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PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUC.
TION IN STATE UNIVERSITIES
FRANCIS W. KELSEY
*
Reprint from “Education and National Character,”
fifth annual volume of the Religious Education Associa-
º




*
º
{
***
2
THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION
IN STATE UNIVERSITIES
FRANCIS W. KELSEY
PROFESSOR UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR, MICH.
Among students of American history the truth
long since found expression, that if one wishes to see
the untrammeled outworking of our national tenden-
cies, to single out and comprehend that which is dis-
tinctly and typically American in our institutions and
usages, he must turn away from the sea-board states,
which were influenced in their development by the
circumstances of their founding and by their inter-
course with countries beyond the sea, and fix his
attention upon the states of the Middle West which,
carved out of the Northwest territory and the Louisi-
ana purchase, have had a development more free
from the influence of local traditions and from external
pressure.
In no department is the manifestation of this
truth more clear than in that of education. Both the
primary school, the secondary school and the college
Originated in the sea-board states; but in the Middle
West the public high school was first developed as a
distinct and characteristic educational type. In New
England, and elsewhere in the East, there were already
in existence other types of institution of secondary
instruction — the academy, often endowed, and the
private school. But the public high school, being
better adjusted to our national conditions than they,
has gained upon them in competition and now dom-
inates its field in all parts of the United States; to see
how small a percentage of boys and girls of secondary
age are enrolled in other than public schools, it is only
R 92.573
2 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
necessary to glance at the Reports of the Commissioner
Of Education.* -
The development of the State University in the
Middle West presents an instructive parallel. So
far from being, as many have been pleased to consider
it, an abnormal and ephemeral variant from the
type of college and university developed in the sea-
board states, there are already indications that the
State University will in the next few generations be-
come as distinctively the dominant type in its partic-
ular domain as the high school now is in the secondary
field. This does not mean that there will not con-
tinue to be colleges and universities of private support;
such are required by the social need as independent
foundations to stimulate the state institutions by com-
petition. The founding of the University of Chicago
has been productive of unmixed good to the State
Universities in the central region, and the establish-
ment of the Stanford University is a not unimportant
factor in the development of the principal State Uni-
versity of the Pacific Coast. It does mean, how-
ever, that the State Universities as a class are so much
better adjusted both to the means of support and
to the needs of their constituencies than the institutions
whose existence is due to the spasmodic and uncertain
impulse of private generosity, that in a large number
of states the dominance of the state institution is
already assured.
*In the school year 1889–90 the total enrollment of students in secondary
schools in the United States was 297,894; of this number.202,963 were enrolled in
public high schools and 94,931, or 31.87 per cent, in schools of private support. In
1905–of the total enrollment was 824,447, of whom 722,692 were in public high
schools and I or,755, only 12.34 per cent of the entire enrollment, in private schools.
No account is here taken of the secondary students enrolled in Normal schools,
Colleges and Universities.
The number of public high schools in 1890 was 2,526; in 1906, 8,031. In the
sixteen years the number of secondary schools of private support dropped from
1,632 to 1,529, but there was a slight increase in the average number of students
enrolled in each school. The statistics are tabulated in a convenient form in the
Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1906, Vol. 2, pp. 697-698.
One phase of the secularization of secondary education is treated in. “Greek
in the High School and the supply of candidates for the Ministry” in The School
Review, November, 1908.
STATE UNIVERSITIES 3
As a type the State University may be conceived
as a well-blended composite of two elements of diverse
origin: a traditional college of English derivation,
which has become a department of arts; and special
separate faculties of the German university type
organized as departments of law, medicine, and
engineering, to which still other faculties or depart-
ments, as of dentistry, pharmacy, and agriculture, are
often added. The significance of this association of
collegiate and professional work upon the same cam-
pus lies in the fact that the State University is an
integral part of the public-school system, of which it
stands as a capstone; so far as secular education is
concerned, in a state with a fully developed system
there is no gap left for private initiative to fill, from
the beginning of elementary instruction to the end of
the professional course.
It has again and again been pointed out that rapid
as has been the increase of our institutions of higher
education in student attendance the increase of the
expense of instruction and investigation has been
much more rapid. The factors which enter into the
permanency of any institution through which society
reacts upon itself are chiefly two, economy and effi-
ciency. First, then, the economic adjustment of the
State Universities, their relation to their means of sup-
port, is much more stable than that of institutions of
private endowment. Productive securities of all
kinds vary constantly in value, and the larger the
number of millions piled up in endowment, the more
difficult it becomes for human prevision from one
generation to another not only to maintain an unvary-
ing aggregate of income, but also to prevent actual
shrinkage and loss of principal. Will the bonds and
other commercial securities locked in college vaults to-
day have their present face value fifty years from now 2
4 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
If not, who has the infallible foresight to change them
at the right moment in such a way as to avoid loss?
The wrecks of endowments scattered along the course
Of Our educational advance afford no reassuring answer.
Let us consider by contrast the foundation of a uni-
versity supported by the taxation of the common-
wealth. The tax is laid by the strong arm of authority.
The collector comes not merely to the office of the cap-
italist or to the store of the merchant; he finds his
way to the farm and the forest; he does not even pass
by the rude cottage of the widow in the outskirts of the
remote village, though she may be well-nigh spent in
the struggle for bread for her young family and there
may be hovering over her the spectre of mortgage
foreclosure. To all alike the state says “Pay, or
I will vitiate your title and seize your property.”
Nothing is sure, as the saying goes, but death and
taxes.
But, men say, a university supported by taxation
has an insecure foundation for the reason that the
next legislature may cut from under it its means of
support. I do not speak of the constitutional and
legal safeguards thrown about the State Universities;
the people who make can also unmake constitutions.
Stronger than constitutions and more fundamental
than laws are the primary motives of mankind. The
State University is sure of its support because the
burden of it, distributed over a whole commonwealth,
rests heavily upon no class and upon no individual,
therefore no one can show cause why he should not
contribute his penny; but in the second place it ap-
peals to two of the strongest motives that actuate
men, first self-interest, since it offers its advantages to
the sons and daughters of those who pay taxes, with-
out distinction of class or condition; and again, it ap-
peals to patriotism, to state pride. The farmer who
STATE UNIVERSITIES 5
at the grange meeting waxed eloquent against the
extravagance of higher education at public expense,
comes to the State University, wanders about its build-
ings, and understanding little of education but awe-
struck by its material paraphernalia, goes back home
filled with joy and pride to think that he is part owner
in something SO great, so imposing.
The State Universities are poor, as are all univer-
sities of rapid growth — they above others because
their numbers have increased with unprecedented
rapidity. In 1885 the number of students in eight
representative universities, California, Illinois, Iowa,
Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wis-
consin, was approximately 4,200; in 1895 it was
13,500; in 1905, 23,000. In the last year the total
enrollment reported in the same institutions was
nearly 27,ooo. It is difficult for any educational in-
stitution to expand so rapidly as to keep abreast of
the needs of a student body showing a five-fold increase
in twenty years.
The only fair way to estimate the financial strength
of the State Universities in comparison with other
institutions is to capitalize their income from taxation
and place this beside the endowment or productive
funds of the institutions of private support. Let us
reckon the assured and regular income from the state
as if it were four per cent interest on an unvarying
capital; when we take into account the fact that the
State University is at no expense of investment and
collection and has no losses from reinvestment or
shrinkage, a net income of four per cent affords a valid
lbasis of comparison. On this basis the assured in-
come, for example, of the University of Wisconsin
represents a capitalization, or endowment, of more
than $15,000,ooo, a sum more than eight times as great
as the sum total of the productive funds of all the
6 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
colleges and universities of private endowment in the
same state. The ratios vary in different states; but
it is unnecessary to discuss further the permanency
of the State University as an educational type in so
far, at least, as concerns its means of support.
From the administrative point of view, moreover,
the State University represents the most economical
and efficient agency of higher education yet devised
among us; for normally (there are a few exceptions)
it masses upon a single campus all the facilities of
advanced secular learning under a single administra-
tive head. Its facilities are so concentrated that easily
and promptly by differentiation it takes on additional
functions or shifts emphasis, according to the mani-
festation of the social need, without the delay and
increased cost of organizing and developing new in-
stitutions with a separate administration.
Some years ago President Pritchett adverted to
the lack of judgment shown as a rule in the location
of the State Universities in small towns rather than
at centres of population. But the founders builded
better than they knew; for as the states have grown
the State University has under such conditions been
enabled to develop a homogeneous and sympathetic
environment, unhampered and undisturbed by the
strain of life and the distractions of a great city; and
meanwhile the funds of the State Universities are made
to yield much larger results for instruction and investi-
gation on account of their location away from commer-
cial centres with increased cost of living. What are
now small towns will in many cases become like Oxford
and Cambridge when our commonwealths shall have
populations ranging from 5,000,ooo to 15,000,ooo
each, and when there shall have been a corresponding
elevation of taste and culture.
Is there any doubt that the State University is here
STATE UNIVERSITIES 7
to stay ? Those religious leaders who have essayed
to solve the varied religious problems of the country
and have persistently ignored the problem of the
State University on the supposition that this is some-
thing ephemeral and unimportant, who have in effect
said to us “You cry “Wolf’ ‘Wolf’ when there is no
wolf,” are masking themselves behind a pale of straw.
I say without exaggeration, and without fear of con-
tradiction by anyone conversant with the facts, that
the State Universities are already far the most impor–
tant factor in American higher education; and they
are only fairly started on their career of development.
In advance sheets lately issued by the office of the
Commissioner of Education, there is a tabulation of
the attendance, last year, in State Universities and
Other institutions of higher education partially sup-
ported by the state. Excluding from the list the iso-
lated agricultural colleges, and summing up the attend–
ance at the institutions of university rank,” we have a
total of more than 53,000 students. We are not con-
cerned here with the relative percentages of those en-
rolled in the departments of liberal arts and in pro-
fessional departments; since in many cases the same
preparation admits to both, the students are of much
the same degree of maturity, and they are subject to
the same influences, exposed to the same temptations.
Fifty-three thousand students in state institutions
of higher education' But do not think of them as a
mass. I have heard President Angell say, that when
our students are crowded into University Hall — it.
will now hold hardly more than half of them — when
they are crowded in and he looks into their faces rising:
tier on tier, he can think of nothing but so many
thousand locomotives, with steam up, ready to start.
* The Commissioner's list includes Cornell University, and this is.
included in our total.
8 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
Let us carry out the figure. Fifty-three thousand
locomotives, with steam up, ready to start—but upon
what track, and with what hand upon the throttle?
Since the State University is a part of the public-
school system the problem of providing religious in-
struction for its students is only a phase of the larger
problem of the adjustment of religious to secular edu-
cation. This phase, however, is differentiated from
other phases of the general problem by three partic-
ulars. The students of the State University are more
mature than those in the lower public schools; again,
being away from home, they are no longer directly
restrained by the influences of early environment; and
lastly the State University from its position of admin-
istrative independence has large freedom in determin-
ing what shall and what shall not be taught. Since
then these institutions, viewed in relation to the rest
of the public-school system, form a class by themselves,
the solution of the religious problem for them can be
reached only through an understanding of the char-
acter and special needs of the student body.
In the first place, the great majority of the students
in the State Universities come from a public high
school; we may therefore assume that their prepara-
tion for their work is, on the whole, better than it would
lmave been had they been trained in academies and
private schools. I am aware of no facts that would
exclude from application here the conclusions stated
By President Eliot in his “Annual Report” of Har-
vard College for 1902-03. He says: “Three sorts of
schools send pupils to Harvard College — public
schools, academies and other endowed schools, and
private schools; and, as a rule, two hundred or more
schools contribute the six hundred or more persons
who enter the various college classes in any one year.
About 30 per cent of these six hundred or more persons
STATE UNIVERSITIES 9
come from public schools; and these 30 per cent can
readily be compared, in respect to their success at the
admission examinations, with those who enter from
the other two sorts of schools.” He then gives sta-
tistics showing that “the candidates who came from
public high schools were decidedly most successful at
the admission examination;” and other statistics are
cited to prove that a like advantage remains with the
boys from the public schools to the end of the college
course—at graduation “the honors belong to the public
schools.” These facts, he concludes, “so far as they
go, tend to prove that the product of the public school
has more character and power of work than the product
of the other schools. It is probably true that the
public-school boy has stronger inducements to exert
inimself than the other boys have; but that is one of
his advantages, which is likely to serve him well till
maturity and beyond.”
In the second place, the students in the State Uni-
versities are as a class precisely the most energetic,
earnest and virile of those graduated from the high
schools. Only the more vigorous graduates from the
high schools go to college. Reports are still circulated
to the effect that state institutions are “Godless” and
dangerous to morals and belief; and efforts are fre-
quently put forth on this and other grounds to turn
students aside to institutions the equipment of which
is obviously inferior. The religious census has shown
that from 70 to 90 per cent of the students in State
Universities may fairly be reckoned, when they enter,
as church members or adherents;* it is reasonable to
suppose, and I believe that the supposition will be borne
* The statistics are in part given in the Atlantic Monthly, vol.
8o (1897), pp. 826-832; more fully in a pamphlet published at Ann
Arbor, Michigan, in 1897, with the title ‘‘The Religious Census of
the State Universities and of the Presbyterian Colleges in the colle-
giate year 1896-97.”
Io EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
out by the fact, that at the present time in a number of
states where the State University has become the dom-
inant institution of higher education, the majority of
the best equipped students, of those with most matur-
ity and independence of judgment, of the students
who have the greatest promise of leadership and use-
fulness, take their collegiate as well as their professional
course in the university. We may safely assert that
the student body of the other colleges is at least not
superior to the student body of the State University
in either mental or moral qualities.
It seems unnecessary, in this presence and at this
time, to make further allusion to the alleged “Godless-
ness” of the State Universities. Upon the cover, and
also upon the title page, of the catalogue of the Univers-
ity of Kansas is the print of the university seal, on
which is shown the picture of Moses before the burning
bush with the words from the Vulgate: Videbo visionem
hanc magnam quare non comburatur rubus, ‘‘I will see
this great sight why the bush is not burnt.” Even so
in the other State Universities, the spirit of investiga-
tion, the search after truth, is generally associated
with humility and the fear of the Lord which is the
beginning of wisdom. Both students and professors
in the State Universities come from the same constit-
uency as that which supplies the students and pro-
fessors of colleges and universities of private support.
In a notable symposium on “Our Public Schools”
published in the Outlook in 1903, (Vol. 75, pp. 635–
642), a number of college presidents expressed them-
selves as in agreement that in respect to moral charac-
ter they had never noticed any difference between the
students coming from the public schools and ‘‘those
from denominational, church or other private schools.”
In what respect then is the student life of the State
Universities, from the religious point of view, en-
dangered P
STATE UNIVERSITIES II
A candid utilizing, for many years, of all available
sources of information in regard to the wrecking of
student careers in the different classes of colleges and
universities has led me to the conclusion that in this
respect there is no appreciable difference; colleges and
universities of approximately the same size and of sim-
ilar environment, whether public or private, will every
year lose by elimination about the same percentage of
students morally unfit, the bad habits in almost all
cases being formed before admission to the higher in-
stitution. The percentage of such cases is, however,
so trifling that it may be left out of account in a broad
survey of religious conditions. The State Universities
are not, and never have been “hot-beds of vice and
immorality.”
The real danger to religion in the State Universities,
as in all universities where there is an intense intellect-
ual life, lies in a tendency to atrophy of the spiritual
nature. Minds become so absorbed in the details of a
particular field of knowledge, or of other interests of
college life, that the things of the spirit are lost sight
of. In their devotion to lines of study that do not
bring them into contact with vital religion, even
students of religious habits of thought tend to lose
their perspective, and drift into indifference; and often
in the expansion of their mental horizon they find it
impossible to reconcile new and old points of view, and
finally assume an attitude hopelessly negative towards
religious matters. Further, it must be acknowledged
that the tendency of public education generally, unless
corrected by direct and vigorous teaching, is to make
men selfish and self-centered. In institutions of pri-
vate support the names of benefactors and donors, and
the needs of the work, are ever before the student, who
is thus reminded of the source of the advantages which
he enjoys, and led to appreciate their value; how often
12 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
is there thus aroused a noble aspiration! In the public
high schools educational advantages are furnished so
lavishly, without cost, that they are utilized as a matter
of course; the source being impersonal, the student
comes to look upon them as he looks upon air and water,
regarding the enjoyment of them as a right, not as a
privilege. Too frequently is the thought of the student
with reference to the State University not “Freely do
I receive, freely must I give back in return” but rather,
to use a terse phrase of the street, “What is there in it
for me P’’ . - t
The proper function of the State University is to
develop leaders. It has no other reason of being.
The higher training of the individual at public expense
is justified only by the expectation that society will
reap the benefit of his special skill and attainments in
the solution of its difficulties and the betterment of
life. But if not merely the moral but the religious
element is indispensable to all sound education, of
what paramount importance does it become in the
case of these who by force, of their superior attain-
ments will yield large influence! So far as the demands
of society are concerned, it is just as important that
the doctor, the lawyer, the engineer, the dentist, the
pharmacist, the banker, and the promoter have high
ideals of life and service, and work the works of right-
eousness, as it is that the minister should; and the
severely intellectual training of that university which
either from the sheer force of numbers or from other
conditions, finds it impossible to keep moral and
religious ideals explicitly and distinctly before the
minds of its students, so far fails in its function to give
men the best preparation to render to society its just
due; failing to develop men on the moral and spiritual
while it is developing them on the intellectual side, it
leaves them, unless other influences intervene, not only
STATE UNIVERSITIES I 3
with a one-sided conception of man's relation to society
but without the development of that steadying power
which has its source in the religious consciousness and
makes life at the same time more useful and supremely
worth living.
To every trained man as to others there comes, in
the athletic phrase, a ‘‘try out.” Every man sooner
or later undergoes his supreme test, his trial as by
fire. It may come to him almost at the outset of a
medical practice, or in time of epidemic; in the nar-
row walls of a law office, or in laying the foundations
for a sky scraper; in the classroom, in the store, in the
counting house. It may come to him lying under the
stars in a mountain camp, when the burden or the
temptation seems greater than flesh can bear; it may
come to him on a cot in the hospital, when the physi-
cians move about with hushed voices, and the nurses
pursue their ministrations silently. Shall he live, or
shall he have done with life, as have so many in the
recent panic? Shall he rise from his pain, failures and
bitterness to face the world with courage and become
a man of strength, ready to do his day's work unflinch-
ingly, or shall he sink back into the crowd, weak and
discouraged, soured by what life has brought him?
Imagine the fullest mental and technical training of
which the mind is capable; add thereto careful train-
ing in the theory of morals; will that alone carry him P
Sometimes men are sustained, it is true, by a kind of
brute force like the phlegm of the ‘‘rough rider” whom
I met in Washington at the inauguration of the Pres-
ident, who told me that even when a target for whist-
ling bullets he had never known the sense of fear; but
most men will emerge unscathed from their season of
trial only when vitally linked in spirit with the spirit
of the unseen God. Such shall be guarded by invisible
hosts, shall be carried by invisible hands; they shall
14 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
run and not faint. No matter what degree of intellect-
ual power or merely moral training a man may have
acquired, he is trustworthy as a leader, for weather
fair and foul, only when he can at all times say with
the Hebrew Samuel: “Hitherto hath the Lord helped
y 7
us;” or with the poet:
“Yet in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To One fixed trust my spirit clings —
I know that God is good.”
It is idle to plead, in favor of the exclusion of the
religious element from university education, either
that the characters, the moral and religious ideals of
students are shaped before they come to the university,
or that the maintenance of ‘‘academic freedom” is in-
consistent with any form of religious instruction.
Students in the university period are less easily moved
than in earlier years, yet they are plastic and responsive
to influences in a degree hardly appreciated by those
who discuss these matters without actual experience,
on a priori grounds; but in this very period the char-
acter tends to become fixed, so that a fundamental
change of purpose or ambitions after a student leaves
the university is rare. And it is obviously more con-
sistent with “academic freedom” to allow religious
truth a fair chance to assert and maintain itself in the
university environment than to try to keep it outside
the pale. Yet for reasons which have often enough
been analyzed, the State University cannot undertake
to give formal instruction in religion. It may offer
courses in Hebrew and Hellenistic Greek, in the history
of religion and cognate subjects, with the special pur-
pose of enabling students to interpret the Bible from
the original tongues and familiarize themselves with
or investigate the phenomena of religious experience;
º
STATE UNIVERSITIES I 5
but it can inculcate no type of belief. It can do little
more than open its buildings to accredited religious
'teachers representing various points of view, and in
public exercises, at which students may be required to
be present unless excused for conscience' sake, set the
example of prayer and the use of the Bible as the Book.
And in the very necessity of avoiding formal religious
teaching at public expense lies the glorious possibility
of the realization, in our country, of an adjustment
between advanced religious and advanced secular edu-
cation possessing advantages over any that has pre-
viously been attempted.
Up to the present time attempts to remedy the lack
of religious instruction in State Universities have come
from four sources: from the members of the university
staff of instruction, who by efforts outside the univer-
sity have sought to direct their students to spiritual
things; from the students, chiefly through the mainte-
nance of Christian associations (supported in part by the
general associations), and through clubs for Bible study
and mutual help; from the local churches, through the
activities of pastors and helpers; and finally from the
religious denominations, in part through the appoint-
ment of student pastors or other representatives to
reinforce the efforts of local churches, and in part
through the establishment of extra-mural foundations
for religious instruction.
These four agencies have all contributed unselfishly
and effectively; that the problem, at least for the larger
State Universities, is yet unsolved, is due to no lack of
zeal on the part of many, but to the magnitude and
complexity of the interests involved. No matter how
earnest and faithful the members of the staff of instruc-
tion may be, the demands of university teaching and
research are in these days of specialization so exacting
that instructors have scant time and strength left for
16 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
religious work of a systematic kind—they cannot
labor seven days in the week; and besides, to grapple
successfully with the religious difficulties of students
in this period of shifting emphasis, a special training is
required which few scholars in other fields possess.
The work of the Christian associations has been
incalculably helpful. It is an active force for good, to
keep students from the neglect of the religious habits
of earlier life and to inspire them to offer themselves
for religious service. While there are great masses
of students that the Christian associations never direct-
ly reach, these bring to the universities as lecturers
forceful expositors of religious truth, and their work
is a leaven in student life. According to a recent
statement the Students’ Christian Association of the
University of Michigan, organized in January, 1858,
“was the first institution of its kind in any institution
of learning in this country.” Its list of presidents, pub-
lished in connection with the recent celebration of its
semi-centennial, reads like a roll of honor. Who can
estimate the good that it has done? Yet, with full
recognition of its usefulness, we must admit that in the
last twenty years the Students' Christian Association
of the University of Michigan, whether working alone
or with the potent and wise assistance of the general
organization, has hardly more than touched the fringe
of the situation. The Christian associations have not
been able adequately to cope with the religious situ-
ation in the larger State Universities for two reasons:
first, because of an imperfect adjustment of their work
with the work of the religious denominations, and
secondly, for the reason that, while they have stationed
in the State Universities as their representatives a type
of men that are high minded, efficient in organization,
conscientious and alert, they have not attempted to
place there men with either the special qualifications
STATE UNIVERSITIES I 7
or the vigor of personality required to make them
effective in a large way as spiritual leaders. The work
of students for students should be upheld and encour-
aged in every possible way, and in all departments of
activity. Universities, for instance, have always been
ready to assist the associations of graduate students
and listen to their findings in educational matters.
But when the time comes to take up large issues and
probe them to their ultimate facts and conditions, and
constructively to work out policies of far-reaching
import, help and suggestions must indeed be sought
from every source, but can the adjustment of such
matters safely be left to the judgment and efforts of
amateurs?
Again, the local churches with the strongest denomi-
national representation in state-university towns find
themselves wholly unable to solve the problem of
religious instruction for their student constituency.
They exist and are primarily administered for their
own congregations. They are not equipped to care
for the student body in addition. I have never known
more devoted and self-sacrificing labors than those of
ministers in university towns who have carried the
burden of their student constituency upon their hearts.
But how can a pastor of a church of two hundred or
four hundred members be expected to minister to a
student constituency of three to eight hundred in
addition? And there are further reasons. The aver-
age minister is not fitted to deal successfully with the
religious difficulties of the average university student.
The ordinary sermon addressed to an average congre-
gation will not strike the intellectual level of the teach-
ing to which the university students are accustomed
six days in a week; and it were idle to expect from
working ministers the ability and the opportunity to
prepare, in addition to their sermons, special religious
I 8 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
instruction which should compel the student's atten-
tion.
Under the conditions prevailing in this country,
religiously society has organized itself along denomi-
national lines. It is not necessary to raise the question
how far denominational differences are traditional and
bistorical, how far they are temperamental; we need
Only to emphasize the fact that though there has lately
manifested itself a tendency toward a synthesis of
religious bodies allied by doctrine and form of gov-
ernment, the religious denomination remains the
normal administrative unit through which, in the place
Of an alliance with governmental administration,
the religious element of our aggregate life finds cor-
porate and institutional expression. If, then, on
account of the separation of Church and State the
amount of religious instruction that may be given by
a State University is so limited as to leave advanced
education inadequate upon that side, do we not see
that there is no hope of an arrangement permanently
and adequately to supply the deficiency except through
the denominations as units of administration ?
The educational function of the religious denomina-
tion is two-fold: to instruct all its youth in the principles
of morals and religion, with the hope that, whatever they
may do, they will live lives consistent with its stand-
ards; and in the second place to develop by special
training those who will become its spiritual leaders.
In the case of the former, the religious training must
lbe carried along with the secular; for the latter, follow-
ing the collegiate or other preliminary course, there
must be a course in theology. For the former, in
addition to the Sunday schools connected with indi-
vidual churches, several denominations have elaborate
systems of young people's societies and appropriate
publications; and that religious and secular instruction
STATE UNIVERSITIES I9
may not be separated, some have a more or less fully
developed school system from the primary grade up to
the college or university. With such systems our
present inquiry is not concerned. The question before
us is, along what lines is contact possible between the
denomination as a religious unit and the State Univer-
sity as the highest unit of secular education?
I have elsewhere tried to show how grave have been
the consequences, in this country, of the severance of
the study of theology,” which is for the most part pur-
sued in isolated schools, from the sisterhood of advanced
studies. In that unnatural separation lies the chief
cause of the lack of adaptation of theological training
to the conditions of American life, which is so frequently
a subject of discussion. Why heap unmeasured criti-
cism upon the theological seminary 2 It is in part, at
least, the victim of conditions. Formerly law and
medical schools also were in isolation; but the estab-
lishment of schools of law and medicine in connec-
tion with the universities made possible so much
greater economy of administration and produced so
much better educational results that the isolated
schools are unable to compete with them and are being
forced out of existence. The study of theology has
equal need of the tonic of a university atmosphere,
and secular learning needs the stimulating and steady-
ing effect of the study of theology. Let the religious
denominations plant their schools of theology about the
State Universities; then shall be realized an ideal con-
dition, both for the adjustment of their teachings to
changing conditions of thought and for the training
of their students. Under such conditions theological
teaching could never become purely formal, as it tends
to become in European countries in which the theologi-
* University of Illinois Bulletin, vol. 3 (1906), no. 8, part 2 (pro-
ceedings of the conference on Religious Education), pp.39-45.
2 o EDUCATION AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
cal faculty receives its income from the State; for
while enjoying the advantage of close contact with
secular learning, the theological school would continue
to derive its support from the religious denomination,
to which it would be directly responsible. It would
then be in no danger of getting out of touch either with
movements of thought or, on the other hand, with
humanity's daily needs. What a power for good would
be the continual influence of such contiguous denomi-
national schools of theology upon even the largest
State Universities, as their faculties and students should
mingle freely with faculties and students of all depart-
ments! A promising beginning has been made in the
founding of schools of theology about the University
of California. . - .*
But the establishment of schools of theology on the
confines of the State University will not alone solve our
problem. Great as the indirect influence might be,
the specialized instruction of a theological faculty
would not reach large numbers of students. Consider
how much the larger denominations have at stake in
this matter. Of the fifty-three thousand students in
State Universities last year we may suppose that seven
to eight thousand were members or adherents of the
Presbyterian Church, probably one to two thousand
more students than the total number of students of all
denominations enrolled at the same time in the Presby-
terian colleges. The number of Methodist students,
according to all available evidence, is greater; the
numbers of members and adherents of the Episcopal,
Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Unitarian denominations,
are smaller. To provide for the religious needs of each
more considerable denominational student body a
special foundation, either associated with a theological
faculty or entirely independent, is required.
This foundation should provide for the support of
STATE UNIVERSITIES 2 I
two persons. There should be a student pastor, who
should devote his energies to pastoral work along the
lines followed by the student pastors already in service
in connection with several State Universities; then,
by his side there should be stationed a man of power
as a religious teacher. The chair of this teacher, extra-
mural, might be that of Christian evidences or of the
Bible. It would make little difference under what
title he should approach his task, but in his command
of his subject and his power to impress the truth upon
others he should be the peer of any professor upon the
campus. To such men students will always find time
to listen; to a group of such men, stationed about the
larger State Universities and working in a spirit of
friendly coöperation, we may confidently entrust the
religious instruction and inspiration that shall supple-
ment the deficiencies of advanced secular education
and transform its spirit.
The University of Michigan owes its existence to the
splendid dream and untiring efforts of a home mission-
ary into whose hands, as he was toiling among the
scattered hamlets in the primeval forest, there came a
copy of a translation of Cousin's little book on the
German universities. Upon the working plan incor-
porated in the University of Michigan the majority
of the other State Universities have been founded.
They are the creation of God-fearing men, they are
supported by states made up, for the most part, of
God-fearing citizens. Students are resorting to them
in such numbers that the mind is staggered when it
tries to compass their multitude, or to grasp their
potentiality for good or for evil. The cry of the State
Universities to the churches is: Send us men! First,
men to look after their Own; but then, and above all,
men who are happily balanced in intellectual and spirit-
ual power, men of equipment to place any aspect of
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aspect of secular instruction within the campus; men:
• too large for creedal bickerings or denominational peº
. tiness, who will interpret, each according to the light.
that is in him, the truths of the things of the Spirit, and
will say to the students of their own churches;
without exclusion of others and yet without suggestion:
of proselyting, “Come, let us reason together on spirº -
itual things.” º
Does this plea seem new or strange 2 It is almost
ninety years since substantially the same request was.
embodied in the well-known proposal of Thomas Jef-
ferson with reference to the University of Virginia. It
thas been repeated and urged again and again. Why
imave the denominations not heeded the call? Because,
for the most part, they have been short-sighted and
have found it difficult to take a broad and unprejudiced
view of the situation; because they have looked upon
the State University, even though it be a normal devel-
opment of a national type, as an intruder upon their
educational domain, and have adopted toward it an
attitude of hostility. It is time to brush the scales
from blinded eyes and to face the naked truth. The
best blood and brain of a score of commonwealths, the
great majority of those students whose ability and - *
equipment will fit them to do the largest work, are
gathered in the State Universities. In their hands are
the destinies of the next generation. Let the churches
go on as with rare exceptions they have gone in the
past, let them continue to pass by on the other side,
giving no care to their sons and daughters in these
strategic centres, and who shall suffer loss? Society in
general, but first of all the churches themselves. v
Shall the churches heed the call of the State Univer-
sity ? With them lies the answer, upon them res
the responsibility.
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