Colleges in America

by John Marshall Barker

Likewise, select a college where the life and esprit de corps is the very best. The college is not an exercising ground for the intellect alone, but a place for inspiring ideas and aims. These are the soul of college life. They are more important than college buildings, endowment or libraries.

The religious principle should have the ascendancy in the choice of a college, because religion demands the supreme place in life. The moral and religious character is by no means fixed when the student enters college, and he needs to come into a pure Christian atmosphere, where the heart, as well as the mind, is molded and stimulated.

Other things being equal, the student should favor a college of his own denomination, or the one that he thinks best represents the spirit and form of Christianity. His church affiliations should be strengthened. In advising this, we do so not from any sectarian bigotry. The probabilities are that if the student attends a college of another denomination, the impressions made may tend to produce indifference to the church of his fathers, or weaken his own Christian efficiency in it. The young should maintain personal loyalty to the church that has helped to build up their Christian character and to inspire in them a thirst for a broader culture.

It is claimed to be an advantage to the student living in the West to select a college in his own state, where he will form his friendships and associations, which afterward may be of value to him in his chosen profession. In such cases, it is thought advisable to take graduate work in the East, in some university which is pre-eminent for its special courses, libraries, laboratories, and appliances. On the other hand, it would often be an advantage for the Eastern student to take work in the best universities of the West.

We come now to speak of some of the personal hindrances and advantages in acquiring an education. Student life has its hindrances. All have not the same capacity to assimilate culture. It requires more effort for some to master a college course than for others. A thorough college training costs arduous labor. Many are not willing to pay the price, and to practice the self-denial necessary to acquire the power to think and master the great subjects of study. It demands all the force of a strong conviction and an earnest resolution to go through college and win a place among the thinkers of the world. One reason why so many students enter college and drop out before they complete their course of study, arises from the fact that they have not acquired the power of application. Their feeble wills and intellectual lethargy succumb before mental tasks requiring eight or ten hours of hard, earnest work a day. They should be encouraged with the words of Lord Bacon, who says: "There is no comparison between that which we may lose by not trying and not succeeding, since by not trying we throw away the chance of an immense good, and by not succeeding we only incur the loss of a little human labor."

Again, there are those who are led to look for some short cut to obtain a college education. This is a serious mistake. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," is as true in an intellectual career as in any other work of life. The laws of mental growth must be observed to make the most of ourselves, and to do the most for humanity and God. The young must learn that it takes years of work to get a college education. "If I am asked," says President J. W. Bashford, "why Methodism does not produce more John Wesleys, I assign as one reason of this failure the fact that none of us observe the laws of mental development as John Wesley kept them, and devote the time to mental growth which John Wesley gladly gave. I turn to Arminius, and find that he spent between twelve and thirteen years at the universities of Europe before he began to preach. Arminius died at fifty-nine. Yet he left behind him a work on divinity which ranks him with La Place and Newton, with Calvin and Augustine and Spinoza, as one of the world's master minds. Calvin spent nine years at college, and later was able to devote three years more to study. Augustine devoted thirteen years to study after his father sent him away to college before he accepted the professorship at Milan. It was eleven years after Luther left home for college before he left the scholar's bench for the professor's chair. Four years later, Luther took another scholastic degree, showing that he was still pursuing his studies. Five years more were required for Luther to reach clear convictions on religion and theology. Paul was a student in the most celebrated schools in Jerusalem for fifteen years. If, therefore, you do not seem to have that mastery of truth, if you do not find yourself the intellectual giant which you once thought you might become, do not blame the Lord, do not depreciate your talent, until you have devoted as many years to college studies as did Arminius, and Calvin, and Augustine, and Wesley, and Luther, and Paul. If you would do a great work in the world, fulfill the conditions by which men outgrow their fellows." The student should be willing to begin at the bottom of the ladder and work upward. It will take more time, but it will yield rich returns and bring real satisfaction.

Again, if the college life is to be profitable and pleasant, the student should refuse to enter an advanced class when his general culture or discipline is so deficient as to render it difficult to make reasonable progress in his studies. It is true that the entrance examination is not always a fair test of the student's capacity or promise. The difficulty cannot be corrected, and study be made a pleasure, unless a student himself shows frankness, and is willing to begin where every step forward is thoroughly understood.

Among the personal advantages of a college education is the fact that it helps to emancipate the individual. The studies pursued take the student out of his narrow self and his present environment, and make him conversant with other ages and conditions, where he finds his larger self. The personality becomes enlarged and enriched by a wider vision and a knowledge of the great and good men who have lived to make the world better. The best thoughts of the past and the present are at the student's command. He may place himself in touch with all ages and peoples and feel that he is contemporaneous with the best spirit and thought of all that have gone before. Truth thus gathered and stored up in life and character has a wonderful emancipating power. The gateway of truth is always thrown open to those who earnestly knock and search for her hidden treasures. The individual in this age, more than in any other, needs the emancipating power of truth to act intelligently and effectively in the drama of life.

A college education likewise tends to liberalize the individual by first eliminating any self-conceit, or inclination to rashness or falsity, and to build up firmness, judgment, and sincerity of character. The aim of the college is to enable the student to know himself and his mission in life. He must have a right conception of self, because he must everywhere live and act with self. He owes it to himself, and to the race, and to God, to make the most of life by developing his God-given faculties. God had a purpose in creating each person, and the aim of each individual should be to live worthy of his origin, by finding out what God wants of him, and then training his faculties and aptitudes on the line of this purpose. He who lives in willful ignorance lives beneath the privileges and possibilities of a human being created in the divine image. No one ought to be satisfied with anything short of the noblest and best possibilities for himself. The majority of men and women have rich capacities, and their natures are full of resources, but these are not always called out. Their incipient powers often need some outside impulse or suggestion to open the chambers of the soul and lead them to discover their unconscious capacities, natural aptitudes, and untried powers.

There are hidden forces in our nature and in life about us of which we little dream. The marvelous forces of electricity are being applied to all human activities, and are unfolding to us new life and new possibilities. We are told that there are mightier currents in the atmosphere above us than those in the Mississippi or the Amazon. Likewise, the science of education exhibits how the trained powers of man reveal unexpected forces and capacities, which have needed only the touch of truth and personality to awaken a higher life and to impart fresh inspiration. Now the college is the best place to discover our inborn energies, and to awaken talent and develop greatness through the influence of men and books.