Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/708

690 based is obsolescent everywhere. In a free community the government does not hold this parental, or patriarchal—I should better say godlike––position. Our government is a group of servants appointed to do certain difficult and important work. It is not the guardian of the nation's morals; it does not necessarily represent the best virtue of the republic, and is not responsible for the national character, being itself one of the products of that character. The doctrine of state personality and conscience, and the whole argument of the dignity and moral elevation of a Christian nation's government as the basis of government duties, are natural enough under grace-of-God governments, but they find no ground of practical application to modern republican confederations; they have no bearing on governments considered as purely human agencies with defined powers and limited responsibilities. Moreover, for most Americans these arguments prove a great deal too much; for, if they have the least tendency to persuade us that government should direct any part of secular education, with how much greater force do they apply to the conduct by government of the religious education of the people! These propositions are, indeed, the main arguments for an established church. Religion is the supreme human interest, government is the supreme human organization; therefore, government ought to take care for religion, and a Christian government should maintain distinctively Christian religious institutions. This is not theory alone; it is the practice of all Christendom, except in America and Switzerland. Now, we do not admit it to be our duty to establish a national church. We believe not only that our people are more religious than many nations which have established churches, but also that they are far more religious under their own voluntary system than they would be under any government establishment of religion. We do not admit for a moment that establishment or no establishment is synonymous with national piety or impiety. Now, if a beneficent Christian government may rightly leave the people to provide themselves with religious institutions, surely it may leave them to provide suitable universities for the education of their youth. And here again the question of national university or no national university is by no means synonymous with the question, Shall the country have good university education or not? The only question is, Shall we have a university supported and controlled by government, or shall we continue to rely upon universities supported and controlled by other agencies?

There is, then, no foundation whatever for the assumption that it is the duty of our government to establish a national university. I venture to state one broad reason why our government should not establish and maintain a university. If the people of the United States have any special destiny, any peculiar function in the world, it is to try to work out under extraordinarily favorable circumstances the problem of free institutions for a heterogeneous, rich, multitudinous