Chautauqua Institution

“ My soul shall praise thee forever. Was this, I say, ever the language of your hearts? And after these inward conflicts, were you ever enabled to reach out the arm of faith and embrace the blessed Jesus in your souls, so that you could say, My beloved is mine, and I am his? If so, fear not, whoever you are—hail, all hail, you happy souls! The Lord, the Lord Christ, the everlasting God is your righteousness. Christ has justified you, who is he that condemneth you? Christ has died for you, nay, rather is risen again, and ever liveth to make intercession for you. ”

“ When, after the required standard in the several departments which constitute the college course has been attained, whether in four, or ten, or fourteen years, the successful candidate shall have his diploma and his degree; and through this window he has constructed out of all these fragments of time—fragments picked up from dusty floor and pavement, from mine, and field, and shop—through this window the light shall shine in its beauty, and people shall see what genius, industry and persistent will can do with the cast away fragments of spare moments and random opportunities. ”

“ Chautauqua would give munificent salaries and put a premium on merit, sense, tact, and culture in the teacher’s office. She would turn the eyes of all the people—poor and rich, mechanics and men of other, if not higher degree, toward the high school and the college, urging house builders, house owners, house keepers, farmers, blacksmiths, bankers, millionaires, to prepare themselves by a true culture, whatever niche they fill in life, to be men and women, citizens, parents, members of society, members of the church, candidates for immortal progress. ”

“ Its capabilities for good can alone be drawn out by education. That Liberty sits enthroned in this land is due solely to education and that proper spirit of freedom and independence in thought and action which is begotten of education. As has been well said by another: “We have gained all that we possess by reason of the education of the individual, and we hold it upon the same tenure. What we hold for ourselves we hold for mankind, and we hold it for both upon the same condition by which it was gained, and that is the continued and universal education and development of the people.” ”

“ And now, my dears, if you are patient and my small assistant keeps me in lead pencils, I shall try to show that if every young woman held in her firm little hand her own best gift, duly cultivated and made effective, society would not explode, the moon would not be darkened, the sun would still shed light. Somehow, dear girls, when I see an audience of young men, they remind me of a platoon of soldiers, marching with fixed bayonet, to the capture of their destiny. An assembly of young women, on the other hand, recalls a flock of lambs upon a pleasant hillside. ”

“ It were almost better that the importance of such education should be a disputed point—that a storm of controversy should arise and shake them in its throes, forcing them to lay hold of the very horns of the sacred altar of education—rather than that the dead, arid level of inert concession should bring forth nothing save a deceptive mirage. It is time to wake up to the fact that government aid in the line of education means nothing unless it be in the form of an annual appropriation of sufficient amount to produce tangible results. ”

“ In college mind meets mind in the severe competition of recitation and annual examination. The bright boy—one of a small class at home, who had it all his own way there—now finds a score or more of leaders whose unvoiced challenge he is compelled to accept, and how he does knit his brow, close his eyes, summon his strength, school his will, force his flagging energies, and grapple problems that he may hold his own, outstrip his rivals, and win prize and place for the sake of his family’s fame and for his personal satisfaction! ”

“ Now it has become so small there are no distant lands; we are all neighbors, and crowded at that, and thought, which is a part of man and the best part, travels round the world in the twinkling of an eye. It is a great thing to live on so small a world in such an age as this. Nowhere do such thoughts more forcibly impress themselves upon the observer than in a World’s Exposition, for here, side by side in friendly rivalry, are the people and productions of almost all the nations of the earth. ”

“ Gently curved, like the celestial sphere on which they are projected, they are not stationary, but almost constantly in motion, but soon resuming their former position, spreading themselves out like immense flags, with their numerous silken folds, ever dancing, quivering, undulating, as if stirred by some gentle breeze, though all else seems in calm repose. To say that the phenomena are electrical, would, probably, not be the whole truth, though evidence is not wanting that the aurora is in some way connected with the electricity and magnetism of the earth and its atmosphere. ”

“ As one reads of the wrongs cruelly inflicted upon the noble Alessandro and the heroic Christian spirit with which he endured them all to the bitter end, there comes a sense of shame that under American laws, base, unprincipled men could commit such deeds of plunder and violence with impunity. The character of Ramona is unique. Her devoted love for Alessandro, the gladness with which she accepted the life of deprivation and danger at his side, and the development, through heavy sorrows, of her deep, true, womanly nature, give the book a richness of color and a depth of pathos seldom met. ”

“ The second marvelous event of these days in which we live is the sweep and triumph of invention. It is worth considering that the steam power of the United States represents more than the entire muscular force of all the able-bodied men in the world. And the improvements in machinery represent immeasurable conquests of mind in the realm of matter. It does not take omniscience to apprehend, to some extent, the fact that these things must affect the destiny of the whole family of mankind. ”

“ But the sentiment which Jesus introduced into the world is really ours. His perfect idealism is the highest rule of unworldly and virtuous life. He has created that heaven of free souls, in which is found what we ask in vain on earth, the perfect nobility of the children of God, absolute purity, total abstraction from the contamination of this world, that freedom, in short, which material society shuts out as an impossibility, and which finds all its amplitude only in the domain of thought. The great master of those who take refuge in this ideal kingdom of God is Jesus still. ”

“ And why not join all forces, North, South, East and West in one sublime and divinely led effort to carry the untold blessings of education, morality, freedom, and Christianity to all peoples who still sit amid the shadows of tyranny, superstition, poverty and ignorance? This World’s Exposition will reach its highest and grandest legitimate possibilities just in proportion as it shall help forward these desires of all good men and these plans and purposes of the World’s Redeemer. ”

“ What is the difference in the outlook of your life that is, and mine that used to be? Let us consider: I was a daring sort of girl; you are the sort of girls who dare. I had aspiration; you have opportunity. I breathed an atmosphere laden with old time conservatisms, from which my glorious mother’s liberality of soul was my one safety valve of deliverance. But you are exhilarated by the vital air of a new liberty. “The world is all before you, where to choose.” ”

“ It is a revelation of wonders to walk about amid these exhibits of machinery, and remember that to all intents and purposes the results we behold are the achievements of the last fifty, and in most cases of the last thirty years. And it is equally remarkable that most of these inventions are the offspring of American thought.
It is most natural for every thoughtful person to ask, how is this and why? The ready and superficial answer is that “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and that the American people, by the conditions of life surrounding them, have been compelled to invent. ”

“ The association of students in college life is another educating factor. Mind meets mind in a fellowship of aim, purpose, and experience. They have left the same world; they now together enter another world. They look up to the heights and to the shining of crowns which await the gifted and faithful. They are brothers now—one “alma mater” to nourish them. They sing their songs—songs which, although without much sense, have power to awake and foster sympathy. Even a man of sense loves to listen to them. ”

“ Every Man has his Price.—It is a curious trait in human nature, that each individual places the highest value on himself; treats the world as if it were only in existence on his account, looks upon himself as if he were the central point round which all things turn—and that yet, in spite of this universal self-appreciation, so many persons make themselves the slaves of others, or of some insignificant desire of their own. ”

“ The laws of affinity work out. Soul inspires soul. Memories grow apace. Attachments that endure, adventures seasoned with fun or touched with sadness, absurdities, failures, heroisms, triumphs, are crowded into the four years, and like fruitage of bloom and fragrance from a conservatory may go forth to bless many an hour of wandering, of sorrow, of reunion, of remembrance, in the later years. There was something pathetic in the return of the famous Yale College class of 1853 to their alma mater two summers ago. ”

“ The work begun in the school room should be continued on the lecture platform, but we should not dissemble the truth that in a crowded hall ninety per cent. of the visitors have generally come to hear an orator rather than a teacher, and enjoy an eloquence that stirs up their barrenest emotions as much as if it had fertilized the soil of their intelligence, just as the unrepentant gamesters of a Swiss watering place used to applaud the sensational passages of a drama written expressly to set forth the evils of the gambling hell. ”

“ O, since in this life love has made us so rich, though but a little brook, which, when the sun shone fiercely, was almost dried up, how rich will it not make us when the little brook has become the stream, yea, the ocean, when it flows forth from the heart of God, in full spring-tide, and sin no more builds a barrier in the heart of the creature, and there will be a free and sacred giving and receiving between heaven and earth, and among all that is in heaven and upon earth! ”

“ Thus we comprehend how, by an exceptional destiny, pure Christianity still presents itself, at the end of eighteen centuries, with the character of a universal and eternal religion. It is because in fact the religion of Jesus is in some respects the final religion. The fruit of a perfectly spontaneous movement of souls, free at its birth from every dogmatic constraint, having struggled three hundred years for liberty of conscience, Christianity, in spite of the fall which followed, still gathers the fruits of this surpassing origin. To renew itself it has only to turn to the Gospel. ”

“ There are tens of thousands of young people out of school by necessities commercial and filial, who are awakened to the power within and the possibilities beyond. They believe they could learn a language, and enjoy the literature of it. They believe they could think and grow, speak and write. They are willing, and eager to try. Out of minutes they could construct college terms. They have will enough, heart enough, brain enough to begin, to go on, to go through, and all this, while the everyday life continues with its duty for this hour and for that. ”

“ The life once begun in everything that lives and grows, there is a power that takes hold of the elements nature has in store for it, and, by a most wonderful transformation, works them up into its own body; and this power of assimilation must forever distinguish it from all lifeless inorganic matter.
The mystery deepens when we notice that living things exist in generations. The plant has seed in itself for the production of another plant. It has life in itself, and power to vitalize its successors. ”

“ They frisk about and nibble at the herbage and lie down in the sun, while above them soars the devouring eagle of their destiny, sweeping in concentric rings through the blue air, and ready to pounce down upon them, while the meek little innocents turn their white faces upward and mildly wonder “what that graceful creature is up yonder?” They remind me, too, of the reply given by a bright young friend of mine to the solemn exhortation that she should “make the most of life.” ”

“ The poor drudge who toils wearily through twelve long hours for the mere necessities of life, can at night sit on a golden throne and dispense royal favors. The ambitious soldier can fight bloodless contests, and win empires, without staining his soul with the crimes of a Napoleon.
And if the dreams of the mass of mankind be so full of wonders, what must be those of the giants of intellect and passion? What exquisite sensuous delight must have thrilled the poet Coleridge during his vision of Xanadu of Kubla Khan, when the mere fragmentary strains that he then heard sung are so beautiful! ”

“ Even the slaves of ancient Rome had their saturnalia, when their masters indulged them in the enjoyment of their accumulated arrears of happiness; but our laborers toil like machines, whose best recreation is a temporary respite from work. Human hearts, however, will not renounce their birthright to happiness; and if joy has departed this life they pursue its shadow in the land of dreams, and try to spice the dry bread of daily drudgery with the sweets of delirium.”—International Review, December, 1880. ”