has disappeared. One effect of this increase of luxury has been to increase the cost of education. A more disastrous effect has been to awaken in the minds of many a reluctance to the endurance of hardship in securing an education. It may be assumed that self-indulgence in various directions is on the increase in the colleges. How to check this disposition to extravagance; how to change sentiment so that not a stigma but a mark of honor may be on those who lead a life of strict self-denial, and devote themselves strenuously to the highest aims; how to prevent the secondary activities of a college course from becoming to many young men and women primary, and thus confusing the moral sense,-these are questions which the managers of the college to-day need to consider carefully. The difficulties in the administration of the modern college are multiplied by the rapid growth in the country of the class that spends money freely, sometimes even before possessing it. The habits fixed in luxurious homes, entering the college, diffuse an insidious aversion to the self-denial that belongs with the best manhood. For the athletes much self-control, temporarily at least, is imperative. When the athlete passes out from the training period, and does not give way to self-indulgence as a reaction from previous abstinence, he presents one of the finest types of the college man. The evil effects of athletics are chiefly for those who get none of the discipline and much of the excitement, whose thought is chiefly on the results of games; who travel long distances to see a contest, and stake money, not probably their own, on the issue. To many it will seem that these tendencies to easy-going indulgence, natural enough, are so great and so truly a part of the time as to be irremediable. It is certain that they cannot be wholly corrected in the college; that too many of them are the result of easy living in our American homes to be successfully opposed. Possibly something may be accomplished by a closer co-operation between the colleges, and certainly the action of faculties, and especially of individual professors, can sometimes discourage and repress such movements as are likely to lead to excess. It is to be feared, however, that Spartan heroism is not always now the chief moral attribute of college faculties, but surely this marked tendency to costly and luxurious habits demands the serious

attention of all boards of management. Such a tendency is certain to be accompanied by lapses on the part of some into serious delinquencies, not to say disasters.

Perhaps the most serious problem relating to the authoritative requirements for the bachelor degree is the determination of the proper line of division between the college and the graduate school, or more exactly between the liberal and the professional training. Shall the old college course be reduced to three years? Practically in some universities it has been reduced to that limit, as the Senior year is often largely made up of professional studies taken with graduate students. It cannot, of course, be claimed that the resulting training of an eleven years' course, supposing that to represent the amount of time necessary for a boy of twelve to secure a degree in medicine on the new plan, will be worth as much as a twelve years' course, including four years of college life; but beyond the degree is the necessary hospital practice, amounting perhaps to two years more. Fourteen years seem a long time to be spent in preparation for the life work. Furthermore it must be admitted that not often is a boy ready for college at the age of sixteen. If he does not enter until he is past his eighteenth birthday, he will be thirty when ready to begin the practice of 'medicine. But for a great many of our young men the studies of the later years, the deeper questions that belong with the preparation for manhood and citizenship, require all the maturity that can be secured. Freshmen should certainly be not less mature than they now are. The boys who enter college very young may have often as good technical preparation, but the slowly maturing boy may surpass them in the higher regions of thought. To enter younger than seventeen is no promise of greater ultimate efficiency. Seniors do not now show such a mastery of the subjects presented as to lead one to think that four years of liberal training is excessive. It may be true that from a strictly professional point of view, young men may secure the advantages of medical training after a three years' course in college, and become, perhaps, though possibly not as useful citizens, yet as successful physicians as at present. This may not be so easily affirmed of those studying law or theology, but the question for all may be one of the comparative value of

life, the subjective, real life under the different proportions of study, rather than of the professional income or eminence. For those who do not intend to study a profession, a number estimated at present as nearly fifty per cent of those graduated with the bachelors' degree, the question is altogether different. It may perhaps be expected that a four years' course will, under some form, that is, with some new degree, be maintained for them even if the three years' course would secure the bachelors' degree.

The problem is certainly a grave one. Those most deeply interested in education will not agree in the solution, and we may see some institutions offering a three years' course, and some insisting on the longer period within the next decade. It is, however, to be feared that if in the oldest universities the three years' course is established, the practical American mind. will let the longer period of liberal training everywhere disappear. The change, if it come, may prove a serious loss to some of the smaller colleges which have had a most honorable history, and have conspicuously shown in their graduates the . value of four years of liberal training.

PRESIDENT JOHN HENRY BARROWS, LL.D.,

OBERLIN COLLEGE, OBERLIN, OHIO.

There is a growing conviction that a true and full education, designed to fit men for complete living, must deal with a totality of human nature. It gives over body, mind and soul to the educational process. The work of the college differs from that of the university. The university makes specialists. The purpose of the college is to make men, to develop human nature on all sides, including the moral and the spiritual. It has respect for the on-looking spirit that is to live for God and with God in realms celestial and unwasting.

The twentieth century, which is sure to witness a vast increase in the facilities for university training in America, will also witness, I believe, a growing tendency and purpose to make education vital,-to connect it with life. There will be an increasing apprehension of the fact that inspiration is more than information; that character, springing out of right choices, is the greatest

thing in the world. It will look upon the human soul, not as a phonograph to repeat mechanically what is poured into it, but as a dynamo for the generation of power, for the illumination, movement and gracious-handed comfort of mankind. I believe that already a new vitality marks the work of American colleges. We are getting closer to the realities. The study of language is more and more an appreciation of literature. The study of history is less and less a study of dates and facts, and is increasingly the study of great epochs and of great men. The best part of history is biography. The new education is not ashamed of admiration, of enthusiasm, of hopefulness. The newer pedagogy realizes that it is dullness and lack of interest that wear out the nerves of the student, and that young people will do twice as much work under a teacher who inspires them as under one who does not. The new education puts a high estimate upon personality. Personality is more than academic pomp and the frozen music of architecture which Tennyson, in 1830, found so useless to him at Cambridge. I think the general opinion among graduates is that men who most largely build themselves into their students' lives are remembered for what they are even more than for what they teach. Ethical and spiritual influences are more and more regarded in our colleges.

Now, the Christian college has for its avowed purpose the moulding of the heart and character, the shaping of the will and the life. "Education," as Herbert Spencer has said, "is to prepare us for complete living." Man, being the kind of person he is, needs right ideals, and something besides: he needs the spirit and the heavenly forces which help him to fasten his affections on right ideals. If religion is something worth while in education, we ought to be willing to declare it, to announce it in every wise way. The aim of the Christian college is not reached by turning out students who are merely believers in Christianity, who consent calmly and indifferently to its great creed. It aims to fill its students with the spirit of St. Paul; to make them alive in the service of Christ; to fill them with the enthusiasm of humanity. It purposes to send them forth equipped with a knowledge of that Book which, more than any other book, has kindled the imagination and shaped the moral sentiment of mankind.

Larger favor and more general acceptance have been accorded to the distinctive principles of the Christian college in recent years. The president of a state university has affirmed from his own experience the conviction that a state university cannot exist unless it is founded upon a religious basis. There is a growing feeling that religion must be an integral part of education. One of the overseers of Harvard recently declared that there never had been a stronger desire than now in that great university, that Christian forces should be brought to bear vigorously upon the lives of the students. When American Christians are educated and enlightened enough to discriminate between the trivial and the important, and to agree on what is essential Christianity, the Christian Church will very likely insist that the education of our children in the public schools shall be essentially Christian education, and that selections from the best Book in the world shall be a part of the literature read and studied by all who are trained in them. Christianity is the dominating force of our civilization, and always and everywhere in its beautiful spirit, not in sectarian forms, should be the dominating force in education.

There are special reasons to-day which show that the part taken by the Christian college in our national life is growingly important and strategic. America, already the richest of nations, is to become far richer. The tendency of opulence is to enervate. Christian character needs to be hardened and fortified against luxury. A manhood that "can stand money is what the Christian college aims to produce. Education, refinement, culture, wealth, luxury, mastery over material things, may become powerful forces of restlessness and vicious discontent unless they are penetrated and controlled by the religion of Jesus Christ, which gives peace, love, courage, faith, hope and joy. Our civilization rushes to a vast and fatal plunge unless God is enthroned in the educated minds of our people. Education without religion is architecture with foundation and roof. Christian character in the leaders of our cities, states and other communities, and in hundreds of thousands of homes, is that gracious something which the Christian college of the twentieth century will more and more help to produce and perfect.