Part 14

“The instruction of the Jesuits was conveyed wholly in the spirit of that enthusiastic devotion which had from the first so peculiarly characterized their order.” This had its effect; for earnest, whole-hearted work on the part of the teacher, even though the methods may be wrong and material false, will surely react in the lives of the pupils. Viewing the work of Jesuit teachers, one feels to exclaim, “Since thou art so noble, I would thou wert on our side!” And so “erelong the children, who frequented the schools of the Jesuits in Vienna, were distinguished for their resolute refusal to partake on fast days of forbidden meats which their parents ate.”

[Sidenote: Jesuits conquered Germany by their schools]

Teachers had more weight with the children than the parents themselves, and became leaders of the older members of the family, so that “the feelings thus engendered in the schools were propagated throughout the mass of the population by preaching and confession.”

The final results in Germany, Ranke gives thus: “They occupied the professors’ chairs, and found pupils who attached themselves to their doctrines.... _They conquered the Germans on their own soil, in their very home, and wrested from them a part of their native land._”[144] So much for Germany and its Jesuit schools.

[Sidenote: Jesuit schools in France]

Concerning the capture of France by the Jesuits it is not necessary to say much. Ranke gives a few strong paragraphs, showing the work of the order as teachers. The Protestants of France made a great mistake, and brought their cause into disrepute, especially in Paris, by taking up arms in a time of commotion, and Ranke says: “Backed by this state of public feeling, the Jesuits established themselves in France. They began there on a somewhat small scale, being constrained to content themselves with colleges thrown open to them by a few ecclesiastics.... They encountered at first the most obstinate resistance in the great cities, especially in Paris, ... but they at last forced their way through all impediments, and were admitted in the year 1564 to the privilege of teaching. Lyons had already received them. Whether it was the result of good fortune or of merit, they were enabled at once to produce some men of brilliant talents from amongst them.... In Lyons, especially, the Huguenots were completely routed, their preachers exiled, their churches demolished, and their books burned; whilst, on the other hand, a splendid college was erected for the Jesuits in 1567. They had also a distinguished professor, whose exposition of the Bible attracted _crowds of charmed and attentive youth_. From these chief towns they now spread over the kingdom in every direction.”[145] Through the influence gained as educators, 3,800 copies of Angier’s Catechism were sold in the space of eight years in Paris alone. France no longer _leaned_ toward Protestantism. She had been regained by the Jesuit schools.

[Sidenote: Jesuitical schools in England]

Concerning the work in England, more is said, and our own connection with that kingdom adds weight in our eyes to the history of her education. Thompson says: “During the reign of Elizabeth the papal authorities renewed their exertions to put a stop to Protestantism in England, and sent more Jesuits there for that purpose.”[146] What they could not accomplish through intrigue and civil policy they were more sure to gain through the schools; hence Thompson says: “They accomplished one thing, which was to carry away with them several young English noblemen, to be educated by the Jesuits in Flanders, so as to fit them for treason against their own country,—repeating in this the experiment Loyola had made in Germany.... The Jesuits endeavored to become the educators of English youths as they had those of Germany.... The pope therefore established an English college at _Rome_, to educate young Englishmen.”

[Sidenote: English college at Rome]

Of this college, Ranke tells us further: “William Allen first conceived the idea of uniting the young English Catholics who resided on the continent for the prosecution of their studies, and, chiefly through the support of Pope Gregory, he established a college for them at Douay. This, however, did not seem to the pope to be adequate for the purpose in view. He wished to provide for those fugitives under his own eyes a more tranquil and less dangerous retreat than could be found in the disturbed Netherlands; accordingly he founded an English college in Rome, and consigned it to the care of the Jesuits. No one was admitted into the college who did not pledge himself, on the completion of his studies, to return to England, and to preach there the faith of the Roman Church.”[147]

[Sidenote: Jesuits as teachers in America]

America was settled when the Jesuit power was at its height. Those teachers who penetrated Germany without fear, and secretly stole into England when it was unsafe for them to be identified, followed closely the paths of discovery and settlement. “In the beginning of the seventeenth century we find,” says Ranke, “the stately fabric of the Catholic Church in South America fully reared.... The Jesuits taught grammar and the liberal arts, and a theological seminary was connected with their college of San Ildefonso. All branches of theological study were taught in the universities of Mexico and Lima.”[148]

[Sidenote: Jesuits in the United States]

In North America their vigilance was no less marked. “In 1611 Jesuit missionaries came over and labored with remarkable zeal and success in converting the Indians.”[149] In Maryland, a Catholic colony from the first, they held unbounded sway. Speaking of the time of Lord Baltimore, Thompson says: “At that time, in England, the papists were chiefly under the influence of the Jesuits, whose vigilance was too sleepless to permit the opportunity of planting their society in the New World to escape them.”[150] Their work has been quietly done from the very first, and some think that because of the papal decree of 1773, suppressing the order, they have ceased their work. This, however, is a mistake; for “Gregory XVI, whose pontificate commenced in 1831, was the first pope who seemed encouraged by the idea that the papacy would ultimately establish itself in the United States. His chief reliance, as the means of realizing this hope, was upon the _Jesuits_, upon whose entire devotion to the principles of absolutism he could confidently rely.”[151] But the Jesuits always accomplish their work largely by means of education, hence we may look for them to use the same tactics in our country that had proved so eminently successful to their cause in England and Germany.

[Sidenote: Object of Jesuit schools in America]

“The chief thing with the Jesuits,” as Gressinger writes, “was to obtain the sole direction of education, so that by getting the young into their hands, they could fashion them after their own pattern.” It has been the avowed aim of the Jesuits to stamp out Protestantism, and with this, republicanism. In this country, where these two principles were pre-eminently conspicuous, and so closely associated that whatever kills one kills the other, it is doubly true that by gaining control of the educational system the order could work for the papacy the utter ruin of America, both from a religious and a civil standpoint. From the dawn of our history there has been within our borders, mingling with our loyal citizens, a class of educators who carry out this principle described by Thompson. “The Roman Catholic youth are forbidden by the papal system from accepting as true the principles of the Declaration of Independence or of the Constitution of the United States.”[152] Leo XIII, who was educated a Jesuit [Thompson], remains true to his principles. His biographer says “that the ‘false education’ and ‘antichristian training’ of the young which prevail in the United States and among the liberal and progressive peoples of the world must be done away with, abandoned, and ‘Thomas Aquinnas [a Catholic of the thirteenth century] must once more be enthroned as the “angel of the schools;” his methods and doctrines must be the light of all higher teaching, for his works are only revealed truth set before the human mind in its most scientific form.’”[153]

[Sidenote: Progress of papal principles]

It is unnecessary to state the number of schools established by Catholics in the United States, which have been placed under the control of the Jesuits; neither is it necessary to trace the attempts which have been made by the papacy, at irregular periods in our history, to obtain the control of our public school system. The affairs at Stillwater, Minn., and at Farabault, in the same State, while unsuccessful, were weather vanes showing the direction of the wind,—were posers to test the public pulse, and just so surely show the policy of the papacy in educational matters. Of far greater importance to us as Protestants is the fact that _Jesuitical principles may and do prevail in our popular system of education_, and these principles, whether carried out by Jesuits, or by the ordinary teacher who is unconscious of her situation, and unmindful of the result of her methods, bring about the fall of Protestantism and republicanism. Our nation has repudiated her foundation principles; are our Protestant churches doing likewise? The history of the educational institutions of the United States, which are discussed in the next chapters, will show how the plan of work now followed in our universities, colleges, and schools of lower grades, are patterning after Sturm, and how they go farther back, connecting the twentieth century with the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. It is without the slightest feelings of animosity toward the Jesuits or the papacy that these facts are traced. These both do for their cause what will best serve to upbuild it. Their methods, in so far as they accomplish their desired end, are to be commended, and their zeal is ever to be admired.

[Sidenote: An educational question for Protestants]

The one problem for Protestants to solve is whether to accept Jesuitical, papal education, and thus become papal, forming “an image to the Beast,”—to use the language of the Apocalypse,—or whether they will follow the principles of Christian education, and remain true to the name PROTESTANT. Let the reader forget the names; but let him remember that there are but two _principles_ in the world, when the standard of eternal truth is recognized; one exalts Christ, and gives life everlasting; the other exalts man, and its life is for this world alone. Education according to the second does, in its methods, dwarf, enfeeble, and belittle. It puts stress upon the unimportant, and passes by truth without a glance. It prepares the mind for absolutism both in government and religion. Education according to the first will be based upon methods which develop, in every particular, the human being. It is a mental, moral, and physical education, and its object is so to educate that eventually each of these three natures will assume the right relation to the other two, and again, as on the Mount of Transfiguration with the Son of God, “divinity within will flash forth to meet divinity without.”

XIV

AMERICA AND THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM

PROTESTANTISM AND REPUBLICANISM, BORN OF THE REFORMATION, NOURISHED BY SCHOOLS.—As if lifted from the bosom of the deep by the mighty hand of God, America stood forth to receive the principles of religious and civil freedom born of the Reformation on German soil. To the German government was first offered the opportunity of developing to the full the reform movement. This full and complete development would have meant religious liberty for all, and a government by the people,—Protestantism and republicanism. These two systems go hand in hand, and are more closely connected than any other principles in existence. The death of one means the death of the other, for the same life-blood nourishes both.

Germany started well. There were to be found princes, liberal in mind and government, who accepted the new religion, and stood by the Reformers through all their storm-tossed career. God had raised up these men for the time and place, as surely as he called Nebuchadnezzar, or appointed a work for Cyrus. Protestantism was firmly rooted, and, as we have already seen, during the first forty years of its existence, so strong was its vitality that men and nations bowed before it. The early Reformers, especially Luther and Melancthon, connected the movement with the fountain of life when they introduced a system of Christian education. And previous chapters make plain the truth that the life of the entire movement in its twofold aspect—Protestantism and republicanism—depended upon a right educational system. When the mass of German youth sat at the feet of German teachers, and those teachers were true to the principles of Christian education, Roman influence dwindled, and her very life was threatened. It was then that the papacy itself took up the subject of education, and by the work of the Jesuits succeeded in killing the Reform in Germany,—indeed, in all Europe.

“A day of great intellectual darkness has been shown to be favorable to the success of popery. It will yet be demonstrated that a day of great intellectual light is equally favorable for its success.”

[Sidenote: Protestantism killed by Jesuit schools]

The Jesuits planted schools of their own in the shadow of Protestant schools; they entered Protestant schools as teachers; they sucked the life-blood from the young child, and it faded and died. The principles of the Reformation found honest hearts in the Netherlands. The Dutch took up the question of education; but the Jesuits were again on the track, and, as Ranke says, “They gradually carried their point.” The Reformation crossed the Channel, to find the hearts of Englishmen longing for greater freedom. Lollardism, started by Wyclif two hundred years earlier, sprang anew into life in the hearts of the Puritans, until, in the reign of Henry VIII, more than one half of the English population was Protestant. Finally the Commonwealth was established.

[Sidenote: England loses her golden opportunity]

To England was offered the opportunity of showing to the world the perfect fruits of the Reformation in its Protestant religion and a republican government. But alas! the story is repeated. English youth fell into the hands of Jesuits. An English college was founded at Rome, and teachers, ministers, and canvassers returned to their native land with the avowed purpose of their educators, the Jesuits, to overthrow the Reformation. And England fell!

Those familiar words from the pen of Luther, which appear in his letter appealing for aid in the establishment of Protestant schools, echo through England also: “The Word of God and His grace are like a shower that falls, and passes away. It was among the Jews; but it passed away, and now they have it no longer. Paul carried it to Greece; but in that country also it has passed away, and the Turk reigns there now. It came to Rome and the Latin empire; but there also it has passed away, and Rome now has the pope. O, Germans, do not expect to have this Word forever!” Could this man of God have come forth from his grave a century later, and have looked over his loved Germany, and over England, he would have added these names to those of the countries where God’s Word and His grace had been, but had passed away. Must the name of America be added to the above list? May Protestants be aroused before it is too late!

[Sidenote: The Puritan exodus]

Finding that England closed her doors against progress, the Puritans sought greater freedom in the Netherlands. They were disappointed, for they could not there educate their children as Protestantism taught them that they should be educated. As Pilgrims they sought new homes in America, finding a retreat on the bleak shores of New England.

[Sidenote: Protestantism reaches America]

It is now our duty to trace the growth and decline of Protestantism in our own land. _Its prosperity in every other country has been in proportion to its adherence to the correct principles of education; its decline has without exception been the result of a wrong system of education._ How is it in the United States?

No student of history, and especially of prophetic history, doubts for a moment that the way was divinely prepared for Protestantism to cross the Atlantic, and it is equally as evident that that same Hand was upholding those principles after they reached these shores. God’s Word spoke often to the hearts of men, leading them to devise plans, pass laws, establish institutions, and in various ways to so work that His truths might here grow to a perfection which they never reached in the old country. On the other hand, those teachings which have frustrated the principles of Protestantism in Europe are seen to be at work in America from the first planting of a colony until the present day. That strength-producing element was _Christian education;_ that counteracting influence was _false_ or _papal education_. These two form the subject of this chapter.

[Sidenote: Educational History of the United States]

United States history is interwoven with the history of education. Her founders, especially of the New England colonies, traced their origin to an educational center in England, and as early New England history circles about Harvard, so the fathers and supporters of that institution traced their origin in Old England to the counties of East Anglia, where Cambridge University bore sway. “Of the first six hundred who landed in Massachusetts, one in thirty, it is said, was a graduate of the English Cambridge. These and their companions were rare men. They had the schooling for a service the like of whose execution, in completeness and good sense, the world has never equaled.”[154]

“With matchless wisdom they joined liberty and learning in a perpetual and holy alliance, binding the latter to bless every child with instruction, which the former invests with the rights and duties of citizenship. They made education and sovereignty co-extensive, by making both universal.”[155]

John Fiske enlarges upon this thought.[156] The “greater hospitality of Cambridge [University, England] toward new ideas” is proverbial, and the very names, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, Cambridge and Huntingdon, familiar in the geography of New England, are telling a story of Protestant education.

[Sidenote: Radical and Conservative Puritans]

Strong as the Puritans seemed in denouncing the Church of Rome, and in accepting Protestantism, which, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, more than ever before, meant separation from the established church and the established forms of government, they were not united in thought. There were two classes: Puritans, and a class of this class represented by such men as Richard Hooker. Of the Puritans, Fiske says: “Some would have stopped short with Presbyterianism, while others held that ‘new presbyter was but old priest writ large,’ and so pressed on to Independency.”[157] This difference of opinion on religious matters is discernible when representatives of both classes, mingling in the society about Boston, started the educational work of America. Those inclined to remain under the banner of Presbyterianism taunted the others, who were known as Brownists, or Separatists, and who followed William Brewster to America, with _anarchy_, merely because they believed in carrying out fully the principles for which all were ready to fight.

Thus from the first has our educational work fallen into the hands of two classes of men,—a class willing to compromise in order to keep peace, and a bold, daring class, who advocated stepping out on truth regardless of what might follow.

[Sidenote: Congregationalism and education]

There was a mighty educational problem before the church. The Episcopalians had failed to take up that work in England; it was from their midst that Wm. Brewster, a Cambridge graduate, John Robinson, who also was graduated from Cambridge in 1600, and William Bradford, afterward governor of Plymouth for thirty years, withdrew to form the nucleus of the Congregational Church, which had its origin at Scrooby, England, and ended in Plymouth. What Episcopalianism had overlooked in the matter of education in England it now became the duty and privilege of the new church to begin on the virgin soil of America.

[Sidenote: The New England theocracy]

The reader is familiar with the fact that the Puritans, leaving England because of civil and religious oppression, the result of a union of church and state, came to America for freedom, and, contrary to what one would expect, especially at a casual glance, they here developed a theocracy. “The aim of Winthrop and his friends in coming to Massachusetts was the construction of a theocratic state which should be to Christians ... all that the theocracy of Moses and Joshua and Samuel had been to the Jews.... In such a scheme there was no room for religious liberty.... The state they were to found was to consist of a united body of believers; citizenship itself was to be co-extensive with church membership.”[158]

[Sidenote: Educational work breaks the theocracy]

It is equally well known, however, that this theocratic form was soon broken; and while the United States is beginning to find herself again approaching this mode of government, it is a remarkable fact, and one well worthy of our closest consideration, that _the ancient theocracy of New England was broken by the power of the educational system_ there introduced. When this is read from the pages that follow, let the reader answer the question whether or not the _repudiation of Protestant principles and the principles of republicanism by the United States in the nineteenth century is equally due to the present system_. Bear in mind the question as we proceed.

The educational history of the United States may conveniently be studied in three sections; 1, colonial; 2, revolutionary; 3, nineteenth century.

I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD.

[Sidenote: The founding of Harvard]

Since Harvard College, the American Cambridge, “accomplished,” as Boone says, “a much needed work, with manifold wholesome reactions upon society and government, so that it has been affirmed, with show of truth, that ‘the founding of Harvard College hastened the Revolution half a century,’”[159] our study of the schools of the colonial period will center around this institution. It can be stated with safety that the history of Harvard, its leading men, and its varying attitude toward different Colonial problems, throws light on the development of the question of education at the time when the foundations of our national government were laid.

When Boston was but six years old, plans were laid for America’s first college. “Among the early educational leaders,” says Boone, “were such men as the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, John Cotton, and John Wilson, Jr.; all clergymen and all college-bred; Stoughton; Dudley, the deputy-governor, and, above all, ‘Winthrop, the governor, the guide and good genius of the colony.’ Such were the men ... of the infant colony.... Here were learning and character; world-wisdom and refinements of heart; breadth and wholeness of culture, such as could alone justify the boldness of their attempt.”[160] The institution was started in poverty, four hundred pounds being voted by the people. The high motive which prompted the enterprise was “an unbounded zeal for an education, that to them seemed not so much desirable as necessary, _that ‘the light of learning might not go out, nor the study of God’s Word perish_.’”

[Sidenote: Object of Harvard to train ministers]