Column on Early Principia college

As I noted previously, a group of men meet here at 10 AM on Mondays. This fall, they are seeing how other religions can teach us about our own faith. Upriver, Principia College is a jewel on the bluffs over Elsah. It is the only college in the country based on the religious thought Of Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science. We have a treasure  in our midst, but one we pass by with a bare glance on the way to music of Grafton, or the fine Pere Marquette Park. (I have yet to bring myself to pronounce pere as peer). Mind over matter is a phrase from Christina Science. I would wonder if our current emphasis on perception and reality has its roots in Christian Science’s cultural impact. Christian Science works with Paul’s admonition to “be transformed by the renewal of your minds.”

It started as an elementary and secondary school based on Christina Science principles. Mary Kimball Morgan started homeschooling her own children, but it developed into a school based on Christina Science principles toward educational reform. “Right thinking leads to successful living.” It became a junior college and plans were drawn up to expand into the only college based on the principles of Mary Baker Eddy. They found that their fine St Louis site would have a new road constructing “right through the center of the proposed chapel.” The Depression was starting, but the founding spirit, Mrs. Morgan, was undeterred. She followed Mrs. Eddy’s injunction that “Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind.” Mrs. Morgan saw human beings as channels for Divine Wisdom. From that source, education meant “to think truly and therefore effectively.” further, education leads us in “developing the power to think accurately, wisely, and with intelligent discrimination; cultivating the ability to dissect thought and to discard that which is not constructive in daily living.”

F. Oakes Sylvester, a poet and painter, worked at the Principia high school. He had a studio near Elsah, and they found that a good bit of land was available from there toward the Chautauqua site at a fair price, including the estate of Lucy Semple Ames, the wealthy businesswoman and advocate of women’s rights. The planning architect, Bernard Maybeck,  San Francisco-based, had said that the new site could be better, and he was thrilled with it as it looked over the river. His buildings work with the contours of the land and re-create the feel of an old English village. “The buildings cannot compete with the beauty of the [Elsah] location, but should fit in without effort.”  Somehow, as the Depression was wrecking fortunes, they raised money and construction started. As promised, the chapel was the first building erected. It shows the New England roots of the faith, as it is a stone version of a meetinghouse.

She was able to see the project to completion as she insisted on a motto of one of the classes: Principle not Persons.” She saw our energies too much directed to vagaries in preferences and opinions., to self-interest and self-centeredness. Divine principle “shows no partiality” and is therefore impersonal, applicable to all. She saw education as more than the acquisition of facts but a step toward wisdom.  . She did not compartmentalize her life, with her religion occupying a small corner. Hers was a thorough-going attempt to do her best to integrate her life, her whole life, with her faith. To make a vision a reality can be miraculous. To create an institution that reflects that vision, that endures through the years is a living testament and connection to those who precede us; we who stand on the “shoulders of giants.”