1st. To know each one personally. It is the measure of the superintendent’s power. 2d. To visit them at their homes, or to insure a visit by their teachers. It is his chief means of knowledge concerning them. 3d. To review their knowledge of the lesson regularly, from week to week, and at the quarter’s end to conduct a thorough and systematic review of the quarter’s teaching. 4th. To urge them to all of the various duties which are required of one in the Christian life. 5th. To aid their home training, or supplement it, in providing suitable methods for using their spare time. 6th. To set before them the constant example of a pure and holy life.
EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.
THE C. L. S. C. PLAN.
No organization that has appeared in the past fifty years has been more favored than the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. From the first the surroundings have been such as to aid its growth. Eminent educators and literary men pronounced their blessings on its head the day it was born. Thousands of people shouted its praises to the echo, in the grove at Chautauqua, as soon as they saw what it was and heard its name. Chautauqua had a history of five years to place behind the C. L. S. C.—a history of enterprising investigation in the fields of science and philosophy, Biblical literature, church and Sunday-school work, and moral reforms. It was five years of hard work to popularize useful information on all these lines of thought. This was a good beginning for the C. L. S. C., and right here it started. With the summer meetings at Chautauqua it has been associated during these first five years of its history. The C. L. S. C. Commencement exercises are held in the Hall of Philosophy, in St. Paul’s grove, at Chautauqua, and from thence the diplomas are sent out to the graduates all over the world.
It never was the design of Dr. Vincent or Mr. Lewis Miller, the founders of Chautauqua, that all the work of students should be pressed into the compass of three weeks of meetings in August, but rather that Chautauqua should be carried into towns and cities, into homes and offices and workshops all over the land. When the C. L. S. C. appeared and its curriculum was announced with the promise that every person who should complete the four years course of reading in ancient and modern history and literature, the sciences, philosophy and art, would graduate and receive a diploma signed by the officers of the C. L. S. C., the idea was easily carried abroad. The press of the country was ready, as we now see, to assist. The plan was written up and philosophized upon from the beginning; but more than this was needed to insure success. To make the Chautauqua Idea as practical in a town five hundred or a thousand miles away as it was at Chautauqua was a hard task to perform; but when it was decided that the individual could enroll his name in the C. L. S. C. office and pursue his studies at home, or when traveling, by devoting forty minutes a day to his books, and could fill out examination papers at the end of each year, the practicability of the plan was admitted by everybody. The organization was simple, the working of the system has been almost perfect, and each succeeding year has witnessed a marvelous growth; classes ranging from 7,000 up to 14,000 members have been enrolled from year to year until the present outlook is more encouraging than all the past.
The local circle has come to be an important factor in the working of the organization. Men are clannish, and in the work of education the world has always recognized the social element as a powerful agency. It was natural that in the C. L. S. C. men and women, who had no scruples on the question of the co-education of the sexes, should come together and effect local organizations, elect their officers and do their work methodically, under the inspiration of one another’s presence. Just as in raising a building ten men are stronger than one man, so in a town or city ten persons will lift up the Chautauqua Idea in more homes and attract the attention of more people to it than one person possibly can. “In union there is strength,” and while the practical working of the “local circle” is to be seen in the growing intelligence of its individual members, it is a fact that through the local circle the C. L. S. C. is taking hold of the people in all parts of our land, and thus demonstrating that the founders of Chautauqua have inaugurated an educational system which has the merit of being a “Home College,” whose privileges may be enjoyed by all classes and conditions of people. While it is not sectarian or even denominational, it is Christian, and carries correct ideas of God and the Bible, of Jesus Christ and redemption, of the Holy Ghost and Christian life into every reader’s mind and into every family where the course of study is received.