452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



young men for the Christian ministry, and in nearly all of them the 

 promotion of the Christian religion (by which is meant the so-called 

 evangelical religion) is the first object. As subsidiary to this come 

 science, languages, and belles-lettres generally. Upon this basis, in- 

 deed, the greater part of the collegiate institutions in England and 

 America stand to-day. With respect to all such, then, the question 

 is, whether they are to be approved and supported ; and, if not, what 

 should be done to change their character so as to counteract whatever 

 is unfortunate or baneful in their influences. 



An ideal of education which sets up the attainment of truth before 

 everything else, and claims not only the right but the necessity of ques- 

 tioning all things and proving all things, never can be satisfied with 

 the constitution of any college or university whose first end and pur- 

 pose is to promote any religion whatever, be it Christian, Mohamme- 

 dan, Confucian, or Buddhistic. A theological seminary to be entered 

 after general education, may properly be sectarian and be maintained 

 for the special purpose of teaching any kind of dogma that its found- 

 ers and patrons desire taught. !Not so, however, with an institution 

 for general academic instruction and study. And it must not be over- 

 looked that an institution whose chief aim is " to promote the religion of 

 Christ," though apparently this would include many sects, is, after all, 

 necessarily sectarian and partisan. To begin with, it is sectarian, 

 because, since there are many Christian sects and a great variety of 

 Christian doctrines, some form of this doctrine must be selected and 

 favored, if " promotion " be the chief object. Any organization for 

 convincing and persuading must have something respecting which it 

 is to convince and persuade. It thus can not avoid being sectarian, if 

 it preserves any character as an effective promoting force. Such we 

 find actually to be the case. Either by agreement at the outset or by 

 a process of natural selection, colleges and seminaries whose chief aim 

 is to promote the religion of Christ become inevitably Roman Catho- 

 lic, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, 

 or something else, according to circumstances. However liberal they 

 may be in selecting teachers for other departments, the religious teach- 

 ing is all of a kind, just in the measure that they make the advance- 

 ment of religion an object. Thus, though college authorities declare 

 in their prospectus, for the purpose of attracting students, that their 

 teaching is not sectarian, a person who reflects on the subject will not 

 be deceived. It must be sectarian, so far as it is aggressively relig- 

 ious, although it may be very tolerant of all sects whose tenets are 

 like its own. If the dominant sect differs from another only on the 

 question of the mode of baptism, no very great amount of disfavor 

 toward the latter would be discovered. But let the point of difference 

 be the divinity of Christ, or the question of eternal punishment, and 

 we shall soon see developed the strength of sectarian feeling in a man- 

 ner sufficient to remove all doubts. 



