ART. II.-OUR COLLEGES.

ARE our colleges fulfilling the intentions and expectations of their founders as a moral and spiritual force? Are they degenerating in this respect? Are they meeting the legitimate demands of the age as positive auxiliaries of Christianity? Is the college primarily or solely an intellectual gymnasium? Is there any incompatibility between learning and piety? If not, do not intellectual expansion and the acquisition of knowledge rightfully call for proportionally higher types of piety and greater spiritual power? Is not the ideal college primarily and chiefly a spiritual force, whose first qualification is to possess in its officers of instruction men who unite with profes sional ability the highest types of faith and religious attainment, and whose proper work is to carry on all mental training with immediate reference to religious culture, and in all its operations and principles of action to show itself the uncompromising and foremost force of aggressive Christianity?

It is not our purpose to answer these questions in detail, but to discuss in a general way the main idea which they suggest. In so doing, we take the American college under those peculiar characteristics which render it an organization and a community by itself; as having a life of its own more isolated and self-dependent for its internal character than any other organization that has sprung from the bosom of society; and withal ruling society beyond any other element of the body politic.

It is undeniable that the general drift of influence on the part of our colleges preponderates in favor of religion. Here and there may be found, possibly, an institution whose moral force may be reckoned at zero, or even on the minus side of the equation. But the large majority of colleges would stand plus in the reckoning. Their general moral tone, the religious auspices under which they are supposed to exist, the general results of mental culture and discipline which are considered favorable to the acceptance and defense of all truth, the moral element that finds a place in nearly all courses of study, the religious exercises that accompany college work, the Christian character of many college professors, the number of Christian students, many of whom graduate into the pulpit, are so many

religious elements whose sum, varying in different colleges, would probably entitle them to claim a balance of influence in favor of Christianity. But whether this balance of influence is not diminishing through the lessening of some or all of these items is a serious question. It is probably true that the colleges of this country are not as decidedly Christian, as thoroughly religious, now as in former days. The religious atmosphere is less healthful and positive, and the purer oxygen of the college life of that time has been carbonized by the liberal culture of this age. The institutions that have sprung up more recently take their stamp from the spirit of the times. State and private institutions are in some degree taking the place of those that were founded under denominational or Church auspices. The possibility of such a thing is a step backward, and a measurable release from religious control. Moreover, whether mental culture and discipline are intrinsically adapted to encourage religious truth or practical piety may well be questioned in view of the skeptical tendencies of the student mind in its first beginnings of study and thought, and in the irreligion, not to say infidelity, of many literary and scientific men. It is doubtless true that the formative period of college life is the time when there is greatest need of strong general and personal influence and teaching to counteract the youthful love of independence and of speculative doubt. The influence of any purely ethical, or even biblical, study which may enter into the curriculum will depend largely on how it is taughtwhether on a scientific basis, or with practical applications. The fact that the frequency of religious exercises in connection with the work of the college is less than formerly in many institutions, and that they are made optional or abolished in others, shows a tendency toward secularization. The fact, furthermore, that eminent scholarship and ability in a given department is about the only consideration in the selection of college instructors indicates the popular estimate and demand.

There is one other point of no slight importance in estimating the religious power of the college to-day. It is a notorious fact that many of the influences of college life are adverse to piety. Certain phases of college morality ignore the laws of God and man. Certain customs and traditions are held ex

empt from the usual moral tests. It is easy to see how inevitably fatal to true piety such a theory of morals must be to all who accept it. Moreover, the rivalries, ambitions, crude notions, and youthful impulses of young men are stimulated by the fact of large numbers, and become insidious snares to capture the conscience. The flutter of newly-fledged freedom from the restraints of parental oversight, the direct temptations of an unscrupulous few, the novelty of the new life, the skeptical halo that dazzles youth in the first gray dawn of independent thought, are among the enemies that find a temporary foothold, if not an undisputed possession, in the fortress of the moral sense. These well-known perils are the terror of many a parent who trembles at the ordeal his son must pass, and warns him earnestly against them as he leaves the home circle.

Such facts and tendencies indicate that the demand is both legitimate and strong upon our colleges to exert a positive religious power. It is not simply a question as to whether they have maintained their original standard; but have they kept pace with the increasing influences that are hostile to religion and provided an adequate antidote for the varying conditions of irreligion and unbelief? It would be a great thing to say that the ideal purpose of the American college in its origin is still held, and greater still, that earnest effort is every-where made to carry it out. There can be no question that the original purpose of the college was mainly as an auxiliary to religion. Whatever may have been its design as a means of mental culture, the dominant one was to promote the cause of Christ. The founders of these institutions in our early history were eminently pious men. Their chief thought in their noble work was to inaugurate a powerful agency of an aggressive Christianity. No doubt they believed, what is true, that the college, as a means of liberal culture, as a center of intellectual power whose utterances should exercise an authoritative control upon the popular mind, and as a discoverer and disseminator of useful knowledge, would be such an agency in a very high sense. But that culture, intellect, and knowledge without the vitalizing forces of religion would realize their intent in the founding of a college never entered their minds. Academic culture was rather the instrument of religion; a

blade of cold steel that must be tempered in the blood of Christ if it would do any real service to humanity. Education was not regarded as a Christianizing force except in the hands of religion. Every effort to promote the one, from the common school to the college, was made on the belief that it was the outgrowth and auxiliary of the other. A large part of the funds given to found William and Mary's College were given as a missionary donation, and conditioned on such an application of them. The seal of Harvard bears the motto Christo et Ecclesia. The seal of Yale has the words Lux et Veritas, and what other light and truth than that of the Holy Scriptures were in the thought of the ten clergymen who laid the foundation of that beacon on our shores? Dartmouth College began as an Indian mission. The announced purpose of the Synod of New York in founding Princeton College was "to supply the Church with learned and able preachers of the word." President Witherspoon well embodied its spirit in the words: "Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ; cursed be all that learning that is not coincident with the cross of Christ; cursed be all that learning that is not subservient to the cross of Christ." There is not a New England college but is the result of the religious enthusiasm of its founders as a means primarily of defending and propagating the Gospel. A large number of Western colleges are missionary enterprises, designed to furnish a supply of pious and learned ministers in those new and growing regions. And the history of the very few institutions that have been founded in irreligion shows them a failure until they have passed under the controlling influence of religion. The founders of Methodist institutions were men of whom it would be sacrilege to suppose that they did not intend them to be directly as well as indirectly a power for Christ. They are the children of the Church, born and baptized with the hope and purpose that they should become the giants of her advancing armies, and the invincible bulwarks of her defense.

Giants and bulwarks they have been and are. From their very nature our colleges must be the Malakoffs and Gibraltars of the friends or enemies of Christ. In the estimation of the people they occupy the front rank of the forces of intellectual power. They are called to the dictatorship of public opinion.

Their faculties wield the scepter of critical learning and scholarship. Their decisions upon questions of history, language, archæology, interpretation, stir the Church of God to its foundations. Their opinions on scientific subjects agitate, confirin, or unsettle the faith of thousands. Their doubts ripple the surface of vast communities, and stretch to the farthest shores of humanity. Their heterodoxy unhinges the faith of society and becomes the stronghold of willing infidelity, which eagerly claims their half-faith as the indorsement of its unfaith. If an unorthodox teaching or an indifferent moral example could be confined to college walls it would not be so fatal, but the infection is caught by those who are able and willing to spread it, and the scars of the malady forever disfigure those who have suffered from its terrible power.

It is not too much to assume that the measure of intellectual power, of liberal culture, and of influential position is also the measure of Christian power, piety, and influence that the world has a right to expect of a man. If the Christian system be true, its doctrines vital, and its new life a reality, it is rightfully expected that those who are most capable of grasping these things intellectually should be also their best defenders and examples. If Christianity were of such a nature that the more thoroughly it is studied the more uncertain it becomes, and the better it is comprehended the broader the basis of doubt, the hope of the world would have gone out in despair long ago. But the reverse is true. He who studies religious truth most carefully finds the strongest grounds for faith. He who has the best endowments of mind and culture can best comprehend the vastness and stability of the everlasting pillars of truth. He who has such endowments is responsible to use them. He who meets this responsibility and possesses most of the truth in its theory and of the faith in its evidences is bound to illustrate them in the positiveness of his Christian teaching and in the earnestness and purity of his life. The best exemplar of humble yet active piety ought to be the man of great learning; and this has often been the case. Men who by their talents and acquirements command the deference and admiration of others in the knowledge of this world ought to do the same also on the more important themes of the future world. He who is an authority in chemistry or mathematics,