UNIVERSITY COURIER.
17
them that fair dealing will create something quite worthy of the name of heaven on earth.
If the terrors of a future hell have ceased to be vivid and real enough to frighten them away from sin and injustice in the body, let us show them that wrong will bring about in time on our native soil a hell compared with which the horrors of the pit with its neverdying flames are but summer dreams of pleasure.
There used to be an impression quite widespread that there is a God in the United States as well as in Israel, and that He runs things; but, though admitting that He may still be here,the belief is gaining ground that He has ceased to run things, at least in the economic world and that Gould, Vanderbuilt and a few others have obtained a controlling interest.
But if, blinded to their own interests, and deaf to the appeals of the oppressed for justice, the well-to-do classes in our country cling to the unfair advantages of their position, then a day will come when the offspring of these poor, grown poorer, in the hopeless misery into which they have been forced, will take revenge with interest upon the descendants of these well-to-do people, grown wealthier at their expense, for the degradation and suffering and woe of generations.
If you talk too much in this strain, if you show too earnest a sympathy with the wrongs of the laborer they will try to hiss you off the stage with the cry of "demagogue"but I tell you God loves good,honest demagogues,-the country needs them.
"They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak ; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffling and abuse. Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two and three."
Oppression of king and nobility is not the only oppression in the world-nor the worst. The French Revolution cannot be too much studied, and to those who would postpone justice sine die, let us read the lesson of that struggle :
"If the gods of this lower world will sit on their glittering thrones, indolent as Epicurus's gods, with the living chaos of ignorance and hunger weltering uncared-for at their feet, and smooth parasites preaching peace, peace, when there is no peace, then the dark chaos, it would seem, will rise, has risen, and, O Heavens, has it not tanned their skins into breeches for itself? That there be no second Sansculottism in our earth for a thousand years let us understand well what the first was; and let Rich and Poor of us go and do otherwise.
KANSAS AND HER UNIVERSITY.
ADDRESS TO LITERARY SOCIETIES BY PROF. J.W.GLEED.
[A Synopsis of the Address is as follows: Conditions of Intellectual Life in Kansas—Republics educate on ground of Self-Preservation—Self-Government, Freedom and equality, the Foundations of Democracy Relation of Education to These-Relation of University to Education-Culture, Intellectual and Moral-State Ideal-Duty of the State.]
We say it is the province of the church to teach religion; and that is true. But in morals, the State must
do a vigorous work. Culture cannot ignore morals, and the history of morals is bound up in the history of religion. Knowledge and religion are the two eyes of the soul; each, without the other, is likely to become unserviceable. Qualities of heart, are more important than qualities of head. Remember; "Culture is the harmony of a well tuned head and heart." Therefore, though the purpose of this institution is not to teach religion, but to teach knowledge of the world, it must ever respect religion, and push forward everything in it directly touching morals.
The folder of the Santa Fe railroad informs me that Kansas has 80,000 square miles of land, and that the best of that land lies in the Arkansas valley. The folder of the Union Pacific railroad informs me that Kansas has 80,000 square miles of land; and that the best of that land lies in the valleys of the Kansas, the Smoky and the Republican. I am, therefore, safe in concluding that Kansas has 80,000 square miles of land; their very differences of opinion as to where the best land lies gives added weight to the statement in which they agree. And this would be all the more true, if they were not in pool. Now the Catholic and Protestant churches are not in pool; and therefore, as they practically agree about the value of certain lines of conduct and certain qualities of character, there is magnificent presumtive evidence that they are right when they agree. Ingersol and Talmage are not in pool; and as they agree that love is the best thing in the world, it is more likely that they are right than wrong. Greek philosophy and Christianity are not in pool; and as they both teach that it is better to be injured than to do an injury, therefore it is safe to accept that teaching for the present. Every new system of philosophy or religion that adds its testimony to any of the great principles of right conduct, gives additional weight to those principles.
Duty, sympathy, courage, modesty, truthfulness honesty, justice and gentleness, ideas bearing directly on conduct, which is the larger part of life—these ideas have the stamp and seal of the best men, the best systems, the best nations. And so, as culture is the harmony of a well tuned heart and mind; and as the heart has more to do with conduct than the head, it is the business of this institution to make these universal ideas of conduct its crowning aim and glory. For very wise and true is that remark of a noted Englishman, "Men are regenerated, not so much by truth in the abstract as by the divine inspiration that comes to human goodness and sympathy."
Whether you believe it now or not, there will come times in your lives when you will want some hope and stay which knowledge cannot give. Unhapily, we have to deal with the known and the unknown—and the unknown is just as real as the known. Let us have no faith which will hinder finding out. But many things which intimately concern us we have not yet found out. It may be a long time before we do, and meanwhile--faith.
Now the world has found a very helpful faith-mind I don't say knowledge,but faith-in that ode of Horace called Sumner's ode. That was the stay of Sumner's