realization of the highest degree of unity, unanimity, and cooperation among Baptist churches. And whatever is done by Baptist church or minister that in design or influence hinders this consummation, is treason against the plain indications of God's providence respecting our mission as a people. They who do this are guilty of sowing "discord among brethren," for which no claim to superior Christian charity or courtesy can furnish justification.

Finally, the spirit of Christ is indispensable if we would have the mutual relation of our churches what it ought to be. Without his spirit we cannot be both firm and charitable; decision will become sectarian bigotry, and charity degenerate into pliable religious sentimentalism; and so the two extremes meet; for the latter ultimately becomes the former, only directing itself towards a different object. What we want is undeviating loyalty to Christ, and within the restrictions of that loyalty a fraternal feeling toward all men. Possessing this we shall employ all valid means for the promotion of the most perfect fellowship among the churches. Thus drawn nearer to one another, bitter criminations and recriminations, harsh utterances and severe denunciations, will seldom be heard in our counsels. Without it, mere advocacy of orthodoxy, however earnest and sincere the former or immaculate the latter, we shall lack the essential thing in our unity, the thing to be constantly sought in maintaining and further perfecting it. If we have this we can to the limits of Christian charity and loyalty to Jesus, "bear the infirmities of the weak," and, at the same time rebuke, reprove, and exhort, with all long suffering and meekness. We will not close our eyes and ears to objections and abuses, but will so protest as, if possible, to save the erring or correct the abuse, rather than repel the former or confirm the latter. If compelled, when all other methods have failed, to disfellowship a minister or a church, we will then do it for Christ's glory, and not to gratify personal or vindictive feelings, or even mere denominational pride. For the glory of our denomination is the headship of Christ and the brotherhood of Baptists; and, therefore, divested of all mere sentiment of any kind that might cause us to sacrifice principle, or compromise our denominational integrity, our Golden Text should be: "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." It is by this we must cement our churches, exalt our true mission and hence realize in our polity the true conception of the visible church. Doing this we shall successfully resist all innovations subversive of those principles and practices on which the fellowship of our churches is founded.

SALEM, MASS.

W. H. H. MARSH.

THE HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE STATE.

"SHOULD

HOULD the state appropriate money for the higher education, an education which, from the nature of the case, must take sides in religion?" This question was some months since propounded to the present writer by a friend who is at once a successful educator and a candid inquirer for truth. At his instigation the following pages have been written. He and the other readers of the QUARTERLY will judge how far they go towards furnishing an answer to the question.

The right of the state to appropriate money involves the right to tax the property of the citizens to raise the money. Has the state a right to tax the people to support institutions for the higher education?

Statesmen and political writers do not perfectly agree respecting the functions of civil government. We must needs, in the present discussion, avoid all disputed ground. It will probably serve our purpose to state a few principles which are either self-evident or universally admitted.

I. Civil government, being ordained of God, has a right to be, and therefore a right to provide for its own safety and perpetuity, and so a right to do whatsoever is necessary for self-preservation. Here we find the right of defensive war, and the right to prepare for war in time of peace, and the right of taxation for military purposes. This right of civil government to perpetuate itself is not the right to resist all

change. Though a despotism may, at one time, be the best form of government for a given people, it is not the right of that government to suppress the efforts of its subjects to fit themselves for the enjoyment of constitutional liberty. Though government ought to guard against and resist tendencies to deterioration, it has the same right and duty as individuals to avail itself of all means for its own improvement. When a people become capable of self-goverument, they are entitled to a government republican in principle and form; and such a government once established has a right to preserve itself from lapsing into monarchy or anarchy, and to strengthen itself against the danger of lapsing.

Intelligence and virtue in the body of the people are admitted to be essential to the perpetuity of free government. A republic may therefore take measures to maintain virtue aud intelligence among the people. The most effectual way of doing this is by means of free schools for the instruction of all the children and youth of the country. The right of the state to tax property for the support of common schools is but one item of the universal right to do whatever the safety of the state requires.

II. Government exists not for its own sake, but for the sake of the people. The people were not made for the state, but the state for the people. The first function of the state is the protection of the people in respect to their rights as those of person, property, reputation and conscience. Whatever is necessary to such protection the state ought to do to the limit of its power.

It is also generally conceded that the state may rightfully render to its citizens some positive service in addition to mere protection. For example, we acquiesce in the assumption by the government of the postal service, though we may not be ready to transfer the railroads and telegraph lines to it. We are glad to have government experiment in imported seeds and plants, though we do not propose to allow it to go into the general business of farming.

How far the state may rightfully or profitably go in such directions it may not be easy to say; but there are landmarks in certain directions which all will recognize.

1. It is not the duty of the state to do what can and will be as well done by individuals, singly or in organizations. The cultivation of the soil is indispensable to the perpetuity of government, because the existence of the race depends upon it; but so long as the state affords protection and encouragement to agriculture, it may safely be left to individual enterprise.

2. The state has no right to impose a general tax for the benefit

of individuals or a class beyond the limit of mere protection. The state creates an office, not for the sake of giving a place and salary to some individual, but for the public benefit. It charters a railroad company, not to give the stockholders a chance to make money, but to give to the public certain advantages of travel and transportation. The office-seeker and the capitalist have a right to look out for their own interests; the state must have an eye single to the public good.

This principle, as guiding the action of the state in providing public instruction, is thus enunciated by Dr. Gregory in his report as Superintendent of Public Instruction in Michigan for 1861:

This aim evidently is to train up the children of the country to be good citizens of the state, and good members of society. It is in their assumed ability to promote these great public ends that the schools rest. their sole claim for public care and support. It is doubtless true that the public schools produce much personal and private good. They afford facilities to parents to secure that education for their children which is at once their duty and interest to bestow. And so also they provide for every child the opportunities for that culture so necessary to his well being and success in life. But not for these private and personal ends does the state maintain its system of public instruction. It is the broader and grander interests which society holds in its members, and the state has in its citizens, that constitute the true aim of a public-school system as such.

III. The state ought not to do anything, however necessary it may seem to its own safety or to the public good, which would be a violation of any citizen's rights of conscience.

Thousands in our land believe most firmly that the inculcation of the doctrines of the Bible is essential to the perpetuity of free government. They believe, just as firmly, that Christian churches are essential to the inculcation of these doctrines. And yet these same persons would resist, even unto blood, the attempt on the part of the state to tax the people for the maintenance of Christian churches. They believe that God has not entrusted to the state any authority over men's consciences or purses in matters of religion. They deny the right of the state to appropriate money for the support of churches, not on the ground that the churches teach false doctrines, nor on the ground that they teach doctrines contrary to the belief of a portion of the people; but on the ground that the state transcends its province in undertaking the work at all.

Let us now see how these principles, thus limited and defined, apply to the question of the duty of the state in respect to the higher education.

1. Is the so-called higher education, as well as the lower, necessary

to the perpetuity of free government; or at least to the attainment of the highest ends of that government?

There is probably little difference of opinion on this point among intelligent friends of popular education. The college and the normal school supply the life-blood to the public or district school. They not only provide competent teachers, but they elevate and maintain the standard of scholarship, and keep alive an enthusiasm for study in the public schools. If the higher rests upon the lower, the lower are vitalized by the higher. They are members of one body. United they stand, divided they fall. If our institutions for higher education had no other end except to promote and foster popular education, we could not afford, we should not dare, to dispense with them.

2. But cannot the state safely depend on institutions established and maintained by private munificence for all the work of higher education it needs? The question has respect only to the wants of the state. The state is not bound to provide for the wants of particular individuals or classes.

Some difference of opinion probably exists on this point; but whoever will consider the alarming amount of illiteracy among the voting population of our country, the alarming fact that the ratio of this illiteracy has for several years been steadily increasing, and the recent extension of the right of suffrage to the whole body of uneducated freedmen (not to speak of the prospect of another and wider extension), may well consent to a fair trial of the experiment which nearly every state in the Union is now making in the establishment of state universities and normal schools. The experience of the past does not encourage us to rely wholly on private munificence and enterprise to provide the means for the higher education which the safety of the state demands. Universal suffrage necessitates universal education. If we would give the tree a wider circumference of branches we must give it a greater depth and breadth of root. The experiment seems to be working successfully.

The importance of the object soughtthe better training of all the youth of the land-justifies us in giving it a fair trial. As a hopeful experiment, then, the state is justified in appropriating money for the higher education, with the view of promoting thereby the instruction of all the youth of the country.

It is not clear however that the professional schools, as those of law and medicine, promote popular education. The benefits they confer are not public and general, but private and personal, except in the same way that every useful avocation in life is a public benefit. Tax-payers might well ask why they should pay for educating their physician any more than their tailor, or why the state should main