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Show ATHEISTIC UNIVERSITIES Modern Tendencies --- Everything Sacred Decried Dissecting God and Religion. Re-ligion. John 'Temple Graves, the journalist and orator, who, at the Bryan banquet, Chattanooga, 1907, urged W. J. Bryan to renominate Theodore Roose-veit Roose-veit as the candidate of both parties to carry to a successful conclusion in behalf of the people against predatory wealth, writes for his journal the following strong article on the irreligious tendency ten-dency of our modern universities. The article referred re-ferred to is entitled, "Blasting at the Rock of Ages." To the May Cosmopolitan Harold Bol'ce, student, thinker and trained journalist, contributes the first three articles which give the result of his diligent and deliberate two-year study of the spirit , and trend of American colleges. What Mr. Bolce has here set down is astounding to the general reader, and to the orthodox alarming alarm-ing in the highest degree. Xo statement so sensational sensa-tional has startled the civilization of the decade. Out of the curricula of American colleges a dynamic movement is upheaving ancient foundations founda-tions and making an open way for a revolution in the thought and life of this people. Those who are ilot in close touch with the great colleges of the country will be astonished, in most cases indignant, indig-nant, to learn the creeds that are being fostered by the strong men in the professors'ehairs. In hundreds of classrooms there is a scholarly repudiation of all solemn authority, and it is being taught daily that "the Decalogue is no more sacred than a syllabus;" that "the home as an institution insti-tution is doomed;" that "'there are no absolute evils;" that '"immorality is simply an act in contravention con-travention of soeietv's accent pd standards :" that. "democracy is a failure and the Declaration of Independence only spectacular rhetoric;'' that "the change from one religion to another is like getting a new hat;" that ''moral precepts are passing shibboleths;" shib-boleths;" that "conceptions of right and wrong are as unstable as styles of dress;", that "wide stairways stair-ways are open between social levels, but that to the climber children are encumbrances;" that "thf sole effect of prolificacy is to fill tiny graves." and that "there-can be and are holier alliances outside the marriage bond than within it!" Every quoted sentiment is from the spoken or written word of some one of the leading and famous fa-mous professors of the great colleges. And the colleges carrying 8iich new and revolutionary revolu-tionary creeds are not the minor schools, but those vaster seminaries such as Harvard. Yale, Princeton Prince-ton (shade of Jonathan Edwards behind it!). University Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, University (of Chicago, Columbia," Syracuse. California, George Washington. Washing-ton. William and Mary, Northwestern, the universities univer-sities of Xew York, Iowa, Kansas. Michigan. Wis-j Wis-j consin, Cornell, Brown, Leland Stanford, Union, I Nebraska and others. In each of these great institutions some professor,, pro-fessor,, neither infallible nor inspired, but a free thinker rioting in the mere license of opinion, and some, alas, hungering for the notoriety of the utterance, ut-terance, are flinging down daily doctrines like these, not to strong and mature men caple of discrimination discrim-ination and accustomed to disputation, but speaking speak-ing from responsible stations to youthful and undeveloped un-developed minds which are accustomed o receive what comes from the scholar in the chair of authority au-thority as the unchallenged gospel of the time. "Meat for strong men and milk, for babies" has no restraining influence upon the riot oi opinion among these so-called professors of today. If these men really believe the monstrous conceptions which are strring the age to unwholesome revolution against the doctrines of the ages; they should at least voice them first in serious councils of their peers, and submit them solemnly and primarily to an arena in which orthodoxy can fairly defend its Gibraltars and stand by its own. But to strip every shred of reverence from the foot of thought to march out before unfledged youth of either sex to dissect God, and Religion and Homage and Home, and Government as if they were mere fossils, or vertebrates or equations to leave morals afloat upon inclination, and so unsettle unset-tle standards of virtue that every youth might swing unsmitten of conscience from the classroom class-room to the scarlet woman in the street this is carrying liberty of thought to the rank license which makes the intellectual commune and presages pres-ages the revolution which is the beginning of chaos. The presidents of these great institutions, held in check by boards and councils, are not usually the voices of 'This amazing propaganda. But college professors, in the enjoyment of apparently too much liberty, and of rarely questioned responsibility, are sowing the seeds of these dangerous doctrines day by day in the minds of a quarter of a million of American young men and women who are poing out to make the morals, the manners and the civilization civili-zation of our countny- I protest the initial exploitation of these "doubtful "doubt-ful disputations" upon the great body in whom all of us have such vital concern. I deny the right of teacher or professor to take such advantage of youth sent by orthodox parents .to university halls. I am neither preacher nor Puritan. I neither cavil nor cant. I am an ordinary man of the world, who. as unworthy as he is, keeps yet in reverence the old orthodox faith of his fathers, and I do not hesitate to say that if I had a son in one of these colleges, and I heard that such doctrines were being led him out of the irreverent lips of uninspired thinkers. I would put my hat on my head and walk up to the chancellor's office of that university and demand on behalf of my son, and of other sons of American citizens, that these intellectual banditti of the classroom should practice their license of opinion 3 . t - . upon the sunrise clubs or the free thought societies to which they belong, or ought to belong and to leave unstained to these tender minds those old honored and orthodox creeds by which America", fathers and mothers for oier a hundred years have led their children up to the honar of the American home and to the responsibility of the American citizen. I shall recur to this topic in more deliberate tone on another day. The object of these impulsive words is to catch the ear of the public with the startling conditions which 'Harvard Bolce makes plain. And'to voice as an individual one earnest protest against the license which is evidently running riot in the classrooms of our American univerisities. In this protest L invoke the sympathy and cooperation co-operation of the wholesome and right-thinking men and women of our country. |