MEN OR THINGS?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 9, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 28.

The Awful Influence of Some Features in the Present-day Education.

In an article in the Independent of June 12 by Charles M. Sheldon, author of "In His Steps," etc., is set forth some present tendencies of education in a most striking manner, yet true to the very letter. A weary minister needs a vacation, and he takes six weeks in visiting his old academy, college, and theological seminary, where he studied and graduated from thirty to twenty-five years before, spending two weeks in each place. After careful observation at each place, he talks with the principal of the academy, the president of the college or university, and the dean of the seminary.

Last week we gave the account of his visit to the academy, and his talk with the principal. In his visit to his college he found it greatly enlarged. "Beautiful solid stone structures had taken the place" of the former main building surrounded by its modest dormitories and recitation halls. The president of the college, or university, was comparatively a young man, who had just succeeded in persuading Mr. Gordon Roscoe to add $500,000 to the endowment fund, making $1,500,000 that Mr. Roscoe had given the college in all. Then followed a conversation along similar lines to that of the conversation with the principal of the academy, which we printed last week. The same questions were asked as to the methods, the luxurious surroundings of the students, the perverse moral standard set before them in the business methods of the great donor, Mr. Roscoe, and the defense of Mr. Roscoe as a Christian by the president, excusing his immoral business methods on the ground of expediency.

The minister then went to the seminary where he received his theological training. He found few men studying for the ministry; commercialism, drawing young men into business, was the reason given by the Dean. Upheavals in theology were the causes of many hesitating to enter the ministry. But notwithstanding all this, the Dean was greatly encouraged, because Mr. Roscoe had given an "endowment in connection with our university affiliation that will handsomely equip us for several years." The gift of $250,000 would enable the seminary better to equip itself, and connected with the university, and in the city, would bring larger views of life. Here follows the conversation in part between the Dean and the minister:—

"What do you think, Brother Dudley?"

"I think it is a very serious crisis for the seminary."

"Serious, yes—but very hopeful, don't you think? Of course the affiliation with the University is a radical step, but it is in keeping with the movement of the times, and will be a great thing for the seminary. Do you see any serious thing to criticize about it?"

The minister was silent so long that the Dean almost lost patience. At last the minister said:—

"I want to ask a question that may seem to you impertinent. It really is not so, but it will probably seem so."

"O, I am sure, Brother Dudley, that I shall not so regard it. Go on. I am interested to know what it is."

The minister rapidly gave a condensed account of his vacation experiences at his old academy and college. He recounted in brief his talk with the principal and the president concerning Mr. Roscoe's money-making methods, and the probable effect on the schools of accepting such money and making no protest against the process by which it was made.

"The question that I want to ask you is the same as that which I put to the principal and the president. What will be the effect on the life of the seminary and on the product it turns out, if you take Mr. Roscoe's money and keep silent about the unchristian practises that are true of his business operations? In other words, what sort of preachers will grow up out of a seminary that is supported in its physical equipment by a man who, tho' outwardly a Christian and a devout man, really breaks the Golden Rule in pieces and tramples on Christ's teachings as given in the Sermon on the Mount? How can the seminary escape the irresistible degradation of its high moral and spiritual purpose? How can the students in the seminary escape the influence of a teaching that must, after accepting such money, ignore all rebuke of such money-making methods?"

The Dean was so agitated by this unexpected question that he rose from his seat and paced up and down the room several times before he made any reply. Then he said:—

"Brother Dudley, do you suppose for one minute that I would accept the money of Mr. Roscoe if I believed the terms of acceptance meant the closing of my lips against unrighteous or unchristian business methods?"

"No, I do not like to believe you would knowingly do that. But what puzzles me is the fact that you and the seminary do accept Mr. Roscoe's gift and regard him as a Christian benefactor, knowing, as you do, the character of the methods he or his company pursue. Knowing all this, can the seminary, or will it, go on to teach the ethics of Jesus in business which necessarily will convict Mr. Roscoe and his company?"

The Dean paced up and down with many signs of agitation in his face and manner.

"I do not believe it is as serious as you think, Mr. Dudley," he finally said with a faint smile. "Just look at the number of colleges that have accepted Mr. Roscoe's money. Only last week the president of X University wrote me that Mr. Roscoe had come to their relief with a splendid gift of $300,000. The president of X is one of our finest types of earnest Christian men. He certainly has no compunctions about taking this money. Clearville Seminary is making an effort to get Mr. Roscoe's help in raising the long-standing indebtedness on the institution, and the prospect is that Mr. Roscoe will come to their assistance. If we are guilty of any unchristian conduct in taking Mr. Roscoe's money, we are certainly

in good company; for, as you know, there are scores of institutions that have been financially helped by them."

"But does that fact make his business methods any less worthy of censure?"

"But, Brother Dudley!" exclaimed the Dean eagerly, "are you not exaggerating unduly this matter? Is it possible for you to sift out the honest from the dishonest dollars that the business men in your own congregation pay into the church toward your own salary? Is it not a fact that in all probability some of the money that comes into your own hands is made in very unchristian ways?"

"I have no doubt that is so," replied the minister. "And it would be an absolute impossibility for me to separate the good money from the bad. But I do not keep silent in my pulpit concerning the unchristian or selfish money-making of my business men. And if I knew of any case as clearly wrong as that of Mr. Roscoe's company, I should consider it my duty to denounce it rather than encourage it by holding up the donor to the public view of my congregation as a type of Christian benevolence. This is the point I can not understand in connection with Mr. Roscoe's gift to academy, college, and seminary. You not only do not reserve the right to criticize his methods in particular as bad, but you actually set him before the students as a type of modern Christian rich man who is illustrating the noble habit of giving. It is the giving you emphasize as a great exhibition of benevolence; the making of the money does not enter into your consideration. So the question comes right back to where we began, and I see no escape from it; what will be the moral effect on the seminary if Mr. Roscoe is accepted, either tacitly or openly, as the type of Christian benevolence?"

"I am sure you must be misinformed concerning Mr. Roscoe's business methods," murmured the Dean. "All business is more or less involved in transactions that meet with opposition, especially from unsuccessful rivals. I have no doubt Mr. Roscoe has been assailed and misrepresented by his business enemies."

"Mr. Roscoe's company," said the minister, "has been guilty, according to well-established records in the courts, of crimes against the laws of the State. There are scores of individuals who have been financially ruined by him. He has, through his company, been guilty of the most unchristian practises in his business relations that I have no doubt he would be horrified to practise in his private life. These things are facts. They have been proved many times. Not to know them is to declare one's self as ignorant of one of the commonest facts in the commercial world. And I for one can not but look with the gravest concern upon the elevation of this man to a place where educational institutions have put him on a pedestal of honor because he has made enormous sums of money, and is giving a small portion of it to schools and seminaries and churches. The effect on our students in academy, college, and seminary will, I believe, be disastrous to their ethical life. It will lower the whole tone of spiritual definitions of conduct. It will greatly emphasize the already distorted valuation placed upon physical equipment in our schools. To have magnificent physical equipment in the shape of buildings, apparatus and endowment, and at the same time to lose the ethical standard or substitute for it a false conception of Christian benevolence, is to drag our educational institutions down into a material prosperity that is nothing more nor less than cultured paganism. The old idea of a college that consists of 'Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other end' is a million times to be preferred to Mr. Roscoe's endowed institutions with their imposing buildings, long array of faculty, and immense crowds of students."

Reaching home, his wife tells him that he looks as tho he had been to three funerals. He tells her what he found, and the story closes with the following conversation:—

"Am I an old fogy, Sarah?" he asked.

"No, I do not believe you are," she answered vigorously. "But the world will think you are if you say anything about it. The age in which we live is magnifying material prosperity."

"I wonder," he spoke slowly, "if we have gained in real power, or only in things? Are we at a crisis in our educational life? At any rate the ethical standard is confused in the case of Mr. Roscoe. I am not an old fogy. What will be the product of the educational system that asks no questions concerning the making of money so long as it gets money?"

"It is easy enough to prophesy what the product will be," his wife replied. "It will be an educated paganism, a cultured heathenism, that will restore the worship of things, instead of demanding the worship of ideals."

"Then," said the minister, as he went into his study to prepare his sermon, "the sooner we get back to the Mark Hopkins kind of college the better for the republic. For I fear the present tendency means more serious consequences to our boys and girls than we dare to imagine. God save us from progress in things at the cost of the ideals of life!"

Reader, is this not true to life? Did not the minister's wife tell the truth? Is not the condition an awful one? In the light of the Word it means that we are in the last days. Read 2 Tim. 3:1-5.