Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/470

452 young men for the Christian ministry, and in nearly all of them the promotion of the Christian religion (by which is meant the so-called evangelical religion) is the first object. As subsidiary to this come science, languages, and belles-lettres generally. Upon this basis, indeed, the greater part of the collegiate institutions in England and America stand to-day. With respect to all such, then, the question is, whether they are to be approved and supported; and, if not, what should be done to change their character so as to counteract whatever is unfortunate or baneful in their influences.

An ideal of education which sets up the attainment of truth before everything else, and claims not only the right but the necessity of questioning all things and proving all things, never can be satisfied with the constitution of any college or university whose first end and purpose is to promote any religion whatever, be it Christian, Mohammedan, Confucian, or Buddhistic. A theological seminary to be entered after general education, may properly be sectarian and be maintained for the special purpose of teaching any kind of dogma that its founders and patrons desire taught. Not so, however, with an institution for general academic instruction and study. And it must not be overlooked that an institution whose chief aim is "to promote the religion of Christ," though apparently this would include many sects, is, after all, necessarily sectarian and partisan. To begin with, it is sectarian, because, since there are many Christian sects and a great variety of Christian doctrines, some form of this doctrine must be selected and favored, if "promotion" be the chief object. Any organization for convincing and persuading must have something respecting which it is to convince and persuade. It thus can not avoid being sectarian, if it preserves any character as an effective promoting force. Such we find actually to be the case. Either by agreement at the outset or by a process of natural selection, colleges and seminaries whose chief aim is to promote the religion of Christ become inevitably Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or something else, according to circumstances. However liberal they may be in selecting teachers for other departments, the religious teaching is all of a kind, just in the measure that they make the advancement of religion an object. Thus, though college authorities declare in their prospectus, for the purpose of attracting students, that their teaching is not sectarian, a person who reflects on the subject will not be deceived. It must be sectarian, so far as it is aggressively religious, although it may be very tolerant of all sects whose tenets are like its own. If the dominant sect differs from another only on the question of the mode of baptism, no very great amount of disfavor toward the latter would be discovered. But let the point of difference be the divinity of Christ, or the question of eternal punishment, and we shall soon see developed the strength of sectarian feeling in a manner suflicient to remove all doubts.