cal
studies should be placed on an equality with studies in classical
literature, one such college to be established in every State of the
Union. The bill, though opposed mainly by representatives from the
Southern States, where doctrinaire politics and orthodox theology were
in strong alliance with negro slavery, was passed by both Houses of
Congress, but vetoed by President Buchanan, in whom the doctrinaire and
orthodox spirit was incarnate. But Morrill persisted and again presented
his bill, which was again carried in spite of the opposition of the
Southern members, and again vetoed in 1859 by President Buchanan. Then
came the civil war; but Morrill and his associates did not despair of
the republic. In the midst of all the measures for putting vast armies
into the field and for saving the Union from foreign interference as
well as from domestic anarchy, they again passed the bill, and in 1862,
in the darkest hour of the struggle for national existence, it became a
law by the signature of President Lincoln.

And here it should not be unrecorded, that, while the vast majority of
the supporters of the measure were laymen, most efficient service was
rendered by a clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, born in New Hampshire,
but at that time an instructor in a little village of New York. His
ideas were embodied in the bill, and his efforts did much for its
passage.

Thus was established, in every State of the American Union, at least one
institution in which scientific and technical studies were given equal
rank with classical, and promoted by laboratories for research in
physical and natural science. Of these institutions there are now nearly
fifty: all have proved valuable, and some of them, by the addition of
splendid gifts from individuals and from the States in which they are
situated, have been developed into great universities.

Nor was this all. Many of the older universities and colleges thus
received a powerful stimulus in the new direction. The great physical
and chemical laboratories founded by gifts from public-spirited
individuals, as at Harvard, Yale, and Chicago, or by enlightened State
legislators, as in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Kansas,
and Nebraska, have also become centres from which radiate influences
favouring the unfettered search for truth as truth.

This system has been long enough in operation to enable us to note in
some degree its effects on religion, and these are certainly