(2) W. H. P. Faunce

(3) J. S. Hall (4) Cyrus Northrop (6) W. F. Slocum (7) Booker T. Washington CONVENTION SPEAKERS-II

(1) William Caven

(5) Francis Patton

ment that Robert Weidensall hoped for has now reached the colleges of more nations than the number of colleges-twentyone-represented on that memorable summer day, the sixth day of June, 1877, in Louisville.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE ASSOCIATION TO THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE OF UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES

PRESIDENT FRANCIS L. PATTON, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Mr. Rashdall, in his history of the medieval universities, says that there are three words under which we might write a very considerable portion of the history of the world-ecclesia, imperium, studium-the church, the state, the school. The church represents the best expression in organized form of man's spiritual life. The state is the highest organized expression of man's moral and active powers. The university is the highest organized expression of his intellectual life. The university very properly considers that its first function is to deal with intellectual things. Yet if the university does not consider its duty to be to make good men, and by making good men to make good citizens, it fails. Good citizens cannot be made out of bad men. Good men cannot be made except upon a moral basis. Obligatory morality cannot be without religion. Religion must, therefore, enter somewhere into university life. The care for the religious side of the university, I believe, must be very largely in the hands of organizations like the Young Men's Christian Association. The responsibility must rest, to a very large degree, upon the Christian element among the undergraduates to see to it that the religious life of the university suffers no declension.

The professors in universities now are not chosen as they used to be, mainly from the ranks of the Christian ministry. Professors as chosen formerly were not always great scholars, and they were not always chosen because of their conspicuous success in the pulpit, either. But they were good men, fair scholars, faithful to the last degree, and they have rendered a splendid service in the education of the country. But with the specialization of functions, so characteristic of our times, we must look to men who choose the teaching profession at the beginning of their career, and therefore the ranks of the professorate are filled with laymen-Christian men, we hope, but they are not by their professional obligations in evidence as the representatives of the gospel.

This increasing specialization of function whereby the professors feel under obligation to make some specific contribu

tion to the literature of their respective departments is more and more divorcing than from active interest in the life of the undergraduate, and particularly in the religious life of the undergraduate. With this disuse of power there comes consequently the loss of power. The man who is not in the habit of speaking on religious subjects comes to find he cannot speak on religous subjects. Mr. Darwin says in his biography that he was conscious of a certain atrophy of faculty growing out of disuse the æsthetic faculty, the love of poetry and interest therein. So there is coming that kind of atrophy in the intellectual power of the every-day professor which, by so much as he is great in the department that he represents, is practically useless outside of that department.

I resent at the outset the suggestion that the professors of our universities are given over to agnosticism, are the victims of skepticism, hold by an uncertain tenure the faith of their fathers, for this I verily believe is not the case. Why should it be the case? If there ever was a day when thoughtful men looked seriously at religious questions, this is the day. Men may not agree with us; they do not scoff. Men may not accept our positions; there is no blatant infidelity among educated

men.

Never did the philosophy of the world stand more conspicuously for a theistic interpretation of the world, for a spiritual conception of the universe. The great question is whether the human soul exists dowered with immortality, and whether over it all an infinite mind exists as a moral governor; and whatever differences of opinion men may have with respect to the way they construe this relationship of God and the world, the recognition of God and the numerical distinction between Him and the world is pretty well conceded. Even these mathematicians, who need no laboratories and libraries, and who are just as happy with their x's and y's and functions and powers as a professor of biology is with a more elaborate equipment, these men have not only laid the keel and set up the timbers of any universal ship that sails the sea of time, but they have said that any free dimension has to conform to the fundamental laws of geometry. They are saying that the world we live in is a world of thought relations. Does a world of thought relations exist with no Thinker, able to grasp them all in a single intuition? I do not wonder that it was said of old-not so long ago, either-that the undevout astronomer is mad.

There is another reason why the Young Men's Christian Association must take hold of the religious life of a university, and that is, that there is a growing separation, to a certain extent, of the undergraduate body from the teaching body, the undergraduate body constituting a world to themselves, with their own burning questions, with their own public opinions,

with their own organs of opinion. If they are to be reached, and reached with collegiate argument and powerfully, it must be by men of their own number to a very great extent. These students come to these universities, with their traditional religion, under the restraints of home life; they come to learn the exercise of the franchises of manhood; they come to widen their horizon and to see their religious life and religious beliefs in the light of current thought. It is not strange if some of them go astray. Some go into dissipation, some fall into skepticism; but the greatest danger of the undergraduate in my judgment, so far as religion is concerned, is not dissipation on the one hand nor skepticism on the other-it is simple, stolid, chronic, apparently incurable indifference. That is the trouble. The question is, how to reach those men.

We do what we can. We invite famous, eloquent preachers into the university pulpit. It isn't every university preacher that knows how to get the ear of university students. Some university preachers think that all university men are familiar with Latin and Greek, and they load up their sermons with quotations from Cæsar, Cicero and Virgil. Some university preachers think that all students are very wicked, and they make allusions to their wickedness with a degree of freedom that sometimes involves a lapse of taste. Some university preachers think that all university students are infidels, and they feel called upon to demonstrate the errors of Herbert Spencer. Some university preachers think that, as they are preaching to an academic audience, they must be very full of literary allusions. Their sermons are mosaics, culled from the prose writers and poets of the Victorian era. Some university preachers think they owe it to themselves to justify their position before the faculty by showing they are up to date in all matters of science and philosophy, and sometimes they miss it by an unfortunate illustration. Some university preachers think that they must conciliate their audience by showing they are in thorough sympathy with outdoor sports, and they miss it by loading up sermons with too many allusions to football and the gridiron. It isn't an easy thing, this preaching to an undergraduate audience, and, therefore, the Young Men's Christian Association, that knows the undergraduate, knows his weak points, knows what he wants, can help him here, can help him there. It can do a work no other agency can do. I commend this association work in the colleges to the attention of the associations of our country, believing that it is the potent agency that is to secure the moral and spiritual uplift of the undergraduate.

This is your opportunity. This is the work you have to do. Don't miss that opportunity. Don't misinterpret that work. Don't do another work because it is easier, and neglect the work you have to do because you may find it hard. Don't be