Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/473

Rh without any religious purpose or aim, but which shall furnish facilities to the student for obtaining instruction in the comparative study of religions, and in the tenets of the leading religious sects, such instruction to be critical, not authoritative. These universities should be broad enough to cover all branches of science, including religions, and each department should stand upon its own foundation. The teacher of Latin should be qualified by reason of his knowledge of Latin and ability to communicate it, and it should matter not whether he be a Christian. The government of the institution should be wholly impartial as regards religion, and its charter ought to forbid religious discrimination in any form. As to worship, the teaching of religion by insinuation, that should have no place in a university save as a matter of voluntary attention. Of a college church there can be no need; for in any college-town there are, no doubt, ample opportunities for the enjoyment of religious services among the churches of the neighborhood.

Such a scheme of collegiate institutions has commended itself to a great many thinking people, but the importance of creating and sustaining the like should be more sensibly appreciated. The Christian church has always been alive to the value of education for the promotion of its own interests. The monks were usually men of peace, but, through their care for the instruction of youth, they became more powerful than the men of war. Though they were working chiefly to perpetuate the power of their order, the world is greatly indebted to them for the preservation of learning and the interest in its acquisition. It is true enough that the church has been in times past the foster-mother of education, but it is not true, therefore, that education will not flourish except under the auspices of religious organization. Let it be impressed upon the community that for the preservation of the social organism education is necessary, for the life that now is; for good government and a larger liberty, and just as powerful a motive is created to promote it as any that loyalty to an ecclesiastical society can originate. To encourage this thought, and to secure its practical carrying out, should be the aim of those who believe in a stable social order; who appreciate, indeed, the value of knowledge in religious matters so well that they are not willing to rest content with partial truth and error. Some institutions of learning there are that foster such a sentiment, and which in their constitution are substantially free from religious partisanship; it is desirable to have more.

Modifying influences are everywhere at work upon existing colleges and universities, and they are nearly all in some degree susceptible of improvement in the directions I have indicated. They desire students and must have funds. The best method of making them understand their short-comings is to cut off their supplies of both. But the higher education must be had, and if it can not be obtained in a non-sectarian institution, the conditions are often such that with