The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, February 1885Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Philosophy
The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, February 1885
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
There is a Chautauqua further on. First, there is a lake level, and
just above it is the level of the “Point,” with its pleasant grass, its
winding walks, its old Auditorium, shaded and hallowed with memories
that have grown through multiplying years. The old cottages, and many
of the old cottagers remain about this Auditorium—reminders of the old
times, and the oldest times, of Chautauqua, when the first vesper service
announced that “The Day Goeth Away,” and the “Nearer My God to Thee,”
rang out under these forest arches. Who that was there can ever forget
that hour? The altars were aglow that night, and hearts on fire. It was
an experiment, but from the first it was an assured success. The time
will come when the remaining sharers in that first feast in the evening
light will be very few, and the last of them will receive honor, and the
children of Chautauqua will listen to their story as with quivering lips
and kindling eye they speak about that first evening under the trees,
the words that broke the sacred silence, the songs that bore praise and
wonder and joy to the heavens, and the friendships that were formed there
never to be broken.
How many who joined in the first Chautauqua service have already “fallen
on sleep” and gone out into a world sleepless and without nightfall,
where, for vesper chant are substituted the hallelujahs of an eternal
morning.
But let us go up higher. Beyond the Point and Auditorium level are the
terraces that run along the hillside, one above another, gardens and
cottages, with pathways and winding roads, leading up under welcome
shadows to a higher Chautauqua—a long stretch of table-land crowned now
with Temple and Chapel, Pyramid, Museum and Hall of Philosophy, while
beyond, in the open fields toward the north we reach the highest point
of our Assembly grounds, one of the highest on the lake. Thus from the
landing and the beginning of our journey we ascend from the lowest to the
highest, and find beauty, delight, pleasant welcomes and rewards all the
way.
This study in the lay of the land which makes the physical Chautauqua is
an allegory. There is an upper Chautauqua. And not all who visit the
place see it, and not all who become Chautauquans reach it.
The Chautauqua movement is progressive, and its friends and students
are expected to make advancement in the line of its conceptions and
provisions. It has court beyond court in which it unfolds its progressive
aims and introduces its disciples to the higher privileges of culture
which it provides. No fences or lines mark these successive stages. They
do not correspond with the topographical elevations, although we have
found in the one a figure or symbol of the other. But such gradation
exists, and I shall point it out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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