Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1899-11-10


must have its own rivers to water its
own territory.
So far in general, but the colleges in
whose behalf especially speak, are a
distinctive type. They are all Midmav
oaks, lineal descendants from Emanuel
college of old Cambridge, through Har.
ward, Yale, Dartmouth, Williams. Bow
dom, Amherst, Middle5ury, Oberlin
and all the rest of the bright succession,
including many noble colleges for
women great and excellent company,
a continental company, and more, for
beautiful and fruitful they thrive on
missionary ground and on foreign
shores. These colleges founded and
fostered by our Congregational churches
all stand for the Christian higher educa
ton. This is based upon the fact that
God is, and that He is over all, and is in
all. They do not ignore belief 10 this
fact, or apologize for it, or minimize it.
Nor do they think it enough to put the
knowledge of the Eternal into curricu
lum as If 1t could be separated topic,
an elective, along with Anglo Saxon or
the history of the Bagdad Califate.
They seek to give it full and prac zeal
recognition, to make it the ever present
thought in the light and warmth of
which all study and training go on.
These colleges seek to be an embodi-
ment OF supreme regard for the worth
OF the Individual human being as made
In the image of God, and redeemed bv
the son of God. The humblest and
weakest may not therefore be despised,
neglected or harmed. Each has right
to an opportunity to become all that it
is in him to be. This logically car les
with it the democratic programme. 1t
is this principle that has wrought might
ly for human liberty and help in the
past. This is the true American tradi
ton, the loftiest principle of American
republican life. 1t is to foster this tradi-
ton and principle that our republic
needs the higher Christian education.
The second common characteristic Of
the colleges in our order is that while
definitely and aggressively Christian,
they are genuinely unsectarian. The
governing body is self-pt rpetuating and
free under its own charter. No ecclesl.
astical body on the one hand, no state
authority on the other, can exercise any
official control in any Congregational
college. There can be no compelling
hand from place to power. No decree
Of Synod, or bishop or council can de-
termne anything. This has been true
from the beginning and is true today.
In the final uniflcation and correlation
of our complex educational machinery
in this country, it is believed that the
university will cease to be college and
a university at the same time. and the
college will he content to be college.
That the university will, in the realza-
tion of immense cooperative possibilities.
increasingly draw to itself the technical
and professional schools, while the col
leges will come to be as separated from
the universities as the secondary schools
are from the fully developed college.
Free from the domination of both church
and state. with an organic capacity for
change, fully endowed and perfectly
equipped, true to the original aim and
spirit of the Christian liberal education.
the college will continue to hold a place
of honor and power and to send to the
/ uu'NClSi'iVo q SOuliuutu StItdlU VI IHul-
vidualized men and women.
In the interest of the best education,
the college should require only such
preparation as may be secured by a dill
gent student at sixteen years of age,
then graduated at twenty, with his
nervous force unimpaired, having had
perhaps no thought of his special voca-
ton until the last year, then. when
habits of thought have been formed,
when moral principles have been ma
tured, and moral earnestness acquired
above all, when right ehthusiams have
been engendered, right impulses born
and the line of life work determined,
then let the young man and the young
woman 60 on up to the university
to find besides special training in
the contracts there the standards
of comparison needed and the stimulus
required Then the complexty and
richness of apparatus, of fellowship. Of
opportunity will be no longer confusing,
for his aim is fixed, aud there will be in
the large and diverse student body a
suggestive aud helpful image of the
Naster world beyond.
Surgeon General Wyman says X y
West yellow fever has run its course.