By the witness of history, the indebtedness of higher learning to religious fervor is very great. This aspect of education deserves at least as much attention as the retardation and perversion of learning by religious bigotry. The latter is, as we all know, most frequently and loudly stressed today. Again, we hear little of the fact that periods when learning has been gradually secularized have been periods when scholarship grew lax and knowledge halted; until a new impulse of religious conviction re-vivified both the souls and the minds of scholars, with the restilt that academies and universities pulsed with fresh enthusiasm and notable advancement in learning took place. But of many instances of this phenomenon the mention of Abailard and the University of Paris, Wyclif and Oxford, Luther and Wittenberg, Cartwright and Emmanuel, Wolff and Halle, Fichte and Berlin, must suffice. Yet none is more illustrative of our conclusions than Harvard, the creation of the Congregational Puritanism of William Ames.

One of the intrinsic weaknesses of our historical studies is that we can understand the past only by utilizing analogies to our age. What we comprehend of past events or personalities most readily is the features which they seem to have in common with our own forms of life, and it is from these associations that we take our cue in exploring the past. We know how fallacious this method can be, since a closer study of the historical landscape possibly reveals that what we regarded as a landmark had actually little significance in its own age and what we believed a resemblant factor was nothing but a superficial similarity. So we have very often to burn the bridges over which we entered into the territory of the past.

From the opening of the eighteenth century to the close of the Revolution the cause and interests of the Church of England were promoted in the American colonies mainly by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. During this period that organization, commonly known as the S. P. G., employed in the colonies a total of three hundred different missionaries. These men were settled throughout the thirteen colonies, but because of the privileged position occupied by the church in Virginia and Maryland, the distribution was by no means equalized.

The Lutheran church in America has always been faced with the problem of language. Because Lutherans have come to America from continental Europe, there has been the question from earliest colonial days as to which language, or languages, would be used in the services of worship.