DR. HAYGOOD’S BATTLE FOR THE NEGRO.

There is something sublime in the spectacle of an earnest man contending for his cause. The sublimity is heightened when we remember that his cause and his convictions are identical, without any reckoning of the cost. Of this character was the figure of Dr. Atticus G. Haygood on the Chautauqua platform, uttering brave words for the Negro, his former slave, but present fellow-citizen. Nor did we have to wait till opportunity made him heard at Chautauqua. From the close of the war until now, he has been a moulder and leader of the best sentiment in the South, and has occupied advanced ground upon all questions relating to the education and welfare of the liberated slave. His recent book, “Our Brother in Black,” is the ablest contribution we have had to the “Negro question.” It breathes throughout the same generous, Christian sentiment and sympathy that characterize all his utterances and his work elsewhere. Nor is the word “battle” too strong a term to be used. When we remember the jealousies, hates, and prejudices of long standing, and greatly intensified by the war; and how they have been kept alive by designing men on both sides; when we bear these things in mind, it is easy to see that it has required no little courage for a Southern man, in the midst of Southern people, with their sentiments and feelings, to take up the black man’s cause and advocate it in words of bold, plain truth.

Dr. Haygood is the Christian, and not the politician. When he praises, as he does without stint, the work accomplished for the Negro by the people of the North, it is not the work of that particular politician, with his promise of “a mule, forty acres, and provisions for a year,” but of teachers, secular and religious, who, with a motive higher than the personal, have sought the elevation, moral and intellectual, of the Negro. He pleads no apology for his Southern brethren who have met these benevolent workers with opposition, social ostracism, and other forms of persecution, but utters his condemnation of this spirit whenever and wherever manifested.

And the results of the first twenty years’ history have justified his high and hopeful views. It is only two years since Senator Brown, of Georgia, said of the Negro, in a speech delivered in the United States Senate: “He has shown a capacity to receive education, and a disposition to elevate himself that is exceedingly gratifying, not only to me, but to every right-thinking Southern man.” The results show that the Negro has a real hunger for the education he so greatly needs. It is shown that in the year 1881, forty-seven per cent. of the colored school population was enrolled as attending the public schools, whilst in the same year there was enrolled fifty-two per cent. of the white population. Though both figures are painfully low, and suggest a condition of great illiteracy, yet, when we remember the past of the Negro—how he has been trampled down and trodden under—the figure 47 at the end of his first twenty years, is both encouraging and significant.

But Dr. Haygood finds his strongest hope in the religious nature of the Negro. The religious element of the race was very manifest in the days of slavery, and since its freedom still more so. The moral and religious progress of twenty years is encouraging. Of seven millions, the entire colored population, a million and a half are communicants of the various churches. Whilst their notions are crude, their conceptions of religious truth often painfully realistic and grotesque, yet their religion is real and worthy of confidence. More than to all other influences combined, to the black man’s religion is due the shaping of his better character. It is from this basis, and working along this line, that Dr. Haygood sees the success of the future. His closing word at Chautauqua is a statement of the whole theory which will commend itself to the sympathy and judgment of right-thinking Christian men everywhere: “Mere statesmanship can not solve this hard problem. It is not given to the wisdom of man; but God reigns, and God does not fail. We are workers with him in his great designs. When we stand by the cross of Jesus Christ we will know what to do. We can solve our problem, God being our helper. But on no lower platform than this—the platform of the Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount.”

THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK.

In a few months we shall be in the midst of another presidential campaign, and one as exciting, perhaps, as the country has known. Already we see earnest preparations for the fray. The party managers are busily laying their schemes; the question of candidates and the measures to secure victory are being thoroughly canvassed by the rival parties.

What now strikes the thoughtful person as he considers the political outlook is the lack of party issues. Two great parties are seen on the eve of a tremendous struggle for the reins of government; but when the question is asked, what are the living issues at the bottom of this fight? one is puzzled for a reply. The situation is about this: instead of coming before the people with certain great principles as a ground of contention, one party has for its cry, “Put the rascals out;” and the other, “Let us keep the rascals from coming in.”

Our feeling is that the case should be different. Are there no living issues important enough to serve as the rallying cry of political parties? Must parties live on a past record? Is there nothing for them to do but to glory in what they have done, and point a finger of contempt at the other side? By no means is this the case. There are to-day vitally important matters pertaining to the public welfare which call loudly to our political leaders for attention; and the party which shall take hold of these matters in an earnest way, and boldly present itself as the champion of principles of truth and justice and purity, ought to be, and must be, the party of the future.

The reform of the civil service might very well be a party issue, but it is not. Neither of the great parties shows a disposition to take a hearty and united stand in favor of such reform. Some prominent men in both parties have it at heart, and the movement which has been seen can not be claimed as a party movement. The reform of the tariff wise men see to be one of the crying needs of the hour; but how hopelessly at sea seem our party leaders in dealing with the question. It can not be said that any principles of tariff are a party issue. There is a wide diversity of sentiment among those who have the management of the parties; on either side are seen free-trade men and protective tariff men; and probably some have their opinions yet to form upon a subject so live and important as the tariff. The nation has a yearly surplus revenue of $100,000,000, to get rid of which extravagant and needless appropriations are made; the embarrassment of certain branches of industry in our land, as things are, is evident; but to which party can we point as the one intelligently and earnestly bent on tariff reform? The time may come when the prohibition of the liquor traffic will be the underlying principle of a great political party, but it is not now. We may have our opinions as to which of the great parties bidding for the suffrages of the people is the more a temperance party, but either is a great way from being ready to adopt as an issue the righteous principle of prohibition. In just one State to-day (Iowa), one of the parties appears as the supporter of this principle. Turn to another State (Massachusetts), which sometimes is thought to lead all the rest in moral ideas, and see the same party fighting neither for this principle nor any other, but simply to wrest the power from Governor Butler.

We judge of the coming national campaign by that now in progress in different States, and we see it is to be marked by a lack of high and worthy party issues. It will be—what it should not be—a contest without great underlying principles. Let whichever party may triumph, the victory can not be regarded one of living principles; it will be rather the success of individuals to whom the majority of the people choose to commit the reins of authority, or the triumph of a party which the people prefer for its record, or to which they give a blind and unthinking preference. Whatever the outcome of the impending political struggle, we have faith in the perpetuity of our institutions, and that there is a nobler destiny for the American people than they have yet attained.

HISTORY OF GREECE.

The installment of Grecian History required in the C. L. S. C. course is not extensive, but has been prepared with much care, and is adapted to its purpose. A careful study—enough to give possession of the principal facts stated, can hardly fail to kindle the desire for further knowledge of a people who had so many elements of greatness, and for centuries surpassed all others in knowledge and culture. The most advanced nations of to-day are largely indebted to the Greeks. Modern art and literature bear witness to the indebtedness. The race had wonderful capabilities. Their country, climate, blood, early habits of self-control, or all these together, secured in that corner of Europe a class of stalwart men, physically and intellectually capable of great deeds.

Much of their early history is, of course, fabulous. The gods, goddesses, heroes and kings, whose councils and exploits are rehearsed, were but myths. Yet the legendary traditions respecting them have charms that attract and hold the reader. We may utterly discredit the story, but pay homage to the ability and versatile genius of the writer, whose glowing words so paint the scenes described. Only a slight basis of fact is conceded to some of the most captivating Homeric descriptions; yet they are in an important sense true. False in history, but sublimely true to the conceptions of the greatest of poets, as a bold delineator, peerless in his own, or any other age. If the ideal of the divinities thought to be interested in the affairs of men falls far below the conceptions of a monotheist, and seems unworthy of a philanthropic heathen, the portraiture is both complete and captivating.

When the mists, that for centuries shrouded Greece and the neighboring isles, are dispersed, and we recognize the certain dawn of the historic period, though the descendants of those mighty heroes and kings that were deified as sons of the gods, shrink to the proportions of men, they are still found to be mighty men, whose noble deeds and achievements have been an inspiration to millions in the generations since. Excepting only such as have the true light, and are blest with Christian civilization, we adopt the statement “No other race ever did so many things well as the Greeks.”

Let the book be closely studied. If the cursory, objectless reader lacks interest, and tires in the work, the student feels more than compensated for his toil.

A COLLEGE REFORM.

The present agitation touching college courses of study is one from which good is likely to come. There is danger, however, that we swing to the other extreme. That undue prominence in the ordinary college curriculum has hitherto been given to classical studies, and too little room made for the modern languages, natural science, and English literature is coming to be widely felt. But the true reform is not utterly to eliminate the classics; it is not the part of wisdom to decry as folly the study of the dead tongues.

The oration of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., last summer at Harvard, published under the title of “A College Fetich,” was quite as unexpected and sensational as that of Wendell Phillips on another similar occasion. Mr. Phillips arraigned his alma mater that her sons were no more active in social reforms, while Mr. Adams charged upon her that, in retaining the dead languages as a required part of the course of study, she was guilty of worshiping a fetich. This grandson and great-grandson of a President, whose illustrious ancestors one after another were inmates of Harvard’s halls, makes against the venerable institution, the most serious charge that her graduates, upon leaving her, are not fitted as they should be for practical life. She sends them forth, he affirms, with a smattering of the dead languages, which is quite without advantage, instead of with a thorough knowledge of what can be turned to practical account and will qualify them for the duties of active life. He would have a drill in the classics no longer required of the college student; but would allow him to win his A. B. by pursuing other and more useful branches of study. Mr. Adams’s bold claim against Harvard, if sustained, would of course hold against other colleges, and against some others would hold in a higher degree.

But we think his statements are too sweeping, and the reform he advocates, because it goes too far, would not be a wise reform. We would not abolish the study of Latin and Greek in our colleges. They are dead tongues, but it does not follow that time spent in their study is wasted. On the contrary, we would have them taught with such thoroughness, by such qualified and skillful teachers that the college graduate will go out with something more than a smattering of them. It is a fact which can not be disproved, that from a study of the classics comes a mental discipline and a mastery of good English, such as can be acquired from nothing else. But that too much comparative attention has been given to these branches is freely conceded. There is a want of more thorough study in our higher institutions of the natural science, the modern tongues, and the models of our own language. The true reform is to cease to magnify Latin and Greek at the expense of these other things, and to give to the latter their due attention. Of the wisdom of elective college courses there can be no doubt. It may not be always best for the young man who has not in view one of the learned professions, but a business life, to spend years in the study of the ancient languages. But it is our judgment that a knowledge of these should always be required of the candidate for the Bachelor of Art’s degree. Certain things are in the air, and we rejoice. Natural science, that field of study in richness so exhaustless, is attracting the student as never before. The importance of gaining a knowledge of languages now spoken, other than our own, is being felt as it was not once. We welcome the indications that promise a college reform. Let us have it without over-shooting the mark.