, ap- pliances and activities, may be excellent de- vices, but the minister is expected to create and guide them all. Many of these activities terminate within the church itself, or are for m.ere entertainment. If all these things must be, they should be directed by the mem- bers of the church. A preacher's first and great business is to preach, to preach the liv- ing gospel in terms and thoughts of to-day. 140 The College to the Church But to bring a fresh message Sunday after Sunday he must give himself chiefly to that one thing. A gifted young man is ready to preach, not in the pride of eloquence, not with itching for publicity, but as a great service for men, and to put all his intellectual and spiritual energy into it. But if he is to or- ganize, to sit on committees, to devise so- ciables, and to spend half his time visiting from house to house, the profession does not attract him. Will able young men go into law, if they are to be clerks, typewriters, sheriffs and gaolers as well as lawyers? Will intelligent men go into medicine, if they are to be nurses and druggists as well as physicians? Let us go right back to the early Church. "Now in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a mur- muring of the Grecian Jews against the He- brews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. And the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said. It is not fit that we should forsake the word of God, and serve tables. Look ye out therefore, brethren, from among you Mutual Dependence 141 seven men of good report, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will continue stedfast- ly in prayer, and in the ministry of the word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude." I do not say that clergymen are to do noth- ing but preach and pray. There is a work, a personal work, to be done, which young men are eager to do, a work for boys and youths and men, through clubs and classes and in other ways ; a work, too, for people outside the churches, for toilers, for the poor and ig- norant. If ministers could do such work and direct others in it, they would find the deepest satisfaction. The numbers of students who engage in settlement work show how strongly educated men are drawn to a real service for their fellows. But that is very different from the social, literary and even religious work which begins and ends within the church it- self. The minister's chief function is to in- spire men, not to administer affairs. When the pulpit is restored to its dignity and power, able ministers of the New Testament will not be wanting. I say all this without reserve 142 The College to the Church here, because the pulpit of this church is the minister's throne. I beheve the Church is so awaking- to the real Christian service which is needed that unreasonable and trivial de- mands on. the preacher will not continue, and that the best Christian students will again be drawn into the greatest profession. I find another reason, which has much to do with the feeling that the ministry is in- ferior to other professions, in the numerical littleness of congregations. Every village, however small, must have its own minister, al- though it is only two miles away from another small village, must have its own Baptist, Con- gregational, Episcopal, Methodist minister. It is not to be wondered at that educated young^ men of good parts see better service for men in some other occupation than preaching and pastoring to the fifth part of a village, or to a little city congregation (which is even worse), and on a precarious tenure of office at that. The Catholics are wiser than we in this respect. About the best thing that could happen would be a church trust. We might wish at least that the old geographical parish could be restored. Mutual Dependence 143 These are homely considerations, but I be- lieve that denominational and local divisive- ness and church machinery are obstructing Christianity in the world of to-day and are keeping suitable men out of the ministry. Longing for Christian unity, however, is more general and deep than it ever was. We all deplore the evils and wastefulness of division on trivial differences, and so may ex- pect there will be larger consolidation of those who profess and call themselves Christians, so that we may go with the multitude to the house of God to keep holy day. The broad- ening of faith to the wideness of the humanity of Christ who drav/s all men unto him will sweep away minor dift'erences. The kingdom of God possessing our service and enthusiasm will restore in vast unity the Church of Christ. The diversities of operations which are needed will be supplied in diversity of gifts, which no one man has, not even the min- ister, but which God hath distributed severally as he will. It is a moral and spiritual work to which Church and preacher are called. The broader 144 The College to the Church faith and the larger service to which the col- lege has greatly contributed will restore proportion of belief, will subordinate method to life, will give freedom and power to the pulpit, will make learning the handmaid of re- ligion, and will make the Church the pillar and ground of the truth. VI THE COLLEGE GRADUATE AND THE CHURCH PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. TUCKER, LL. D. X THE COLLEGE GRADUATE AND THE CHURCH "And the first came before him, saying, Lord, thy pound hath made ten pounds more. . . . And the second came, saying, Thy pound, Lord, hath made five pounds. . . . And another came, saying, Lord, behold here is thy pound, which I kept laid up in a napkin" — Luke 19: 16, 18, 20. The college graduate represents one of the investments through which society endeavors to increase the social capital. The higher education, considered from the social point of view, is distinctly an investment. Society takes the initiative, not the individual, and the end sought is the public good. Whether you have the college or university founded by the Church or by the state or by the capitalist, the outcome is the same. You have the so- cial institution. And the avowed object of this particular social institution is the creation of social capital. A recent writer has pointed out the econom- ic fact that "The great civilized peoples have 147 148 The College to the Church to-day at their command the means of de- veloping the decadent nations of the world. These means," he says, "in their material as- pects consist of the great excess of saved capi- tal which is the result of machine production." Transfer this idea to the subject before us and you have my precise meaning. The modern nation which is morally strong, is strong because of a certain surplus of intel- lectual and moral wealth at its command created by agencies which have been establish- ed to produce it. And one of the agencies which is everywhere recognized as fitted to se- cure this result is the college or university. The college is set to increase the common stock of necessary, desirable and stimulating ideas ; it is set to advance those principles and truths of common concern, which are advanced not only as they are applied, but also as they are renewed and reopened at their intellectual and moral sources ; and it is set to arouse and vivify the intellect, the imagination and the conscience of each incoming generation. The college graduate is the product of this system of agencies which society has devised College Graduate and the Church 149 to increase the social capital. He may fall far below his own ideals or the ideals of so- ciety, but still society continues the method of production. On the whole, it works well. The college graduate is seldom an incom- petent. That is the reason why he is made an object of remark whenever such is the fact. Society is surprised, as well as angered, when- ever a college man ignores or fails in the social obligation — whenever he says to society through indolence, or cowardice, or incompetence, "Behold, here is thy pound which I kept laid up in a napkin." Society is not surprised nor overjoyed, but simply expectant when one says, "Thy pound hath made five," and another says, "Thy pound hath made ten more." I propose to ask and to try to answer two plain questions : First — What is the contribution which the college is expected to make to the social capi- tal? And, Secondly — If the college makes its proper contribution to the social capital, what may it reasonably expect in the way of support from the Church? 150 The College to the Church First — What is the contribution which the college is expected to make to the social capi- tal? In naming the three essential forms which this contribution may take, I begin with the most recent, which you may regard as the lowest, namely, that contribution which lies in the region of utility. We have reached that point in the prodviction of material wealth at which the contribution of the school has be- come of the first importance. We can make no further progress by chance, or luck, or hap- hazard discoveries, nor yet by enterprise and integrity, unaided. Everything in the way of material wealth waits the impulse and the di- rection of the educated mind. All gains at the sources of material wealth (I do not say in the manipulation of it) depend upon the increase of mathematical certainty, or upon that in- vention which belongs to the trained imagina- tion. The real sources of modern wealth are not our workshops nor our warehouses, but our laboratories and our class-rooms, just as these are the real sources of modern power. The shot that reaches the mark invisible to the eye, is fired not by the strength or skill of the College Graduate and the Church 151 seaman, but by the calculation of the scholar. This change in the sources and agencies of wealth and power is almost incalculable. The money with which England carried on her wars against Napoleon came out of her newly established factories, which in turn were built out of the inventions of plain workmen, no one of whom had seen the inside of a uni- versity, no one of whom would have been greatly helped if he had. But as Mr. Hux- ley pointed out, not long before his death, France was paying the cost of the Franco- Prussian War out of the laboratories of Pas- teur. The fear is often expressed that the grow- ing dependence of material wealth upon the educated mind will soon or late commercialize education. Without doubt there is a danger here, a danger against which the medical pro- fession, in its refusal to allow its members to profit pecuniarily by any discoveries which they may make, utters its serious and perpetual protest. But on the other hand we are to re- member that practicality is not ignoble. It is not dishonorable nor ignoble to create a 152 The College to the Church force which will supply a want. The real danger lies in intercepting a beneficent force on its way to the want, and in obliging it to pay unrighteous toll. There has been a marked change in the academic estimate put upon utility within the century. At the beginning of the century a great scientist, in pleading for the pursuit of science for science's sake, spoke in lofty dis- dain of what he termed "The grand practical innovations" of the times. "These rising workshops," he said, "these peopled colonies, these vessels which furrow the seas, this abundance, this luxury, this tumult, all this' comes from discoverers in science, and all this remains strange to them. The day that a doctrine comes into practice they abandon it to the populace ; it concerns them no more." That was not the tone of science, nor even of learning, as the century closed. Practicality is no longer ignoble. The scholar who con- tributes to the material well-being of society is not ashamed of his contribution, nor are his fellows ashamed of him. Utility is recog- nized as coming within the range of the aca- demic contribution to the social capital. College Graduate and the Church 153 But the more distinct contribution, prob- ably many of you would say the most dis- tinct contribution, of the college to the social capital is that of intellectual authority. In- tellectual authority is in most demand wherever there is the most intellectual activ- ity ; for activity, however interesting it may be, does not satisfy. Intellectual activity amongst us as a people is altogether out of proportion to intellectual authority. We have the versatile, alert, smart, intelligent mind, but the authoritative mind is rare. It would be mere arrogance to say that it is not found outside of our colleges, or outside of academic training. There may be, there often is, a personal quality about it, which is inde- pendent of conditions. But the conditions which are most favorable to its development are such as are to be found in our colleges. For there you have the requisite continuity of thought and that kind of intellectual morality in which authorit)^ lies. A university has been defined as the place "where the highest culture of one generation is best transmitted to the ablest youths of the next." It is there- 154 The College to the Church fore a place of safety against mere newness, mere ferment, mere experimentation. I know the danger of conservatism. I know the danger of setting up the traditional, the con- ventional, in place of the living truth. But authority must have in it the element of time. It cannot be extemporized. When the au- thoritative man speaks, it is not his voice alone that we hear nor the voice of the better men of his time, but the voice also of the progres- sive past. Authority is the consenting opin- ion of the past which lives on in the present, and of the present, thus reinforced, reaching forth into its own future. It is one part of the business of the higher education to give steadiness and momentum of thought and of opinion, and even of belief. It is one part of its business to keep the generations from pull- ing apart and breaking that continuity of in- tellectual power which gives authority. I have said also that the conditions are fa- vorable in colleges for intellectual morality. I mean by this that they are usually free from the disturbing influence of immoral motives. There is no reason whv the mind should not College Graduate and the Church 155 be trained to think toward the truth. The element of personal gain or advantage is ab- sent. The question has no place, "What will it profit me if I reach this rather than that conclusion?" The high thinking which is assumed may not always be going on, but there may always be straight and honest think- ing. You may say to me — ^the results do not always appear in the college graduate. There is at least no guarantee against a decline on his part in intellectual morality. I have in mind a letter bearing on this point written to a benefactor of education, from which I am per- mitted to quote. "Now and then" says the 'writer, "quite possibly too often, I find float- ing through my mind doubts about the pure- ly moral value of so much education as is now being provided for. Nearly every time I mix in business affairs, I have the fact forced upon my observation that college graduates are quite as dishonest and expert sharpers as their less fortunate brothers. I fear that I am gradually being forced to the adoption of a new motto, 'fewer churches, less learning and more honesty.' How do you like it ?" This 156 The College to the Church was the impatient, half earnest word of a well known lawyer, a gallant soldier and reformer and a lover of books beyond most scholars, a word against which no general denial can be entered but of which it can be said that the fact which impresses us in all such cases is that of their tremendous inconsistency. That is the tribute we pay in our minds to the training which has gone before. And it is for this reason, I suppose, that society guards so care- fully the freedom of university teaching. It is assumed to be honest teaching. It may be impracticable — that is a frequent criticism — it may be foolish even as it passes out of its sphere — there is nothing to prevent college professors from speaking out of their igno- rance as well as out of their wisdom — but it is not often charged with dishonesty, with dis- turbing influences, or with ulterior motives. The morality of the intellect is the most precious aim and outcome of the university, and so long as men believe this to be the fact, they will look to the university for intellectual authority. The other contribution which the college College Graduate and the Church 157 makes to the social capital — you may or may not think it of equal importance with that which we have been considering; in some respects I should consider it higher — is sentiment. The historic col- leges nearly all came into being under the im- pulse of the passion for humanity. The mo- tive as well as the circumstance of their origin set them toward the heroic. Their history is still a challenge. In the old cemetery where the founder of my college lies, there runs this epitaph on his tomb : By the Gospel he subdued the ferocity of the savage. And to the civilized he opened new paths of science. Traveler: Go, if you can, and deserve the sublime reward of such merit. I like to go there from time to time and read this challenge out of the heart of the eighteenth century. It seems to say to me, "Man of the twentieth century, go, if you can, do an equal task, declare an equal purpose, show an equal spirit." When I speak of sentiment as a contribu- tion of our colleges, especially of our historic colleges, I mean available sentiment, sentiment 158 The College to the Church which can be communicated and organized and put into action. Consecration to high ends is an individual act, but I suspect that it is often held back and thwarted by untoward cir- cumstances. The life is committed to lower ends before it can reach out to higher ends. Freedom of choice is gone. The advantage of the college is that freedom of choice is of- ten held open to the last. One may commit himself in the comparative maturity of his powers to the greatest and most satisfying ends. He has not yet "given hostages to fortune." The opportunity for the highest and for the noblest consecration is still before him. The years of this delayed or retarded choice, which rnake up the college period, I count to be of inestimable value, in the interest of the great choices and the great consecra- tions. If you should eliminate it you would eliminate with it a vast deal of the heroic work of the world. More decisions looking to the missionary service are made in college than in all previous stages of training. The college is more potent than the home in the incentives to a devoted life. Hence our col- College Graduate and the Church 159 leges are the recruiting ground for all agencies which do their work at the heart of humanity. The unfailing appeal meets there the unfailing response. This is the fact. Appearances may give a contrary impression. The side of college life which is turned to the public does not seem to be serious, it often appears friv- olous. The public sees here, as elsewhere, what it likes to see ; it follows the life in which it is interested. It is not that colleges play more than they work, but that the public at large cares more for their play than for their work. Deeper than the currents of physical life which runs at times so swiftly are the currents of the spiritual life. The man of the abounding physical life may be also the man of the abounding spiritual life. Few men, during their college course, are out of reach of high incentives, and some man is al- ways yielding to them. Sentiment, in the form of some cleat, distinct and noble ambition, is never absent from college life. These are the contributions which the col- lege may be expected to make, and which it does make to the social capital : — utility, intel- lectual authority and sentiment. i6o The College to the Church I do not speak in this connection of the other well known things which it offers to the general social life. It is one function of the college to give color and picturesqueness to our somewhat hard and dull social atmosphere. The American college is the brightest, the happiest, the most hopeful of all our social institutions. I do not except even the home. But I am speaking of those social contribu- tions which go to make up capital, that surplus of intellectual and moral power with which as a nation we may affect the world. And now, in so far as these contributions are genuine and are being made, what has the col- lege to say to the Church? I do not mean by the Church any form of ecclesiasticism. I refer to it as the representative of Christian- ized society. What is the message of the college to the Church in regard to the use of this social capital, which, through the colleges and through other means, is increasing far be- yond even our material wealth? The work of the college is largely creative; the work of the Church is largely distributive. The distinction is not absolute, but it is real. College Graduate and the Church i6i The Church is at the center of all life. It is everywhere. It is of the country and of the city. It has access to men under every con- dition and circumstance. It deals in organi- zation. It can meet men in the mass and as in- dividuals, and though it does not attempt to cover every variety of interest, nothing is foreign to it which is of any deep concern to humanity. What, then, may the college, in so far as it contributes to the material well-being of so- ciety ask of the Church at this point? Clear- ly and directly this, that the Church shall aid in the proper distribution of material wealth. The college enters the field as a producer, mainly through science. But the beneficence of science lies in the fact that its results are for all. It deals in those large forces which work for all. Science is the almoner of nature, and nature knows no distinctions. The sun shines and the rain falls upon the just and upon the unjust. Science in its bounty cannot accept the limitations of art. Art de- lights in quality. It ministers to the elect. It demands conditions of its disciples, even of its XI 1 62 The College to the Church patrons. But science, when once it has ex- pressed itself in results, asks no conditions of those who receive it, not even appreciation, but goes its beneficent way, abundant and im- partial as nature. The Church, as representing the moral power of society, ought to match the bene- ficence of science by opening and widening the channels of distribution. The school as the producer, through science, of the new wealth, has the right to ask this. Charity offers no sufficient moral outlet for the new abundance. Charity hardly covers more than the pension list of the Church. The material well-being which the new order allows and demands, demands because it allows it, is in- finitely more than the care of the disabled. It means new life all round, a closer connection between the individual, whoever he may be, and the means of his growth and enlargement. The charge to be brought against the Church in this matter is not its lack of kind- ness or good will, but its lack of initiative. It may love men with the heart ; it does not love them with the mind. The message therefore College Graduate and the Church 163 of the college to the Church is — study men, understand the conditions of their life and work, measure the forces which are against them and the forces which are for them, help them to help themselves. And this message is not in word only. By simple and unob- strusive methods the college has organized the social settlement. The social settlement puts a group of college graduates into a neighbor- hood which needs them, first, to live there, then to know their neighbors, then to make their neighbors know one another, then to make all agencies available from within, re- ligious, educational, charitable, municipal, actually helpful to the residents of the neigh- borhood, then to bring in quickening and freshening influences from the outside, art, music, books and, above all, people worth knowing, then to study the economic condi- tions under which the average man works, with a view to intelligent advice to him, or of intelligible action in his behalf. The college settlement is an agency for bringing back the isolated, depleted and depressed parts of our great cities into the general circulation, so that 164 The College to the Church the rich and abundant Hfe of the whole may flow into and through every part. It is in its beginning but it has made its beginning in judgment and invention as well as in en- thusiasm and in sacrifice. But what has the college to ask of the Church in the furtherance of the intellectual life ? Much every way, but chiefly in the ap- plication of intellectual power to religion. If religion has in any way ceased to be interest- ing to men, the fault is not in religion. In an after-dinner speech by the chief justice of this commonwealth, he quoted the remark of a friend to the effect that "after all, the only interesting thing is religion," and then added for himself, "I think it is true, if you take the word a little broadly and include under it the passionate awe we feel in face of the mystery of the universe." The message of the college to the Church at this point is. Do not make religion uninterest- ing in the attempt to make it interest- ing. Do not go over into the trivial, the in- cidental, the remote in the search for interest or impression. It is not the sensation of College Graduate and the Church 165 the hour which interests men rehgiously, but rather the "inevitable questions," the everlast- ing realities. Religion appeals to men partly by what it says and partly by what it cannot say. Its appeal is alike to reason and to faith, but to a reason which is not unbelieving, and to a faith which is not irrational. The intellectual approach to religion is the commanding approach. If you are ever in- clined to doubt it, go back to the New Testa- ment and read it. The power of the pulpit lies in the greatness and in the nearness of its subjects, but this nearness would avail noth- ing if the subjects themselves were not great. Preachers who have drawn men, and held them, and moved them have realized and illustrated this fact, the uneducated and educated alike, Moody as well as Phillips Brooks. I do not violate the proprieties of this time or place when I say that the steadily rising power of this pulpit lies in its handling of the great, vital, sensitive, difficult, "interesting" sub- jects of religion. It is the characteristic of the regular occupant of this pulpit that he has the ability and the courage to speak in the i66 The College to the Church great terms of religion, and the natural result is the listening ear of men here and elsewhere, I agree entirely with what has been said, as I understand, by my predecessors in this course, that the time has come when the Church must impress upon the men in our colleges the fact that they want men of power in the ministry. The Church has been too indifferent about this impression. They have been content to go into the open market for the supply of their recurring wants, without concerning them- selves about the sources of supply. I should like to see a church, I should like to see churches strong enough to support a staff of ministers, go to our colleges, pick the best men they can find and say to them, "We want you, there is your call to the ministry; will you accept it and fit yourself for it?" But I have maintained that a further con- tribution of the college to the social capital is sentiment — responsiveness, that is, to noble calls, the ambition to undertake the ar- duous and the heroic. If this be so, how can the Church best support this spirit in our colleges? What is the message of the col- College Graduate and the Church 167 lege to the Church at this point? You may at first question my answer, which is this : The support which sentiment in the form of consecration to high ends needs to-day above all things is morality, plain, undeniable moral- ity ; and until we can have more public moral- ity it is not of much use to ask for more con- secration of the kind to which I have referred among young men. Unfortunately, I can give you a clear il- lustration of my meaning. The past century was a missionary century. It began and continued under the incentive of motives for the redemption of the world. The saying of young Mills to his college friends, "We ought to carry the gospel to dark and heathen lands, and we can do it if we will," caught the heart, the conscience and the faith of the Church. As a result the colleges poured out their wealth of consecrated life into dark and hea- then lands. The record of the century has been a continuous record of heroism filling its pages with the names of heroes and martyrs. But, lo ! as the century ends they and their work are discredited in the eyes of the world. i68 The College to the Church Christendom has been exposed before pagan- ism. The very nations which have sent out apostles to preach the gospel have shown that they have not learned how to keep the com- mandments. What chance has the mission- ary in China, under the present ethics of Christendom? You recall the proverb, "In the presence of arms the laws are silent." It looks as if we must add "The gospel also." It is very difficult to know what to say to young men in these days of inconsistency and confusion. Suppose a young man of zeal and integrity should ask one of you where he could put his moral power to the best ad- vantage, or according to the great need to- day? What would you tell him? That would hardly have been an open question at the beginning of the century. Mills gave the true as well as the heroic answer. What has made the difference torday? The failure of Christendom to support Christianity through its practical moralities. For "Christendom," as was said by Professor Christlieb, "is the world's Bible." "Ye are our epistle . . . known and read of all men." The Church College Graduate and the Church 169 has been set back nobody knows how long by the behavior of Christian nations in China. And a hke result must follow in degree every- where wherever there is a break between the faith and the morals of Christendom. There- fore I argue that the only sufficient support of sentiment in our college is morality in the Church and the nation. In bringing to a close this course on the Message of the College to the Church, I can- not forbear an acknowledgment both to those who invited these conferences and to those who have supported them by their pres- ence. It is well that there should be the interchange of serious thought between those who represent the great social institutions. The interests at stake are vital. The college and the Church touch the life within them and the life without. It is every man's concern what they are and what they do. They are not above popular criticism. But as every man should be his own most severe and sternest critic, so every institution, set to the uses of society, should have the power of self- examination and rigorous self -analysis. I 170 The College to the Church know of nothing so serious for men or insti- tutions as the interpretation of duty, and yet nothing can be more simple, if the primitive tests are kept continually in sight. Of col- lege and Church alike, of state and nation, of anything to which is committed the high privi- lege of duty, the old prophetic question may be asked, as truly as of the individual soul : "What is it," O College, O Church, O Na- tion, "which the Lord thy God doth require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thv God?" OCT 3 1901