I can not say that the Chautauqua Idea, pure and simple, has as yet taken root in England; but there are approximations to it, and the principles of which it is an embodiment are everywhere gaining ground. To my mind Chautauqua stands for the keeping together of many things which God hath joined, and which men are too apt to put asunder. First, I think of holiday recreation and wholesome study which many imagine to be mutually destructive, whereas our experience proves them to be mutually helpful. Well, the people here are beginning to appreciate this. In connection with the great “Fisheries Exhibition,” which was the chief novelty of the London season, last year, courses of useful instruction were organized; and this year, as an important part of “The Health Exhibition,” which has taken its place, lecture courses, bearing on important branches of sanitary science, have been delivered, and a number of useful little manuals, like those with which we have become familiar in our Chautauqua course, have been issued, one of them by Mrs. Gladstone.
Then, I think of secular and sacred culture, which there has been quite too much disposition in our day to separate, and which are, in my opinion, so happily combined in our studies. Here I am reminded of the recent great Sunday-school meeting at Exeter Hall, which I had the privilege of addressing, where the chair was occupied by the Hon. A. J. Mundella, who manages with such ability and energy the educational department of the government. Mr. Mundella, who has risen from a very humble position, had the foundation of his education laid in the Sunday-school, and a night school connected with it, and when very young, received much stimulus and encouragement by the presentation of a Bible for proficiency in his Sunday-school lessons. He does not forget his obligation, and his speech that evening from the chair was eminently hearty and satisfactory. I am reminded, also, in the same connection, of an important meeting held recently in the Jerusalem Chamber, a private meeting, from which reporters were excluded, and which, therefore, I must not report to you further than to say that it was a representative gathering of leading men of all denominations, including some distinguished Roman Catholics, (one of whom, by the by, made the finest speech of the evening), to consider the question whether it was possible under a system of State Education in a country like England satisfactorily to combine secular and religious instruction.
And this suggests another of our pleasing combinations at Chautauqua, the drawing together, not only in fraternal feeling, but also in important work, of Christians of different denominations. I need not say that the current of the times still sets in the same direction. The meeting in the Jerusalem Chamber, above referred to, is an illustration of it; and as a farther indication I may refer to the fact that recently the rector of St. Paul’s, Cheswick, after due announcement, preached and conducted divine service for Mr. McLeod, successor to Dr. Cumming, of Crown Court. He did it with the full knowledge that it might get him into trouble; but he was willing to have the question tested at his expense. Considerable notice has been taken of it in various ways, but no one has ventured to make any complaint.
I take it that one prominent feature of the Chautauqua movement is the desire and endeavor to bring those privileges which have been hitherto to a large extent the possession of the few, within reach of as large a circle as possible—the attempt to bring the scholarship of the scholarly into far closer relations with the wants of the people. And here I am reminded of the new Oxford movement, of which you have no doubt heard—the resolution of a large number of young Oxonians to devote themselves to work in the East End of London for the educational and social amelioration of its wretched poor. The plan involves residences among the people and brotherly intercourse with them. It remains to be seen, whether, without those high Christian motives which have always been found necessary in the past, but so far are not at all acknowledged, there will be that “patient continuance in well-doing,” without which nothing worthy can be accomplished. But whatever may be thought as to the probable success and permanence of the movement, it is certainly a most gratifying sign of the times.
But I am allowing myself to drift into a treatise de omnibus rebus et quibus dam aliis, and must therefore call a halt, and come to a period, which I do with renewed congratulations for the past and hearty good wishes and earnest prayers for a happy holiday season, and a prosperous and fruitful year of work.
I shall not sign myself your Counselor, though you honor me with the title, for I am sure that any counsel I can give at this vast distance is of very small account, but I do heartily call myself your sincere friend,
John Monro Gibson.
Many kind letters of greeting and encouragement were read. No one stirred a deeper sympathy than that from Mrs. Abbey Gough, of Westfield, N. Y., the senior graduate of the C. L. S. C.:
“Although I am too feeble to be with you to-day, and although I am nearly eighty-four years old, I am with you in spirit. God bless the C. L. S. C., and God bless the Class of ’82.”
Dr. Vincent said: “This dear woman marched in through the gate when eighty-two years of age; her son of over fifty, or about fifty, behind her; his daughter of twenty, perhaps, behind him; three generations in that Class of ’82. She still lives, at the age of eighty-four, to give greeting on this glad day.”