Ohio History Journal

The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

VOLUME 69 ?? NUMBER 4 ?? OCTOBER 1960

 

 

 

Learning and Piety in

Ohio Colleges, 1865-1900

 

By SHERMAN B. BARNES*

 

 

 

BECAUSE IN THE "Gilded Age" a flood of new knowledge

was received into the collegiate curriculum, the question often

arises whether traditional Protestant piety impeded or hasten-

ed the adoption of new curricular offerings in science, history,

psychology, philosophy, fine arts, and modern languages.

Excellent histories of a number of Ohio colleges published

in recent years offer an opportunity to answer the question.

They suggest that piety did indeed play a constructive role in

nourishing new learning and that it did so while insisting on

correct philosophical interpretation. They also suggest that

collegiate piety was receptive as well to other new influences

in this transitional period before 1900.

In the post-Civil War era the church-related Protestant

colleges of Ohio continued, as they had before the war, to

profess themselves in most instances to be Christian but un-

denominational. Catalogs announced that sectarian peculiari-

ties of belief would not be taught. Colleges described them-

selves as denominational in ownership and control, but not in

instruction. A charter forbidding Antioch to be denomi-

national enabled that institution to survive even the strain

of dual control by the denomination known as "Christians"

and by Unitarians for a period after its reopening in 1882:

* Sherman B. Barnes is a professor of history at Kent State University.

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328     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

"The ethics taught is Christian ethics; the daily religious

service is the Christian worship. The officers and students

are of many denominations, and maintain the relations which

their own consciences approve."1 Another college gave attend-

ance of both Protestants and Catholics as a reason for calling

itself "practically non-sectarian." Its Christian purpose was

left in no doubt: "It earnestly desires its teachers and stu-

dents to think their thoughts after God in His Word and

Works, and to live their lives after Christ."² When Mus-

kingum, previously nonsectarian, was in 1877 taken under

the care of the United Presbyterian Church, the purpose was

financial support, not theological.³ When a college became

a university, this did not mean that it could avoid "relations

to the fundamental doctrines of religion, for there are funda-

mental truths of being. . . . An irreligious university is a

logical inconsistency."⁴

A much larger proportion of college presidents came from

the ministry than did the faculty, but a lay member of the

denomination supporting a college was occasionally elected,

as at Denison, Kenyon, and Marietta.⁵ Lay presidents from

outside the denominational tradition of the college were non-

existent. Ordained professors dropped into a minority; their

professionalized lay colleagues could be of any denomination,

but were expected to be Christian: "Most colleges would no

more elect as professor one opposed to Christianity, or even

indifferent to its claims, than they would elect one notoriously

ignorant of the topic he would teach."⁶ Sessions of the an-

 

1 Daniel A. Long, Sketch of the Legal History of Antioch College (Dayton,

Ohio, 1890), 8.

2 Catalogue of Baldwin University, 1887-1888 (Berea, Ohio, 1888), 51.

3 Robert N. Montgomery, "Some Presidents of Muskingum," in Robert N.

Montgomery, ed., The William Rainey Harper Memorial Conference, . . . Held in

Connection with the Centennial of Muskingum College (Chicago, 1938), 141-142.

4 Charles F. Thwing, A History of Higher Education in America (New York,

1906), 459.

⁵ George F. Smythe, Kenyon College: Its First Century (New Haven, Conn.,

1924), 228; Arthur Granville Beach, Pioneer College: The Story of Marietta

(Chicago, 1935), 204-208; G. Wallace Chessman, Denison: The Story of an Ohio

College (Granville, Ohio, 1957), 234-235.

6 Charles F. Thwing, Within College Walls (New York, (1893), 38-39.

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LEARNING AND PIETY               329

nual meeting of the Ohio Association of Colleges were opened

with the offering of prayer. Professors were called upon to

conduct chapel services, preach sermons, lead prayer meetings,

and conduct funeral services. An Oberlin professor regu-

larly noted in his diary his opinion of the quality of sermons

he heard.⁷ Professors watched over the religious life of

students, prayed with them, and took part in revivals. A

professor at Ohio Wesleyan was quick to detect a false note

in a student's religion.⁸ A letter from Otterbein in 1890 took

pleasure in the fact that "a number of times in its history

scarcely a solitary student was left in the ranks of unbe-

lievers."⁹

Adherence to the doctrines of the college's denominational

affiliation was not enforced on either professors or students.10

At Antioch, President Daniel A. Long could tolerate the

"bad theology" of Unitarianism, judging men by their fruits

and recalling that "error is never really dangerous if truth is

left free to combat her."11 Intradenominational theological

dispute only very occasionally developed in this era. When

it did break out, as at Kenyon, Ashland, and Wittenberg,

public opinion frowned and enrollment dropped.¹² The dis-

missal of Professor Walter Q. Scott at the College of Woos-

ter in 1880 was not because he questioned Presbyterian doc-

 

7 Diary of Lyman Bronson Hall. Manuscript in Oberlin College Library.

8 Henry Clyde Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan's First Hundred Years (Delaware,

Ohio, 1943), 82.

9 George Wells Knight and John R. Commons, The History of Higher Educa-

tion in Ohio (Washington, D.C., 1891), 145.

10 Beach, Marietta, 227; Mary Bosworth Treudley, Prelude to the Future: The

First Hundred Years of Hiram College (New York, 1950), 117; Donald M. Love,

Henry Churchill King of Oberlin (New Haven, Conn., 1956), 73. The Univer-

salist convention in 1896 asked that at Buchtel "the instructors, if possible . . . be

Universalists." A. I. Spanton, ed., Fifty Years of Buchtel (1870-1920) (Akron,

Ohio, 1922), 91.

11 Long, Antioch, 12.

12 Kenyon suffered for a decade after 1867 because President James Kent Stone,

a Tractarian, offended the evangelical traditions of the college. Smythe, Kenyon,

195-198. For Ashland, see Ashland College Bulletin, 1957-58 (Ashland, Ohio,

1957), 5. The "trial" of Professor L. A. Gotwald at Wittenberg, in 1893, arose

from fear that the liberal traditions of the college were threatened by a rising

"exclusive and conservative spirit" symbolized by Gotwald. Harold H. Lentz,

A History of Wittenberg College (1845-1945) (Springfield, Ohio, 1946), 176-178.

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330    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

trine. To provoke reasoned conviction by raising the ques-

tion in class whether God exists was Scott's offense.¹3 The

Christian college had not yet learned to approve this type of

dialectic in the classroom.

Professions of Christian purpose and observance of com-

pulsory daily chapel characterized universities under state

support. The granting of the first state money to Ohio Uni-

versity in March 1881,14 and Miami's reopening in 1885 as

a state-supported institution after having been closed twelve

years,¹⁵ did not affect the Christian college pattern. A trustee

of Ohio University in the 1890's called his school "non-

sectarian but Christian."16 President William Henry Scott

of Ohio State University, stating in 1884 that the true posi-

tion for any university is to be Christian but undenomina-

tional, rejected the alternatives of higher education "under

the malign influence of a sordid utilitarianism or a dead ma-

terialism."¹⁷ Clergymen continued to be elected presidents of

state institutions. In respect to daily compulsory chapel, the

line between denominational and state-supported colleges was

in this era nonexistent.

At Miami the faculty and at Ohio State the trustees moved

against presidents who neglected to enforce daily compulsory

chapel. When state support and the first lay president ar-

rived simultaneously at Miami in 1885, the faculty, led by

Andrew D. Hepburn, opposed President McFarland's abo-

lition of compulsory chapel, which was restored in 1888, after

this president's departure.¹⁸ At Ohio State University the

trustees required the first four presidents to observe daily

compulsory chapel. His failure to enforce this ruling was

 

13 Lucy Lilian Notestein, Wooster of the Middlewest (New Haven, Conn.,

1937), 101-104.

14 Thomas N. Hoover, The History of Ohio University (Athens, Ohio, 1954),

147.

15 Walter Havighurst, The Miami Years, 1809-1959 (New York, 1958), 135ff.

16 Hoover, Ohio University, 176.

17 James E. Pollard, History of The Ohio State University: The Story of Its

First Seventy-Five Years, 1873-1948 (Columbus, Ohio, 1952), 51.

18 Havighurst, Miami, 142-143.

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LEARNING AND PIETY            331

an important factor in the resignation of President Walter

Q. Scott in 1883, after he had served only two years.¹⁹

In the nineteenth-century college there was believed to be

one right curriculum, outside which there was no educational

salvation. The languages and literature of Greece and Rome,

mathematics, mental and moral philosophy, and Christian evi-

dences developed "all the powers of the soul as an end but

not as an instrument," "correctness in mental processes,"²⁰

and awareness of self as a moral being made in the image of

God. "Strenuous mental discipline" was needed because "the

average man does not desire to study long, nor deep, nor

continuously."21 Colleges existed not to impart information:

"The college . . . sees in her student not a mere receptacle

of facts . . . but a possible strong and scientific thinker, able

to make right use of his knowledge; who can expound facts

and organize knowledge into the orderliness of truth."²² The

subjects of the curriculum were not ends in themselves, but

means for developing the mental and moral faculties of the

student.²³ The recitation method at its best meant intellectual

fencing between professor and student, not parroting the

text. A master of this method, William George Williams of

Ohio Wesleyan, had the Christian humility not to lecture but

to prod the student by suggestion and question to rely on him-

self to reach conclusions.²⁴ At Otterbein, President Henry

Adams Thompson in 1875 urged the faculty not only to

investigate and write themselves but to encourage the in-

quisitiveness of the students: "Asking them the precise ques-

 

19 Pollard, Ohio State, 81-89.

20 Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan, 88.

21 C. L. Ehrenfeld, "The Aim of the College," Transactions of the Association

of Ohio Colleges (Columbus, Ohio, 1888), 6-19. The Transactions of the Ohio

College Association (as it was known after 1891) will be referred to hereafter as

Transactions only.

²² Ibid., 10.

23 A History of Mount Union College During Its First Thirty Years, 1846-1876

(Cleveland, 1876), 12.

24 J. W. Bashford, "Memorial Address on Professor William George Williams,"

Transactions (Cleveland, 1902), 11-19.

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332    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

tions in the book is not the way to make them thinkers."25

Belief in the education of the whole man, however, required

that mental development should not be disjoined from moral

and religious culture.²⁶ Moral reflection disclosed the "dis-

cordant elements" and passions within the self which required

the word of God to keep the soul from going "adrift without

a rudder, sail, or compass, upon an ocean of doubts and dark-

ness."²⁷ The ideal of educating the whole man led to notable

efforts to conciliate the claims of both faith and reason.

Reason and religion harmonized in diverse ways. Their

coexistence appeared particularly in the Christian evidences

course. In such a class at Oberlin it was argued that accept-

ance of the Christian system rested not on blind faith, force,

or habit, but on well established conviction, on evidences

developed in its conflicts with other religions and philosophies

in its long history.²⁸ A president and professor of philosophy

and mental and moral science expressed the hope in a bacca-

laureate address to seniors that "your study in philosophy

has already convinced you of the impotency of any philo-

sophical system to satisy the hunger of the human soul for

God."²⁹ The Greek and Latin languages and literatures

were valued for giving "us a conscious historic feeling of the

oneness of humanity that we cannot otherwise obtain."30

Their awareness that the true spirit of religion at times

needs revival in the church alerted clerical professors to the

need for "a revival of the true spirit of learning and

science."31

A sense that crisis was upon the traditional Christian col-

lege mounted as the century waned. From Wittenberg came

25 Willard W. Bartlett, Education for Humanity: The Story of Otterbein College

(Westerville, Ohio, 1934), 48-49.

26 Mount Union College, 12.

27 John Tonner, Baccalaureate Sermon at the Commencement of Mount Union

College (Alliance, Ohio, 1867), 13.

28 Anna M. Metcalf, Student Notes on Professor John M. Ellis' Course, Evi-

dences of Christianity, Spring, 1882. Manuscript in Oberlin College Library.

29 President Joseph Edward Stubbs of Baldwin University, in Berea Advertiser,

June 14, 1889.

30 Ehrenfeld, "Aim of the College," 14.

31 Ibid., 17.

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LEARNING AND PIETY             333

the cry that "the college is in a period of struggle to main-

tain its true existence, its identity."³² To an Otterbein presi-

dent it seemed "that a great contest is on between the so-

called bread-and-butter sciences and a liberal training."³³

From Buchtel College came lament that the expanding elective

system was a form of worldliness:

Out of this utilitarian sentiment arises indifference to education, then

direct opposition to it on the ground of its expense. Out of it springs,

too, the disposition to get as little education as is consistent with making

a fair show in society, and getting along in the world. Hence the ten-

dency to take elective studies and rush through the work of education,

as if economy of time were of paramount importance to an immortal

soul, that has all eternity before it!34

Another Buchtel president asked, "What are electives for? To

enable the scientific to escape all literature and the literary

to elect away from   sciences?"35

The theme was increasingly developed that colleges were

advancing in intellectual and cultural ways without corres-

ponding religious and moral growth.³⁶ Sullivan H. McCol-

lester, president of Buchtel, 1872-78, felt that the current

curriculum, too weak religiously, "savors somewhat of classic

Greece and Rome, of Pestalozzi and Liebig, of Cuvier and

Bacon."³⁷ H. C. Haydn found need for colleges to require

the study of the Bible, with the help of the latest findings

of historical criticism in order to overcome the "profound

ignorance" of the Bible on the part of the average freshman.³⁸

At Hiram, Ohio Wesleyan, the University of Cincinnati, and

elsewhere, steps were taken in the 1890's to require biblical

32 Ibid.

33 T. J. Sanders, "The Place and Purpose of the College," Transactions (Athens,

Ohio, 1889), 5-14.

34 President Orello Cone of Buchtel, 1880, in Spanton, Buchtel, 173.

35 Ira A. Priest, "Concerning the Purpose and Plan of Education," Transactions

(Columbus, Ohio, 1900), 7-14.

36 See Love, King of Oberlin, 15; Thwing, Within College Walls, 56-59; Ellen

E. Garrigues, "Suggestions Concerning the Moral, Aesthetic and Social Develop-

ment of the Undergraduate," Transactions (Athens, Ohio, 1897), 69-78.

37 Spanton, Buchtel, 47.

38 Hiram C. Haydn, "The Study of the Bible in American Colleges," Transac-

tions (Columbus, Ohio, 1889), 36-40.

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334    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

study in place of the traditional Christian evidences, Joseph

Butler's The Analogy of Religion, and William            Paley.³⁹

At Hiram under President Ely Vaughn Zollars, 1888-1902,

and at Ohio Wesleyan under President James Whitford

Bashford, 1889-1904, the new emphasis on history, biblical

criticism, comparative religion, and psychology was linked

with the belief that acceptance of the biblical God requires

the mental flexibility to avoid the danger

 

that, being set for the defense of certain distinctive ideas as to religion,

it shall seek to hold its culture, and limit its mental liberty to the

compass of those ideas. The college that makes itself narrow and sec-

tarian defeats its own proper object. To hold the mind of the student

to the grooves of ancient thought, to forbid utter liberty to the honest

soul--this is to suppress the mind and the man. Men may grow

shrewd and cunning under such restrictions, but they will never grow

large and strong.⁴⁰

At the same time, President Thwing of Western Reserve

was insisting that, in spite of the waning of revivals, changes

in textbooks and teaching methods, and emphasis on re-

search, "Christian life is no less vital" in colleges -- under

new forms.⁴1

A crisis for the college originated not only in curriculum

changes and in the inner tensions of a system combining

piety and learning; it arose also from the pressures of the

community on colleges which felt they best served humanity

by adherence to the absolutes of their classical and Christian

tradition. Even the location of colleges on rural hilltop or

plain was felt valuable for moral purity and rigor of learn-

ing. At Western Reserve strong feeling arose against the

move from Hudson to Cleveland in 1882 and against the ad-

mission of coeds.⁴² Townspeople of Wooster and Oxford

³⁹ Treudley, Hiram, 130-131; Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan, 207.

40 E. V. Zollars, "The Mission of the Endowed College," Transactions (Cleve-

land, 1900), 7-11.

41 Charles F. Thwing, The Choice of a College for a Boy (Boston, 1899), 12.

42 H. C. Haydn, Western Reserve University from Hudson to Cleveland, 1878-

1890 (Cleveland, 1905), 70-74; Frederick Clayton Waite, Western Reserve Uni-

versity: The Hudson Era (Cleveland, 1943), 448-467.

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LEARNING AND PIETY            335

felt their respective "gowns" were too religious. In the late

eighties and early nineties there were presidents and faculties

at Miami and Wooster who opposed the incipient invasion by

intercollegiate athletics as trespassing on the "holy time" in

college preparing for later usefulness in life.⁴³ A president

recorded the contemporary feeling that colleges were places

of amusement or centers of preparation for the learned pro-

fessions. Young men who wanted to make a fortune would

avoid them.⁴⁴ If the world of business had a prejudice against

college men,45 it was because colleges resisted the mercantile

spirit:

 

Everywhere there is clamor against the branches which the college

idea demands, branches whose mastery greatens and irradiates the minds

that penetrate and possess them, but which do not minister immediately

to the mercantile spirit that prevails.⁴⁶

Colleges were slow to abandon traditional linguistic and

mathematical requirements for admission, often adhering to

standards at the cost of low enrollment and needed fees. Most

colleges maintained preparatory departments to assist youths

to enter the college freshman class. Frequently more stu-

dents were in the preparatory department than in the college.

There was resistance to admitting high school graduates by

presentation of diplomas. From Denison in 1890 came a

note of vexation that the graduates of the rising system of

public high schools lacked preparation: "It is regarded as ex-

tremely unfortunate that the better class of Ohio high schools

are not so organized that their diplomas, upon approval by the

board, could entitle the holder to full standing in the fresh-

man class."⁴⁷ A Wittenberg professor was confident that the

 

43 Notestein, Wooster, 106, 175-177; Havighurst, Miami, 128, 143-153. See

"Discussion-Inter-Collegiate Athletics," Transactions (Athens, Ohio, 1899), 62-67.

44 George W. Williard, The History of Heidelberg College (Cincinnati, 1879),

94-101.

45 Thwing, Within College Walls, 148.

46 Ehrenfeld, "Aim of the College," 17.

47 W. H. Johnson, "Denison University," in Knight and Commons, Higher

Education in Ohio, 161.

• 9
 

336    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

high schools should adjust to the collegiate order of studies

"tried and not found wanting in the ages past" rather than

the reverse. To him the college was "not simply another still

more advanced form of the high school." Their provinces

were not the same and their functions were distinct.⁴⁸ Liberal

college presidents took another approach. The fact that Wil-

liam Oxley Thompson, president of Miami, 1891-99, oppo-

sed entrance examinations as a basis of admission to college

as unfitted to Ohio conditions does not mean he sympathized

"with the notion that a college should be an accommodation

train."⁴⁹ President Thompson urged the college leaders of

the state to "put a new emphasis upon the importance of the

high school" in order to enable the colleges to close their

preparatory departments and to raise their standards for

"sound scholarship, superior citizenship . . . [and] leadership

in inspiring the youth of our state toward the best things in

a christian civilization."⁵⁰ In 1892 James Edward Stubbs,

president of Baldwin University, 1886-94, urged a program

for Ohio of "two or three superior training colleges for teach-

ers" and asked whether there could not be more preparation

in colleges "for bread-winning in life without abating a jot

of the higher education of the whole man."⁵¹ James Whitford

Bashford is another example of a theologically liberal presi-

dent who moved to lessen the gap between college and com-

munity.

President of Ohio Wesleyan University, 1889-1904, Bash-

ford opened his college to high school graduates by certificate

of graduation.⁵² He was an innovator in the use of publicity

and promotional methods to build enrollment. He maintained

 

48 Ehrenfeld, "Aim of the College," 18.

49 William Oxley Thompson, "Entrance Requirements," Transactions (Athens,

Ohio, 1897), 5-13; William Oxley Thompson, "President W. O. Thompson's

Paper," Transactions (Delaware, Ohio, 1896), 67.

50 William Oxley Thompson, "Address in Behalf of Ohio Colleges," in The

Inauguration of Rev. Guy Potter Benton, A.M., D.D., as President of Miami

University (Hamilton, Ohio, [1902]), 26-31.

51 James Edward Stubbs, "The College of Today," Transactions (Warren, Ohio,

1893), 5-21.

52 Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan, 106.

• 10
 

LEARNING AND PIETY            337

that the colleges were themselves at fault for failing to sup-

ply the Ohio schools with an adequate number of teachers:

"The college men must admit that they have neglected this

most serious problem, and thus have weakened their own

sources of supply, by their greater willingness to establish

professional schools of law and medicine and theology than

of pedagogy."⁵³ Bashford visualized the high schools of the

state as capable of providing moral and spiritual education.

He viewed the state as "fit to give all the training necessary

to prepare her children for the highest service of herself and

of humanity."⁵⁴ There can be no sharp distinction between

Christian college and community when it is believed that

 

the school which omits Bible reading and prayer at the opening of its

exercises is not necessarily a Godless school. God is quite as pious

when making bugs and beetles. . . . All conduct, whether teaching

arithmetic, or washing dishes, or shoeing horses, is sacred, if per-

formed with unselfish motives.⁵⁵

The liberalism of President Bashford also redirected in-

tellectual and moral traditions at Ohio Wesleyan. Opposed

to the tradition of president and faculty standing in loco

parentis by a system of regulating student conduct, he moved

with the current of the time toward student self-government:

"I fear that the continuance of the patriarchal method in col-

lege life has not only injured personal freedom, but has low-

ered the standard of morality among the students."⁵⁶ Seven

years later, however, he expressed approval of the principle

of faculty regulation of athletics because of rising abuses in

intercollegiate competition.⁵⁷ In respect to intellectual cur-

rents President Bashford welcomed the latest discoveries in

 

53 James Whitford Bashford, An Educational Policy for Ohio (Delaware, Ohio,

n.d.), 4.

⁵⁴ J. W. Bashford, "Can State Schools Teach Christian Ethics?" Transactions

(Granville, Ohio, 1891), 41-52.

55 Ibid., 44.

56 J. W. Bashford, "A Study of Civil Government," Transactions (Wooster,

Ohio, 1892), 3-20.

57 "Discussion-Inter-Collegiate Athletics," Transactions (Athens, Ohio, 1899),

62-63.

• 11
 

338    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

science, biblical criticism, philosophy, and comparative re-

ligion. All learning he could "cast in a frame of zealous

evangelistic religion."⁵⁸ Applied science he could cast in a

patriotic mold. Its more intensive study on the graduate level

was a necessity if the United States was to become the in-

dustrial and commercial leader of the world.⁵⁹

In the post-Civil War college whatever minimal resistance

was offered to expanding scientific studies in the curriculum

originated in factors other than religious. The expense of

new scientific buildings, laboratories, and apparatus was a

retarding factor in some cases.⁶⁰ The belief that scientific

courses ranked low in cultural value and mental discipline as

compared with the classics was probably the most important.⁶¹

The classical tradition was so strong that even at Ohio State,

founded to advance engineering and agricultural studies,

respectability as a college was felt to require a strong classi-

cal emphasis.⁶² William Henry Scott, Greek professor, Metho-

dist clergyman, and president of Ohio University, 1872-83,

regarded the increasing ratio of scientific to classical students

as a "demoralizing" trend.⁶³ Indifferent to swelling the enroll-

ment, he restored in 1882 the Latin and Greek requirement as

a condition of entry to the freshman class. The science

sequence leading to the bachelor of science degree in numer-

ous colleges was covered in three years in contrast to the

four-year classical course. By 1889, however, standards were

being raised for the B.S.; colleges unable to do adequate

scientific work were persuaded by the Ohio College Associa-

tion not to grant this degree, "and the few colleges which

bestow the degree, for the most part do so only for a fair

 

58 Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan, 87.

⁵⁹ Bashford, Educational Policy for Ohio, 19-20.

60 For example, at Otterbein. Knight and Commons, Higher Education in Ohio,

143; Chessman, Denison, 135.

61 Spanton, Buchtel, 82; Williard, Heidelberg, 25.

62 Philip D. Jordan, Ohio Comes of Age, 1873-1900 (Carl Wittke, ed., The

History of the State of Ohio, V, Columbus, 1943), 394.

63 Hoover, Ohio University, 153-154.

• 12
 

LEARNING AND PIETY            339

amount of work done."⁶⁴ It is significant that professors of

the physical and natural sciences who argued their case

utilized traditions from the classical course to justify their

work. That is to say, they argued that their disciplines had

mental and moral value equal to or superior to that of the

classics. The self-control, independence, truthful statement,

suspended judgment, and industry required in laboratory

work were interpreted as good in ethics as well as in science.⁶⁵

There was also a theological mold and interpretation within

which and partly because of which scientific studies made

their way.

There was a favorable milieu for science in colleges having

presidents who regarded "every exact fact" as "a thought

of God."⁶⁶ President Samson Talbot of Denison, 1863-73,

stated the general ideal of harmony: "I would have instruc-

tion in the Arts and Sciences bound in close alliance with

high mindedness and depth of thought and practical wisdom

and with the Christian religion."⁶⁷ An expectation of new

discoveries echoed in the words of Dr. Samuel Sprecher, presi-

dent of Wittenberg, 1849-73: "Here is the only true method

of retaining the truth in religion, that we have every present

judgment by the Word of God and that we be ready to receive

whatever new truth shall be made known to us from the same

Word."⁶⁸ His zeal for science and his local museum as neces-

sary both vocationally and evangelically in a "peoples col-

lege" led Orville N. Hartshorn, president of Mount Union

College, 1846-87, to travel in Europe in 1867 to observe

 

64 John M. Ellis, "Historical Sketch of the Association of the Colleges of Ohio,"

Transactions (Oberlin, Ohio, 1890), 54-66.

65 Chessman, Denison, 121-122; C. L. Herrick, "The Ethical Aspects of Labora-

tory Teaching," Transactions (Granville, Ohio, 1891), 5-15; E. W. Claypole,

"Value in Life of Scientific Thinking," ibid., 15-20; W. E. Henderson, "The

Science Course," Transactions (Columbus, Ohio, 1900), 31-40.

66 Sylvester Fithian Scovel, president of the College of Wooster, 1883-99, in

Notestein, Wooster, 137.

67 Chessman, Denison, 138.

⁶⁸ Lentz, Wittenberg, 142n.

• 13
 

340    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

methods in scientific instruction and museum procedure.⁶⁹

James Edward Stubbs, president of Baldwin University, re-

garded scientific discovery as a boon to material, moral, and

spiritual growth. In an address after returning from two

years in Germany, 1890-92, he declared that "from the labora-

tory of the chemist, the biologist and the physiologist has

come a stream of life saving knowledge."⁷⁰

The theological training of clergymen presidents and pious

professors prepared them to see the facts and laws of nature

studied by science as evidences of God's handiwork. To

President Willis Lord of the College of Wooster, 1870-73,

these facts and laws were "the offspring of God. He orig-

inated their elements. He imparted their qualities and powers.

He devised and ordained their laws."⁷1  At Denison the

biologist C. Judson Herrick was confident that when the

Darwinian "laws of variation are discovered we may be as-

sured that, like all other laws of nature, they are the voice

of God."⁷² Both Lord and Herrick shared the optimism that

increasing knowledge of nature will lead men to acknowledge

"Him who made it" (Lord) and to see that the evolutionary

process "is under the guidance of an immanent Divinity"

(Herrick). In Charles F. Thwing, elected president of Wes-

tern Reserve University in 1890, a sense of the urgent need

for research was combined with piety:

 

Valuing at the utmost the content of all special revelations from and

concerning the divine Being, these revelations are so slight in comparison

to the whole content of truth respecting God and His Will that advant-

age must be taken of psychology, anthropology, and biology for learning

whatever can be known touching Him who is the all in all.⁷³

 

⁶⁹ Mount Union College, 6; Yost Osborne, "A History of Mount Union College,

1846-1946" (unpublished manuscript in Mount Union College Library).

⁷⁰ Stubbs, "The College of Today," 12; Dorothy McKelvey, "A History of

Baldwin-Wallace College" (unpublished manuscript in Baldwin-Wallace College

Alumni Office).

71 Notestein, Wooster, 45.

72 Chessman, Denison, 144.

73 Charles F. Thwing, A History of Higher Education in America (New York,

1906), 459.

• 14
 

LEARNING AND PIETY            341

It was a recurring theme that Scripture was not to be

taken as authoritative in respect to problems such as the age

of the earth, the origin and order of nature, or "whether

man as a mere physical being was descended from the earlier

forms of existence."⁷⁴ H. C. Haydn, president of Western

Reserve, 1887-90, and his successor, Charles F. Thwing, felt

that the Bible stood out all the more prominently as a guide

in religion and ethics when it was seen not to be a manual of

science.75 G. Frederick Wright, an Oberlin biblical scholar

and geologist, was holding that the Bible should not be mis-

taken for a textbook of science when stating it was "an im-

pertinence to endeavor to find all modern science in the docu-

ment (Genesis), however easy it may be for science to find

shelter under the drapery of its rhetoric."⁷⁶ Wright's obvious

rejection of James Dwight Dana's manner of showing the

correspondence between Genesis and geology in the order

given the facts of creation does not mean that he rejected

either the divine inspiration of Genesis or the divine causa-

tion of the world. By using his knowledge of glacial geology

to throw light on the flood, the passage of the Red Sea, the

destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and other old Testa-

ment occurrences, he intended to make better known the

means, or secondary causes, "through which God accom-

plishes His design."⁷⁷ The biologist C. L. Herrick felt the

nearness of God through constant creativeness: "Biology

suggests that whatever Power created this world and its

inhabitants is now as truly operative as it ever was, that cre-

ation is a constant act and not a postulated long forgotten

event incapable of proof."⁷⁸

 

74 Chessman, Denison, 143, citing President Samson T. Talbot.

75 Hiram C. Haydn, The Bible and Current Thought (Cleveland, 1891), 22;

Charles F. Thwing, A Liberal Education and a Liberal Faith (New York, 1903),

178-179.

76 G. Frederick Wright, Story of My Life and Work (Oberlin, Ohio, 1916), 369.

77 Ibid., 382. See the works of Wright: Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences

(New York, 1898); Scientific Confirmations of Old Testament History (Oberlin,

Ohio, 1906).

78 C. L. Herrick, "The Ethical Aspects of Laboratory Teaching," Transactions

(Granville, Ohio, 1891), 5-15.

• 15
 

342    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

An element of cautious scepticism kept many college spokes-

men in the middle between extremism either theological or

scientific. The resistance to evolutionary theories at Ohio

Wesleyan before the 1890's was defended in 1894 by Amos

E. Dolbear, an alumnus who had achieved some distinction

in science: "When the class of 1866 was in college we heard

nothing about evolution or thermodynamics; . . . it is right

for a college to go slow; there is not a little today that is

dubbed evolution which is certain to become obsolete."⁷⁹ G.

Frederick Wright felt that too often scientists forgot the

provisional nature of their theories; on the other hand, he

warned defenders of Christianity not to err by being "too

incredulous regarding the conclusions of modern science,

lest they also do violence to those common principles of rea-

son in which all in the last resort must take refuge."⁸⁰ To

Wright, as to Joseph Butler, there were mysteries underlying

any system of knowledge equally as great and beyond logical

proof as those of Christian faith.81 At Denison in the 1870's

the biologist Lewis E. Hicks took both theologians and

scientists to task for the extremism of their views.⁸² Under-

lying the suspended judgment of these men who would be

both pious and scientific was a fear less of science than of

science wrongly interpreted. The intellectual frontier of the

day was conceived as more than a battle between science and

religion. To a clerical president at Baldwin University scien-

tific discoveries had to be seen in context with philosophical

and theological research. Studies on all these frontiers

have brought again the old time struggles upon the field of religious

doctrine. In some respects this conflict is healthful and in others it is

dangerous. All the doctrines of the theological system of churches, and

the divine origin of the Bible are coming under a searching review by

both friend and foe of Christianity.⁸³

79 Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan, 100.

80 G. Frederick Wright, The Logic of Christian Evidences (Andover, Mass.,

1880), 64.

81 Wright, My Life and Work, 200.

82 Chessman, Denison, 143.

83 President Joseph Edward Stubbs, baccalaureate sermon to seniors, in Berea

Advertiser, June 14, 1889.

• 16
 

LEARNING AND PIETY           343

That good would emerge from the struggle President Stubbs

did not doubt: "Old forms will pass away. New forms will

symbolize the adjustment of religious thought and activity

to new conditions of general thought and life."⁸⁴

In the baccalaureate sermons of President George W. Wil-

liard of Heidelberg College from 1867 to 1879 there was no

opposition to science, but only to wrong philosophies. In a

list of these, in 1877, he included "Pantheism, Evolution,

Materialism, Nihilism, Atheism, Naturalism and Rationalism,

of which we have heard so much in these latter days." In his

comment President Williard showed both an accurate aware-

ness that philosophies may be confused with science and also

a trust in the rational powers of his youthful auditors:

 

From such speculations and theorizings, my young friends, I would

affectionately entreat you to keep aloof, and, if you study them, as it is

right and proper for you to do -- to keep pace with the progress of

thought -- do not allow yourselves to be deceived and led astray by the

specious forms of sophistry and boasting pretensions of science, falsely

so called.⁸⁵

 

President W. D. Godman, D.D., of Baldwin University,

1870-75, felt confronted "with unbelief in every form"⁸⁶ To

him contemporary unbelief originated less in science than in

the positivism which denies a first cause and the rationalists

"who refuse to award the character of truth to spiritual ex-

perience."⁸⁷ To Herbert Spencer's insistence that education be

made exclusively scientific Dr. Godman answered: "This

exclusion of any kind of knowledge is unscientific, though

done in the name of science."⁸⁸ To refuse to investigate the

supernatural is a form of "scientific bigotry"⁸⁹ which forgets

that "Faith and Reason are really near of kin and go har-

 

84 Stubbs, "The College of Today," 20.

85 Williard, Heidelberg, 257.

86 W. D. Godman, A Post-Graduate Course of Study for Ministers of the

Gospel (Cleveland, 1874), 14.

⁸⁷ Inauguration at Baldwin University (Berea, Ohio, 1871), 27.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid., 16.

• 17
 

344    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

moniously together."⁹⁰ Dr. Godman's belief that a harmony

of faith and reason could be found, led him to urge increased

study of science by ministerial students, including use of

Lyell's and Dana's geological manuals. It was his vision that

 

all truth is Christ's; and He will show us how to harmonize the revealed

and the discovered. They are friendly and at one in themselves. All

the severance is made by man's ignorance. A great gain is made by

learning their connections.91

 

Of the two bigotries, one rationalistic, one religious, God-

man was capable of saying that religious bigotry "is hotter

and more dangerous than scientific bigotry."⁹² He hoped that

an alliance of science with religion could defeat rationalism

and positivism. Of the positivists he held the view that they

were "the most complete bigots of our day . . . who ignore

everything but physical and social science."⁹³

At the College of Wooster, President Willis Lord knew

that facts of science may be used in ways antagonistic to

moral truth, but that such use of the facts springs "from an-

other cause, not from the sciences." "I do not believe," he

said, "that the study of the Physical Sciences has any legiti-

mate tendency antagonistic to moral truth."⁹⁴ At Denison,

President Talbot, in an 1872 review of Charles Darwin's

The Descent of Man, showed alarm, not about science, but

about the inability of mechanistic science to "construct a

philosophy of all being and knowing."⁹⁵ It is probable that

a similar anxiety lest too much science would disrupt philo-

sophical direction prompted President James H. Fairchild

of Oberlin to say in 1880 that the expansion of the sciences

"will require all our diligence to retain for literary and

philosophical studies their usual dominance.^"96 After re-

 

90 Ibid., 17.

91 Godman, A Post-Graduate Course, 16.

92 Godman, Inauguration at Baldwin University, 16.

93 Ibid., 22.

94 Notestein, Wooster, 45-46.

95 Chessman, Denison, 142-143.

96 Love, King of Oberlin, 56.

• 18
 

LEARNING AND PIETY          345

viewing past conflicts, Professor John M. Ellis at Oberlin

told his students that the present and future conflict of Chris-

tianity was not with science but with "the naturalistic science

of this century" and "with Heathenism and Modern Pagan-

ism which is still before it."⁹⁷

It was G. Frederick Wright's view that theism and scienti-

fic study were reciprocally beneficial to each other. The har-

mony of science and revelation which he endeavored to por-

tray during his occupancy of a professorship at Oberlin under

that title from 1892 to 1907 was mainly undermined, Wright

felt, by erroneous theological and philosophical speculation.

Deploring the permeation of materialistic evolutionary theory

into seats of learning and centers of scientific thought,

Wright gave even more attention to currents of thought in

theological centers, many of which, he wrote, were con-

trolled "to a lamentable extent" by "a monistic theory of the

universe" that was "equally destructive with pantheism of the

true theistic view":

 

In eliminating the idea of second causes and referring everything to

the direct activity of God, the prevalent doctrine of divine immanence

is undermining the whole Christian system, by relieving man from the

responsibility of sin, charging it upon the Creator himself; and by

obliterating the whole distinction between natural and supernatural,

and referring everything to the direct action of God, is destroying the

whole conception of miracles, since it renders everything miraculous.⁹⁸

In the reasonings of Wright, as well as in those of Williard,

Godman, Talbot, Lord, Fairchild, and others, there was con-

sensus that when the houses of philosophy and theology

were in disorder, the facts of science and biblical revelation

could not be correctly interpreted.

An especially troublesome tax upon philosophical ingenuity

was imposed by the rise of physiological psychology. This

discipline had its advocates in the Ohio colleges towards the

end of the century. Professors appeared who had studied

 

97 Anna M. Metcalf, Student Notes.

⁹8 Wright, My Life and Work, 398-399.

• 19
 

346    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

under Wilhelm Wundt.⁹⁹ Psychology courses were freshened

by William James's Principles of Psychology.¹⁰⁰ The new

approach did not come without pain. Both religious convic-

tion and academic custom felt attacked. The reigning psy-

chology, called mental and moral science, was a peculiar mix-

ture of religion, morality, philosophy, and psychology. Had

not the Bible settled the matter of God's imparting to man

higher intellectual and moral faculties than could be derived

from instinct or man's animal nature?101 Was not the preva-

lent introspective psychology an adequate and vitally im-

portant means of setting forth the truths of the soul, man's

uniqueness, free will, and self-knowledge? At the Ohio Wes-

leyan semicentennial in 1894 Vice President Lorenzo Dow

McCabe dreaded William James's psychology as he had dis-

liked John Stuart Mill's associationist psychology because

both reduced mind to a series of feelings and undermined

free will. To him traditional psychology was "the science of

the whole soul, intellect, sensibility, and will."102

Physiological psychology had become an issue in Ohio

college circles prior to the publication of James's Principles

in 1890. At the 1889 meeting of the Ohio College Associa-

tion two papers were read on physiological psychology, one

by John M. Ellis of Oberlin, attacking it, and the other by

W. O. Krohn of Adelbert College, defending a middle way

between the one extreme of treating mind as wholly inde-

pent of bodily conditions and the other of seeing mental

phenomena as only shadows cast by physical organs and

conditions.¹⁰³ Ellis feared that the study of the physical basis

of mind would lead to a "psychology without a soul," and the

student, by losing contact with the real nature of mental

 

99 Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan, 204.

100 Love, King of Oberlin, 76-77; Notestein, Wooster, 184.

101 Chessman, Denison, 143.

102 E. T. Nelson, ed., Fifty Years of History of the Ohio Wesleyan University,

Delaware, Ohio, 1844-1894 (Cleveland, 1895), 129-132.

103 John M. Ellis, "The Method and Place of Psychology in the College Course,"

Transactions (Oberlin, Ohio, 1890), 5-9; W. O. Krohn, "Methods of Teaching

Psychology as Modified by Modern Psychophysical Research," ibid., 10-20.

• 20
 

LEARNING AND PIETY             347

phenomena, would end in the blind alley of knowing neither

himself, other selves, his destiny, moral responsibility, nor

his immortality. 104 Krohn, however, no more than Ellis

favored "materialism." By knowing the "flesh" better, the

"noble guest" inhabiting it and using it would all the more

be honored. Krohn showed confidence that the "self" could

survive a study of the physical forces conditioning it.

The inferences which Henry Churchill King drew from the

new psychology freshened his vision of the person as a moral

being capable of self-control, self-development, and self-sur-

render. For the sake of the intellect itself education should not

be "exclusively intellectual."¹⁰⁵ With James he affirmed the

body-mind interaction, the physical basis of habit, the prime

importance of decision and act: "Our philosophical solutions

must always be as James has noted, 'prevailingly prac-

tical.'"106 President Peirce of Kenyon saw no reason why

introspection was of "supreme importance"; he favored

physiological study as inducement to the analysis of mental

phenomena, but lacked the coherent view of the person King

displayed.¹⁰⁷ Person, introspection, and metaphysics all dis-

appeared in Arthur Allin, an Ohio University representative

of the numerous rising chairs of pedagogy-psychology in the

1890's.108 Allin offered little beyond a vague hope that know-

ing "the nervous system" would open a way for environ-

mental improvement through education. Disbelieving in

heredity and in past faculty psychology, Allin saw no limit

to a new psychology; in him awareness that metaphysical

issues existed beyond the range of his particular branch of

 

104 In his lectures in psychology, in the spring of 1876, Ellis had endeavored to

refute necessitarians, who placed the acts of man in the same category as physical

events. He defined free will as implying "power to resist any degree of influence."

Manuscript student notes in Oberlin College Library.

105 Henry Churchill King, "The Primacy of the Person in College Education,"

in Inauguration Henry Churchill King May 13, 1903 (Oberlin, Ohio, 1903), 21-53.

106 Henry Churchill King, "Moral Training in College," Transactions (Dela-

ware, Ohio, 1895), 29-32.

107 William F. Peirce, "Has Psychophysics a Place in the College Curriculum?"

Transactions (Athens, Ohio, 1897), 14-17.

108 Arthur Allin, "Pedagogy in Ohio," ibid., 49-54.

• 21
 

348    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

knowledge found no expression--unlike a biologist who de-

clared that "biology opposes no facts to the postulated exist-

ence of a soul or higher states of intelligent existence."1⁰⁹

The expansion of historical and sociological studies in the

last third of the century had results in some ways analogous to

those of psychological study. As metaphysical psychology

waned under the impact of empirical psychology, so the syste-

matic theologies of Calvin, Finney, Hodge, and others weak-

ened as a result of the rising historical study of the Bible,¹¹⁰

the Church and the religions of the world. To H. C. Haydn,

president of Western Reserve, history offered "a mine of

wealth" for the reconstitution of "our spiritual structure."111

In Henry Churchill King's personalistic reconstruction of

theology, both psychology and history played important and

related roles: "The real is concrete. This seems to me to be

one of the most important inferences of modern psychology,

and to suggest at once respect for personality and the recog-

nition of history."¹¹² Traditional psychology as the study of

consciousness served as a bridge to both empirical psychology

and history. To a Baldwin University clerical president, psy-

chology as knowledge gained through consciousness branched

into historical theology. To him theology was to be rejected

as a delusion "except as we make it the comparative study

of the opinions men have entertained concerning a deity."113

References in Christian evidences courses to the universal

recognition of some deity in the history of the race, "114 could

easily be expanded into specialized study of comparative

religion, already under way from the late 1880's at Ohio

Wesleyan, Oberlin, Hiram, Heidelberg, Western Reserve,

 

 

109 Herrick, "The Ethical Aspects of Laboratory Teaching," 5-15.

110 H. C. Haydn, The Bible and Current Thought (Cleveland, 1891), 24.

111 Ibid., 22.

112 H. C. King, "Moral Training in College," Transactions (Delaware, Ohio,

1895), 29-32.

113 Godman, Inauguration at Baldwin University, 22.

114 Anna M. Metcalf, Student Notes.

• 22
 

LEARNING AND PIETY               349

and elsewhere.¹¹⁵ Also, the missionary motive could awaken

interest in other religions.     The Wooster trustees early saw

the need of such study for "the preparation of young men

for the foreign missionary field."¹¹⁶ Apologetics turned his-

torical. Trumbull G. Duvall in 1895 introduced at Ohio Wes-

leyan a new use of the history of ideas as a type of historical

apologetic for the faith replacing the traditional philosophical

apologetic.¹¹⁷ With the same purpose of combatting mate-

rialism and agnosticism, President Charles W. Super of Ohio

University, a professor of Greek, contrasted the setting sun

of antiquity with the rising sun of Christianity in his learned

historical study Between Heathenism and Christianity (1899).

In his apologetic contrast of the history of philosophy with

Christianity, Daniel A. Long of Antioch College defended

the "unique appearance and work of the great Christ" against

the Tubingen school's reduction of Christianity to being a

product of Greek, Roman, and eastern influences and of

Jesus "to the position of a Jewish rabbi, not much more

noticeable than some of his contemporaries."118 Such histori-

cal apologetic was related to rising awareness that Christi-

anity was not a speculative system, but a series of unique

events in history.

Realization that Christianity is "preeminently an historical

religion"¹¹⁹ may have contributed to cordial reception of the

 

115 Henry Churchill King was lecturing on Buddhism at Oberlin in 1886. Love,

King of Oberlin, 50. The prominent clergyman who promoted the World Congress

of Religions at Chicago in 1893 was John Henry Barrows, president of Oberlin,

1899-1902. It is evident that his knowledge of other religions did not shake Presi-

dent Barrows' faith: "I see no hope for the moral regeneration of Asia, except

through Biblical Christianity." John Henry Barrows, "The World Pilgrimage,"

Transactions (Columbus, Ohio, 1900), 15-30. President George W. Williard of

Heidelberg completed in 1893 the book he regarded as his most important, The

Comparative Study of the Dominant Religions of the World. See Edward I. F.

Williams, Heidelberg: Democratic Christian College, 1850-1950 (Menasha, Wis.,

1952), 166.

116 Knight and Commons, Higher Education in Ohio, 147.

117 Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan, 204.

118 Daniel A. Long, "Philosophy and Christianity," Transactions (Wooster,

Ohio, 1894), 50-58.

119 Wright, Scientific Confirmations of Old Testament History, 3.

• 23
 

350    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

historical approach. H. C. Haydn knew that the Bible was

not a textbook of history any more than of philosophy or

science, but the fact that it was "incidentally" a work of

history may have contributed to his feeling that history

study was a religious obligation and that historical study of

the Bible was "the birth-throe of a new era of life and power

for the Church of God."¹²⁰ W. D. Godman saw an incon-

gruity between neglect of history in collegiate education and

the fact that "Christianity is a historic religion; i.e., a religion

of facts . . . however mysterious and incomprehensible."

Godman offered a list of both ecclesiastical and secular his-

torians with whom ministerial students should become ac-

quainted.121

Traditional ethical studies were another force influencing

the rise of history and the social sciences in college curricula.

The offerings in these fields at Baldwin University in 1886

were described in its catalog as follows:

One term each is spent in the study of Civil Government, History of

Civilization, Political Economy, and International Law. The factors,

principles and institutions that form the basis of civilization are con-

stantly kept before the mind and special attention is given to the present

living issues in National and Domestic Economy.¹²²

That these studies were seen as extensions of ethics appears

from President Stubbs's statement that "the ethical principles

that are fundamental in the treatment of all questions in

government; such as taxes and tariff, money and exchange,

capital and labor, must receive adequate treatment, if any-

where, in the class-room of the nation's Colleges."¹²³ To

Stubbs, history and the classics were useful in pointing to

"the corrupting extravagance of a wealthy class and the

slavish dependence of a poor class."¹²⁴  In his inaugural

120 Haydn, The Bible and Current Thought, 28, 36.

121 Godman, A Post-Graduate Course, 15-16. The list included Plutarch,

Josephus, Gibbon, Grote, Neander, Mosheim, Schaff, Hallam, Mommsen, Bingham's

Antiquities of the Christian Church, Waddington, and Alison's Modern Europe.

122 Catalogue of Baldwin University, 1885-86 (Berea, Ohio, 1886), 22.

123 Stubbs, "The College of Today," 9.

124 Ibid., 12.

• 24
 

LEARNING AND PIETY         351

address as president of Oberlin, Henry Churchill King saw

sociology as a corollary to awareness of the essential alike-

ness of men and the value and sacredness of the person, ideas

familiar in moral philosophy.¹²⁵ His knowledge of industrial

conditions in Pittsburgh combined with a background in

theology and moral philosophy to produce J. H. W. Stucken-

berg's Christian Sociology (1880).126 To a Kenyon professor

the economic system was "if not anti-Christian, at least un-

christian."¹²⁷ H. C. Haydn proclaimed that "the overwhelm-

ing need is a practical rather than a dogmatic Christian-

ity."¹²⁸ Ethical cradling of political opinion underlay insist-

ence by President Zollars of Hiram that "it is a shame to a

college when on any moral issue, on questions in which

honesty and temperance are involved, it gives an uncertain

sound.... It has a duty to stand against that monstrosity in

a republican form of government known as a "political

boss.' "129  A similar background prompted an affirmation

from Ohio Wesleyan in 1890 that "the University believes

in peace. It regards the settlement of national or interna-

tional difficulties by the arbitration of the sword as a scourge

of God. Upon the other hand ... a love of justice and a love

of country may make war again a stern necessity."130

Presidents and professors who pondered the relations of

piety and learning in the late nineteenth-century college in

Ohio sensed coming dangers to both learning and piety. In

1916 G. Frederick Wright felt that his mid-nineteenth cen-

tury preparation "did as much for me as the wider and more

superficial courses of study of the present time would have

done. The specializations which have come in my later life,

have been all the more fruitful for the thorough groundwork

laid in the prescribed course of my college days."¹³¹ In 1906

125 King, "Primacy of the Person," 27.

126 Lentz, Wittenberg, 139-142.

127 J. Streibert, "Christian Socialism," Transactions (Warren, Ohio, 1893),

57-70.

128 Haydn, The Bible and Current Thought, 26.

129 Zollars, "The Mission of the Endowed College," 9.

130 Hubbart, Ohio Wesleyan, 284.

131 Wright, My Life and Work, 74.

• 25
 

352     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Charles F. Thwing doubted that the colleges were developing

either the character or the thinking power of the student as

well as was done by the instruction of 1875: "College studies

are in dire peril of being made simply descriptive, having

picturesqueness and the motive of interest as primary con-

ditions, and not being made interpretative and comparative

of the more fundamental relations of man and of nature."¹³²

What Thwing expressed "diffidently" President Zollars of

Hiram voiced more explicitly:

 

To educate without religion, by my vision, is to deform the soul. To

civilize without an immortal hope, is to drive the race to madness.

To equip men and send them forth, uncommissioned and uncontrolled

by a supreme power, is to curse the sea with pirates. . . . Our system

has its sun, and man a soul, and the universe, God. And the college

plays with trifles that does not take account of these things. . . . The

College has a mission with respect to religion. To my mind there has

something gone radically wrong with a young man who stands at last

in a realm of orderly and magnificent truths, and scoffs at what may

lie behind it. Even an agnostic, if he be wise, will still be reverent.¹³³

Perhaps President Zollars' way of expressing religion seemed

dated to Hiram students134 because his liberal theology gave

them no convincing ground for remaining or becoming

"reverent."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

132 Thwing, Higher Education in America, 431, 456.

133 Zollars, "The Mission of the Endowed College," 10-11.

¹³⁴ Treudley, Hiram, 143.

• 26