en with new throngs looking for the first time upon forest, farms,
and lake. Those ivy-covered and moss-grown terraces of Fair Point were
soon to be trodden by the feet of multitudes; and that camp-meeting
stand from which fervent appeals to repentance had sounded forth, to
meet responses of raptured shouts from saints, and cries for mercy from
seekers, was soon to become the arena for religious thought and
aspiration of types contrasted with those of the camp meeting of former
years.

CHAPTER III

SOME PRIMAL PRINCIPLES

WE have looked at the spot chosen for this new movement, and we have
become somewhat acquainted with its two leaders. Let us now look at its
foundations, and note the principles upon which it was based. We shall
at once perceive that the original plans of the Fair Point Assembly were
very narrow in comparison with those of Chautauqua to-day. Yet those
aims were of such a nature, like a Gothic Church, as would readily lend
themselves to enlargement on many sides, and only add to the unique
beauty of the structure.

In this chapter we are not undertaking to set forth the Chautauqua Idea,
as it is now realized--for everybody, everywhere, and in every
department of knowledge, inspired by a Christian faith. Whatever may
have been in the mind of either founder, this wide-reaching aim was not
in those early days made known. Both Miller and Vincent were interested
in education, and each of them felt his own lack of college training,
but during the first three or four years of Chautauqua's history all
its aims were in the line of religious education through the Sunday
School. We are not to look for the traits of its later development, in
those primal days. Ours is the story of an evolution, and not a
philosophical treatise.

The first assembly on Chautauqua Lake was held under the sanction and
direction of the governing Sunday School Board of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, by resolution of the Board in New York at its meeting
in October, 1873, in response to a request from the executive committee
of the Chautauqua Lake Camp Ground Association, and upon the
recommendation of Dr. Vincent, whose official title was Corresponding
Secretary of the Sunday School Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Normal Committee of the Union was charged with the oversight of the
projected meetings; Lewis Miller was appointed President, and John H.
Vincent, Superintendent of Instruction.

Although held upon