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The close alliance of
Scotland and Ireland dates from the time of St. Patrick, who died in a.d.
465. He appears to have been educated in the southern part of Scotland,
and he preached the Gospel and established religious houses in Ireland.
His monasteries were not the homes of lazy monks, but seats of learning
and centers of missionary effort. They resembled the schools of the
prophets of the Old Testament, and were repeated in the last century in
the log colleges of America. The early Irish monks, many of them married
men, were zealous students and copyists of Scripture, and enthusiastic
itinerant preachers. An old tradition says that one of them, St. Brendin,
discovered the new world, and, after returning to Ireland to report his
discovery, he set sail a second time (in the year 545), to preach the
Gospel to the natives of the newly discovered land. He was never heard of
again, but his name is immortalized by a bay on the west of Ireland, from
which he is said to have sailed. Another tradition associates colonists
from the north of Ireland with Scandinavians as the first settlers of
Iceland, which became a home of learning.
Two men from Ulster, both
bearing the name of Columba, became missionaries of learning and religion,
one in the Highlands of Scotland, the other in continental Europe. One of
them Columba, or Columbkille, from County Donegal, in west Ulster,
established the religious house at Iona, an island west of Scotland, and
himself and his disciples carried the Gospel over Scotland and into the
north of England. Hence arose the Culdees, or worshipers of God, who
cherished the Gospel in the homes of Scotland even in the dark ages; and
their descendants quickly responded to John Knox when, at a later age,
like Columbkille resurrected, he preached Christ to his beloved Scotland.
Lindisfarne, in the north of England, was a fruit of the work of the
Culdees; and it has been lately found that the Lindisfarne Illuminated
Gospel, kept in the British Museum, and long supposed to be a gem of
Anglo-Saxon learning, is an Irish work, probably penned by some English
student in one of the celebrated Irish schools.
The other Columba came from
a school in County Down, on the eastern coast of Ulster, and went as a
missionary to Eastern France and Switzerland, where he is better known by
the name of Columbanus. His biography has been recently discovered in the
civic archives of Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, written in the pure
ancient Celtic language, and has given an impetus to the study of that
language. One of the cantons of Switzerland commemorates by its name (St.
Gallen, Irish county) these old Irish missionaries, members of the genuine
Clan-na-Gael. Boniface, the apostle of Germany (a. d. 738), belonged to
them; and he and other Scotch-Irish missionaries established religious
houses, among them the monastery of Erfurt, where Luther, at a later date,
found the Reformation in a Latin Testament. Thus, by easy steps, we go
from St. Patrick to Iona and the Culdees and Knox in Scotland, and to
Switzerland, with its Zwingle and Geneva, and to Germany and Luther.
Germany, which now leads the world in scholarship, was content to receive
its first schools from humble Scotch-Irish itinerants.
The quality of the teaching
of those times may be estimated from the Confession of St. Patrick, from
the love generally shown for the Scriptures, and from the Commentary on
Scripture of Sedulius, abbot of Kildare, in Ireland, ninth century. Pure
Gospel is found in these writings, without any hint of a pope, and
Sedulius praises Paul for his censure of Peter, and gives an evangelical
interpretation of the Lord's Supper. A traveling Irish-Scot, named Ferghil
(or Virgil) taught that the world is globular, and that the further side
is probably inhabited. He was summoned before the pope for such teaching,
but escaped the fate of heretics. Johannes Scotus Erigeua (which name may
be interpreted as Scotch-Irish John) gave the celebrated repartee to
Charles the Bald, who asked him across the table, "John, what is the
difference between a Scot and a sot?" and was promptly answered, "Nothing
whatever, please your majesty, except the table."
Another tradition awards to
St. Comgall's school, at Bangor, in County Down, the alma mater of
Columbanus, the additional honor of supplying Alfred the Great with the
first batch of professors for Oxford University, in England, as, at a
later date, Scotland gave its first professors to Dublin University, in
Ireland, and as many of our American colleges have been started by
Scotch-Irish ministers.
The twelfth century brought
in the age of darkness to Ireland. In 1110, the Irish Synod of Rathbreasil
sold their religious independence to an Italian pontiff, and, within the
same century, the Italian pontiff bargained away its civil independence to
a dissolute English monarch, in return for a promise of payment of Peter's
pence. Thus a double servitude, both spiritual and temporal, was imposed
on the country, the ecclesiastical and civil potentates sometimes
quarreling, sometimes courting each other, but always oppressing the
people. In 1315, Edward Bruce, the brother of Scotland's hero, endeavored
to free Ireland from the English; but the church excommunicated him, and
he lost his life in the struggle. During the dark ages, schools
disappeared from Ireland, and the only men who perpetuated its reputation
for learning were such as spent their days abroad at the courts of
European monarchs. Ireland then became a good country to leave. So low had
it sunk, that the Reformation, which stirred other nations, was scarcely
felt there. Even the Bible had become forgotten; yet, when the Roman
Catholic Archbishop of York presented two fine copies of the Scriptures to
the two cathedrals of Dublin, the people welcomed the gifts and eagerly
studied the books.
The Reformation in Scotland
was the outcome chiefly of university scholarship. Men with the training
and spirit of Columbkille — such men as Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart,
John Knox, and Andrew Melville — revived the times of the Culdees, and
Scotland, the poorest of the nations, soon took a leading position for
scholarship and piety.
Early in the seventeenth
century, the north of Ireland was vacated by turbulent chiefs, and
Scotchmen were invited to enter and lend a helping hand in its
civilization. That was an age of religious persecution, even among
Protestants. It was the time at which pious Non-conformists were driven
from England, first to Holland, and afterward, in the Mayflower, to
America, in quest of liberty to pray to God. At first, the king of England
encouraged Scots to migrate to Ireland with a prospect of religious
liberty. This "plantation of Ulster" was the counterpart, in some measure,
of the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers; but the Scotch took nearly a
century in moving from Scotland by way of Ireland to America, and they had
to pass through a hot fire in the transit, and to come out, not as Scots,
but as Scotch-Irish, with new experiences and new characteristics.
Though the "plantation of
Ulster" by Scotch immigrants was numerically a small affair, only a
million of acres being open to colonization, and not half of these falling
to the newcomers, yet a complete change of habits and mode of cultivation
ensued, and the entire province felt the benefit of the change. The men
who came from Scotland were many of them the "floaters," of bad principles
and a coarse type, and they intermingled with semi-savage natives. There
came over, however, along with them, the religious and educational methods
of Scotland. John Knox had established a system of schools, so that every
minister had a hand in teaching during some part of his career, and every
boy, however poor, had before him the opportunity of gaining education up
to his ability. The church and the school went together, as both of the
people and for the people. James Melville (nephew of Andrew) informs us
that, at one of these schools, in Montrose, Scotland, he was instructed by
a Christian minister, who was "a guid, kind, learned man," in the three
important subjects of a boy's education, (1) book learning, (2) religion,
(3) athletics. He learned Latin and French; also, archery, swimming,
fencing, and jumping; and his piety grew with the discipline of the
school. In Scotland, this educational system culminated in the great
universities, that of Edinburgh being itself a child of the Reformation.
The religious history of
Ulster begins with the ministrations of a few immigrant Scottish
ministers, some of them men of noble blood, who had to flee from
persecution, and who were for a time permitted to occupy the churches in
Ulster. In 1636, a great religious awakening took place, which spread
among all classes, Roman Catholics as well as Protestants, and transformed
the province. There was hope of times of blessing coming to all Ireland,
when, as usual, the English government stepped in to interrupt the work by
persecuting the ministers and people for non-conformity. What is known in
history as the Black Oath was enforced in Ulster, people being fined and
imprisoned for failing to swear obedience to the king in all things, and
ministers being silenced or banished. Thereafter followed a long series of
religious oppressions in Ireland; and these persecutions subsequently
followed the Scotch-Irish to America.
The colonization of Ulster
from Scotland brought over schools fashioned after the Scottish model, but
without the civil encouragement which had been secured by Knox for his
people. The Irish schools were private schools, often of an humble
character. Those which have persisted even till our memory were conducted
by picturesque, poor, but often enthusiastic teachers, who were
remunerated by sods of peat, dishes of potatoes, fresh eggs and butter,
and occasionally by a fat goose at one of the great festivals. The
scholars would go barefoot, with arms out at the elbows, carrying the peat
under one arm, and a copy of an old arithmetic or Ovid's Metamorphosis
under the other. No Irish colleges welcomed these boys, as the only Irish
university, though at first it was started under Scottish teachers, was
soon closed against their characteristic faith. The Scotch-Irish lads,
after their school training was completed, had to go on foot to the
seaside, whence they embarked on a packet for Scotland, and again went
afoot in groups to Glasgow or Edinburgh University, whence they were sent
back, in the course of a few years, with the university diploma. On
returning, they were trained in theology under the supervision of the
presbytery. Francis Makemie, the father of American Presbyterianism, gives
us an account of his own education in the latter half of the seventeenth
century. At a school in County Donegal, he experienced, as he says, " a
work of grace and conversion in my heart at fifteen years of age, by and
from the pains of a godly schoolmaster, who used no small diligence in
gaining tender souls to God's service and fear." His theological training
was faithfully superintended by the presbytery, though it was not
permitted to hold public meetings, some of its members having been
imprisoned and fined for holding a session of presbytery. Soon afterward,
Non-conformists were forbidden to teach school. Moreover, the Scottish
colonists of Ulster came to experience extortions by landlords, and to be
denied the rights of freemen in the country for which they had done so
much. In Ireland, as in America, a three-fold struggle for liberty had to
be carried on: (1) for liberty to be educated; (2) for religious liberty;
(3) for civil liberty.
We will not follow the
struggle as it went on in Ulster. Suffice it to say, that the men who
saved England by closing the gates of Derry, were robbed of the honor of
their services, were afterward declared unfit to hold office in the city
which they had defended, or anywhere under the British crown; and laws
were passed to destroy their woolen trade, to make their marriages null
and their children bastards, and to deprive them of Christian burial; nor
were they relieved of their disabilities until the rebellion of the
American colonies taught England to deal gently with the oppressed at
home. Step by step, Ulster has fought its way to political equality, to
protection for its tenant farmers, to religious freedom, and to high
educational rank. Belfast, at present, holds the third place in Great
Britain as a seaport, being surpassed in the tonnage of its shipping only
by London and Liverpool. Ulster is remarkably free from crime, and has few
police, as compared with the rest of Ireland, or even England. And men who
have gone from Ulster, with the education and principles of the
Scotch-Irish, occupy the highest positions as teachers or statesmen in
England, India, China, Australia, and America.
The advent of the
Scotch-Irish to America dates from the time when oppressions became
unbearable at home; especially from the time of James II. It was about
1683 that Francis Makemie arrived, the first Scotch-Irish clergyman whose
history is known to us. He was put in jail in New York city for the crime
of preaching the gospel in a private house; and he defended the cause of
religious liberty with heroic courage and legal ability, being helped by a
Scottish lawyer from Philadelphia (who was silenced for his courage), and
being ultimately acquitted by a brave New York jury. Thus was begun the
great struggle for religious liberty in America.
Some of the immigrants
established colonies in New England, as in Massachusetts, New Hampshire
and Maine. In 1718 a large company arrived in five ships at Boston,
introducing four characteristic Scotch-Irish institutions: (1) potatoes,
(2) a spinning-wheel, (3) a school to teach even the Bostonians how to
spin, (4) a Presbyterian minister ready at once to form them into an
organized church. This last was Rev. John Moorehead, for long time the
representative of the cause in Boston. Other churches were established, as
at Andover, Londonderry, N. H., and in Maine.
The influx of this class
into Pennsylvania soon changed the character of the middle colonies. The
governor of Pennsylvania, during fifty years (1699 to 1749), was a
Scotch-Irish Quaker, James Logan, a native of county Armagh, Ireland, an
able judge, a patron of learning, a friend of the Indians, but not fond of
his own countrymen when they were not Quakers. He feared that ere long
they would turn matters their own way. "It looks as if Ireland were to
send all her inhabitants hither," was his complaint in 1725; "if they will
continue to come, they will make themselves proprietors of the province;"
and he condemned the bad taste of people who were forcing themselves where
their presence was not desired. We may estimate the rate of the invasion
from the rise of the population of Pennsylvania from 20,000 in 1701, to
250,000 in 1749. Shortly before the revolutionary war, a new outbreak of
oppression in Ireland sent a larger stream, chiefly of farmers and
manufacturers. Most of these men were Presbyterians, of a sturdy spirit;
they sailed in search of liberty, and they were the earliest and most
persevering of our people in our struggle for civil liberty. John Stark,
who had fought for England against the French, rushed, when the great
struggle came, to fight for America against British tyranny, his pious
Irish wife, by her letters, encouraging him in what she said was God's
cause. Richard Montgomery, who fell at Quebec, was Scotch-Irish, as was
the other Montgomery, who presided over the first meeting of the
Scotch-Irish in Cumberland Valley, where resolutions were passed for
independence, and money was raised, and a regiment of soldiers soon
despatched to aid Washington at Boston. This regiment was under the
command of Colonel Chambers, a Scotch-Irish elder. Thomas McKean, another
of them, was one of the fourteen of the race who signed the Declaration of
Independence, and was governor of Pennsylvania during the great struggle.
A Scotch-Irishman wrote, another publicly read, a third first printed the
Declaration of Independence. Joseph Reed, son of an Irish father, himself
a graduate of Princeton college, was the trusted secretary of Washington,
though he died young. It was he that replied to king George's officers: "I
am not worth bribing, but such as I am, Britain is not rich enough to buy
me." Charles Thomson, from Maghera, Ireland, was then secretary of
Congress, "the man of truth;" as the proverb ran, "as true as if Charles
Thomson's name were to it." Henry Knox, the Scotch-Irish bookseller of
Boston, was Washington's efficient chief of ordnance, from Ticonderoga to
York-town. The Scotch-Irish of Philadelphia and of Boston, came forward in
times of financial embarrassment, to help the popular cause by their
contributions. Scotch-Irish pastors were foremost in their patriotism.
Rev. John Murray, of Maine, and David Caldwell, of North Carolina, were
honored by the British offering rewards for the capture of either of them.
Dr. George Duffield, an excellent cross between the Scotch-Irish and the
Huguenot, said from the pulpit that he was sorry to see so many
able-bodied men at church, when their country needed their services at
Valley Forge. In those days it was an offense calling for discipline
before the New England and Pennsylvania presbyteries, if a minister did
any thing that might excite suspicion of disloyalty to his country's
cause.
The military services of
the race, at first against the French and Indians, and afterward on behalf
of independence against the British, were merely an incident in their
history. Their greatest achievements were in peace, with the axe, the
plow, and the loom, clearing the forest, subduing the land, and developing
mechanical arts and trade. Above all other public institutions, they loved
the church and the school. With them religion and education were
inseparable; no religion without the training of the intelligence ; no
education divorced from piety. The school was always planted near the
church, the schoolmaster was often the pastor, or a candidate for the
ministry, or one of the pillars of the church. An attempt was made, early
in the eighteenth century, to exclude non-conformists from the office of
teaching ; nobody was to teach in New York (at least of the
English-speaking people), unless provided with a certificate from the
bishop of London. But in Pennsylvania and southward, greater liberty was
allowed, at least as to common schools. The present condition of the
middle states bears testimony to the use made of this liberty. Whilst New
England was colonized by the cream of old England's puritanism, and
Pennsylvania only a century later by the outcasts of the poor province of
Ulster, yet the progress of the Keystone State may compare with the
vaunted achievements of the Plymouth colony.
The man to whom, above all
others, our country is indebted for his influence on its education, is the
Rev. William Tennent, founder of the log college at Neshaminy, in Bucks
county, Pennsylvania. He was a native of county Armagh, Ireland, at first
an Episcopalian, probably a graduate of Trinity college, Dublin. His wife,
Catherine Kennedy, was the worthy daughter of an Irish Presbyterian
minister, who had suffered persecution for his faith. They came to America
with their young family, in 1716, and ten years later he was ordained and
settled as pastor at Neshaminy. There he started a school which aimed to
be a college, in order to prepare young men for the Christian ministry. It
seems to have been a hybrid between the hedge schools of Ulster and Dublin
university, with poor equipment as to finances or buildings, called in
derision a " log college," but claiming to impart sound classical,
philosophical, and theological education. This institution was established
in order to provide a home supply of ministers, and the men who issued
from it were the most zealous and successful that have been given to our
country. It was opposed by worthy clergymen, who demanded that all
candidates for the ministry should produce a degree from one of the older
universities, that is, either from Yale or Harvard, in New England, or
from Scotland. But the New England colleges were hostile to evangelical
religion. Yale had expelled David Brainerd, really, as was believed,
because he attended prayer-meeting, and formally complained because after
its censure, this best of missionaries was ordained by a presbytery. It
was pronounced in its hostility to revivals of religion. Harvard placed
itself on record, by a manifesto signed by its president and professors,
against George Whitefield, the gravamen of his sin being that he preached
without paper. And Governor Belcher, himself a graduate of Harvard, wrote
that Arminianism, Arianism, and Socinianism were being propagated in the
New England colleges. Thus the hope of securing a supply of godly
ministers from New England was futile. Nor was there any better prospect
from abroad. Some good men did come over, as Francis Makemie and William
Tennent. But in answer to the entreaties of our presbyteries that the
British churches should send them out pastors, most of those who came were
"crooked sticks." One was sent back after being convicted of plagiarism,
and a complaint was made to the synod of Ulster, for imposing on the
Americans by sending bad men. Others were narrow and quarrelsome; not a
few were intemperate. The best of the immigrants was a man who had fled
from a charge before an Irish presbytery of forging his credentials, who
was afterward deposed from the ministry on the same charge by the
presbytery of Philadelphia, who went to Maine, where he was irregularly
restored to the ministry by a congregation, and who filled a long and
devoted ministry, under this charge, which he never dared to meet.
In such circumstances it
was suicidal to depend on a foreign supply of ministers, and in fact the
Presbyterian churches of New England, by continuing in a dependent
condition, prepared the way for their extermination. Nor could the
Presbyterians hope for a college of their own; on the contrary, they were
informed that no college charter would be granted to dissenters; and it
was not till the success of the log colleges was assured, that a charter
was given, in an irregular way, to the more moderate section of the
denomination, for Princeton college.
The attempt to train young
men for the ministry in the Log College, and their ordination without the
degree of a chartered university, though sometimes condemned by
historians, seems to us to have been the Declaration of Independence by
the church for the right to train its own ministry. The charge recently
made, that Tennent and his friends took a low view of education for
ministers, may be met by the facts that they gave the best education they
could command, that so soon as Princeton college was established, they
rallied to its support and its further development, and that the alumni of
the log colleges were deemed good enough in scholarship to be appointed
professors or presidents of the high-class colleges which were at length
established. The Log College preachers have also been condemned for
venturing to preach within the precincts of ministers who opposed revival
methods, but their conduct in this respect would be justified with us, on
the ground that ministers may not interpose to prevent the preaching of
salvation to sinners, even though the sinners are of their own flocks.
Like the monasteries of St.
Patrick, Tennent's Log College became a home of learning and a center of
missionary movements. Besides William Tennent, senior, and Mrs. Tennent,
it was blessed by worthy disciples, including four sons of its founder.
One of these, Gilbert Tennent, maybe named along with George Whitefieid
and (at a later date) Bishop Asbury, as the three men who were, above all
others, used of God for the development of spiritual religion in the New
World. Besides these, there were Samuel Finlay, Samuel and John Blair,
John Robinson, John Rowland, and Charles Beatty. The last named was an
Irish peddler, who offered his wares in elegant Latin at the Log College,
was invited in, educated, and became a faithful preacher. He was the
ancestor of devoted men, the last of whom, Charles Beatty, of
Steubenville, O., died a few years ago, after a long service as
missionary, educator, and benefactor of the Western Theological Seminary,
and of Washington and Jefferson College.
The example of the Tennents
was followed by other Scotch-Irish pastors in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and
southward. Thus a number of high-class schools were established, bringing
education to the doors of the people, independently of government. The
office of teacher was not highly esteemed in England (it was apologized
for, on behalf of John Eliot, that he was in early life a teacher), but it
was always appreciated among the Scotch-Irish; and the teachers often gave
their services without pay, so that the poorest boy might be educated up
to his capacity. As examples of these institutions, may be named one at
Fagg's Manor (New London, Chester county, Pennsylvania), established in
1790 by Samuel Blair, one of Tennent's pupils; subsequently, under Francis
Allison, who was encouraged in his work by the Synod. Allison afterward
removed to Philadelphia, where he was preacher and teacher, and at length
professor, when the University was started. Nottingham Academy, in
Maryland, was established by Dr. Samuel Finlay, in 1744, who was descended
from John Finlay, one of the early martyrs burnt at the stake in Scotland,
and was himself, like nearly all the other founders of these schools, a
native of Ireland. This academy of Nottingham produced some of our
greatest men, as Governor Martin, of North Carolina, Dr. Benjamin Rush,
Colonel Bayard, and preachers Waddell, McWhorter, etc. Pequea School, in
Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, was established by Robert Smith, one of
Tennent's disciples, himself Irish, and blessed with an Irish wife (who
was sister of Robert Blair). His son, Samuel Stanhope Smith, was another
great educationist, president of Hampden Sydney, and afterward of
Princeton College ; remarkable for his services in developing the higher
studies in college. His brother, John Blair Smith, was successively
president of Hampden Sydney and of Schenectady College. A school was
established at Newville, in the Cumberland valley, Pennsylvania, by John
Blair, brother of Robert; another at West Canococheague, by John King.
Rev. David Caldwell, in North Carolina, had at once an academy, college,
and theological seminary, and was also a red-hot patriot. John McMillan
went out to the wilds of West Pennsylvania, where he established a church
and a log college. Thaddeus Dod followed his example at Red Stone, in
South-western Pennsylvania, and John Smith started another school. These
western institutions afterward developed into Washington and Jefferson
College.
The humble academies gave a
completion to our education before we were blessed with colleges, and they
prepared the way for chartered institutions, so soon as these could be
obtained. Immediately on the establishment of Princeton College, the
Tennents gave up their school at Neshaminy, and bestowed all their great
influence toward the advancement of the new institution. We find that, in
1748, the roll of trustees of Princeton College included, with others,
Gilbert Tennent, William Tennent (the younger, his father having died),
Richard Treat, Samuel Blair, all these being pupils of the Log College and
earnest preachers; and we find Whitefield, Lady Huntington, and others
collecting money for Princeton as a seat of learning and piety. In 1756,
the year in which Wesley's friends were banished from Oxford for holding
prayer-meetings, Whitefield was invited to preach in Princeton, and he
informs us of a revival in which many of the students were converted.
Other colleges were soon founded after the same pattern. In this way was
evolved our American type of college, as seen especially in our middle and
western states, homes of scholarship and religion, independent of state
control, yet producing patriotic citizens as well as ardent students and
Christian heroes, bringing education near to the people, and raising the
poor to a par with the rich in respect of scholarship. We cordially
respect the achievements of the great New England colleges, but we plead
that, under special disabilities, the Scotch-Irish of the middle states
have fought their way to the same results, with the important addition
that, with equal zeal for learning, a warmer religious tone has been
manifested in its pursuit. Our colleges have received the significant
encomium of James Bryce in his "American Commonwealth." He remarks that,
in America, we desire to have our business men furnished with college
education, and adds that this is a result of the dispersion of colleges,
of their accessibility, and the cheapness of education; that nearly all
the eminent men of the last forty years, including several Presidents of
the United States, have taught school in some part of their earlier years;
and that our American universities are at this moment making the swiftest
. progress and have the brightest promise for the future. This praise
comes from a Scotch-Irishman, the first Presbyterian, we believe, who was
admitted to the honors of Oxford without selling his conscience, who
afterward became a professor in that university, and is now coming to the
front as one of England's greatest statesmen.
Such colleges are now
rapidly extending over our own land. Even to the golden gate of
California, they have been established by Scotch-Irish founders. They are
often objects of benevolence with the pious, and themselves nurseries of
piety. They are overflowing into other lands: Roberts College, at
Constantinople, is giving trouble to Russian as well as Turkish despotism;
Beyrout College is becoming
the light of Western Asia; and in Pekin, Canton, and Tokio, similar lights
appear. The Imperial University of Pekin is now under control of Dr.
Martin, one of our American missionaries, with the aid of an international
faculty of educators, so that the whole educational system of the empire
is being changed. Sir Robert Hart, controller of the customs system of
China, is Scotch-Irish, son of a mill-worker in Belfast, and educated
under Dr. McCosh; and John McLeavy Brown, his coadjutor, is the same. We
hope, ere long, to see another of these colleges in Brazil.
We can not venture into the
personnel of Scotch-Irish educators and inventors of recent times, as in
theology the Alexanders and Hodges; in science, Fulton of the
steam-engine, McCormick of the threshing machine, Joseph Henry of the
telegraph and electro-magnet. In biology, the chief place in Cambridge,
England, and in Johns Hopkins, of America; in political science, the chief
place in Princeton College, and in the University of Pennsylvania — are
held by the race, as are a host of positions of varying importance over
the whole country, such as the superintendents of public schools and many
of our most successful workers in the higher schools. The present
generation of the race remember their traditions as devotees of learning;
lovers of the country that shelters them, and true to their God; and they
find in these traditions a stimulus to their enthusiasm. There is a
continuity in the record of their history, as there is a community between
the kinsmen who are now serving as educators over all the continent. And
hereby are we taught not to seek for ourselves phenomenal accumulations of
wealth, which can not raise us to a higher plane, but to cultivate the
attainments which have already proved a blessing to our race, and which
have made them a wholesome factor in human society. |
