THE RELATION OF COLLEGES TO CIVILIZATION. 163 
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'n civilization—for sometimes, alas! they assume forms which indicate 
ts decay—thus far, and, please God, no farther, we are trustfully deter- 
mined, as our World's Fair sufficiently indicates, that we shall yet attain 
to such artistic excellence too. But meanwhile we are content to know 
that these are only the external vesture and adornments of civilization ; 
that its essence lies deeper and higher far than that; and that essence we 
selieve that we hold in our ideal of the citizen and the man. 
But we have lately heard a note of warning which no American who 
loves his country can afford to ignore. The warning I allude to came to 
ns from Mr. Gladstone. Viewing the magnificent proportions which our 
sountry is sure to assume within the next century, and forecasting the 
;remendous influence which she must necessarily exert on the civilized 
world, he reminds us that this influence may be either a curse or a bless- 
mg to mankind, according to the spirit in which it is exerted. He asks 
which is it to be ? And he answers : ¢ This depends not on what sort of 
a producer, but on what sort of a man, the American of the future is to 
be.” His answer is not only a forcible assertion of all that has just been 
said about the true notion of civilization, but is also a solemn warning lest 
we overlook it ; perhaps, even, a friendly intimation of his dread lest, in our 
sager, almost feverish, endeavor to master and develop our country’s won- 
drous resources, we may have been intent on forming ¢¢ producers” rather 
than on forming “men.” This, we can easily recognize, would be the 
destruction of the civilization which is our country’s birthright and des- 
;iny. As man means more than citizen, @ fortiori man means more than 
producer. To forget this, to fall to so low an aim and ideal, would be 
not only to fall back to the insufficient Graeco-Roman ideal, but to fall far 
selow it. Our civilization depends on our bearing this in mind. and shap- 
‘ng our ideal and system of education accordingly. 
What, then, does all this mean practically ? We have seen that the dif- 
ference in the systems of civilization arises from their different estimate of 
man—from a difference of philosophy concerning man. Human action is 
governed by ideas : a wrong philosophy must be the bane of a people ; a 
irue philosophy, in as far as action is shaped by it, is the security of 
aobleness and prosperity. Hence the all-important thing is to make sure 
shat we hold the right philosophy concerning man, and that the rising 
generations be molded in it both as to their intellectual convictions and 
as to all their practical aims in life. But history and reason both show 
manifestly that the only such philosophy concerning man is that which 
ls embodied in the Christian religion. Therefore, practically, the right 
molding of our people, the right shaping of our civilization, the right 
directing of our nation’s energies, and the right attaining of her destiny 
depend on this, that our people’s ideas should be shaped and their lives 
molded in the philosophy embodied in the Christian religion. If logic 
eads to any conclusion. it leads to this.