Dr. Howard Crosby, of New York:
Your scheme to induce business men and others to pursue useful courses of reading in science and history is worthy of all commendation. While we cannot expect to make such persons scientists or scholars, we may expect them to become appreciative of things scientific or scholarly, and to be able to discriminate between the false and the true.
He added some valuable suggestions regarding the kind of books that should be chosen; and the hope that the course, instead of becoming a substitute for the college, might lead to the college.
Dr. Charles F. Deems, of New York, gave his heartiest approval of the plan, and stated that he was holding in his own church classes in all the departments named, and would enroll them under the Chautauqua system, with examinations and the diploma at the completion of the course.
Dr. William F. Warren, President of Boston University, wrote a letter in which he said:
You are aiming to secure that without which every system of education is weak, and with which any is strong; namely, interested personal home work the year round. And you seem to carry these home students to the point where they can go alone, if they cannot have the help of the schools.
One of these letters must be given in full, notwithstanding its length. Dr. Vincent introduced it with an account of his interview with its author, the venerable William Cullen Bryant, the oldest of his group—the American poets of the mid-century.
I wrote him afterward a long letter [said Dr. Vincent], defining the scheme more fully. While in London a few weeks ago I received from him the following letter, written with his own hand,—written but a few weeks before his death. This letter has never been read in public and has never been in print.
New York, May 18, 1878.
I cannot be present at the meeting called to organize the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, but I am glad that such a movement is on foot, and wish it the fullest success. There is an attempt to make science, or a knowledge of the laws of the material universe, an ally of the school which denies a separate spiritual existence and a future life; in short, to borrow of science weapons to be used against Christianity. The friends of religion, therefore, confident that one truth never contradicts another, are doing wisely when they seek to accustom the people at large to think and to weigh evidence as well as to believe. By giving a portion of their time to a vigorous training of the intellect, and a study of the best books, men gain the power to deal satisfactorily with questions with which the mind might otherwise have become bewildered. It is true that there is no branch of human knowledge so important as that which teaches the duties that we owe to God and to each other, and that there is no law of the universe, sublime and wonderful as it may be, so worthy of being made fully known as the law of love, which makes him who obeys it a blessing to his species, and the universal observance of which would put an end to a large proportion of the evils which affect mankind. Yet is a knowledge of the results of science, and such of its processes as lie most open to the popular mind, important for the purpose of showing the different spheres occupied by science and religion, and preventing the inquirer from mistaking their divergence from each other for opposition.