Motives to prayer for colleges [microform] : an address delivered in the First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, February 26, 1863

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PRAYER FOR COLLEGES.

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DELIVEEED IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE
CITY OF NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 26, 1863,

BY

WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D. D.

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ALDEESS.

We are assembled in the house of God to offer up our
prayers, in concert with our fellow Christians of all
denominations, that he would pour out the renewing
and sanctifying influences of his Spirit upon the thou-
sands of youth who are pursuing their studies in the
vmous institutions of learning scattered throughout"
the land. If the union of Christians in prayer for the
conversion of the human race is desirable, then their
concert in supplication for a spiritual blessing upon one
of the most interesting portions of that race is equally
so. If the immortal nature and needs of a pagan are
suited to waken in the heart of a disciple of Christ a
profound interest in him, and to prompt an importunate
petition that spiritual gifts be bestowed upon him, then
surely the immortal nature and religious needs of a
cultivated youth, born in the bosom of the Christian
Church, dedicated to God in baptism, and passing
through that process of liberal education which will
make him a man of power and impression among his
fellow-men, are an object of exceeding interest to the
people of God, and one that should elicit their warmest
and most believing supplications on his behalf

Let us, then, that we may obtain a still more definite
conception of the object that has assembled us, and of
the specific blessing that we would ask from our prayer-
hearing God, consider some of the motives to prat/ /or

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all young persons engaged in academical and collegiate
studies. Yet in our remarks we do not confine our-
selves to the highest institutions of learning. We have
in view, as we suppose that the Church has in view,
upon this day of general prayer, that entire system
and concatenation of schools, by which the youth of
the country are carried from the lowest to the highest
grades of education; by which the child is conducted
from the simplest rudiments of knowledge to the strain
and life-long task of the learned professions. We are
praying for a baptism upon aU the educational agencies,
and all the grades of culture in the land. It is no nar-
row field that lies before the Church upon such a day
as this. If it is education that forms the common
mind; if the young men and the old men of a nation
are what they are, by virtue of tbe ideas and the disci-
pline which they receive from the schools in which they
are trained, during the period of training; then we are
here in this temple to ask the great God to sweeten the
very fountains of social, civil, and religious life; to make
the very tree good, and so its fruit good.

While, however, our remarks will possess this com-
prehensive character, and will have a general reference
to the entire system of education, and to all classes of
students, the limits of the hour, together with other
considerations that will readily occur, will lead us to
speak with a prevailing reference to colleges and colle-
giate education.

1. The first motive that meets us, to pray for young
men in a course of liberal education, lies in the fact
that this class of persons is destined to exert more influ-
ence in society than any other one.

Educated men rule the world. Knowledge is power.
The difference between the civilized and the savage
man irking to the superiority in information which

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the former possesses oyer the latter. The one holds a
secret of influence which the other lacks ; and hence, in
the contest between the enlightened and the barbarous
nations of the earth, one man chases a thousand, and
two men put ten thousand to flight. And the same
&ct appears when we narrow the circle, and look for
the most powerful and influential class in a particular
people. The "governing classes," as they are called,
are the educated classes. Look at England, our father-
land, and see what a prodigious power is wielded by
those who have been trained in her schools and univer-
sities. The reverence for birth, and blood, and wealth,
is undoubtedly great in that aristocratic empire, with
its descending orders of nobility, and its noble and royal
lineages running back in straight lines for a millennium ;
but he is greatly mistaken who supposes that the influ-
ence of the two houses of Parliament, of those peers
and commoners who from year to year administer the
complex affairs of the British realm with a sagacity and
ability that is wonderful, is due merely or mainly to the
accident of birth or wealth. The legislature that sits
in St. Stephens is the most severely educated, the most
thoroughly disciplined political body upon the globe.
The English earl, knowing that, by the constitution of
England, his first-bom must one day take his own place
in the national councils and debates, subjects him to
the strictest educational methods, and causes him to
pass through all the curriculums, so that, like the Eng-
lish racer, he may be thoroughbred. And hereby power
fe acquired and kept by that governing class; power to
think, power to write, power to speak, power to wield
the fierce democracy by the sway of a superior intelli-
gence, by the glance and sweep of an eye that sees ftn-
ther than that in the head of an illiterate man.
. But this may 1^ illustrated yet again, by remarkijo^

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the influence which a single liberally educated person
exerts in any single community. He may be a teacher,
a physician, a lawyer, or a clergyman. In this case, he
is unquestionably a source and medium of greater im-
pression upon the vicinity about him than any man of
merely common education and ordinary information.
The less favored members of society go to him for
knowledge; they send their children to him for educa-
tion ; they follow his prescriptions in the hour of sick-
ness and death; they entrust their property to his
management before the courts of law; and they go into
the house of God upon the Sabbath, to learn from him
their duty and the way of salvation. When liberal
education makes itself felt in this way, through the
medium of a profession, the influence which it exerts
is unquestionably second to none save that of divine
truth and the Holy Ghost. And even when the edu-
cated man does not devote his powers and his culture
in any direct and specific manner to the service of his
fellow-men, he nevertheless inevitably exerts an indi-
rect influence. How many a clergyman can testify to
the great impression which a man of collegiate training,
literary tastes, but skeptical principles, makes upon the
society, and especially the youthful portion of society,
in which he moves. So true is it that knowledge inevi-
tably imparts a species of superiority to its possessor.

Now, it is for the sanctification of this knowledge,
the consecration of these educated men to God, kiat we
are here convened to pray. The conversion of any
soul, be it in the heart of ignorant and degraded
Africa, is a great and glorious event, and all the angels
of God sing for joy over it, as they did when the mate-
rial creation first burst like an explosion upon their
vision. Certainly, then, the regeneration of an edu-
cated mind that is destined to be a power in society,

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and a radiating centre of influence for scores of years,
must be an occurrence that is witnessed with infinite
rejoicings in both the third and the seventh heavens.
And with what a thrill of pleasure does the militant
Church upon earth, struggling with her two great foes,
the ignorant superstition and the cultivated infidelity
of the world, hear the tidings, that the grace of God,
which bringeth salvation, has entered a college, and
subsidized its youthful talent, and its thorough disci-
pline, to the purpose and work of human redemption.
Lord Bacon, the most sagacious of Englishmen, has
said that the destiny of a nation is decided by the com-
plexion of the principles which its educated young men
take with them into contemplative and active life.
Every page of English history proves the truth of the
remark. When the young men of England were
imbued by their teachers and the educational methods
that prevailed, with a firm confidence in the truths of
natural and revealed religion, a glorious era in the
annals of Great Britain was the consequence. In that
grand period, when such high-minded and reverential
men as Sidney and Raleigh were representatives of
"Young England," the foundations of the English
Church and the English State were strengthened and
consolidated, as they never have been before or since.
But when," from the speculations of Hobbes and Boling-
broke, and the semi-infidel educational methods that
had crept into the English universities, the young
nobles of the land had imbibed a bitter hatred of
Christianity, and an utter indifference towards the first
truths of ethics and natural religion; when "Young
England" was represented by a Wharton and a Chester-
field, a shock was given to the foundation and fabric of
English greatness which it required a century of civil
commotion and foreign war, together with a revival of

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yflie old evangelism of the "Wickliffes and the Latimers,
to recover from. The reign of licentiousness and bar-
barism began in ancient Greece, when the education of
its young men fell out of the hands of Socrates and
Plato into those of the Sophists, who substituted the
denial and disputation of first principles for the clear
and profound enunciation and defence of them. And
not many years elapsed before Grecian society betrayed
that inward consumption, and that hectic fever, which
are the inevitable consequence of false principles, and
the whole fabric of Grecian empire and civilization
crumbled away before Philip and his barbarians, like
some noble shaft that has been struck with the sap-rot.
The same causes will produce the same efiect in the
United States of America. A democratic form of gov-
ernment cannot prevent the operation of the law of
gravitation ; and neither can it prevent the operation of
those moral laws by which God governs all nations, and
peoples, and kindreds, and tongues. If the Church of
God, by its watchfulness and its prayerfulness, retains
the education of the land in its own hands; if the
schools, academies,, and colleges of the country shall
continue to be penetrated by New Testament Christigm-
ity; if natural and revealed religion shall, as heretofore,
be^ the stability of these educational institutions; and
i^ as the crown and completion of all, the Church shall,
by its fervent prayer, this day, and every day, bring
down upon all these educational agencies the blessed
baptism of spiritual influences, — ^then all is well and aU

is safe.

2. A second motive to pray for the conversion of all
young persons that are pursuing a course of liberal edu-
cation, lies ui the fact that they are favorably situated
for religious instruction and impression,
' The academies and colleges of the land, witk but few

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exceptions, are under a Christian regime. Their boards
of managers are composed of persons of consideration
and standing in the locality, and who, as a general fact,
are characterized by a theoretical, if not a practical,
belief in the Christian religion. We call to mind but
one or two instances, in which a literary institution has
had its foundations laid in unbelief; and these attempts
have been saved from utter failure only by receding
from the original plan. The university which Jefferson
was the chief instrument in establishing, is now a thor-
oughly Christian institution ; and the college for orphans
founded by the late Mr. Girard, has discovered that it
cannot live, severed from the Father of the fatherless,
the God of the widow and the orphan. Through all
our wide borders, we see the academy, the college, and
the university built, at least, upon a theoretical Chris-
tianity, and in a multitude of instances upon a warm
Christian evangelism.

These remarks hold true, in an eminent degree, of
academical and collegiate education within the bounds
of the Presbyterian Church. A system of education
that is more immediately related to the character and
wants of a particular denomination, can, of course, be
brought more completely under doctrinal and religious
influences, than one which, like the common-school
system, is intended for all varieties of denominations.
And we cannot but think it to be one of the felicities
of the Church which is more particularly convened
here to pray for the effusion of the IX vine Spirit, that
it has so many academies and colleges under its pre^)^
terial watch and care. For these institutions are thereby
brought into very warm and living contact with the
individual Christian and the local church. Not being
under the control of close corporations, who may ap-
point their own successors, and whose management of

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the institution is entirely beyond the supervision of the
churches that are to feel their influence, whether it be
good or bad; but being subject in every respect to the
religious bodies that appoint their boards of manage-
ment, and thereby their corps of instruction, they
stand in the most immediate and salutary connection
with the Christian brotherhood itself, and the warm
evangelical life of the people of God is transmitted
through all their veins and arteries. Such institutions
are eminently Christian, and respond most sensitively
to all that is going on in the churches that support
them and control them.

Now in all these facts we find a motive to prayer for
these institutions. If they are built upon the general"
foundation of Christianity, and are managed by those
who cherish at least a theoretical belief in the religion
of the Bible, and impart an education that is in har-
mony with the principles of natural and revealed reli-
gion, every man who knows how to pray, may see in
such an educational apparatus as this, a noble object to
pray for. And i^ in addition to this, the academy or
the college is built upon the more special foundation of
a particular type of Christianity, — a type that is dear to
the heart of a particular Church, — then surely that
Church, while it prays for a divine , benison upon any
and every institution that teaches any degree of bibli-
cal truth, — according to our Lord's principle, that he
4hat is not against us is for us, — while the prayer of the
Calvinist will go up warm and heartfelt for all who
hold the head; for aU the evangelism there is upon the
planet, — certainly it will lose none of its warmth, and
none of its heartiness, for those institutions that are
founded i^on his own ancestral faith and c^-eed. j

But not only are the youth who are gathered in the.
literary institutions of the land, favorably situated in

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respect to religious instruction and impressions, by
reason of the Christianity in which the foundations of
these institutions have been laid; they are also most
favorably situated by reason of the daily routine of dis-
cipline and study to which they are summoned.

There is moral power in any steady routine. The
farmer, the mechanic, any man who, when the sun
ariseth, "goeth forth to his work and his labor until the
evening," receives an influence from his occupation that
is wholesome and bracing. Nothing is more debilitat-
ing, nothing more demoralizing, than doing nothing.
There is no feebler creature, and oftentimes no more
wicked creature, than a man about town. It matters
not so much what the species of labor shall be, as that
it be performed with punctuality and uniformity — that
it be a routine.

Now the youth that are assembled in the academies
and colleges of the country are subjected to a species of
influence, from the regular and systematic curriculum
of these institutions, that is favorable to morality and
religion. They are secluded from the busy world, and
escape many of its temptations; and the power of those
temptations which are peculiar to collegiate life is con-r
siderably broken by the steady occupation to which the
young student is put. He rises in the morning, and
the first act to which he is summoned is the worship of
Almighty God. The preparation of lessons, the recita-
tion before teachers, the scrutiny of examiners, fill up
the waking hours. One duty crowds on after another,
and, without being aware of it, the young man is really
made to pass through a routine and a drill almost as
exacting as that of the military schooL - t

Besides all this, his mind is coming in contact with
great truths and high principles. He is engaged in
accumulating ideas. The whole tendency of his daily

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occupation is elevating; for it brings him into commu-
nication with the noblest minds of th|fe race, and the
loftiest results of their thinking. The cora* of hi»
instructors is commonly a body of men of broad views,
serious temper, perhaps earnest Christian character.
Now, it is true that there is nothing regenerating in these
influences. If there were^ We should not be assembled
here to pray for the effusion of the Holy Spirit upojn the
colleges of the land. We well know, that no aiSunt
of mere instrumentalities can convert a proud intellect
into a meek and lowly mind; can subdue a high spirit,
and fill it with the gentleness of Christ. We well know
that the acquisition of human knowledge, if unbalanced
by a higher acquisition, tends to pride. Knowledge
puffeth up. At the same time, it must be granted,
that these thousands of youth of both sexes, for whose
spiritual welfare we are offering up our prayers, are in
a more hopeful condition, are in a more recipient
moral state, than they would be, were they all of them
bending their eyes to the earth in search of filthy lucre,
like Bunyan's man with the muck-rake, or were they
all of them whirling round and round in the giddy
vortices of fashion and pleasure. God, even their God,
hath caused the lines to fall for them in pleasant places,
and they have a goodly heritage. How much more
hopeful is the future prospect of the Church, from the
fact that so many of her children are secluded, during
their forming, plastic period, from the sordid and
deadening influences of our hard colliding life, and are
made more sensitive and recipient in the "still air of
delightful studies."

3. And this brings us to the third and last motive
that we shall mention, to pray for all young persons
that are pursuing studies in the educational institutions
Qf the land: namely, that this class contains in it a

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greater proportion of baptized persons tiian any other
similar class.

The rolls of our academies and colleges show that
religion and learning go hand in hand. It is the pious
parent who is most anxious that his child should obtain
wisdom rather than rubies. It is the serious or the
pious child that sets the highest estimate upon know-
ledge and instruction. How often does the conversion
of a parent change the whole current, the whole future
of the children's lives. Before, he was anxious mainly
that they should grow up men of wealth, and women of
fashion. Now he is anxious mainly that their minds
should be developed by all good methods of education,
in the hope and the faith that the heart will in this
way be most likely to become changed by the renewing
grace of God. How often does the conversion of a
child deaden his interest in merely material pursuits
and material wealth, and make a scholar of him. There
is no more striking proof of the affinity between religion
and learning, than in such facts as these, which strew
the annals of our churches and our educational institu-
tions. Would you see an utter indifference to liberal
education; go into an earthly, money-loving, money-'^
hoarding community; go into a family where greed is
the ruling passion. Would you see a respect for cul-
ture, and a quick sensibility towards it ; go into a
Christian population ; go into a religious household.

Hence it is, that that class of youth who are engaged
in the pursuit of knowledge, contains a much larger
proportion of baptized children, children of Christian,
parentage, than any other class of young persons. The
irreligious parent places his son where he will accumu-
late wealth; the religious parent sends his child where
he will accumulate ideas. The irreligious youth pre-
fers the bustle and excitement of material existence;

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the pious youth hungers after wisdom, human and
divine. From the ranks of the Church, then, issue the
great majority of those who are obtaining a liberal edu-
cation. Infidelity, with all its professed respect for
reason and truth, neither s^eks education, nor imparts
it. It founds no universities, it produces no literature.
The utmost that it attempts, is to wrest to its own pur-
poses the institutions and the literature that have come
into being from a Christian source, and whose vitality
flows altogether from Christian ideas.

In the encouraging fact, then, that so many of these
youth have been sprinkled with the baptismal water,
and have been consecrated to the adorable Trinity, in
the covenant which He himself has made with his peo-
ple, we find a strong and overcoming motive to fer-
vent and efiectual prayer for them. We surely need
not enlarge upon this motive in such a presence as this.
We are speaking to Christian parents, who believe that
the promise of mercy is to believers and their offspring.
We are addressing churches, to whom the covenanted
ikercy in the sacrament of baptism is precious as the
ap^ of the eye; to whom it is a strong tower into
which they bring their children, that they may be safe
from the darts of the evil one, and the snares of the
destroyer. All that you have ever heard from the
Christian ministry; all that you have ever re^d in the
Scriptures and the recorded wisdom of the Christian
Church; all that you have ever observed in the deal-
ings of God with his elect people and their children;
all that you have ever known in your own personal
experience of God's faithfulness to his covenant; all
that bpars in any manner upon the doctrine of cove-
nanted mercy to believers and their offispring, applies
with its fullest force to that class for whom we are met
to pray. They are the children of Christian parents;

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they are the children of prayers and tears ; they are the
children who have been taught the Scriptures from
infency; they are the children who have been guarded
and watched over in reference to the habits they should
form, and the company they should keep; they are the
children who have been taught to prefer instruction to
riches, intellectual to material advantages. They are
the elite youth of the country, and we are here to pray
that they may become the elect children of God.

Is it not plain that this annual union and concert of
prayer for the outpouring of the Divine Spirit upon the
educational institutions of the land, is second to none
in importance? Recapitulate these motives to pray for
the many thousands of youth in academies and colleges.
This class is destined to exert a thousandfold more
influence in Church and State than any other one of
the same number. The learned professions are to be
supplied from it, and the majority of our legislators
will come from its ranks. This class is very favorably
situated, by reason of its seclusion from the distrac-
tions and temptations of the world, the steady, exacting
nature of its daily routine, and the theoretical, as well
as practical Christianity under which it is trained, for
the reception of distinctively evangelical truths and
gracious influences. And lastly, this class of persons
is most immediately related to the Church of Christ
itself, by virtue of birth, blood, and covenanted mercy.
Look at these motives one by one; then place them in
combination, and ask what more interesting, what more
promising object of prayer, can be presented to the
minds of God's people, than this one?

An annual concert of prayer supposes an unceasing
daily prayer. The monthly supplication for foreign
missions implies that the Church goes every day into
the closet, and prays for the great consummation.

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These special seasons are iaerejiy the times when the
steady and constant devotion oi the people of God con^
centrates itself with an unusual intensity, that it may
gather itself up for another and a stronger movement;
they are like the knots in the grape-vine, which show
that the living principle is so forceful, and. so overflow-
ing, that it accumulates upon itself, and bulges out in
the growing wood. So should it be with the Church,
in reference to all these monthly or annual unions for
prayer and Christian cooperation. The daily zeal and
the daily supplication should be so unceasing and cumu-
lative, that these occasional opportunities should be the
vents through which^twe discharge our surcharged and
brimming souls; not the mere formal, and mechanical,
and rarely-occurring seasons, in which we lash ourselves
up to an unwelcome duty.^ %,►

, That, therefore, for which we pray now and here,
should be, will be, if we are alive in Zion, the continual
burden and the constant supplication of our souls. Let
us bear through all the days and months of the coming
year these educational institutions, and these thousands
of young persons in them, upon our hearts, before the
throne of God. Then this day will be the beginning
of days to Zion, and, she shall arise and shine, her light
being come. Then all her children shall be taught of
the Lord; and great shall be the peace of her children,
(Isaiah liv, 13.) i t l

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