Address at the Annual Meeting.
BY PRESIDENT EDWARD H. MERRILL, D.D., RIPON, WISCONSIN.
I wish simply to emphasize a single thought, viz., that these institutions of higher learning have their chief use as being aids to direct force. When you have mentioned what these higher institutions have done for individuals—when you have followed the individuals to their work in their various fields, you have only begun to tell the story of their importance. If you go up into Wisconsin, along the lower Fox river, you will see one of the finest water-powers in the world. It is often called the Merrimac of the West. I don't know how long that water-power has been there unappropriated. It was there when the Mound builder was there. God proffered it to him with all its resources, and asked him to improve it; but failing to regard the heavenly admonition, he passed away, leaving but few traces behind; only a few rude instruments and pieces of pottery. All other marks of him are gone. After him came the Indian. He also has passed, to all intents and purposes. Then came the Anglo-Saxon in blood and the Puritan in civilization and culture, and applying his inventive ingenuity to the banks of this river, he set the water-wheel, and the wheel has converted the power of the river into product, and the product has turned into property, and the property into intelligence, and the intelligence under this same productive ingenuity of the Puritan has turned into morality, and that into religion. So we have this great native force, directed to the account of the kingdom of God, transmuted into higher forces for His glory.
Now, my friends, the higher institutions of learning in the midst of these great original forces all about us in the new communities are that product of inventive ingenuity which turns these forces to account, giving them direction and transmuting them from the lower to the higher. The local church cannot do it. Individual labor cannot do it. The institution of higher learning is the only thing that can accomplish it. More than this, not only does this higher institution planted in new fields turn to account the force which already existed, but it has the power of enlarging this force and creating new forces, and after creating, transmuting them and turning them to the account of the kingdom of God. The institutions of this Association in the South not only create an enthusiasm and desire for learning, but they are turning the money acquired and the material prosperity attained by our colored brethren into those higher influences which effect the upbuilding of the kingdom of God. That is what these colleges are for.
It is impossible now to amplify the thought, but I wish in connection with it to name three particulars. And first, it is entirely possible for us, in heeding the Scripture admonition to preach the gospel to every creature, to neglect those great and overwhelming forces in new communities which are sweeping the youth away. I read in a Providence paper last Saturday evening that there are no infidel books published in the Welsh language. I know those Welsh people well. This statement may be true; but meanwhile, forces outside of them which they cannot control are threatening to sweep their youth away into the gulf of materialism and atheism in the new communities. The children speak English, and are thus led into the outside drift.
The second point is this: It is wise to put our directive force where the power is. It is utterly impossible to build institutions in the State of Massachusetts or in New England that will answer the purpose for the South. The children of this world build their water-wheel where their water-power is. The children of light sometimes build their water-wheel where the power is not, or where it has already been appropriated. We must put healthy, strong institutions into the South. They are worth even more than the local churches we are planting. They stand in need of support. The local churches give them character.
Third, I think we have need of a larger Christian sagacity in the distribution of funds for this purpose. In my appeals for educational work, no one has heard me say I would have less money given for older institutions, I believe there can be a wiser distribution of money with reference to the kingdom of God. Any one looking upon this field will tell you that one dollar put into an institution of learning in the Southern field—conditions being as they are, these forces being yet undirected—one dollar in one of these institutions will often accomplish more than one hundred in an old one. I have told people frequently—and I believe those who have studied this problem will assent to it—that one dollar for a Christian college in the Western field, will accomplish more than ten put into some of the older institutions. What I say then is, that if we wish to have a larger sagacity, if we wish to give our money with wiser heed to results, we shall put more into those institutions on the Southern field which are to determine what the South shall be; we shall put more into those institutions in the great Mississippi valley which are to determine what the Mississippi valley shall be, and which, two generations hence, are to determine what this continent shall be. Let not less be given to the old; but, my friends, the most economical giving is the money given to your higher institutions in the South and in all our new communities.
PURITANISM AND THE DESPISED RACES.
Address at the Annual Meeting.