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the student. Thus is the editor ground between the upper and nether stones.

We have to keep in mind that the vast majority of our readers are the people, and not the ministers. I fancy my own experience has been duplicated in other offices. With a sincere desire to put the good results of the new Bible study before our readers, so that they would see and understand that their Bible is not being despoiled of its riches, but is being enriched and lifted to a still higher plane of service and exalted to greater honor, I tried to secure from those who were most competent to speak articles which should accomplish this purpose. And what did I get? Theses on the process of criticism, of great worth, and perfectly adapted to the classroom of the seminary, but of no worth, of no interest to the average reader.

But I am not discouraged; when we really want a literature which will help restore the Bible to its supreme place in the hearts of the people, we shall get it; and with that at our command, we can make large contribution to the restoration.

Yet another, and perhaps most important, condition is, hearty editorial sympathy and service. After all is said, the real direction and force of a paper's influence is determined by the editor, — else he should not be the editor. He may be open-minded and generous, and admit to his columns the most antagonistic matter, yet, consciously or unconsciously, he shapes the policy and purpose to his own mind.

As to specific methods, I confess myself at fault; I believe in the editorial, of course, but the editorial which supports and is supported by the able article has a larger measure of efficiency. It is not possible to work out systems of study on the editorial page; it is possible to awaken interest, to cultivate and sharpen the appetite, to stir motives, to give momentum. It is possible to magnify the study of the Bible as chief among the life-studies. And why do we not? We exploit other books, and call our constituency to the reading and study of them; we play at politics and toy with literature, and study schemes for social betterment, while the Book of books, the Treasure-chamber of God's Word, the greatest literature of the ages, the source of all true politics, the fountain-head of all social reform, the secret of all Christian character, which alone can redeem the world and bring in the kingdom of Heaven, lies neglected, unread in the homes, perfunctorily in the pulpit, while in the so-called Bible class we study about it but do not study it.

XV. CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION

THE PLACE AND POSSIBILITIES OF CORRESPONDENCE IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

PRESIDENT FRANK W. GUNSAULUS, D.D.

ARMOUR INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; PASTOR CENTRAL CHURCH, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

I remember, as I stand here, that once upon a time Mr. Armour, the founder of the Armour Institute of Technology, visited this city of Boston with me, and after we had looked over the work which is done so nobly here by the Massachusetts institute, we tried to re-lay the foundations of the institute in Chicago. He said to me about a year after that, when once he was visiting the institute and saw a good many welldressed young men there, "I don't know whether this is the thing I wanted to do or not. I want to get at the man in the overalls and the man with the dinner-pail. It seems to me that there ought to be some way to get this institution to the man who can't get to the institution. Now, with sausages and with hams and soap we go to the people, and it does n't seem to me an undignified thing for an institution of learning to go to the people who need it the most." In that spirit we began the work of instruction by correspondence.

Let it be understood at the very beginning, that instruction by correspondence is no substitute whatever for other kinds, any better and more efficient kinds, of instruction. It is a last resort. It is an effort to get at the man who can't get at the instruction himself. It is a sincere desire, taking an organized form, and working along lines that seem sensible and are also very inspiring in their nature and in their tendency, to do something for the man who not only needs it the most, but for the man whom the world needs the most, for the man of the democracy, for the man whose relationship to life, through his family, is an efcient one, a relationship to be husbanded and guarded and to be reinspired as often as possible, in order that the pyramid of our American thoughtful life may rest upon its base, and in order that out of the democracy there may perpetually emerge a real aristocracy with trained hands and trained brains to lead and to help on the great, good time.

Correspondence instruction means, in the first place, a high morality with regard to that thing which we call "a little time." Here are these men with their little time on their hands. The day's work is done, the man with his overalls and dinner-pail goes home: what is he going to do

with his evening? It is a great comfort to recognize that there are more than 60,000 human beings whose evenings cannot be spent in any kind of dissipating activity, but are actually spent so that this little time is exalted into something like a leading importance in their lives. And lo! the horizon opens, the man finds himself in league with scholars, he realizes the fact that he belongs to the great republic of educated people, or people who are being educated, and that little time shines with so much of significance to him that it actually creates an atmosphere for all the other times of the day, and it glows, and its glow is contagious, so that the other hours, the hours of his conversation, the hours of his labor, come to circle around this hour with its splendid significance to his life and to the life of his family.

The personal attention given by correspondence brings about a relationship between the teacher, between the author of the instructionpaper and the scholar, which is very wholesome and very uplifting to the lives of these men. And if correspondence instruction is pursued as it ought to be, that is, if the right sort of men have it in charge, if the missionary spirit—for it is impossible to conduct this work without a genuine missionary spirit - if the missionary spirit is all at work, forcing its paths of activity into new grounds, indicating here and there the new possibilities to which the man wakes as he goes forward,- if that missionary spirit is present, you will find at once how really it pervades every phase of the man's life, and how personality quickens personality, even though they may not have seen one another's faces.

It used to be said that university extension is a cheap, short road to learning. There are no cheap and no short roads to learning. It was thought that university extension would cause people to think they knew more than they do, and it was thought that the whole fabric of education was to go because people would see these things for themselves, the wonder would depart, the amazement that stands by the side of the ordinary professor would go, and all the cloistered phantasm that has belonged for too many years to culture would go. Let it go. It has gone; it will go more and more. The very moment we realize that the cultured man is the man who can do things from a high point of view, after the "pattern in the mount " of his life, with vision, knowing that there are laws in this universe - the very instant that man has learned to send his life along practical lines efficiently, he has entered into the great brotherhood of cultured men.

You will realize at once how to-day, say to-night, there are, perhaps, to-night 260,000, more than 260,000, men, women, boys, and girls attending university extension lectures. Why, do I think for a moment that

this has not been a real revival? We are praying for a revival of religion, with the most comp'ete ingratitude to God for the real revivals that we have been enjoying for the last ten or fifteen years ever known in the history of the Church. We are forgetting this immense revival in civics. We are forgetting the revival which has come to the world in the kindergarten. We are forgetting the revival which has come all over the domain of culture since it has received a genuine missionary motive and has been baptized, as it never was baptized before, by the Holy Spirit.

Think, will you, how all through the country Sunday school teachers, how all through these towns Christian workers, young men and young women, would add to the morality of their lives, the seriousness of their lives, the fine and high intention of life, by actually having a course of study. Oh, well, he can get it in the books in the village library! He may get something in the books in the village library. But there is no continuity about his studies, he has no papers to prepare, he has none of the training which will come by perpetual examination. If he goes to the village library and gets his book, perhaps the book itself is not written along the line of instruction in such a way as a correspondence paper may be written. And, indeed, the fact stands that our Sunday school teachers and our Christian workers do not go, and they do not obtain these things. If they do go, and if they do read, there is nothing of the quickening, disciplining influence which comes by reporting after their study, and reporting by way of examination.

You may be perfectly sure that nothing but the highest class of men and women, nothing but the very best teachers, nothing but mastery in pedagogy, can ever supply these instruction-papers.

In the matter of engineering, it is impossible to allow the ordinary man to prepare what is called an instruction-paper, for it does not instruct. Three things must be had, simplicity, lucidity, thoroughness.

Would it not do something for our whole religious life, would it not do something for the whole realm of imagination, if it were compelled to be so simple that the ordinary man could understand it? I think the effect of an instruction-paper on a man, an instruction-paper that is simple, is a very desirable end. But I think that to have to write an instruction-paper, I think for a great organization like this so to deal with the form and forces of religion, so to deal with biblical literature and with the problems and their solution, that men can understand, the common people can understand, the democracy shall know, will add strength, because it will add, through simplicity, to all our thought and to all our endeavor.

Your instruction-paper must not be less thorough than the most

technical book, but it must be so thorough, and it must be so lucid, that the facts themselves, and the forces and the laws, stand out clearly.

This would compel us to a recognition of the fundamental things, this would get us to the realities of the religious life and to the facts which have to do with the progress of Christian thought.

With regard especially to this work of religious education by correspondence, no man has done so much as President Harper has to carry forward by this missionary spirit the riches that are in institutions and in men, and thus to effect a real uplift of those who could not get to school, by means of correspondence instruction. Has it in any way harmed the standards of the university? Does it in any way affect the mental ability or the scholarship of any man? Certainly not.

Take it in engineering. We say that that is the most difficult field in which correspondence instruction may be prosecuted. Why? The boy has no laboratory, the man has no place in which he may work as he does in the shops, for example, of the Massachusetts Institute or the Armour Institute of Technology. Are you sure he has no laboratory? His engine-room is his laboratory, the place where he works is his laboratory, the problems of the next moment are problems to be solved with all seriousness. His studies and his daily labor co-ordinate and operate on one another.

Has your Sunday school teacher no laboratory? Here is your Sunday school class. Has your man in the little town, who wants the bettering of the community, no laboratory? There are the people whom he wants to help. Has any man lack of a laboratory? Here is his own soul, here is his own personality, here is his own conduct. Connect that man at once with the realm of scholarship, let him know that these things that are in the air are practical realities that he may have in his life, and you have offered a new world for that man.

My brother, the instant demand in this America of ours is to make the common people realize that the best things of life are not owned either by the rich or by the cultured. Just the moment we get men to feel that the finest, the most enrichening things of life, are theirs, there will be less anarchy, there will be less criticism of rich men. Men will begin to realize all over how much more fair and how much more beautiful it is to be in possession of education, to have the great realm of learning open to them, than it is simply to possess money.

Now, what would some of these subjects be? In the very first place, I would have a course of correspondence instruction, guided and directed by men of undoubted capacity in pedagogy. I would begin another course with psychology. You will be amazed to find out how thirsty

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