BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
There is a Chautauqua further on. First, there is a lake level, and just above it is the level of the “Point,” with its pleasant grass, its winding walks, its old Auditorium, shaded and hallowed with memories that have grown through multiplying years. The old cottages, and many of the old cottagers remain about this Auditorium—reminders of the old times, and the oldest times, of Chautauqua, when the first vesper service announced that “The Day Goeth Away,” and the “Nearer My God to Thee,” rang out under these forest arches. Who that was there can ever forget that hour? The altars were aglow that night, and hearts on fire. It was an experiment, but from the first it was an assured success. The time will come when the remaining sharers in that first feast in the evening light will be very few, and the last of them will receive honor, and the children of Chautauqua will listen to their story as with quivering lips and kindling eye they speak about that first evening under the trees, the words that broke the sacred silence, the songs that bore praise and wonder and joy to the heavens, and the friendships that were formed there never to be broken.
How many who joined in the first Chautauqua service have already “fallen on sleep” and gone out into a world sleepless and without nightfall, where, for vesper chant are substituted the hallelujahs of an eternal morning.
But let us go up higher. Beyond the Point and Auditorium level are the terraces that run along the hillside, one above another, gardens and cottages, with pathways and winding roads, leading up under welcome shadows to a higher Chautauqua—a long stretch of table-land crowned now with Temple and Chapel, Pyramid, Museum and Hall of Philosophy, while beyond, in the open fields toward the north we reach the highest point of our Assembly grounds, one of the highest on the lake. Thus from the landing and the beginning of our journey we ascend from the lowest to the highest, and find beauty, delight, pleasant welcomes and rewards all the way.
This study in the lay of the land which makes the physical Chautauqua is an allegory. There is an upper Chautauqua. And not all who visit the place see it, and not all who become Chautauquans reach it.
The Chautauqua movement is progressive, and its friends and students are expected to make advancement in the line of its conceptions and provisions. It has court beyond court in which it unfolds its progressive aims and introduces its disciples to the higher privileges of culture which it provides. No fences or lines mark these successive stages. They do not correspond with the topographical elevations, although we have found in the one a figure or symbol of the other. But such gradation exists, and I shall point it out.
I. The Assembly—Is the first point of approach to the true Chautauqua. It is the outer court open to the whole world. It has no restraints upon those who come, save those which are necessary to guarantee a financial support to the institution, and those rules of ordinary decorum which are essential to the quiet enjoyment and profit of those who pay their tribute and wait for the promised compensation. And this compensation comes in lectures on the widest range of topics, from the “Philosophy of Locke and Berkeley” to the light and cheery discussions about “Fools and their Folly.” Concerts by gifted artists, characterizations by rare impersonators, illustrations of life and manners in remote regions, by the aid of costumer and tableaux vivants, stories of travel, with photographic accompaniments colored, magnified, and illuminated; sermons by able ministers, lessons by competent teachers, attractions for lighthearted youth and wearied but rational age, in bonfires, processions, fireworks, illuminated fleets—these are the features of the outer court of Chautauqua for the entertainment, awakening, and broadening of people who come with no far-reaching or serious purpose, but who come to “hear” and “see” and have “a good time.” They are simply recipients. The will-power lies dormant, save as some stirring statement of lecture or sermon, or some unsyllabled passage in music opens the soul to the worlds all about it replete with marvel, beauty and power. So much for the outer Chautauqua. There are those who see this—only this and nothing more. They come and go. They wonder why they and others come, and yet they think they may come again—but are not sure. They do not forget Chautauqua, and they do not “go wild” over it. They smile at other people, whom they call “fanatics,” because they are full of it, and “bound to come again,” and to “come every year,” and always, and “would be willing to live there.” These have seen the Upper Chautauqua—for beyond the “Assembly” is
II. The Circle.—It is another court—further in, and a little higher up—with a white-pillared hall among the trees—“The Hall in the Grove,” about which a book has been written, and in which songs are sung and weird services held, and where strange inspirations fall on people. For those who belong to the Circle—the “C. L. S. C.” as everybody calls it—are advanced Chautauquans. They know why they come to the place. And they know when to come. They keep a calendar, and they mark the feasts, and they know what to do when they are there. They seem at home. There are hosts of them—all knowing each other, and apparently bound together by some secret association which has a mystic power. They wear badges on certain days, badges of different styles and colors and legends. In all this there is something singular and beautiful.