fence; for about fifteen years past, all has been in transition; this is now advanced to a sort of rushing speed, betokening the final crisis; it will be but a few years till the last trace of German speech and German life is gone. They resisted the improvement of their German schools, and now a law is passed requiring these to give place to English "common schools," securing thus a complete victory of course to the foreign invasion. Churches with German worship are growing less numerous every year; mainly through the fault of the ministers. Judicial proceedings in the German language, have now also come to an end. Since the German element sustained a full defeat in its last struggle, the bitter contest on the -subject of schools, all conscious opposition to the change which is going forward has ceased; there is no longer any resistance, and consequently no room farther to to dream of any victory. A full third part of the German inhabitants of Pennsylvania, still make use of the German language. There is less fidelity to boast of, on the part of the older German settlements, as compared with these Pennsylvanians. Without entering now into the confessional side of the case, the writer holds the proportion in which the congregations have given up German worship, to be a fair measure of the general apostacy; since those who take no interest in the Church have, as a matter of course, still more readily parted with their German nationality. In the State of New-York, whose Lutheran Synod, formed only forty years since, was originally all German, there are now, out of eighty-five congregations, only fourteen (of which six belong to the city of New-York,) that are provided with German preaching; in Maryland, out of forty-six, only nine (five of them in Baltimore); out of twenty in Virginia, none; out of eleven in North Carolina, none; in South Carolina, out of thirty, only one. In the younger States, where moreover a large part is of persons born in Germany, the proportion is still more unfavorable; out of one hundred and eighty-five union congregations of the two confessions, Lutheran and Reformed, in Ohio, there are but about forty that have German preaching, and the number is growing less every year. The observations of the writer have convinced him, that it is a rare thing, in the case of the recent emigration, throughout all America, the seaports not excepted, for the children of the emigrants to be able to make use of the German language for the purposes of conversation. He has himself met with hundreds of cases, where children were wholly unable to converse in German with their own parents, whose tongues had been too stiff to suit themselves to the new language; so that it was hard for them to exchange thoughts at all. The first generation born in America may be looked upon as lost to German nationality. The lower class of Germans, emigrating late in life, seldom acquire more than fragments of English; the writer has met with a number, who, after a residence of fifteen or twenty years in the country, were not able to speak a word of English. Young people, from eighteen to thirtyfive years of age, are usually acquainted with both languages; but become at the same time more anglicised in their mode of expression every year. In the case of those who had come over in still earlier life, it was found that they had very often (those who were children always) lost almost every recollection of their native tongue; they were English Americans in their speech and whole appearance. PRESIDENT STURTEVANT'S DISCOURSE. Extracts from a Discourse in behalf of the Society, delivered in Broadway Tabernacle, (N. Y.) by Rev. J. M. STURTEVANT, President of Illinois College. President Sturtevant argued the urgent duty of the Eastern churches to aid in* sustaining Christian Seminaries of learning at the West: 1. As the only way in which the church can ever provide an adequate supply of enlightened and evangelical ministers. 2. As the founding and sustaining of Colleges in the West is the only means of extending over those States the blessings of an efficient system of popular education. 3. The West must have Colleges as the great organic power of society. The fact is not to be disguised that the most opposite systems are contending in fierce and mortal strife for ascendency and dominion over this great nation. On one side is a godless infidelity which would prostrate in its path every altar of God, annihilate our Sabbaths, leave our Bibles neglected and forgotten, drive religion from the holy sanctuary of the family, shut up the portals of immortality, and leave us as a people to the brutalizing and debasing worship of Mammon and of pleasure. This desolating system is aggressive too, and its adherents are as active and as proselyting as though they really had some valuable advantage to offer to their countrymen. They feel that their consciences cannot be quite easy while there are any altars of God in the land, or any who pay their worship on them. They glory in the power of steam, and would extend the telegraph across the continent and speed the railroad car, but these are their highest improvements. They would break the bands of God asunder and cast his cords from them. Shall this be the creed of our country? Shail this be the creed of that most splendid abode which God has fitted up for the residence of human beings-the valley of the Mississippi? Forbid it, merciful Heaven! On another side are the legion hosts of superstition and Papal despotism. Shail this bear sway over these vast regions which our children will own as their home? Shall the Bible be banished from their houses, and the crucifix and the legends of the saints take its place? Shall this Roman hierarchy, which ground Europe in the dust so many dark and hopeless centuries, and in resistance to which, so many of our pious ancestors have endured the dungeon and the stake-shall this Roman hierarchy gain more in this land of the Pilgrims than she lost in the Lutheran reformation? If she gains the valley of the Mississippi and the Lakes, she gains what is equivalent to all Europe. Shall this splendid prize be hers, and the blessed heritage of freedom to worship God, no longer be the birthright of our children? In another direction we may see, here and there, a scattered band of humble spiritual worshippers. They would give God's blessed Bible to every child, and teach him to read it; they would make every family a sanctuary of God, and every father the priest of his own house. This system would make every hill and valley vocal with the songs of a spiritual worship, hold up to every perishing sinner the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, and impart to every human being that glorious immortal freedom wherewith Christ doth make his people free. Which of these three systems, so widely different, shall be the system of our beloved land in all coming time? Nay, the question is within still narrower limits than this. It lies entirely between superstition and spiritual despotism on the one hand, and the free gospel of Christ on the other. For though infidelity may scoff at superstition and boast of her enlarged intellectual freedom, she is at last the readiest and most efficient helper of spiritual despotism, the only helper by whose aid I do solemnly believe it possible Rome should ever triumph in this land of the Pilgrims. The notion that any people will long be without religion, is a wild daydream of these infidel enthusiasts. Anarchy in the state is not more certainly followed by military despotism, than the destruction of a pure religious faith is followed by some form of degrading superstition and grinding spiritual tyranny. To What then is the great organic power by which this contest is to be decided and the foundation principles of Western society laid down for all coming time? this question history and experience give but one answer. That power is found in educational systems as centralized in the College or University. On a mere first view of such a case as this, what should wise, large-hearted Christian men do to save the nation from a threatened danger? What, but to found their schools of learning-place over them enlightened, pious, able, and faithful men, to train the greatest possible number of youth, destined for the learned professions and for other influential positions in society, in the fundamental principles of evangelical truth and free society? And who does not see, that if we obtain the education of these leading minds in society in Seminaries after the Pilgrim model, we obtain for the principles of the Reformation an absolute and perpetual ascendency? and that, on the other hand, if Rome is permitted to train the influential minds in her Seminaries and under the influence of her priesthood, the conflict is equally decided in her favor? Rome understands this subject well. She clearly sees what the issue is, and that it is by the control of the educational system through Colleges and Universities that the fate of the whole battle is to be decided. She sees and knows well, that in the comparative supineness and inaction of Protestants in reference to this great interest, her Colleges and high Female Seminaries are the towers of her strength. She remembers well, that it was by her influence in the Universities that she regained her power over nearly half Europe, which at one time seemed hopelessly lost to her by the Reformation. The fact is perhaps not so generally known, that the time was when in Austria itself not one in thirty of the population adhered to the Papacy, and for nearly a generation scarcely a man was found to enter the Romish Priesthood. But meanwhile the Jesuits had gone abroad, and they obtained a controlling influence in the Universities, and in a single generation Austria was lost to the Reformation and regained to the Roman hierarchy. And what is she now? Drunk with the sorceries of Rome, she is the grave of all religious freedom and the persecutor of the gospel of Christ. Ranke, the philosophic historian of the Papacy, ascribes this result directly to the influence of the Jesuits on her Universities, and through them on her whole system of education. My Christian brethren, I make the assertion deliberately, solemnly, understandingly; history, experience, and facts sustain me in it :-Do what you will, plan as you will, this is a conflict of the permanent institutions of education; and by these, or by the want or the inefficiency of them, is the fate of this whole mighty conflict to be decided. Every intelligent Romanist knows this, and it is time every Protestant knew it, for every Protestant should, on such a question as this, be intelligent. For Protestants to be at this time neglecting the work of collegiate education in the West, of to be doing it feebly, timidly, and inefficiently, is perfectly suicidal; it is shameful, my brethren, reproachful both to our intelligence and our liberality. It adds no small force to this consideration, that the field is now ours. The great mass of the Western population are now turning their eyes towards Protestant Seminaries of learning, as towards the rising sun of their hopes. And if they be hold these Seminaries drooping, meagerly sustained, and inefficient in their action, they will turn away with indignation and disgust, and reluctantly commit their children to papal educators. My hearers, let me tell you the whole truth on this great subject. There is no class of men who enjoy half the advantages for establishing and sustaining popular and efficient Seminaries of learning at the West, as those of Puritan principles. It is well understood that the founding of such institutions is their office, their calling; they are known and recognized as the educators of the nation. Shall we act worthily of this high calling, or shall we dishonor and forsake it? Let every man answer this question to his conscience and his God. Let him answer in deeds, not in words. 4. Once more, we must have Colleges at the West as the great conservative power of society. The foundation of religion and government in this country, is the right of private judgment. Every man claims it, and to none can we consent, for one moment, that it be denied. And yet never can it be well with any people, unless society rests upon fixed, settled, unchanging principles. The unsettling of fundamental principles, whether in church or state, is the esssential idea of anarchy. What sober man has not deplored the tendency to such anarchy in this age, and somewhat peculiarly in the West? What is our remedy? I answer, the only power which can prove an antidote to this diseased tendency of the public mind, is found in a sound healthful Christian system of liberal education. A system of education in. which, on the one hand, the freedom of the mind shall be fully recognized and respected; and yet, on the other, through the whole course of its training, that mind shall be held fast to the great foundation principles of free Christian society by the adamantine links of an irresistible logic; a system of education too, in which the fervent prayers and pious lives of godly teachers shall attend the labors of the understanding and where the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven, shall set upon the forming youthful mind the blessed seal of life eternal. The infidelity, the folly, and the radicalism of this age, are to be met in and by our Colleges, just as French infidelity was encountered by the venerable President Dwight, at the beginning of his administration in Yale College, not by might nor by power, but by the sword of the Spirit and the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. The gospel is of God; it fears not the intensest light of day. And the high province of the Protestant College is to place our youth destined for all the professions in the very focus of that illumination, and hold them fast to the eternal truths of God by the power of conviction and the energy of the Divine Spirit. And if the church is neglecting this work, let her not wonder at the prevalence of radicalism and infidelity. is neglecting the only remedy which God has given her against these evils. It is a remedy, too, which must and will succeed wherever it is applied. We must apply it vigorously and faithfully at the West, or else let us cease to mourn over Western radicalism, anarchy, and infidelity. She It is therefore an effort of present and most urgent necessity, to raise up Institutions to do for the mighty West what Yale, and Dartmouth, and Williams, and Amherst have done for New England; to call forth from the bosom of the Western church a learned and pious ministry; to send life, and health, and vigor through the whole system of popular education, and to erect there fortresses of evangelical truth which may be expected to arrest the fatal progress of Popery and Infidelity, and found society on the lasting basis of religious freedom and evangelical truth. The sun shines not on such another missionary field as the valley of the Mississippi. Whether the calls be too numerous or not, I cannot say ; but one thing those who have labored in this work for the last fifteen or twenty years do know, they cannot hold their peace, and it must not be expected of them. We must speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen. We must lift up our voices, and plead with our brethren for the neglected cause of Protestant education in the West, till our tongues are silent in death. We dare not otherwise meet our Judge in the hour of final adjudication, lest the blood of our brethren and our countrymen be found in our skirts. The Seminaries of learning for which I plead owe the greatest obligations to the Society whose claims I present to you to-day. It is not possible for me to see how several of them could have continued in existence to the present time without its fostering aid. It has thus far saved them from extinction. But the aid they have received has fallen greatly short of their absolute necessities. The men who are connected with those Institutions, have struggled and are still struggling with difficulties with which our Eastern friends have little conception. We have been often pained and sick at heart. We have seen Institutions of learning struggling for a bare existence, which ought to have been full of vigor and able to impart their own energy to all around them. We hear men, the enemies of our religion and our God, sneer at our weakness and inefficiency, and giving their influence and their time to the Catholic Priesthood. We have seen able and excellent fellow laborers driven from the field for want of support. We have seen others weary of combating these unexpected difficulties, dispirited and desponding for the want of the aid which we needed and have confidently hoped to receive. We have seen our libraries meagre and stinted, and entirely inadequate to the wants of the enterprising student. But I forbear. I stand here a living witness that the cause needs far, far more efficient aid than it has hitherto received. The church must enter on this work with a larger heart and more liberal hand. We cannot but entreat that this sacred cause may be borne in solemn and prayerful remembrance in all portions of our land, and that when men are about to bestow upon the cause of learning of that abundance which God has given them, or when they are about to close up their accounts with this world by making their last will and testament, they will remember the struggling infant Seminaries of the great West, and do for them what Harvard and Yale did for the Colleges of the infant colonies of New England. |