THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5243, 24 February 1928, Page 1

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

DEEPLY RELIGIOUS.

IN ALL PHASES OF LIFE.

Dr Frederick Lent, president of Elmira , College, the oldest college for women, in the Uhited States, in addressing the Elmira College Club oil New York, at its monthly meeting, said it was “astonishing ,1W religious, the American people are.’’ As a ll illustration he cited an instance at Atlantic City, where he had' been attending a meeting of the Associations of American Colleges.

“In. that city I saw a building in course of erection,” he said, ‘ and it lookefl to me an ordinary stricture so far as I could see. Attached to a piece of the steel work was a banner bearing the Bible text: “ Except the Lord build a house they labour in vain that build it.” “ One meets evidences of religion everywhere to-day, in the public schools anid in businefe, and I believe, America is , a wonderfully religious country. The average ■, businessman.is very much influenced by religion, whether he acknowledges; it or not. The education of the country is, for the most part, from the kindergarten up, in the hands of genuinely good people'.

“ Every college except the State institutions has a religious foundation, and the impress the average college puts upon its students is religion in the highest sense. American colleges are at' present commanding a great deal of interest, and they are now reckoned! as institutions which can be depended upon; to influence American life for the better.” Dr. Lent spoke of the wide attention is now given to colleges, the interest paid to them by the newspapers anld the ■ moneys donated by philanthropists, many of whom, he said, had never attended college. In this connection he spoke of the founders of two of . the great foundations, the Carnegie, and the Rocket feller Foundation, neither of whom, he said, went to college. ‘ In opening up a career for its stur dents a'college, the speaker continued, widened their intellectual 'horizon gave them capacity for happiness, and made friendships of the finest sort.

He referred to Colonel Roosevelt afe, a college man, who had gathered, up in himself what America and American colleges stand for ; “ a typical American, who embodied ini himself the energy, intellectual force and moral idealism that seems to be American.”