The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1882-01-26

: that literature some slight taste fo
student life was kept alive. Tru
| many a priceless manuscript of tn
r older literature was erased to Civ
place to monastic missals and monk
) ish legends, were scrawled over will
the forgeries Of faith but out of i
came the first gems Of modern litera
: ture. Some monk vainly searching
for the philosophers stone, whose
touch would change all things to gold
proved the great-grandfather of mod.
ern chemistry. The work of arrang.
ing cloister manuscripts gave the first
impulse toward historical writing, and
scholastic literature, proved the prim-
itive impulse of modern literature
To us familiar with the wild yagaries
Of modern spiritism, or the wild orgies
of camp-meeting religion, it is toe
early to condemn too severely the su-
pArstitions of the elder centuries.
Viewed in such light it is not so hard
to understand that wave Of ignorant
fanaticism aroused to anger that swept
over Europe and precipitated il. almost
solidly upon Asia in the form Of the
Crusades. They could only have been
possible in an age of absolute ignor-
ance. reinforced by absolute faith and
unreasoning brutality.
Charlemagne. possibly, deserves the
honor Of originating the public school,
and the teachers of to-day if ambitious
OF apostolic succession can trace an
unbroken line to Alcuin. The Uni
versity of Paris dates buck to the be-
ginning of the tenth century. Those
of Oxford, Bologna, Padua followed
until against the sixteenth, every con-
siderable city had it's university and
its host of students. With all the in
tellectual light they cast upon the
age, the culture Of these universities
reached but few. The great robber
barons were too proud, the serfs and
villeins of the soil too poor to care for
the learning of the schools. Despite
all this however the intellectual leaven
spread and with its spread came
loosening of the bonds of villeinage;
lowering of the barriers that stood
between the higher and the lower
classes; a gradual amelioration Of the
tyrannies of the feudal system
The grand old universities that loom
up so grandly amid the gloom of the
later medieval years, shedding such
brilliant rays around them; are worthy
of the veneration of all friends of hu-
man progress. They proved the real
precursors of the revival of learning.
Cambridge and Oxford, Heidelberg
and Brague, Paris and Erfurt have
proved the centres from which much
of the literary life of our centuries can
deduce its origin. They are not
model schools, perfection is possible
to nothing human, but we who still
struggle almost hopelessly against so
much Of customary, unreasoning
prejudice can afford to forgive much !
of their failings. As long as social
customs rear rock walls between the
upper and lower classes; as long as
the legal subordination of women is
held and defended; as long as the
friends of co-education fight a losing
battle, it is too early to condemn too |
severely, the subserviency Of those
schools to class, to race and to sex
In many cases their found
ers builded better than they knew.
As they spread the light of intelli-
gence over Europe they put in motion
the train of causes that has under
mined the feudal system, and is slowly
raising all castles, sexes and classes to
legal and political equality. The alb
surd struggles of the schoolmen, the
disciples of Aristotle are forever over.
the questions that press upon modern
life and upon modern thought are of
a far different class.
1t was in those schools that Wick
life, Savonarola and Huss received
their training, and from them they
first began to throw the rays Of intel
ligence through the thick night of
their centuries. 1t was in one of
these the earnest, impulsive Luther
made the great literary discovery of
the age in the chained Bible, and
reading in its pages the great lessons
Jesus aimed o teach, saw how far the
church had gotten away from the
maxims of its supposed founder.
Grandest among the worlds historic
names towering far above those of
statesmen and soldiers; peerless as
Sirius among the midnight stars, in
the very front rank of those whose
names mark eras in human history,
must ever stand that of the conserva-
tive, enthusiast. the iconoclastic sys-
tenn builder Martin Luther. Those
logmatic theses on the Wittenberg
church door were protest at the
same time against Middle Age ignor-
lnce and demand although their
author knew it not. for modern free
lom of literary and religious thought
and action In that manly protest
was involved much of the European
largely that of America
IS well. In it was involved freedom
# thought, freedom of speech and
pest of all chance for general intel
6 nee.
However willing the people may
nave been to accept the reform alton,
was the scholars of the Universe
les that gave it form. The long
'truggle that followed, and-is scarcely
yet over, was the struggle of the
spirit Of ignorance that had destroyed
he elder literature, and was now
.triving to strangle the new at its
birth. Thank God! the effort failed.
Out of that literary revival has come
every advance modern humanity has
made Charles and Cajetan are
lead, Luthers lives in his daily WIDEN
ing work. Every protest against ig-
norance and superstition, every ad-
vance humanity has made-the free
dom Of England, the constitution of
the scientific progress that
has made the last two centuries event