Page:Educational Review Volume 23.djvu/18

 2 Educational Review [January still owe a certain allegiance to a particular body. But they are also assuming many strictly university functions and are thereby accepting obligations to a larger world of scholarship and of society. In these respects the institution imposes upon its teaching corps not merely a right, but a duty, to maintain in all ways the university ideal of freedom of inquiry and free- dom of communication. But, in other respects, while the his- torical denominational ties are elongated and attenuated, they still remain; and thru them the instructor is to some extent bound. Implicit, if not explicit, obligations are assumed. In this situation, conflict between the two concerns of the uni- versity may arise; and in the confusion of this conflict it is diffi- cult to determine just which way the instructor is morally bound to face. Upon the whole it is clear, however, that the burden falls upon the individual. If he finds that the par- ticular and local attachment is so strong as to limit him in the, pursuit of what he regards as essential, there is one liberty which cannot be taken away from him : the liberty of finding a more congenial sphere of work. So far as the institution is frank in acknowledging and maintaining its denominational connections, he cannot throw the burden back upon it. Never- theless he, and. those who are like-minded, have the right to deplore what they consider as a restriction, and to hope and labor for the time when the obligation in behalf of all the truth to society at large shall be felt as more urgent than that of a part of truth to a part of society. But it cannot be inferred that the problem is a wholly simple one, even within the frankly announced denominational insti- tutions. The line in almost any case is a shifting one. I am told that a certain denominational college permits and en- courages a good deal of instruction in anatomy and physiology because there is biblical authority for the statement that the human body is fearfully and wonderfully made, while it looks askance upon the teaching of geology because the recognized doctrine of the latter appears to it to conflict with the plain statements of Genesis. As regards anatomy and physiology, an instructor in such an institution would naturally feel that his indebtedness was to the world of scholarship rather than to