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THE PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS

WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE, D. D., LL. D.

PRESIDENT, BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R. I.

All of us are more or less clearly conscious that we live in two worlds the world of facts and the world of values. In the one world we are constantly asking what is; in the other we are asking what is worth while. In the one world we deal with the bare existence of objects and phenomena; in the other we deal with appreciation and appraisement. In the one world we have to do with science, which never approves or condemns, but simply attempts to understand; in the other we have to do with morals and religion, with standards of value and ideals of life.

Now the great triumphs of western civilization, particularly in the nineteenth century, have been achieved mainly in the realm of fact and by the aid of physical science. Of those triumphs we are justly proud. Men have discovered more facts regarding the physical world in the last fifty years than in the previous five thousand years, and have given us inventions and discoveries which have revolutionized our life. But in the world of standards, ideals, and values, we have made as yet no corresponding progress, but still stand vacillating, irresolute, and waiting for light. As to what is true, we know far more than our fathers; as to what is right, we are not so sure. Therefore, our education has become chiefly a search for truth rather than an aspiration for righteousness, and in many quarters mental discipline and the acquisition of knowledge have been dissevered from the building of character.

This convention is in itself a clear affirmation that knowledge and character, which God hath joined together, shall not in America be put asunder, and that the only purpose of knowing what is true is in order to do what is right. The education of the future must give us not only laboratories in which we determine what is, but such power of ethical appreciation that we shall recognize the beauty and listen to the impera tive summons of the things that ought to be.

In the early history of the American colonies, there was no divorce of mental and moral training. Nearly all of the eight pre-Revolutionary colleges had their foundations laid deep in moral earnestness and religious faith. Their primary object was the training of a "godly ministry," and their very mottoes, Christo et Ecclesiæ, Lux ac Veritas, In

Deo Speramus, show how profound was the religious conviction which gave them birth.

At that time all primary education, as well, was permeated and colored by the dogmatic teaching of religion. In Massachusetts Church and State were united, and no man could exercise suffrage unless he were a church member. In Connecticut the standing order was not abolished until 1833. But the best witness to the character of the old primary education is the New England Primer, of which two or three million copies were printed during a century and a half. In all that long period, every New England child learned to read by the help of that famous primer. When the child learned the letter A, he learned to repeat: "In Adam's fall, We sinned all." The letter O introduced him to Obadiah, the letter Z taught him the virtue of Zaccheus, and the entire alphabet was made the vehicle of Biblical history and Puritan theology. Then followed, in that primer which held undisputed sway, the ten commandments, the shorter catechism, and a summary of Christian duties. In our early American education, all books, studies, schools, from the first day with the primer to the last day in the college, were arranged with the conviction that the acquisition of knowledge and the teaching of religion could never be separated.

That state of things has forever vanished. We have seen the rise and marvelous development of our great public school system, controlled and administered by the State. We have seen the founding and growth of state universities, dominating entire systems of education, and forbidden to ally themselves with any religious creed. We have seen the acceptance of the educational philosophy of Froebel and Pestalozzi, whose attitude toward childhood is hardly that of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. We have seen great educational gifts made by men whose success has been in the financial rather than the moral world. We have met teachers whose interest is not in students, but in studies, and who, confining themselves to the search for facts, deliberately relegate character building to the churches.

And some of our churches we must frankly confess are not awake to their educational responsibility. Handing over all education to the State, they have sometimes allowed themselves to become a saints' rest rather than a soldiers' inspiration. Some of us have been running the ambulance, when we might have been leading the charge. In some cases, the Sunday school has remained passive, stationary, while the public school has swept onward with vast equipment and novel methods. In some cases the pulpit has been mainly hortatory, forgetting the cry which greeted the preaching of our Lord: "We know that thou art a

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