The C. L. S. C. as an Educational Force.
This is an age of educational activity. Universities, colleges and
seminaries are being multiplied. The public school system is being
perfected and in some form is in effective operation in all parts
of the Union. Lectures on science, literature and religion impart
instruction to the masses, so that this generation is highly favored
with facilities for acquiring knowledge. The result of these advantages
is already seen in the increased intellectual quickening of the times,
in the wide diffusion of information among all classes, and in the
spirit of intelligence which characterizes the average citizen.
Among these educational forces the C. L. S. C. has won its place. It
is of recent origin, but its growth has been rapid and vigorous, and
its power is being felt everywhere. Institutions of learning exert a
direct educational influence mainly upon those who are, or have been,
enrolled as actual students in their various departments. This number
must always be comparatively small, inasmuch as but few persons can
command the time and means necessary to enable them to pursue the
courses of study laid down in a college curriculum. And if any desire
to do this, they must be present in college halls and at educational
centers. Hence the educational force of schools of learning is for the
most part confined to the locality where they exist, and even there are
concentrated mainly upon those enrolled as students.
But the influence of the C. L. S. C. is felt in almost every hamlet in
the land. Every circle, however small, is an educational center, which
exerts an educational influence, not on its members alone, but on the
community as well, through the books and periodicals used, lectures
given, and the higher culture attained by the individual members.
The attendance at each of the higher educational institutions in this
country will not average more than three hundred students per annum,
if it does that. But the C. L. S. C. has on its rolls more than forty
thousand names, so that, compared as to its direct influence on the
student classes, it is equal in influence to not less than one hundred
and twenty educational institutions. From this standpoint, it must be
recognized as one of the greatest educational forces of the age.
It has, however, been urged against the C. L. S. C. that its course of
study is but meagre when compared with college curriculums, and for
this reason its educational tendencies are of but little worth, or even
deleterious. We are not of those who believe that a “little learning
is a dangerous thing,” but rather think that a “little learning” is
far better than absolute ignorance, and that it will always exert a
benign influence on its possessor. Whatever affords opportunities for
the intellectual awakening and improvement of the people, is worthy of
being classed among the educational forces of the age. Certain it is,
that many humble artisans, toiling mothers, and overworked seamstresses
have found in the C. L. S. C. a force that has elevated them above the
drudgery of their daily toil, and has inspired their mental faculties
for a new and worthy work, while it has also been the means of bringing
increased cultivation and refinement into many homes.
We urge as another reason for regarding the C. L. S. C. as an
educational force, that it begets habits of study independent of direct
oversight and supervision. Many of the students in our institutions
of learning are kept at their tasks with regularity, only by the
pressure brought to bear on them by the presence of professors and
tutors, and by class rivalries, and whenever they are removed from
their college surroundings, and from these constraining forces, they
at once relinquish their pursuit of knowledge, and cease to make any
further efforts after intellectual development. Such is not the case
with the C. L. S. C. Its students are carried forward in their course,
not by an impulse from without, but from within, which is continually
active, and which is ever operating on their mental energies to secure
a more thorough training. But the C. L. S. C. is by no means to be
looked upon as a rival to the regular institutions of learning. Far
otherwise! It has already become a valuable helper to the schools, and
every circle may become a recruiting station from which the colleges
and universities may draw many of their best and brightest students.
Without doubt many of the young people who enter upon the course of
study prescribed for the C. L. S. C. will have such an intense thirst
for knowledge created in their souls that they will be impelled to
pursue more extended courses of study, and will turn to the colleges
and universities to obtain all the advantages they have to offer.
The Passion Play.
Ex-Mayor Grace, of New York, deserves much credit and honor for his
refusal to grant Mr. Salmi Morse a license to produce his Passion Play.
With all the world’s past and present progress, we are not without here
and there signs of degeneracy. The Passion Play, which began in motives
of religious devotion with the ignorant villagers of Ober Ammergau
two hundred and fifty years ago, is now sought to be produced in the
metropolis of the foremost Christian nation, for the degraded motive of
money-making. Surely some things progress downwards. The superstitious
population of Ober Ammergau made a vow that if they were allowed to
escape the then prevalent plague they would every ten years perform a
play representing the passion and death of the Savior. Accordingly,
during twelve consecutive Sundays of the summer season, continuing
from 8 a. m. to 4 p. m., with three hundred and fifty actors and an
orchestra and chorus of eighty members, the play has been produced.
It has attracted the attention of the Christian world because it is
the only one of the miracle plays once so common which continues to
be performed. But this and all the miracle plays enacted by monks and
friars in the middle ages differ radically from the proposed enterprise
of Mr. Morse. The passion and events of the life of our Lord were
represented by them to make them real to ignorant and illiterate
people, but Mr. Morse proposes to cater to the low and morbid class,
in order to make money. There is no reason to believe that the effect
of such representations, even when performed with a view to religious
instruction and impression, has ever been of a salutary character.
The only effect to-day is to shock and outrage the refinement,
intelligence, and reverence of the average class of American society.
The human heart has human loves and affections too sacred to be
placarded before the public eye, or even to be given utterance by human
lips. It has feelings and sentiments associated with the divine tragedy
of Calvary which make it revolt at the scene of coarse and vulgar
persons attempting to re-enact the tragedy which revealed the infinite
depths of heaven’s love for the race.
Gambetta.
Another death has caused a profound, world-wide sensation. The life of
Leon Gambetta, the great French orator and statesman, went out in the
last moments of the old year. At five minutes before twelve o’clock on
New Year’s eve he breathed his last. His death, like that of our late
lamented President, was due to pyæmia. In November last he received
a gun-shot wound, in regard to which there are conflicting stories.
Though the case is not clear, it is very generally understood that the
disease had its origin in this wound. His suffering in his last days
was intense, and drew from his lips, shortly before his death, the
exclamation which will be long remembered: “I am lost—it is useless to
dissimulate,—but I have suffered so much it will be a deliverance.”
Gambetta was born April 2, 1838, in Cahors, in Southern France, and
was therefore only in his forty-fifth year when he died. His father,
Joseph Gambetta, was an Italian, and in business a grocer. The early
educational advantages of the future statesman were good, and were
well improved. When very young he was distinguished in school for his
powers of oratory and his retentive memory. He graduated from a lyceum,
receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts at the age of eighteen, and
was the winner of the first prize for French dissertation, in the
competition for which five lyceums were represented. His studies were
first directed with a view to his entering the priesthood; later he had
medicine in mind as a profession; but finally he entered upon the study
of law, and was admitted to practice in Paris in 1859. His first law
case, in which he was an assistant in the defense of a man tried for
conspiracy against the Emperor, gave him distinction, and he became one
to whom persons in difficulty on account of Republican sentiments and
hostility to imperialism looked for powerful legal aid. In 1868 certain
French journals which had incurred the displeasure of the government,
were persecuted, and Gambetta was engaged to defend the _Réveil_. His
plea in this trial sent a thrill throughout France. A master-piece of
oratory, it held spell-bound those who were gathered in that Paris
court room. He spoke bold, fiery words against the empire and in favor
of popular government. In spite of all precautions taken, the address
was published and circulated everywhere. Other occasions were improved
in a similar manner. His vehement, treasonable utterances produced
a powerful effect. He became a popular idol, and leader of French
Republicans.
He was elected to the Legislature of France in 1869, and entered it
the foremost of the sworn foes of the empire. Soon came the war with
Prussia, and the collapse of the government of Napoleon III. Gambetta
became a prominent member of the Government of National Defence, and
served for a time as both Minister of War and Minister of the Interior.
In this time of confusion and transition, when France was at war with
a powerful nation, and had no established government, he performed
herculean labors for his country. Escaping from beleagured Paris in a
balloon, he joined himself to the army and directed its operations.
His was the master-mind, more than any other, which ruled France. He
appointed generals, raised re-enforcements for the army, and negotiated
loans. Though defeat followed defeat, he urged that the war should be
pushed on, and was bitterly opposed to the conclusion of a peace with
Prussia. When, in 1871, the National Assembly convened at Bordeaux,
voted to accept the enemy’s terms and make peace, Gambetta, in wrath,
withdrew from the hall, followed by certain of his colleagues. The
new elections of the same year sent him back to the Assembly, where
he continued the peerless orator, and firm and brave champion of
Republicanism. When President MacMahon, in 1877, supplanted the old
Republican ministry with one of another character, Gambetta led the
attack upon him, which resulted in his retirement. In the period which
followed, until 1881, this statesman’s star was in the ascendant. His
influence was greater than ever before. In the Assembly he had a strong
Republican majority at his back. He was “the power behind the throne.”
Deferred to by those at the head of the executive department of the
nation, he governed while others did so in name. In the Autumn of 1881
he became Premier, but the defeat of one of his measures compelled his
retirement in a few weeks.
Leon Gambetta was easily the most brilliant man of the Third Republic.
He is the one man of genius we discover in recent French political
life. As an orator he has had few equals. He possessed a magnificent
voice, a commanding presence, a remarkable command of rich language, a
rapid, fiery utterance, and his eloquence at times was overwhelming. He
is spoken of as an editor, but his work in this character was probably
small. His paper, _La République Française_, was perhaps chiefly
edited by other hands, but became a very influential journal. He was
a man of great courage, and that audacity which men admire. He loved
his country, and rendered her services for which she should be ever
grateful. He has been accused of aiming at a dictatorship for himself.
There seems little ground for the charge, and for doubting that he was,
his life through, true to Republican principles. He was a good hater,
and never ceased to long for an opportunity for France to revenge
herself upon Germany. His private life it is best to pass over with
few words. It is not one, like that of our own great statesman whose
death and his own were so strangely alike, to admire and to copy. He
was destitute of moral and religious principle. We are left to believe
that he passed out of life without faith in God or a future state, and
another illustration he furnishes that, “With the talents of an angel
man may be a fool.”
The Decennial Assembly.
The first note of preparation for the Assembly of 1883 has been
sounded. Some of the proprietors of the Gibson House, at Cincinnati,
Ohio, being at Chautauqua during the last Assembly, invited the
trustees to hold this year’s annual session in their ample and
elegantly furnished parlors. The invitation was gratefully accepted,
and on January 10, the Chautauqua Board of Trustees met for
deliberation. President Lewis Miller was in the chair, and presided
with his usual ease and dignity. Nearly all the members were present,
full of confidence, and ready to do and to dare. One of its members,
Rev. E. J. L. Baker, answered not to roll-call, as he had only a few
days previous responded to the summons of death. Appropriate action
was taken by the Board in the case, recognizing the high character of
the deceased, and the important part he had taken in the affairs of
Chautauqua.
C. C. Studebaker, Esq., of South Bend, Indiana, a new and great admirer
of the Chautauqua Assembly, was chosen to fill his place.
It appeared from the report of the Treasurer that the business part of
the last Assembly, the erection of the hotel not included, amounted to
nearly ninety-five thousand dollars. The department of instruction cost
nearly sixteen thousand dollars. About two thousand dollars had been
expended on music, the cost of the great organ not included.
In August, 1883, will be held the Decennial Assembly, and an
attempt will be made to place it a little in advance of any of its
predecessors. Joseph Cook will be present to give the public, in three
lectures, the concentrated results of two years of travel, observation,
and study in oriental lands. Other great lights, some old and some
new, will appear upon the platform. Different methods of collegiate
education will be thoroughly discussed by the best educators in the
land. Among them will be President Cummins, LL. D., of the Northwestern
University, at Evanston, Illinois. As yet the program is but partially
arranged, nor will it be fixed and given to the public in all its
details till sometime in June.
Ten years ago Chautauqua was compared to the groves of Greece in which
Plato and Aristotle taught their disciples philosophy. Instinctively
the people have watched the growth of the place, expecting that in due
time it would develop into university proportions. Such hope, existing
then, seems a dream, but coming events often cast their shadows
before. Chautauqua can not stand still; its vital nature makes growth a
necessity; but it can not advance much further and not embrace in its
curriculum a university education. It can do what can be done in no
other place, namely, combine a thorough and broad education with the
great variety of exercises which characterize the Assembly gatherings.
July of this year will be characterized by the opening of a children’s
school, under the instruction of the most accomplished teachers.
Families have hesitated to come early to Chautauqua because their
children were in school, and they did not like to disturb their
studies. As this difficulty is to be obviated, the way will be open for
our Southern friends and all others to come early in the season.
Dr. Vincent was present at the meeting of the Trustees, and favored
them with his wise counsel. His plans for the coming season are, as
usual, original and broad. He has several pleasant surprises in store
for the Chautauqua people.
The Board was visited by Messrs. Warren and Morrow, from East
Tennessee, as the representatives of the Mount Eagle Sunday-school
Assembly. They were welcomed by a neat speech from Dr. Vincent and Mr.
Miller, to which they handsomely responded, explaining their work in
the South. This is but one of the many echoes of Chautauqua.