they should not want for worthy, educated leaders, soldiers for their armies, and statesmen for their Congress. Thanks to them, America to-day has no need to hide her face as • she looks upon that line of statesmen that built her political institutions and have occupied her chief places. We owe it to the men that laid the corner-stones and built the walls of these institutions of higher learning, that to-day we stand foremost in civilization, peerless in our industries, and among the richest nations of the world. Fifth. Christianity at the outset, let us mark it—at its birth— set out to be the educating power of the world. " Go," said the Master, when the crucifixion was passed and his resurrection ac complished and He stood for the last time among his disciples gathered around Him with bent heads and sorrowful hearts, "Go, teach all nations." His was the first grand conception of a world-religion that should take in all people. And from that hour they went out, and when the Dark Ages came, when Rome with its civilization, following the track of Greece and its fallen civilization, fell into the dust and was lost to mankind, then in Christian houses, in'those monasteries which we sometimes blame too much, Christian men treasured up what to-day remains to us of the literature of Greece and the learning of Rome. And when there were no others to teach, the learned among the monks, the few among the many, gathered young men in and taught them the last teaching that survived the civilizations of the olden times. Later they built schools and founded medieval universities, and opened the doors of learning everywhere. We owe to Martin Luther the very thought of a common school. It was he who first established alongside of his Protestant churches little schools where the people might learn to read, that they might read the Bible which he had translated for them into the mother tongue, and sing the hymns he composed for their worship. The universities of the middle ages were all of them the result of Christian feeling and Christian sacrifice. I tell you what is con firmed by the records and no history attempts to deny. Nor has Christianity been at any time false or unfaithful to the injunction of its founder. During all the ages after Him they steadily kept that message, " Go, teach all nations," in mind; and to-day show me, if you can, the heathen land anywhere on the globe that the successors of the apostles and the scholars of Jesus, the Great Teacher, have not wet its shores with their tears and too often with their blood. The Free Lance. C MARCH,
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers