I have emphasized the word Christian as I have spoken of Christian education. Let me not in any less degree emphasize education. Matthew Arnold is not far wrong when he says that the object of religion is conduct, and that conduct is three-fourths of life. It is simply doing what we ought. But one of the things which a man ought to do is to make the most of himself as a power for good in the world, and that he cannot do without education. Man, without education, is a clumsy machine. The educated man is force which drives machines. This force, if uncontrolled, becomes destructive. The educated man, without principles, is more dangerous than the uneducated. The latter may become at the worst a brute; it takes the former to be a demon. But we do not on this account think less of education; we only insist that the force it generates shall be controlled by Christian principle. Thus controlled it is always beneficent, like fire and water and air, which, nevertheless, when uncontrolled, may become agents of the most fearful destruction.
The necessity for Christian education at the South may be looked at and clearly seen from two different points of view. To the Christian, these millions of the South are human beings, for whom Christ died and to whom He has commanded us to carry the Gospel. Properly developed, intellectually, morally and spiritually, they will be a part of the Kingdom of God, and will become powerfully influential in establishing that kingdom throughout the world. They are accessible, eager for knowledge, ready to accept the truths of Christianity, peculiarly impressible, lacking stability only because undeveloped, and they offer to us an assured hope of a more complete, immediate and glorious harvest than seems likely to be gathered in any other part of the world. Nowhere else on the round globe will your money or your efforts bring such returns as they will at the South. You have not to contend with an impregnable hostile faith, as among the Mohammedans or Buddhists. You have only to lift the clouds of ignorance, and to overcome the natural depravity of man—a depravity greater, perhaps, than in some other places, but on that very account more easily recognized, felt and repented of.
Nor can the necessity for Christian education at the South appear less imperative to the patriot. There is no element so dangerous to the stability of the republic as ignorance and its associated lack of principle. It is by votes that rulers are elected, laws made and the country governed. Just so long as we have a large element of ignorance in the republic, whose votes can be bought at the caucus or at the polls, will the most unscrupulous men rise to prominence in our politics, for they are the only men who will utilize this ignorance.
And now what of the future? We have tried all sorts of reconstruction measures with the South and all kinds of policies with the South, and all have proved in a greater or less degree failures. They stand as monuments of our lack of the keenest foresight. The best reconstruction measure which we can now adopt is to fill the treasury of the American Missionary Association full to overflowing, that it may carry forward at once and triumphantly this work of Christian education in the South. What it has done is sufficient assurance of what it will do, if the means are placed in its hands. It cannot establish throughout the South a common school system like that which blesses the North; it cannot carry education to every cabin in the South, nor open college halls, free of expense, to all who may desire a liberal education; but it can and will qualify large numbers of these people to carry education and Christianity to the rest; and that, after all, is the best thing possible, for no lesson is more needed by these people than that of self-reliance. Teach them to take care of themselves in the best way, and we shall have done for them the best that is possible. The day will not be far distant, then, when the common schools of the South will provide education for the white and the black alike as at the North, and when the church of God in the South shall hear the voice of God saying, “All souls are mine. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones.”
HIGHER EDUCATION.
PRES. E. A. WARE.
This paper, recognizing the importance of normal and industrial education, claims for higher education simply the place accorded to it in other sections in the educational system for the South. Its right to that place is widely questioned. The Journal of Education recently had the following: “In spite of the youthfulness of colored education, some of their schools are graced with a reprint of a Northern College curriculum. What nine-tenths of the pupils in these classes want of Latin and Greek, fails of our comprehension.” We are constantly hearing about “educating them out of their place.” It will hardly be claimed that the colored man cannot be educated, when several have graduated with honor from Northern colleges; when one has passed the fiery ordeal of West Point; when one, below the middle of a class of six in a Southern school, graduated above the middle of a class of thirty at Andover Seminary; and when a Southern examining board say: “We were impressed with the fact that the colored people, whether of pure or mixed blood, can receive the education usually given in such schools.”
Perhaps the frequent remark about “their place” means that they ought not to be educated. Now and then we see what might have been a good barber spoiled by the attempt to make him a minister, and a hasty generalization leads many to say: “They, instead of he, ought not to be educated.” Allowing for this folly, this talk about “their place” raises several questions. Who determines and assigns the place for six millions of American citizens? Who will keep them in their assigned places? Are our Declaration of Independence and Constitution “glittering generalities?” Are the life and teachings of Christ a vain thing? Pres. Woolsey thanked God for the war to rid us of slavery before it had so sapped the virtue of the whole people that we should not be worth saving. Surely He sent it none too soon. How few are color-blind; how many are color-blinded!
Higher education is needed because time is required for the mental, and especially the moral, development and furnishing of pupils, who neither inherit nor receive from home and church such furnishing. It is needed to continue the work to which it has already contributed so much, of the adjustment of the former owner and property to their new relations of brother and man, of fellow-citizens. The owner could not see the citizen till the man was developed. He needs higher education that he may take some part, other than with pick and shovel in, and may have his share of, the rich benefits of the development of the vast resources of the South. Again, it is often asked, “Would it not be well for the negro to keep out of politics?” Would it not be well for Niagara to run up-hill? He has the ballot, and the duty presses not simply to fit him to read it, but to furnish leaders who will teach him the sacredness of that ballot; who will teach him that the interests of labor and capital are one; the duty of debt paying, personal, state and national; the sacredness of law and the duty to obey it; that the United States is a nation and not a confederacy. The law and medicine should be open to him. The need of thoroughly educated physicians for these people can hardly be overestimated, and is second only, if indeed it be second, to the need of ministers. Higher education should be open to him, that here, if nowhere else, he may feel that he is like other people; that there may be one door that is not forever shut in his face with the words, “This is for white folks.”