Colleges in America

by John Marshall Barker

The college receives students from all ranks and conditions of society, and holds open to them its great opportunities, and worthily trains them to go forth into those professions and higher walks of life where their generous character and refreshing influences may be of larger service to the whole community. In the language of President Thwing, it may be said that "it is to the people that the college and university desire to give more than they receive from the people. It is not unjust to say that the people are debtors. The community has given to Yale, and to Princeton, and to Harvard, much, but Yale, and Princeton, and Harvard have given to the community more. For the college and the university are set to hold up the worth of things to the mind, and these things are the worthiest. In an age democratic and material, they are to represent the monarchy of the immaterial. In an age of luxuriousness, they are to declare the words of Him, homeless and pillowless, who said: 'A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he hath.' They stand for the continuity of the best life, intellectual, ethical, religious, Christian. In the realm of thought, they stand for the value of ideas; in the realm of morals, for the value of ideals; in the realm of being, like the church, for the value of character."

Next to the home, the college has been the ruling spirit in private and public life. The colleges have rigorously upheld the principles of piety, justice and sacred regard for truth as the best foundation of social order. The true wealth and power of the nation are the great and good men produced by the colleges whose example and influence have been to promote intelligence and good order in society.

We look over our vast territory, with its multiplied resources and growing population, and rejoice in our material possibilities and social privileges. But what is better and grander than all these, is the fact that more than 300 Christian colleges are scattered over our land as beacon lights in our national life, building up Christian character as the best legacy for present and future generations. Some of the colleges are yet weak and struggling, but they glory in their aspirations and prospects of future grandeur. The great fabric of our national life is radiant with the golden threads of good influences emanating from these centers of superior intelligence and instruction, where time is given for careful thought and reflection on the great problems of life.

Education by the Christian college is essential to the largest growth and progress of the state, the church, and all humanitarian movements. "The progress grows more rapid," says William T. Harris, "as the Christian spirit which leavens our civilizations sends forward, one after another, its legions into the field; for great inventions, as well as great moral reforms, proceed from Christianity."

No one can afford to be indifferent to the power and influence for good of the Christian college. These are immeasurable. The Christian Church and all the friends of human progress and welfare must, more and more, emphasize the lesson that, if we educate in our colleges the leading minds of the nation, we will be able so to control the prevailing habits and modes of thought throughout the country as to secure the permanency and glory of Christian liberty and religious institutions.

These truths may be enforced by many historic examples. The Jesuits have always been eminent for their adroit management of men. They recovered a large part of Europe to the papacy by seizing and controlling the colleges and universities as fountains of power. They had at one time under their control 600 colleges. They made it their business to educate the leading minds, and through them to guide and govern communities and nations. When only one in thirty of the inhabitants of Austria adhered to the papacy, Professor Ranke says that "the Jesuits obtained a controlling influence in the universities, and in a single generation Austria was lost to the Reformation and regained to the papal hierarchy."

In the sixteenth century, the Protestant King of Poland appointed a Jesuit minister of public instruction, who soon filled the professors' chairs with members of his own order. The "scale was soon turned, and the doctrines of the Reformation never again recovered the ascendency."

In our own day, the influence of a college education is seen in the case of a number of young Bulgarians at Roberts College, in Constantinople. These students rekindled hope and courage in the people and revived the feeling of nationality in the hearts of the Bulgarians. This prepared the way for a general uprising in 1876, the bloody repression of which brought on the war with Russia, which led to the liberation of the province. Thus, influences descend with power from above into society. The colleges are the right arm of strength for all noble efforts for human welfare. Professor Van Holst, in his recent address, delivered at Chicago, said: "The most effectual way to lift the masses to a higher plane—materially, intellectually and morally—is to do everything favoring the climbing up of an ever-increasing minority to higher and higher intellectual and moral altitudes. Therefore, universities of the very highest order become every year more desirable—nay, necessary—for the preservation and the development of the vital forces of American democracy. Undoubtedly, to have them established is the interest of those who would frequent them, but it is still infinitely more in the interests of the American people in its entirety."

It is impossible to estimate all the good that comes to society through the influence of the college. It is quite evident that our colleges stand for the production of the highest manhood and womanhood, and their friends should marshal their forces to enhance their growth and usefulness. It is the underlying forces at work for good in our colleges that insure the integrity and safety of our social and religious organizations. Men and women who have means should regard it a privilege to lavish their gifts upon the colleges that labor for the imperishable things of life, and provide incentives for the highest Christian character and activity. He who consecrates his money to found a professorship in a Christian college erects a monument to the worth of the human soul, and perpetuates his own fame. He helps the colleges to determine, in a large measure, the character of the persons who shall fill our pulpits, teach our schools, edit our papers, write our books, and give direction to all the political and social movements. The dangers that menace our nation lie in the lack of intelligent Christian leadership. It is within the power of friends of the colleges to enroll among the college graduates a vast army of the youth of our land, whose largeness of manhood and womanhood and magnificence of character will commend themselves to the love and esteem of the lowly and suffering in every land.

Lord Macaulay once said that "the destiny of England is in the great heart of England," and we may safely say that the power for usefulness of the colleges is in the great heart of the Christian people of America, who will be more and more loyal to the sacred trust.