SOME PRIMAL PRINCIPLES
WE have looked at the spot chosen for this new movement, and we have
become somewhat acquainted with its two leaders. Let us now look at its
foundations, and note the principles upon which it was based. We shall
at once perceive that the original plans of the Fair Point Assembly were
very narrow in comparison with those of Chautauqua to-day. Yet those
aims were of such a nature, like a Gothic Church, as would readily lend
themselves to enlargement on many sides, and only add to the unique
beauty of the structure.
In this chapter we are not undertaking to set forth the Chautauqua Idea,
as it is now realized--for everybody, everywhere, and in every
department of knowledge, inspired by a Christian faith. Whatever may
have been in the mind of either founder, this wide-reaching aim was not
in those early days made known. Both Miller and Vincent were interested
in education, and each of them felt his own lack of college training,
but during the first three or four years of Chautauqua's history all
its aims were in the line of religious education through the Sunday
School. We are not to look for the traits of its later development, in
those primal days. Ours is the story of an evolution, and not a
philosophical treatise.
The first assembly on Chautauqua Lake was held under the sanction and
direction of the governing Sunday School Board of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, by resolution of the Board in New York at its meeting
in October, 1873, in response to a request from the executive committee
of the Chautauqua Lake Camp Ground Association, and upon the
recommendation of Dr. Vincent, whose official title was Corresponding
Secretary of the Sunday School Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Normal Committee of the Union was charged with the oversight of the
projected meetings; Lewis Miller was appointed President, and John H.
Vincent, Superintendent of Instruction.
Although held upon a camp ground and inheriting some of the camp-meeting
opportunities, the gathering was planned to be unlike a camp meeting in
its essential features, and to reach a constituency outside that of the
camp ground. Its name was a new one, "The Assembly," and its sphere was
announced to be that of the Sunday School. There was to be a definite
and carefully prepared program of a distinctly educational cast, with no
opening for spontaneous, go-as-you-please meetings to be started at any
moment. This was arranged to keep a quietus on both the religious
enthusiast and the wandering Sunday School orator who expected to make a
speech on every occasion. On my first visit to Fair Point--which was not
in '74 but in '75--I found a prominent Sunday School talker from my own
State, grip-sack in hand, leaving the ground. He explained, "This is no
place for me. They have a cut-and-dried program, and a fellow can't get
a word in anywhere. I'm going home. Give me the convention where a man
can speak if he wants to."
In most of the camp meetings, but not in all, Sunday was the great day,
a picnic on a vast scale, bringing hundreds of stages, carryalls, and
wagons from all quarters, special excursion trains loaded with visitors,
fleets of boats on the lake or river, if the ground could be reached by
water route. No doubt some good was wrought. Under the spell of a
stirring preacher some were turned from sin to righteousness. But much
harm was also done, in the emptying of churches for miles around, the
bringing together of a horde of people intent on pleasure, and utter
confusion taking the place of a sabbath-quiet which should reign on a
ground consecrated to worship. Against this desecration of the holy day,
Miller and Vincent set themselves firmly. As a condition of accepting
the invitation of the Camp Meeting Association to hold the proposed
Assembly at Fair Point, the gates were to be absolutely closed against
all visitors on Sunday; and notice was posted that no boats would be
allowed to land on that day at the Fair Point pier. In those early days
everybody came to Fair Point by boat. There was indeed a back-door
entrance on land for teams and foot passengers; but few entered through
it. In these modern days of electricity, now that the lake is girdled
with trolley lines, and a hundred automobiles stand parked outside the
gates, the back door has become the front door, and the steamboats are
comparatively forsaken.
In addition to the name Assembly, the exact order of exercises, and the
closed ground on Sunday, there was another startling departure from
camp-meeting usages--a gate fee. The overhead expenses of a camp meeting
were comparatively light. Those were not the days when famous
evangelists like Sam Jones and popular preachers such as DeWitt Talmage
received two hundred dollars for a Sunday sermon. Board and keep were
the rewards of the ministers, and the "keep" was a bunk in the
preachers' tent. The needed funds were raised by collections, which
though nominally "voluntary" were often obtained under high-pressure
methods. But the Assembly, with well-known lecturers, teachers of
recognized ability, and the necessary nation-wide advertising to awaken
interest in a new movement would of necessity be expensive. How should
the requisite dollars by the thousand be raised? The two heads of the
Assembly resolved to dispense with the collections, and have a gate fee
for all comers. Fortunately the Fair Point grounds readily lent
themselves to this plan, for they were already surrounded on three sides
by a high picket-fence, and only the small boys knew where the pickets
were loose, and they didn't tell.
[Illustration: The Old Guest House. "The Ark"]
[Illustration: Old Children's Temple]
The Sunday closing and the entrance charge raised a storm of indignation
all around the lake. The steamboat owners--in those days there were no
steamer corporations; each boat big or little, was owned by its
captain--the steamboat owners saw plainly that Sunday would be a "lost
day" to them if the gates were closed; and the thousands of visitors to
the camp meeting who had squeezed out a dime, or even a penny, when the
basket went around, bitterly complained outside the gates at a quarter
for daily admission, half of what they had cheerfully handed over when
the annual circus came to town. During the first Assembly in 1874, the
gatekeepers needed all their patience and politeness to restrain some
irate visitors from coming to blows over the infringement of their right
to free entrance upon the Fair Point Camp Ground. There were holders of
leases upon lots who expected free entrance for themselves and their
families--and "family" was stretched to include visitors. Then there
were the preachers who could not comprehend why _they_ should buy a
ticket for entrance to the holy ground! The financial and restrictive
regulations were left largely to Lewis Miller, who possessed the
_suaviter in modo_ so graciously that many failed to realize underneath
it the _fortiter in re_. Behind that smiling countenance of the
President of Chautauqua was an uncommonly stiff backbone. Rules once
fixed were kept in the teeth of opposition from both sinners and saints.
Let me anticipate some part of our story by saying that at the present
time there are from six to eight hundred all-the-year residents upon
Chautauqua grounds. Before the Assembly opens on July 1st, every family
must obtain season tickets to the public exercises for all except the
very youngest members and bedridden invalids. A lease upon Chautauqua
property does not entitle the holder to admission to the grounds. If he
owns an automobile, it must be parked outside, and cannot be brought
through the gates without the payment of an entrance fee, and an officer
riding beside the chauffeur to see that in Chautauqua's narrow streets
and thronged walks all care is taken against accident. The only
exception to this rule is in favor of physicians who are visiting
patients within the enclosure.
The catholicity of the plans for the first Assembly must not be
forgotten. Both its founders were members of the Methodist Episcopal
Church and loyal to its institutions. But they were also believers in
and members of the Holy Catholic Church, the true church of Christ on
earth, wherein every Christian body has a part. They had no thought to
ignore the various denominations, but aimed to make every follower of
Christ at home. Upon the program appeared the names of men eminent in
all the churches; and it was a felicitous thought to hold each week on
one evening the prayer meetings of the several churches, each by itself,
also to plan on one afternoon in different places on the ground, for
denominational conferences where the members of each church could
freely discuss their own problems and provide for their own interests.
This custom established at the first assembly has become one of the
traditions of Chautauqua. Every Wednesday evening, from seven to eight,
is assigned for denominational prayer meetings, and on the second
Wednesday afternoon in August, two hours are set apart for the
Denominational Conferences. The author of this volume knows something
about one of those meetings; for year after year it has brought him to
his wit's end, to provide a program that will not be a replica of the
last one, and then sometimes, to persuade the conferences to confer. But
if a list were made of the noble names that have taken part in these
gatherings, it would show that the interdenominational plan of the
founders has been justified by the results. It is a great fact that for
nearly fifty years the loyal members of almost every church in the land
have come together at Chautauqua, all in absolute freedom to speak their
minds, yet with never the least friction or controversy. And this
relation was not one of an armed neutrality between bodies in danger of
breaking out into open war. It did not prevent a good-natured raillery
on the Chautauqua platform between speakers of different denominations.
If anyone had a joke at the expense of the Baptists or the Methodists or
the Presbyterians, he never hesitated to tell it before five thousand
people, even with the immediate prospect of being demolished by a retort
from the other side.
A conversation that occurred at least ten years after the session of '74
belongs here logically, if not chronologically. A tall, long-coated
minister whose accent showed his nativity in the southern
mountain-region said to me, "I wish to inquire, sir, what is the
doctrinal platform of this assembly." "There is none, so far as I know,"
I answered. "You certainly do not mean, sir," he responded, "that there
is not an understanding as to the doctrines allowed to be taught on this
platform. Is there no statement in print of the views that must or must
not be expressed by the different speakers?" "I never heard of any," I
said, "and if there was such a statement I think that I should know
about it." "What, sir, is there to prevent any speaker from attacking
the doctrines of some other church, or even from speaking against the
fundamental doctrines of Christianity?" "Nothing in the world," I said,
"except that nobody at Chautauqua ever wishes to attack any other
Christian body. If anyone did such a thing, I don't believe that it
would be thought necessary to disown or even to answer him. But I am
quite certain that it would be his last appearance on the Chautauqua
platform."
In this chapter I have sought to point out the foundation stones of
Chautauqua, as they were laid nearly half a century ago. Others were
placed later in the successive years; but these were the original
principles, and these have been maintained for more than a generation.
Let us fix them in memory by a restatement and an enumeration. First,
Chautauqua, now an institution for general and popular education, began
in the department of religion as taught in the Sunday School. Second, it
was an out-of-doors school, held in the forest, blazing the way and
setting the pace of summer schools in the open air throughout the nation
and the world. Third, although held upon a camp-meeting ground it was
widely different in aim and method, spirit and clientele from the
old-fashioned camp meeting. Fourth, it maintained the sanctity of the
Sabbath, closed its gates, and frowned upon every attempt to secularize
or commercialize the holy day, or to make it a day of pleasure. Fifth,
the enterprise was supported, not by collections at its services, or by
contributions from patrons, but by a fee upon entrance from every comer.
Sixth, it was to represent not one branch of the church, but to bring
together all the churches in acquaintance and friendship, to promote,
not church union, but church unity. And seventh, let it be added that it
was to be in no sense a money-making institution. There were trustees
but no stockholders, and no dividends. If any funds remained after
paying the necessary expenses, they were to be used for improvement of
the grounds or the enlargement of the program. Upon these foundations
Chautauqua has stood and has grown to greatness.