The Place of Christian Education 
 
 in the Civilization of the West. 
 
 An Address • . . 
 
 By 
 Henry A. Stimson 

 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOF 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 THE PLAiJE OF 
 
 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 IX THE 
 
 CIVILIZATION OF THE WEST. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 BY THE REV. HENRY A. STIMSON 
 
 Before the Congregational Club of Worcester, Massachusetts, 
 at its Annual Public Meeting for 1881. 
 
 "The Lord takes care of cliil<lren, idiots, and the United States," is 
 tlie conit'ortahle utterance of one of our jiuhlic men. If we were sure 
 of its trutli, we niiglit a])]»roacli the to])ic l)efore us with rather more 
 of jauntiness tlian is now ]iermissil)le. The story is told of a canny 
 Scot, wlio, iiaving recently lost Ins wife, was receiving the commisera- 
 tion of a friend. "You have had a great trial, INfr. Campbell." "Yes, 
 sir, you may well say that," was the rejdy. And then, pausing, with a 
 shake of his head : " Xot only was it a gri'at trial, hut let me tell you 
 a matter of varra considerable f'xpense.'^ 
 
 IJesides the moral evil that will ensue should the West go wrong in 
 the matter of Christian civilization, it is very certain that we at the 
 Kast, and indeed the whole country, will incur a \ cry considerable 
 expense. 
 
 The (|uestion before us, then, is suthcicntly important to lead us to 
 di'sire to be very sure of our ground. 
 
 When De Toccpieville wrote, "This mighty tide of men rolling 
 fcaselessly westward has in it all the solemnity of the march of 
 Destinv," he litlh' thought that within a generation it W(Uild bring
 
 amiually ovtT fi\o luiiulroil tliuusaiid iimnigrants to our !>iliores, and 
 that DU what hv know as duIv the arid phiins of tlie far "West, then 
 tlie home of the buffalo and the savage, a new nation wouhl witliin 
 the same period arise. 
 
 One-half of the population of the United States to-day lies west of 
 Columbus. 
 
 In the East the i)laee of Christian edueation as a ei\ ilizing force is 
 sutfieiently clear; in the West it is still a jjroblem. There, in the 
 midst of a heterogenous and alien jiopulatioii, with few recognized 
 institutions, in the face of hostile forms of religious belief, and amid 
 social and industrial *])roblems as new as they are ditficult, the civiliza- 
 tii>ii that found its early and congenial home in New England is to be 
 ))ut to a sui)reme test. 
 
 Three different lines of investigation o])en before us. Shall we 
 Aveigh and measure the forces at the West antagonistic to civilization, 
 and seek to estimate the o]»])osing power of Christian education? Or 
 shall we examine the various civilizing agencies, and seek to determine 
 the relative value of Christijin education among them V Or shall we 
 confine ourselves more strictly to the ([uestion of Christian edtication 
 itself, and seek to learn, by what it has accom])lished in the past, of 
 what it is cajialjle in the future V The time at my disjiosal limits me 
 to one of the three, and I choose that which offers the surest founda- 
 tion for confidence, viz: a study of accomplished facts. The historic 
 method has in any case certain manifest advantages over that of 
 speculation and theory, and this must be my apology if I do not fully 
 cover the ground you are antici])ating. If I work in a single line, I 
 leave all the more to the after debate. 
 
 Let me ask you, then, to go back with me to a time some fifty years 
 ago. Lyman Beecher, then fixe first i)astor of Boston and New 
 England, called to the ])residency of Lane Seminai-y, in Cincinnati, lias 
 just written: "The moral destiny of our nation, and all our institu- 
 tions and hojjes, and the world's hopes, turn on the character of the 
 West. The great battle is to be fought in the valley of the Mississii)pi. 
 If we gain the West, all is safe ; if we lose it, all is lost." 
 
 "The West" then lay anywhere beyond the Mohawk and the 
 Schuylkill. The j)opulation oi the entire country was but four millions ; 
 and its center still hugged the Atlantic seaboanl. The new Connecti- 
 cut of the Western lieserve was struggling for a jtiecarious existence 
 on tl»e .southern shore of Lake Ei'ie. Cincinnati was a small town of 
 large liopes ; St. Lcjuis a j»oor French village; and as for Chicago, a 
 friend of mine drove into it one evening in 1884, and, unable to find 
 fooil enough for his jaded lujrses, was obliged to seek shelter for man 
 and beast some ten niili-s bevond.
 
 -fan 
 
 In this early West of tlie interior tlie prol^lem of Christian education 
 even tlien appeared. On Sunday morning, the 15tli of Xovemlier, 
 1829, a wagon containing a gentleman and three ladies, a compan- 
 ion folloAving as best he could on horseback, after a dreary journey 
 through mud and meltinf'; snow, drove into tlie little group of log 
 cabins that composed Jacksonville, Illinois, to begin a Christian college, 
 the center around which the whole machinery of Christian education 
 must needs revolve. The jieople gathered to receive them in a log 
 school-house, with puncheon floor, a chimney built of mud and sticks, 
 and with no other furniture than a few rude seats made of sj)lit logs, 
 with holes bored in the ends, and sticks driven in for legs. Illinois 
 then had a population, scattered here and there over the boundless 
 ])rairies, of about 160,000. They were almost entirely immigrants 
 from the Sofithern and Southwestern states. The houses were of the 
 kind described in the story of Mr. Lincoln's early life. Schools worthy 
 of the name were unknown, and it is on record that at the time of 
 which I s])eak there was probably not one youth in the Avhole state 
 fitted to enter college. For the future there was small pros]>ect of 
 anything better than an ever-multii)lying*ignorance. 
 
 Three years later — that is, in the autumn of 1832 — a little group 
 
 of five ministers and thi'ee laymen, after much prayer and coiinsel, 
 
 kneeled in the snow to consecrate the ground selected for another 
 
 college, in the valley of the Wabash, in Northern Indiana; and in the 
 
 following s}n-ing still another college grew out of a revival of religion 
 
 m in the little settlement on the banks of the Ohio, at Marietta. 
 
 «r> ... 
 
 '— From beginnings such as these came the institutions which sustain 
 
 ^ the civilizing flres that have reduced and will reduce and refine the 
 DC rocky and often unpromising l)ut none the less gold-bearing ores of 
 Zj Western society and life. 
 
 ^ Before we jtroceed to examine the outcome of this movement, let us 
 § fix clearly in mind the fact that it Avas no accidental event, no merely 
 '^ local and incidental ])hase in the development of jtarticular communi- 
 ties. As stated by President Sturtevant, one of tlie leaders of the 
 movement : "All the se])arate systems of causation which resulted in the 
 founding of these colleges originated in one and the same source — the 
 unfailing ])ur])0se which has ever been cherished by the religious j)eo]»le 
 of this nation to disseminate by means of inatitutions the influence of 
 the gospel co-extensively with our ever-exi)anding ])Oi)ulation. In our 
 whole national history there is no force which acted with more steadi- 
 ness and uniformity than this, and there is no feature of American 
 society which is more gloi-iously unique and characteristic. There is 
 nothing like it in the history of colonization in any other age or nation. 
 It is lu-e-emiiiciitly to this cause that we owe the incejitiou and the 
 
 .$11846
 
 growtli of our whole system of higlier education. It was the parent 
 of Harvard, Yale, and the other colleges of New England, and not 
 less of Princeton, and these were the parents of the college system 
 of the country." The Englishman takes to his colony English 
 administration of justice, and his bath-tub; the American, with his 
 wooden nutmegs and his revolver, takes the college. 
 
 I have before me, then, the easy task of showing to you that the 
 place of Christian education among the civilizing forces of the West 
 is none other than thatM'hich it occupies among the civilizing forces of 
 the East, and of convincing you, by an appeal to facts already historic,, 
 that the institutions which have proved so efficient to create and sus- 
 tain the forms of civilization in which we are accustomed to rejoice, 
 are fully comi»etent, if generously sustained, to carry the same civiliza- 
 tion to the furthermost bounds of our territory, and to makt- it 
 indigenous there, as here. 
 
 Let me point out, then, in the first jtlace, what these earliest Western 
 colleges have accomplislied in dereloping dor)nant talent and educating 
 the people among lohom they are jdaced. 
 
 As I have said, when Illinois College was founded, that state had 
 not in all its borders a single youth fitted to enter college. Dr. Post^ 
 of iSt. Louis, one of the original cori)S of professors, told me that 
 among his early pupils was an unkemjtt, barefooted lad, from the bush, 
 whom he hired to care for his horse, and then began to instruct. That 
 boy became the well-known Governor Yates. Within sound of the 
 college-bell a youth nearly full grown was plowing. Seeing the people 
 gathering at the college, one midsummer's day, he Avas led by curiosity 
 to follow the crowd, to have his own mind so (piickened, his ambition 
 so stirred by what he saw and lu aid that he too sought the education 
 his fellows were obtaining. To-day that youth is one of the most 
 accomplished and widely useful jmblic instructors in the land. As it 
 was the victories of ]\[iltiades that would not let the young Themis- 
 tocles sleep; as it was the sight of an artist's studio, with its half- 
 h'nished forms of beauty springing from the lifeless blocks of marble 
 that made the New Hampshire school-girl first conscious of Ik r inborn 
 jiowers and gave to the world IMargaret Foley, the scul])tor ; as it is 
 always the coming of o)»poi-tiiiiity into the range of our own life, and 
 bt'holdincr what othei's like ourselves are doiuu', lliat furnishes our 
 sufficient ins])iration, so these scattered, much-ridiculeil Western 
 colleges have everywhere awakened talent that without them would 
 never have been known. Ami in lliis lliey are exaclly in the line of 
 our older institutions. 
 
 The chief work of every one of mir sclmols ot' liiLilier leai-ning, 
 however <i;reat its fame or advanced its years, is to e(liicale the yoiitli
 
 born under tlie shadow of its waMs — youtli who, without its imme- 
 diate presence, it is safe to say, wouhl never seek and never receive a 
 liberal education. Of the 512 students now in the academical dei»art- 
 ment of Yale, 177, or one-third, are from Connecticut, 169, or another 
 third, are from New York and the Connecticut \'alley, thus leaving 
 only one-third of the students in the academical department of that 
 great university to be drawn from beyond its immediate vicinage. Of 
 215 in Dartmouth, 126, or four-sevenths, are from New Hampshire and 
 Vermont, and anothei" two-sevenths from the vicinage in New York, 
 Massachusetts, and Maine, leaving only one-seventh of the wliole 
 attendance coming from beyond. Of 80 students in the college jirojicr 
 at Marietta, 24 are from that town and 73 from the town and neigli- 
 borhood. Of 52 at Carleton, 11 are from Northfield, the site of the 
 college, and 47 from Minnesota. Of 48 in Ri]»on, 20 are from Ri|ton 
 itself and 41 from Wisconsin. 
 
 In this respect the Western colleges differ from tlie Eastern but 
 little. They are having the same powei-ful influence u])on their own 
 neighborhood. 
 
 What this awakening of undeveloped talent in tlie West means, in 
 connection with its civilization, is now to be shown. Thirty years 
 after the graduation of its first class, Marietta rej)orted that seven of 
 its alumni were professors in colleges, one a college president, one a 
 judge of the supreiiie court of the state, one a United States senator; 
 and out of 298 graduates 115 had studied for the ministry and were at 
 that time preaching the gospel in twenty states of the" Union. This is 
 but an average statement. Graduates of three theological seminaries 
 and nine colleges in the West have preached the gospel in not far from 
 3,000 different communities and taught in upward of 15,000 common 
 schools. 
 
 Already these Western colleges are furnishing as many 2)astors for 
 our churches, East and West, as are Eastern colleges, though the 
 constituency from which they draw has but one-half the church mem- 
 bership of that at the East. Twenty ]ter cent, of the college-educated 
 missionaries now in the service of the Amei-ican Jioard are from 
 Western colleges. Eleven are from Chicago Seminary, as against 
 seven from New Haven. Only one is from Harvard ; indeed, Harvard 
 College has given but tour graduates to foreign missions since the 
 beginning, as against one hundred and twenty-five from the " one- 
 horse " colleges of the West. Beloit, organized l)ut thii-ty-four years 
 ago, lias given twelve, and Oberlin sends out eight this year. Tliere 
 are, indeed, few lands where tlie footsteps of Oberlin students are not 
 to be found. No less than twelve of these have laid down their lives 
 for Christ and Christian civilization in Africa alone. The last niaitxr
 
 oti tlint t'ntal sIk^vc (tlio lirst from Ainorioa in tlic new inovciiicnt for 
 her tinnl nMlc'iii|ttioii — tlic lamented nn<l devoli'il I'inkerton) was a 
 Ljraduate of Kipon (^olleoe and Chioac'o Seminai'v. 
 
 Tims ra])idly and ettieiently have tlie Western eolleo-es taken u]) the 
 work passed on to tliom by tlie ohler institntions at the East; thus 
 nobly ai'e they )»rovin<»' that the light which for two hnndred and tifty 
 years has slione here in New England for Christ and for sonnd leai-ning, 
 is shining in them, and that to-chiy, no less than in the ])ast, it is a 
 light to awaken those who sleeji, and through men thus awakeiu'd to 
 give life to the world. 
 
 IJut it is not enough that material be su]i]»lied for the work of civi- 
 li/ation. An atmos])hcre must l)e created in whieh eivilizatiou can 
 thrixc. Let us shou\ in the second place,, ichat theae coUe(/es haiu- (lone 
 to create such an atnwsphere. 
 
 For five years after its organization Illinois College sought in vain to 
 procure a cliarter from tlie legislature of the state, so hostile was it to 
 such an institution. The Western woman who, in rcs])onse to the 
 (juestiou whether there were any Episcopalians about tliere, said : 
 " P]])isclo]>iaus! I guess not. My husband has nM shot any," ox- 
 pressed the general sentiinent. Colleges belonged in that section to 
 the class of unknown and ))resumal)ly dangerous " varmint," which 
 are, if not to be shot, at least, in the vernacular, "to l)e got shet of." 
 
 We who are accustomed to look u})on Illinois as one of the foremost 
 in the sisterhood of states in intelligence, as in w(\'dth, will do well to 
 consider how this has l)een brought al>out. It has ])een through no 
 comfortable throes of natural selection, and by no easy survival of the 
 fittest. It is the ri])ening harvest of much jiatient seed-sowing, the 
 linal rewai'(l of many a long struggle and of no litth' heroic self-sacrifice. 
 
 The philosophy of the movement, recognized at the outset, was that 
 it is lu'cessaiy to create an intellectual and moral atmosphere the vital 
 power of which all shall feel. The church needs it no less than the 
 school. "Oh! yes," said a ('o)nu'cticut <livine, sarcastically, half a 
 century ago, when he lu'ard of this movement, "they are goiug to 
 Illinois to found a college. 'I'hey are going to kindle a fire tliere and 
 ])our on oil, till its blaze shall illumine the toj)s of the Kooky Moun- 
 tains." The sarcasm has pi-o\ (■<! prophetic. The lire was kindled, the 
 oil has not been lacking, and ihe bl;i/,c has passed l»cyond 1 lie mountains 
 to the sea. .Men laughed at the idea of ;i unixci'sity l>eguii with a 
 sid>scriptioii-list <if :J;;5,(l(l(l in a coinmunil \ i)f log houses; but see what 
 followed, 'i^he talk aliout that college, .md the v<ning men from Yah' 
 going to the prairies of the West to plant Christian institutions, 
 awakem-il ;i li\c|y intei'est hei'e at the P^ast. A stream of emigration 
 began. Thousands of \ew P^nuland homes were t i-ansferi-ei| not onl\
 
 to Illinois, l)Ul to tlit' territories beyond, and the influences were set 
 jiowerl'ully in motion whieli have saved those states for the forms of 
 (•i\ iii/.ation we eherish at the East. Iowa and the Iowa band, with 
 their college and chnrclies, were but a speedy rejietition of Illinois 
 with hers, as Dakota and the Dakota band are to-day ])ut another 
 iteration. 
 
 It is hard to reali/,e the- ra])itlity and ]>ower of this movement. 
 Carlet(m College stands in a community where, twenty-six years ago, 
 the first family altar was set up in a circle of wigwams. That little 
 community of Northtield, Minnesota, has to-day forty-one of its sons 
 and daughters studying in the college; has contributed over fifty 
 tliousand dollars to the endowment of the college; and last year gave 
 to the cause of home missions as much j)er member as did, for example, 
 the I'hurches of our highly-favoivd Amherst. Y(ni will say tiiat an 
 atmosj)here favorable to civilization already exists there. 
 
 .Vt the quarter-century celebration of Illinois College, there were 
 then in Jacksonville a female academy, an institution for the education 
 of the deaf and dumb, another for tiie blind, a hosjtital for the insane, 
 a Methodist female college, and the Berean College, besides a jiublic 
 school of 500 pupils, all these more or less directly as the consecjuence 
 of the planting of that coUe/e twenty-live years before. If "fifty 
 years of Kuro|)e " are better tlian a "cycle of Cathay," what is to be 
 said of life amid changes like this? 
 
 But let us look a little dee]>er. Vital religion is the chief agent in 
 creating an atmosphere of civilization. John Wiclif and Thomas (d' 
 Bradwardine gave to Oxford her first great impulse, :is Cal\ in and 
 Theodore Beza did to Geneva. The University of Ilalle was the result 
 of Sjiener's efforts to revive Evangelical religion, and from it, says 
 Tholuck, " went forth in the first forty years of the eighteenth century 
 more pious ministers and laymen than the Lutheran Church had in all 
 her pre\ ious histoi'y." Praying mothers have made an atmosphere for 
 our colleges which the highest learning could not create. Between 
 1741 and 1S87 Yale exj»erienced twenty revivals of religion, and odd 
 young men l)egan a CIn-istian life as the i-esult of fourteen of llieni. 
 In six revivals in Dartmouth tlu'i'e were 170 conversions. During- the 
 first thirty years of Amherst over oOO of her students became Christians. 
 We are accustomed to look to such influences, not only to mould the 
 young minds within the college walls, but to staniji a jiowerful impress 
 for the best forms of Christian civilization upon the community. 
 
 This ])owerful agency has not been lacking at the West. Marietta 
 was born in a revival. The permanent character of Beloit was fixed 
 by tlie great revival of 1857. "My young friends," said, not long since, 
 one of tlie ])rofessors of Iowa College, "Jesus Christ is in tlu' habit of
 
 visitiny. lowii C'»illriL;t'." I'lrsidoiil HiittciHrld, thru (if W:islil»uni 
 CoHogi', s:ii(l, in 1S()S: '' Wi- liave Imilt a rliaiii of (.•olk'u.x's that hlazc 
 with ivvivals." If tlu' sayiiii; of tlu' Taliiuul is tna-, tliat "tlu' world 
 is |tiH'si'rvt'd by tho bronth of tlio i-Iiildroii in tlu- sclioi>ls," and the 
 liiLilu'i- tfutli still stands that "tlu' fear of the Lord is the beginning of 
 wisdom," then there is reas()n to l)elieve tliat our Western eoUeges are 
 exac-tly in the line of God's iirovidenee. Their breath is the atnios- 
 ]ilu're of eivilization. 
 
 JJut, as a third and last eonsideration, all are aware that there can, be 
 no per/nanent civilization withotit the optning of the sprinas of indi- 
 vi'hial liberalitf/ and of costly personal sacrifice. I'here are no nioi-e 
 moving i)ages tlian the story of the Western colleges in this connection. 
 
 One of the first gifts to Illinois College was $100 from a missionary 
 whose salary was |!400, and that but partly jiaid. The money wliich 
 set Carleton College on its feet came largely from the members of a 
 Home Missionary Conference, in the form of gifts from men who lived 
 in unfinished houses, who gave land and colts, the small savings of 
 years, and jdedges of money yet to be earned. It was a day of small 
 things and costly sacrifices, never to be forgotten l)y those who 
 witnessed them ; but they aggregated over !J;1G,000. Carleton has 
 received in all u})ward of $110,000 from the citizens of Minnesota. 
 
 Of the $110,000 subscribed to Illinois College, u]. to 1836, *80,000 
 came from citizens of that state. The ))eople of Grinnell, Iowa, have 
 given $1^5,000 to Iowa College. Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan have 
 given largely to the Chicago Seminary. Kipon College has li\ed 
 almost exclusively upon the small gifts of farmers and others residing 
 in the neighborhood. Until very recently, it had not received as much 
 as $1,000 in a single donation. It has done its large work on tlu' stream 
 of these small but constant su])plies. 
 
 In comparison with the jirincely gifts to Easti'rn institutions, the 
 largest of these sums seems small. President Bartlett stated in 1871 
 that, of seventeen millions of dollars given to educational institutions 
 throughout the land, fifteen millions had gone to institutions at the 
 East. And now President .Alagonn says that, of nineteen millions 
 given within the past fifteen months to the same cause, all but one 
 million has gone to the East. Nevertheless, relatively small as is the 
 sum (levotcd to the Western work, that raised on the groun<l is often 
 at the price of costliest self-sacrifice, an<l is just so much, that would be 
 otherwise unreached, set at work for Christ and the iiigher civilization. 
 Its value is not to be measured by its amount. Kach gift is a cord 
 fastening a home, a church, a community, to an institution of learning, 
 whicli will lift llial home, thatcliurcli, that coiniiiunity int<» an atmos- 
 phei'c of lite aii<l thought otherwise unattainable, if not unknown.
 
 9 
 
 But the lilRTiility and the saci'ificeis wliidi these Western colleges 
 have enlle<l forth are not limited to gifts of money. The saerifiees 
 witiiin their walls have been always greater and more constant than 
 those without. The demand for Western professors in Eastern insti- 
 tutions is incessant, and the list is long of those who have accejjted 
 calls; but there is many a man to-day, standing faithfully at his j»ost 
 on a salary of *1,5U0, |!l,'200, yes, even |!800, who has again and again 
 declined a salary of twice the amount offered at the East, No foreign 
 missionary is more heroically giving his life to the cause of Christ or 
 more resolutely shutting his heart to all openings to earthly reward. 
 Look at the Western college presidents. Sturtevant, Andrews, Chapin, 
 Fairchild, Merrell, Magoun, Strong, and the others — men of wide 
 influence, men often sought for more lucrative positions, Avho have, 
 some of them, held their trusts for a generation and nursed a struijgling 
 college through its jiainful years of distrust and contumely and want. 
 Living often with the barest necessities of life at home ; with stout 
 heart sustaining the faith, and struggling to meet the needs of students 
 and professors depending on them ; guide, counselor and friend to the 
 community and the state ; summoned far and wide to sjteak the fittin<<- 
 word or preach the important sermon ; treated often as if they were 
 mendicants when they go abroad to seek the aid for the want of which 
 the Lord's work drags and his chariot-wheels cease to move — these 
 men, whom the America of the future will delight to honor, are to-day 
 the embodiment of a large })art of the self-sacrifice and the heroic 
 consecration out of which the Western civilization of the future is to 
 l)e begotten. 
 
 Guizot's words with reference to Charlemagne have been recently 
 quoted: "It was under his reign and, as it were, under his hand that 
 the shock took place by which Euroi)ean society, turning right round, 
 left the paths of destruction to enter those of creation." Not by a 
 shock, but by a steady, life-giving impulse, our Christian colleges are 
 jiroving, in no small degree, the forces through which Western society 
 is also departing from the paths of destruction, to enter those of 
 creation and of life. It remains only to ask : What is the duty of the 
 hour? 
 
 Merivale, the historian of Rome, has drawn the ])arallel between the 
 decay wrought in Rome by the vast influx of foreigners of a lower 
 grade of civilization and the state of things now existing anu)iig us. 
 He sees in it a dangei- to which no modern European comnuiuity 
 furnishes an analogue. President Woolsey has come forth from his 
 well-earned retirement to lift up his voice in solemn warning. The 
 voices of the dead stil' call to us. We hear Charles Sumner savin<>-: 
 
 .'{llH4(i
 
 1^ 
 
 "■'Nations li.i\f (li'rnycil ; Imt lu'Vrr witli tlic imlnrility of agi'. 
 l»i>j;litf<»usin'ss I'xalti'tli a iiatidii, and sin is the rcproarli ot any |n,'o])lc." 
 Ami \)v 'roniuevilk' warns us: "To l»e tret', nations must bi'liovo." 
 
 We lia\ c, then, to exalt the institutions by which the Anieriea of the 
 future siiall he taught to believe: and we must estal)lisli those institu- 
 tions wliere tlie iieojile are. The Eastern colleges have none too much 
 niouev — they all need more; hut it is nut a wise, Christian, or pat- 
 riotic foresight that leaves twelve Western colleges, occupying a field 
 tliat extends from Ohio to the Pacific Oci'an, with a contiguous 
 population of fourteen million souls, ami an endowment of hut a 
 couple t)f hundred thousand dollars for the richest of them, and no 
 endowment at all for the ])oorest, while New England has eiglit times 
 as niany colleges as tlie most favored Western state, in jiroportion to 
 its area (which means that her colleges are eight times as accessil)le t(j 
 lier people), and for a total popiUation of but three and three-«|uarter 
 millions has an average endowment of over a million and a (piartei* 
 dollars to each college. Oberlin, with as many students as Vale or 
 tiarvard, has an endowment of something over two hundred thousand 
 dollars, as against the nearly three and three-(|uarter millions of Vale. 
 Iowa has half a million youths to educate, and Dartmouth has receivetl 
 in three years gifts equal to double the whole endowment of Iowa 
 College. 
 
 We must believe in the agencies we ha\e called into being. Our 
 colleges are no l(»nger experimonts. They ha\e wrought to the livil- 
 iziniZ of the past; they are lujt inade(piate to the redemption of the 
 future, if they are i)roperly maintained. Their record is now so jilainly 
 rea<l of all men that, year by year, the American Boanl is concentrat- 
 in*' a lar<'-er prop(^rtion of its total ex))enditure on similar institutions 
 to do the work of civilization and Christianity in foreign lands. 
 
 But we must believe in our colleges with an aggressive faith. There 
 is no time to be lost. Gen. Eaton, tlie United States Commissioner of 
 Educati(jn, says : "This is the crucial hour of the liepublic!" What 
 we neglect, others will do in tiieir own way and for their own ends. 
 Half of the pupils in the Jesuit schools in Denver are from Protestant 
 families, and it is said that there are "in the Roman Catholic schools 
 of California more scholars by perhaps two thousand than are to be 
 found in all the Protestant .schools, acailemies, semiiniries, colleges, 
 normal schools, and universities combined." (4ive u|» the Held, an<l 
 vou cannot retake it. Neglect it, and the rank growth of its vices ami 
 its ignorance will make civilization long imj>ossible. 77//? J-'Jitcyrlopadia 
 Jiritatmlca puts oui* ]M)]iulati(in for the year llMKt at om- hundred 
 millions. TIh- iKwt ten years will <lo iniicli to ilcliTiiiiiie what shall l»e
 
 11 
 
 tho oliavactor of tlio oncoming lialf of lliat enormous innltitudc. You 
 soo wo arc doalino; with factors so tremendous tliat error involves 
 destruction. 
 
 It has been the fashion to make lioht of Western colleges. The dav 
 came when, as has been said, the blue-blooded Greeks of the Pelopon- 
 nesus were proud of tlieir far-away countrymen. "When Archimedes 
 stands for Syracuse; Sappho, Alca»us, Apelles, and Hippocrates for 
 Coos; Herodotus for Halicarnassus ; Pythagoras for Samos; and tlie 
 Laocoon for the splendid culture of Rhodes," Athens herself mav 
 claim kindred. The day is not distant when New England will ]»roudlv 
 remember that her generous citizens endowed the institutions from 
 which scholars, and 2:)atriots, and soul-loving men are coming forth for 
 the maintenance of the nation and for carrying the standard of her 
 civilization beyond the seas. 
 
 The ])resident of this Club,* the head of an institution the most 
 successful of its kind in the land, which owes its foundation and its 
 continued sujjpoit to the large generosity of our own peojile, sliows 
 the l)readth of his sympathies in proposing the theme Avhich occu))ies 
 our thoughts this evening. It would be but a new proof of the lariie- 
 hearted intelligence that lies about us if the discussions of tlie hour 
 should lead to further gifts, which shall witness to the abiding faith of 
 the citizens of Worcester in the power of Christian institutions to 
 civilize even the furthest West and settle beyond ])eradventure the 
 character of the America of the future. 
 
 * Professor Thompson, of the Worcester Free Institute of Technology.
 
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