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establishment of the Kingdom of righteousness on the earth.
The Students' Volunteer Movement began in 1876. It aims to awaken a
deeper interest in foreign missions among college students, and to
enlist their services. Within a brief period, more than 4,000 students
consecrated their lives to this heroic Christian work. Already, since
the movement began, 600 young men and women have entered the mission
field, and thousands of others are waiting on a hesitating church to
furnish the means to send them to work in foreign lands. Well did
Ex-President McCosh say that the Christian Church had not witnessed
such a spirit of consecration since the day of Pentecost.
The colleges have done another valuable service in awakening and
strengthening in the national life a deeper sense of the value and
importance of human knowledge. They are monuments of the dignity and
worth of ideas, and the aspirations of the human soul.
In a new country, with its marvelous possibilities, the danger has
been in having an excessive and exaggerated estimate of our national
advantages, and our civilization has tended to take on a too
mechanical and material character. We need to have more time to
cultivate the nobler nature, and, by Christian and scholarly
associations and more intimate friendships, discover and prize the
fineness and sweetness of character in others, which may enrich our
own life and incite us to worthy action. It is the province of higher
education to help foster those conditions of mind and heart whose
flexibility and natural aptitudes lead the individual "to draw ever
nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and
becoming." Such wisdom and goodness are of the highest practical
utility in the life of a nation. The colleges have helped to offset
the material tendency of our civilization by holding up high ideals
and emphasizing the supremacy of the unseen mental, moral, and
spiritual forces in our life. Through their leadership in the schools,
and through the press, platform and pulpit, they have introduced into
the fomenting mind of the republic the noblest ideals and the most
generous incentives, which have, in a large measure, transformed
public sentiment for the better. We have, at least, learned one great
lesson in our history: that if we would have peace, contentment,
happiness and prosperity, we must give the people a Christian
education, and put all we can into character.
The college receives student
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