Here are some of the advantages of this organization: It will develop higher and nobler tastes, increase mental power, exalt home-life, giving authority and home-help in public school studies and organizing homes into reading circles. It will counteract the influence of our modern pernicious literature and sweeten and enrich the daily lives of poor and hard-working people. It will bring the more cultivated people into contact with the less scholarly, promote a true appreciation of science, and tend to increase the spiritual life and power of the church. All knowledge becomes glorified in the man whose heart is consecrated to God.
As I copy these words in the year 1920, more than forty years after they were spoken and printed, with each sentence there rise to my mind instances that have come to my own knowledge of every one of these prophecies fulfilled. Chautauqua through its home-reading course has accomplished far more than its founder even dreamed.
The speaker answered an objection to the plan of study based upon its superficiality.
Superficial it is, and so is any college course of study. The boy who stands at the close of his senior year, on Commencement Day, to receive his parchment and whatever honors belong to him, who does not feel that his whole course has been superficial, will not be likely to succeed in the after struggle of life. But superficiality is better than absolute ignorance. It is better for a man to take a general survey, to catch somewhere a point that arrests him; for the man who never takes a survey never catches the point in which dwell the possibilities of power for him. When you sow seed, it is not the weight of the seed put into the soil that tells, it is the weight of the harvest that comes after.
Here are some of the closing words of the address:
How glad I should be if I should find in the future years that more boys and girls are going to our high schools and universities because of the impulse received here at Chautauqua! And I say to you: with all your getting, get understanding. Look through microscopes, but find God. Look through telescopes, but find God. Look for Him revealed in the throbbing life about you, in the palpitating stars above, in the marvelous records of the earth beneath you, and in your own souls. Study the possibilities which God unfolds, and make of yourself all that you can. The harder the struggle, the brighter the crown. Have faith and holy purpose. Go on to know and to will, to do and be. When outward circumstances discourage, trample the circumstances under foot. Be master of circumstances, like the king that God has called you to be. God give you such hearts, such toil, such triumphs, and give you such masterhood as shall one day place you among the kings and priests of a redeemed and purified universe!
After the applause following this address subsided, a poem was read, written for the occasion by the ever-ready Mary A. Lathbury. It pictured the modern Chautauqua as representing the old Jerusalem which pilgrims sought for worship and inspiration. We can only quote its final stanzas:
The Life of God is shining
Upon her where she stands;
And leaf by leaf unfolding
Within her reverent hands,
The earth and seas and heavens
Disclose her secrets old,
And every force of Nature
Reveals its heart of gold!
Now knoweth she the answer
That ends the schoolmen's strife,—
That knowledge bears no blossom
Till quickened by the Life.
O holy, holy city!
The life of God with men!
Descending out of heaven
To ne'er ascend again.
O Light, O Life immortal!
One sea above, below!
If unto us be given
That blessed thing,—to know—
Hope's beatific vision,
And Faith's prophetic sight
Shall die before the fullness
Of that unclouded Light.
After the reading of the poem, Dr. Vincent said, "In the preparation for this important occasion, I have consulted some of the most experienced and practical educators of the country, and from a number of distinguished gentlemen I have received letters relating to this movement."
