Colleges in America

by John Marshall Barker

The majority of great writers have spent years at the university. Lord Bacon outlined his gigantic plan for "the Instauration of the Sciences" during the four years spent in the University of Cambridge. Milton laid the foundations of his classical scholarship in the university. "Newton was matured in academic discipline, a fellow in Trinity College, Cambridge, and a professor of mathematics. He passed fifteen years of his life in the cloisters of a college, and solved the problems of the universe from the turret over Trinity gateway."

The literary influences of our colleges were early manifest in our nation. The scholarship, classical taste, and fine literary style of the superior men in public life led the Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords, in 1775, to pay "a tribute of eloquent homage to the intellectual force, the symmetry, and the decorum of the state papers recently transmitted from America, which was virtually an announcement that America had become an integral part of the civilized world, and a member of the republic of letters."

The colleges have nourished the conditions out of which a pure, classical literature may grow. Such men as Edward T. Channing, of Harvard, and Webster, Worcester and Goodrich, of Yale, have performed an inestimable service in preparing the way for our mother tongue to be spoken in its purity.

In the line of history, the American colleges have given the nation such men as Bancroft, Parkman, Palfrey, Prescott, Motley, Winthrop and Adams. In the sciences, there are Dana, Gray, Cooke, Walker, Porter, Woolsey and Agassiz. In law and political science, we have Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Evarts, Webster, Chase, Choate, Everett and Sumner. These men have been the true architects of the state. The pulpit is represented by such men as Mather, Edwards, Dwight, Storrs, Warren, Beecher, Talmage, Cook, Thomson and Brooks.

Literary genius has been displayed by men like Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Holmes, Hawthorne, Mitchell, Holland, Emerson and a host of lights scarcely less brilliant. These men, who have written in a terse and graphic style, received their stimulus and training in college, and are among the bright examples of classical scholarship, and the results of their genius have enriched character and enlightened the world.

The periodical literature reflects the prevailing ideas, sentiments and spirit of the American people. The college-trained men have been especially quick to utilize this throne of power to guide the public mind to right principles and inspiring motives. The colleges must continue to be fountains whence shall flow a pure, earnest, and truthful literature, which will, in a great measure, determine the destiny of the present and future generations.

We are especially indebted to the colleges for the maintenance of the ascendency of the moral and religious principles which have done so much in unfolding and shaping our national life. The religious sentiment has been the controlling spirit of the nation, and our patriotism has issued from a meditative and religious temper, which the colleges have been foremost in fostering. Nearly all the great religious and reformatory movements have proceeded from the colleges and universities, whereby great good has come to society. "It was through the interchange of students between the Universities of Oxford and Prague that the teachings of Wycliff passed over into Bohemia and issued in the splendid work of Huss. It was from college students of Florence that Colet, and Erasmus, and More caught somewhat of the spirit of Savonarola, and felt the power of truths that emerged in the Italian Renaissance, and made them contribute so grandly to religious liberty in England. It was in the presence of the college students of Germany that Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the doors, and burned the papal bull, and lit the watch-fire of the Reformation that has awaked an answering brightness from ten thousand hills. It was from a little circle of Oxford students that God led forth Wesley and Whitfield to shake the mighty pillars of unbelief in the eighteenth century."

President William F. Warren says: "By means of the great religious movement called Puritanism, the English University of Cambridge shaped, for nearly two hundred years, the intellectual and spiritual life of New England. Emmanuel College, the one in which John Harvard, Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, and many of the early New England leaders were educated, was founded for the express purpose of providing a nursery for the propagation of Puritan principles. Never were the hopes of founders more fruitfully fulfilled. The New World, then just opening, furnished a field of unimagined extent, with motives and social forces and ranges of opportunity which even yet are a marvel. By founding a new England beyond the sea, and planting a new Emmanuel College in a new Cambridge, English Puritanism was enabled to transcend itself, to exchange the attitude of a struggling ecclesiastical party for that of an Established Church. It gained the opportunity to originate a new social order, and to impress itself upon a new age, built upon new and democratic principles. The initial and fundamental covenant out of which grew the chief of all New England colonies—that of Massachusetts Bay—was formulated and signed in ancient Cambridge. In fact, in American Puritanism, with its social, civil, and religious results, may be seen the high-water mark of the intellectual and spiritual influence which, in the whole course of history, have thus far proceeded from the banks of the Cam." The church, in harmony with the genius of Christianity, has always fostered education. It assumes to guard Christianity by directing education as one of its most powerful of organized forces.

The existence and support of colleges are largely due to the Christian Church. They are the offspring of a dominant desire to promote the cause of Christ, and make them powerful agencies for a positive and aggressive Christianity. In the middle ages the pious princes, Charlemagne and Alfred, established schools for the elevation of the clergy. Oxford, Cambridge and Glasgow Universities were established and fostered by the church to educate more fully the clergy. The founders of Harvard College thus described their motive: "Dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our ministers shall lie in the dust." Yale College was founded by preachers for a like purpose. Princeton College was founded "to supply the church with learned and able preachers of the Word." The fact is that prior to the eighteenth century there was no university founded save those established for the glory of God and the good of the church.

The chosen mottoes of the colleges indicate the spirit of the founders. That of Oxford is, "The Lord is My Light;" Harvard, "Christ and the Church;" Yale, "Light and Truth." Eighty-three per cent. of the colleges in our land were founded by Christian philanthropy, and are under denominational control. The spirit of infidelity does not lead men to make the sacrifices to found colleges. Perhaps there is not more than one in our nation.