A special dispensation of weather seemed to have been prepared for the accommodation of the second graduating class of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle on Saturday. A bright warm day was benevolently shaded and cooled by nature’s great sunshade of cloud during all the out-door exercises, and promptly upon the entry of the multitude under the cover of the Amphitheater it began to rain to still further cool the air. Everything was opportune, and the surroundings faultless.
The management terrestrial was equally good. There were four different processions, in five divisions, moving from different rendezvous in the grounds and converging and articulating with each other. Each of them started on time “to a tick,” got to and dropped into place, and everything moved with the smoothness and precision of a well-adjusted machine. The program, as prepared, was carried out to the letter and second.
The attendance was as immense, the feeling as good as the day and management. The unprecedented crowd of the night before was augmented in the morning by boat-loads and train-loads, and when the signal-bells for beginning the day’s movement sounded the avenues were thronged.
Punctually at the hour the “Guard of the Gate,” H. S. Field, J. J. Covert, Miss E. E. Tuttle, W. H. Rogers, Charles B. Wood, S. J. M. Eaton, Miss Myrtie Hudson, A. M. Martin, J. G. Allen, A. M. Mattison, and the “Guard of the Grove,” Miss Annie E. Wilcox, A. Wilder, Miss M. F. Wells, Miss E. Irvin, Miss Eleanor O’Connell, E. C. Norton, Mrs. E. Howe, De Forest Temple, Mrs. Isaiah Golding, George Seebrick, in charge of Marshal S. J. M. Eaton, formed at the cottage of Lewis Miller (Auditorium), the right resting on Hedding Avenue.
The keys of the Golden Gate having been delivered by President Miller to the Messenger, Rev. A. H. Gillet, the division marched up Hedding Avenue to Clark, and out Clark to the Hall of Philosophy, and were distributed to their proper positions in charge of the inclosure of St. Paul’s Grove.
The second division, consisting of fifty-two little girls, the youngest, Jennie Templeton, four years of age, heading the procession, beautifully garlanded and bearing artistic baskets laden with flowers to their very brim, conducted by Mrs. Frank Beard, superintendent, assisted by Miss M. E. Bemis, Miss Minnie Barney, Messrs. Garret E. Ryckman, and W. H. Burroughs, and Miss Blanche Shove, was formed at the Children’s Temple, the right resting on Clark Avenue. The “Society of the Hall in the Grove,” (the graduates of the class of 1882, C. L. S. C.) were thus escorted by this beautiful company of prospective Chautauquans through Clark Avenue to Hedding, down Hedding to Simpson, through Simpson to Park Athenæum, through Park Athenæum to Lake Avenue, to Dr. Vincent’s cottage.
The sixth division, consisting of the graduates of the class of 1883, and the graduates of the class of 1882, who had not last year passed through the Golden Gate, and under the Arches, met at the gate of St. Paul’s Grove, on Merrill Avenue, each provided with a ticket, a garnet badge, and a copy of the commencement service. A portion of the Guard of the Grove stood within the gate, and a portion stood in waiting without. The Messenger stood at the portal, holding the keys of the gate. The Guard of the Gate took their places in order, near the Messenger, while the leaders of the graduating class, Rev. H. C. Farrar, chairman, and Rev. George C. Wilding, took their stations, one on the right and the other on the left of the gateway, that at a given signal the class might read responsively the form of service provided. The classes were arranged in parallel columns stretching from the portal itself to the middle of Miller Avenue, a block and a half.
At precisely 9:45 the Chautauqua Band, headed by Frank Wright, Marshal, marching up Lake Avenue, reached the cottage of Dr. Vincent. Here the banner of the C. L. S. C., with the “Guard of the Banner,” Mrs. M. Bailey and Mrs. Delos Hatch, were escorted to their places in the line. Four little children, Chippie Firestone, Edna McClellan, Nellie Mallory and Bobbie Davenport were conducted to their places as “streamer bearers,” while the beautiful fabric itself was borne by Mr. W. E. H. Massey and Mr. Will Butler. The Superintendent of Instruction, Dr. Vincent, took his place in the line.
The procession took its order of march, moving through Lake Avenue to Haven Avenue, and up Haven to the Hall of Philosophy, which it entered, and the band departed to escort thither “The Chautauqua Procession.” (Division V.) This division formed at the Hotel Athenæum, Frank Wright, Marshal, the right resting on the north main front of the hotel, in the following order:
Band.Chautauqua Board of Trustees, led by Lewis Miller, Esq., President.The Faculty and Students of the “Chautauqua School of Languages,” J. H. Worman, Marshal.The Normal Alumni, carrying their banners for the various years since 1874, Frank Beard, Marshal.The members of the classes of the C. L. S. C. for the years 1887, 1886, 1885, 1884, Mr. Copeland, Marshal.The guests of the Assembly, Rev. Frank Russell, Marshal.
The procession, thus constituted, moved at ten o’clock from the piazza of the Hotel Athenæum, across the north side of the Park Athenæum, to Lake Avenue, out Lake Avenue to Cookman Avenue, up Cookman to Clark, halting on Cookman, the right resting on Clark, in open order, the Hall of Philosophy being on its right flank.
At this time the entire neighborhood of the “Hall in the Grove” was filled with interested crowds of spectators, whose eyes saw for the second time the “Recognition Services” of the immense class in the “People’s University.”
More than a hundred and fifty of the “Society of the Hall in the Grove” (graduates of the preceding year), entered the Hall, and were seated in its western side.
Precisely at ten o’clock, as the booming of the great bell at the Point indicated the hour, the members of the Class of 1883, with such members of the Class of 1882 as had not last year passed the Arches, standing at the gate of St. Paul’s Grove, read responsively the devotional services, Rev. George C. Wilding acting as precentor of the first section, and Rev. H. C. Farrar as the precentor of the second section.
The “Messenger,” Rev. A. H. Gillet, in slow and solemn utterance gave the announcement as follows:
I come to inform all candidates for enrollment in the “Society of the Hall in the Grove” that the hour appointed for your reception has arrived; the Hall has been set in order; the Path through the Grove has been opened; the Arches under which you must pass have been erected; the Key which will open this Gate has been placed in my hands. And to you who, as members of theChautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, have completed the four years’ Course of Reading, and now hold in your hands a pledge of the same, I extend, in the name of the authorities, a welcome into St. Paul’s Grove, under the First Arch—and let the watchman guard carefully the Gate.
I come to inform all candidates for enrollment in the “Society of the Hall in the Grove” that the hour appointed for your reception has arrived; the Hall has been set in order; the Path through the Grove has been opened; the Arches under which you must pass have been erected; the Key which will open this Gate has been placed in my hands. And to you who, as members of theChautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, have completed the four years’ Course of Reading, and now hold in your hands a pledge of the same, I extend, in the name of the authorities, a welcome into St. Paul’s Grove, under the First Arch—and let the watchman guard carefully the Gate.
After the announcement by the Messenger, he turned and opened the gate. The first to enter was Mr. Miner Curtis, an invalid, borne in a wheeled carriage by the advance members of the class of ’83, and accompanied by his wife and son, who were graduates of last year.
Having entered the Gate, and the Gate having been closed, the class proceeded very slowly toward the Hall, passing the second and third Arches. As they walked up the beautifully decorated way, the “Choir of the Hall in the Grove” stationed at the fourth Arch, and led by Prof. C. C. Case, sang “A Song of To-day:”
“Sing peans over the Past!We bury the dead years tenderly.”
“Sing peans over the Past!We bury the dead years tenderly.”
“Sing peans over the Past!
We bury the dead years tenderly.”
At the entrance to the Hall stood the Superintendent of Instruction to welcome the coming class, and as they passed by the Arch nearest the Hall, the fifty-two little girls standing in double columns, scattered the way of the coming graduates with the beauteous flowers, emblematic of the flower-strewn paths of intellectual light which they may hope to tread in the coming years.
On entering the building the “Society of the Hall in the Grove” received their brothers and sisters with the most marked tokens of good cheer, waving their handkerchiefs and vocally expressing the kindly feeling of the seniors of the year agone.
At precisely 10:20 the “C. L. S. C. Glee Club,” Prof. W. F. Sherwin, conductor, led the classes (which filled the Hall to repletion), as they sang
“A sound is thrilling thro’ the treesAnd vibrant thro’ the air.”
“A sound is thrilling thro’ the treesAnd vibrant thro’ the air.”
“A sound is thrilling thro’ the trees
And vibrant thro’ the air.”
After the reading of the responsive services came the “Recognition,” by the Superintendent of Instruction, Dr. J. H. Vincent, as follows:
Fellow Students of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle of the Class of 1883:
Fellow Students of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle of the Class of 1883:
Dearly Beloved—You have finished the appointed and accepted course of reading. You have been admitted to this sacred Grove. You have passed the Arches dedicated to “Faith,” “Science,” “Literature” and “Art.” You have entered in due form this Hall, the center of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle; and now, as Superintendent of Instruction, in behalf of my associates, the counselors, who are this day absent, I greet you, and hereby announce that you, and your brothers and sisters absent from us this day, who have completed with you the prescribed course of reading, are accepted and approved graduates of the “Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle,” and that you are entitled to membership in the “Society of the Hall in the Grove.” The Lord bless and keep thee; the Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
I may say on behalf of the only counselor who is on the ground, Dr. Lyman Abbott, that his indisposition renders it unsafe for him to be here, but at my cottage he will join the procession, and go with you to the Amphitheater. We will now unite in singing
“Bright gleams again Chautauqua’s wave,And green her forest arches.”
“Bright gleams again Chautauqua’s wave,And green her forest arches.”
“Bright gleams again Chautauqua’s wave,
And green her forest arches.”
During the singing of the ode, according to the direction of the Superintendent of Instruction, the class of 1882, under the marshalship of W. A. Duncan, quietly marched from the Hall in double column, taking their position on Haven, Clark, and Cookman avenues, that the graduating class might pass through their ranks at the close of the service of recognition.
The Superintendent of Instruction, Dr. Vincent, Lewis Miller, the Messenger, the Secretary of the C. L. S. C., preceded by the children (flower bearers) and the Banner of the C. L. S. C., headed the procession, which passed out of the south side of the Hall, around Clark to Cookman Avenue, and passed down through the opened ranks of the classes of the C. L. S. C., from whom they received constant marks of recognition and affection, the classes in some cases waving their Chautauqua salute to the Chief as he passed by.
When the head of the procession reached the cottage of Dr. Vincent, a halt was made for a few moments, during which Dr. Lyman Abbott, one of the counselors of the C. L. S. C., and the orator of the day, took his place in the ranks.
As the procession marched up the long walk to the north door of the Amphitheater, immense throngs filled all the available standing room on the slopes of the ravine, and the “Blooming of the Lilies” (the Chautauqua salute) was given by all the opened ranks of the classes as the head of the procession passed through.
The Chautauqua Band, stationed at the entrance of the north gate, discoursed sweet music during the passage of the longcortege.
All the officers, invited guests, members of the board of Chautauqua trustees, officers and members of the Chautauqua School of Languages, the Normal Alumni, and the various classes of the C. L. S. C., passed into the great Amphitheater, when the ropes were dropped, and sooner than we write it, all the remaining seating space was filled to overflowing.
The platform was filled with distinguished Chautauquans and others; the organ gave forth its sweet harmonies under the manipulation of Prof. Andrews; the Chautauqua Banner of the C. L. S. C. was stationed in full view of the vast throng; and after the devotional exercises Dr. Vincent introduced Dr. Lyman Abbott, who delivered the Commencement oration, as follows:
Fellow Chautauquans:—I see in some of your eyes triumph. You have run in four years a race with uncertainty whether you could ever reach the goal. You have carried on your work under difficulties and discouragements, such as are never known to him who has perfect and continual leisure for the pursuit of studies; but in the midst of employments which were incessant and imperative in their demands upon you; and your courage, your patience, your hope, have vanquished the obstacles, and you are here to-day to receive the outward sign and symbol of your inward victory. In other eyes I see expectation. You have commenced a course and you are hopeful of achieving a result, which has been made possible to you within the last few years, that the fruits and results of study might be yours though you could not give yourself to a life of study, still less to the persistent and professional pursuit of scholarship. In other eyes I see desire dimmed by fear and doubt; you do not know whether this great realm is open to you or not; you wish that you could be assured that it is. Is this all a mistake? Is your triumph a false one, your expectation a delusive one, your hope and your desire one impossible of attainment? This is so asserted. There are not a few in our times who are of the opinion that learning is of necessity only for the few, or at all events if the many can enter a little upon the realm, they must always live upon the border and never can enter into the heart of the country.
I desire, if I may this morning, to meet and to answer this objection of skepticism, and to show that learning is within the possible reach to-day of the great body of industrious, hard-working, perplexed, and driven people of America; that it is not the privilege of the few; that it is the prerogative of the many. I desire to show you that we are entering into an epoch which I may call the “Democracy of Learning.” We have already entered into the epoch of democracy in religion. The time has gone by, at least for all Protestant people, of believing that religion is for the few, or that even the higher and larger privileges of religious life are for the few. It has been established for all those who believe in an open Bible and in the universal religion of Jesus Christ that the innermost sanctuary of the temple is for every one. The great wall that before separated the court of Israel from the court of the priests has been broken down; there is but one court. The great veil that hung between the holy of holies and the court of the priests has been torn asunder, and every one of us is not only priest but high-priest, free to enter into the very holy of holies. And we have entered into the epoch of democracy in public affairs. The time has gone by when political power belonged to the few, and political intelligence was believed to be the prerogative of the few. We have come into an epoch in which political power is lodged in the hands of the great masses of the people; and it is lodged there because we believe that, on the whole, political intelligence is lodged in the hands of the great masses of thepeople. I desire to show you this morning that we are entering upon an epoch of the Democracy of Learning, in which the highest and best fruits of scholarship are also the privilege and the prerogative of the many. When we have entered upon that land, then we shall be ready to enter upon the last and the completest phase of the triumphant democracy, the Democracy of Industry. Then, when intelligence shall be universally diffused, and when all men shall have the power at least of acquiring the largest and the best and the ripest fruits of knowledge and of intelligence, we shall come into that epoch in which no longer the few will control the industries of the many, but in which industry will be the controlling power, and wealth will be its servant.
I have a three-fold object this morning—I desire in the first place to show you that the fruits of learning are fruits which hang on the lower boughs of the tree where we may all pluck them; to show you not only that, but that the ripest and the best fruits of learning hang there. I desire to show you that it is not necessary that men should go through a college course and should have four years of leisure and of quiet for college study in order to reap the best fruits of a college education. Theprocessof investigation must always be carried on by the few. Theresultsof education may be, yea! are already becoming the property of the many. Only a few explorers can bear the perils of the Arctic Sea and investigate the mystery of the North Pole; but we can all have the fruits of their investigation. Only a few men can labor and toil in the great libraries searching out the course and progress of history and its sacred events, but we can all have the garnered fruits of their toil and their industry. Not only may we pluck a single blossom, and here and there a single half-ripened fruit from this tree; but the ripest, the best, that which has hung the longest in the sun-light, that whose cheeks are painted the most rosy red, and whose heart has in it the most saccharine juice, that is ready to-day to fall into our open palm if we will but extend it.
In endeavoring to show you this, I shall also necessarily ask you to consider with me what are the ripest and best fruits of learning. What is the object of education? It is not an end, it is a means to an end. It is a great pity that our colleges do not understand this better; for if they did better comprehend that education is a means, and that the end lies behind, fewer students would come out with empty diplomas when the college course is ended.
And incidentally I shall hope also to answer one argument which is sometimes used, and oftener, I think, lies secretly in the minds of people, against a popular and universal education. Some satirist has said that “Ignorance is the mother of devotion.” If that were true, we might well doubt whether universal education is worth the price we should have to pay for it. If it were true that God held out in one hand devotion to us and in the other hand education, and said, “You must choose between these two; if you become educated you must be skeptical, if you would be devoted you must remain ignorant”—it would be a difficult question for most of us to decide whether we would have intelligence without piety or piety without intelligence. I shall show you that it is not learning, but a little learning which is a dangerous thing; and that if our work is thorough, the broader the culture, the profounder the piety.
For our purpose this morning, learning may be divided into four provinces: literature, history, science and philosophy, to which must be added in any complete topography of the realm, pure mathematics. By pure mathematics I mean arithmetic, algebra, geometry, logarithms, the calculus and the like. But pure mathematics is simply an instrument by which the scientific mind reaches certain results. I shall not therefore consider this department at all; it is not necessary for our purpose. Some one must look through the telescope, some one must know how to use the spectroscope in order to tell us what is the size of the sun and its constituent elements; but we do not need to examine the telescope or the spectroscope. Some one must be skilled in pure mathematics in order to tell us how many miles the sun is distant from our own earth, but we may take the result without going through the process. This instrument must always be left in the hand of the specialist. I wish to show you that all that is best, highest and most important in literature, history, science and philosophy lies within the power of your acquisition. I wish to show you the spirit with which you must study, and the purpose with which you must acquire it; and I wish to show you that if you acquire in that spirit and with that purpose you can not but gain in your religious nature.
I. In the first place, then, what is literature, and why do we study it? Literature is the expression of human life, in its innermost experiences, and in its outward forms. Sometimes it is the expression of social life, sometimes of the intellectual life, sometimes of the emotional life; but always and everywhere literature is a mirror held up either before society or before the human heart; no, not a mirror, but the sensitized plate in a photographic apparatus; and the picture, now of society, now of the brain, now of the palpitating heart with its fears, hopes, joys and experiences, is given upon the plate; and literature is the picture brought out for us to examine. To study literature is not to study language. Language is merely the instrument which we use for the study of literature. To study literature is to study life—life in its outward semblance or life in its inward experiences. It is to study the life of the community and of society as we study it in Thackeray; or it is to study the life of the brain and the thought as we study it in Plato and Bacon; or it is to study the life of the inward emotions as we study it in Tennyson or Wordsworth. Now, in order to study life as it is portrayed in literature it is not necessary to know the original language in which that life was portrayed. Some one must have studied the Greek language in order to bring Homer to our intelligence; some one must have studied Latin and brought Horace within our horizon; some one must have studied French and brought Molière within our knowledge; some one must have studied Italian in order to introduce Dante to our acquaintance; but it is not necessary for us to do so. Some one must have taken the negative and printed the picture on the paper for us; but we need not all be photographers in order to get the picture for our own enlightenment. I hold a silver dollar in my hand. Some one must have gone to the mines and dug out the ore with a pick; some one must have put it under the great stampers and beaten it out in the stamping mill; some one must have put it in the sieve and shaken it and shaken it until the grosser dross was washed away; some one must have put it into the furnace and heated it until the finer dross was eliminated; some one must have carried it to the mint and put the stamp of the United States authority upon it; but we need not all be miners digging in the mines; we need not all be workers in the stamping mill; we need not all be toilers in the furnace room; we need not all be masters or mechanics in the mint. The money was coined by those who have wrought for us, and to whom our gratitude is due, but the coin is ours; it is not merely for those who worked in producing it.
I hold in my hand an extract from Taine which expresses that which I desire to express better than I can perhaps express it myself. Let me read it: “What is your first remark on turning over the great leaves of a folio, the yellow sheets of a manuscript, a poem, a code of laws, a confession of faith? This, you say, did not come into existence all alone, it is but a mould like a fossil-shell, an imprint, like one of the shapes embossed in stone by an animal which lived and perished. Under the shell there was an animal; and behind the document there was a man. Why do you study the shell, except to bring before you the animal? So you study the document only to know the man. The shell and the document are lifeless wrecks, valuable only as a clue to the entire and living existence. We must get hold of this existence and endeavor to re-create it. Itis a mistake to study the document as if it were isolated. This were to treat things as a simple scholar, to fall into the error of the bibliomaniac.”
You do not need to have traversed the ocean beach or climbed the mountain-top and gathered the shells; you may go into the museum where they have already been gathered, and study their history there. You do not need, with dictionary and grammar, to work out the secrets of the language; you may take the products of those who have thus wrought, and learn the man that lies behind the document.
Not only is it not necessary that a man should study language in order to study literature; in innumerable cases the study of the language has absolutely interfered with the study of the literature. In innumerable cases, men at college have ground away, day after day, and month after month, and year after year, over cases and nouns and parts of speech, and rules of syntax and rules of grammar—working only at the grammar, and utterly oblivious of the great light that lay behind it. Mr. Adams, of Massachusetts, has recently told us how hard a man may study Greek and how little he may know of it after he gets through with it, for he assures us that he does not know the Greek alphabet to-day, although he studied Greek six years, four years before college and two in it. I confess I should not have thought it possible for a man to have studied so much and yet know so little when he got through; but I am very certain of this, that my own experience reflects the experience of many college students. I learned more of Homer—of his life, of his character, of the lessons he has to teach, of the man himself—from reading in the “Ancient Classics for English Readers,” the Iliad and the Odyssey, and from reading Bryant’s translation, than I ever received from reading Homer himself in the original Greek in my college class. That which is highest, and supremest, and best in literature, you may obtain without a college education. You may learn the life, you may learn the man, you may learn the sacred truth; and you can not do that without broadening your sympathies and developing your charity. When you have read Homer and Virgil and Horace; when you have read Dante and Milton; when you have read Molière and Shakspere; when you have read Wordsworth and Tennyson, and when, out of all this reading, you have gathered their fruits, you will find this to be true, that, though you have one picture of Greek life, one of Italian life, one of French life, one of English life, one portraying the life of four centuries before Christ, and one portraying the life of eighteen centuries after; yet in all these languages, in all these epochs, in all these civilizations the great heart of hope and joy and love and fear and reverence and faith was one. And you will learn to know that humanity, in all its nationalities, in all its epochs, in all its civilizations,—aye, and under all the varied forms of its religions, true and false—that humanity is one in all its brotherhood, and one in its great Father in heaven.
II. What is the object of studying history? What is history? It is not a mere record of dates, not the mere annals of actions, not merely the account of what men have performed or what nations have wrought. A man does not know history because he can recite glibly, beginning with Alfred the Great and coming down to the present time, the dates of the chief events and the chief epochs in English history. History is the record of God’s dealing with the human race. History is the account of the great laws under which this human race has been evolved from its lowest condition to its highest condition. As the tree grows from the seed planted in the ground—first the little bud peering above the surface, then the stalk, and then the branches, and by and by the completed oak; as the child grows from the babe in the cradle, taking on one new faculty and one power after another till he comes into as yet incompleted manhood—for the completion of manhood lies afar off in the dim, distant and invisible future—so the nations of the earth, and so the whole race of man has been developed from the seed to the oak and from the babe in the cradle to manhood in its maturity; and to read history is to read the process of this development.
What, for example, is English history? To know English history is to know that in the Bible, way back years and years before the birth of Christ—fourteen centuries before—were planted all the seeds of a free representative government; to know that in the Mosaic statutes is to be found the outline of a perfect political economy; to know that the Mosaic commonwealth had in it all the elements of those institutions which have made America a free nation; popular suffrage, representative assemblies, political government divided into three departments, executive, legislative, and judicial; a carefully framed system of laws, with a carefully framed system of penalties, a universal system of education, and a religion that was national. To know history is to know that Alfred the Great was a devout believer in the Bible as the word of God, that he studied it and found in this Old Testament, fourteen centuries before the birth of Christ, these seeds of a free government buried and forgotten. It is to know that he gathered them out of this old book, as men have gathered wheat seeds out of old mummies in the tombs of Egypt, and planted them in the more fertile soil of an Anglo-Saxon community. It is to know how the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemote grew to be an English Parliament; it is to know how the people came to be represented in it under Simon de Montfort; and how they came to be supreme in it under Charles the First, and Cromwell. It is to know how the nation was at first a congeries of conflicting tribes, partially brought together by Alfred the Great, and consolidated together under one national sovereignty by William the Conqueror, and growing thence into unity under successive statesmen, until these latter days, when William Gladstone, the greatest statesman of them all, is perfecting the Christian unity of the empire by Christian justice and equity. It is to know how, in the earlier history of this nation, the Pope of Rome assumed authority and control over the nations. It is to know how, through the centuries, the war went on between the Anglo-Saxon love of liberty and this claim of the Church of Rome; how it was begun under Augustine, continued under Thomas à Becket, brought to the beginning of the end under King Henry the Eighth, until finally under Elizabeth the bonds that bound England to Rome were severed forever, and England was made free from every foreign prince and potentate. It is to know how this seed—the sovereignty of the people in the nation, the sovereignty of the nation against the anarchy of feudalism, and the liberty of the nation against the Pope—grew into a tree, as yet but a young sapling; it is to know how then God carefully dug this sapling up, and transported it three thousand miles across the ocean and planted it in the yet more fertile soil of America. It is to know that because of the battle and bloodshed, and the long suffering endured on that soil, to-day there floats over us the banner of liberty and justice. The seeds were there in that old Bible, the culture was there in that English history; the fruit we rejoice in here to-day.
One does not need to work in the Spanish libraries with Prescott, nor in the Dutch libraries with Motley, nor among the old manuscripts of the British museum with Froude, nor among the pamphlets of English literature with Macaulay, in order to gather for himself these highest and supremest fruits of historical learning. The processes of historical research must always be carried on by the few; we must always have in this country some men who have leisure to pursue them. Alas for us, if the time ever comes when we grow careless or indifferent respecting our colleges or universities, and the kind of culture which they give; but they give culture that the cultured may give us fruit. The few garner; the heaviest are for all.
Nor is it possible for one thus to study the history of the human race, to see how, little by little, liberty has grown, education has grown, humanity has grown, and not grow himself in faith in an overruling Providence, and in hope in the Supreme God.
As the broad, comprehensive, interior study of literature will give breadth of sympathy, so the broad, comprehensive, and large study of history will give hope. When the fog covers the ocean, and the mariner befogged knows not where he is, and can not tell whence his course has been, nor where it shall be, he sometimes goes aloft and from the top-mast, looking above the fog, discerns the coast in the distance and the entrance into the harbor. In history we rise out of the fog that environs all in the lower level; we look above the fog and over it, and know then the courses we have traced, and see the harbor and the haven not far before us.
III. What is science, and for what purpose do we study it? I use, of course, the word science in its restricted sense, meaning natural science. For two purposes. Nature is a vast and wonderful machine; its mechanism may well arouse both our astonishment and our admiration. If you have a watch that keeps time so that it does not vary more than two or three minutes in a year you are proud of it, and if you should by chance have a watch that did not vary more than one minute in a year you would be a remarkably humble man if you did not boast of it to your acquaintances. But in the heavens the sun and the planets round it have been keeping time for the centuries, and as yet astronomy has not detected an appreciable variation in its time. What a wonderful mechanism is this! If an inventor should construct a furnace which would keep us warm in winter and cool in summer, no manufacturer would be able to supply the orders. But you have within you a furnace such that although you may go from the land of the Esquimaux with the thermometer 40° below zero, to the tropics with the thermometer 110° above zero, this furnace does not allow the habitation in which you dwell to vary more than four or five degrees. What a wonderful mechanism is this nature which we study! And we study this mechanism partly that we may use it, that we may lay hold on these great forces of nature and make them subservient to our will by understanding the laws which regulate and govern them. But nature is more than a machine; nature is also a book, and a wonderful book, written all over in hieroglyphics that require study for their apprehension. It is more than a mechanism. It is a revelation; and it reveals wondrous things to him who knows how to read it aright. Edison and Morse, Copernicus and Newton—they have interpreted nature on the one side; but Wordsworth, and Longfellow, and Bryant—they have interpreted nature on the other, and the one class of interpretations is as valuable as the other. We study nature as a mechanism that we may know how to use it; we study nature as a book that we may know how to read it.
Now, all that which is most valuable in nature, as a mechanism, we lay hold of and use without going through the labor necessary in the original examination by the first investigator. We do not need to understand the laws of heat and steam to use them; some one has learned the laws, and has brought fire and water together and has pronounced a nuptial blessing over them, and a child has been born of the marriage, and we take steam for our slave without knowing the ritual which married the father and mother. Some one must have learned how to reach his hand to the cloud, and bring down the electricity, make it run our errands and serve the purpose of our illumination; but we do not need to know the processes in order to sit under the light. Not only is it true that the mechanical uses that come from natural sciences we get without going through the processes, but the literary and spiritual we get also. Others have been turning over the pages of this marvelous book and have been reading it to us, and unconsciously, unknowingly, almost without the sense that we have been learning anything, we have learned great lessons in this book of nature. Scientists on the one side and theologians on the other have put science and religion into antagonism with one another. But they are sister teachers of the race; science has received all its life from the late comprehended revelation of the first chapter of Genesis that nature is man’s servant, not his god; and theology has learned some of its profoundest lessons from the book of nature which science has interpreted. Consider for one moment what a fundamental religious lesson we have learned in the school-room of science almost without knowing that she was our teacher. The ancient Hebrews believed that Palestine was the world; all the rest was a mere outlying district environing it, the back yard as it were. The Mediterranean was the Great Sea, the little pond of Galilee was the Sea of Galilee, the sun and moon and stars were torches for man’s illumination—that was their conception of the universe. With that conception it is not strange that they had an equally insignificant and unworthy conception of the God of the world, a conception against which the inspired writers were continually struggling, and from which they were continually endeavoring to lift the people up. When the Philistines fought against the Israelites and captured the ark of God they were in triumph. “We have captured God,” they thought; and the Israelites were almost equally in despair, for they also half thought that Jehovah had been carried off a prisoner. Now, science, even more than revelation, has been enlarging our conceptions of this universe. The Holy Land, a province about as large as Vermont, is no longer the earth; the Atlantic and the Pacific are the great seas; this globe on which we live is but one of the smaller globes of the planetary system; and the great planetary system itself is but a smaller one of the great planetary systems which are circling around some vast and distant sun. Science has taught us too that all this universe is linked together, bound together by a common law, bound together by a common order of phenomena. It has investigated the sun and the stars, it has analyzed their light, it has shown us that the substances of these bodies are identical with the substances of ours. It has taught us the unity of nature, it has taught us the vastness of nature. There are stars in the firmament which you can see with the naked eye, on which if a man were standing with a telescope fine enough and powerful enough to see what is transpiring on this globe, and should look through it to-day, he would see not this congregation assembled under this roof, but the first outbreaking of the revolution, so long does it take light to traverse from our globe to the stars, light that takes but eight minutes to travel from the sun to the earth. There are stars so distant that he would see not Chautauqua gathered here to-night, but the crucifixion of Christ taking place on the hill of Calvary; stars so distant, that with a telescope powerful enough to carry the message of this world to his sight, he would see Abraham coming out of the land of his idolatry into the promised land; stars so distant that he would see this earth first taking on its brightness in the birth-day of its glory. So vast is our universe that the mind can not attempt to comprehend its majestic distances. It is not theology, it is not religion, it is not even the Bible that has unfolded this vastness; it is science. It is impossible that men who have once learned anything of this greatness of creation, or anything of this unity of creation, should ever bow down again before idols of wood and stone. So long as men thought that the laws of the material universe were antagonistic and anarchic, that the universe was made up of warring tribes and provinces, so long it was not strange that they should worship many gods. So long as they thought that it was a little province on which they lived, the boundaries of which they could themselves measure with their tape-line, they might well worship before images they had formed with their utterances or with their hands. But to-day you might burn every Bible in the land, you might burn every church and Sunday-school house, you might put all the priests and ministers in America on the great bonfire, and consume them as well, and then you might erase from every mind every lesson that had been learned from church or Sunday-school, from priest or minister, and this nation could not go back to idolatry, unless it went back to the utter barbarism of utter ignorance. That which is highest and supremest in science you can learn withoutbecoming a scientist; and you can not learn it without learning the large reverence that is the very foundation of religion.
IV. What is philosophy? The study of philosophy is the study of the laws which govern the spiritual realm, as the study of natural science is the study of the laws which govern the natural and the physical realm. It is not studying Hegel, and Kant, and Schleiermacher; it is not studying Hickock or Hopkins; it is not studying what philosophers have thought—they are the mere translators, the mere “ponies.” Philosophy is the law of humanity, either social or individual. The study of philosophy is the study of the laws which God has ordained for the binding of men together into a common organism, or for the government of their individual lives. Men believed that the foundation of the State was a compact, and that each citizen gave up something of his rights for the common welfare; they believed that the foundation of the Nation was a compact in which each State gave up something which it had of right to secure the advantage of a commonwealth. So believing, they concluded that any State might withdraw from its allegiance, and they might have easily concluded that any individual might withdraw from his allegiance. It is only as we learned that we are born into the government and made a part of the State from the beginning by the ordinance of God, that we have learned what is the bond that has bound the nation together. Revolting from the Romish doctrine that marriage is a sacrament, Protestantism has been teaching for years that it is merely a civil contract. We are reaping the result of this false teaching. To-day in Puritan Connecticut, the minister can not tie the marriage bond much faster than the courts across the street can dissolve it. We have yet to learn that marriage is more than a civil contract, that it is an ordinance of God; that he who made man and woman made them that these twain should become one flesh, and made the home to be the first Church and the first State. When we have learned that, we shall have learned the foundation of the home as we have learned the foundation of the State. To study philosophy is to study the laws which govern society in its organism. All text-books are only instructions to teach us how to study life itself, which is the great text-book. To study philosophy is also to study the laws which govern the individual. It is to know that God has made you body, soul and spirit; that he has given you a physical organism, wonderful, but simply a mechanism in your hands; that he has given you a mental power wonderful in its reasoning qualities, but with its partial parallels in the animals about you; it is to know that far above the body and the mind is the spirit—reverence, and love, and hope, and a living faith—that makes you one with God, and that points you to your eternal habitation. This it is to study mental and moral philosophy. It is to know how to read the secrets of your own soul. It is to know how to read the inner life of the souls of others. Books will help; scholarship will help; but the great book is the human soul, and we need not have scholarship to read that book. Burns and Shakspere were not great scholars; but no scholar ever surpassed Burns and Shakspere in the reading of the human soul.
No one ever exerted so profound an influence on the life of humanity as Jesus of Nazareth. You may think that Jesus was simply a man; you will not doubt that from the teachings of Jesus have gone forth an influence greater by far than went forth from Plato, or Socrates, or Confucius, or Buddha. You may think with me that he was the Son of God; you surely will not doubt the potency of the influence that proceeded from the incarnate Son of God. Jesus, the son of the carpenter, what did he know of literature, of science, of philosophy? Rather, what knowledge did he employ? He was thoroughly familiar with the literature of his day—that is, the Bible; but he never displayed or employed any critical or literary knowledge respecting it. He never discussed questions of authorship, he never debated questions of origin or date, he did not touch that which lay on the surface. He read the interior and spiritual truth. He saw in that which to their mind was a mere annal, and a mere law the beating heart of the inspired prophet telling of God. He tore off the wrapping and made the world see it. He plucked from the psalm of David this bud, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” and in his hand it blossomed into the parable of the Good Shepherd. He plucked from the psalm of David this utterance, “Like as a father pitieth his children,” and in his hand it blossomed into the parable of the Prodigal Son. He knew the life back of literature. He invented no machine, gave no hint of any, suggested no steam engine, no steam boat, no electric light. What heknewI say not. I may say what he used, and knowledge of nature as a mechanism he never used; but he looked into nature as a book, read her teachings, and interpreted them; in the sower going forth to sow, in the fisher gathering his fish from his net; in the bird’s song in the air he heard the sweet note of trust; in the flowers blossoming from the ground he read the sweet promise of God’s providing care. Things which men having eyes saw not and ears heard not be brought to their vision and their hearing. He propounded no scheme of political philosophy, none of psychology, or theology, but he taught that “One is your father, even God in heaven, and ye all are brethren;” and the great laws that are to bind together, rather the one great law of order, the law of love, this law he expounded. The son of the carpenter lived that he might teach, among the other lessons, this lesson of the democracy of learning; that learning, in its higher and more valued forms, is for the mechanic busy at his bench, for the smith grimy with toil at his forge, for the mother busiest of all, with hands and brain and heart filled with her children.
Kings of the earth have fought that they might hold the power in their own hands, and the many might be subject to them. The people have risen, and grown strong, until at last they have trampled the king and the army under their feet, and have rushed into the citadel and the palace and taken possession, and the citadel of oppression and the palace of luxury have become the temple of liberty. The priests have fought long that they might keep the people out of the temple and hold the mysteries of religion an exclusive possession. But the people have surged up against the priests and trampled them under foot, and occupied the temple of religion. The temples of earning are open; the kings of learning stand at the door, and with their scepters beckon you to come and share their coronation and their crown. The priests of learning bid you come, that they may open to you the mysteries of literature. For in the republic of letters there is no aristocracy but that of service. And they only are great who have learned how best to serve their fellow-men.
The triumph that I read in your eyes is not a false triumph. You have plucked the first fruits, and all the other brightest and best are before you for your plucking. The expectation that I read in your eyes is not a delusive expectation. The fruit is yours. The desire that I read in your eyes is not a cheating desire. The aspiration that burns within you for learning may have its gratification. You have no money? Literature is cheap. You have no time? You have as much time as Schliemann had, who stood in the long line before the postoffice and studied his Greek while waiting for the letters. You have as much time as Mary Somerville had, who wrote the volume which gave her a princely reputation among astronomers, while tending with motherly care the children in the nursery pulling at her skirts. The forces of nature come out of the ground and offer themselves to you to do the drudgery which aforetime was left to human hands, that you may have time to learn the truth of God, and the works of God, and the will of God. We stand to-day on the mountain height. We look just across the valley. The Jordan is no longer overflowing its banks, but is a narrow and shallow stream. The promised land lies there in all its richness and brilliance, and God’s providence utters its promise to us Americans in this nineteenth century: “Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; forthe Lord thy God has given thee this land for a possession forever.”
Another immense audience assembled in the Amphitheater at two o’clock to listen to the addresses delivered to the graduating class by President Lewis Miller, and Dr. J. H. Vincent.
Chautauquans:—In these days of popular education, it may be profitable to examine the different sources of culture and development. First among these are books—the treasures that lie hidden in them may well awaken our inquiry and admiration, may well be worth the many hours of toil spent in preparing the mind, so that it can converse with the masters of the past and present. I do not wonder at hunger after the hidden treasures of books, for in them are power, wealth and pleasure. We need but watch the interested audiences that gather in this Amphitheater, to realize the power there is in the rostrum, how in all ages peoples have been confirmed or changed in their opinions by that mere persuasive power of words. Your mind now runs over the histories you have studied, and you recall the orators who, through the power of speech alone, have revolutionized empires, advanced or checked civilization. What pleasure to the mind and heart, to be able in our leisure hours to sit with Herodotus, Macaulay, Motley, Bancroft, and a host of others, and hear them tell their historic stories! or with David, Homer, Shakspere, Whittier and Bryant, and let them fill our minds with the beautiful and soothing words of poetry! Does not art, in a still more condensed form, give us the history of the nations of the past? Does it not give us a clearer idea of thought? What descriptive words could give us so clear a view of the golden candlestick, around which clusters so much of interest to the Bible student, as can be had by a look at the plaster mould of the arch of Titus, in the Museum? What more rapidly moulds, and more powerfully influences, the present age than do the pictures on the walls, and the books in the libraries of our homes?
May I venture to bring before your mind that other phase of art, known as the mechanic art? That art, on which the educator has placed so small an estimate that when an apparently dull boy is found in the school or family, he is turned over to it, in the notion that stupidity can here find subsistence and compensation.
Now, give this art the power to express itself in words and in the fine arts, and I will bring back to you the days of Raphael and Michael Angelo, in which thought was expressed in words and on canvas and stone, in such purity that the student in the schools of to-day is carried back to these times, to study the perfection and beauty of expression. In the line of a better educated labor lies the settlement of the great labor question. Will it be as Garfield suggests, for Chautauqua to provide not only for the leisure, but secure the leisure by some system of education that will make it possible?
If by any means the mental energies can be combined with the muscles, the product of labor will be greatly increased, and the time producing the same quantity lessened. Struggling labor hardly sees that in the short space of about thirty years the time has been lessened from thirteen and fourteen hours to ten hours per day, and the wages enhanced from fifty and seventy-five cents per day to an average of two dollars per day. In most of the prominent manufacturing establishments throughout the North we are at a near approach to a reduction of time to eight hours—and may God speed the day. Take the advance in quantity of products for ten years only, and by the aid of machinery, and more intelligent labor, we have gained more than two hours. Why should not labor get its due proportion? We are fast turning the drudgery of labor to pleasure. You need but visit the dish-washing and laundry-rooms at the Hotel Athenæum to witness the truth of what I state.
Some years ago I made an estimate of the number of inhabitants it would require to do by hard labor that which was done at that time by twelve thousand inhabitants by the use of steam and water power. It reached the enormous number of three hundred thousand inhabitants. From this we may learn that it will not be a great hardship to give to labor more leisure and more pay, not rashly as by strikes, but by prudent and gradual measures.
Ah, the wealth of nations rests in this art! The power to subdue forests and belt empires with railroads and telegraphs, and ignore distance is in its hands.
This art sends forth its missionary in its manufactured products to all quarters of the globe; every different product is a copy of a volume on some subject, carrying with it some Christian’s impress and prayer. So true is this that it needs no great expert to tell an article made by Christian hands from that made by heathen.
This power of the individuality impresses with interest and wonder. How readily thoughts in words are detected from others, even on the same subject. Every workman of a manufactured article in some such sense makes his individual impress on the work he performs, and it is as readily told. The Christian, liberty-loving intelligence is pressed into every article and sent forth on its mission of preaching the gospel to every creature, even gaining entrance where the missionary is refused. With this truth in mind, with what renewed pleasure must the liberated laborer make still greater impress of his individual mind. This thought can be carried into all that we do. Our walk, our talk, and the expression of our faces all enter into our products of whatever kind. How important that it should be imbued with the spirit of intelligent Christianity.
Class of ’83, you have only opened the doors to wider range, to fields of greater usefulness. All about you lie sleeping elements to be quickened into activity. Have your accumulated mental development well stored, and constantly add more. The purpose of the study was more to create an appetite for knowledge than to give a thorough or finished education.
We are glad as officers of the C. L. S. C. to present you with diplomas having places for many seals. May there be no laxity of effort until the crowning seal will emblazon over the whole its rays.
The Rev. Dr. Vincent said:
A large number of salutations from members of the C. L. S. C. have been received, some of them breathing a simple prayer of benediction on the Circle and its officers, others testifying to the value of the Circle to them intellectually, socially, and spiritually; many are too long to read at this time, but every line has been carefully read by the Superintendent of Instruction, and a few of the sentences are here reported:
From Sacramento, Cal.: “We long to be with you at the Assembly; but since we can not be, be assured that as we read of Commencement Day our hearts beat in sympathy with those of the C. L. S. C.”
From Washington, D. C.: “Hearty thanks for so splendid an opportunity of living more abundantly, as I have enjoyed through the noble conception and sensible management of the C. L. S. C. I hope to add many of its seals to my diploma.”
From St. Paul, Minn.: “The day in which ’83 passes through the Golden Gate you, who are present amidst the jubilee, will most likely forget the distant ones; but I for one will put on my C. L. S. C. badge, take out two faded maple leaves, kept in remembrance of last summer, and in imagination march with the proud class under the Arches, while I will pray the good Lord to bless Chautauqua.”
From Brooklyn, N. Y.: “The salutation, as recorded in Malachi iii:16, ‘Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it; and a book ofremembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord and thought upon his name.’”
From San Francisco: A New Yorker writes: “I foundThe Chautauquanon a planter’s table in the Sandwich Islands, and learned of a circle in Honolulu.”
A member writes: “The royal road to learning is noterra incognita. Ourroute en roiis calledviaChautauqua.”
From Amsterdam, N. Y.: A poem closes: