185*7.] Gonvention of Ohio College Officers. 317 



healing influences, to bear upon the indiscretion, the rashness, or 

 the wantonness of the other. The parties were brought into prox- 

 imity for this identical purpose. Here is the casus fa'dens. Why 

 does not one of them supply the affectionate counsel, the preventive 

 admonition, the heart-emanating and heart-penetrating reproof; 

 perhaps even the salutary fear, which the other so much needs ; — 

 needs now, needs to-day, needs at this very moment ; — needs as 

 much as the fainting man needs a cordial, or a suffocating man air, 

 or a drowning man a life-preserver ? Why is not the anodyne, or 

 the restorative, or the support, given ? Shillful physician and des- 

 perate patient are close together. Y\^hy, then, at this most critical 

 juncture, does not the living rescue the dying ? Because a ^'■friend," 

 a pretended " friend," holds it as a Point of Honor that, when his 

 friend is sick, — sick with a soul-disease, now curable, but in danger 

 of soon becoming incurable, — he ought to cover up his malady, and 

 keep the ethical healer blind and far away! When Cain said, " Am 

 I my brother's keeper ? " it was a confession of his own crime. But 

 even that crime, great as it was, fell short of encouraging Abel to 

 do wrong, and then protecting the criminal that he might repeat his 



crime. 



" Where we disavow 

 Being keeper to our brotiier, we're his Caia." 



Such is the whole philosophy of that miserable and wicked doc- 

 trine, that it is apoint of honor not to "report," — though from the 

 most humane and Christian motives, — the misconduct of a fellow- 

 student to the Faculty that has legitimate jurisdiction over the 

 case and is bound by every obligation of affection, of honor, and 

 of religion, to excercise that jurisdiction, with a single eye to the 

 good of the offender and of the community over which it presides. 

 It is a foul doctrine. It is a doctrine which every parent ought to 

 denounce wherever he hears it advanced, — at his table, at his fire-side, 

 or in public. It is a doctrine which every community of students 

 ought, for their own peace, safety and moral progress, to abolish. It 

 is a doctrine which every College Faculty ought to banish from its 

 halls ; — first by extracting it from its possessor, and expelling it 

 alone ; or if that severance be impossible, by expelling the possessor 

 with it. 



In conclusion, the Committee would express a confident opinion 

 that the proposed revolution in public sentiment is entirely practi- 



