3 
 
 BUI^IyETIN OF THI) STATiJ UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 
 
 NEW SERIES NO. 3a MAY, 1901 
 
 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE SCHOOLS BOTH 
 CHRISTIAN 
 
 BACCALAUREATE SERMON 
 
 Delivered June 3, 1900 
 
 By 
 
 GEORGE E. MACLEAN, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 President of the State University of Iowa 
 
 PUBWSHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Iowa City, Iowa 
 
 190 1 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY BUI,I<ETINS PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY ARE 
 ISSUED EVERY SIX WEEKS DURING THE ACADEMIC YEAR, AT LEAST SIX 
 NUMBERS EVERY CALENDAR YEAR. ENTERED AT THE POST OFFICE AT 
 IOWA CITY AS SECOND CLASS MAIL MATTER- 
 
 Wlw-^ \ 
 
 ^•r<^^ 
 
BULLETIN OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 
 
 NEW SERIES NO. 32 MAY, 1901 
 
 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE SCHOOLS BOTH 
 CHRISTIAN 
 
 BACCALAUREATE SERMON 
 
 Delivered June 3, 1900 
 
 By 
 GEORGE E^ MACLEAN, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 Ppesident of the State University of Iowa 
 
 PUBI,ISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Iowa City, Iowa 
 
 1901 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY BUIyLETINS PUBI,ISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY ARE 
 ISSUED EVERY SIX WEEKS DURING THE ACADEMIC YEAR, AT LEAST SIX 
 NUMBERS EVERY CALENDAR YEAR. ENTERED AT THE POST OFFICE AT 
 IOWA CITY AS SECOND CLASS MAIL MATTER. 
 

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 The Disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. — 
 Acts, XI, 36. 
 
 In the nineteenth century we have become realists rather 
 than nominalists. We quote with approval, "What's in a 
 name?" The educational dictum is, "Study things before 
 words." When we study words with the spirit of the 
 realist we trace them to their origin. They become entities 
 redolent of reality. All unconscious, we bring the cycle 
 round to the truth of nominalism and realism combined. 
 
 There are life and history in a word. The Antiochian 
 sneering appellation "Christian," representing the view of 
 the highest culture of the Orient and Occident blended in 
 Antioch, was antithetical to the simple esoteric name 
 "disciple." Disciple was a schoolman's term used by the 
 philosophers, implying the devotion and obedience of a 
 pupil to his teacher and intimating that Christianity is 
 essentially educational. The companions of Jesus, the 
 members of the New Testament church, gave themselves 
 the five names, disciples, followers, believers, brethren, and 
 saints. The three times the word "Christian" is admitted 
 to the New Testament are practically quotations from 
 the lips of pagans. Slowly the term of shame is transmitted 
 into one of glory, and then, in the essential meaning 
 of the word, is synonomous with disciple. A Christian is 
 literally "one belonging to the Christ." Christ in turn is 
 the Greek for the Hebrew "Messiah," meaning "the 
 Anointed." Christ is not the name of Jesus, but his title, 
 "Jesus the Anointed." Jesus was too great to become the 
 founder of a sect. Jesus-ites could not spring from Him 
 
2 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 who was endowed with the title "The Anointed." Jesus 
 was not the founder of Christianity as he is superficially 
 believed to be, but he found it. Christianity commenced 
 with the creation, when the morning stars sang together, 
 and all the sons of God rejoiced. It was founded by God 
 the Father when he "saw that all things were good." 
 God-inspired, it has welled up in the hearts of the faithful 
 of all ages. There was the church of the Jews. There was, 
 according to St. Peter, the church of the Gentiles, roomy 
 enough for Greeks, Romans, Orientals, and Barbarians, 
 for "God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he 
 that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted 
 with Him." 
 
 In the poesy of the Orient, "the Anointed" meant orig- 
 inally "the anointed by God's spirit, the inspired one." 
 He became the natural leader who, later, by the ceremony 
 of outward anointing, was recognized as prophet, that is, 
 the poet of righteousness — or priest, that is, the man of 
 prayer in the sense of aspiration and sacrifice — or as king, 
 that is, the politically endowed, God's and the people's 
 representative. In Jesus the Christ, or Anointed, to whom 
 the spirit of God was given without measure, coalesced the 
 poet, the prayer, the divine king or people's president. 
 "For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness 
 dwell, and in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead 
 bodily." 
 
 In the personality of the Peasant of Galilee we reach the 
 culmination of the evolution of the inspired ones of human- 
 ity. As related to the ages before Him, He was, in His 
 words, "One who came to fulfil." As related to the ages 
 to follow Him, He was the type of a new humanity that 
 with accelerated evolution should develop from the old, 
 under the anointing or inspiration not only of the Father's 
 spirit, but also of the example and spirit of the Christ. In 
 scriptural language, "When the fulness of time was come, 
 God sent forth His Son made of a woman * * * that 
 
ESSENTIAL CHRISTIANITY 3 
 
 we might receive the adoption of sons, and because we are 
 sons, God has sent forth the spirit of His Son into our 
 hearts, crying, Abba, Father," 
 
 The revision of the pagan meaning of the term "Christ- 
 ian," by which essentially it was made synonomous with 
 "disciple or learner" of Jesus the Christ or Inspired, 
 reconciled the church to the use of the term. But the 
 pagan meaning survives side by side with the essential 
 one. "Christian" is still a term of reproach, not only on the 
 part of Moslem and Buddhist, but in certain circles of 
 culture. The religion of Jesus has been confounded with 
 the Christianity sometimes merely crystalized, or better, 
 petrified in dogmas and churches. The pagan name has 
 shrivelled and constricted the thing until even historians 
 like Gibbon, Draper, and even Andrew White, seem to 
 exclaim, "Christianity, what crimes have been committed 
 in thy name!" Let our reply be: "To the essential 
 Christianity! " "Christian" is the synonym, not antithesis 
 of disciple, follower, believer, brother,saintof the Holy Jesus, 
 known as the Christ, the Anointed or Inspired One of his- 
 tory past, and Inspirer and Type of humanity to come. 
 
 The recent watchword has been "Back to Christ," 
 amended to "Forward to Christ," but the true word is 
 "Introspice! Circumspice, Suspice! " To the Christ, the 
 Inspirer within, about, above us! 
 
 Beecher said, "Christianity is a soul-power, an invisible, 
 immutable power in the world." In Beecher's time, 
 Christianity was passing from the static to the dynamic 
 stage. It is now rising to its original biologic form, and 
 we say, "Christianity is a soul-life infused through the 
 spirit of a sempiternal Christ, not only in the individual, 
 but in nature and society. We do not simply imitate the 
 Jesus of the first century and ask, "What would Jesus do," 
 but we are inspired by the Christ spirit to live a Jesus 
 today. 
 
 The Christian is "more than the man of creed or cult or 
 
4 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 church or conduct. He is the man of life, a disciple in the 
 Anglo-Saxon quaint phrase, "A knight of learning of the 
 living Christ," He is a man of growth in grace and in 
 the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The 
 inspired man does not despise instruction. Coleridge was 
 taught logic in his study of Milton's poetry, and held 
 that the poet must be the strictest logician. The greater 
 the inspiration, the wider and higher is the field of instruc- 
 tion. Pseudo-genius is an inflated idler, that disdaining 
 common things soars high in the thin atmosphere of vanity, 
 at last to fall in failure. God-given genius toils and soars 
 to heights or falls to depths, seeking truth and bearing life — 
 "A creature not too bright or good 
 For human nature's daily food." 
 
 Essential Christianity has been, and ever must be, a 
 friend to education. The new education is largely the 
 result of child study, and as modern psychology and philoso- 
 phy show, must be essentially Christian. Aristotle pointed 
 out that the aim of education was the cultivation of char- 
 acter. Our latest research apart from the influences of 
 historical Christianity brings to the same thing. Education 
 is not primarily the imparting of knowledge, but the devel- 
 opment of the mysterious soul of the child. It is a growth 
 that the teacher watches like a gardener. He tends it with 
 the truth as a fertilizer; he waters the unfolding soul with 
 his sympathies ; he detects the law of its individual growth ; 
 with the sunshine of his personality, and radiance of his 
 love he brings to full bloom the character of the child. 
 Physical training and parental discipline are a trellis 
 to support temporarily the soul plant, and to teach it 
 adjustment. 
 
 In these days of evolution the law of service of others, 
 or self-sacrifice if need be, is inculcated in the individual 
 as he is seen to spring from the root of a common human- 
 ity. He is but one plant in a garden of plants of like 
 order, living with and for others as well as himself, and 
 
NEW EJDUCATION CHRISTIAN 5 
 
 bearing fruit for the gardener. I^ife immortal deepens the 
 significance revealing this earthly paradise as an antitype 
 of a heavenly paradise. Let us reiterate, we are speaking 
 of the deliverances of modern pedagogy, and not of pro- 
 fessed Christianity, The oneness therefore of essential Christ- 
 ianity and of modern education appears. 
 
 Of necessity, progressive education is Christian education. 
 Through the pathway of science we have come to see, in 
 the words of Professor Levi Seeley, that "the coming of 
 Christ marked a new era both in religion and education." 
 It is suggestive that the modern authorities on pedagogy 
 have their chapters on Christian education, and point out 
 the pedagogical truth of Christ's teaching. Seeley follow- 
 ing the commonplace authorities says, "The central peda- 
 gogic truth of Christ's teaching is this, all education is for 
 the individual." He contrasts Oriental education as 
 having for its end the interests of the state, and Christian 
 education as having for its end the interests of the individual. 
 
 Let us in the interest of the whole truth revert to the 
 principles of our discourse and not follow the pedagogists 
 as they tend to follow the theologists in the error of putting 
 Christ's teaching into the place of the Christ-life. Professor 
 Seeley 's dogma, supposed to be drawn from the Christ's 
 teaching that all education is for the individual, and his 
 glib contrast between the interests of the State and the 
 interests of the individual contradict the utter self sacrifice 
 in life and death of the individual Jesus for all humanity. 
 Christian education makes the most of the individual in 
 order to make the most of the state as a free government 
 in a universal brotherhood of man that shall be a king- 
 dom of heaven on earth. 
 
 All our studies to this point have established it philosoph- 
 ically that essential Christianity would educate scien- 
 tifically, and that scientific modern education must be 
 essentially Christian. 
 
 If we review the subject of Christian education histori- 
 
6 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 callyinthis century, and particularly in the United States, 
 we shall be brought to the same conclusion. The fathers 
 of the republic, in the ordinance of 1787 for the govern- 
 ment of the Northwest Territory, the Magna Charta of the 
 public school system, recognizing that "religion, morality, 
 and intelligence are necessary to good government and 
 human happiness," made it law that these "should forever 
 be encouraged." Public education was by this organic act 
 to be Christian education. With a practice sometimes 
 more, sometimes less Christian, not until recently has the 
 subject been cleared up. The provision that church and 
 state should be separated, the traditions of church and 
 college education for a long time set forth a contradiction 
 between sectarian and secular education, between a Christ- 
 ian or religious, and an unchristian or godless education. 
 At length we have learned that separation between church 
 and state does not imply antagonism. A deeper philoso- 
 phy and higher Christianity have shown that the distinction 
 between secular and sacred is nominal. There has devel- 
 oped a positive Christly charity immeasurably superior to 
 the old boasted negative toleration. A severe secta- 
 rianism has yielded to a complacent and partially co- 
 operative denominationalism. A larger Americanism, con- 
 scious of a new nationality with a mission for humanity, 
 roots itself in a basic spiritual life, and is not afraid that 
 religion and morality in the schools will trench upon 
 liberty of conscience and degenerate into sectarianism. By 
 common consent therefore, the contrast now is not between 
 the Christian and the Godless state school, but between 
 the church and the state school both essentially Christian. 
 Did I say contrast? I should have said comparison. lyCt 
 us go further. We hope the day is at hand when we may 
 expect co-operation between the church and the state 
 school, each having its sphere, each lending a happy in- 
 fluence to the other and a lustre to our common American 
 education. 
 
AMERICAN EDUCATION CHRISTIAN 7 
 
 I^et us be thankful that the various churches in the era 
 of America's continental expansion not only planted their 
 sanctuaries upon the prairies, but also their schools, and 
 especially their colleges, in order that the old civilization 
 and Christianity might not perish amidst the poverty of the 
 pioneers. 
 
 I^et those of us who are churchmen be equally thankful 
 that the strength and treasury of the churches, all but 
 over-taxed to sustain missions the globe around, are not 
 required single-handed to support church schools and 
 colleges, but these are supplemented and comf)lemented by 
 the public schools maintained by the service and treasury 
 of the state. In fact, a silent conquest of the public 
 school has been made by religion. As it has been done 
 without impairing freedom or liberty of conscience, there is 
 no friend of humanity who may not rejoice. 
 
 Despite philosophical demonstration, and the historical 
 survey of tendencies, some excellent person with more of 
 denominational zeal than knowledge, or some extreme 
 sentimentalist, suspicious of any religious enthusiasm, will 
 object that the speaker's wishes are the father to his 
 thoughts. Christian education by church or state must 
 meet the test of the practical. What are the facts? On 
 the one hand, the church schools are belittled as sectarian 
 and accused of narrowness and bigotry; on the other, the 
 state schools are denounced as Godless and as promoting 
 indifference, skepticism, and even immorality. An im- 
 partial study of the curricula, faculties, students, and 
 alumni of both classes of institutions will show little 
 difference. The older so-called church colleges like 
 Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Williams, and the 
 oldest imitators of these in the West, have opened their 
 curricula to the widest extent to the modern secular 
 studies. They have reduced to a minimum, if they have 
 not abolished, as requirements the specifically Christian 
 and ethical branches. The same liberties are granted to 
 
8 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 the students that are bestowed in the freedom of the state 
 institutions. These colleges are eager to deny that they 
 are sectarian in spirit, or even denominational to any 
 appreciable extent in administration, Creedal tests are not 
 applied in the selection of professors, and occasionally 
 men known not to be adherents of Christianity are 
 tolerated on their faculties. The supreme tests are those 
 of character and scholarship. 
 
 The census of the students in the older church colleges 
 does not show a larger proportion of membership in 
 church than in state institutions. With the exception of 
 the survival here and there of compulsory chapel attend- 
 ance, the religious life of the students is free and 
 voluntary. In matters of conduct, if one could rely upon 
 the press reports, there is apt to be more of the mediaeval 
 if not of the absolutely immoral behavior in these institu- 
 tions that by tradition have been supposed to have peculiar 
 prerogatives over-riding the common law of the land. 
 
 Proportionally more of the alumni of the church schools 
 are found in the holy ministry as will be natural where 
 parental influence has destined youth for the ministry and 
 selected the college with that in view. The proportionate 
 decrease of alumni entering the ministry in recent years 
 may or may not be significant on account of the emphasis 
 of the need of Christian men in all walks of life. The 
 recognized leadership of the alumni in these colleges in 
 church and state bears witness to the scientific advance 
 and maintenance of manliness in these seats of learning. 
 
 Originally the state institutions practically copied the 
 curricula of the older church institutions, including the 
 specifically religious studies. More speedily than their 
 elder sisters they ceased to require these studies, but for 
 the most part they have not ceased to maintain them or in 
 the most modern times to offer electives pertaining even 
 to Biblical literature, languages and history. 
 
 The character as well as the scholarship of the faculties 
 
STATE EDUCATION CHRISTIAN 9 
 
 has been pre-eminent, and with occasional exceptions, it 
 has turned out that the members of the faculties were 
 men of religious life and church membership. A series of 
 denominational colleges could be gathered from the 
 student body in a state university and generally there 
 would be more students of a given denomination than in 
 the largest church college in the state. 
 
 The students in the earlier years were required to attend 
 chapel, those having conscientious scruples being excused. 
 In the interest of having no discrimination and in 
 harmony with the tendency to make voluntaryism the 
 responsible center of development of religion and charac- 
 ter, the compulsory attendance at chapel was abolished. 
 The voluntary religious activities of professors and 
 students, the various religious and philanthropic associa- 
 tions have greatly multiplied. Student conduct, subject 
 chiefly to faculty counsel and primarily to the civil law, 
 has been for the most part exemplary. Self government 
 and a high sense of moral responsibility resting upon the 
 code of honor have developed. 
 
 The alumni while furnishing a smaller quota to the 
 holy ministry have furnished many able christian laymen, 
 leaders in their communities, and have made a noticeable 
 contribution to the service of the state. The applied 
 Christianity of a representative of these institutions, of our 
 university, appears in the words of one of our brilliant and 
 beloved graduates, Mr. lyowden, in his address at the anni- 
 versary of the Grant Club of Des Moines: "And oh! the 
 ideal democracy of those college years we spent in Iowa's 
 ancient capital! Better than any equation the mathe- 
 matical works contained, was the uniform equation 
 between the student's status and the student's worth. 
 Better than the fierce war of competition which economics 
 taught us, was the co-operation we practiced — and co- 
 operation already begins to soften to rigors of competitive 
 strife. Better than the doctrine of evolution which our 
 
10 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 science proved, was our own experience that when being 
 mounted up to man, love came into the universe to shield 
 the weak. Better than the Ideal Republic of Plato, which 
 came from out the passages of his stately prose in outlines 
 so clear they seemed to be seen through Athens' air, was 
 the actual republic which had its seat within the campus 
 at the newer 'Athens of Iowa.' I see some of my old 
 friends and class-mates about me tonight, and I call them 
 to witness that for happy, hopeful, helpful years we shall 
 never see their like again. It was, as I have said, the ideal 
 democracy." 
 
 The nineteenth century amidst its unexampled activ- 
 ities has witnessed the upheaval of elemental forces. 
 We have been wont to dwell upon the political revolutions 
 and wars from those of Napoleon changing the face of 
 Europe, through those remaking the continent of Asia and 
 at this moment of Africa, to those of the United States 
 changing the balance of the hemispheres. To us indeed, 
 "the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as 
 the small dust of a balance." "Behold!" in these last 
 days "we take up the isles as a very little thing." With 
 Whitman, we sing the song of science and invention and 
 all the conquests of commerce. 
 
 The gigantic form of democracy leads the much praised 
 hosts of progress. Before the supreme influences of the 
 century, often unheeded, ever changing or progressing in 
 form, irradiating the portentous face of democracy, have 
 been Christianity and education. When they are blended 
 in Christian education, they become the pillar of cloud by 
 day and the pillar of fire by night to guide the century's 
 pilgrims . 
 
 There is a famous painting entitled "Philosophy and 
 Religion." In the center sits an old man of noble mien 
 bent over open tomes and manuscripts piled about him. 
 At his side are retorts and alembics speaking of science. 
 
ADDRESS TO CIvASSES H 
 
 The sage has sought wisdom and immortality in scholarship. 
 His death moment is at hand, and as his head is about to 
 fall forward, his whole form bespeaking dissatisfaction and 
 failure, his eye lights up with faith as it catches sight of 
 the long unobserved picture upon the wall of the Madonna 
 and Christ-child. 
 
 The dying scholar is transformed into the wise man. In 
 the moment his heart is open to the simple story of divine 
 love revealed in the mysterious but common mother-love 
 and in the sweetness of child innocence with its possibilities 
 of purity, virtue, and perfection through growth and suffer- 
 ing. Anointed by the Christ-spirit the old man becomes an 
 "inspired one" and full of hope in death. 
 
 The world in thesp pessimistic times burdened with 
 knowledge and "problems" needs "inspired men" and 
 inspired and instructed youth with courage to live. Have 
 faith in the simple story pictuted on the walls of history in 
 the Gospels, and inwrought in the nature of man and 
 things. Seek the Christ- spirit's inspiration. 
 
 ADDRESS TO CLASSES. 
 
 Membeis of the classes of 1900 : With your classes the 
 nineteenth century is rounded out. Marvelous are the 
 changes in college life in matters of morals and religion 
 since the opening of this century in the colleges of 
 America. It is a notorious fact that at the close of the 
 eighteenth century open infidelity prevailed at Yale, and its 
 sister colleges were little better. It is reported that when 
 the elder President Dwight became president there was but a 
 handful of students who would own the name of Christian. 
 Not only was religion a subject of derision supposed to be 
 forever exploded, but debauchery and drunkenness were 
 prevalent. Compulsion, with its attendant hypocrisy, 
 was the law with reference to every college duty. Volun- 
 taryism with its joy of freedom and with its development 
 of the sense of responsibility is a child of the Christ's 
 
12 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 Spirit of Jesus, with His "Whoever will," and of the 
 modern pedagogy . Contrast the old college with its rules and 
 regulations, and with its assigned work, with the freedom 
 of your self-government, and with your numberless volun- 
 tary associations grouped about the elective courses. In 
 the best moods and the tender moments of this com- 
 mencement season, touched by gratitude to your profes- 
 sors and to the bounty of Iowa, may you consecrate your- 
 selves to the maintenance and elevation of the ethical and 
 religious standards of your Alma Mater. 
 
 In this era of our new development, under the liberality 
 of the state, may you continue to prove that it is men and 
 not moneys that make institutions. May each of you of 
 whom it may not heretofore have, been true, become a 
 disciple who need not be ashamed to be called a Christian. 
 May those of you who bear that sacred name live out its 
 best meaning and remember that Christian education is not 
 confined to the college but is continuous. May the symbol 
 of two circles ('00) designating the classes of 1900, classes 
 I shall never forget as being the first to pass out under my 
 presidency here, remind you of infinity and perfection and 
 of the possible destiny of your personalities through 
 Christian education. 
 
 It is mine in behalf of Faculties and of the whole Univer- 
 sity family to bid you God-speed today. But it was another 
 President who welcomed you to the University. He was a 
 noble specimen of Christian education in home, church, 
 college , and country. In the golden autumn, under yonder 
 oaks, you laid that fine face and form to rest. But his manly 
 spirit, death-crowned, works on in the University, and its 
 voice from out the infinities may be among the first to 
 welcome you to the higher life. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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