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 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
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 BV 4258 .A5 1911 c.l 
 Alexander, Charles Beatty, 
 
 1849-1927. 
 Western Theological Seminar 
 
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WESTERN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
WESTERN THEOLOGICAL 
 
 SEMINARY '^^ - 
 
 I* 
 
 ADDRESS DELIVERED, BY INVITATION OF ^- -*'^^ ^^^ 
 THE DIRECTORS, ON THE OCCASION OF 
 THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF 
 MEMORIAL HALL, A NEW DORMITORY, 
 NORTH SIDE, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 BY . 
 CHARLES BEATTY ALEXANDER, LL.D. 
 
 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY AND WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON COLLEGE 
 
 MAY THE FOURTH, MCMXI 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE SEMINARY 
 1911 
 
THE TROW PRESS, NEW YORK 
 
Mr. President, Fathers and Brethren : 
 
 We are laying the foundations of a building, 
 the future value of which it is hard to esti- 
 mate. The time is past when institutions of 
 learning were criticized because they spent 
 a great deal of money on their material sur- 
 roundings. While intellectual and moral 
 interests should be supreme, it cannot be 
 denied that the usefulness of a university, or 
 seminary, or college, is very largely depend- 
 ent on the way in which the members are 
 housed. Our Protestant, and especially our 
 Presbyterian, ancestors did not always realize 
 this. They had simple ideas. They thought 
 more of the inward and spiritual grace, than 
 they did of the outward and sensible sign. 
 
 But of late years the advantages of stately 
 architecture have been more and more under- 
 stood. Good buildings not only satisfy the 
 aesthetic sense, but have a moral value. 
 Much might have been lost from the in- 
 fluence of Oxford and Cambridge, if those 
 universities had had their homes in the un- 
 couth houses of the German schools. 
 
There is a practical side to this subject. 
 When a number of young men, preparing for 
 one of the learned professions, have to live 
 with unattractive surroundings, they must be 
 demoralized. To live in rooms that are clean 
 and hygienic and comfortable must surely 
 make for a good and wholesome life. 
 
 Let me say also, that we owe something to 
 men who are going out to sacrifice themselves 
 for the Church. No doubt there are some 
 who will live very well in the great city par- 
 ishes, and in prosperous towns. But there 
 are many who will have to endure hardness 
 as good soldiers of the Cross. It is a 
 great thing for these to have a comfortable 
 home, at least while they are preparing for 
 their great conflict with the world. They 
 can afterwards look back and say that the 
 Church helped them to begin their career 
 in comfort. 
 
 From a layman's point of view the exis- 
 tence of a Theological School of the right 
 kind in a great center of industry like this, is 
 of incalculable value to the City itself. It 
 gives tone to all its surroundings. It brings 
 in residence learned and able men. It gathers 
 in the City advanced students, and it has a con- 
 stant influence on the preachers of the Word, 
 
 4 
 
There have been cases where the influence 
 of a Seminary, of a so-called ultra liberal 
 type, has not been for the good of the sur- 
 rounding Churches. But this is not that 
 kind of an institution. 
 
 In seeing the corner-stone laid of this im- 
 portant building, one cannot help thinking of 
 another less material foundation upon which 
 this Seminary is built. It is built upon the 
 foundation of the Prophets and Apostles. 
 Surely I do not have to tell you what it has 
 done for the Church. It has occupied one 
 of the strategic points, with Princeton on the 
 east. Auburn on the north, and McCormick 
 on the west. 
 
 It has in the years since its foundation in 
 1825 carried on a great work. Its advance 
 under its present able President, Dr. James 
 A. Kelso, of which this building will be an 
 outward and visible sign, is known in all the 
 Churches. It cannot be hid. We con- 
 gratulate him on this auspicious occasion. 
 
 May we not without straining our imagina- 
 tions indulge the hope that this great edifice, 
 which we are beginning, may be one of a 
 group of buildings, under the same able con- 
 trol, testifying to the willingness of Penn- 
 sylvania Christians to express, by their 
 
 5 
 
gifts, their approval of great educational 
 success. 
 
 Bishop Berkeley thought that the course of 
 empire was toward the west. It seems to me 
 that the course of theological empire is to- 
 ward the east. As a Princeton and eastern 
 man, I know what a refreshing source of in- 
 spiration this school of theology and this 
 part of the country have been for different 
 centers of learning. To speak specifically, 
 our gardens farther east have been watered 
 by such men as Archibald Alexander Hodge, 
 M'Gill, Paxton, Warfield, Purves and Gregg, 
 who were famous here before we took them 
 from you. 
 
 There is, however, one professor whom we 
 have never been able to lure across the moun- 
 tains. He remains here, faithful to his ances- 
 tral soil, and loyal to the old blue flag of 
 Alleghany. I refer to that most learned and 
 saintly man, Professor Matthew Brown Riddle. 
 
 It is not for a layman to point out the 
 things that have made this Seminary efficient. 
 Yet I cannot refrain from referring to some 
 of them. 
 
 In the first place, this school has always 
 represented a very definite and uncompromis- 
 ing theology. For want of a better name, 
 
 6 
 
I shall call it Calvinism. Calvinism has had, 
 and still has, its defenders and assailants. 
 It is not always palatable. Sometimes it is 
 thought to be medicinal. It has, however, 
 one great advantage. It is true. However 
 it may be regarded, its principles are the 
 same, yesterday, to-day and forever. The 
 eternal years of God are theirs. 
 
 In all the learned professions, particularly 
 in law and theology, this is an age of com- 
 promise. The period of great advocates is 
 almost past. We know that the battles in 
 the courts are no longer what they were. It 
 is now considered better to have disputes 
 settled out of court, and to avoid the clamor 
 and shouting of the forensic arena. In theol- 
 ogy, it is the same. Men are looking always 
 for a ground on which they can meet, and are 
 seeking to obliterate so far as possible the 
 old dividing walls which were once so bravely 
 defended. 
 
 This tendency has its advantages. It les- 
 sens friction, and makes for peace. But I 
 sometimes think that, with this habit of con- 
 cessions and compromise, we are in danger 
 of effacing the great dividing lines between 
 truth and error, between the right and the 
 wrong. As it was in the days of the Early 
 
 7 
 
Fathers, so it was in the day of the Reformers, 
 so it is in our day. Truth is not discerned 
 and won and conserved by concession and 
 compromise. It is the spoils of war — a war 
 not carnal, but intellectual and spiritual. 
 This Seminary has been no friend of com- 
 promise. 
 
 And let me digress here and now to say 
 to the young men present, from the point of 
 view of the non-official layman, that the secret 
 of clerical success at the present day is the 
 uncompromising preaching of the fundamen- 
 tal doctrines of Our Holy Faith. 
 
 In the second place, it seems to me that 
 you have here taken a very practical view of 
 religious teaching. How indeed could it be 
 otherwise? You could not, if you would, 
 give yourselves over to mere- speculative 
 dogma and sterile scholarship, being so near 
 as you are to the great industrial capital with 
 the flame of its furnaces before your eyes, 
 and the sound of its machinery in your ears. 
 The real world, with its pathetic hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness, is at your very 
 doors; and a man who can study here with- 
 out knowing what he is studying for must be 
 both blind and deaf. 
 
 And thirdly, I think that this school of the 
 
 8 
 
prophets has been great, because of the fire 
 of its missionary spirit. More than one of its 
 professors have come from the foreign field 
 to lead students to see farther horizons and 
 more glorious visions. We recall the great 
 Samuel Henry Kellogg, the translator of the 
 Old Testament into the Hindi language, and 
 Archibald Alexander Hodge. Nor must we 
 forget that a missionary home has given us 
 the distinguished President of this institution. 
 
 I confess that I should like to read the 
 record of those who have gone from here to 
 carry light and life into the African jungle, 
 and into the formidable regions of India and 
 China, or who have worn out their lives on 
 an apparently hopeless frontier nearer home. 
 Our hearts burn when we remember J. C. 
 Lowrie and John Newton (fifty-seven years a 
 missionary). I must pause to tenderly refer 
 to that saint and martyr, F. E. Simcox, who 
 with his lovely wife and their three children 
 was brutally murdered in China in the year 
 nineteen hundred. 
 
 The Sun (of New York) on Saturday last 
 stated that Mr. Carnegie, in an address on the 
 twenty-eighth of April in this city, deplores the 
 expenditure the Churches make for Foreign 
 Missions. I applied to him for a copy of his 
 
 9 
 
address. He replied that he had no notes of 
 his address. He said: "The Sun is not cor- 
 rect. I gave no figures. I think it is the 
 first duty of millionaires to attend to the 
 needs of their neighbors. I count Home 
 Missions first in importance." 
 
 I hope Mr. Carnegie, although he has not 
 contradicted the paragraph, did not say what 
 was credited to him by the Stm. The 
 protest would sound strange from the Donor 
 of the Peace Foundation, which is in itself a 
 missionary work among foreign nations, the 
 expenditures of which will not be confined to 
 territorial limits. The Church will, we hope, 
 continue to send abroad the Heralds of the 
 Prince of Peace. 
 
 I hope you will forgive me now, if I refer 
 to something more personal to me than are 
 these general thoughts. I never come into 
 this part of the country without realizing that 
 it is a place made dear to me by many holy 
 memories. Not far away was born one to 
 whom I owe more than I do to any human 
 being. Her father made Washington and 
 Jefferson College the chief interest of his 
 life. And I am very proud to wear to-day 
 the gown and hood of doctor of laws of that 
 College, bestowed on me at its Centennial. 
 
 lO 
 
She often told me that her religious char- 
 acter was formed, at her mother's side, before 
 she was ten years old, in the old President's 
 Home in Canonsburg, and her interest in 
 the educational work of this region was keen 
 until her life closed last December. My 
 mother was deeply gratified when ten years 
 ago one of my brothers became a director 
 of this institution. 
 
 Moreover the building which we begin to- 
 day replaces one which was built by one of 
 my own kindred, whose name I bear. There 
 are probably very few here who remember 
 Dr. Beatty, and the singular energy and per- 
 tinacity with which he gave himself to the 
 cause of religion and education — the educa- 
 tion of ministers, college education, the educa- 
 tion of women. Although it was many years 
 ago, I remember very well how he came to 
 New York and, with Dr. William Adams of 
 happy memory, worked to unite the divided 
 branches of the Presbyterian Church, to make 
 it once more a mighty fortress against igno- 
 rance and evil. Dr. Beatty was the pioneer of 
 that great body of philanthropists who have 
 made Pittsburg famous. I very vividly recall 
 his wife Hetty, called by hundreds of the 
 women of this region " Mother Beatty," with 
 
 II 
 
her sweet face and Early Victorian curls on 
 each side of her face. She was a woman 
 well worthy of her distinguished husband. 
 
 In closing, we wish for this Seminary a 
 most prosperous career. May it continue to 
 be a source of sound learning and of fervent 
 piety, so long as time shall last. 
 
 We know not what the future has in store 
 for Church or Country. In the Desert of Sa- 
 hara, last winter, I was told, that in the sand 
 storm in the darkest night, under a clouded 
 sky, every true Moslem ever intuitively knows 
 in what direction lies the Sacred City of 
 Mecca. And when he prays, even as Daniel 
 prayed, his " windows open toward Jerusa- 
 lem," he turns toward his Holy Places. May 
 it not be that in the days of darkness which 
 may come in the future. Christians may turn 
 in like manner to this sacred and historic hill, 
 and receive as they pray to the God above, 
 light and guidance and peace. 
 
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