Beneficiary Education [pp. 236-264]

246 BENEFICIARY EDUCATION. [April,
institutions planted around them. Nobles, rulers, and rich men
came to their support. Thus Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, exempted the students at the University of Marburg from all
civil taxa'tion and charges, and endowed fifty bursaries with
prnvisions for board and lodging. Albert, Margrave of Brandenburg, devoted the principal building, that at Kdnigsberg,
to be a dwelling for poor students. The enormous accumulations of monkish property, through many previous centuries
were everywhere devoted to the new and vast necessities of
the kingdom of Christ, and the charities of believers were invoked to provide lodging-houses, bursaries, stipends, free or'
cheap boarding, and other benefits, for the young men who
were gathered, by many hundreds, to these institutions. Our
English word, "college," is a memorial of these charitable
houses, at once dormitories and eating-houses, in which the
students, scattered about in circumstances of temptation, and,
perhaps, of want and neglect, were collected and cared for,
bodily and spiritually. The gifts and bequests of pious men
and women were gladly and liberally bestowed upon these objects. It is upon such historical facts as these, which have
given name to our high institutions of learning, that our best
legal authorities, as Story, Kent, and Marshall, have based
their decisions, that "A college is an eleemosynary or charitable
institution, for the promotion of learning and piety."
Among the Reformed Churches there is no name greater than
that of John Calvin. He was especially gifted by the Spirit of
God with a clear, simple, yet profound insight and comprehension of the doctrine of God, and the principles on which the
New Testament church rests and must be built up. He was
the wise and ardent friend of the education of the young in
every form. He was, as Bancroft says, "the father of popular
education," and to him we owe the system of free schools.
Calvin made it his first care to raise up a thoroughly instructed
and trained ministry. To the first National Synod of the French
Reformed Church, held in Paris in May,`559, and the repre
sentative of "a church whose history is so singularly pure,
beautiful, and sad," this man of clear insight and profound
knowledge gave a Confession of Faith, Catechism, and Directbry of Worship, and a complete system of Church government.
Prominent among its sections and provisions is the one relating