the sole direction of education, so that by getting the young into
their hands, they could fashion them after their own pattern.” It has
been the avowed aim of the Jesuits to stamp out Protestantism, and with
this, republicanism. In this country, where these two principles were
pre-eminently conspicuous, and so closely associated that whatever
kills one kills the other, it is doubly true that by gaining control of
the educational system the order could work for the papacy the utter
ruin of America, both from a religious and a civil standpoint. From the
dawn of our history there has been within our borders, mingling with
our loyal citizens, a class of educators who carry out this principle
described by Thompson. “The Roman Catholic youth are forbidden by the
papal system from accepting as true the principles of the Declaration of
Independence or of the Constitution of the United States.”[152] Leo XIII,
who was educated a Jesuit [Thompson], remains true to his principles. His
biographer says “that the ‘false education’ and ‘antichristian training’
of the young which prevail in the United States and among the liberal and
progressive peoples of the world must be done away with, abandoned, and
‘Thomas Aquinnas [a Catholic of the thirteenth century] must once more
be enthroned as the “angel of the schools;” his methods and doctrines
must be the light of all higher teaching, for his works are only revealed
truth set before the human mind in its most scientific form.’”[153]
[Sidenote: Progress of papal principles]
It is unnecessary to state the number of schools established by Catholics
in the United States, which have been placed under the control of the
Jesuits; neither is it necessary to trace the attempts which have been
made by the papacy, at irregular periods in our history, to obtain
the control of our public school system. The affairs at Stillwater,
Minn., and at Farabault, in the same State, while unsuccessful, were
weather vanes showing the direction of the wind,—were posers to test
the public pulse, and just so surely show the policy of the papacy in
educational matters. Of far greater importance to us as Protestants is
the fact that _Jesuitical principles may and do prevail in our popular
system of education_, and these principles, whether carried out by
Jesuits, or by the ordinary teacher who is unconscious of her situation,
and unmindful of the result of her methods, bring about the fall of
Protestantism and republicanism. Our nation has repudiated her foundation
principles; are our Protestant churches doing likewise? The history of
the educational institutions of the United States, which are discussed in
the next chapters, will show how the plan of work now followed in our
universities, colleges, and schools of lower grades, are patterning after
Sturm, and how they go farther back, connecting the twentieth century
with the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. It is without the slightest
feelings of animosity toward the Jesuits or the papacy that these facts
are traced. These both do for their cause what will best serve to upbuild
it. Their methods, in so far as they accomplish their desired end, are to
be commended, and their zeal is ever to be admired.
[Sidenote: An educational question for Protestants]
The one problem for Protestants to solve is whether to accept Jesuitical,
papal education, and thus become papal, forming “an image to the
Beast,”—to use the language of the Apocalypse,—or whether they will
follow the principles of Christian education, and remain true to the
name PROTESTANT. Let the reader forget the names; but let him remember
that there are but two _principles_ in the world, when the standard
of eternal truth is recognized; one exalts Christ, and gives life
everlasting; the other exalts man, and its life is for this world alone.
Education according to the second does, in its methods, dwarf, enfeeble,
and belittle. It puts stress upon the unimportant, and passes by truth
without a glance. It prepares the mind for absolutism both in government
and religion. Education according to the first will be based upon methods
which develop, in every particular, the human being. It is a mental,
moral, and physical education, and its object is so to educate that
eventually each of these three natures will assume the right relation to
the other two, and again, as on the Mount of Transfiguration with the Son
of God, “divinity within will flash forth to meet divinity without.”
XIV
AMERICA AND THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM
PROTESTANTISM AND REPUBLICANISM, BORN OF THE REFORMATION, NOURISHED BY
SCHOOLS.—As if lifted from the bosom of the deep by the mighty hand of
God, America stood forth to receive the principles of religious and civil
freedom born of the Reformation on German soil. To the German government
was first offered the opportunity of developing to the full the reform
movement. This full and complete development would have meant religious
liberty for all, and a government by the people,—Protestantism and
republicanism. These two systems go hand in hand, and are more closely
connected than any other principles in existence. The death of one means
the death of the other, for the same life-blood nourishes both.
Germany started well. There were to be found princes, liberal in mind and
government, who accepted the new religion, and stood by the Reformers
through all their storm-tossed career. God had raised up these men for
the time and place, as surely as he called Nebuchadnezzar, or appointed a
work for Cyrus. Protestantism was firmly rooted, and, as we have already
seen, during the first forty years of its existence, so strong was its
vitality that men and nations bowed before it. The early Reformers,
especially Luther and Melancthon, connected the movement with the
fountain of life when they introduced a system of Christian education.
And previous chapters make plain the truth that the life of the entire
movement in its twofold aspect—Protestantism and republicanism—depended
upon a right educational system. When the mass of German youth sat at the
feet of German teachers, and those teachers were true to the principles
of Christian education, Roman influence dwindled, and her very life was
threatened. It was then that the papacy itself took up the subject of
education, and by the work of the Jesuits succeeded in killing the Reform
in Germany,—indeed, in all Europe.
“A day of great intellectual darkness has been shown to be favorable to
the success of popery. It will yet be demonstrated that a day of great
intellectual light is equally favorable for its success.”
[Sidenote: Protestantism killed by Jesuit schools]
The Jesuits planted schools of their own in the shadow of Protestant
schools; they entered Protestant schools as teachers; they sucked the
life-blood from the young child, and it faded and died. The principles of
the Reformation found honest hearts in the Netherlands. The Dutch took
up the question of education; but the Jesuits were again on the track,
and, as Ranke says, “They gradually carried their point.” The Reformation
crossed the Channel, to find the hearts of Englishmen longing for greater
freedom. Lollardism, started by Wyclif two hundred years earlier, sprang
anew into life in the hearts of the Puritans, until, in the reign of
Henry VIII, more than one half of the English population was Protestant.
Finally the Commonwealth was established.
[Sidenote: England loses her golden opportunity]
To England was offered the opportunity of showing to the world the
perfect fruits of the Reformation in its Protestant religion and a
republican government. But alas! the story is repeated. English youth
fell into the hands of Jesuits. An English college was founded at Rome,
and teachers, ministers, and canvassers returned to their native land
with the avowed purpose of their educators, the Jesuits, to overthrow the
Reformation. And England fell!
Those familiar words from the pen of Luther, which appear in his letter
appealing for aid in the establishment of Protestant schools, echo
through England also: “The Word of God and His grace are like a shower
that falls, and passes away. It was among the Jews; but it passed away,
and now they have it no longer. Paul carried it to Greece; but in that
country also it has passed away, and the Turk reigns there now. It came
to Rome and the Latin empire; but there also it has passed away, and Rome
now has the pope. O, Germans, do not expect to have this Word forever!”
Could this man of God have come forth from his grave a century later, and
have looked over his loved Germany, and over England, he would have added
these names to those of the countries where God’s Word and His grace had
been, but had passed away. Must the name of America be added to the above
list? May Protestants be aroused before it is too late!
[Sidenote: The Puritan exodus]
Finding that England closed her doors against progress, the Puritans
sought greater freedom in the Netherlands. They were disappointed, for
they could not there educate their children as Protestantism taught
them that they should be educated. As Pilgrims they sought new homes in
America, finding a retreat on the bleak shores of New England.
[Sidenote: Protestantism reaches America]
It is now our duty to trace the growth and decline of Protestantism
in our own land. _Its prosperity in every other country has been in
proportion to its adherence to the correct principles of education;
its decline has without exception been the result of a wrong system of
education._ How is it in the United States?
No student of history, and especially of prophetic history, doubts for a
moment that the way was divinely prepared for Protestantism to cross the
Atlantic, and it is equally as evident that that same Hand was upholding
those principles after they reached these shores. God’s Word spoke often
to the hearts of men, leading them to devise plans, pass laws, establish
institutions, and in various ways to so work that His truths might
here grow to a perfection which they never reached in the old country.
On the other hand, those teachings which have frustrated the principles
of Protestantism in Europe are seen to be at work in America from the
first planting of a colony until the present day. That strength-producing
element was _Christian education;_ that counteracting influence was
_false_ or _papal education_. These two form the subject of this chapter.
[Sidenote: Educational History of the United States]
United States history is interwoven with the history of education. Her
founders, especially of the New England colonies, traced their origin
to an educational center in England, and as early New England history
circles about Harvard, so the fathers and supporters of that institution
traced their origin in Old England to the counties of East Anglia, where
Cambridge University bore sway. “Of the first six hundred who landed in
Massachusetts, one in thirty, it is said, was a graduate of the English
Cambridge. These and their companions were rare men. They had the
schooling for a service the like of whose execution, in completeness and
good sense, the world has never equaled.”[154]
“With matchless wisdom they joined liberty and learning in a perpetual
and holy alliance, binding the latter to bless every child with
instruction, which the former invests with the rights and duties of
citizenship. They made education and sovereignty co-extensive, by making
both universal.”[155]
John Fiske enlarges upon this thought.[156] The “greater hospitality of
Cambridge [University, England] toward new ideas” is proverbial, and the
very names, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, Cambridge and
Huntingdon, familiar in the geography of New England, are telling a story
of Protestant education.
[Sidenote: Radical and Conservative Puritans]
Strong as the Puritans seemed in denouncing the Church of Rome, and in
accepting Protestantism, which, at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, more than ever before, meant separation from the established
church and the established forms of government, they were not united in
thought. There were two classes: Puritans, and a class of this class
represented by such men as Richard Hooker. Of the Puritans, Fiske says:
“Some would have stopped short with Presbyterianism, while others held
that ‘new presbyter was but old priest writ large,’ and so pressed on to
Independency.”[157] This difference of opinion on religious matters is
discernible when representatives of both classes, mingling in the society
about Boston, started the educational work of America. Those inclined to
remain under the banner of Presbyterianism taunted the others, who were
known as Brownists, or Separatists, and who followed William Brewster to
America, with _anarchy_, merely because they believed in carrying out
fully the principles for which all were ready to fight.
Thus from the first has our educational work fallen into the hands of two
classes of men,—a class willing to compromise in order to keep peace, and
a bold, daring class, who advocated stepping out on truth regardless of
what might follow.
[Sidenote: Congregationalism and education]
There was a mighty educational problem before the church. The
Episcopalians had failed to take up that work in England; it was from
their midst that Wm. Brewster, a Cambridge graduate, John Robinson,
who also was graduated from Cambridge in 1600, and William Bradford,
afterward governor of Plymouth for thirty years, withdrew to form the
nucleus of the Congregational Church, which had its origin at Scrooby,
England, and ended in Plymouth. What Episcopalianism had overlooked in
the matter of education in England it now became the duty and privilege
of the new church to begin on the virgin soil of America.
[Sidenote: The New England theocracy]
The reader is familiar with the fact that the Puritans, leaving England
because of civil and religious oppression, the result of a union of
church and state, came to America for freedom, and, contrary to what
one would expect, especially at a casual glance, they here developed
a theocracy. “The aim of Winthrop and his friends in coming to
Massachusetts was the construction of a theocratic state which should be
to Christians ... all that the theocracy of Moses and Joshua and Samuel
had been to the Jews.... In such a scheme there was no room for religious
liberty.... The state they were to found was to consist of a united body
of believers; citizenship itself was to be co-extensive with church
membership.”[158]
[Sidenote: Educational work breaks the theocracy]
It is equally well known, however, that this theocratic form was soon
broken; and while the United States is beginning to find herself again
approaching this mode of government, it is a remarkable fact, and one
well worthy of our closest consideration, that _the ancient theocracy
of New England was broken by the power of the educational system_ there
introduced. When this is read from the pages that follow, let the reader
answer the question whether or not the _repudiation of Protestant
principles and the principles of republicanism by the United States in
the nineteenth century is equally due to the present system_. Bear in
mind the question as we proceed.
The educational history of the United States may conveniently be studied
in three sections; 1, colonial; 2, revolutionary; 3, nineteenth century.
I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
[Sidenote: The founding of Harvard]
Since Harvard College, the American Cambridge, “accomplished,” as Boone
says, “a much needed work, with manifold wholesome reactions upon society
and government, so that it has been affirmed, with show of truth,
that ‘the founding of Harvard College hastened the Revolution half a
century,’”[159] our study of the schools of the colonial period will
center around this institution. It can be stated with safety that the
history of Harvard, its leading men, and its varying attitude toward
different Colonial problems, throws light on the development of the
question of education at the time when the foundations of our national
government were laid.
When Boston was but six years old, plans were laid for America’s first
college. “Among the early educational leaders,” says Boone, “were such
men as the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, John Cotton, and John Wilson, Jr.; all
clergymen and all college-bred; Stoughton; Dudley, the deputy-governor,
and, above all, ‘Winthrop, the governor, the guide and good genius of
the colony.’ Such were the men ... of the infant colony.... Here were
learning and character; world-wisdom and refinements of heart; breadth
and wholeness of culture, such as could alone justify the boldness of
their attempt.”[160] The institution was started in poverty, four
hundred pounds being voted by the people. The high motive which prompted
the enterprise was “an unbounded zeal for an education, that to them
seemed not so much desirable as necessary, _that ‘the light of learning
might not go out, nor the study of God’s Word perish_.’”
[Sidenote: Object of Harvard to train ministers]
The object of the school, as held by the founders, is well described by a
Boston citizen, who writes thus in 1643 to some of his friends: “After we
had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared
convenient places for worship, and settled the civil government, one of
the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning
and to perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate
ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the
dust. And as we were thinking and consulting how to effect this great
work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Howard (a godly
gentleman and a lover of learning, then living among us) to give the one
half of his estate ... toward the erecting of a College, and all his
library.”
In the contemplation of a college by those noble men, the uppermost
thought was _how to gain an educated ministry_. This object was lost
sight of.
“It must be remembered,” writes Boone, “that for sixty years the
institution was little more than a _training-school for ministers_,
managed as a theological seminary, having religion, of a more or less
well-defined type, as its basis and chief object. Yet, as Professor
Emerson has put it, ‘It is one of the most remarkable things in the
history of Harvard, that, in all the constitutions of the college there
is _nothing illiberal or sectarian_; _nothing to check the freest pursuit
of truth in theological opinions, and in everything else_; and this, too,
while the founders of the college were severely and strictly orthodox,
often exclusive in their own opinions, and while their object was
unquestionably to provide for the thorough education of ministers of the
gospel in like views with themselves.’” “The very foundation idea of the
college,” says Boone, in another paragraph, “was the theological want.”
“The presidents and members of the corporation were generally the
prominent scholars, the theologians, and the political leaders of the
community and time. The college easily came to be the arena upon which,
or the interest about which, were fought those terrible logomachies of
dogma and doctrine. These required, as they had, the best learning, the
shrewdest insight, the most politic minds of the day.”
This perhaps explains that former statement, that the education of
ministers by Harvard had more than anything else to do with the overthrow
of the theocracy established about Boston.
[Sidenote: A manifest spirit of democracy]
It is interesting, also, to note the spirit of democracy which this
institution fostered. In speaking of the raising of the fund for erecting
the building, Boone says: “The colony caught his [Mr. Harvard’s] spirit,
... and all did something, even the indigent. One subscribed a number
of sheep; another, nine shillings’ worth of cloth; one, a ten-shilling
pewter flagon; others, a fruit-dish, a sugar-spoon, a silver-tipped
jug, etc.... No rank, no class of men, is unrepresented. The school
was of the people.”[161] “It was nursed by democracy,” and it in turn
nursed democracy. Surely the Spirit of God was pleading with men so to
arrange their leading educational institution that the principles of the
Reformation might be perpetuated.
[Sidenote: Early course of study in Harvard]
The course of study for this ministers’ school, as described by Emerson,
was remarkably free from sectarianism, and liberal in thought. “The Bible
was systematically studied for the entire three years, Ezra, Daniel,
and the New Testament being specified. A year was given to catechetical
divinity.”[162] Students were required to attend worship twice daily,
when the Scriptures were read in Hebrew or Greek, and they were required
to translate the selection. History received some attention, but the
sciences were practically unknown, and “all profane literature was
excluded.”
Through all this is discernible the attempt to educate for the cause
of Christ. With this beginning, what might have been accomplished had
the plan, with truth unadulterated, been followed! The work done in
later days by the schools, under the direction of the State, is but an
indication of the broad field which lay ahead of Harvard and similar
institutions, _had the church remained in her province as the educator of
her own children_.
[Sidenote: Indications of papal principles]
From the very foundation of Harvard may be seen indications that there
was alongside of these principles of Christian education somewhat of
medieval teaching, which, unless discovered and banished would act as
leaven, permeating the whole loaf. For instance, when the college was
less than twenty years old, we find this requirement for admission
announced: “When any scholar is able to read Tully or any like classical
Latin author, _ex tempore_, and make and speak true Latin in verse and
prose, and define perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek
tongue, then may he be admitted to the College; nor shall any claim
admission before such qualifications.” This, of course, was patterning
after the European universities, and theirs was a papal system.
This was the Harvard of colonial times. As we enter the Revolutionary
period, we may look for changes as the result of both the correct and
the incorrect principles harbored. Is Harvard, with all her wonderful
facilities, training as many for gospel service to-day as she did of old?
Yale, the second Congregational school, followed closely the plans and
object of Harvard.
[Sidenote: Education in Virginia monarchical]
William and Mary, the second college in the United States, was founded
under different circumstances. It was born in the midst of wealth, and
was befriended by cavaliers and courtiers. “The roots,” says Boone, “were
deep in the great English ecclesiastical system,” and yet the avowed
object was “that the college, when established, should be a ‘seminary
for the breeding of good ministers.’” Notwithstanding good intentions,
it mixed scholastic teachings; for it stood for “the Oxford order of
humanities; the _abstract_ as the foundation of the concrete; everything
for discipline; the ancient languages before the modern.” Jefferson was
a graduate of this school, and later it will be seen how this man, whose
mind comprehended so clearly the principles of religious liberty, strove
to break away from this mixture in education, and advocated a decidedly
secular education in schools which were supported by the State, thereby
avoiding in such institutions the mixture of secular and religious
training.
So far, we see the Episcopal school, William and Mary, deeply rooted in
the English ecclesiastical system, and unable to receive the Reformation
principles of education pure and simple. The two Congregational schools,
Harvard and Yale, approached more nearly the Protestant ideal, but being
unable to break wholly the bond of scholasticism, they made much of
preparatory work in the classics.
[Sidenote: Education problems of Colonial days]
Some or the educational problems with which our Colonial Fathers had
to wrestle were “parental responsibility, the general viciousness of
indolence, the educative office of labor, the State’s relation to
individual need, compulsory employment and schooling, the state ownership
of child-life,” and above all, and including all, the relation the church
sustained to the schools, how far secular education could be offered in
Christian schools, and how far the church could ask aid of the state in
the conduct of church schools. They were weighty questions upon which
hung, and still hangs, the destiny of a nation.