The attendance at each of the higher educational institutions in this country will not average more than three hundred students per annum, if it does that. But the C. L. S. C. has on its rolls more than forty thousand names, so that, compared as to its direct influence on the student classes, it is equal in influence to not less than one hundred and twenty educational institutions. From this standpoint, it must be recognized as one of the greatest educational forces of the age.
It has, however, been urged against the C. L. S. C. that its course of study is but meagre when compared with college curriculums, and for this reason its educational tendencies are of but little worth, or even deleterious. We are not of those who believe that a “little learning is a dangerous thing,” but rather think that a “little learning” is far better than absolute ignorance, and that it will always exert a benign influence on its possessor. Whatever affords opportunities for the intellectual awakening and improvement of the people, is worthy of being classed among the educational forces of the age. Certain it is, that many humble artisans, toiling mothers, and overworked seamstresses have found in the C. L. S. C. a force that has elevated them above the drudgery of their daily toil, and has inspired their mental faculties for a new and worthy work, while it has also been the means of bringing increased cultivation and refinement into many homes.
We urge as another reason for regarding the C. L. S. C. as an educational force, that it begets habits of study independent of direct oversight and supervision. Many of the students in our institutions of learning are kept at their tasks with regularity, only by the pressure brought to bear on them by the presence of professors and tutors, and by class rivalries, and whenever they are removed from their college surroundings, and from these constraining forces, they at once relinquish their pursuit of knowledge, and cease to make any further efforts after intellectual development. Such is not the case with the C. L. S. C. Its students are carried forward in their course, not by an impulse from without, but from within, which is continually active, and which is ever operating on their mental energies to secure a more thorough training. But the C. L. S. C. is by no means to be looked upon as a rival to the regular institutions of learning. Far otherwise! It has already become a valuable helper to the schools, and every circle may become a recruiting station from which the colleges and universities may draw many of their best and brightest students. Without doubt many of the young people who enter upon the course of study prescribed for the C. L. S. C. will have such an intense thirst for knowledge created in their souls that they will be impelled to pursue more extended courses of study, and will turn to the colleges and universities to obtain all the advantages they have to offer.
The Passion Play.
Ex-Mayor Grace, of New York, deserves much credit and honor for his refusal to grant Mr. Salmi Morse a license to produce his Passion Play. With all the world’s past and present progress, we are not without here and there signs of degeneracy. The Passion Play, which began in motives of religious devotion with the ignorant villagers of Ober Ammergau two hundred and fifty years ago, is now sought to be produced in the metropolis of the foremost Christian nation, for the degraded motive of money-making. Surely some things progress downwards. The superstitious population of Ober Ammergau made a vow that if they were allowed to escape the then prevalent plague they would every ten years perform a play representing the passion and death of the Savior. Accordingly, during twelve consecutive Sundays of the summer season, continuing from 8 a. m. to 4 p. m., with three hundred and fifty actors and an orchestra and chorus of eighty members, the play has been produced. It has attracted the attention of the Christian world because it is the only one of the miracle plays once so common which continues to be performed. But this and all the miracle plays enacted by monks and friars in the middle ages differ radically from the proposed enterprise of Mr. Morse. The passion and events of the life of our Lord were represented by them to make them real to ignorant and illiterate people, but Mr. Morse proposes to cater to the low and morbid class, in order to make money. There is no reason to believe that the effect of such representations, even when performed with a view to religious instruction and impression, has ever been of a salutary character. The only effect to-day is to shock and outrage the refinement, intelligence, and reverence of the average class of American society. The human heart has human loves and affections too sacred to be placarded before the public eye, or even to be given utterance by human lips. It has feelings and sentiments associated with the divine tragedy of Calvary which make it revolt at the scene of coarse and vulgar persons attempting to re-enact the tragedy which revealed the infinite depths of heaven’s love for the race.
Gambetta.
Another death has caused a profound, world-wide sensation. The life of Leon Gambetta, the great French orator and statesman, went out in the last moments of the old year. At five minutes before twelve o’clock on New Year’s eve he breathed his last. His death, like that of our late lamented President, was due to pyæmia. In November last he received a gun-shot wound, in regard to which there are conflicting stories. Though the case is not clear, it is very generally understood that the disease had its origin in this wound. His suffering in his last days was intense, and drew from his lips, shortly before his death, the exclamation which will be long remembered: “I am lost—it is useless to dissimulate,—but I have suffered so much it will be a deliverance.”
Gambetta was born April 2, 1838, in Cahors, in Southern France, and was therefore only in his forty-fifth year when he died. His father, Joseph Gambetta, was an Italian, and in business a grocer. The early educational advantages of the future statesman were good, and were well improved. When very young he was distinguished in school for his powers of oratory and his retentive memory. He graduated from a lyceum, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts at the age of eighteen, and was the winner of the first prize for French dissertation, in the competition for which five lyceums were represented. His studies were first directed with a view to his entering the priesthood; later he had medicine in mind as a profession; but finally he entered upon the study of law, and was admitted to practice in Paris in 1859. His first law case, in which he was an assistant in the defense of a man tried for conspiracy against the Emperor, gave him distinction, and he became one to whom persons in difficulty on account of Republican sentiments and hostility to imperialism looked for powerful legal aid. In 1868 certain French journals which had incurred the displeasure of the government, were persecuted, and Gambetta was engaged to defend the Réveil. His plea in this trial sent a thrill throughout France. A master-piece of oratory, it held spell-bound those who were gathered in that Paris court room. He spoke bold, fiery words against the empire and in favor of popular government. In spite of all precautions taken, the address was published and circulated everywhere. Other occasions were improved in a similar manner. His vehement, treasonable utterances produced a powerful effect. He became a popular idol, and leader of French Republicans.