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 19 
 
 I\EV. A. J. NELSON, A.M. 
 
 Centennial Educational Meeting, 
 
 ^ 
 
 HELD IN THE 
 
 M. E. 0HUR0H, NAPA 0ITY, GALIFOI^NIA, 
 
 February 15TH, i6th and 17TH. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO: 
 
 HENKY E. PASTOR, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER. 
 1885. 

 
 THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 M. 
 
 6= 
 
 'I %Mm\ 
 
 REV. A. J. NELSON, A.M 
 
 Centennial Educational Meeting, 
 
 HELD IN THE 
 
 [. E. GHUI^GH, NAPA 0ITY. 0ALIFOP.NIA, 
 
 February 15TH, i6th and 17TH. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO : 
 
 HENRY E. PASTOR, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER. 
 
 188=;.
 
 H33:, 
 
 ' — ^ 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 REV. A J. NELSON A.M.: 
 
 Dear Sir: It affords me much satisfaction to learn that 
 the urgency of the friends of sound education is compelling you to publish your admirable 
 address on " The Christian College." I have already given public expression to my 
 appreciation, but permit me to add again my voice to the long list of requests you have 
 already received for a wide circulation of the address to which the people of Napa 
 listened with such profit and delight. Our people are not selfish enough to wish to 
 monopolize a pleasure which it were well for tens of thousands to enjoy. The question 
 which you discuss lies at the chief nerve-center of our national life, and the manner of its 
 settlement will inevitably determine the future of the greatest experiment of free gov- 
 ernment. M. C. BRIGGS. 
 
 % 293485
 
 THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 
 
 *' 6cholb, the fear of the Xorb, that h toisbom ; 
 anb to bcpart from eoil is unbci'Citanbing/'^/t^^^. 
 
 ^aV^E are near the close of sixty centuries of human history, 
 ^'V ^^^ human history and human experience both corrob- 
 orate the declaration of the text. 
 
 T/ie most complete character and loftiest intellect are the pro- 
 duct of religious thought. 
 
 Every forward movement of the race has had its origin 
 and inspiration in some great thought which has awakened and 
 kindled to a blaze all the powers of the soul. History is but 
 ideas worked out into deeds, formulated in declarations of 
 rights, decisions of councils and courts, and which, after long 
 conflict, have been crystallized in constitutions and organized 
 in churches and states. Free thought has been the instrument 
 in all reforms; religious ideas the origin of all great intellectual 
 achievements and race-lifting. 
 
 We are closing the first century of our organic existence 
 as a church. We measure events by years , but God does not 
 measure moral movements by our almanacs. 
 
 The ratio of events is not reducible to any human form- 
 ula; sometimes long years elapse without apparent progress — 
 the forces are organizing, and when all is ready, a nation or a 
 church is born in a day. 
 
 K
 
 ^ % 
 
 IHl. CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 The two great institutions of the century and of 
 modern history are American. Both were born on 
 the same soil, born about the same time, and born out of 
 the same common thought- the thought of Liberty. The 
 spirit of the one fled from oppression and proclaimed all 
 men free and etjual. The soul of the other broke away from 
 a fatalistic philosophy and a dead ecclesiasticism, and 
 preached free will, free grace, and free men. One is American 
 Republicanism; the other, American Methodism. One offers 
 a home to all fugitives from oppression ; the other, a heaven to 
 " all who desire to flee from the wrath to come." One seeks 
 to make man a complete citizen; the other proposes to instruct 
 him how he may become a complete saint. 
 
 The race has but two great needs : the formation of char- 
 acter and the development of powers — Wisdom and Under- 
 standing : complete living and complete knowing ; the need 
 to be converted and the need to be educated. 
 
 The two great institutions needed by the coming centuries, 
 then, are the church and the college. The two great leaders of the 
 future, the chief instruments that are to mold society and the 
 state, are the preacher and the college professor. 
 
 There are three modern theories of human culture: the 
 Scientific, the Literary, and the Christian. 
 
 THE SeiENTIFie THBO!^Y 
 
 Is based upon the fallacy of false assumption; hence, can never 
 result in the complete development of the race. It treats jnan 
 as belonging only to this world. To learn the laws of nature, 
 and how to use them for our own benefit, is the great object 
 to be attained, according to this theory. To put the machinery 
 of the body in working order, and to finish up and polish the 
 intellect as a great engine to drive this machine, in order to 
 better accomplish the secular work of this life, is the chief end 
 
 Ih.
 
 -% 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 of scientific education. This theory makes no provision lor 
 heating the steam or for the proper instruction of an engineer. 
 
 Mind is propelled by motive as certainly as is the locomo- 
 tive by steam. Reduce this power, and you reduce the forward 
 motion in the same ratio. If motive is limited to this world, 
 there is not sufificient power left in the most vigorous mind to 
 overcome the up-hill grades of life. 
 
 The scientific theory has no provision for proper manly 
 motive. It has no place for conscience, for it needs none. It 
 determines human actions as it does the motions of the planets. 
 Therefore, it is calculus man needs to act well his part, not 
 conscience; and mathematics is worth more than morals to 
 solve the problems of this life, by this theory. 
 
 What estimate would we place on the astronomer who 
 calculates the movements of a planet without taking into the 
 problem the great fact that there are other worlds upon which 
 these movements depend? Conduct and highest culture de- 
 pend as much on man's knowledge and belief in the future as 
 the movements and velocity of a planet in its orbit depend on 
 the fact of the worlds beyond. 
 
 By this theory education is only negative — only taking off 
 the pressure and letting mind act. 
 
 " Remove ignorance," says Herbert Spencer, " and you 
 put an end to crime." "Conduct is the adjustment of means to 
 ends ; good and bad is the wise or unwise adjustment of means 
 to ends." But facts are more valuable than philosophies in the 
 solution of the problem of life. History furnishes a cloud of 
 witnesses, and all deny Mr. Spencer's proposition. 
 
 The knowledge of "good and bad" can only be attained by 
 a broad generalization of all the facts and phenomena of life; 
 hence, the scientific conscience is, at most, only a human syl- 
 logism. 
 
 The Signal Bureau may determine the condition of the 
 continental current running from southwest to northeast, and 
 
 n.
 
 ^ yc 
 
 THK CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 make shrewd guesses of the approaching storm; but it must 
 have all the facts before it can make the complete generaliza- 
 tion. But the facts of lite are more numerous and more com- 
 plex than the facts of the weather; and were this theory true, 
 not one man in a hundred thousand would ever attain to a 
 knowledge of right and wrong, and ignorance would be the 
 only possible crime by the scientific theory. 
 
 Every system of culture that treats man only as an inhab- 
 itant of this world is both unsatisfactory and unscientific. 
 
 The civil and religious institutions are facts that must go 
 into every broad generalization of life. Every church, every 
 cemetery, is a proof of a power within that links man to another 
 world. Hence, every college that makes no provision for the 
 education of the conscience is a failure, and is behind the 
 age, and behind all the ages of the past. Human nature is out 
 of balance; appetite and passion rule the judgment and the 
 conscience. Humanity is sick, weary and wan, pale and 
 painted, suffering and sinning; it must have help. It is not 
 quantity nor quality of brain that is most needed; the convic- 
 tion of conscience is more valuable to the race than the secrets 
 of physiology or the mysteries of chemistry; worth more to 
 the State than all her public lands, more than all her public 
 schools. Virtue is the only hope of the nation and the race. 
 
 THE LITERARY THEORY 
 
 Is broader and more elevating than the scientific, yet insufficient 
 for the needs of man, It has furnished the world with speci- 
 mens of more exalted character and of greater physical and 
 intellectual achievements. 
 
 But it is built on a false hypothesis; on a half truth, which is 
 a fatal error. It assumes that man is wrajit u]) in mind as the 
 acorn in the oak. All he needs is development — soil and sun- 
 shine; that opportunity and education will develop the race. 
 
 i^ ^
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 The error is in substituting growth for goodness, polish for 
 purity, culture for character, in the highest and best sense. 
 
 It rests upon a postulate that needs proof: that culture 
 depends upon models instead of morals — ^on a mental bias 
 instead of a new birth. The great masters of literary excel- 
 lence are demonstrations of the inade([uacy of this theory. The 
 models used in our college classes and in the lecture-rooms 
 have no tendency to quicken the conscience or arouse the spir- 
 itual faculties, and develop the whole man. 
 
 The Greek soul is heathen; its poetry is brilliant and beau- 
 tiful, but it is pure paganism. Homer is a sublime artist, but 
 destitute of all reverence. His matchless sentiments are all 
 aglow; his brilliant imagination is on fire; he blazes and burns 
 like the wild grass of the prairies, but leaves nothing for the 
 soul but darkness and desolation. He feeds on the landscape; 
 he digests the mountains and the hills; he lives in the rocky 
 caves and shady dells; he drinks in the ^-Egean Sea to quench 
 his thirst; and transmutes them all into charming words of 
 rhythmic beauty. The imagination is excited, but the soul is left 
 as bare and barren as the blasted heath where Macbeth's 
 witches met. 
 
 Behind his forms of supernal beauty there is no personal 
 presence to satisfy the human spirit. The highest types of men 
 this theory can produce are lop-sided and unhappy. Beauty, 
 passion, art, cannot cancel conscience nor meet the high de- 
 mands of the immortal soul. 
 
 If the age depends for its highest culture on the gems of 
 a pagan literature, it may be inspired by the gusts of passion, 
 be impetuous, brave, and reckless; but without moral motive, 
 true affection, or self-control. 
 
 Three men are principally responsible for the popular wave 
 that now sweeps over two continents, coloring our literature and 
 giving a momentum to the literary theory in most of our col- 
 leges — Goethe, Carlyle, Emerson. 
 
 -dz
 
 THK CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 Goethe must he acknowledged as a high priest in literature. 
 A man of most marvellous intellect, he shot up, like a century- 
 plant, far above his fellows ; bloomed in the highest atmos- 
 phere, then ])erished in the shadow of his own genius — a pale, 
 sickly critic; a proud but ))()lished scholar; a keen, cold thinker, 
 destitute of all moral emotion. He had flame without heat, 
 color without substance; he produced beautiful flowers, but 
 destitute of all fragrance; a wealth of matchless leaves, but no 
 luscious fruit — a proof that genius and opportunity need soil in 
 which to root themselves. Add conscience to his — 
 
 " manner, mastery and might ; 
 His power of handling shadow, air, and sprite," 
 
 And Goethe is supernal. 
 
 Carlyle was both the child of the college and the church — 
 a giant in chains ; a master of literature and philosophy; a cult- 
 ured genius, and a moral maniac. Doubt — that damning 
 disease of unconvt^rted souls, the vibration of the restless spirit 
 between "the everlasting yea and nay" — burst forth in eloquent 
 strains of learned blasphemy that shock the moral sense. He 
 moved forward toward the dismal future with the reckless sub- 
 limity of the tidal wave. Did he dash himself to pieces on the 
 dark rocks of the eternal shore and foam on forever ? The obli- 
 gations of duty, the doctrines of destiny, must be commensurate 
 with the scale and scope of mind and the development of its pow- 
 ers, or man must ever be unbalanced or imhappy. Had Carlyle 
 been born again ; had his christian culture Imlanced his Titanic 
 brain ; had he been born from above — then had he been the 
 most magnetic soul, the most magnificent mind, of the century. 
 A great soul once awakened in a Christian country can never 
 find rest till it find it in a crucified Christ. Life without a com- 
 mensurate motive is but the philo.sophy of despair. 
 
 Emerson is the highest ideal of literary excellence, as he 
 understood it — the peerless product of the American college 
 divorced from Christian culture. He fed on the great thoughts of 
 
 %-
 
 THK ( HRisriAN c:ni,i,F.c;E. 
 
 the great men of all ages. His mind was a red-hot crucible, his 
 soul a great evaporating dish, where sublimation and condensa- 
 tion and crystallization were going on constantly. No realm of 
 art, or literature, or philosophy, he did not master, from Plato 
 to Hamilton ; from Zoroaster to Carlyle. He studied Homer 
 and Job; Goethe and Napoleon; St. John and Swedenborg; but 
 all from the literary side. He selects, condenses, restates in 
 beautiful forms and with Emersonian emphasis. He has the 
 insight of Swedenborg, the scholarship of Cioethe, the ambition 
 of Napoleon, and the egotism of Carlyle; with all their pro- 
 fundity and perfume, but without the conscience and skepticism 
 of the former two, or the spiritual momentum and spontaneous 
 life of the latter. He is subtile, refined, transcendent, and auda- 
 cious. He is ideal; he belongs to no school, either in religion, 
 or philosophy, or poetry; he lives on perfumes in the realm of 
 the beautiful, and never troubles himself about the resurrection 
 of the dead — a mystic seer, a devoted Druid, a literary scholar, 
 a cultivated saint. 
 
 The doctrine of development and spontaneous generation, 
 which has been so completely exploded and renounced by 
 science, still remains popular in literature. It is the doctrine 
 of the newspaper, the magazine, and the novel. It colors our 
 poetry, and corrupts our pulpits. Depravity is regarded only as 
 a dogma of the church; sin only a negation; virtue only devel- 
 oped vice; hence, man needs nothing but culture. 
 
 As well might the scientific theory propose to convert a 
 crystal of quartz into a human conscience, or develop an atom 
 into an angel, as for the literary theory to teach that degenerate 
 man may become regenerate man by human culture. 
 
 THE (SHI^ISTIAN THBOf^Y, 
 
 The church must give some better reason for the Christian 
 college than denominational pride or religious bigotry. We 
 must have a sufficient reason, or an immense amount of impu-
 
 -^ % 
 
 IHE CHRISl'IAN COLLEGE. 
 
 k 
 
 dence or stupidity, to ask an intelligent people to erect buildings 
 and endow professorships and found libraries in the presence of 
 the vast facilities the State has furnished. 
 
 We must have an intelligent faith as a fountain of 
 energy, resting on moral obligation as the motive power, to 
 awaken sympathy, inspire enthusiasm, and create a base of sup- 
 l)lies for an enterprise of so grand proportions. 
 
 To the question, "Why not hand over all the denomina- 
 tional schools to the State ? " the fallacy is exposed by asking 
 the same question from another standpoint : Why not the State 
 hand over all her schools to the church ? 
 
 The answer is as broad, as intelligent, and as American, as 
 the question. It is as great a presumption and strain of author- 
 ity for the State to assume to educate all the people as it is for 
 the church. Facts show that the intelligence of the people is on 
 the side of the church schools. Out of forty-five thousand col- 
 lege students, the State, with better appliances and more costly 
 buildings, is educating only six thousand. 
 
 There are immense reservoirs of power in society that can- 
 not be controlled by taxation or satisfied with massive buildings 
 and magnificent machinery as substitutes for moral development. 
 
 The State school is based upon the rights and duties of 
 man as a citizen. 
 
 The argument by which this proposition is maintained is a 
 fallacy of false assumption, and is made to rest on three false 
 postulates — false, because they contain but half the truth ; and 
 hence the gravest and best hidden error is cunningly substituted 
 for the most important truth. 
 
 First — The free State depends upon the intelligence of the cit- 
 izen ; yes, but not on intelligence alone. All the history of past 
 civilizations proves that the citizen is not free in the ratio of his 
 intelligence. The men of Athens were both scholars and slaves, 
 'i'he cup of Harpalus contains both the answer to the fallacy and a 
 lesson for the modern State. Demosthenes and Despotism may be
 
 ^ 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 twin brothers — may live togetheragain in modern civilization. This 
 land of free schools may reach an Augustan age of State degradation. 
 
 The doctrine of the Father of our Country and the fathers 
 of our schools was, that virtue and morality are more important 
 to the citizen than mere intelligence. Washington said, in his 
 last message to the nation, that "reason and experience both 
 forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclu- 
 sion of religious principles." This doctrine has been refined by 
 modern theorizers until now, in less than a century, the public 
 school system is made to depend on the prohibition of all relig- 
 ious teaching and the rejection of the Holy Scriptures — the 
 only basis of morality acknowledged by the civilized world. 
 
 Second — -It is the duty of the State to educate all who ex- 
 ercise the rights of citizenship. 
 
 If it be anti-rei)ublican for the church to educate or seek 
 to control the education of the citizen, is it not preposterous for 
 the State to assume such a prerogative ? No government, how- 
 ever civilized, can be entrusted to control and enforce the edu- 
 cation of her citizens. There must be checks both upon church 
 and state. The doctrine that any State system shall ever be- 
 come constitution law is both anti-republican and dangerous 
 to the liberties that have been purchased at so priceless cost. 
 
 Third — All schools should be supported by a property tax, 
 and be free to all. 
 
 This is an error and a wrong which has thus far been borne 
 by the people because it is so well covered up by the fallacy, 
 " free to all." The great majority of the citizens of this coun- 
 try are excluded from her own schools by the defects of our 
 system. Our godless schools bar their doors from the best 
 portion of her citizens. They prefer to pay their taxes to the 
 State and make private provision for their children rather than 
 avail themselves of our "free schools." 
 
 Our high schools and State universities are a waste of the 
 money of a free people — taxation without representation. 
 
 %
 
 ^ % 
 
 THK CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 State schools are on too narrow a gauge to attempt to edu- 
 cate the American jjeople. After more than half a century of 
 experience, with all the advantage of the most enthusiastic co- 
 operation of all the Protestant religious denominations, and the 
 most immense expenditure of money, and the use of appliances 
 of every sort, the most intelligent and devoted citizens are 
 more dissatisfied than ever before ; the demand is for reform 
 and reconstruction. 
 
 The leading educators of the nation are compelled to ad- 
 vocate the anti-republican doctrine that every free State system 
 of education must be compulsory. But this doctrine, where it 
 has become a law, is a dead letter. The free State cannot en- 
 force any doctrine opposed to the instincts and religious senti- 
 ments of an intelligent people. Building upon a false premise, 
 time will reveal the error and force the argument to its logical 
 results. The public school sjstem, based only on the intelli- 
 gence of the people, after years of faithful trial, has at last been 
 driven to the bold but logical conclusion now adopted by the 
 leading educators of this country, and indorsed by many good 
 but illogical minds— that "every free, compulsory system must 
 be secular r 
 
 This conclusion, though logical, is obnoxious to many of 
 our best citizens, and to all good people who are compelled, by 
 poverty, to educate their children in the " free schools." It is 
 out of harmony with the highest civilization, and anti-republic- 
 an. Had secular, compulsory education been made the basis 
 of our school system in the beginning, it would not have found 
 a response in the heart of the people — it would have failed. It 
 is a European thought grafted into an American institution, 
 and will produce more and more friction as the years move on. 
 The citizen must be moral or the State must die. 
 
 Culture, in every age, must include conscience, or the 
 people will go back to paganism, and the State sink to degrada- 
 tion and die. 
 
 K
 
 ^" 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COI.LF.GK. 
 
 /«!. 
 
 The college claims to be the fountain of knowledge, both 
 past and present; the condensation of the scholarship, culture, 
 and ex|)erience of all the past centuries. It presumes to be the 
 only institution with authority to confer literary degrees and 
 scholastic honors. It is the great conservator of the best inter- 
 ests of humanity ; the expounder of principles that bind the 
 centuries together. It must give shape to mind, and mold the 
 thought of every age. If it be the fountain, it must be higher up 
 in the hills than the people whom it presumes to supply. If it 
 retain its dignity or maintain its authority, like Jupiter, it must 
 live on Olympus, in the pure empyrean, and not be corrupted 
 by the spirit of the age. 
 
 We live in a lop-sided age ; hence the tendency to a lop- 
 sided culture and a lop-sided college. The secular and scientific 
 spirit seeks to change the curricidi/m, and rob it of its moral 
 power. That which menaces the State, the church, and the 
 college, is the commercial spirit of the century. It consumes 
 the best energies, deforms the mind, secularizes the soul. The 
 best brain is employed by the great corporations, and leaves the 
 second-rate mind for the church and college. We are import- 
 ing our clergy and college presidents as we do our carpets. 
 England, Scotland, Canada and Ireland are filling our highest 
 places as presidents of our leading colleges and pastors of metro- 
 politan churches. 
 
 Ethics occupies the least space in our colleges, and among 
 the best thinkers it seems to get but little attention. 
 
 The time spent in natural science, language and mathe- 
 matics, compared with that devoted to moral science, is an 
 indication of the place conscience occupies in the college 
 course. We have journals published periodically in the 
 interests of speculative science, summer schools of metaphys- 
 ics ; but no prominence is given anywhere to Christian ethics. 
 Hence the antagonisms in society: depraved impulses, giving 
 birth to mobs, apologizing for crime, moralizing on suicide, 
 and legalizing intemperance, licentiousness and divorce.
 
 }g yc 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 The Christian college must lead in this reform, or ruin will 
 overtake the State 
 
 We must no longer apologize for teaching the cardinal doc- 
 trines of Christianity in the recitations and in the college lect- 
 ures. 
 
 The Christian theory of human culture is the only complete 
 one. The world never had a complete Master till .Jesus came ; 
 nor was a correct theory possible without a comprehensive 
 anthropology. He who__niade man could alone give an 
 analysis of his nature and provide for his development. 
 
 Man is the image of God— a trinity in unity ; he has an 
 animal, intellectual and moral nature ; a mind, a heart, a con- 
 science. These cannot be divorced without deformity to each 
 and loss to the whole. Again, the normal man of this age is 
 an ideal man — a product of the theories of the ages; he is not 
 the man that matriculates in our colleges; in the schoolroom, 
 we have to deal with depraved beings, moral weaklings; in our 
 college classes, all need both moral restraints and moral helps. 
 
 Sin and grace are essential factors in every system of 
 human culture. Moral life is necessary to the highest intel- 
 lectual development. Moral training is first in the order of 
 importance, and first in the order of time — "The fear of the 
 Lord is the hegi>ifiing of wisdom." The chair of Moral Science 
 is the highest demand of the modern college ; its work should 
 begin with the preparatory school, and continue through every 
 term in the entire course — a system of ethics based on personal 
 obligation to God, embracing the doctrine of sin and grace; for 
 without personal obligation to a Personal Being there can be no 
 true ethical system. 
 
 That which is built on utility or poetic aspiration is with- 
 out authority, and absurd. Morals can only be taught from a 
 Christian standpoint, and our colleges must cease to apologize 
 for religious instruction. 
 
 God is the center, circumference and native stimulus to 
 
 % ^
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 all healthy thought. Religion and its sublime problems have 
 ever absorbed the attention of the best minds of the race. 
 
 Man must feed on the great truths of religion in order to 
 reach the highest intellectual attainment. The surrender of 
 self to the demands of one's own spirit is the genesis of all 
 pure, exalted thinking; the birth-throe of profoundest thought. 
 It gives energy, tone and sublimity to the sensibilities; it widens 
 the base of the understanding, increases the mental range, 
 equips the imagination, so that all height and depth, the past 
 and present, the future and the infinite, are brought within the 
 field of human exploration. 
 
 Were it possible to subtract from the field of thought all 
 questions of duty and destiny, there would not remain enough 
 of mental stimulus to make an average man, out of the best 
 brain, with all the books, buildings and appliances the age could 
 furnish. 
 
 Religious problems cannot be banished from the college 
 curriculum. They cannot be excluded. They must be solved. 
 They are interwoven with the daily recitations, the experiments 
 in the laboratory, and the lectures from the rostrum. 
 
 The Scientific Theory proposes to deal only with facts and 
 phenomena. Well, is Christ not a fact ? is Christianity not a 
 phenomenon ? What must the college do with them ? It is 
 compelled to give some intelligent solution ; some satisfactory 
 classification of the problems of Christianity, or close its doors. 
 Mind was never more wide-awake ; it is pushing its inquiries to the 
 very verge of thought. The soul, once awakened, must have help. 
 The thought of God, duty and destiny once entertained, the 
 sound mind will never cease to vibrate between Christianity 
 and skepticism till it has found rest in some satisfactory solution. 
 It will attempt to explore heaven and fathom hell without license 
 from church or state ; hence, it is impossible to teach anything 
 in the modern college without teaching some theory about God 
 and human duty.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 Every professor in every chair in the colleges of this age is 
 a professor of theology. Every professor preaches, with or with- 
 out license or ordination. More theological problems are dis- 
 cussed in the college than in the average pulpit, and every 
 student receives a religious bias. Every college that proclaims 
 that it does not meddle with questions of religion is a fraud — 
 a species of cowardice and dishonesty that ought to be exposed. 
 
 The professor of science may endeavor to limit all discus- 
 sion to what a])pears in the field of the telescope, or the focus 
 of the microscope, or the residuum of the evaporating dish. He 
 may talk of atoms and molecules, protoplasm and transmuta- 
 tion, forces and affinities; but the awakened soul is not satisfied 
 to feed on dictionaries. It asks: Can matter be endowed with 
 living force? or does Christ uphold all things by the word of 
 his power? 
 
 The question must be answered, and the answer depends 
 on the man in the chair. 
 
 'i'he professor of literature has a gallery of gods, a pantheon 
 of geniuses, heroes, and demi-gods, and divine men; but has 
 no place for the greatest phenomenon in the history of the race — 
 no place for him who is "the fullness of the Godhead bodily." 
 
 The college of the incoming century must classify Jesus, 
 and find some place and satisfactory exposition for the great 
 facts and phenomena of Christianity, or cease to talk of scien- 
 tific methods, or surrender its charter. 
 
 Conscience, under the restraint and culture of Christian 
 ethics, is the great want of the age and the race ; it is the great 
 want of the age. We must not attempt to put brakes on the 
 business spirit of the age; the commerce of to-day is the growth 
 of all the centuries, and the legitimate outgrowth of the dis- 
 coveries of this age. It cannot be crushed; it must not be dis- 
 couraged. We must rather bring up the slow, depraved side of 
 humanity; religion must give direction to our culture, and con- 
 science guide the affairs of commerce. Morals must be the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 great factor in the education of the people. This is the Amer- 
 ican idea of the citizen. Virtue is more important than mere 
 intelligence. We need science to create more bread, cheaj)er 
 and better clothes, and more convenient and beautiful homes; 
 we need machinery and corporations to save labor and time, 
 that the race may be lifted up. But morality must balance the 
 spirit of the age, or depravity, like dynamite, may blow the 
 nation to atoms. It is the power back of intellect that stimu; 
 lates thought, checks the passions, corrects the judgment, modi- 
 fies the sensibilities, governs the will, and tips the scales in the 
 emergencies of life, and gives character to the citizen. 
 
 It is the great want of the race. It is the highest fountain 
 of energy. The clock clogs by the accumulations of dust ; it 
 must be cleaned and oiled, in order to keep time. The heart not 
 under the control of conscience, like the California Geysers, 
 sends forth streams hot and sulphurous, that poison the atmos- 
 phere and kill the grass, and fade the flowers on the hillsides. 
 Under the power of a healthy conscience the soul moves for- 
 ward and upward with a sublime energy. The movement is 
 spontaneous, heaven-born. As the eagle is not fettered by his 
 ignorance of the analysis of the laws of aerial navigation, but 
 makes his mathematical curves and attains his highest altitude 
 by a fresh-born instinct, so consecrated genius has never de- 
 pended on scholastic gamuts for its highest notes. The highest 
 attainments made in the history of the race have been made by 
 mind under the supreme control of conscience. The grandest 
 discoveries, the most useful inventions, the most exalted crea- 
 tions, the tumultuous rapture that has thrilled the ages, the souls 
 that have poured forth their treasures in richest rhythm, are 
 those who have moved under the power of a cultivated con- 
 science. 
 
 True science is the product of the love of knowledge. Im- 
 mortal literature must be born out of a supreme love of the 
 beautiful. The beautiful in the forms of sense must have a
 
 Si 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 higher origin than human imagination. It must not only be "the 
 splendor of the true" — the ideal of Plato— but the splendor of 
 the Truth. 
 
 If there is nothing back of beauty — no personal, eternal 
 ideal; if there is no morality in art, then is there no real inspira- 
 tion. The great world-poets belong to the school of conscience 
 of necessity. They live in the realm of broader thought and 
 higher sentiment ; have greater powers of intuition, more subtile- 
 ness, keener analysis, more spirituality. The most exalted genius 
 has ever lingered about the great problems of being, duty, and 
 destiny. Here, in this realm of angels and personal presence, they 
 must ever remain. The college and the church can never be di- 
 vorced, but at the expense of the forward movement of the race. 
 The college halls are next in importance to our church altars. 
 All beyond the conversion of the soul and its spiritual growth 
 that man needs is education — complete, symmetrical devel- 
 opment. 
 
 The work contemplated in the elevation of the race is the 
 renewal of a depraved nature and the development of fallen, fee- 
 ble faculties. Any system that makes no provision for the doc- 
 trines of sin and grace can never succeed in meeting the wants of 
 men. The Christian College is as old as the church, and essen- 
 tial to its existence and growth. The colleges at Jerusalem, 
 Tarsus, Alexandria, Antioch, Rome and Caesarea were the out- 
 growth and helpmeets of the church. The reformation began 
 in the college, and here our Methodism found both a birth-place 
 and a cradle. 
 
 The college of the future needs a new text-book and a new 
 chair. Christianity is both a science and a literature as well as 
 a religion. Its history is full of facts, wonderful phenomena, 
 and most remarkable achievements. It has exerted the greatest 
 influence on civilization, moral reforms, and the speculative 
 thought of the centuries. Jesus is the greatest fact in the his-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 tory of the race. This scientific age must find a place for these 
 facts and phenomena, or confess its impotency. 
 
 We have authority for teaching Christianity in the great 
 commission. Go preach and teach, is the divine plan in the 
 divine order. 
 
 Physical science should have a large space in the college 
 curriculum. It should be studied not less, but more; but studied 
 from a new standpoint, and from a higher motive. Analysis 
 and classification is the chief aim of modern science; secular 
 advantage the great motive. But nature, like its Author, lies 
 beyond the realm of pure reason; beyond the limits of the 
 purely scientific^ secular soul. It shrinks from the gaze of the 
 microscope, and can only be seen through a glass darkly. It 
 rebels at being .pounded in a mortar; it escapes from the fires 
 of the crucible unseen, like the angel of Manoah, without utter- 
 ing a word or revealing its great secrets. 
 
 Nature has no free school, no complimentary tickets; 
 heaven confers no honors till fairly won. He that would hear 
 the concerts of the woods, drink in the beauties of the landscape, 
 and feed on flowers, must live like Prospero in the enchanted 
 Isle of Harmony; must hunger and thirst; hear with the heart 
 and see with the soul. Nature is not mere material atoms bound 
 together by molecular attraction; it has its ethical side. Its 
 great secrets are revealed only to the highest motive and by the 
 most subtile laws of spirit. The highest knowledge comes 
 through contemplation, rather than reflection. There is a logic 
 of the soul that must find a place in the college of the future 
 centuries. 
 
 The sacred literature of Christianity contains the grandest 
 truths, the most matchless forms of expression, and the only true 
 philosophy of language. 
 
 Truth is transcendent, ineffable. It cannot be defined nor 
 expressed in propositions or by diagrams. The highest truth 
 must be incarnated to be understood by mortals ; must be real- 
 
 293485
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 ized by the human soul. Next to the study of Jesus' life — which 
 is a living drama, a moral epic — is the study of his language. 
 His language is the perfect expression of a perfect mind. It 
 consists of words and their correlation or arrangement. 
 
 His words are physical pictures of thought. His rhythm 
 is the expression of the emotion of his soul. He takes his 
 vocabulary, paradigms, and metaphors from nature — the original 
 te.xt-book on rhetoric, containing the sum of all language, the 
 complete grammar of God, the key to all human expression. 
 Proverb and paradox, parable and poem, are the divine forms of 
 expression. Jesus found Palestine full of ethics and theology. 
 It was the the transcript of his own mind — a stereotyped edition 
 for all time. 
 
 A chair of sacred rhetoric, where Moses, and the prophets, 
 and the Psalms, and the methods of Jesus are taught, and the 
 the philosophy of language is studied from these old text-books, 
 is essential to the highest literary and Christian culture — essen- 
 tial to a profound and correct interpretation of the Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
 Christianity has a sacred literature unecjualed in its wealth 
 of thought and models of expression. If the highest culture 
 demands the study of the models of the Greek and Latin mas- 
 ters and the philosophic methods of Plato and Aristotle, how 
 can we neglect the manner and methods of Jesus, or the style 
 and charming rhetoric of the prophets and evangelists ? 
 
 We need a text-book on the methods of thought and the style 
 of expression of Jesus, who is the prince of philosophers and 
 rhetoricians — a text-book that will classify the facts of Christian- 
 ity, bring to the front the sublimest literature and a true anthro- 
 pology; the doctrines of depravity and sin; grace and salvation, 
 and the helps of the Holy Spirit — the only basis upon which 
 a correct and symmetrical culture is possible. 
 
 The college of the coming century must be broader, more 
 scientific, more religious, and more closely wedded to the 
 
 2?,
 
 THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 
 
 church. The stabiHty of the state, the purity and power of the 
 church, and the elevation of the race, will depend more on the 
 Christian College in the future than ever before. It must be 
 endowed, and ought to be made as free as the church. The 
 church has the wealth, and the tendency is in this direction. 
 Sixty-one million five hundred thousand dollars, the free-will 
 offerings of Christian men to Christian schools in the last ten 
 years, are both prophecy and prelude that a system of Christian 
 education shall be established in California that shall be a 
 monument to the Christian men of this age and a rich inherit- 
 ance to the unborn generations. 
 
 Christian men of California: You live in a commercial 
 age; its spirit is developing your latent energies. Let it not 
 absorb your noblest powers, or color your highest life. Let 
 your beneficence be on the same scale with your secular suc- 
 cess. Put the church and the Christian College on the same 
 plane, at least, with the hotels and warehouses, railroad palaces 
 and princely homes of the money kings. 
 
 Heaven has provided only for the divine renewal of the 
 human soul; the work of providing for the complete culture of 
 the race is left to be done by the renewed man. 
 
 May Heaven not be disappointed in the Christian men of 
 California !
 
 \
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
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 1978 
 
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