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February 24, 1909. 1
Canadian Council of the Laymen's Missionary
Movement has graciously invited
the Movement in the United States to
send over at least two hundred representative
laymen and ministers to attend
this congress as honorary members.
This invitation has been heartily accepted
and the Movement is looking for
suitable men who can enjoy this rare
privilege.
The Canadian National Campaign was
lindprfnkpn in Uiq hnnn - ~i ???
?- .?u vuv iiwj?c mui a siimictr
series of meetings, on a national scale,
might be conducted In the United States
next winter. This proposal has been
under consideration for several months.
It received the cordial endorsement of
the Annual Conference of Foreign Mission
Boards held in New York, January
13-14. It is expected that the campaign
will be launched at Washington, early in
the fall, with the encouragement of the
president of the United States and other
public men. A series of meetings lasting
from three days to a week, will be held
in each of the leading cities of the na
tion. Deputations of speakers may also
be sent out ;to a large number of the
smaller cities for one or more meetings.
Missionaries and Board Secretaries will
co-operate actively in the campaign.
In spite of the severe financial depression
last year, when it might have
been expected that the offerings to foreign
missions would seriously shrink,
they actually increased by $602,000 from
the United States and Canada, over the
gifts of the previous year. The income
on the foreign mission field was even
more remarkable. It increased" last year
K,, *1 *J<IA AAA mi A? a-* -? * *
vj ?i,ouu,wu. i ue tuiai gms on me various
foreign fields were $4,844,000. This
is 48 per cent of the total amount contributed
to this object by the Protestant
churches of North America.
Another striking fact is the* increase
of native converts last year by 164,674
or over 450 per day. It took about one
hundred years to gain the first million
converts, or until 1896. The second million
were added in twelve years (18961908).
They are now being added at
me raie or a million In six years. While
our church membership in the United
States increased 1 1-2 per cent last year,
the increase in the membership of American
missions abroad was 12 per cent.
While an average of two members for
each ordained Protestant minister were
added to the total Church membership
in the United States, there was an average
of 41 for each ordained American
Missionary abroad.
At least five hundred men are expected
at Reading, Pa., on March 16-18, at the
Convention of the Laymen's Missionary
Movement of the Reformed Church in the
United States.
The appeal of the world is the greatest
appeal in the world. It is sienifionnt
and prophetic that the laymen of the
churches are responding to the challenge
to evangelize the world in larger numbers
and with greater enthusiasm than
they have ever before exhibited In any
religious problem. The Church will yet
save herself in her effort to save man"kind.
1 Madison Avenue, New York.
'HE PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SOL
Educational
WHY DO CHURCHES KEEP "CHRISTIAN
COLLEGES"?
President Pritchett, head of the Carnegie
Fund, in a pamphlet entitled "The
Relations of Christian Denominations to
Colleges*' professes to tell why Mr. Carnegie
will not allow his fund to pay retiring
pensions to teachers In church
schools. But we entertain a keen doubt
whether it's Mr. Carnegie at all who is
being interpreted. Mr. Carnegie has no
in J 1 -? ?'
inui v Kiucti prejudice against church
schools. He gives personal gifts to them
right along.
What Dr. Pritchett is really interpreting
is a haughty and disdainful educational
aristocracy that considers two
things in the intellectual world axiomatically
manifest?that there isn't any education
worth speaking of in this country
except in the big and rich universities,
and that there couldn't possibly be any
respectable intellect in "the orthodox evangelical
churcaes.
And there's plenty of evidence in it?
with external evidence to corroborate '
the same?that long before the public
knew anytning of Mr. Carnegie's pensioning
fund for teachers this brain-proud
upper-tendom of the educational world
must have had Mr. Carnegie's ear ureine
him to cut out the Church schools.
Dr. Pritchett's paper gives a clue to
the reason why Mr. Carnegie was so advised:
The Carnegie Fund is to be used
to put the Church out of the educational
business if possible.
If a fight is thus to be made oh
Church colleges, it's time for the Church
to review the reasons why it is in the educational
business at all. If those reasons
turn out valid still, it's time for the
Church to buckle down and provide for
its schools so well that they will be sure
to survive the fight. And it's time for
the Church colleges themselves to Inquire
whether they are living up to ideals that
justify their existence.
Dr. Pritchett says: "The strongest
motive which has operated In inducing
denominations to Undertake the support
and control of colleges is unquestionably
the desire to .propagate the faith for
which the denomination stands." He dexterously
manages to convey the impression
that the "faith" which the denominations
are interested in the "propagating"
consists in their respective denominational
peculiarities.
Now, if Dr. Pritchett knew enough of
Church colleges to have any right to
speak of them, he would know his argument
is totally unfair. He claims to be
favorable to religion in education but
against denominatlonalism. Well, let him
listen to this: The denominational
schools as maintained by the evangeli/>nl
-- " 1
uuuikucg arc nut ui an Kepi up in
the interest of sectarian tenets, but in
the interest of religion and sound living
In the broadest Christian sense.
Do Presbyterian colleges make a specialty
of teaching the doctrines that dis
rTH. 21
tinguisli Presbyterianism from, say,
Episcopalianism or from the Baptist
churches? Absolutely not. The Idea
would be spurned in any Presbyterian
college in existence. What's taught and
insisted on religiously is the simple faith
that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the
world, and that it's the best use of life
to devote the whole of it to his service.
Does Dr. Pritchett object Jo that atmospnere
in a college?
It is true enough that the Presbyterian
Church relies on its colleges very largely
for its ministers and its dead-in-earnest
laymen. That, however, is not because
the colleges propagate a peculiar Presbyterian
theology, but because they maintain
and impart to their students the
moral seriousness and the mental alertness
which are the two chief elements of
capital that the Presbyterian Church
needs in its business.
But the sword on which Dr. Pritchett
relies to transfix the denominational college
through and through Is the charge
that the aim of such colleges is to bring
about the conversion of their students.
He classes all attempts to secure a
student's conversion and bring him Into
Church membership with those "methods
which, contravening the intellectual
* ideas of trained students or failing to
meet their honest Inquiries, have a doubtful
effect in the development of their
characters."
Now all this is gross bigotry. Dr.
' - - -
Mucucu won t nnd m any of thfe universities
of the land a fairer and broader
willingness to answer intellectually a
young man's intellectual questionings
about religion than in typical denominational
colleges.
Dr. Pritchett does point out a great
many things wrong in the denominational
college situation?attempts to do grades
of work for which the institutions are
unequipped, needless rivalries, qven
slovenly neglect of good educational
standards. College authorities ought to
thank him for these searching criticisms
and go about it to purge themselves of
blame.
But he and his fellow-trustees ought
to be fair enough to admit that these
evils are not inherent in "denominational
control." They ought to admit what everybody
else knows?that many colleges
which show all these evils are not controlled
denominationally. anH mnnv
__r , ?? rnrnwmmmtj UtUCl
colleges which .ire controlled denominationally,
are honestly free from all of
them.
There Is only one way to administer the
Carnegie Fund and hold the respect of
the Impartial. That is to give its benefits
to all schools which on their individual
merits are found educationally
worthy, excluding none by arbitrary class
distinctions.?The Interior.
We gain strength of the temptation
we resist.?Emerson.
A familiar, and usually pernicious,
phrase runs, "Business Is business." The
words are commonly uttered as an excuse
for conduct that would not square
with the Sermon on the Mount. "Runt.
ness ia business;" yes, but business is
also religion, or else neither is wholly
what it claims to be.