reflects that today this emphasis upon a place for religious nurture is regarded as part of the "new" education one is able the better to judge the far and clear-sightedness of these pioneers in denominational education.

Again, these worthies were quite convinced that a "liberal" education was not incompatible with true piety. Under the "plan" the students were to be instructed in "English, Latin, Greek, logic, rhetoric, history, geography, natural philosophy and astronomy;" and further, when the finances of the college permitted, there were to be added courses in "Hebrew, French and German." But even so the discipline was more for character than culture. For, we are told, "in teaching the languages care shall be taken to read those authors, and those only, who join together purity, strength and the elegance of their several tongues. And the utmost caution shall be used that nothing immodest be found in any of our books." Even this was not all. "We shall take care that our books be not only inoffensive, but useful; that they contain as much strong sense and as much genuine morality as possible." With learning just for learning's sake these eminently sensible saints had small patience. Education was for them an instrument of life, and as such must minister to clean as well as to sound thinking, to pure as well as to strong feeling.

Once more, following, as they confess, the theories of Locke and Rousseau, play was prohibited in the strongest terms. Instead were offered for recreation the practical

arts of agriculture and architecture,―studies they declare, "of the greatest public utility, necessary for a new-settled country," and therefore a means for promoting patriotism. For the benefit of such as might shrink from a suggestion of this sort as not comporting with the dignity of the higher learning, examples were cited from history of undisputed dignitaries who were not above a practical knowledge of building and farming to which latter art, moreover, the Georgics of Virgil, "one of the completest poetic pieces of antiquity" was devoted. Between the art of the class room and the practice of the plow "the students might delightfully unite the theory and practice together. We say delightfully, for we do not entertain the most distant thought of turning these employments into drudgery or slavery, but into pleasing recreation for the mind and the body."

Religion, the humanities and the most necessary of the domestic arts, these three and the greatest of these religion! Such was the educational creed of early Methodism. And yet the unique thing about the institution was not its curriculum but its place in the thought of the Church. The entire Church was convinced of the value of education and of the higher education. Asbury, indeed, was disposed to favor a school of academy grade. But his fellow workers joined with Dr. Coke in his scheme for a college, and the college became the pride of the whole people. When one remembers the times, the condition of the country, the meagre recourses, the sparse numbers,

the manifold and pressing demands upon every dollar in hand or expected,-one would want no better testimony to the enthusiasm of the people for education than their contribution of $40,000 for the establishment and equipment of Cokesbury College. The money came from the people and, of course, almost altogether in small subscriptions. Asbury traveled incessantly over a wide area, and made the school his chief care; it was entirely characteristic of the man that in multiplied labors he never forgot the enterprise or its needs. During a very trying period he actually went from door to door through the streets of Baltimore begging money to support "the charity boys at the college."

Ten years after its auspicious opening Cokesbury College was destroyed by fire. In the sharpness of his disappointment Asbury concluded that "the Lord did not call the Methodists to build colleges," a remark which was then, and long after, used to dampen the ardor of the denomination in its educational work. That the remark was the outcome of a passing temper is abundantly manifest in the fact that a second Cokesbury College arose withing a year and that Asbury gave the school the same personal supervision as in the case of the original college. When, however, the second building was destroyed by fire, there were many who found in the calamity a Providential confirmation of Asbury's hasty remark, and thereafter, for a time at least, the educational work of the Church, so far as it concerned institutions of "higher learn