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ward the Cross to an all-redeeming conquest. The world's debt to us is to a single company merely of the mighty and ever increasing army moving ever forward under our divine Captain, for the betterment of man and the salvation of the world. With all who acknowledge the Saviour as their Master we claim fellowship; over none do we assert our precedence.

The minds of men behold differently the details of dogma; and denominations, especially among Englishspeaking peoples, serve the invaluable purpose of meeting all views and enlisting all classes to a great and common end; but on the eternal things on God, on immortality and on Christ there is perfect concord and agreement.

Methodism says to every sister church: "Surpass us in zeal if you can; excel us in disciplined energy if you can; but we defy you to excel us in the cheers of approval with which we shall be the first to greet your noblest effort."

To every company of Christians, by whatever name it may be known whether Catholic or Protestant Methodism exclaims: "Come, brothers, we are with you! Your glory is our glory; our triumph is your victory."

To every member of every Christian church Methodism exclaims as to its own members:

“Onward, Christian soldier,

Marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus

Going on before.”

And in this spirit will be found, after all, the world's

chief debt to Methodism.

SCHOOL AND NATION

Inauguration address at the installation of the Reverend Edwin Holt Hughes, S. T. P., as President of De Pauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, December 9, 1903.

HE glory of all American colleges should be that

they produce citizenship as well as culture. And of these, citizenship is more valuable than culture. Culture is important; citizenship is indispensable. Upon the installation of a new president of this institution of learning we naturally turn to the purpose of education in a Republic for the school is the most active influence among our American millions except the influence of the American home. From the council that gathers daily around the American fireside radiate those streams of wisdom and purity which keep the civic life of our country sane and wholesome. But next to the American family, the school is plainly the strongest force molding our destiny. So what the school does is of vital concern to the Nation. The word "school" is used as the broadest term for all educational institutions.

It is said "the school is a corner-stone of the Republic." That is true if the office of the school in our national life be accurately understood and performed. But in our hurried way we have taken education to mean mere instruction in definite subjects -the learning of facts, rather than training in wisdom. Our general

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thought has come to be, "Let us teach American youth geography, history, chemistry, and the country is safe. Let American youth learn Latin, and the Republic is safe. Let us raise up a race of Euclids, and the Nation is secure."

But is this a true conception of the relation of the school to the Nation? There were few schools among the people when our Nation was founded. Yet the national spirit was strong in their hearts. Many apostles of nationality all through our history have been men not of the highest culture. The best and greatest of them have not been men of finished education. Consider Washington, Lincoln, Jackson. The same is true of leaders of the people in other lands.

Of course, some of them have been the finest products of university training. But this one truth is common to all of them. They were inspired by faith in their people, by a passion for national solidarity, by devotion to high ideals of their country's destiny. Each of them in every land believed in the mission of his own people, and that, in some form, that mission was and is to work righteousness in the world.

Mere learning, then, does not necessarily make citizenship. Knowledge of dead and living languages, mastery of the physical sciences, instruction in higher mathematics none of these in itself produces the civic sense. And an educated man who disregards the common welfare is more dangerous to a Republic than an ignorant man because he has more resources with which to take from the common good for his own advantage.

Even if such a man is not active against the State, and merely contents himself by leaving public affairs alone,

his neutral example is a negative influence for evil. His less fortunate neighbors will say: "If this man, with all his education, does not care for the public good, why should I bother myself about it?" And this means the beginning of the decay of the civic sense that profound personal interest which every citizen must have i the Nation if the Republic is to work out its theory and purpose.

It is plain, then, that the American school must produce something more than book culture. The soul of our American instruction must be American nationality; or, rather, fundamental civic righteousness expressed through the activities of the American Republic.

Your professor of chemistry will tell you that science has been able to reconstruct a grain of wheat, with all of the chemical properties in the exact proportion in which they are found in the natural grain of wheat. So far as science can tell, absolutely nothing has been left out. Yet this grain of wheat which the chemist constructs will not grow. So in a Republic, the school which does not produce the spirit of nationality is a dead thing. It is the chemist's grain of wheat, not God's grain of wheat.

In a Republic, then, the great mission of the school is to create the national spirit. The fruit of public instruction in governments like ours must be patriotism. You may produce your man of culture, and yet if you have made him too dainty for the duties of citizenship, you have not only wasted your work, you have actually wrought evil. The most highly cultured man of loftiest mind who yet has not the political spirit is not as useful to a free government as the humblest country lad, if the

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latter has the civic sense that makes him take a hand in politics. For he is a good citizen, and the educated exquisite is not a good citizen.

Your man of culture may march to the Republic's battle-fields and die for the Nation; but that is not enough. He must live for the Nation. If his education has lifted him above the common duties of citizenship it has robbed him of his civic manhood. And civic manhood is the life of republican institutions.

Let us reduce this to the simplest terms. Citizenship means suffrage. So if the Republic is to endure, every citizen must not only be willing to vote; he must be willing to sacrifice business, convenience, comfort, and every other thing, rather than fail to vote. We read with tears in our eyes the heroic tales of the men who died to give us the right to vote; yet, as we read, we too often neglect that right. Unfortunately, this is true of many college men, and increasingly true. It must cease to be true of any college man. His very equipment commands. him to do more for the Nation than men less cultured.

That equipment should mean activity in politics; for politics is the method through which our form of government works. And politics means the machinery of elections as much as the formulation of policies which the citizen must pass upon at the polls. So the farmer who answers to his political committee for his precinct is performing a duty to the Nation. But the person whose civic sense has been drugged by the refinements of a soulless education until he disdains such work is a deserter from the noblest duties and dearest rights ever bestowed on man. The one defends the pillars of the Republic;