John Marshall Barker

“ The importance of promoting religious culture in our colleges cannot be overestimated. Dr. Thomas Arnold has spoken words that should be preserved in letters of gold. "Consider," he says, "what a religious education, in the true sense of the word, is: It is no other than a training our children to life eternal; no other than the making them know and love God, know and abhor evil; no other than the fashioning all the parts of our nature for the very ends which God designed for them; the teaching our understandings to know the highest truth; the teaching our affections to love the highest good!" ”

“ It is an omen of good that chairs of political and social science are being established in all our high grade colleges to train young men for this service. They ought to prosper, and will. Milton saw this need years ago, and said: "The next remove must be to the study of politics, to know the beginning, end, and reasons of political societies; that they may not, in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth, be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a tottering conscience, as many of our great counsellors have lately shown themselves, but steadfast pillars of the state." ”

“ The efficiency of our public schools has been felt in every department of our social organization. They have been a strong bulwark against the influences of a raw and uninstructed foreign population, who, like a tidal wave, have flooded our shores. Some of these have not only been ignorant and infidel, but filled with monarchical ideas and un-American sentiment. The public schools have brought their children into accord with our American institutions, and developed intelligent patriotism. ”

“ I was lately saying to one of the first mathematicians in England, who has been a distinguished senior wrangler at Cambridge and a practical mathematician besides, that in one department, at any rate—that of mechanics and engineering,—we seemed, in spite of the absence of special schools, good instruction, and the idea of science, to get on wonderfully well. 'On the contrary,' said he, 'we get on wonderfully ill. Our engineers have no real scientific instruction, and we let them learn their business at our expense by the rule of thumb, but it is a ruinous system of blunder and plunder. ”

“ The undue excitement and spirit of rivalry fostered is foreign to the true idea of an earnest student life. The college is no monastery to make the student a recluse, but it should be a place of solitude, a modern cloister, where the student may be kept in partial isolation and away from the turbulent stream of public life and distracting social influences. The student may keep in the midst of the current of actual modern thought and life without sacrificing the quiet seclusion which is an essential requirement for the best scholarship. ”

“ Next to the home, the college has been the ruling spirit in private and public life. The colleges have rigorously upheld the principles of piety, justice and sacred regard for truth as the best foundation of social order. The true wealth and power of the nation are the great and good men produced by the colleges whose example and influence have been to promote intelligence and good order in society. ”

“ The student who has the promise of a large inheritance has intimate social relations with those whose only capital is brain and heart. The true college test is thus expressed by President Thwing: "Brain is the only symbol of aristocracy, and the examination room the only field of honor; the intellectual, ethical, spiritual powers the only test of merit; a mighty individuality the only demand made of each, and a noble enlargement of a noble personality the only ideal." ”

“ There is little doubt that elective courses of study are a recognized necessity and benefit. It remains, however, an open question what studies should be required and what elected, and when the work of specialization should begin. If we keep in view the fact that the primary aim of a college education is to elevate and broaden the student by training him to clear and exact thought and accurate observation and expression, we will see that, whatever the course or subject of study chosen, it is only the means to this end. ”

“ Professor Josiah Royce has well said that "the result of this 'conflict' between the two ideals of academic work has been the union of both in the effort of all concerned to build up a system of university training whose ideal is at once one of scholarly method and of scientific comprehension of fact. For the scholar, as such, be he biologist, or grammarian, or metaphysician, the exclusive opposition between 'words' and 'things' has no meaning. He works to understand truth, and the truth is at once word and thing, thought and object, insight and apprehension, law and content, form and matter. ”

“ The New World, then just opening, furnished a field of unimagined extent, with motives and social forces and ranges of opportunity which even yet are a marvel. By founding a new England beyond the sea, and planting a new Emmanuel College in a new Cambridge, English Puritanism was enabled to transcend itself, to exchange the attitude of a struggling ecclesiastical party for that of an Established Church. It gained the opportunity to originate a new social order, and to impress itself upon a new age, built upon new and democratic principles. ”

“ It is this spirit that makes and enforces a peculiar sentiment in the college community, which becomes almost as strong as positive law. These influences emanate in various ways. No one can trace them to their ultimate source, but all feel the effect of these dominant forces, and realize that their lives are, in some measure, gradually but surely becoming molded and shaped by them. These influences are among the most cherished recollections in after years, and unite the student to his college with affectionate regard. ”

“ No one can afford to be indifferent to the power and influence for good of the Christian college. These are immeasurable. The Christian Church and all the friends of human progress and welfare must, more and more, emphasize the lesson that, if we educate in our colleges the leading minds of the nation, we will be able so to control the prevailing habits and modes of thought throughout the country as to secure the permanency and glory of Christian liberty and religious institutions. ”

“ Ignorance is the synonym for narrowness and bigotry. Charity, good-will, and human brotherhood spring from a kind heart and an enlightened understanding. The student, by reason of years of study, is better able to see truth in its various human relations and personally exhibit a breadth of charity unknown to those of narrow vision. ”

“ It is impossible to estimate the indebtedness of popular to collegiate education. There is an intimate and vital relation between the college and the public schools, which differ not in kind, but only in the degree of instruction. "The success and usefulness of common schools," says Professor W. S. Tyler, "is exactly proportioned to the popularity and prosperity of the colleges, and whatever is done for or against the one is sure to react, with equal force and similar results, upon the other." ”

“ The journalists of to-day need breadth and concentration of mind to meet the demands of a reading and thinking people. They need a knowledge based on history, literature, and politics in order to report speeches correctly and to discuss living questions clearly, cogently, and with a broad knowledge of principles and facts. The press wields an influence next to the pulpit, and it should be consecrated to the highest service through men qualified for editorial work.
The profession of teaching has justly assumed a position in this country second to none in influence and power. ”

“ The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders, like Atlas, and put along with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself. Cowards suffer; heroes enjoy. ”

“ I cannot be unwilling to avail myself of any opportunity to turn the attention of the Christian public to the Christian College. It is a noble public and an equally noble object. I can conceive of no worthier or more Christian thing than the caretaking of one generation that the next one which must necessarily lie so long under its influence and for which it is therefore so thoroughly responsible, should receive a Christian education.
To put Christ at the center and make Him felt to the circumference (as Bungener said in speaking of Calvin's school policy) , is exceedingly difficult. ”

“ The intellectual processes involved in study do not necessarily exert a spiritual influence. The aim and spirit of the professor and student will determine whether the study pursued shall contribute to the cultivation of greater reverence and exaltation of the soul. The charm of scientific study may so occupy the student's attention as to exclude all thoughts of the spiritual and eternal, or he may "look through nature up to nature's God." ”

“ The baser things of life are crowded out to give place to nobler thoughts and higher aims. He finds his real happiness in cultivating the inner life of exalted thought and generous impulses. He realizes that, as the body demands sustenance, and the soul needs "bread from heaven," so the mind must have intellectual food, which gratifies a taste for the best thoughts of the best thinkers. ”

“ Exclusive privileges and distinctions on account of sex are contrary to the character and genius of a free people. "If," says President Dwight, "education is for the growth of the human mind—the personal human mind—and if the glory of it is in upbuilding and outbuilding of the mind, the womanly mind is just as important, just as beautiful, just as much a divine creation with wide-reaching possibilities as the manly mind. ”

“ Channing says: "The grounds of a man's culture lie in his nature, and not in his calling;" and, in keeping with this, the primary aim of a college is to train men. Yet, it should be the door of approach to all professions. The studies pursued in college are the foundations of the practice of the various professions, and a young man does himself and his profession no credit when he neglects to master a college course because of his impatience to rush into a professional career, and thus help to swell the army of poorly-equipped professional men. ”