USA > Ohio > Delaware County > Delaware > Fifty years of history of the Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio : 1844-1894 > Part 15
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
Two thousand two hundred graduates have passed from its halls bearing its honored parchment, while probably 20,000 students have for a longer or a shorter period felt its molding touch. To tell what this army of men and women, march- ing with brave hearts and noble purposes to the world's work and the world's battle, have done, would be a task like that of calculating the influence of the sun upon the earth. Suf- fice it to say, that humanity has been so greatly enriched by the direct products of this institution of learning that could you by some fell stroke eliminate all its work and quench all its light, the wide world would feel the darkness and im- poverishment. This college has been singularly successful in helping to make men ;- manly men and womanly women. Men and women in whom highest culture has been crowned with highest character, and whose lives have been devoted to useful service. Men and women who have made Society, the Church and the State, better by their salutary influence. We proudly place its 2,200 graduates beside an equal num- ber from any other college in the land. It is doubtless the highest glory of this institution that for fifty years it has been pre-eminently a religious college. Its all pervasive and ever-continuing religious spirit, its oft-repeated and phe- nomenal religious revivals, beyond all question constitute the brightest gem that sparkles in the coronet of this Chris-
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tian College. Genuine scholarship has always been at a premium, and graduates of high scholastic attainments have from the first gone forth from its halls into all the honorable vocations of life, while through its entire history the large proportion of ministers which have received their training here has been a marked feature; and it is not a little grati- fying to recall the fact that in the proportion of its male graduates who are intending to enter the Christian ministry, it still leads the colleges of Methodism and the colleges of the land, thirty-five per cent. of the gentlemen of the class of '93 having the ministry in view. If all the money ever expended by American Methodism produced no greater re- sults than are seen in this institution, it would be a hundred fold reward.
WHY MAINTAIN DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES.
If the question should be asked, " Why in our time should the Christian Church support its own colleges ?" the answer may be promptly and emphatically given ; because the higli- est interests of the individual and of the nation and of the Church demand the maintenance of such colleges. Because the Christian Church cannot fulfill its mission without the use of this right arm of power, the Christian College. Never was the Christian College more imperatively demanded than to-day.
The highest interests of the individual demand it.
What is the chief aim in all true higher education? To make the mathematician, the biologist, the linguist ? Rather to make the man; the man prepared for complete living, the symmetrical man, the ideal man. And where shall we find the true standard of ideal manhood ? To that question there is but one answer. God's ideal of a man is given us in Jesus of Nazareth. The nearer we approach to this
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matchless standard, the nearer perfection shall we attain. Need we add that the institution of learning that pays hom- age to this lofty ideal, that enthrones this incomparable Teacher and conducts all its educational work under His supremacy and in accordance with the principles of His Kingdom, will do the noblest work, will produce the loftiest types of character. Amid so much that is confusing and misleading in our modern education, there is need that the Christian College should speak with the prophet's voice to the youth of our land, and in all the work of character build- ing should repeat with emphasis the words of inspiration, "See that thou make all things according to the pattern shown thee in the mount." Some voices are now being heard speaking with an emphasis that it is refreshing to hear. Recently an educator and social leader who is rapidly coming to the front, has affirmed, "The worth or permanence of any man's life is just according to the measure of the Christ- life he receives. Character, individual, social, or political, without Christ, is a vain and destructive imagination. There is no genuine morality that is not the output of the ingrowing Christ-life. Self-righteousness is atheism in the soul, in the market, in the Church, in the State." If this be true, and who dares challenge its truth, it is quite time that this supreme truth were proclaimed with even more courage than has marked the utterances of the Church in previous years ; and being proclaimed, it smite with destructive hand all Christless systems of education. There is no more de- lusive teaching of modern times than that which holds a man educated whose best and noblest nature is left an un- cultivated waste. As well claim that the brutal champions of the prize ring are educated because their muscles have been so trained that they can beat and pommel each other with fearful force. So may a man's mental nature be trained
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to no higher purposes, and practically with no higher results. We want colleges that will produce not a Sullivan in physique, nor a Mephistopheles in intellect, nor a Lilliputian in faith and morals, but manly, Christian men.
Since, then, symmetrical character and high manhood are the prime object of all genuine education, it is of prime im- portance to every individual, whatever may be his intended vocation, that he secure his education in an institution of learning in which these high ideals are dominant. It is certain that one's education, its quality and its value, will be largely determined by his Christian principles and by his environment. His very conception of culture is thus deter- mined as well as all its processes, its aims and its ends. With the right conception of education at the start, a con- ception that seeks a preparation for life in order to compass life's highest end, unselfish living, the student seeks a cul- ture that is genuine and deep and abiding rather than the superficial and the ephemeral. He has then from the be- ginning the immense benefit of high aims, high ideals, high inspirations, and a favoring environment, that seldom fail in producing best results. A man lacking these high moral and manly qualities lacks the crown of manhood, lacks gen- uine greatness. John Stuart Blackie, the sturdy, genial old Scotchman, says, "A great genius is not necessarily a great inan. He may be a Beethoven in the lordship of sweet sounds, a Raphael in the cunning handling of brush and pencil, a Napoleon in the well-ordered sweep of ambitious war, but not therefore a great man. Jove is not Jove merely as a strong launcher of the thunderbolt, but as the asserter of justice, the avenger of perjury and the protector of inno- cence." That is the kind of man which the times demand. It is the kind of man which all our institutions should seek to produce. It is, however, let us sadly confess, a question
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of great seriousness whether a certain class of colleges, not difficult to name, are to-day graduating from their halls a very large proportion of men of that type, men who possess genuine scholarship and genuine manhood built after the Christian pattern. There is pre-eminent need of the Chris- tian College to give the world the type of men it sadly needs -men who are not content to leave Society as they find it, but carry it forward to nobler issues and higher attainments. Herbert Spencer says, " By no political alchemy can you get golden conduct from leaden instincts." No, by some pro- cess, the "leaden instincts " must be made golden. But how ? By no alchemy that science can command; only by that higher alchemy with which the Christian teacher is quite familiar, the alchemy of the new birth. And the teacher or the school that ignores that higher alchemy of Heaven, will toil away hopelessly at the impossible task of trying to make "leaden instincts " produce "golden conduct."
THE NATION.
The Christian College is necessary to the nation's perpetu- ity and safety. National prosperity and honor are all in- volved in the maintenance of thoroughly Christian institu- tions of learning. Goethe said, "The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinions of the young men who are under twenty-five years of age." If this be even approximately true of its young men in general, it is a hundred-fold more true of its young men who are gathered within college and university halls. Would you cast the horoscope of Europe? Make careful analysis of its univer- sities, the Sorbonne, Berlin, Oxford.
And nowhere else is the connection between the college and the State so close, so direct and so vital as in our own Re- public. Republican institutions are unquestionably glorious,
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but unquestionably perilous. No other institutions feel the touch of youthful hands so quickly and respond to that touch so readily. Believing as we do and must in the Divine Book, we must also firmly hold that no nation can permanently stand the stress of years that is not upheld by the pillars of righteousness. And to keep those pillars firm and erect requires the strong hand of Christian statesmen. And Christian statesmen, for the most part, are the product of the Christian College. Few perils of our nation are greater than the greed of power ; partisanship runs mad in its wild, unprincipled race for power. The statesman asks what the nation needs, and seeks to provide for it. The demagogue asks how he can lift his petty self to position, or place his party, right or wrong, in the seat of power. But what makes statesmen ? High and righteous principle applied to the character build- ing from the cradle through the university ; education con- ducted with unwavering fidelity to the development of the whole being ; symmetrical education that would as soon neg- lect the mind in any other of its varied functions as the con- science, which is the regal power of the mind. Banish from our colleges religious teaching, and they will quickly become nurseries of socialism and anarchy, as many universities of Europe can emphatically testify. Nor can we deny that our own system of government presents special temptations to the ambitious young man. Political preferment is easily within reach, and naturally sought. The young men of America need all the restraints of a stalwart Christian faith, all the helps of a firm disciplinary regime, and all the accessories of healthful environment, to protect them from the insidious influence of an unworthy ambition, and to hold them to the steady path of the statesman, rather than leave them to tread the perilous ways of the demagogue.
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The next fifty or even twenty-five years in our nation's history will be critical years. It must be wisely and firmly held to its Christian traditions and its practical Christian character. The seeds of political atheism have been too widely sown, and we cannot deny that their poisonous fruit is beginning to appear. It ought not to be possible, it must not remain possible, for a senator unrebuked to repeat a piti- able piece of recent history and declare that the application of Christian principles to politics, such principles as are taught in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, is an "iridescent dream." It ought not to be possi- ble for a man in our national Congress to utter such words as have startled the ears of the nation within the last few months, when a representative of a Christian commonwealth affirmed that bodies of Christian people have no right of pe- tition to our national Congress, with the plain implication that they should attend to their own peculiar business, what- ever that may be, and leave the grave matters that affect the State and the social interests of the people to the demna- gogues and the devil. That is a species of political atheisın that means political anarchy, and political anarchy means national destruction. It is quite time that the Christian sentiment of this Christian nation asserted itself, and relegated to deserved obscurity the men who utter such dangerous sentiments. No wild-eyed anarchist, with his uncurbed tongue, is doing half as much harm as these unprincipled men who stand inside the halls of Congress. Every interest demands that we should listen reverently to the inspired words that have not yet lost their force, "The nation and the kingdom that will not serve me shall perish." Wrong is wrong, and right is right, irrespec- tive of the foolish utterance of the partisan and the dema- gogue ; and whatever would be wrong in any Christian man,
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is equally wrong in the State. And this high doctrine of a standard of righteousness applicable alike to men and to states, to individuals, to corporations, and to nations, must be faithfully applied. It needs no argument to show that this class of men who will be of real service to the nation will come almost entirely from the Christian College. Noth- ing is so much needed in our country as to enthrone con- science and intelligence in the high seats of power and influ- ence. Conscience and intelligence in the President's chair, in the Senate Chamber, in the National House of Represent- atives, in magisterial and legislative seats, in every com- monwealth of the Union; and nowhere else is it more needed than in that most potent agency of our times, the daily press. The Christian College never had so great a work to do ; never was demanded by such imperative voices as now summon it to the work of training a class of consci- entious and cultured men, who, rising above self-interest and party preferinent, will march forward as leaders of a con- quering host, whose watchword and battle cry shall be, “ For God and native land."
" The riches of the commonwealth Are free, strong minds and hearts of health ; And better far than gold and grain, The cunning hand, the cultured brain."
THE CHURCH.
The interests of the Church demand the Christian College as never before. Never did the task set before the Church so imperatively require the highest culture, combined with Christly love. With the increasing complexity of our civili- zation comes increased difficulty in attaining success in any vocation in life. Nor must the Church expect that in any of her varied fields of endeavor she can win success without reaching the high standard of requirements demanded in
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other fields. The pulpit is still a throne of power, but it is a throne which the weak man will occupy at his peril and the peril of the Church he represents. A throne of power indeed, but only for a man of power. For while strength was never so potent, weakness was never so puerile. The great problem before all Christian denominations to-day is the problem of demand and supply; the demand for the right kind of ministers and missionaries and Christian leaders far exceeding the supply. There is and there will be no substi- tute for the Christian College in yielding this much-needed supply. Methodism is rich in its resources, rich in its mag- nificent armies of young men and women that have in them the possibilities of high service to the Church. It must not fail to see that these thousands of aspiring youth find their way to its highest institutions of learning ; nor must it fail to provide such institutions, unsurpassed for excellence by any in the land. The greatest Church in Christendom de- mands the greatest and best-equipped army in Christendom ; and that necessitates the noblest and best endowed institu- tions of learning in Christendom. Methodism will be dere- lict to its duty if it does not provide, nor linger long in mak- ing the provision, the needed millions to put upon a firm foundation our struggling colleges and universities.
Never before has there been such expansion of views, such breadth of aims in the Christian Church as to-day. A new era is dawning. Glorious as the past has been, still more glorious will be the future. All signs point to a coming conflict in which the Church is to bear aloft her banners and lead to greater victories than have marked her history in the past. Society is not only feeling the pulsations of evolution, but is in the very throes of revolution. The air is tremulous with the gathering forces. Everywhere there is unrest, dis- content and strife. Nothing is more apparent than the fu-
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tility of all other agencies and organizations to adjust the re- lations between man and man, to place Society upon a firmn because a righteous basis, and to lead its contending forces to higher and better uses. Plainly, the Church of Christ is Society's true and only Savior. And there is no aspect of our times that bears the stamp of God's providence upon it as does the great awakening which is evidently coming to the Church of Christ respecting its duty to Society. Pro- phetic voices, touched with Divine fire, are calling to the Church to move forward to the salvation of Society as it has never yet undertaken to do. Far be it from me to chide or criminate the Church for what she has not done in the past, or has done so imperfectly. Enough to say that times change and wider prospects open to the advancing Church ; new op- portunities are presented, new duties summon her to what she has not hitherto undertaken. The duty of the hour is to marshal her forces, to unify and mass them, and to under- take by direct efforts the mighty task of overthrowing iniq- uity, organized, legalized, respectably patronized, buttressed and supported by whatever prop of respectability or law or custom, and to make Society thoroughly Christian in all its organizations and forms. That the Church will undertake this sublime work, that it will succeed in it beyond what the most hopeful prophet dares to foretell, I cherish no doubt.
I foresee a future for the Church of Christ big with prom- ise, glorious in its unequalled victories. And this new era, sure to come, may already be dawning, and hurrying our waiting feet forward to its tremendous issues calls for dis- tinguished leadership. The one imperative, comprehensive demand of the Christian Church to-day is high, inspiring, commanding leadership. Give to the Church of Christ in Christian America that leadership to-day, and 110 forces of evil can stand before it. And where shall we look for such
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leadership but to the Christian College? Not colleges that question the wisdom and greatness of Moses, but that magnify his statesmanship and sound in the ears of the coming lead- ers of these marshaling forces the Commandments of God written by Moses on the tables of stone amid Sinaitic thun- ders. Not colleges that insinuate skeptical questionings as to the truth of Christianity, but colleges that enthrone Christ and hail him as the world's great deliverer. Colleges that emphasize and teach applied Christianity that has the Sermon on the Mount for its supreme, practical guide ; that do not deem that incomparable charter of the Church an impracticable, ideal dream, but a veritable constitution, by which the Church, the State and Society are to be governed, and through which the Kingdom of Heaven is to be set up on earth. Colleges that, while free from bigotry and sectari- anism, as the Church must and will be free, will make no apology for lifting high the Cross of Calvary and pointing the thousands of them that flock to their halls to that su- premne symbol of power while they teach with an emphasis that cannot be misunderstood the never-to-be-forgotten le- gend, "By this sign conquer!" Colleges that hold the body of students kindly but firmly up to this high standard of Christian manliness and Christian purity, that will not toler- ate any practice, however innocent in name, or respectable in precedent, that is inconsistent with the teachings of the manly Christ. And this means that the college itself inust be thoroughly and uncompromisingly Christian; not half Christian and half pagan. And this type of a Christian Col- lege alone will meet the stress of the twentieth century. If a denominational college is not Christian through and through, and cannot present better products of character, better specimens of its work than schools that make no claim to Christianity, the raison d'etre, the right of existence for
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such a college has ceased. And in these new and stirring times that are just before us, when the trumpet of God is sounding among men as never before, and prophetic voices are calling the Church to a higher service and to greater victories, no man, no Church, no institution, no State, can bear the stamp of Christianity that is not in very truth, and in the eyes of men, actually and practically following the Lord Jesus Christ. Following Him in the surrender of per- sonal ease and will, and in consecration to the high service of manhood; following Him by putting into concrete form in daily deed the Sermon on the Mount.
In Gov. Mckinley's address, delivered upon the platform a year ago, he related an instance connected, I think, with the battle of Cedar Mountain, where a part of the brigade had gotten quite in advance of their comrades in a seeming- ly perilous position, and the Division Commander, seeing the situation, commanded that the colors should be brought back. The Brigade Commander, with better knowledge of the real condition of affairs, and unwilling to beat a retreat, called out in tones that thrilled the hearts of the men, " Bring the men up to the colors!" The man who uttered those memorable words was once President of the United States, three times Governor of the State of Ohio, and- honor equal to that of any other position-a trustee of Ohio Wesleyan University. That man was Rutherford B. Hayes. The Ohio Wesleyan University has carried its colors with courage and hope to the most advanced position held by any American college. We can, by no means, beat a retreat. Turning to the millions of Methodist people in this great country, and to the two hundred and fifty thousand Method- ists in the great State of Ohio, to-day she sends out her ringing appeal, " Bring the men up to the colors !"
Nineteen years ago this very commencement season, I was
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elected President of the Ohio Wesleyan University. A year later I was inaugurated. The first year we had three hun- dred and twenty-three students-all men. In my dreams for its future, I started a battle cry that was echoed through- out this great central State. That battle cry was, let there be a thousand students within its halls and a million dollars within its treasury! When I resigned the Presidency of the Institution, six years ago, having held it for twelve years, I was permitted to see almost the full realization of that dream; a thousand students, minus but seventeen, were then enrolled in its student body, and a large portion of the mill- ion dollars had been fully pledged, while the remainder was in clear sight. And now I start another battle cry: long be- fore the Ohio Wesleyan University shall have accomplished its next fifty years of history and completed its full rounded century, there must be five thousand students within its halls and five millions of dollars in its treasury !
EX-GOVERNOR CHARLES FOSTER.
MR. PRESIDENT, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : As this is the Jubilee year-the Semi-Centennial of the Ohio Wes- leyan University,-it is entirely appropriate to refer to its early founders. In fact, the ceremonies will not be complete without reference to the early labors of Thomson, Merrick, McCabe, Williams, and others, who laid broad and deep the foundation stones upon which rest the magnificent, as well as beneficent, results which are now conspicuously apparent on every hand.
No other man or set of men could have been found who possessed the attributes of good sense, self-denial and fervent piety, and all the qualities necessary for a successful begin- ning of such an enterprise. While all honor and glory are due these men, we must not forget that behind them was an
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organization just then assuming gigantic proportions in the religious world, which, after all, has been the strong right arm of support, and without which it is probable that the brave efforts of the founders would have come to naught.
Here the thought suggests itself that, inasmuch as the great and powerful M. E. Church has not hesitated to con- form itself to the advancing civilization of the age, so must the management of the University also conform to the times in which we live. This, I am glad to note, she is doing.
Your President was pleased to refer to me as a tow-headed boy, whom he first knew in our school days at Norwalk, O. I think he is mistaken as to the color of my hair, but, be that as it may, I was born in Northwestern Ohio. The first preacher I ever saw or heard was a Methodist, and my only academic education was received at Norwalk, under the presidency of Dr. Thomson, whom I most affectionately remember.
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