The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35Various
General
The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume I., 1834-35
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Upon the subject of moral restraint and college discipline, Mr. Olin
is forcible and interesting. With a mind well organized for the clear
perception of truth, we take the President to be fearless in
proclaiming his convictions, without stopping to calculate the
strength of opposing prejudices and opinions. He does not hesitate to
come up boldly to the mark, and to advocate the only rational system
by which our erring nature, and especially our youthful nature, can be
brought to a just sense of what is due to its own interests, as well
as to the requirements of society. Upon this subject, however, we
prefer that the President should speak for himself.
"In proportion as virtue is more valuable than knowledge, pure and
enlightened morality will be regarded by every considerate father the
highest recommendation of a literary institution. The youth is
withdrawn from the salutary restraints of parental influence and
authority, and committed to other guardians, at a time of life most
decisive of his prospects and destinies. The period devoted to
education usually impresses its own character upon all his future
history. Vigilant supervision, employment, and seclusion from all
facilities and temptations to vice, are the ordinary and essential
securities which every institution of learning is bound to provide for
the sacred interests which are committed to its charge. But safeguards
and negative provisions are not sufficient. The tendencies of our
nature are retrograde, and they call for the interposition of positive
remedial influences. The most perfect human society speedily
degenerates, if the active agencies which were employed in its
elevation are once withdrawn or suspended. What then can be expected
of inexperienced youth, sent forth from the pure atmosphere of
domestic piety, and left to the single support of its own untested and
unsettled principles, in the midst of circumstances which often prove
fatal to the most practised virtue! I frankly confess that I see no
safety but in the preaching of the cross, and in a clear and
unfaltering exhibition of the doctrines and sanctions of christianity.
The beauty and excellence of virtue are excusable topics, though they
must ever be inefficient motives, with those who reject the authority
of revelation; but in a christian land, morality divorced from
religion, is the emptiest of all the empty names by which a deceitful
philosophy has blinded and corrupted the world. I venture to affirm,
that this generation has not given birth to another absurdity so
monstrous, as that which would exclude from our seminaries of learning
the open and vigorous inculcation of the religious faith which is
acknowledged by our whole population, and which pervades every one of
our free institutions. Our governors and legislators, and all the
depositaries of honor and trust, are prohibited from exercising their
humblest functions till they have pledged their fidelity to the
country upon the holy gospels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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