some admirable provisions relating to education. These provisions made it the duty of Presiding Elders to bring the subject of education, as it concerns individual churches, "before the first Quarterly Conference of each year, and secure the appointment of a committee, of which the preacher in charge shall be chairman, to organize, wherever practicable, a church lyceum for mental improvement; to organize free evening schools; to provide a library, text-books, and books of reference; to popularize religious literature, by readingrooms, or otherwise; to seek out suitable persons, and, if necessary, assist them to obtain an education, with a view to the ministry; and to do whatever shall seem best fitted to supply any deficiency in that which the Church ought to offer to the varied nature of man." With the statement of this broad policy, there must be added the fact that the Sunday-schools of the Methodist Church are, as a general thing, largely attended, efficiently organized, and skillfully taught.

The early Methodists distrusted Theological Seminaries. Recognizing as the one necessary qualification for preaching the divine Word, a genuine call from God, they feared the tendency of such institutions would be to convert a sacred mission into a secular business. The views of the Church have undergone some change in this respect, but even now most Methodist congregations would prefer a preacher whose utterances are the fresh outgushing of a soul filled with religious thought and feeling to one who becomes the exponent of the colder formalism and stiffer creeds that are too apt to result from a course of study in the Theology of the schools. The great majority of Methodist ministers, even at this day, come from the ranks of devout young men without special collegiate or theological training, but moved by the Holy Spirit to preach the Gospel. Once admitted into the church service, however, and the young minister is compelled to enter upon a rigid course of study and reading, and to undergo annually for a period of four years a critical examination. Not considering a course in a Theological Seminary essential as a preparation for the ministry, the Methodist Church was not so early or so earnest in establishing higher institutions of learning as some of the other churches; but when once entered upon the work, it was pushed forward with characteristic zeal, and the record made is a very creditable one. Of the Methodist Colleges and Conference Seminaries in Pennsylvania, some account will be given in the proper place. It may be said here,

however, that in establishing higher institutions of learning, the early Methodists gave great prominence to the feature of industrial education. Kingwood Academy in England, founded by Wesley, was organized on the manual labor principle. Cokesbury College, near Baltimore, established in 1788 by Bishops Coke and Asbury, "had connected with it shops, gardens, etc., in which the students were required to spend the hours of recreation, instead of idle plays, which were strictly forbidden." The Maine Wesleyan Seminary, established some years later, was managed on the same plan. And when Allegheny College came into the hands of the Methodists, about 1830, work for the students on a farm and in shops was projected.

CHAPTER VII.

PRIVATE EDUCATION IN EARLY DAYS.

THE CHURCH IN THE WORK OF EDUCATION. THE GERMAN SETTLERS. THE REFORMED AND LUTHERAN CHURCHES.

ENNSYLVANIA as a land of promise became known in Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, through the preaching of Penn and other Friends, who extended their Gospel labors to these countries. The first colonists were the German Friends who settled Germantown. But it was not long until numbers of the oppressed inhabitants of nearly all parts of Germany and Switzerland, and especially of districts along the Rhine, began to seek homes, with wives, children, and all they possessed, in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Among them were members of a dozen different religious denominations, large and small. They all came with the common object of bettering their condition in life, and securing homes in a country where they could enjoy unmolested the right to worship God as their consciences dictated. In Pennsylvania, if nowhere else, they knew they would secure civil and religious liberty. Some of them were very poor, even coming without sufficient money to pay the expenses of their passage, but others were wellto-do, bought land, built houses, and soon by patient industry had about them the comforts to which they had been accustomed. The German immigrants were mostly farmers, but among them there was a smaller proportion of different kinds of mechanics. They brought few books with them, but nearly every individual possessed a Bible and a Prayer or Hymn-book, and many had in addition a Catechism or a Confession of Faith. These were treasures that could not be left behind, and they are still preserved as heirlooms in hundreds of old German families. When they came in bodies, they were usually accompanied by a clergyman or a schoolmaster, or both. They were not highly educated as a class, but among them were some good scholars, and few could be found who were not able to read. The impression has prevailed that they were grossly ignorant; it is unjust; those who make the charge either

do not take the pains to understand, or wish to misrepresent them. Their average intelligence compared favorably with that of contemporary American colonists of other nationalities. If they did not keep pace with others in subsequent years, their backwardness is easily accounted for by their living for the most part on farms, frequently many miles separated, and extending over large sections of country; their division into many religious denominations, among which there was little unity; their inability, scattered and broken as they were, to support ministers and schoolmasters, or even to secure the advantages of an organized community; their use of a language which in a measure isolated them from the neighboring settlers, and shut them out from the social, political, and business currents that gave life to the communities around them; their unacquaintance with the proper forms of local self-government, and the habit brought with them of looking for help, in all public concerns, to some outside or higher authority; and, above all, perhaps, their quiet, confiding disposition, quite in contrast with the ways of some of the more aggressive, self-asserting classes of people with whom they were brought in competition.

Soon after the beginning of the eighteenth century, German immigrants came to Pennsylvania in great numbers. In 1730, the estimated number in the Province was 30,000. By 1750, they had increased to 90,000, the whole population being about 270,000. Ebeling says that, in 1790, the German population was 144,660; and at present fully one-third of the people are either German or of German descent. They form the bulk of the population in many counties, and there is no section of the State in which scattered German families may not be found.

Although invited to settle in Pennsylvania, the Germans, arriving in such large numbers and spreading over the country so rapidly, seem to have created a fear on the part of other settlers and of the Provincial authorities that they would form an unruly element in society, and eventually work the overthrow of the Government or assume possession of it as their countrymen had done long before in England. Laws restraining their immigration were passed, and the alarm disturbed even such well-balanced minds as those of Logan and Franklin. It is almost needless to add now that such a fear was groundless, and arose wholly out of the political and sectarian prejudices of the day. On the contrary, it is only just to say that to all that has gone to build up Pennsylvania, to enlarge her wealth,

to develop her resources, to increase her prosperity, to educate her people, to give her good government, from the first, the German element of the population has contributed a full share. Better citizens cannot be found in any nation on the face of the globe. The outline that is to follow of what was done for education by the dif ferent German churches in the early days, will go far to prove them worthy of the words of commendation thus freely accorded them.

The Reformed and Lutheran churches in the Fatherland, at the time so many of their members were seeking homes in Pennsylvania, were accustomed to provide, as a part of their religious duty, for the instruction of the young belonging to the several congrega tions. The Heidelberg Catechism taught from the first that it is required by commandment of God, "That the Ministry of the Gospel and schools be maintained." The Lutheran teaching on the subject was not less fundamental. "Were I to leave my office as preacher," said Luther, "I would next choose that of a schoolmaster of boys; for I know next to preaching this is the greatest and most useful avocation." "To make provision for the education of children," says he, "is not only the duty of parents, but also of the State and the Church. How can reason and charity allow the youth to grow up uneducated, to become a poison and pestilence, corrupting a whole town?" In most cases, in all German-speaking nations, where there was a church there was a school; the two were under the same control, and the schoolmaster as well as the minister was a church officer. In addition to his duties as an instructor of children, the schoolmaster was generally the organist of the congregation, led the singing, and sometimes officiated at funerals and assisted the minister at the sacred desk. Like the minister he received a stated salary, and was furnished with household accommodations for himself and family. Charges for tuition were fixed by the consistories. Parents who could afford it paid tuition fees, but the children of the poor were admitted free. It was the duty of the minister as his superior officer to supervise the work of the schoolmaster. The school was considered an auxiliary to the church, and the children in attendance always received religious instruction and were prepared for confirmation. "The school teachers," says Dr. John W. Nevin, "were in fact part of the ecclesiastical establishment of the land; and it was their province in particular to see that the young were diligently trained in the knowledge of the Catechism from the beginning, so as to be qualified in due time for a full relig