In the preceding chapter you see how God, through my indefatigable perseverance, gave me my first school to teach at the age of twenty, when I only weighed ninety-three pounds and looked like a little boy, so very juvenile, and beardless as a lassie. After the first school, I never had any trouble to get employment whenever I wanted it, and commanded splendid wages. Having taught my first school at the age of twenty, then I wanted to go away to a grammar school and learn English grammar, of which I was utterly ignorant. But as it was universally customary in that country for the boys to work for their parents till they were twenty-one, when they reached majority and received their freedom, I was actually too conscientious to cheat my parents. I was not twenty-one till the third day of the following June, therefore I sold my horse which I had raised on the farm, or rather which my father had given me, for ninety dollars, and hired a stout young man to take my place on my father's farm till the day of my majority. This gave me four months to attend the grammar school, where I made grammar my specialty, devoting all of my time to the study of it, and actually mastered it, so that I could teach it and never did recite it any more. Having reached majority and become my own man, according to the civil law, I never again returned to labor on my father's farm, but devoted all of my time to teaching and attending college. God gave me wonderful physical hardihood, and I was an untiring, assiduous student, the teachers in every school certifying that I accomplished more in the time than any other young man they ever knew. At the age of twenty-one I entered upon the study of Latin and Greek. I carried my books with me everywhere I went and committed them to memory so I could recite them from beginning to end. Though I was then a preacher, I was not sanctified, and had a Napoleonic ambition. One day when we recited our Latin, the teacher assigned us one-half of the conjugation of the active verb "amo" for a lesson, at the same time observing that when he was a student he took a whole verb for a lesson. I spoke out, "I can learn as big a lesson as you or any other man." Then he assigned us the whole conjugation to commit to memory. When the recitation rolled round the next day, I knew every word of it, while all the balance of the class so failed that he reassigned it to them for the next day. We had been studying for about four or five months, when he took me out of the class of beginners and put me in the next highest class, which had studied it one year before I got there. It was not long before I stood at the head of that class. I did not progress so rapidly in Greek, owing to the fact that the teacher, while quite proficient in Latin, was not so thorough in Greek. It was not long until I left that college and went to another, at Georgetown, Ky., which was old and very thorough. I spent six years in the prosecution of my collegiate education, taking the entire regular classical course, finally graduating June 30, 1859, and receiving my Latin diploma. It cost me one thousand dollars, every cent of which, in the providence of God, I made by teaching, as my dear father and mother were not able to give me any financial help.
On our graduating day, when we twenty young men delivered our orations and received our diplomas, six of us were preachers and, sad to say, about six drunkards, and the other eight gentlemen of correct lives. During those six years I saw many young men go out from college, not
only without salvation, but on the slippery steeps of dissipation which precipitate their incumbents into the bottomless pit. I have been praising the Lord all my life for a father and mother who were too poor to give me money on which to dissipate. The greatest intellectualist in our class, a younger man than myself, has already gone to a drunkard's grave, leaving the world as he lived, utterly regardless of God. If my parents had been rich, I, like my classmates and college chums, would have been exposed to those awful temptations which plunged them in ruin and, as we fear, eternally. Oh, what a mistake Christian parents make to pile up money for their children when they are so likely to use it to pay their way to Hell! What a glory if they had only given that money to evangelize one thousand millions of poor heathens through the ages sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death.
I do believe that I will praise God forever in Heaven for giving me parents who never had one dollar to give me to defray my expenses to Hell. But they did give me a patrimony which outshines all the gold that ever glittered, and all the diamonds that ever sparkled, and all the rubies that ever radiated.
That inheritance is God's precious Word and the testimony of His glorious redeeming grace in their own hearts; and an humble Christian home, where God was feared, loved, and obeyed. Well does Solomon say, "Wisdom is better than riches."
I much regret the deprivation of a classical education which has supervened in the last forty years.
The proportion of students in colleges now prosecuting the regular classical course is much smaller than it was during the years of my college life. This is in harmony with the general trend of the age to superficialism, which is manifest in every department of practical life at the present day; e. g., in architectural, for while the buildings of all sorts are vastly more fastidious, showy, and ornamental, they are lamentably deficient in solidity, substantiality, and durability. This you will observe in every ramification of the arch. We are constantly constrained to deplore this tendency in the spiritual realm, where we observe it most obvious and significant throughout, i. e., superficial conviction, insubstantial conversions and unsatisfactory sanctifications; superficial professions all along the line of evangelistic work.
Especially do we observe this superficialism in the educational realm. Learning in all departments has caught the impatient fugitive spirit of the age, dashing through with all possible expedition, rushing to a superficial graduation, reaching the end prematurely and going out into the world professionally ready for business, when the diploma is but a farce and a burlesque. The old style four years' course, Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior classes, which had long prevailed in all the regular colleges, is about given up and superseded by irregular classification, in view of expediting the graduation. It is high time for us to halt and heed the apostle James, "Let patience have her perfect work." We hear them say, "I must finish my education, get out preaching, or off into my missionary field." There is always a wide open door for all to preach who will while they are prosecuting their education. Here we have great Cincinnati, with her suburban cities, comprising half a million people, open wide for evangelistic work, and you find it so everywhere; therefore there is no apology for losing time in response to your call to preach. If you ever succeed in this life, you must learn the great problem of harmonizing perpetual study with incessant labor, in the field of disinterested philanthropy to which you are called. The most blessed collegiate education you will ever receive, instead of winding up your student life only begins it, thus qualifying you to dispense with the constant help and guidance of teachers, paddle your own canoe across the stormy river of probationary life and secure a safe landing on the golden shore of a glorious immortality. If you are ever a success in any department of intellectual labor, you must be a student all your life, surviving
the migratory abstractions of transitory allurements and reaching that concentration of mentality which will make you an incessant student.
(1) You need a classical education to qualify you to successfully study the blessed Bible. This is obvious from the fact that it was never written in your vernacular nor that of any other person now loving on the earth, but in the Hebrew and Greek, which are now dead languages. God, in His providence, after the Scriptures were written in those beautiful and learned languages, took them out of the world, so that people could not corrupt them, as they do every spoken language. But we have this grand thesaurus of God's precious truth revealed for the salvation of a lost world, to which we can go and drink of the water of life, limpid and pure, as it leaps from the fountain, gushing out beneath the throne of God. You can never drink at these fountains unless you learn those original languages; but you will be dependent on translators. That is all right as far as salvation is concerned.
If we drink from the bucket which the translators carried from the fountain, we will never die of thirst, yet, for a thousand reasons I have not space here to mention, we should much prefer to drink at the fountain itself.
(2) We need the Latin and the Greek languages to qualify us to understand the English, four-fifths of which are taken from those languages. In our great, beautiful, versatile and voluminous Anglo-Saxon tongue we have only twenty-three thousand Saxon words, which constitute the nucleus of the great language, comprising the vast vocabulary of a hundred and fifty thousand words, and that vocabulary rapidly increasing. I have no doubt but that the English language which is so rapidly spreading over the whole earth and is now the popular language of the world, so that other nations want their children to learn it, will be the language of the world during the glorious Millennium, whose rising aurora now thrills the hearts of many waiting and longing pilgrims. You never can be very proficient in the great English language without a thorough study of Latin and Greek.
The Alexandrian conquest, B. C. 325, put the Greek language in all the governments under heaven; therefore it was universal in the days of Christ and His apostles. The Roman conquest did the same for the Latin language three hundred years subsequently. Consequently not only the English, but all other languages in present use are so largely taken from those tongues that we need those fundamental languages preparatory to the study of all the modern. A Greek and Latin scholar will learn any of the languages in India much more easily and quickly than the people who have not received a classical education. If you desire thoroughness in any other language, the quickest and surest route is through the meandering halls of classical lore.
(3) We need the Latin and Greek to qualify us for real proficiency in the sciences, all of which we have to study in the nomenclature of these languages. We never can be learned in any sense without studying the sciences, all of which require us constantly to use the dead languages which will be so difficult to learn and retain in the memory in case we have never studied them. For example, zoology, which teaches us all about the animal kingdom, is from zoon, an animal, and logos, science;
therefore it means the science of animals. Astronomy is from astron, a star, and nomos, law;
therefore it means the law of the stars. Whereas the sciences are all expounded in the Greek language, the great bulk of words used in public orations and written dissertations are from the Latin.
If you would master languages so as to have command of words and easy fluency of speech, it is
really indispensable that you study the Latin and Greek, which constitute the boundless thesaurus and illimitable vocabulary of universal language.
(4) We are living in by far the most literary age the world has ever known. During the by-gone ages you could count on your fingers the prominent authors of all nations. Now they are rapidly becoming an innumerable host, flooding the world with literature. It is certainly a glorious privilege to participate in the prevailing aspiration to large usefulness. The study of the Latin and Greek, and actual proficiency in the same, is really indispensable to qualification for efficient authorship.
But you may raise the question of financial inability to acquire these languages. This is really imaginary on your part. That is a circumstance in your favor and not against you. If you had plenty of money it would be difficult for you to resist the temptation to luxuriate and prodigalize; if not to actually fall by dissipation and even debauchery, thus withering and blighting all your hopes of scholarship and usefulness. Read the biographies of the great scholars and you will find they all had to contend with meager finances, if not actual pauperism, from the beginning of their educational course. I was a student twenty-one years, and a constant witness of these phenomena, i. e., the failure and often the wreckage of the rich students, and the brilliant achievements and college honors conferred upon the poor. So rejoice in your poverty and thank God for thus, in His providence, fortifying you against the temptations which on all sides engulf the rich in ruin both for time and eternity. You cannot go through college without money, but God will attend to it if you will be true.
Do not understand me to encourage you to beg your way through. That will never do. If you start on that line, you are ruined before you begin. David says, "I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." You must hold your head up and let all the world know that you are no beggar, but God's millionaire, rich in faith, though not a dollar be in your pocket. By the help of God, I made and paid every cent of my collegiate expenses by my own exertions. God raised up friends in the strange lands whither I sojourned during those six years; as I was under the necessity of leaving the circle of my consanguinity and acquaintance and going among people who knew neither me nor my ancestors. Among those friends, the most prominent was Adison Parks, of Perryville;
Ky., who put his hand on me and took a especial interest in my education loaning me money, indulging me for clothing and giving me employment as a teacher. This good man did not wait for me to ask him to loan me money but he would ask me to remember the year I graduated in college he handed me a fifty dollar bill observing, "I expect you will need this before you graduate." I told him I did but observed: "Brother Parks I already owe you a lot of money, and do not like to take this as I am afraid I will die and then you will never get it for there is nobody to pay it for me." He responded: "You take it and rest easy about it. If you live I know you will pay it back; and if you die please just count it paid, as I would be so glad to help you with the full amount that you owe me."
God let me live to pay him and everybody else the five hundred dollars which I owed for my education When I graduated I was not worth five cents. The churches, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Campbellite, all proposed to educate me gratuitously, but I declined; I knew that in that case they would feel I belonged to them. I was determined to be free and belong to none but God. I shall always praise God for His signal mercy in delivering me in times and ways past my space to enumerate.
When I was toiling hard for an education and the embarrassments of financial destitution, the Campbellites proposed to send me to their great college at Lexington, Ky., and carry me through the
entire curriculum at their own expense. They said: "Then if you will preach for is, we will make you rich." Oh, what a temptation for a penniless boy! It thrilled me with a burning enthusiasm for a thorough collegiate education. It is a wonder I did not get caught in that dangerous lasso. If I had received their education and become their preacher, -- how awful to think! -- I would have preached my own way to Hell! The preacher's Hell is the hottest and most terrible of all, with the people deceived and ruined by false doctrine, forever anathematizing him as the cause of their hopeless run.
It grieves me to see some of our dear holiness people assuming a beggarly attitude, which dishonors God, grieves the Holy Spirit and conduces to their own spiritual leanness, as well as to the delusion of others. God's people are not beggars, but kings and priests. The ink was on the pen to make the title to property in Indiana, said to be worth four thousand dollars. I utterly declined it, and have always been glad of it. The same thing occurred in Texas, which I also declined. It was again repeated in the state of Washington, but, by the grace of God, I was enabled to decline it. Satan is very adroit and ready to use our friends as well as our enemies to tie us up and encumber us, and, if possible, utilize against our fell efficiencies for God and souls.
During my collegiate course I alternated the attitude of student and teacher. In 1857, while in Georgetown College, when the time arrived for me to leave and go to Perryville, I was engaged to teach the public school, which occupied the vacations of the graded schools in the town and precisely suited my convenience, as I wished to lose as little time as possible out of the ensuing college session. I had taught that same school the preceding year at the same time. I just had thirty dollars yet coming to me from my wages the preceding year, and aimed to stay in college only long enough to consume the money I could command. But somehow that time made a mistake, though I was generally very particular. When I hunted up everything I owed preparatory to settlement before leaving, I found it would take sixty dollars instead of thirty to clear me of debt and carry me to Perryville. I got into serious trouble over it, as I was very unwilling to leave there in debt, as students often did to their deep disgrace. I took it to the Lord in prayer and told Him that I was there, understood as a ministerial student, and had promised them all to pay them before I left, and I feared that my delinquency would damage the interest of His kingdom in that place, as I had been reaching and testifying boldly. I was really in deep trouble and cried to Him with a broken heart. He comforted me, taking all my burdens away, drying up my tears and making my heart glad, yet I could not explain it. I was looking for a letter bringing me the thirty dollars. It came and, to my unutterable surprise; contained sixty dollars. When I opened it and read the bills, I could hardly believe my eyes.
Gushing tears of gratitude and surprise flooded my eyes till I could not read the bills. I went around and paid my debts, bidding the people adieu, and mounting the stage, as that was the day before railroads were in that country, I hastened to Perryville. I went at once to see old Dr. Polk, a very venerable local Methodist preacher, who was president of the Board of Trustees. I asked him "Why did you send me sixty dollars, when you only me thirty?" He responded: "When we drew the public money, it amounted to thirty dollars more than we expected, and I felt that we ought to send it all to you, so I went around and asked the patrons what they thought about it. They, without a single exception, responded: 'Of course, send it all to him, for he deserves it; that boy taught us the best school we ever had in town; he labored from sunrise to sunset, as he had so many scholars, in order to give them all due attention.' " The explanation of that is easy and simple. Who ever heard of people overpaying a teacher thirty dollars? God touched the hearts of those stingy Kentuckians to sympathize with the boy, so that they responded unanimously and sent him all the money.