C,,
CD
00
CO)
N
1:T


otO ),"I   a
r- *' -c
0<t^ n


rn8
0:
- i w-I






I


— 1 I


THE GIFT OF
S, 30- j






vj/70
lql    7
/9/ct




I




's..,:
a        a,..   0:.
I*






~~u
e I
i
~~51. \.li r rY ~.r ul  ~r ~
tn
rl '
~ ViY1~y;M;jLCLt:
~`
(I \
\ I' V. A Y;
~ ~?
r r I i
~?j.r~~
~~ t~.n~l (~'4t;l~.:


VIEW FROM THEE TERRACE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.




THE DEDICATION OF THE
NEW BUILDINGS
OF THE
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
NOVEMBER 27, 28 AND 29, 1910


BROADWAY AND ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTIETH STREET
NEW YORK








CONTENTS


I. HIST(
II. THE
I.
2.
3 -4.
5.


3RICAL STATEMENT...
EXERCISES OF DEDICATION.
The Sunday Morning Service..
The Communion on Sunday Afternoon
The Student Meeting on Monday Evening.
The Alumni Meeting on Tuesday Morning.
The Dedication Service on Tuesday Afternoon...
The Dinner on Tuesday Evening.


6.


III. THE INSTITUTIONS REPRESENTED
IV. THE DEDICATION SERMON by the Reverend
Professor HENRY SLOANE COFFIN, D.D.
V. THE ADDRESSES AT THE STUDENT MEETING.
I. Historical Address by the Reverend Professor
WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN, Ph.D., D.D.
2. Address by President JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN, Sc.D., LL.D., "Some Elements of
Religious Progress".
VI. THE ADDRESSES AT THE ALUMNI MEETING.
I. Address by the Reverend FRANCIS BROWN,
Ph.D., D.D., D.Litt., LL.D., "The Seminary's New Era"...
2. Address by the Reverend HENRY HAMLIN
STEBBINS, D.D., "The Claim of the Kingdom upon the Seminary".
3. Address by the Reverend WILLIAM PIERSON
MERRILL, D.D., "Our Gospel".
4. Address by the Reverend HOWARD SWEETSER BLISS, D.D., "The Christian Missionary and his Message in the Twentieth
Century....
VII. THE ADDRESSES AT THE DEDICATION SERVICE
I. The Presentation Address by the President
of the Board of Directors, ROBERT CURTIS
OGDEN, LL.D., L.H.D..
3


PAGE
7
I3
16
I7
17
I8
24
28
3I
39
49
51
63
71
73
76
84
92
105
107


234063
~ab x b"-)
%_!   - B _1




4
2. The Response for the Faculty by the Reverend President FRANCIS BROWN, Ph.D.,
D.D., D.Litt., LL.D.....  12
3. The Dedication Address by the Senior
Professor, the Reverend CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS, D.D., D.Litt.....   5
VIII. THE RESPONSES AT THE DINNER.... 137
I. Address of Welcome by the President of the
Board of Directors, ROBERT CURTIS OGDEN,
LL.D., L.H.D..39
2.lResponse by President NICHOLAS MURRAY
BUTLER, Ph.D., LL.D., D.Litt., of Columbia University-" Our Neighbors". 141
3.YResponse by the Right Reverend DAVID H.
GREER, D.D., LL.D., S.T.D., Bishop of
New York-"The City".... 143
4. Response by the Reverend GEORGE ALEXANDER, D.D., Moderator of the Presbytery of New York —"The World"..   46
5. Response of the Reverend Professor EDWARD
C. MOORE, D.D., of Harvard University"The University."..... 147
6. Response by the Right Reverend WILLIAM
LAWRENCE, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Massachusetts-"Our Friends Across the Sea". 155
7. Response by the Reverend Professor GEORGE
WILLIAM  KNOX, D.D., LL.D.-"The
Seminary".....          57
8. Response by the Reverend President JAMES
G. K. MCCLURE, D.D., of McCormick
Theological Seminary -" Sister Seminaries"........  I60
9. Response by the Reverend President WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE, D.D., LL.D., of Brown
University-" The Spirit of Service".. 163
Io. Response by the Reverend President FRANCIS
BROWN, Ph.D., D.D., D.Litt., LL.D."Retrospect and Prospect"...   65




I
HISTORICAL STATEMENT








HISTORICAL STATEMENT


The Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
was founded by a group of Christian ministers and laymen of
the Presbyterian Church who believed that it was wise to
plant a training school for ministers in a great city. They
met first October Io, 1835, and, after three intermediate meetings, constituted a Board of Directors by the election of ten
ministers and fourteen laymen, November 9 and I6, I835.
This Board of Directors held its first meeting January I8,
1836, when it chose its officers, appointed its committees,
adopted the Preamble, and proceeded to further business. January I8, 1836, is therefore regarded as the official date of the
founding of the Seminary.
The Seminary was opened for instruction on Monday, December 5, 1836. The Legislature of the State of New York
passed the Act of Incorporation, March 27, I839, and this was
accepted by the Board of Directors, December 20, 1839.
The Founders of the Seminary were Presbyterians of the
broader type represented in the New School branch of the
Church, and had many affiliations with New England Congregationalism. They had in view a service of wider boundaries
than those of the Presbyterian Church alone. The Seminary
has been from the outset independent of any ecclesiastical control. The only approach to this was that on May I6, i870,
a few months after the Reunion of the Old and New School
wings of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of
America, it conceded to the General Assembly of that Church
the right of veto on the election of its Professors, in the interests of harmony within the Church, and of similarity of
standing for all its Theological Seminaries. This concession
was withdrawn October 13, I892. Now, as heretofore, Union
Seminary is ecclesiastically independent, according to the plan
of its Founders, and the provisions of its Charter.
For many years the Directors and Professors gave their
assent to the Westminster Standards, the exact formula varying from time to time. Since 1905 this requirement has ceased,
and a new form of declaration has been provided, which se7




8


cures the Christian character of the institution in more comprehensive terms. At the present time the Board of Directors
and the Faculty include representatives of the Presbyterian,
Congregational, Protestant Episcopal, Baptist, and Methodist
Episcopal Churches.
The principles underlying the foundation of the Seminary
were expressed in the Preamble adopted at the beginning by
the Founders. The Preamble reads as follows:
PREAMBLE
That the design of the Founders of the Seminary may be
fully known to all whom it may concern, and be sacredly regarded by the Directors, Professors and Students, it is judged
proper to make the following preliminary statement:
A number of Christians, both clergymen and laymen, in the
cities of New York and Brooklyn, deeply impressed with the
claims of the world upon the Church of Christ to furnish a
competent supply of well-educated and pious ministers of the
Gospel; impressed also with the inadequacy of all existing
means for this purpose; and believing that large cities furnish
many peculiar facilities and advantages for conducting theological education; having, after several meetings for consultation and prayer, again convened on the I8th of January, A. D.
1836, unanimously adopted the following resolutions and declarations:
I. RESOLVED, in humble dependence on the grace of God,
to attempt the establishment of a Theological Seminary in the
City of New York.
2. This Institution (while it will receive others to the advantages it may furnish) is principally designed for such
young men in the cities of New York and Brooklyn as are, or
may be, desirous of pursuing a course of theological study, and
whose circumstances render it inconvenient for them to go
from home for this purpose.
3. It is the design of the Founders to furnish the means
of a full and thorough education, in all the subjects taught in
the best Theological Seminaries in the United States, and also
to embrace therewith a thorough knowledge of the standards
of faith and discipline of the Presbyterian Church.
4. Being fully persuaded that vital godliness well proved,
a thorough education, and a wholesome practical training in
works of benevolence and pastoral labors, are all essentially
necessary to meet the wants and promote the best interests of


0




9


the kingdom of Christ, the Founders of this Seminary design
that its Students, living and acting under pastoral influence,
and performing the important duties of church members in
the several churches to which they belong, or with which they
worship, in prayer-meetings, in the instruction of Sabbathschools and Bible-classes, and being conversant with all the
social benevolent efforts in this important location, shall have
the opportunity of adding to solid learning and true piety, enlightened experience.
5. By the foregoing advantages, the Founders hope and
expect, with the blessing of God, to call forth from these two
flourishing cities, and to enlist in the service of Christ and in
the work of the ministry, genius, talent, enlightened piety and
missionary zeal; and to qualify many for the labors and management of the various religious institutions, seminaries of
learning, and enterprises of benevolence, which characterize
the present times
6. Finally, it is the design of the Founders to provide a
Theological Seminary in the midst of the greatest and most
growing community in America, around which all men of
moderate views and feelings, who desire to live free from
party strife, and to stand aloof from all extremes of doctrinal
speculation, practical radicalism and ecclesiastical domination,
may cordially and affectionately rally.
REQUIREMENTS OF THE CHARTER
The Charter provides that "equal privileges of admission
and instruction, with all the advantages of the Institution,
shall be allowed to students of every denomination of Christians."
In fact instruction is given not only in the doctrine and
polity of the Presbyterian Church, but also in those of other
leading Protestant Churches. The student body at the present
time is made up of members of twenty-two different Christian
bodies. All of these are urged to retain their original connection, and to enter the ministry of their respective churches.
The endeavor is made to provide them all with what they need
for effective service to their own people.
THE NEW BUILDINGS
The first Seminary building was at No. 9 University Place,
and was dedicated December 12, 1838. In later years a few
subsidiary buildings were acquired in Winthrop Place (or




10


Greene Street), the next parallel street to the east, and at the
corer of Winthrop Place and Clinton Place (Eighth Street).
In 1884 the Seminary moved to its second home on Lenox
Hill, where its important group of buildings, with the main
entrance at 1200 (afterward 700) Park Avenue, was dedicated December 9, 1884. The generous benefactions of exGovernor Edwin D. Morgan, supplemented by large gifts
from D. Willis James, Esq., Morris K. Jesup, LL.D., and others, made this move possible.
In 1908 the work of constructing the Seminary's third
group of buildings began. The Corer Stone was laid on
Tuesday, November 17, 19o8. The buildings were opened for
instruction on September 28, I91o, and the services of Dedication took place on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, November 27, 28, and 29, I910.
This second move received its impulse and its chief support from the princely contributions of Daniel Willis James,
Esq., for forty years a Director, and Vice President of the
Board since November 17, I898, to which after his death Mrs.
James made large additions. Generous contributions to the
Building Fund were also made by other persons, including Mr.
John Crosby Brown, the late President of the Board of Directors.
A brief description of the buildings follows:
Their architecture is the English Perpendicular Gothic.
They occupy the double block bounded by Broadway, Claremont Avenue, I20th and I22d Streets, and form a large
rectangle, enclosing a Quadrangle approximately 300 feet long
and Ioo feet wide. A part of the west side, however, is for
the present unoccupied by any building.
A tower at the corner of Broadway and I20th Street contains the main entrance hall, rising through three stories. Its
ceiling is vaulted with fan tracery. A wide circular stairway
leads to the upper floors of the Library as well as to the classrooms and Professors' studies and offices in the Administration Building. This comer tower is designed to rise ultimately
to a height of over 200 feet and will then be a striking feature
of the group.
The Library building occupies the Broadway side from the
Entrance Tower to the Library Tower opposite I2Ist Street.
On the first floor are two rooms devoted to the Biblical, Christian and Missionary Museum and to the exhibition of rare
books. Several Seminar rooms occupy the second and fourth
floors. On the third floor is the Reference Library, 1oo feet




11


long by 40 feet wide, with an oak beamed ceiling. The rooms
for library administration adjoin this. The library stack is
beneath the Reference Library, and contains five levels which
connect with various floors. The Library Tower rises over a
vaulted drive-way with ornamental iron gates, the principal
entrance to the Quadrangle.
The Broadway Tower opens also into the Administration
Building, which extends along I2oth Street. The offices of the
Seminary are on the first floor; on the second and third floors
are class-rooms and a large lecture room; the fourth and fifth
are divided into offices and studies for Professors and Instructors. Both the Library and the Administration Building
have access to a terrace, which rises above the main level of
the Quadrangle at the south, and, from within, gives these
buildings, with the Chapel, a fitting prominence.
The Chapel stands on Claremont Avenue, across the Quadrangle from the Library, its lofty tower rising on the axis of
the Quadrangle in line with the Library Tower. This Chapel
has been erected as a Memorial to the late D. Willis James,
Esq., who was a Director of the Seminary for many years,
and its largest benefactor. The great chancel window was
designed and made in England by a firm which during four
generations has produced some of the best work in the typical
English Antique glass.
The President's house occupies the corner of I20th Street
and Claremont Avenue. Between it and the Chapel is a low
Cloister enclosing various service-rooms connected with the
Chapel. On the Quadrangle side an interior Cloister connects
the entire group of buildings.
An Apartment House bounds the Quadrangle on 122d
Street, and provides residences for ten Professors.
The Students' Dormitory extends from I2Ist to I22d
Street on Broadway and contains about one hundred and fifty
sets of rooms. Most of these comprise a study with bedroom
adjoining; a few sets consist of a study and two bedrooms.
Ample toilet accommodations are provided on each floor. In
the Library Tower, with direct access from the Dormitory, is
a Social Room for the use of the Students.
The buildings are of native stone taken from the site, the
window tracery and finished trimmings being of Indiana limestone. A marked detail of the ornamentation is the series of
academic seals and shields, carved in this limestone, on several
faces of the Administration Building and Library.
The buildings are fireproof throughout, are heated by steam




12
and lighted by electricity, and are ventilated in the most approved manner. The main heating and lighting plant of the
group is placed underneath the Dormitory at the lowest point
of the site.
The Quadrangle is turfed and will be planted, so as to
form an attractive and quiet enclosure.
The architects of the buildings are Messrs. Allen & Collens
of Boston, Mass.




II
THE EXERCISES OF DEDICATION
I The Sunday Morning Service
2 The Communion on Sunday Afternoon
3 The Student Meeting on Monday Evening
4 The Alumni Meeting on Tuesday Morning
5 The Dedication Service on Tuesday Afternoon
6 The Dinner on Tuesday Evening.




I




THE EXERCISES OF DEDICATION


The Dedication services began on Sunday morning, November 27, at eleven o'clock, when a large congregation assembled
in the Chapel, and the Dedication sermon was preached by the
Reverend Professor Henry Sloane Coffin, D.D. In the afternoon the Communion was celebrated at four o'clock, the Reverend Anson P. Atterbury, D.D., and the Reverend Professor
Arthur Cushman McGiffert, D.D., officiating.
On Monday evening at eight o'clock a meeting was held
in the Chapel, designed specially for the students of the Seminary and their friends, at which addresses were delivered by
the Reverend Professor William Adams Brown, Ph.D., D.D.,
and President Jacob Gould Schurman, Sc.D., LL.D.
On Tuesday morning at ten-thirty o'clock the Alumni gathered in the Chapel for the anniversary meeting of the Alumni
Association. After an address of welcome by the President
of the Association, the Reverend Henry W. Ballantine, D.D.,
addresses were delivered by the President of the Seminary,
the Reverend Francis Brown, D.D., LL.D., and by representative alumni-the Reverend Henry Hamlin Stebbins, D.D.,
the Reverend William Pierson Merrill, D.D., and the Reverend Howard Sweetser Bliss, D.D. At the conclusion of the
service the alumni and invited guests adjourned to the large
Lecture Room A, where luncheon had been provided by the
Board of Directors.
The formal service of Dedication took place at three o'clock
in the Chapel, admission being by ticket. The Presentation
Address was made by Robert Curtis Ogden, LL.D., the President of the Board of Directors, to which the Reverend Francis
Brown, D.D., LL.D., responded in behalf of the Faculty. The
Dedication Prayer was offered by the Reverend Charles H.
Parkhurst, D.D., the senior member of the Board. The Dedication Address was then delivered by the Reverend Charles
Augustus Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., the senior member of the
Faculty.
In the evening the visiting delegates and many friends and
15




16


guests of the Seminary were entertained at dinner by the
Board of Directors at the Waldorf Astoria.
During Monday and Tuesday the buildings were open for
inspection, and were visited by many of the delegates and
friends of the institution. A brief account of the different
services follows:
I. The Sunday Morning Service
The procession, which consisted of the Choir, the Faculty
and the officiating persons, formed in the cloister and entered
the Chapel during the organ voluntary played by Mr. William
P. Dunn. The service was opened by the recitation of the
Lord's Prayer, led by President Brown, after which the choir
and congregation united in singing Hymn 405, " Soon May The
Last Glad Song Arise." Professor George Albert Coe, Ph.D.,
LL.D., then read the Scripture lesson, Hebrews xi: I-Io, 17 -27, 39, 40; xii: I-2, after which the choir sang Chant 218,
"Benedic, Anima Mea." The congregation then joined with
President Brown in the Apostles' Creed, after which prayer
was offered by the Reverend Professor Thomas Cuming
Hall, D.D.
The usual offering for the Kingdom of God was then received, after which the Choir sang the anthem, "Hymn of
Thanksgiving." The Dedication sermon was preached by the
Reverend Henry Sloane Coffin, D.D., from the text, "Thou
hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name"
(Psalm lxi: 5). President Brown then recited the collect for
All Saints' Day, followed by the benediction: "  Almighty
God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion
and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our
Lord; grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all
virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys which thou hast prepared for those who unfeignedly love thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
" The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep
your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and
of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God
Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst
you and remain with you alway. AMEN."
The procession retired during an organ postlude by Mr.
Dunn.




17


2. The Communion Service on Sunday Afternoon
The Choir and the officiating persons entered the Chapel
during the organ prelude by Dr. Gerrit Smith. After the
Lord's Prayer, in which the congregation were led by President Brown, the Choir sang Chant I5, "Venite." President
Brown then read the Scripture lesson, John vi: 22-51, and
the congregation joined in singing Hymn 599, "Lead us, O
Father, in the paths of peace." The sacrament of the Lord's
Supper was then observed, Professor McGiffert conducting
the administration of the bread and the Reverend Anson P.
Atterbury, D.D., the administration of the cup. After the
singing by the congregation of Hymn 564, " Jesus my Lord,
my God, my All," President Brown offered the concluding
prayer, and pronounced the benediction as follows: "Grant,
we beseech thee, O merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins
and serve thee with a quiet mind, through Jesus Christ our
Lord.
" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, evermore. AMEN."
The service closed with an organ postlude by Dr. Gerrit
Smith.
3. The Student Meeting on Monday Evening
On Monday evening, November 28, at 8 o'clock, the procession, which consisted of the Choir, the Faculty and the
officiating persons, entered the Chapel during an organ prelude by Dr. Gerrit Smith.
President Brown then led the audience in the Lord's
Prayer, after which the Choir sang Chant No. 22, " Venite."
The Scripture Lesson, being Psalm cv, was read by the
Reverend Professor George William Knox, D.D., LL.D., after
which the Choir sang the anthem, " Hymn of Thanksgiving,"
Netherlands Hymn.
The Reverend Professor William Adams Brown, D.D.,
then delivered the Historical Address, at the conclusion of
which the Choir, joined by the audience, sang Hymn No. too,
"All People That On Earth Do Dwell."
President Brown then introduced President Jacob Gould
Schurman, Sc.D., LL.D., of Cornell University, in the following words: '




18


"The next speaker comes to us from a busy life to say
a word which he has deeply at heart. The subject of his
address is to be 'Some Elements of Religious Progress.'
I have great pleasure in presenting to a Union Seminary
audience, President Jacob Gould Schurman, of Cornell University."
At the conclusion of President Schurman's address the
Choir and audience joined in singing Hymn No. 352, " Lead
On, O King Eternal." After this President Brown offered
prayer and pronounced the benediction as follows:
"Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we, thine unworthy
servants, do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for
all thy goodness and loving kindness to us and to all men.
We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, and now in particular for thy goodness to
this Seminary year after year, and for all its benefactors,
supporters, teachers and friends; but above all for Thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord
Jesus Christ, for the means of grace and for the hope of
glory, and, we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all
Thy mercies that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful,
and that we may show forth thy praise not only with our lips
but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to thy service and by
walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days,
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom, with thee and the
Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end.
AMEN.
"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and
the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore.
AMEN."
The procession retired during an organ postlude by Dr.
Gerrit Smith.
4. The Alumni Meeting on Tuesday Morning
The Alumni of the Seminary gathered in the Chapel on
Tuesday morning, November 29, at half past ten o'clock, the
Reverend Henry W. Ballantine, D.D., President of the Society of the Associated Alumni, presiding. The meeting was
opened by an organ prelude, after which Dr. Ballantine offered the following Invocation:
" 0 God, our Heavenly Father, whose kingdom is everlasting, look graciously, we entreat thee, upon this gathering of
thy servants, trained for the ministry of thy holy Gospel in




19


this same Christian Seminary; but now for the first time
finding ourselves in these spacious halls, which thou hast
newly provided for us. We are filled with wonder and joy
and hope, and yet we fear also.
"Unto thee, therefore, we look, the Protector of all who
trust, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy. Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy, that, thou being our
Ruler and Guide, we may so do our parts, both here in this
place at this time and always hereafter in our sacred ministry,
as to promote more and more effectually thy righteous kingdom, and so pass through things temporal that we finally lose
not the things eternal.
"Grant this, O Heavenly Father, for the sake of Jesus
Christ, our Lord. AMEN."
The Choir and audience then joined in singing Hymn No.
304, "The Church's One Foundation."
The Scripture Lesson, Psalm No. cxxii, was read by the
Reverend Charles Ripley Gillett, D.D., the Secretary of the
Associated Alumni.
The Reverend Joseph Dunn Burrell, D.D., then offered the
following prayer:
"0 God, our Heavenly Father, on this auspicious day we
raise our hearts to Thee in thanksgiving and praise and as
those who are the children of this institution especially we
are grateful to Thee for what we see and know, and we bless
Thee for what Thou didst for us through this Alma Mater,
that Thou didst give us here that equipment which has enabled us to do something for Thee in the world, in the ministry of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are humbly grateful
to Thee for that.
" And we look back over the years that are gone and think
of the great number of those who went out from this school
of learning, went out into the world and bore its burdens and
did its work, and gave their hearts and lives to Thee, and
have entered into eternal rest. We rejoice in that noble
record. We pray that Thou wilt help us in our day and
generation to be worthy of it.
"And we rejoice as we lift up our eyes and look into the
future and see the great number who shall go out from these
walls in the spirit of consecration to Thee to work in the
world, and to make the world better by their presence in it,
in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
"O God, for all these things our hearts are grateful to
Thee.




20


"Bless us now while we are here, this hour. Bless those
who shall speak to us. May we gain something afresh of
the spirit of this sacred place. May we gain anew the consecration of Jesus Christ our Saviour, and of Thee our loving
God and Father. May we go away with our hearts burning
within us with gratitude and love.
"These things we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
AMEN."
The Address of Welcome was given by the Rev. Dr. Ballantine, who spoke as follows:
"FELLOW ALUMNI:
"As I happen to be, by your favor, your presiding officer
for the current year, there has come to me, among other
pleasant incidents, to be chosen by the Directors and Faculty
of the Seminary, to convey to you in their name a welcome
to these new halls of study. In spaciousness and all manner
of equipment they greatly surpass any we have hitherto known
our loved Seminary to possess. They probably surpass the
expectations of us all, either singly or together. It is probable they surpass the fondest dreams of most of us, even for
our Seminary's distant future.
" Witnessing, as we have in recent years, the steady and
even rapid enlargement and enrichment of the Seminary, some
of the older graduates of us become almost bewildered. It
is not our achievement. We of the Alumni have rarely
been situated so as to lend even appreciable help. Under
God these great enlargements are the work of the Directors
and the Faculty, who have both devised and accomplished
them.
"Let us not fail, therefore, on this day of dedication and
henceforth, to give to them, the Directors and the Faculty,
our hearty appreciation and their worthy meed of honor.
And let us also thankfully embrace the opportunities afforded
us from time to time to come in here and witness the Lord's
work by these his servants.
" All our hearts are full to-day. Every one of us doubtless
would like to give expression to some at least of the thoughts
and feelings now welling up in our souls. But the limit of
time forbids, all the time that is available being required for
those who have been especially invited to address us.
"We will first hear a brief statement regarding the Cuthbert Hall Memorial Library Fund, from Professor William
Adams Brown, to whom I now give way."




21


Professor Brown then made the following statement:
"MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW ALUMNI:
" It is with great pleasure that I stand here to make report
on behalf of your Library Endowment Fund Committee, the
stewardship of which you have entrusted to our care.,
"Two separate tasks were committed to us: First, the
raising of a general library fund, the income of which should
be used for the purchase of books, and secondly, and more in
particular, a special memorial fund to bear the name of our
beloved President, Charles Cuthbert Hall, the income of
which was to be used for the purchase of books on Christian Missions.
"I have before me the latest statement of the treasurer of
the fund. He tells me that the general endowment fund consists up to date of $9,423.53, to which should be added in
pledges $1,205.
" The Charles Cuthbert Hall Memorial Fund, I am glad to
be able to announce to-day, is complete. This gratifying announcement is made possible through the generosity of an individual, himself a large donor to the fund, who had offered
to guarantee the three hundred and odd dollars which are
still lacking of the five thousand which we planned to raise.
" You will not misunderstand me, I am sure, if I say that
those Alumni in whose heart it may lie to have some part in
the completion of this work of love, have still a chance to
assume to themselves any part of that remaining guarantee
which they may desire, by communicating with Professor
Rockwell, the Librarian, or with Dr. George S. Webster, the
Secretary of the Fund.
" It may be interesting to know some of the facts conhected
with this Memorial Fund, which has been contributed by one
hundred and fifty to two hundred donors, who have sent in
amounts ranging from five hundred dollars to twenty-five
cents. Any amount, however small, which you may desire to
give in loving remembrance of Dr. Hall will be gratefully received by the Committee.
"If, to the contributions to the general fund, we add the
pledges outstanding, the Charles Cuthbert Hall Memorial
Fund, and one further generous gift by Mrs. R. Hall McCormick, secured through one of our Alumni, of five thousand
dollars for the Henry Day Memorial Fund for the further
care and completion of the Bird Hymnological Library, which
was Mr. Day's gift, it will appear that the net result of the
effort made two years ago, has been to increase the funds




22


of our Library by over twenty thousand dollars, and I am
sure you will hear this with gratification."
Dr. Ballantine then introduced the President of the
Faculty, who delivered an address on " The Seminary's New
Era."
At the conclusion of President Brown's address, Dr. Ballantine introduced the Reverend Henry Hamlin Stebbins,
D.D., of the Class of I867, who spoke on " The Claims of the
Kingdom upon the Seminary."
Addresses followed by the Reverend William Pierson
Merrill, D.D., of the Class of I890, who spoke on "Our
Gospel"; and the Reverend President Howard Sweetser
Bliss, D.D., of the Syrian Protestant College at Beirfit, whose
subject was "The Christian Missionary and His Message in
the Twentieth Century."
After the addresses were concluded, the Reverend Dr.
Gillett, the Secretary of the Association, made the following
announcements:
" I wish to call your attention to the announcement on the
general program to the effect that there will be an informal
luncheon at one o'clock to the Alumni and guests, which will
be served in Room A, up one flight of stairs in the Administration Building.
"The interval until one o'clock is only about a quarter of
an hour, but I think that we shall perhaps best spend it by
remaining here in this room, rather than by making a very
partial inspection of the buildings, though those who desire so
to do have that opportunity.
"I hold in my hands four pamphlets, samples of those
which have been placed in the vestibule on the table, and also
in the entrance to the Memorial Tower. Those pamphlets
consist of: (I) the Proceedings at the Laying of the Cornerstone and the Inauguration of Dr. Francis Brown as President
of the Seminary, (2) an Address by the Reverend Charles
Cuthbert Hall on 'Spiritual Expression and Theological Science,' (3) a pamphlet on the Seminary, its Spirit and Aims,
containing addresses which were made on the occasion of the
Annual Dinner of the Alumni Association held in I907, and
finally (4) a pamphlet by Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall entitled,
'Notes of an Address before the Alumni of the Union Theological Seminary,' in the Adams Chapel, in 1903.
"At the conclusion of this service the Choir will pass out
through the centre aisle and the rest of us, being all Alumni,
will remain in this room, or proceed according to our own




23


desire at one o'clock to the room where the luncheon will be
served."
Professor William Adams Brown then made the following
announcement:
" If our quarters were as large as our heart we could wish
that every single alumnus could sleep in this building to-night.
That is unfortunately impossible. There are, however, still
a few single rooms in the building available for Alumni who
may not be otherwise provided for, and as far as they go they
are cordially at your service. If you will kindly communicate
with Dr. McGiffert's office on the ground floor, he will see
what can be done.
" The same is true of the dinner to-night. Here again we
wish we could provide for everyone, but that I fear has not
been possible, partly because we could not anticipate who
would be here. I wish, therefore, to say that we have a number of tickets in the gallery which will be available for those
alumni who will not attend the dinner, but who desire to hear
the speeches which will be delivered. For these tickets also,
will you kindly communicate with Dr. McGiffert or Professor
Bewer. The seats in the gallery will be available at nine
o'clock this evening and will afford an excellent opportunity to
hear the speeches.
" Finally we wish everyone could be accommodated at the
dedication services this afternoon, but because of the fact that
a large number of delegates are coming from institutions all
over the world, we shall have to deny ourselves the pleasure
of including everyone of you, as we should wish, in the services
this afternoon."
The Choir and audience then sang Hymn No. 358, "Who
is On the Lord's Side?"
Prayer was then offered and the benediction pronounced
by President Brown as follows:
"0 Lord, who hast been our dwelling place in all generations we commit ourselves now to Thee, asking that Thou
wilt guide us in the way that lieth before us, and that we
may fear nothing so much as to lose touch with Thee; that
if we see falsely Thou wilt enable us to see aright; that if we
form wrong plans Thou wilt give us thy inspiration that we
may change them to true plans; that in all things Thou wilt
be with us, giving us Thy grace and enabling us more and
more to learn of Thee through Jesus Christ.
"Help us, we beseech Thee, in the varied work of our
lives. May each one in his daily round of service have Thy




24


presence and the joy of it and Thy benediction and the success
of it, and may we all together lift our hearts to Thee constantly in a union of praise for Thy goodness and love and
serve Thee faithfully and obediently unto the end.
" We ask it for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore. AMEN."
The meeting closed with an organ postlude.
5. The Dedication Service
The formal service of Dedication was held in the Chapel
of the Seminary at three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon,
November 29.
The procession formed in the Administration Building,
passed through the central door to the terrace which connects
the Library and the Chapel, descended the steps to the interior court and, moving along the brick walk which bounds
the quadrangle, entered the Chapel in the following order:
The Choir,
The Directors and Faculty of the Seminary,
The Representatives of other Institutions,
The Officiating Persons.
While the procession was forming, the Adagio from Guilmant's fifth sonata was played as an organ voluntary by Dr.
Gerrit Smith, the Musical Director of the Seminary. The
service opened with Hymn No. 139, " All Hail the Power of
Jesus' Name," which was sung by the Choir as a processional.
The Reverend Francis Brown, D.D., President of the Faculty, then led in the recital of the Lord's Prayer, after which
the Choir sang the anthem, "Except the Lord Build the
House," by Gilchrist. The Reverend Joseph Dunn Burrell,
D.D., then read the following Scripture lesson:
"Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, be sober
and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought
unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts
in the time of your ignorance: but like as he who called you is
holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy. And if
ye call on him as Father, who without respect of persons
judgeth according to each man's work, pass the time of your




25


sojourning in fear, knowing that ye were redeemed, not with
corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers; but with precious
blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even
the blood of Christ: who was foreknown indeed before the
foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of the
times for your sake, who through him are believers in God,
who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; so that
your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified
your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love
of the brethren, love one another from the heart fervently:
having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth. For
"All flesh is as grass,
And all the glory thereof as the flower of grass,
The grass withereth and the flower falleth:
But the word of the Lord abideth forever.
And this is the word of good tidings which was preached unto
you.
" Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and
hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as new-born
babes long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that
ye may grow thereby unto salvation; if ye have tasted that
the Lord is gracious: unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious, ye also,
as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy
priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ. Because it is contained in the scripture,
"Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corer-stone, elect, precious:
And he that believeth on him shall not be put to shame."
(I. Peter i: 13; ii: 6.)
He added: " May God bless the reading of His Holy
Word!"
The Choir then sang the Chant, No. 212, " Benedic Anima
Mea."
The President of the Board of Directors, Robert Curtis
Ogden, LL.D., made the address of Presentation, to which
the President of the Faculty, the Reverend Francis Brown,
D.D., made appropriate response.
The Dedicatory prayer was then offered by the Reverend
Charles H. Parkhurst, D.D., the senior member of the Board,
as follows:




26


"Thou divine Christ, Thou kindly Master, in whose presence we are gathered and under Whom we are seeking to
serve, endue us with that appreciation of mind and spirit that
shall qualify us to take the measure of this present occasion
in all the variety of its sweet and solemn import, in its relation to the times past that have led up to this interesting but
serious moment, in its relation to present obligation and opportunity, in its relation to the times forward to which we are
looking and to which this institution is privileged and bound
to bequeath in enlarged abundance its present possessions of
strength, wisdom and grace.
"While confessing the earnestness with which our hearts
are enlisted in this service of dedication, we are assured, O
God, of Thine own divine interest in it, that Thy thought is
engaged in it, that Thine eye, which is sensitive to whatever
is fit and beautiful, rests with satisfaction upon that which
has here been planned and constructed in Thy name, planned
and constructed in attestation of our faith in Thee, in furtherance of Thy cause, in advancement of the interests of Thy
kingdom.
"Thy guiding hand has been in all the history of this
Seminary. In its bright days Thou hast gone before it as
a pillar of cloud; in dark, difficult and troubled days, Thou
hast led the way as a pillar of fire. In all our wanderings
Thou hast kept us in Thy sight and we have ever striven
to keep our faces toward Thee.
"Thou hast counselled this institution through the wisdom
of men of large faith and of devout and loyal intention.
Its foundations didst Thou lay in the intelligence and piety of
men who could see with a long and wide vision and a pure
heart, and as we revert to the years that are past, we bless
Thee, dear Father, for the wealth of this Seminary's history
and for all the power and impulse which survives as a sustaining and moving energy from those who have been the founders of that history and those who have been the shapers of
its purposes and efforts.
" We gratefully remember this afternoon that from the first
the prayerful aim has been to maintain here Christian doctrine
that has been in simple line with Thine own revealed thought,
doctrine that is faithful to that thought, both as narrow and
as broad as that thought and as tender. We appreciate the
heritage thus bequeathed to us, and now our prayer is that
by Thy grace we, who are the heirs of the past, may be strong
to stand erect and to walk unfalteringly under the blessed
burden of that heritage.




27


" May Thy Spirit be the dominating influence in these halls,
may this Seminary be spared the feebleness and the dishonour
of becoming a scholastic institution, may the intelligence of
those who teach and study here be of the clearest and finest,
but intelligence held under the strictest control by a Christian
devotement, with learning treated not as an end, but as a
means, with a constantly cherished consciousness of its relation to the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: and these
grounds, these buildings and all this splendid equipment made
possible by the sanctified wisdom and genius of some who are
living and of those who are gone, be cherished, all of it, as a
holy temple dedicated to Thy service, 0 God, an instrument
of Thy Church appointed for the salvation of the world.
" Continue to enrich with practical wisdom those who are
charged with the responsibility of studying the material interests and administering the government of this institution.
Endue with heavenly wisdom and prophetic vision those who
are appointed to the service of instruction. May those who
as students avail of the rich opportunities here offered enter
these halls as disciples and emerge from them as young
apostles full of divine light, power and purpose, men certified
for the profound in their experience of the saving power of
Christ and with all their hearts aglow with the Gospel message.
" And all this rich legacy of privilege and power into which
as trustees and students we are now entered, all this superb
dowry we do to-day with reverent and loving hearts dedicate
to Thee, O God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, praying Thee
to hallow it all by Thy consecrating spirit that so it may be
not only humanly fitted but sanctified to the work of publishing to the world the redemption wrought out by Jesus Christ
our Lord. AMEN."
Dr. Ogden then introduced the senior Professor, the Reverend Charles Augustus Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., who delivered
the Dedication Address, at the conclusion of which the Choir
and Congregation sang Hymn No. 116, " Our God, Our Help
in Ages Past." President Brown then offered prayer and
pronounced the benediction as follows:
"Most glorious God; Accept through Thy beloved son
Jesus Christ, our thanksgivings for Thine unspeakable love
and goodness. Thou art the Father of mercies and God of
all consolation, full of compassion, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. We thank Thee that thou hast founded Thy
Church upon the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ him



28


self being the chief cornerstone. We thank Thee that Thou
hast committed to Thy ministers the word of reconciliation.
Continue Thy loving kindness unto us that we may rejoice
and be glad in Thee all our days. Guide us by Thy counsel
and afterward receive us to Thy glory; where with all the
blessed host of heaven we may behold, adore, and perfectly
and joyfully praise Thee, our most glorious Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, forever and ever, through Jesus Christ
our Lord. AMEN.
"The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep
your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and
of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, and the blessing of God
Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost be amongst
you and remain with you always. AMEN."
Then followed the Recessional, the Choir and Congregation singing Hymn No. 298, "Glorious Things of Thee are
Spoken."
The services closed with an organ postlude, by Dr. Gerrit
Smith, Lemmens' "Pontifical March."
6. The Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria
The official delegates and a large number of the friends of
the Seminary were entertained at dinner by the Board of Directors at the Waldorf-Astoria on Tuesday evening, November 29, at seven-thirty o'clock.
Tables were spread for five hundred and fifty guests, while
the boxes in the gallery were occupied by many ladies and
gentlemen, including a number of students of the Seminary.
The guests assembled in the large reception room on the
Thirty-fourth Street side of the building and proceeded to the
banqueting room, each of the guests at the speakers' table being escorted to his place by a member of the Board of Directors or of the Faculty.
The seating at the guests' table was as follows, beginning from the right:
*The Rev. Dean WILFORD L. ROBBINS, D.D., LL.D., General
Theological Seminary.
*The Rev. EDWARD B. COE, D.D., LL.D., representing Robert
College, Constantinople.
*The Rev. CHARLES H. PARKHURST, D.D., LL.D., Director of
Union Theological Seminary.
* Unavoidably absent.




29


*The Rev. AMORY H. BRADFORD, D.D., representing Mansfield
College, Oxford, Eng.
The Rev. G. A. JOHNSTON Ross, M.A., representing Westminster College, Cambridge, Eng.
The Rev. PRESIDENT JAMES D. MOFFAT, D.D., LL.D., Washington and Jefferson College.
The Hon. JOHN WANAMAKER.
JACOB H. SCHIFF, Esq.
The Hon. ST. CLAIR MCKELWAY, LL.D., L.H.D., Vice-Chancellor, University of the State of New York.
Acting Chancellor JOHN H. MACCRACKEN, PH.D., LL.D.,
New York University.
The Rev. President WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE, D.D., LL.D.,
Brown University.
The Rev. President JAMES G. K. MCCLURE, D.D., LL.D.,
McCormick Theological Seminary.
The Rev. Professor EDWARD C. MOORE, PH.D., D.D., Harvard University.
The Right Rev. DAVID H. GREER, D.D., LL.D., representing
Columbia University.
President NICHOLAS  MURRAY    BUTLER, PH.D., LL.D.,
D.LITT., Columbia University.
President ROBERT C. OGDEN, LL.D., L.H.D., Union Theological Seminary.
The Rev. President FRANCIS BROWN, PH.D., D.D., LL.D.,
D.LITT., Union Theological Seminary.
The Rev. GEORGE ALEXANDER, D.D., Moderator of the Presbytery of New York.
*The Rev. Professor HENRY VAN DYKE, D.D., LL.D., Princeton University.
The Right Rev. WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D.D., LL.D., representing Durham University, Eng.
The Rev. Professor GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX, D.D., LL.D.,
Union Theological Seminary.
J. PIERPONT MORGAN, LL.D.
The Hon. SETH LOW, LL.D., Director of Union Theological
Seminary.
The Rev. President HOWARD S. BLISS, D.D., Syrian Protestant College, Beirfit.
The Rev. Dean EDWARD L. CURTIS, PH.D., D.D., Yale University.
President JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN, SC.D., LL.D., Cornell
University.
Unavoidably absent.




30


The Rev. President ROBERT W. FALCONER, D.D., LL.D., University of Toronto.
Dean JAMES E. RUSSELL, PH.D., LL.D., Teachers College,
Columbia University.
The Rev. Principal HOLLIS B. FRISSELL, D.D., LL.D., Hamp
ton Institute.
The Rev. Professor JOHN CHARLES ROPER, D.D., representing Oxford University.
The Rev. Professor DUNCAN B. MACDONALD, D.D., representing Glasgow University.
The other guests were seated at small tables which were
tastefully decorated. Souvenir pamphlets containing pictures
and a description of the new buildings were furnished to each
of the guests. Grace was said by the Reverend James D.
Moffat, D.D., LL.D., President of Washington and Jefferson
College. At a quarter past nine promptly the meeting was
called to order by the presiding officer, Dr. Robert Curtis Ogden, who welcomed the delegates and guests present in fitting
words, and read a letter from the President of the United
States, the Honorable William H. Taft, LL.D., in which he
expressed regret at his inability to be present.
Dr. Ogden then introduced the speakers of the evening,
who responded to the following toasts:
President NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, PH.D., LL.D. Our
Neighbors.
The Right Reverend DAVID H. GREER, D.D., LL.D. The City.
The Reverend GEORGE ALEXANDER, D.D. The World.
The Rev. Professor EDWARD C. MOORE, D.D. The University.
The Right Reverend WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D.D., LL.D. Our
Friends across the Sea.
The Rev. Professor GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX, D.D., LL.D.
The Seminary.
The Rev. President JAMES G. K. MCCLURE, D.D. Sister Seminaries.
The Rev. President WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE, D.D., LL.D.,
The Spirit of Service.
The Rev. President FRANCIS BROWN, D.D., LL.D. Retrospect
and Prospect.
The speaking concluded promptly at eleven o'clock, and
Dr. Ogden dismissed the audience with the words: " Ladies
and Gentlemen, good night."




III
THE INSTITUTIONS REPRESENTED




I




THE INSTITUTIONS REPRESENTED


The following Institutions, arranged in the order of foundation, were represented by the Delegates named:
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, the Rev. Professor J. CHARLES
RoPER, D.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS, ANDREW CARNEGIE, LL.D.
GLASGOW UNIVERSITY, the Rev. Professor DUNCAN B. MACDONALD, D.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARBURG, the Rev. Professor W. W.
ROCKWELL, LIC.TH. (Marburg).
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, the Rev. Professor EDWARD C. MOORE,
PH.D., D.D.
YALE UNIVERSITY, the Rev. Dean EDWARD L. CURTIS, PH.D.,
D.D., the Rev. JAMES W. COOPER, D.D.
YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL, the Rev. Professor HENRY H.
TWEEDY, M.A.
THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, the Rev. Professor J. A.
MONTGOMERY, PH.D., S.T.D.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, President NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER,
PH.D., LL.D., LITT.D., the Right Rev. DAVID H. GREER,
D.D., LL.D., Professor JOHN W. BURGESS, PH.D., LL.D.
BROWN UNIVERSITY, the Rev. President W. H. P. FAUNCE,
D.D., LL.D.
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, CHARLES F. MATHEWSON, LL.B., A.M.
RUTGERS COLLEGE, the Rev. Professor GEORGE H. PAYSON,
D.D.
THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN
AMERICA, the Rev. Professor EDWARD P. JOHNSON, D.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA, GEORGE FOSTER PEABODY,
LL.D.
WILLIAMS COLLEGE, President HARRY A. GARFIELD, LL.D.
BOWDOIN COLLEGE, General THOMAS H. HUBBARD, LL.D.
UNION UNIVERSITY, the Rev. President CHARLES A. RICHMOND, D.D., LL.D.
MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE, the Rev. President JOHN M. THOMAS,
D.D.
33




34


WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON COLLEGE, the Rev. President
JAMES D. MOFFAT, D.D., LL.D.
ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. President ALBERT PARKER FITCH, D.D., the Rev. CHARLES L. NOYES,
D.D.
MORAVIAN COLLEGE, the Rev. President AUGUSTUS SCHULTZE,
D.D., L.H.D.
HAMILTON COLLEGE, the Rev. ROBERT G. MCGREGOR, B.D.
BANGOR THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. Professor W. J.
MOULTON, PH.D., D.D.
THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. Professor
HERBERT M. DENSLOW, D.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, the Rev. Chancellor S. B.
MCCORMICK, D.D., LL.D., the Rev. S. B. LINHART, D.D.
AUBURN   THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY, the  Rev. Professor
ARTHUR S. HOYT, D.D.
MCGILL UNIVERSITY, Principal WILLIAM PETERSON, LL.D.,
C.M.G.
TRINITY COLLEGE (Hartford, Conn.) the Rev. PHILIP COOK.
NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION, the Rev. President
GEORGE E. HORR, D.D.
THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN
UNITED STATES, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Rev. President JOHN C. BOWMAN, D.D.
WESTERN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania,
the Rev. President JAMES A. KELSO, PH.D., D.D., the
Rev. Professor D. SCHLEY SCHAFF, D.D.
WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, the Rev. Professor ARTHUR
C. MCGIFFERT, PH.D., D.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, President ROBERT WV. FALCONER, D.D., LL.D.
HANOVER COLLEGE, the Rev. JOHN C. PALMER, D.D.
ILLINOIS COLLEGE, the Rev. THOMAS W. SMITH, D.D.
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, Professor JOHN H. MACCRACKEN,
PH.D., LL.D, Dean D. W. HERING, PH.D., LL.D., Dean
FRANCIS H. STODDARD, PH.D.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, Professor ANDREW C. ARMSTRONG,
PH.D.
LAFAYETTE COLLEGE, Professor WILLIAM B. OWEN, PH.D.
PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE, the Rev. JAMES B. REMENSNYDER,
D.D., LL.D.
HAVERFORD COLLEGE, President ISAAC SHARPLESS, LL.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM, (England), the Right Rev.
WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L.




35


HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. Professor E.
K. MITCHELL, D.D.
WABASH COLLEGE, the Rev. ARTHUR J. BROWN, D.D.
ALFRED UNIVERSITY, the Rev. Professor WILLIAM C. WHITFORD, D.D.
MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE, President MARY E. WOOLLEY,
D.LITT., Professor SAMUEL P. HAYES, PH.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, Professor CASSIUS J. KEYSER,
PH.D.
OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, EDWARD J. WHEELER, M.A.,
LITT.D.
MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL, the Rev. President F. C.
SOUTHWORTH, M.A., S.T.B.
WESTMINSTER COLLEGE, (Cambridge, England), the Rev. G.
A. JOHNSTON Ross, M.A.
COLGATE UNIVERSITY, the Rev. Dean W. H. ALLISON, PH.D.
KNOX COLLEGE-Toronto, the Rev. Principal ALFRED GANDIER, D.D.
MOUNT UNION COLLEGE, President W. H. MCMASTER, D.D.
EARLHAM COLLEGE, the Rev. ROBERT E. PRETLOW, M.A.
LAWRENCE COLLEGE, the Rev. President BRADFORD P. RAYMOND, D.D., LL.D.
THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, Professor FITZGERALD TISDALL, PH.D.
OBERLIN COLLEGE, the Rev. C. J. RYDER, D.D.
ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. President A.
H. STRONG, D.D., LL.D.
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, CHARLES HARVEY FAHS, B.D.,
the Rev. GEORGE MOONEY, A.B., the Rev. THOMAS
NICHOLSON, D.D., LL.D.
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER, ENGLAND, President
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, PH.D., LL.D., D.LITT.
TRINITY COLLEGE, Durham, North Carolina, Professor
GEORGE B. PEGRAM, PH.D.
TUFTS COLLEGE, the Rev. FRANK OLIVER HALL, D.D.
BERKELEY DIVINITY SCHOOL, the Rev. Professor WILLIAM
PALMER LADD, B.D.
CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. President OZORA
S. DAVIS, D.D.
BEREA COLLEGE, the Rev. President WILLIAM G. FROST, D.D.,
LL.D.
HILLSDALE COLLEGE, the Rev. RIVINGTON D. LORD, D.D.
THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL DIVINITY SCHOOL OF PHILADELPHIA, the Rev. Professor LUCIEN M. ROBINSON, D.D.




36


MCCORMICK THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. President
JAMES G. K. MCCLURE, D.D., LL.D.
VASSAR COLLEGE, the Rev. President JAMES M. TAYLOR,
D.D., LL.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, Professor A. H. YODER.
THE SYRIAN PROTESTANT COLLEGE, Beirfit, Syria, the Rev.
President HOWARD S. BLISS, D.D.
THE GERMAN PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF THE
NORTHWEST, Dubuque, Iowa, the Rev. Professor DANIEL
GRIEDER, D.D.
THE LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, Mount Airy, Philadelphia, the Rev. LUTHER D. REED, M.A.
ROBERT COLLEGE (Constantinople), the Rev. EDWARD B. COE,
D.D.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE, Vice-President GEORGE A. HOADLEY,
LL.D.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, President JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN,
LL.D.
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY, President HENRY S. DRINKER, LL.D.,
the Right Rev. ETHELBERT TALBOT, D.D., LL.D.
CARLETON COLLEGE, the Rev. ARCTURUS Z. CONRAD, PH.D.,
D.D.
DREW THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. Professor R. W.
ROGERS, PH.D., D.D., LL.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF WOOSTER, the Rev. Professor CHALMERS
MARTIN, D.D.
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY, the Rev. President EDWARD TWITCHELL WARE.
CROZER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. Professor SPENSER
B. MEESER, D.D.
THE EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF CAMBRIDGE, the
Very Rev. Dean GEORGE HODGES, D.D., D.C.L.
FISK UNIVERSITY, the Rev. President GEORGE A. GATES, D.D.,
Professor WARREN G. WATERMAN, M.A.
HOWARD UNIVERSITY, the Rev. President WILBUR P. THIRKIELD, D.D., LL.D.
IOWA COLLEGE, Professor GEORGE M. WHICHER, LITT.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, EDWARD L. ABBOTT, B.S.
HAMPTON NORMAL AND AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE, the Rev.
Principal HOLLIS B. FRISSELL, D.D., LL.D.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY, the Rev. WILLIAM I. HAVEN, D.D.
GERMAN THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, the
Rev. Professor HENRY J. WEBER, PH.D., D.D.




37


URSINUS COLLEGE, the Rev. President A. EDWIN KEIGWIN,
D.D.
DRURY COLLEGE, the Rev. W. L. SCHMALHORST.
COLORADO COLLEGE, the Rev. President WILLIAM F. SLOCUM,
D.D., LL.D.
PURDUE UNIVERSITY, DANIEL RALPH LUCAS, M.D.
THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, JOHN G. BOWMAN, M.A.
DOSHISHA COLLEGE, the Rev. President TASUKU HARADA,
LL.D.
PARK COLLEGE, the Rev. CLELAND B. MCAFEE, D.D.
SMITH COLLEGE, Professor HARRY N. GARDINER, M.A.
WELLESLEY COLLEGE, Professor ALICE VAN VECHTEN BROWN.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, the Rev. Dean E. H. GRIFFIN,
D.D., LL.D.
WASEDA UNIVERSITY, Professor K. ASAKAWA, PH.D.
HURON COLLEGE, the Rev. President CALVIN H. FRENCH,
D.D.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA, MAXWELL M. UPSON,
B.A.
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, the Rev. Dean WALTER B. SHUMWAY,
D.D.
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE, President M. CAREY THOMAS, LL.D.
THE MEMORIAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, Saharanpur, India,
the Rev. Professor H. C. DELTE, M.A.
CANTON CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, Mr. W. HENRY GRANT.
THE JEWISH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF AMERICA, Professor
ISRAEL FRIEDLANDER, PH.D.
MANSFIELD COLLEGE, Oxford, England, the Rev. AMORY H.
BRADFORD, D.D.
NORTH JAPAN COLLEGE, Sendai, Japan, Professor TEIZABURO
DEMURA, M.A.
CLARK UNIVERSITY, President EDMUND C. SANFORD, PH.D.,
Sc.D.
TEACHERS COLLEGE (Columbia University), Dean JAMES E.
RUSSELL, PH.D., LL.D.
POMONA COLLEGE, the Rev. MILTON WITTLER, B.D.
BARNARD COLLEGE, Provost WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.,
SILAS B. BROWNELL, LL.D.
NORTH CHINA UNION COLLEGE, the Rev. ARTHUR H. SMITH,
D.D.
LELAND STANFORD JR., UNIVERSITY, Professor R. L. WILBUR,
M.A., M.D.
MORNINGSIDE COLLEGE, FRED J. SEAVER, PH.D.




38
ALLAHABAD CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, CHARLES D. THOMPSON, JR.
CENTRAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, the Rev. Professor JAMES
I. GooD, D.D.
Courteous messages of regret came from other institutions,
some of which sent also congratulatory addresses, which were
received with appreciation.




IV
THE DEDICATION SERMON




I




THE DEDICATION SERMON


By the Reverend Henry Sloane Coffin, D.D.
Psalm lxi, 5.
"Thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy
name."
Our first thought, as we set apart these stately and graceful buildings to their use for the Kingdom of God, is naturally of those to whose large faith and generous thought we
owe both the plan for the enlargement of this Seminary's
work and the means for its accomplishment. We recall with
reverent and grateful affection the late President of the
Faculty, Charles Cuthbert Hall, who dreamt dreams of the
destiny possible to this institution upon this commanding site
at the great academic center of the metropolis of the continent; the Christian men of affairs in our Board of Directors, who shared his vision and made possible its achievement upon a scale surpassing even his sanguine hope, such
men as John Crosby Brown and Morris K. Jesup; and in
particular that broad-minded, truth-loving, far-seeing business
man, whose memory this chapel records, D. Willis James,
the Greatheart in the company of those who in recent years
have with signal wisdom, assurance and devotion guided this
school of sacred learning. Of them we may say as we look
about upon that which they planned, but were not permitted
to see completed, " These all died in faith, not having received
these prbmises, but having seen them and greeted them from
afar." We cannot but feel that they commit to us very
wistfully and very trustingly this heavy responsibility, the
weight of which they appreciate, because they carried it in
anticipation. And we, as we accept it from God so directly
through them, are keenly sensible that their consecration in
planning and providing has already given its solemn dedication to that which we are now setting apart to its intended
use. The dedication comes with the gift itself, as we say
gratefully, "Thou hast given us the heritage of those that
fear thy name."
And with these who conceived and prepared for these
41




42


impressive buildings we would couple in our thankful remembrance the illustrious role of teachers, who in the past
have won distinction for this Seminary by their scholarship,
the pastors and missionaries who have gone from its halls
to bring honor to its name by their efficient service of the
Church of Christ, and the ministers and laymen, who with
singular freedom from denominational prejudice and untrammeled by traditionalism, with faith in the living God,
loyalty to Jesus Christ, and seeking to be as inclusive in their
sympathy as He, have shaped its policy, supplied its endowments, directed its affairs and moulded its spirit. It has
been theirs to command for this institution that trust and attachment manifestly evidenced in this incomparable equipment
for its work. It is ours-and how weighty the obligation 1 -to deserve what it has been theirs to secure.
We are dedicating this costly plant to the preparation of
preachers and teachers of religion. Religion comes to every
man, no matter how independent an investigator he may be
in his fellowship with the Invisible, as an inheritance. It
is significant that two of our evangelists in presenting the
biography of the world's most startling religious Innovator, its
most original and self-reliant Man of faith, supply us with
His genealogy, as though His unique convictions were inexplicable and unintelligible apart from their antecedents in a
long succession of believers. This Seminary has been called
in the providence of God to stand for the right and the duty
of each generation to think its own thought of the Most High.
But this by no means implies our want of reverence for those
who have preceded us in the life of faith. It is not the imitative followers of adventurous leaders who are in closest
sympathy with them, but the pioneers who gratefully acknowledge the bounds which their precursors reached, and instead
of remaining within them set out from them to add to the
territory already attained. The God we trust has been man's
old, old home. There can be nothing strictly new in our intercourse with Him. Every emotion we feel in His presence,
every thought of Him that comes to our minds, every word we
utter of praise or petition, every rite we perform in worship,
every task to which we set ourselves as our Father's business,
has a long history behind it. God, even with His unsearchable
riches, would not mean so much to us were it not that into
their fellowship with Him, as into their permanent home,
centuries of believing men and women have put their personalities.




43


"The souls of many thousand years
Have laid up here their toils and fears
And all the agonies of their pain."
Religion, no doubt, means to every man a private understanding between himself and God. He is conscious of following no precedent as he places himself in the everlasting
arms. He is not aware that he is obeying an age-long tradition when he responds to the voice of God in his conscience.
He flies to Him and obeys Him spontaneously, as though God
and he had been made for each other, and suddenly he recognized the affinity. But when he comes to reflect upon his
private fellowship with the Father he discovers that he has
entered a great household of faith. The impulse that drove
him to an unseen Friend and the conscience that spoke to him
with commanding authority have behind them a far-stretching heredity. The confession of his weakness and failure and
sin which he is pouring into the divine ear seems an echo that
comes sounding from every century of the voices of the contrite in heart. His aspiration which rises towards godlikeness
in temper and sympathy and usefulness appears as the outbreathing through him of the souls of the upreaching of every
generation. His consecration to the kingdom of love is an
ancient fire that has blazed in the spirits of untold thousands
since time began. His timid knock at the door of the divine
heart for companionship has admitted him to a thronged presence, where men out of every kindred and tongue and era
stand before God. The divine voice that seemed to whisper
its confidential secret in his ear now sounds as the voice of
many waters, a great harmony of all the heavenly tones that
have fallen on the ears of men from the beginning. Paul uses
a bold but true phrase when he speaks of "the riches of the
glory of God's inheritance in the saints." There is a genuine
sense in which God Himself has more to offer us because of
His acquisitions in the past from all who have served, Him
and are now with Him abidingly. Our first exclamation when
we come into the secret place of the Most High may be, "0
God, Thou art my God." But our next will be: "Lord,
Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." " Thou
hast given me the heritage of those that fear Thy name."
There are some who would challenge our right to place
this theological seminary beside institutions where sciences like
mathematics and chemistry and astronomy are studied. Theology is not to them a science because it does not deal with




44


actual fact. There is no reality they say corresponding to the
name we reverence. Faith in God is an hallucination destined
to become as obsolete as the belief in ghosts and witches. Religion should be studied as part of pathology in a course in
a medical school that deals with nervous disorders, or as an
historical curiosity, as we examine the superstitions of savages. But in setting this school of theology side by side with
these other scientific institutions we claim that we deal with
reality as truly as they. "We know Whom we have believed." The invisible God is as genuine a fact of human
experience as men and things, although we apprehend Him
by faith and not by sight. Like other sciences, theology tests
and criticizes its conclusions, and grows more clear and precise from age to age. Its data are given, as are all other
scientific data, through the experiences of men, primarily the
experiences of the living-for we are in touch with the living
God-but also, and often far more richly, through the experiences of the religiously gifted of the past, the seers of all
time. It is the discoveries of their souls in God, discoveries
confirmed by similar experiences of our own, which give us
the name we fear. Ten thousand times ten thousand of every
race and condition have been in Christ before us, and these
all have had witness borne to them through their faith. Their
witness is evidence which we are not afraid to submit to the
most rigorous tests. The forms in which they bore their testimony may be open to correction and improvement, but the
testimony itself is unimpeachable. "They looked unto Him
and were radiant." They discovered, as it were, a vast new
continent. They explored and chartered Him who is invisible.
They mined unsearchable riches of comfort and strength in
God. They reaped harvests of peace and joy from fellowship with Him. They have been enraptured with prospects of
surpassing beauty in the character of the Altogether Lovely.
They have emigrated to Him and exchanged the ideals and
sympathies and interests of the world about them for the
mind and heart and purpose of God, and He has been the
home of their spirits while they moved freely in the life
of earth. The name they fear is the interpretation of their
experience, their description of what God has been to them.
And that name they pass on to us as their most precious bequest.
The word in our text which needs most emphasis to-day is
the word "name." There is so much anonymous religion
among us. Men devote themselves to investigations of various




45


sets of facts, to the invention of all sorts of appliances, to
social justice, to economic readjustment, to political reform,
to art, to crusades against disease and vice, with a consecration that is essentially religious. In every sphere of life one
finds altars to an unknown God. The devotees of personal
integrity and public rightousness, the zealots for sympathy and
service are legion. And for all this we cannot be too grateful.
But relatively few of the followers of truth and right, beauty
and love, are aware that through these they are in fellowship
with the Lord of heaven and earth, the God and Father of us
all. We should impress our ancestors as extremely undevout.
They might call us irreligious. And in part they would be
justified. One cannot imagine our contemporaries establishing a day of public thanksgiving to God. That custom remains with us as a survival from an era when men in general
took God far more seriously than do we. Ours is not an age
of public or family or personal prayer. Men do not ask themselves how they stand with God. Pure religion and undefiled
is, for us, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction
and to keep oneself unspotted from the world, but we forget
that James wrote, "Pure religion and undefiled before our
God and Father." We insist that it is required of us " to do
justly and to love mercy," but we seldom finish the sentence,
"to walk humbly with thy God." We assent to the saying
that whatever we do to the least of Christ's brethren we do to
Him, but we are not often conscious of direct intercourse between ourselves and Him in the service of men. Our sense
of social responsibility is strong, but we have little sense of
personal accountability to God. Not many men give us the
impression of being intimate with the Most High, " far ben,"
as the Scotch say, His close friends and companions.
It would be very easy and pleasant, although certainly not
novel, to point out the advances we have made upon those who
bequeathed us their convictions. The founders of this institution would probably admit that we were trying to apply
Christianity to many relationships of life which they had overlooked. The attempt seriously to embody the mind of Christ
in business ethics, in international affairs, in the treatment of
the criminal, in every phase of our complex social existence,
commands far more interest than in their day. One is sure,
however, in reading the charter of this institution that with all
this modem broadening of the scope of our religious responsibility our founders would have been in complete accord. But
in this development we must admit that there have been some,




46


perhaps unavoidable, losses. We have lost in our thoughtfulness of God. His universe is so fascinating and absorbing
that we seem to have no surplus attention to devote to Him.
We have lost in reverence. The Old Testament phrase " them
that fear Thy name" seems scarcely applicable to our religious experience. We have lost the tone of authority which
conscience had when men connected it directly with Him that
sitteth upon the throne. And above all we have lost that definite consciousness of our personal relationship with God, which
comes very near to being the essence of vital religion. Indeed,
there is much Christianity which it would not be wholly false
to describe as godless. There are many men who share the
humanitarian attitude of Jesus, who are in sympathy with His
ethical ideals, who cherish His social hopes, but who part company with Him in that which was with Him fundamentalHis sonship with God.
They, whose legatees you and I are, were no worshippers
of an unnamed Deity. They knew Him far too personally
for that. He was the God and Father of Jesus Christ, the
God who revealed Himself to holy men of old and is still revealing Himself to holy men to-day, the God who became entirely frank with His children when His Word became flesh
and dwelt among us, and so gave us God's own name for Himself:
"Jesus, name of wondrous love,
Human name of God above."
Jesus of Nazareth was for them, as He is for us, God's Selfdisclosure in a human life, " God's God in the mind of man."
One may say without exaggeration that all the efforts of
the scholars who gave this Seminary its reputation in days
gone by, and all the struggles for truth and liberty in which
it has engaged, were motived by the desire to set forth more
clearly Jesus Christ as the only and final name for God. This
was the impulse which led its teachers of a past generation to
modify their inherited Calvinism, and which has influenced its
more recent scholars in their Biblical criticism and their restatement of theology in terms of the social purpose of Jesus
-the Kingdom of God. Many good people have not understood them, and have been led to criticize and oppose, when
could they but have known their motive, they would have been
in heartiest sympathy with them. Such misunderstandings
are pathetically inevitable in all advances of thought. The in



47


terest in Jesus Christ we inherit is in Him as the name, the
revelation of God. We give Him all our loyalty, all our trust,
all our consecration, all our worship, and are not idolaters,
because He is for us the image of the invisible God. When
we name Him, we do not think merely of One who lived in
the past, but of the living God, His God and Father, of whom
He is the likeness and to whom He is the way.
The task to which those whose heritage is this conviction
must set themselves to-day is the interpretation to men by
Jesus of that which they are seeking with such religious devotion anonymously. "What ye worship in ignorance, this I
set forth unto you-the God that made the world and all things
therein, He being Lord of heaven and earth, is our Father
disclosed in Jesus Christ, His Son." We must make them feel
that in investigating truth, they are discovering the mind of
the All-wise, whose treasures of wisdom and knowledge for
life are accessible in Christ; that in shouldering social obligations they are bearing burdens which rest on the heart of One
who unceasingly and unsparingly gives Himself to be God and
Father to everybody, as Jesus gave Himself to be everyone's
Friend; that in attempting economic readjustments by which
none shall waste and none shall want, they are fulfilling His
will in whose household there is bread enough and to spare,
and that in the solution of their complex problems they can
draw on His wisdom and sympathy extended in Jesus; that
in working for human health and happiness, they have His cooperation whose attitude towards pain and misery is manifest
in Him who Himself took our infirmities and bore our diseases, and willed that His joy should be in us and that our joy
should be made full; that in seeking to redeem the worthless
into useful men and women, and to regenerate a selfish world
into a " realm where the air we breathe is love," they are coworkers of Him whose eternal purpose is the heavenly social
order Jesus proclaimed and whose nature is the redeeming
love commended to a sinning world on Calvary. The heritage
of which we, with the Church universal, are custodians, and
which it is ours to give to all men, is fellowship with God
through Jesus Christ in seeking His kingdom and His righteousness.
It is significant that the most noticeable and the most
beautiful of this group of buildings is not that which contains
the library or the lecture rooms, but the chapel. This Seminary exists to train men to be skilful workmen in a most,
surely in the most, difficult of callings-the inspiration of lives




48


with the Spirit of God. In their equipment we deem the
primary requisite not knowledge of methods of work, not
familiarity with the best religious thought of others, past or
present, but personal acquaintance with God Himself. Before
all they must be "men of God." And as the center of this
institution's life on its new site, as on its old, we dedicate a
house of prayer.
That which claims the first attention of all who enter here
is yonder window. It symbolizes two great sacraments. The
one is the sacrament of responsibility. "Go ye into all the
world and make disciples of all the nations." It reminds us
that the Church's task is the transformation of an entire world
into the kingdom of love, the remodeling of every institution
and the redemption of every man, woman and child, until society is divine and every individual Christlike. And such responsibility is a sacrament. It is when men are captivated by
this vision and feel themselves committed to this labor that they
realize how desirable, how indispensable God is.
"Ere earth gain her heavenly best a God must mingle in the
game."
The other is the sacrament of memory. The window commemorates a Christian who was a splendid type of the Godfearing man this Seminary would have its graduates seek to
produce by their ministry; and it portrays in symbolical figures
the Church of the past and above all its Lord and ours. As
the light streams through those figured panes into our faces,
so through the memories of the saints, and supremely of the
King of saints, God reveals to us His name. There is the type
of religion for which this Seminary stands-a whole world for
which to feel responsible, and the God disclosed in Jesus Christ
and all His followers with whom to serve it. This responsibility and these memories are our inheritance, the heritage of
those that fear God's name.




V
THE ADDRESSES AT THE STUDENT
MEETING
i Historical Address by the Reverend Professor William
Adams Brown, PH.D., D.D.
2 Address by President Jacob Gould Schurman, LL.D.,
" Some Elements of Religious Progress."








I.


Historical Address
By the Reverend Professor William Adams Brown,
PH.D., D.D.
I have been asked to tell you as much of the history of
the Seminary as it is possible to crowd into thirty minutes. I
am sure you will feel for me. If, in my life as a teacher,
I have ever been lacking in sympathy with any of you, my
fellow students, as you have tried to compress the wisdom
of a lifetime into the rapidly-vanishing minutes of an examination hour, I repent now in dust and ashes. On my table at
home lies a paper which represents my final effort at condensation. It would take me just an hour and fifteen minutes
to read it. Our beloved President, masking under his gentle
mien an inexorable resolution, refuses to allow me five minutes more. What am I to do?
What can I do but what I have done; leave my paper at
home and start afresh?  What I bring to you to-night is not
a history of the Seminary, but the impression which has been
left on my mind as I have tried to relive it.
Every one of us has two lives, an outer and an inner.
The former is made up of event and incident, and the complete record of it would fill many volumes; the latter is a quality of spirit, and a half hour spent alone over the fire may
suffice for the revelation of the best we have. It is with institutions as it is with men. They are spirit as well as body, and
it is the spirit that counts. Bear with me, then, as I try to
interpret to you the spirit of the Seminary as it has revealed
itself to me in my communion with the memories of the past.
The first impression that I have carried away is one of
inner consistency. The story is all of a piece. Seventy-five
years ago nine gentlemen met in the study of Mr. Knowles
Taylor, a prominent New York layman, to consider the expediency of establishing a theological seminary in the City of
51




52


New York. Five of the nine were laymen. All were men
eminent in their various callings and professions. All were
devoted, heart and soul, to the cause of missions, home and
foreign, and many of them were officers or active workers in
the great missionary societies.
These men felt the need of a training school for the Christian ministry, different in kind from any which was then in
existence. The seminaries with which they were familiar
failed to satisfy them at three points. In the first place, they
were under ecclesiastical control; in the second place, the
training which they gave was narrow; in the third place, they
were remote from the great centres of human life. The men
who founded Union believed that there was room for something different, and the ideal which animated them they have
put into words which no Union Seminary man will ever forget.
I will not repeat here the famous preamble, which is the
charter of our liberties. It is enough to remind you of its
salient points, so far as they are necessary for the understanding of the history that followed.
In the first place, the founders expressed their belief that
a great city furnishes peculiar facilities and advantages for
conducting theological education.
In the second place, while providing for instruction in the
doctrine and discipline of the Presbyterian Church, of which
they were members, they declared their purpose to furnish
the means of a full and thorough education in all the subjects
taught in the best theological seminaries in this and other
countries.
In the third place, they emphasized the importance of practical training for an efficient ministry. They believed that it
was not enough to be pious and scholarly; one must know
how to express his faith and to apply his knowledge in action.
Accordingly, they proposed that their students identify themselves with the various churches of the city, actively engage in
their services and become familiar with all the benevolent
efforts of the city and of the time.
In the fourth place, they proposed to train men not only
for the Christian ministry, but for every form of Christian
service, whether educational, philanthropic or religious.
Finally, they wished to provide an institution of truly
catholic spirit, or, in other words, to use their own memorable
language, one " around which all men of moderate views and
feelings who desire to live free from party strife and to stand
aloof from all extremes of doctrinal speculation, practical rad



53


icalism and ecclesiastical domination, may cordially and affectionately rally."
Contact with life in its intensest form, the most thorough
training possible, practical discipline gained through repeated
experiment, a wide outlook and a catholic sympathy, a liberty
safeguarded against the dangers of license, whether on the
side of thought or practice, by devotion to a great cause:such were the ideals of the founders for the institution they
created. We, their descendants, surveying their work after
the lapse of three quarters of a century, find nothing either to
add or to take away.
No doubt there were ups and downs in the history. We
do not always see things with equal clearness, and we are
not always equally true to what we see. Yet, on the whole,
I repeat, the impression produced is one of singular consistency. What Union Seminary was to the mind of its founders,
that it is to us, their descendants, to-day.
The story of the outer life falls into five chapters. First,
the days of struggle and weakness, from 1835 to I852; secondly, the period of reconstruction, financial and educational,
from 1852 to the reunion of the old and new schools in I870;
thirdly, the period of enlarging activity and growing usefulness, including the presidency of William Adams, from 1873
to I880, and culminating in the removal of the Seminary to
its new site on Lenox Hill in 1884. Fourthly, the period of
storm and stress, marked by the veto of Dr. Briggs' transfer
by the General Assembly in I89I, the resumption by the Seminary in I892 of the independence which it had surrendered
in I870, and the trials of Dr. Briggs and of Dr. McGiffert,
and ending with the alteration of the terms of subscription in
I904. Finally, the new era of opportunity and service, in the
dawn of which we stand to-day: I835 to 1852; I852 to I870;
I870 to I884; 1884 to I904; I904 to the present-these are the
outward landmarks. What they mean for the inner life of the
institution we have now to consider.
What then is this spirit of Union, of which we love to
speak? First of all, it is a spirit of confidence in the truth.
If anything may be said to be characteristic of the Seminary
it is this. The founders were, with a single exception, New
School men, and this is only another way of saying that they
were confirmed optimists. Their differences with the Old
School men were not so much theological as ecclesiastical and
practical. They believed that God was in his Heaven, and
therefore that all was well with His world. It was not that




54


they were more radical in their theology, but that they were
more hopeful in spirit. They believed that the truth was able
to take care of itself, and were eager to co-operate in practical effort with every one who shared this faith. Those whom
they associated with them were men of like mind with themselves, and the new Seminary became almost from its birth
the organ of the New School and the training school of its
ministers in the new era of independence which the disruption of 1837 forced upon it.
A single instance will illustrate what I mean. When Henry
B. Smith came to the Seminary in I850 he was fresh from
New England, and what was still more dangerous, only four
years away from Germany. In his inaugural address at Andover a few years before, he had paid a glowing tribute to
Schleiermacher as the great German theologian, who first in
modem times led his fellow countrymen back to the feet of
Christ. It was not strange that a man of such a type should
be looked upon askance in Presbyterian circles. It seems that
some of his own colleagues had their doubts.
Dr. Smith thus describes a conversation which he had with
Dr. White, his colleague in the Chair of Systematic Theology,
just before he came to the Seminary.
"Last evening I spent wholly till eleven o'clock and after
with Dr. White talking over the whole Seminary and matters
thereto belonging. He was rather curious about some of my
theological opinions, and we got into a discussion of two hours
on the person of Christ, in which he claimed that I advocated
something inconsistent with the Catechism, and I claimed that
he taught what was against the Catechism, which was rather
a hard saying against an old-established professor of theology.
However, it was all very well and kind on both sides, and did
not prevent his urging my coming here."
" It was all very well and kind on both sides, and did not
prevent his urging my coming here." Here speaks the spirit
of Union; mutual confidence consistent with the recognition
of individual differences. So may it ever be. God forbid
that the day shall ever come when all the members of the
Union Seminary faculty shall be men of one type, however excellent that type may be.
Next in the order of my impressions is that of thoroughness of preparation. The men who founded Union Seminary
were men of affairs, and they believed in training. They
thought the best training possible was none too good for a
minister of Jesus Christ. They believed in training in theory




55


as well as training in practice, important as they regarded the
latter, and strenuously as they insisted upon it. In the darkest
days of the institution, when the Seminary was practically
bankrupt, they invested $5,000 in the Van Ess Library, a sum
more than half as great as that paid for the site of the building. They knew that a seminary without books was a contradiction in terms, and they were determined that Union
should have the best that could be obtained, whatever the cost.
The spirit of the founders was the spirit of the professors.
I wish I had the time to read the letter written by Dr. Robinson when he accepted his appointment to the Chair of Biblical
Literature. It was no light matter, I can tell you, to study
under this insatiable scholar.
"To understand the Bible," he tells us, "the student must
know all about the Bible. It is not a mere smattering of Greek
and Hebrew, not the mere ability to consult a text in the original Scriptures, that can qualify him to be a correct interpreter
of the word of life. He must be thoroughly furnished for
his work if he be expected to do his work well."
And then he goes on to enumerate the particulars which
fall within the department as he understands it.
"To it properly belong full courses of instruction in the
Hebrew, Greek and Chaldee languages, and also as auxiliaries
in the Syriac, Arabic and other minor dialects; in Biblical Introduction, or the history of the Bible as a whole and its various
parts, its writers, its manuscripts, editions, etc.; in Biblical
Criticism, or the History and condition of the text; in Biblical
Hermeneutics, or the theory and principles of Interpretation;
in Biblical Exegesis or the practical application of those principles to the study and interpretation of the sacred books; in
Biblical Antiquities; and further, a separate consideration of
the version of the Seventy as a chief source of illustration for
both the Old and New Testaments."
This was written in I837. Even our own beloved Dr.
Briggs, from his high tower of theological encyclopaedia surveying the whole field of human knowledge, could find little
to add to such a program.
New subjects have taken their place in the Seminary curriculum, but the old spirit lives on. If sometimes in our zeal
we younger men are tempted to ask of our students more than
we ought, you must remember the training we have ourselves
received. To those who have studied under Dr. Briggs, Edward Robinson professor in fact as well as in name, and the
teachers whom he has trained, lack of thoroughness is not an




56


intellectual failing, it is a moral fault. We cannot help this
feeling. It is bred in our bones. We have drunk it in from
the mother who has nurtured us. We owe it to ourselves; we
owe it to our fellowmen; we owe it to our Master, to learn all
that we can learn, that we may be able to do all that we can do.
With confidence in the truth and thoroughness of training
went courage in the defense of the right. This is my third impression. Twice in its history the Seminary has faced a crisis
which would have daunted men of less heroic mould. From
each it has emerged triumphant. The first was financial. It
met the' Seminary on the threshold of its history before it had
had time to take root in the new soil. The founders met for
the first time in I835. Two years later the panic of 1837 swept
over the country, carrying down with it many of those on
whose support they had relied. Many of the subscriptions,
which had been made in good faith, could not be collected.
The original plans which contemplated houses for the professors had to be abandoned. The property was heavily mortgaged, the salaries of the professors were often months in arrears, and they were reduced to every shift to keep body and
soul together.
But they never faltered for a moment. The darker grew
the outlook, "the more hopeful, even brilliant" it seemed to
them. The words are not my own, but those of Mr. Charles
Butler, clarum et venerabile nomen,-long time our honored
President, himself one of the founders and a participant of
the vicissitudes of those early days. "I can recall in memory," he says, "but cannot describe the feeling that was
reflected on the countenances of the members when called together to consider what could be done to meet the impending
exigencies. These meetings were generally attended by the
professors as well and were always opened and closed with
prayer." Thus began a feature of the Seminary life which
has been characteristic ever since,-the close contact between
Faculty and Board and the entire frankness and confidence
which have ever marked their relations.
The turn of the tide came in 1852. In that year, as the
result of a sermon preached by Dr. Prentiss, a meeting was
called at the house of Mr. Charles Butler, at which it was
resolved to inaugurate a movement for immediate and full
endowment. In the course of the next twenty years, through
the united efforts of the friends of the Seminary, nearly a
million dollars was raised and the financial stability of the
Seminary once for all secured.




57


The second crisis in the Seminary's history was far more
serious and called for courage of a higher order. It was the
struggle with the General Assembly which began with the
veto of Dr. Briggs' transfer to the Edward Robinson Chair in
I89I.
It is not my purpose in this hour consecrated to the forward look to revive old memories. The controversy between
the Seminary and the Assembly has become a matter of history, and it is not necessary in this presence to tell again
what has been retold so often before. Let the dead past bury
its dead. Our interest in the struggle to-day is in its revelation of the spirit of the Seminary.
I can remember as if it were yesterday the intensity of
feeling which marked those early days. The controversy between the Seminary and the Assembly was at its height during the first years of my official connection with the Seminary
Faculty. With what quiet patience all who were concerned
carried themselves during this great ordeal, none could know
better than the younger men who saw them in the intimacy
of the classroom and of the Faculty meeting. The work of
the Seminary proceeded as quietly as if nothing were happening without. We used to say, half in jest, and yet I think it
was literally true, that the only place where you could go without hearing the Briggs case discussed was Union Seminary.
Yet, underneath this quiet exterior a great fire was burning.
It was a time that tried men's souls. Old ties were sundered;
lifelong friendships severed. Every motive that could be
brought to bear upon men was used to influence the Directors
and friends of the Seminary to abandon this faithful servant
of God whom the highest court of their own church had
publicly adjudged a heretic. Financial support was cut off,
motives were impugned, students turned aside to other seminaries, but the men at the helm never faltered for an instant.
They had taken their course deliberately and under a high
sense of responsibilty to God, and they kept it unfalteringly
to the end.
For you younger men, sitting in this beautiful chapel today, with every sight and sound about you ministering to the
sense of peace and beauty, it is difficult to realize what you
owe to those who fought your battles in the past. With a
great price they won the liberty to which we were born. I
think of Butler and Dana, and Jesup and Dodge and Cuthbert Hall and James and Brown, and all the honored roll of
faces whom we miss to-day. Would that they could be with




58


us to rejoice in the new era which their sacrifices and steadfast courage have made possible. Of the living, one name
only I will name, our leader through those years of storm
and stress, through the providence of God preserved to enjoy
in the ripeness of his age the veneration of the sons of Union,
our beloved ex-President, Thomas S. Hastings, wise in counsel, courteous in manner, unswerving in courage, trusted
leader of men who were themselves accustomed to lead, his
name will be held in remembrance wherever men love liberty
and honor truth.
A fourth impression which I have carried away from my
survey is that of catholicity of spirit. I have said that the
founders were New School men, and that means that they
were willing to work with anybody who was willing to work
with them. From the first the doors of the Seminary have
been open to men of all denominations, and all shades of theological opinion have found shelter within its walls. Whatever was of interest to the church of Christ here or across
the sea has found a quick response in the hearts of Faculty
and students. Nowhere has Christ's prayer that his disciples
might all be one been prayed more fervently than within these
walls.
To this eager love for unity must be traced the one serious
mistake in policy which the annals of the Seminary discloseI mean the so-called compact of I870. This was an agreement between the Seminary and the General Assembly, by
which the former agreed to grant the Assembly the right of
veto over its professors, provided the latter would relinquish,
in the case of the seminaries under its control, the right of
direct appointment of professors which it had hitherto exercised. This action was taken at the earnest request of Dr.
William Adams, the leader of the New School in the reunion
movement, and one of the most influential members of the
Board. Himself an ardent lover of liberty, chosen by common
acclaim as the one American Christian fitted to voice his
country's welcome to the Evangelical Alliance at its first
meeting on this side of the sea, so great was his zeal for the
unity of the church that he was willing that the Seminary,
which he loved and served, should surrender some part of
her own liberty, if by doing so she could help others to a
larger freedom. The decision was not made without searching of heart on the part of the Directors and, in the case of
one of them, Mr. D. Willis James, with grave misgivings.
Time proved the action mistaken and in due course the Board




59


resumed the power which for the time it had surrendered.
But if it was a mistake, it was a mistake that honored those
who made it.
The same spirit of catholicity accounts for the last step
taken by the Seminary in its progress toward complete freedom, namely, the abolition of the requirement of subscription
to the Westminster Confession. This action was taken on
November 15, I904, when Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall was
President of the Faculty. In place of the previous requirement it was provided that each new member of the Board and
of the Faculty should in the presence of the Board express
his adherence to the principles of the institution as set forth
in the Preamble of January I8, I836, and the Charter of
March 27, I839. Further action provided that the Directors
should be members in good and regular standing in some evangelical church, that the professors of Systematic Theology
and Pastoral Theology should be ordained ministers of the
Gospel, and that all the members of the Faculty should satisfy
the Board of their Christian faith and life.
This action must not be understood as a departure from
the original principles of the Seminary. On the contrary it
was their natural consummation. If subscription was abolished it was not that we wished to believe less, but that we
might be free to believe more. Above all, it was that we
might open our doors to Christians of every name, that they
might enter in and share our work with us. For years this
principle had been applied to the student body. Now at last
it has been extended to the members of the Faculty and of the
Board.
I have said that this action was taken under Dr. Hall's
presidency, and with the name I mention one who was himself the very embodiment of the spirit of catholicity. I can
see him to-day as he stood in the old library at 700 Park Avenue, when he first met the student body as President-elect,
his face radiant with that sunny smile which we came to
know so well. I need not remind you how quickly he won his
way to the hearts of all whom he touched, or speak of the
many improvements which he introduced into the Seminary
life. The readjustment of the scholarship system on its present basis, the provisions of the Social Room and of the social
spirit, without which the room would have been useless, the
baths and the handball courts, the new home for the Union
Settlement, the redecoration of the Adams Chapel, and the
institution of the new service, the quiet communion seasons at




60


eventide, the kindled enthusiasm for missions,-all of these
and more we owe to him whose face we miss to-day.
Much as he did for us, he was more than all that he did,
and, as we survey these spacious buildings and study their
refined decoration and graceful form, they seem to be the incarnation in stone of that exquisite personality, himself the
expression in human life of the spirit of religion pure and undefiled.
Two final impressions, and I am done. One is of the spirit
of service, the other of the wealth of personality which the
story of Union reveals.
On the first I can touch lightly, not because it is less important, but because it is all important. It is that for which
all the rest of which I have spoken exists. If our fathers
trusted the truth, it was because they had proved its power in
service. If they believed in thorough preparation, it was in
order that they might serve better. If they were courageous
in conflict, it was because they valued the right to serve so
highly that they would suffer no man to rob them of it. If,
finally, they were catholic in spirit, it was because they were
disciples of him whose kingdom is worldwide and who came
to seek and to save the lost.
We have not realized our ideal-far from it-but at least
we can say that we have never appreciated our ideal more
clearly or cherished it more whole-heartedly than we do today. If we have established ourselves on these heights, close
by the great university whose throbbing life we can feel pulsing
through our own veins, it is not that we would abandon the
city to its need, but that we may gain added knowledge to aid
us in the solution of its problems. The Settlement on East
One Hundred and Fourth Street, with its spacious play-ground,
surrounded by crowded tenements, is as truly a part of the
Seminary as this stately pile on Morningside Heights, and far
away on the frontiers of the distant West, or in the lumber
camps of Maine, or among the Negroes of the Southland, or
in China and Japan and India and the islands of the sea, wherever a son of Union in the spirit of his Master is grappling
hand to hand with the problems of human misery and human
ignorance, there the spirit of Union is present and the heart
of the Seminary finds expression.
The other impression is of the wealth of personality. To
no other institution on God's earth, I verily believe, has it been
given in a similar space of time to gather so large a cluster
of devoted friends. What a roll it is that passes before the




61


mind as imagination recalls those who have gone before.
Clergymen like Absalom Peters, Erskine Mason, Albert
Barnes, Samuel Hanson Cox, George L. Prentiss, Edwin F.
Hatfield, Henry B. Smith, Edward Robinson, William Adams,
William G. T. Shedd, Philip Schaff, Roswell D. Hitchcock,
and Charles Cuthbert Hall. Laymen like Knowles Taylor,
Richard T. Haines, William M. Halstead, Norman White, Anson Phelps, Fisher Howe, Frederick Marquand, James Brown,
Edwin D. Morgan, Charles Butler, D. Hunter McAlpin, William E. Dodge, Morris K. Jesup, and last but not least that
far-sighted merchant and simple follower of Jesus Christ,
whose name this chapel commemorates. Others in this company will speak his praises in words more eloquent than mine,
but I cannot deny myself my tribute to his memory. For
more than forty years a Director of Union Theological Seminary, for ten years its Vice-President, always its generous
benefactor and wise counselor, he was its faithful friend in
adversity as in prosperity, and his final gift was but the crown
of a life which was full of giving.
One other there is, of whom piety will not suffer me to be
silent, though piety makes it difficult for me to speak. We
miss to-day one face that was with us at the laying of the
corner-stone a year ago. It is a face that has grown familiar
to many generations of Union Seminary students, not only
through his official position as President of the Seminary, but
in the more informal intercourse of the home. Bound to the
Seminary by ancestral ties, for forty years identified with its
interests as Director, Vice-President and President, intimately
associated with the smallest details of its affairs, it was to him
that Mr. James first communicated his generous purpose, and
it was to him that he confided the execution of his trust. It
was not his privilege to see the completion of these buildings,
into whose every stone he had built his thought and love, but
to the end he carried them on his heart. They were the last
responsibility which he laid down, and the last continued conversation which I had with him only a week before his death
had to do with them.
What was the secret of this devotion? What spell does
Union possess which can bind to her service men such as these
whose names we have mentioned? Let us find our answer in
the words spoken by our late President at his last public appearance with us, when he laid the corner-stone of the new
buildings:
"As the representative of the Board of Directors," so the




62


solemn words run, "I have been requested to lay the cornerstone of this group of buildings, the future home of the Union
Theological Seminary, an institution founded in 1836 by godly
men 'to prepare young men for the service of Christ in the
work of the ministry.' Sharing with the Founders the belief
that for all enduring religious work 'other foundation can no
man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ,' the Directors
set apart this stone as the symbol of the spiritual foundation
upon which this Seminary rests."
Six and twenty years ago the friends of Union Seminary
met upon another hilltop to dedicate a new home. How little
they anticipated what the next quarter of a century would
bring forth. "The present location," said Dr. Hitchcock, in
his memorable dedicatory address, "is apparently for many
decades, if not for all time. This commanding site, so near
the centre of the island, is in little danger of losing its advantages. Right behind us is the great Central Park, close around
us are hospitals, schools and galleries of art, trophies and
adornments of an advancing civilization, but this institution
of sacred learning which we dedicate to-day, interpreter of
God's word, herald of God's grace, outranks them all."
Only yesterday I stood on the old site, now a heap of
ruins, and as I recalled the words which I have just quoted
in your hearing, these other words, spoken by an older member of the Seminary many years before, rose unbidden to my
lips: "Nothing, my brethren, is great in this world but the
Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Nothing but that to a spiritual eye
has the air of permanency."
Nothing in this world is great but the Kingdom of Jesus
Christ, nothing else is permanent. Brick and mortar may decay, stones may crumble into dust, one generation of workers
after another may pass away, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ
endures forever. This is the ground of our confidence as we
look forward to the new and splendid future that we face.
These noble buildings, massive as they are, are to us but the
symbol of a reality far more enduring, even the Kingdom of
our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, God manifest in man, the
same yesterday, to-day and forever.




63


2.
Some Elements of Religious Progress
Address by President Jacob Gould Schurman,
Sc.D., LL.D.
After the very scholarly and instructive and inspiring address of Dr. Brown, to which you have listened, I need offer
no apology for saying, that the thing about Union Theological
Seminary which most impresses an outsider, like myself,
among all the characteristic things which he has mentioned is
its catholicity. When your President honored me with an invitation to speak on this occasion, he didn't limit me inexorably to thirty minutes, but as he understood that I was very
busy, he diplomatically remarked that it was not necessary
to speak more than thirty or forty minutes. I think I can
not do better than attempt to describe as I see them, and as
I have tried to give them expression in my own mind, some
of the phases of religious progress which our generation has
witnessed.
It seemed to me, as I have said, the Union Theological
Seminary was the embodiment of that spirit. And when I
thought of the scholars who have been and are of its Faculty,
the names of many of whom you have heard this evening,
I felt that it in no inconsiderable measure had contributed to
this religious progress in America. Nevertheless, I recognize
that the movement is larger than any institution, and therefore it seemed to me that in a sense it might be said that
Union Theological Seminary was the effect of that spirit. And
a notable institution this Seminary is, notable, and as it seems
to me unique.
Free and unfettered it devotes itself to the pursuit of truth
in the whole realm of theological science and at the same time
it trains young men to the noble calling of the Christian ministry. As it devotes itself to effort in this field it is akin with
the university, and I appeal to this kindred spirit for sympathy
and tolerance. To that spirit I appeal as I endeavor to describe some of the phases of progress of which we have been
conscious in the religious sphere in the last thirty or forty
years.
In the first place, and to put it strongly, I think we have
witnessed a shifting of emphasis from individualism to the




64


improvement or amelioration of the condition of society. I
am not saying that this change is altogether good. I can easily
see or imagine in certain cases that it is carried too far, and
that men are thinking of the improvement of society who
ought to be thinking about their own souls and characters and
about Jesus Christ.
Nevertheless it is a change which has come over the religious world. I think there has never been a time since Christianity came into the world that there is so much sympathy
for the poor and concern for the condition of the poor than
there is to-day in all ranks of society and especially in the
Christian Church, and when we recall that the Founder of
this Church was especially solicitous about the condition of the
poor, we can at least find no fault with this shifting of
emphasis in the attitude and work of the modern church.
I think, however, it becomes us to remember that our attitude
is not and cannot be the same as that of two thousand years
ago. Knowledge and exact science have made great progress
not only in the last two thousand years but in the last two
hundred years, and if the early church thought of relieving
suffering, the church of to-day, certainly, with the scientific
atmosphere through which it lives and moves, will more and
more think of the prevention of suffering, and as there can
be no effective prevention of any evil, whether in the individual's life or in the life of society without the knowledge of
causes, we shall come more and more to studying the causes
of social evil and of the suffering and ills of society. It may
well be that some of the subjects which that worthy of 1837
desired to see incorporated in the curriculum of this institution, Hebraic, Greek, Chaldean, Syriac and Arabic, will in
the course of time be omitted and your students will pay
more attention to useful sciences, with reference both to the
normal condition of society and the evils and sufferings of society. I say this, because I know at the present time that
when ministers and especially young ministers, who are devoted to the welfare of their fellowmen, and burning with
desire to do them good, face this great social problem of
our time they very easily swing to socialism, as though socialism were the only scheme that offered relief for the toiling
masses. I am inclined to think that when we know more
than we generally know to-day about the causes of social
evils, we shall take up with less ambitious schemes and try
for reform and improvement here a little and there a little.
For instance: justice is the fundamental foundation of




65


the State. Plato says of the ideal commonwealth which he
calls his republic, that it is merely justice enlarged. All of
us, in the church and out of the church, have a right to insist
that justice shall be done in the modem State, and if, for
instance, we find the burdens of taxation falling more heavily
on the poor than they fall on the rich and the well-to-do, then,
in the name of justice we have a right to demand that these
systems of indirect taxation which produce such an effect
shall be modified, and that some device-income tax or what
not-shall be found which shall compel the prosperous
classes of the community to support the government in proportion to their means and to the relief of the great mass of
the poor and indigent.
But to continue. The Christian Church is devoted to peace
on earth and good will to men. It is the shame of Christendom, the burning, intolerable shame of Christendom, that so
large a proportion of all the wealth produced in our industrial
communities is used to provide the instrumentalities of warfare. Socialism does well to cry out against the militant spirit
of our time and denounce it. I believe that if all branches of
the Christian Church in all countries denounce it with the same
fervor and earnestness that statesmen of the great powers of
the world would find a solution of this problem or give up
their jobs.
A second change which I notice in the religious world is
a reaction from dogmatic religion and a recoil towards what
I shall call spiritual religion. All the religions of the world,
as I understand them, have three elements. They have an
intellectual element; they must, therefore, be dogmatic. They
have an aesthetic element, and, therefore, have rituals, and they
have a moral and a spiritual element. For hundreds, I might
almost say, for thousands of years, the Christian religion has
laid stress on dogma as the essential feature of religion. The
earliest religions laid stress on ritual. A man among those
communities would not be a heretic or a wrong believer, but
he would be a wrongdoer because he did not perform the rituals in the right way.
But we are coming, nowadays, to feel, I think, throughout
the religious world in general that neither of these elements
is the essential element in religion, though both of them will,
I suppose, always be present in all religions. We are coming
to realize more and more that the essence of religion is the
spirit and attitude and freedom of mind with which they approach their problems.




66


The Founder of the Christian religion paid no attention to
ritual or to creed. He passed them sublimely by, and the
thing I am trying to describe perhaps I can express best if I
should say that we seem to me to be rediscovering, after nearly
two thousand years, Jesus Christ and his religion. There are
reasons, no doubt, which have hastened this movement, appearing outside the Christian Church itself. The most potent
of these has been the development of exact science. It is simply impossible for us nowadays to take up the same attitude
toward dogmas which was assumed towards them thirty, forty
or fifty years ago. I do not mean that we are bound to accept
the speculations and hypotheses of rash inquirers, who call
themselves physical scientists or historical critics, but I do
mean that both scientists and historians have built up, in the
course of the last two or three generations, and notably in the
last fifty years, a body of exact and verified science, and this
science has become in its general phases the commonplace of
popular thought, and the methods of research which these investigators have followed are the only methods in which we
now have confidence. These things have been assimilated by
the people, and are now an expression of the spirit of the
times. They have all been verified and interest us all, and
consequently, whether we would or not, we simply find it impossible to take the attitude towards dogmas which the human
race possessed prior to the advent of this scientific knowledge
and these scientific methods.
A generation ago our teachers and theological schools were
full of the warfare between science and religion, but better
methods have reconciled that warfare. Professorships were
founded in our institutions of learning for that purpose. I
think I may say that to-day this conflict is over. The age of
the world, the origin of the earth, the manner of its development, the succession of living organisms on its surface, the
evolution of man, the history of the Jews, the evidence of
miracles; these are questions which do not to-day enter into
the religion of educated or thoughtful men; that religion is
something, as it seems to me, deeper and more divine.
It is not whether the mere logical minds and intellects can
grasp and correctly formulate certain mysterious propositions
ranging over the whole field of metaphysics, a large portion of
the field of natural science and a not inconsiderable part of
the field of history of the human race, but whether the will
and the conscience are attuned to the spirit of Jesus Christ.
The third change which I notice in this period which I am




67


surveying I may describe as the development of the Christian
Church away from sectarianism and towards the spirit of
world religion. A generation ago or certainly two generations
ago groups of men took sides on these questions, which, as I
have said, are for us fading into unimportance, and the whole
Christian Church was split up into sects and co-operation between them was almost impossible, and a spirit often very
different from a spirit of brotherly love prevailed amongst
them. That seems to me to be disappearing. The different
branches of the church are coming together. They can cooperate in the common educational, philanthropic and often
missionary undertakings. I do not mean that differences of
religious belief are destined to disappear. Nations differ and
individuals differ and beliefs are an expression of national and
personal character, and we may therefore fairly assume that
differences will continue. My point is that these differences
do not appear as large as they did, or do not raise up between
us the walls or partitions they did, but that in spite of them
we believe the things we have in common are infinitely more
important than the things in which we differ. The things in
which we differ may be not only of personal or national character or as to historical circumstances, but as we understand
the reason for these differences they thus become less important in our eyes. But that is not all that I mean by this third
change I am endeavoring to describe. It is not merely that
we are growing big, but we are taking our religion to all quarters of the globe and we are working harmoniously in those
missionary fields. Oh, more than that, we are coming to appreciate what is good in the religions of foreign nations and
foreign races. Three weeks ago I invited to preach at Cornell
University the Rev. Dr. Harada, Japanese Christian and Professor of the University at Kyoto. It was one of the most
instructive and interesting discourses I have ever heard. His
subject was "The National Characteristics of the Japanese,
considered as Helps and Hindrances to the Acceptance of the
Christian Religion." He said that the great mission of the
Christian religion in his country is to bring into life the
highest ideals, and he said, "If you conceive of Christianity
as the religion of self-sacrifice, then if the cross was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, it appealed to what was deepest and noblest in the minds and hearts
of the Japanese." "The mission," he said, "the great mission of the Christian Church in my country is to quicken into
life ideals we already possess." He did not mean to say that




68


it would do nothing else for the Japanese, but on the contrary
he said to those who have any knowledge of the personality
of the Japanese that he felt it might be the mission of the
Christian religion to develop a deeper sense of personality,
personality of God and personality of man and thus arouse in
them a deepening sense of personality and growing sense also
of human responsibility. I think a generation or two ago it
would have been almost impossible for Christian people to
sympathize with what we may call unity in Christian missions,
as described by Dr. Brown, and as shown here to-day.
May I go further? I think I see a still further line of
development. The Christian religion, we believe, is the noblest
of all religions. It is the only religion that can become a
world religion, but my belief is, and it is founded on some
observation and experience, that it is just in proportion as we
carry that religion to foreign nations and they assimilate it
that we ourselves get a new insight into it. In other words,
we shall not know what the perfect Christian religion is until
the nations of the world have heard it and assimilated it, and
the perfect Christian religion will be what is revealed by this
universal religious life of mankind in that distant day, or perhaps not distant day when they all come to enjoy its blessings.
Finally, and not disconnected with what I have already
said, I think we are laying more and more stress on the religion which Christ taught and of which his own life was the
living precept and embodiment. He did not perplex men's
minds with difficult intellectual problems; he challenged their
laws; he appealed to their conscience; he talked of right and
duty, of love, of devotion, of self-sacrifice; these are the hard
things demanded of us, but I think more and more as the
years go by the Christian Church is coming to recognize that
these are the essential things in religion,-the Christ-like spirit,
the Christ-like life; and wherever we find these things, whether
in the churches or out of the churches, whether in Christian
lands or in so-called heathen lands, we shall say, " There is
the spirit of Christ." Remember what he himself said, " Other
sheep I have which are not of this fold."
These are a few of the changes which I have felt it proper to call to your attention at this time in connection with
this great celebration. I chose this subject, because as I said
in my own mind the Union Theological Seminary stands so
pre-eminently for this kind of work, and as Dr. William
Adams Brown has already said, "The Seminary stands not
only for scholarship, not only for intellectual life, not only




69


for catholicity of spirit but for a practical devotion to the
service of mankind." I like that note; I like that combination;
that rounds up all the supreme things of man's life.
My wish for Union Seminary and for its members now
and their successive generations is that on the one hand they
may retain the intellectual freedom which they have and have
so conspicuously shown, retain it as it is retained by scientists
and philosophers, but on the other hand that they combine
with it as they have already combined in the past the devotion
which characterizes the martyr and the saint. It is absolutely
essential that these two things be combined in the life of individuals and institutions if their work is to be made permanent, as the great danger of all living institutions and of all
living movements is in the lack of earnestness. We cannot have
listened to the address of Dr. Brown without feeling that thus
far this institution has happily escaped that danger.
The one thing needful is that men shall become better.
This however is an individual concern. Consequently it is
through the reform and improvement of indivduals that the
religion of Christ is to make its way in the world. Not only
is the progress of the Christian religion effected by individuals,
but the essential work of that religion is in the mind and soul
of the individual. Of course this is not to disparage philanthropic enterprises for improving the sanitation, the housing,
or other environmental conditions of the poor. And indeed
we must recognize that until the primal physical necessities
are reasonably satisfied it is almost useless to try to improve
the moral and intellectual conditions of the individuals who
compose the mass. Furthermore, it may be asserted that it
is the duty of all Christians to make the environment and external conditions of the poor more favorable than they are today. But when all this is said and when all allowance is made
for other qualifying conditions, the fundamental fact remains that the Founder of the Christian religion appealed
to the heart and conscience of the individual man. And any
interpretation of the Christian religion which ignores this allessential function gives us the body without the soul of that
religion.








VI
THE ADDRESSES AT THE ALUMNI
MEETING
I The Seminary's New Era, by the Reverend President
Francis Brown, D.D., LL.D.
2 The Claim of the Kingdom upon the Seminary, by the
Reverend Henry H. Stebbins, D.D.
3 Our Gospel, by the Reverend William P. Merrill,
D.D.
4 The Christian Missionary and his Message in the
Twentieth Century, by the Reverend President
Howard S. Bliss, D.D.








I.


The Seminary's New Era
By the Reverend President Francis Brown, D.D., LL.D.
Mr. President and Members of the Alumni Association:
You will all agree with me that a new era it is. We are
introduced to a new period in the Seminary's life. It is not
the first step in the introduction that we are taking to-day.
If the Seminary had faltered when the attack came twenty
years ago there could have been no new era. If free and
reverent scholarship had been discouraged there would have
been none. If that "extreme of ecclesiastical domination"
against which our founders spoke had been permitted twenty
years ago, there would have been none. If there had been no
enfranchisement by new terms of subscription the new era
would have halted and lagged. The great things were done by
the insight and courage of the men just back of us, men whom
we know, men of whom some are alive still. The new era
was born in steadfast bravery and spiritual vision. This site,
and these buildings are splendid, and their worth is doubled by
the fact that they are due, primarily, to those who already
had expressed their vision in noble testimony, and fought the
fight with courage. But these buildings launch us upon a new
era not because they are more significant than the intellectual
and spiritual forces which have been working, but because
they give these forces a new opportunity. The essential forces
are primary. The new equipment gives them free course.
Because of both, it is, indeed, a new era that we are facing.
And what do we see?
I. We see a great horizon. It is hard to set limits to it.
I pity the man, who, in such a case, does not reach out,
strongly, into the unknown. It is an era for the imagination.
Great pictures of the future take shape. Plans almost form
themselves without straining of the mind. The possibilities
are bewildering. But we are not looking with flickering,
feeble gaze. We see what may be as a sculptor sees his
statue in the block, and as the architect sees the cathedral be73




74


fore stone is laid upon stone. It may not be realized quite as
we see it, but we, all of us, are stirred by the outlook toward
the shaping of an instrument great and good, for the worldwide service of God. These plans do not stir our pride; their
magnificence has something awful in it, which sends us to our
knees. Are our material resources adequate to their fulfillment? Hardly, yet. Is our physical strength sufficient?
Doubtless, as long as God needs us-and then the next relay
of men will come on. Is our mental power healthful and
competent? We have not already attained but we follow
after, if that we may apprehend. Is our personal influence and
moral sensitiveness and spiritual energy ample stock for our
great business? These are questions that we ask ourselves.
And we are giving no self-confident or jaunty answers. We
know that we can do nothing, as we ought to do it, without
God.
2. It must be therefore an era of faith. We cannot go
into it without belief in the realities-in the reality of God,
in the revelation through Jesus Christ, in the forgiveness of
sins, in a supreme power for setting wrong things rightto the last stubbornness of heart, the lowest depth of infamy,
the very end of the world-in the real triumph of righteousness. We need faith in our opportunity-no prostrating fear
of it-expectancy, in every aspect of it, because God gives it
to us. We need faith in the message of Jesus, which is our
gospel; in the worth of his character, and the essential necessity of his salvation;-in the conquest of self, and the reproduction of his life, in its simplest elements, under the greatest
variety of conditions and circumstances,-in the possibilities
germinating in ourselves and our neighbours, which hold the
promise of a redeemed world, and make it both desirable and
certain that human life shall at length be filled with the divine,
and controlled by it.
3. It must be an era of efficiency. Dreamers may still
have their part to play, but it must be to inspire the doers.
Idle dreams are ignoble. It is the patient, faithful, efficient
doers of the work that justify bold dreams. We must train
men to master the technique of their art It cannot be done
by simply applying high pressure to the spiritual life. Patient,
quiet, steadfast work, in study and practice, is the channel
of expression for real spiritual life, and no mean one, when
it signifies knowing your business. You want men who can
do things, and we want to produce them, but the process cannot be hurried, and it takes concentration of purpose and long,




75


hard work. The reason why some ministers are inefficient is
that many ministers have too low a conception of efficiency,
and know too little how efficiency can be attained. You,
who know, will not blame us for trying to make our training
mentally severe. It is the condition of efficiency.
No doubt some things are more important than others. We
are constantly revising our judgment of values, and acting
accordingly. I should like to set before you, if there were
time, our present view of a curriculum in theology, under the
three rubrics of the essential gospel, the situation in the world
which needs the gospel, and the means by which the gospel
may be brought home to the world. Think these subjects
through and see if your thought of training for the ministry
does not gain unity and insistence. This great establishment
must be put to the largest and most intelligent use for the
Kingdom of God. We ask you to encourage us in making our
new era an era of efficiency.
4. It is an era of fellowship. We want fellowship with
all Christians, and with all earnest people who are not Christians, in their work for righteousness, as far as they will let
us have it. "He that is not against us is on our part." Our
business is too high for rivalry. We seek fellowship and
sympathy on all hands, and especially with all with whom
Christ holds fellowship, or would have, if they would permit
it. We have no hostilities or bitternesses or grudges to cherish-as far as we understand ourselves. We may have prejudices but we hope they are like "that salutary prejudice
known as love of country "-salutary prejudices known as
love of the Seminary, and what we think to be the truth, and
love of liberty, and love of Jesus Christ, and desire to be like
him, and to see a world of people like him. If we have
meaner prejudices we are not proud of them. This is the
kind we wish to have. But these do not destroy our sense
of fellowship-in which small party names and sectarian distinctions are merged and lost-it gives our fellowship value
and fulness.
Your fellowship, who have now come here, must be with
each other, and with us whose duty is here, and our fellowship must be with each other and with you. We can do
great things by helping each other and holding together. But
true fellowship is not at all content with the like-minded and
congenial. Christianity is weighed twenty times a day against
other religions, old and new. We shall honor them all for
whatever they do to lift men towards righteousness and God.




76


And if anyone of them proclaims as its essence the obligation
of each man to share the richness of his life and not to hoard
it, and lives this out in the simple strength of God, by the
practice of men's days, busy and hard beset, it is Christ's religion, under another name, in its unalloyed product. The
only advantage that Christianity then has lies in a broader and
deeper practice of fellowship with God and man, giving oneself loyally to them both, as Jesus Christ did and does forevermore. We shall never be afraid of any religion's seeming too much like that of Christ when we are once convinced
that the world of people will have entered the divine fellowship, with knowledge, heart and purpose all together-when
every religion is made entirely Christian, after Christ's manner, and the world has grown a brotherhood, in rich exchange
of the earthly gifts and treasures of the soul-to the glory of
God, the Father.
The Seminary lives in its alumni. It is strengthened,
more than you know, by your presence here, and your generous loyalty. If you were not full of large plans for God,
and great faith, and efficiency, and the spirit of fellowship, the
Seminary would be an empty name. Help us, brothers, to
make it more than an empty name. Help us, by your own
ardent service of Christ and his kingdom, to realize the possibilities of the new era-to train new generations even better
than you were trained, to bear testimony to the heroic life, to
take our share in the divine conquest of the world.
2.
The Claim of the Kingdom upon the Seminary
By the Reverend Henry H. Stebbins, D.D.
Mr. President of the Alumni, Mr. President of the Faculty, undergraduate students and fellow Alumni of this dear
Seminary that is exciting so many delightful and hallowed
memories and that is inspiring so many Alumni to unprecedented hopes:
The claim of the Kingdom upon the Seminary is, as I at
least conceive it, that the Seminary should interpret the Kingdom of God as revealed in the Old and New Testaments of




77


the Word of God and should train all applicants for the service
of the King.
To such end the Kingdom would venture to submit the
four cardinal points of a compass, as it were, whereby the
Seminary may steer her course to the desired heaven.
I. The first cardinal point is the Seminary herself.
The Kingdom recognizes the Seminary as the institution,
above all others, that should unfold the Kingdom in all its
bearings, whether the Kingdom that cometh within, the Kingdom that cometh not with observation, or the Kingdom visible.
The Kingdom reminds us that, humanly speaking, the Seminary is the supreme resource of the Church; that the Church
looks to the Seminary to turn out ministers thoroughly furnished to go into all the world, near or distant, and to preach
the Gospel of the Kingdom to every creature.
The Kingdom claims that the Seminary should be the repository of all possible information about the Kingdom, information concerning its nature, its scope, its subjects, its
present day demands, its prospects and its consummation in
heart and life, in the individual, in society, in the state, in the
world, to the end that God's Kingdom may fully come in the
doing of his will on earth as it is done in heaven.
Further, the Kingdom claims that the teaching force of the
Seminary should be second to none, either as to acquisition
or ability to impart, and in popular fashion a force that should
teach with authority and not as the scribes.
The Kingdom claims that the Seminary should blaze the
way, should take the initiative, should, under the impulse of a
faith that is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen, anticipate the demand as commerce anticipates the market, so that as the servants of the King go about
their appointed work, they may stab wide awake the social
consciousness and the social conscience of those with whom
they have to do, thereby attracting in growing numbers those
who shall spend and be spent in the active, practical propagation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, who shall discern
readily any given environment, who shall be instant in season,
out of season, in knowing what is to be done and how to do it
most feasibly and permanently, and who, in a word, shall incite to a militant altruism in the service of the King.
2. The second cardinal point in the proposed compass is
the federated church.
While the Kingdom would have the Seminary recognize
herself as, providentially, the first of institutions for meeting




78


the demands of the Kingdom, it would have her recognize the
Church as the supreme instrumentality, humanly speaking, for
the promotion of the Kingdom, not, however, by any means,
to the exclusion of other agencies, but to their distinct subordination.
There is vital reason, the Kingdom contends, for the
preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom, the preaching, backed
by the authority of "Thus saith the Lord."
The Kingdom claims that it springs directly from the
bosom of religion, in distinction from mere philanthropy or
humanitarianism; that it inculcates, first of all, the most comprehensive love to God, and along with that and separable
from it, love to man, and that the Church is the obvious means
to that end.
The Kingdom sees the Church as the exponent of the
Christianity of Christ, as His divinely designed successor, and
that accordingly she is true to the fullness of her mission only
as she looks at the world as Jesus looked at it and stands, in
relation to men, as Jesus did, and ministers as Jesus did to the
manifold ills and limitations of human life.
And the Kingdom appeals to the New Testament, to say
nothing of the Old Testament, which abounds in teaching and
injunction about the Kingdom, for overwhelming evidence in
corroboration of its claim as to the primacy of the Church as
the instrumentality for the diffusion of the laws of the Kingdom, in their manifold application to the individual and to
society.
In this connection the Kingdom congratulates the Church
upon the following resolution adopted by the Presbytery of
New York:
"RESOLVED, that we recognize the gospel of Christ as the
supreme remedy for every form of evil, and the church of
Christ as the agency by which the world is to be regenerated
and saved, and, therefore, we believe that the moral teachings
of Christ must be applied to every sphere of life, and that the
church should bear her testimony for righteousness and purity
in all human affairs."
So with renewed assurance the Kingdom maintains that
the Church needs to be exploited, that she needs to come to
her own, needs to be stimulated to make her calling and election sure in the world realm of social service; that she needs
to be socialized, and to become a radiating social center, exemplifying brotherly love, a love aiming to fulfill every jot
and every tittle of the laws of service and sacrifice.




79


And it is the Church as such which the Kingdom has in
view, the church in the country, as well as in the City, the
church in foreign parts as well as in the homeland.
Indeed; the Kingdom points with pride to the vastly broadened scope of missions. At first, as we are reminded, the missionary's equipment, aside from a consecrated heart, consisted
of a Bible and a sun hat, or, as a little girl is reported to have
conceived it: A man standing under a tree and reading the
Bible to everybody who passed by.
Witness now, is the challenge of the Kingdom, witness
now, by contrast, the school, the college, all that is comprehended under medical missions, and all that is signified by
industrial missions, to say nothing of the wonders of the printing press and the fruits of Christian Sociology.
The Kingdom points to the following list of things with
which a missionary is about to sail to Africa: A turbine wheel,
a saw-mill with planer and jointer, mortising machine, etc., a
traction or motor engine and gang plow, a reaper and binder,
a thresher, two horse seed drills, appliances for a school of
agriculture, school supplies and a hospital outfit.
Moreover, and in the same connection, the Kingdom reminds us that to the peoples who on earth do dwell there were
never so many open doors as to-day. Indeed, missionaries
report that doors have been taken from their hinges. Not
from Macedonia alone, but from every quarter, the cry is
heard, " Come over and help us," which cry, being interpreted,
is a cry for the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven in the
interest of which Jesus Christ came to the Kingdom of Earth.
Still further, never have the peoples of the earth been so
well understood as they are to-day, and never so responsive.
Such is the plea of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom submits that the citizens of the Kingdom are bound to hear and
heed that cry or they are recreant to the will of their King.
The Kingdom, while making careful and grateful record
of the fact that the supporters, by word and deed, of social
service are to a great extent connected with the Church, and
while delighting in the institutional church, as a progressive
approach to the desired goal, yet urges the Church to identify
herself more prominently and intimately with the many-sided
service of the Kingdom, and to embosom it in her working
creed that she is the pre-eminent means for the promulgation
and expansion of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
The Kingdom would emphasize the Church of it in distinction from the churches. For the Kingdom does not recognize




80


churches, it recognizes but one Church, the holy Catholic
Church. Consequently the Kingdom stands for the speediest
possible federation or unification, organic or spiritual, or combination, call it what we will, of all the churches of God, only,
pleads the Kingdom, let it be in fulfillment of Jesus' prayer of
intercession:
" That they all may be one; as thou, Father, are in me, and
I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may
believe that thou hast sent me."
And, inasmuch as citizenship in the Kingdom is more inclusive than membership in the Church, the Kingdom would
have the Seminary take into account, in this connection, all
who, in the Church or outside the Church, are cultivating
pure and undefiled religion, all who aim to fulfill God's requirement to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with their God, all who are living righteously, soberly and
godly in this present evil world, and who would join the forces
of those disposed to labor for the universal prevalence of
whatsoever things are true and honest and just and pure and
lovely and of good report.
3. The third cardinal point in the proposed compass is
the Bible.
The Kingdom insists that the Book of books in the curriculum of the Seminary, so far as such curriculum has to do
with the Kingdom, should be the Bible, the English Bible,
and that it should be handled in such masterful fashion as
to make it quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged
sword.
The Kingdom holds that there is no consistent theory or
application of the Kingdom apart from the Bible, and that
the worthiest treatises on the Kingdom have been consciously
or unconsciously, the echo of what the Bible declares and
illustrates.
The Kingdom affirms that there is no phase of itself, that
there is no social law worth while and no line of social service, whether having to do with the child or the adult, with
body or mind or heart, with the family or the city or the
state, or with industrial life or with politics, or education, or
crime, or with defective and dependent life, or outcasts, or
with hospitals or any of the institutions of philanthropy or
with settlements, that is not anticipated and fundamentally
provided for by the glorious Gospel of the blessed God.
And the Kingdom imposes upon the Seminary the task
of coupling with every department of social service, the law,




..,                           I
II
0.




1aaILXS ziaozI J mfLtaVOTOx


I'
I....  -




81


or the principle, or the precept, or the sentiment contained in
the book of final authority.
4. The fourth cardinal point of the compass the Kingdom would command to the Seminary is the Christ.
The Kingdom would have the Seminary, in its relation to
social service, exalt the personality of Jesus Christ. It would
have the Seminary hail Him as King and give Him the glory
due unto His name.
The Kingdom would have the Seminary discriminate between the King and the Kingdom, as between Christ and
Christianity, so keeping the personal life more than the impersonal instrumentality, before the reverent eye and the
grateful, loyal and affectionate heart of every citizen of the
Kingdom.
The Kingdom would have the Seminary behold in Christ
the Teacher come from God, the chief among the ten thousand who throughout the ages, have thought or spoken or written upon the problematic, yet fascinating theme of the Kingdom. It would have the sociology taught at the Seminary not
merely Christianized, but shot through and through with the
personality of Jesus Christ.
Honor to whom honor is due, pleads the Kingdom. Let
the name of Jesus stand above every name, as the prince of
authorities on the subject so vital and of such world-wide
significance.
The Kingdom recalls the following sentiment from Professor Peabody of Cambridge:
"In a great orchestra, with all its varied ways of musical
expression, there is one person who performs on no instrument
whatever, but in whom, none the less, the whole control of
harmony and rythm resides.
"Until the leader comes the discordant sounds go their
various ways; but at his sign the tuning of the instruments
ceases and the symphony begins.
" So it is with spiritual leadership of Jesus Christ. Among
the conflicting activities of the present time, His power is not
that of one more active among the rest, but that of wisdom,
personality, idealism.
" Into the midst of the discordant efforts of men He comes
as one having authority; the self-assertion of each instrument of social service is hushed as He gives His sign; and in
the surrender of each life to Him, it finds its place in the
symphony of all."
The Kingdom would have the Seminary widen its doors




82


and keep them wide open day and night for all classes and
grades of workers, for candidates for the ministry in the
technical sense, for church officials, for Sunday school teachers, for members of Men's Guilds and Brotherhoods, of
Missionary Societies, of the Young People's Society, of Christian Endeavor, and of the Young Men's Christian Association; for members of the church, for non-ecclesiastical Christians,-for the "children of the unwritten gospel," as Dr.
Matheson calls them, for college graduates, for philanthropists
of wealth, for merchant princes, in a word, for any and all
who would be fitted for the most effective social service in
the name of Him who came not to be ministered unto but
to minister.
Of course such a policy would make the Seminary coeducational. And there should be shorter as well as longer
courses. Just as at Cornell University there are courses of
twelve weeks in poultry-raising, horticulture, dairying and
general agriculture, so the Seminary should afford brief
courses of study, according to the wishes or the necessities of
the students.
The Seminary should provide a wide range of electives,
or homogeneous groups of subjects in line with the foremost
demands of the times; she should provide for night classes
and for a summer course; she should require, not leave it
optional, of every student, a course in Christian sociology and
should permeate with such course the whole period of study
from start to finish.
In short, the Seminary should be perennially open for all
seeking instruction under its guidance, and should be manned,
yes and womaned, if need be (and the Kingdom anticipates
that there will be the need), so that the burden of instruction
would not be heavier than could be borne consistently. Such
is the insistence of the Kingdom.
"A new departure, all this," the Kingdom anticipates the
Seminary as exclaiming. "Yes," replies the Kingdom, "yet
it is but one of numerous new departures necessitated by the
exacting law of adjustment to existing or prospective conditions."
The Kingdom is swift to assure the Seminary that the
proposed enlargement of her sphere does not involve the surrender or the curtailment of her present curriculum.
The Kingdom is grateful for the apparent fact that in a
considerable percentage of the Seminaries of the United States
provision is made for more or less, less rather than more,




88


it would seem, of training along social service lines, thus facing, measurably at least, the responsibility that is upon them
and welcoming with diminishing timidity the opportunity to
meet such responsibility.
And, again, the Kingdom, while impatient of delay, would
concede the necessity of patience and a judicious conservatism.
At the same time the Kingdom would spur the Seminary to
quicken its pace because of the larger, clearer vision the
Church is gaining of the Kingdom, as shown by her parish
houses, her institutes, her missions, her settlements, and in
general by the institutional character she is making for men
of God, men who, as pastors, will take into account the whole
man and not merely the soul, who will aim to win to Christ
not the individual only, but society as well, and who, in a
word, will help to extend the Kingdom in all its length and
breadth and height and depth.
My fancy pictures a Seminary modeled after the Gospel
plan: a Seminary obedient to the heavenly vision of her obligation and her corresponding opportunity; a Seminary steering
her course of conquest according to the compass whose four
cardinal points are: the Seminary herself as the institution
above all others for the training of competent workers; the
federated Church as the instrumentality above every other
for the world-wide proclamation and extension of the Kingdom; the Bible as the basic authority of all teaching with
reference to the Kingdom, and the Christ as the basic personality of the Kingdom, King of Kings and Lord of Lords,
worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and blessing; a Seminary undenominational, a Seminary with twelve gates, on the east three gates,
on the north three gates, on the south three gates and on the
west three gates; a Seminary dedicated to the training of all
who would preach, practice and propagate the gospel of the
Kingdom in the name of Him who came to seek and to save
that which was lost; a Seminary that should be the chief repository of the history, the literature, and all current facts
respecting the Kingdom; a Seminary so munificently endowed
that the administrators of her affairs would take no anxious
thought as to ways and means; a Seminary that should be the
pride, the joy, the inspiration of the Church which Jesus
Christ loved and for which he gave himself, that he might
present it unto himself a glorious Church, not having spot or
wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish; and lastly, a Seminary which should no more




81


be called a Theological Seminary, but a Theological University.
However wide the chasm between fancy and fact in relation to the Seminary, may be to-day, I confess that, as I go
round about this ally and resource of our beloved Zion, that
as I tell the graceful and symbolic towers thereof, the towers
that are and the towers that are to be; that as I mark well
her bulwarks of tradition, of affectionate and enriching personality both in professor and in student, and of her worldwide and ineffaceable influence; and that as I consider her
palaces of equipment in contrast to what used to be; I see
the chasm between fancy and fact bridged by this institution
whose new buildings we dedicate on these days of grace, the
twenty-seventh, the twenty-eight and the twenty-ninth days
of November, in this year of our Lord one thousand nine
hundred and ten.
Who knoweth whether the Union Theological Seminary is
come to the Kingdom for such a time as this?
So let it be, so far as it is according to the will of Him
who taught us, when we pray, to say: " Thy Kingdom come."
3.
Our Gospel
By the Reverend William P. Merrill, D.D.
MR. PRESIDENT AND BROTHERS OF THE ALUMNI:
In presenting this theme I am not thinking so much of the
Seminary and the place it should take as of us who are Alumni
of the Seminary and the place we should take and the Gospel
that we should preach as representatives of that Christian
thought and love for which this Seminary stands.
The word "our" is intended to include all those in the
ministry of the church, teachers or preachers, who frankly
adopt the modem point of view in religion. One of the main
characteristics, perhaps the chief distinction of this Seminary,
in whose stately new home we rejoice to-day, is that with few
exceptions, her graduates are men who welcome reconstruction in religion. Most of us are grateful to our Seminary most
of all for breaking for us the shell of tradition, and letting us
into life. Some years ago Dr. Francis Brown remarked that




85


there are two classes of theologians, "those who think they
know enough, and those who want to know more." When I
speak of "our" Gospel, I am thinking of "those who want
to know more," those who are loyal to the critical and historical method, accept the well-assured results of that method,
adopt the principle of evolution as at least an indispensable
hypothesis for men who would think in harmony with the
science of our age, refuse to believe in a world of enchantment outside the world of experience, and will not admit that
any doctrine of the church whatsoever has found its final statement.
Speaking to and for such men, I declare my conviction
that the great religious need of to-day is that we should have
a Gospel; that our worst weakness is the lack of a Gospel;
that our greatest and most immediate duty is to find and proclaim our Gospel.
What do I mean by a Gospel? I mean a message that can
not only hold its self-respect in the light of scientific thinking,
but can prove itself a " power of God unto salvation." I mean
a message that can rebuke, convict, and redeem a sinner; bring
real comfort to a soul in sorrow; give assurance of hope in
the face of death; put conquering strength into the tempted;
and in short prove a practical power for human living.
Such a Gospel the religious world demands of us. So far
we have been concerned too exclusively with critical and theological reconstruction. We were fighting in self-defense;
there was no time for building houses or planting vineyards.
Moreover the critical and theological investigation was a prerequisite of a clear Gospel message. But now the right to
think the thoughts of to-day and stay inside the church is won.
It is time we are taking our critical and theological reconstruction for granted, and going on to develop and proclaim the
Gospel which alone can justify us in the eyes of the world.
For the world is a pragmatist in its taste. We can demonstrate-I think we have demonstrated-that our view of the
Bible and of doctrine is truer and worthier than the old view.
But this world looks for fruits. If we get and show for our
painful and disturbing efforts no added power to comfort,
strengthen, and save, no new vital message, no new tone of
authority in proclaiming the old message, the world will continue to think of us as needless troublers of Israel. And the
world will be right. The final test of what is taught in the
Theological Seminaries is not its intellectual or ethical soundness, but the Gospel it inspires you and me to preach. The




86


final test of your ministry and mine is its redeeming power in
human life.
But a positive Gospel is demanded of us not only that we
may justify ourselves, but as well that we may fulfill our mission. The world to-day needs a Gospel which only we, of the
progressive wing of the church, can give.
Of course what is needed is not a new Gospel at all, but
a new setting of the everlasting Gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ. We are all agreed upon that. We are not moving
away from Christ; nor are we even going back to Christ; we
are moving on with Christ. We have gone back to Him in
our critical and theological studies, only that we may know
Him better, and so follow Him more closely. But the world
needs a new setting of His Gospel and a new vigor in proclaiming it; and we must meet that need or it will not be met.
For only the men of modern viewpoint have the thoughtfoundation and the point of contact necessary for the proclamation of an effective Gospel.
I need spend no time trying to make evident the painfully
clear fact that we are living in a new world. There is a social
consciousness, a world-view, a craving for unity, an independence of thought and action, an industrial massing, that
demands a new saving power, a new outbreaking of the Gospel; and how can we face this modem world, needing so painfully a religion fitted to it, and then look back over our training in fearless searching of the Bible, in open-minded desire
for facts, in broad human interest, and not recognize the hand
of God upon our spirits and the voice of God in our hearts,
summoning us to give the world a Gospel which we do not
hesitate to speak of as ours, just as Paul spoke of " our Gospel," "my Gospel."
There are many indications that the sense of rleed of a
Gospel has been growing acute in the hearts of progressive
men through the past few years. Not long ago, in a meeting
of liberal men, something was said about " saving souls," and
one of the leaders remarked: "I do not care about saving
souls; all I want to do is to set the truth before men and leave
them to deal with it." Some of us who, a few years back,
would scarcely have criticized that attitude, now feel how
grotesquely inadequate it is as the attitude of a minister toward his work. Unless the deepest desire of our hearts is to
save men we have no business in the ministry of Jesus Christ.
Of course " save " is to us a vastly bigger word than in the
thought of past days, not tied up to a future heaven or hell,




87


nor to a single instant of decision, nor to a special type of
creed; but as big, broad and deep as life itself, as unbounded
as Jesus' own redeeming work. But to be good ministers of
Jesus Christ, and true helpers of the world, we must be at
least as intense in our desire to save men in all ways as our
fathers were to save them in the one way.
This deepening sense of the need of a Gospel has frequently proved a temptation. Realizing the urgent demand
for a message of salvation, the present lack of a clear Gospel
in harmony with our modem faith, and the attraction still residing in old phrases and methods, some have been led into an
attempt to use old words and old ways, echoes of the dead
past, despite the inherent contradiction between them and the
real faith of their hearts. A man of modem type once said
to me, " I know my theology is a great deal nearer.the truth
than my father's was. But I would give all my light for a
little of his heat." Many of us have been so tempted, as Esau
was; and some have yielded, as Esau did. It is a Faust-bargain, exchanging soul integrity for a temporary success.
With others the temptation has been to assume what is
known as a "positive note" in preaching. I am thinking not
of the true positiveness that means confident affirmation of
our real faith, but the assumed positiveness, the violent assertion, the proclaiming "Thus saith the Lord," not because we
believe that the Lord has said it, but because of the impression the assertion will produce. It is the method employed by
a certain preacher, who remarked that when he came to a
place in his argument where he felt weak, he " always hollered
louder."
Against these and similar reactionary or shallow expedients, we must set a ster guard. We have put our hand to the
plough; we art not fit for the Kingdom if we turn back. We
must find our Gospel by moving forward, not by looking backward. With toil and pain, at any cost, we must work out
the meaning and application of the Gospel to-day, and put our
souls into the preaching and living of it.
What this is to mean in detail is a problem with which
each of us must wrestle. And it is the mass of men out in
the active ministry, not the leaders and teachers alone, who
must work out the Gospel our world needs, the message that
will grip the conscience, inspire the heart, command the will,
dominate the life of the average man of our time, and, above
all, impress him as spiritual and eternal in the vital sense of
being real.




88


May I venture to indicate certain lines along which I believe we must move toward such a convincing Gospel message?
It will come not through hiding our faith, but through
frank outspeaking.
There may have been a time, I think there was, when
it was the part of wisdom and honor to say little directly and
openly about the new views of truth, the new Bible which
criticism had given us, the changed point of view in theology,
to let the new light dawn quietly. But that time is past.
Knowledge of the new truth is widely diffused though vague.
We can, and we should, speak out, telling the plain people
of the churches what the new light on truth is, and what
changes it necessitates. We must not hide new light under
old bushels, or grope in yesterday's wardrobe for veils to
cover our faces, or serve new wine from old bottles. It is
high time we were saying plainly what we think, not offensively, not attacking old systems if we can avoid it; but quietly,
resolutely leaving old systems sidetracked, save where they
insist on the right of way (in that case we must keep them
sidetracked) and telling the people the truth of God in His
world and in His word as we see it to-day. We need to follow Mark Twain's effective counsel, " When in doubt, tell the
truth."
But will not this be dangerous? To ourselves, very likely.
But it may be our Gospel will shine out the more clearly if we
face misunderstanding for its sake. Will it be dangerous for
the people who hear us? No. Not-and here is the gist of
the matter-not if the people see plainly that our chief concern is not the maintaining of some particular theory, but
their spiritual upbuilding. Where one would be unsettled or
cast into doubt by plain preaching or modern thought, a score
would be helped and led back into the way of God; and even
the man made to doubt would be far better off than when
comfortably settled in an inadequate faith.  Paul's ideal
should be ours: " Not walking in craftiness, nor handling the
Word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth
commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
of God." Plain preaching of that sort, throwing aside all
thought of evasion or compromise, will help clear the way to
our Gospel. This does not mean bringing critical conjectures
or theological negations into the pulpit; it does mean stating
in the plainest words we can find the faith in which our own
hearts are living and rejoicing.




89


We should be able to discern and to show the spiritual
value of our view of religious truth. We should cease apologizing for the modern view of truth, and begin to be missionaries, eagerly pointing out the incomparable values it possesses.
We should adopt the method of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
acknowledging the glory and power of the older faith, but
pointing out with glowing zeal how much better is the new.
Our critics assert that the new view makes the Bible and the
Master less divine by making them more human. Let us glory
in the fact that, by making the Bible more human, we make
it more real and so more divine; and that, by making Jesus
more human, we make Him more really Son of God. The
new view of the Bible sets free an inestimable moral and religious force; for it shows us the heroes of Israel as "men
of like passions with ourselves," struggling manfully out of
their crude beliefs up to a true apprehension of the living God.
Texts that were dead or sleeping in the old world of thought
flash into splendid meaning in the new light. " That he might
be the first-born among many brethren "; " the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of
God"; how near Christ comes to us, and we to Him, in
those great words; and that sort of nearness means power.
What a Gospel of Freedom we have to preach! The man
who stands in the new light is not afraid that some new discovery, some novel theory, will knock the props from under
his faith. His faith does not need props; the universe supports it. "Fear hath torment; but perfect love casteth out
fear." Is not that great gain? Is there no worthy Gospel
in the proclamation that the whole world of truth is open to
one, without bolts or bars, with no enemies to fear? "God
hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of
love, and of a sound mind." What could the preacher of the
older sort make of that text compared with the Gospel we
find in it? With the critical and theological basis for faith
that we have, you and I ought to be able to preach the love of
God, the brotherhood of Christ, the reality of religion, the
glory of following Jesus, the splendor of eternal life, the
courage of faith, as no man ever preached them before. Let
us awaken to the spiritual value of our own beliefs.
It is but viewing the same thing from another angle to
say that we can and should emphasize the positive elements of
the common faith. We have been critical and negative long
enough. We have fallen into the fallacious fashion of attacking certain beliefs as non-essential. If they are non-essential,




90


in heaven's name let them alone! Sometimes of course a nonessential must be attacked. Paul said, "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything"; yet on occasion
he could strike hard at circumcision, when it was thrust forward as an essential. But we might well now leave non-essentials aside, and go on to emphasize the positive elements in
Christian faith. If we do not believe in the crude substitutionary theory of the atonement, is that any excuse for giving
our main attention to attacking the old theory? We do believe in the vicarious death, in a divine and all-pervading
principle of sacrifice for the life of others, finding its most
powerful and perfect expression in the life and death of
Jesus; we do believe that His death has in it a saving, purifying force, whereby God redeems men. We see, as believers
of the older type could not see it, the cross the believer must
carry, the share of the disciple in the redemptive work of the
Master. Preach that! Or if not that, preach what you do
find in the cross, setting aside what you do not find there, and
speaking gently if at all, of what to others seems sacred, even
if to you it seem false or hurtful.
What a wealth of positive teaching and inspiration lies
in unappropriated words of the Master and of the prophets
and apostles about the Kingdom of God. Hard enthusiastic
Bible study would endow many of us with a Gospel message.
If some of us who are coldly criticizing evangelism,-perhaps
with some justice,-would simply live with Amos and Isaiah,
with Paul and James, above all with Jesus, till we caught their
spirit, saw their social visions, and the applications they make
of religion to our social relations, we could speak with a
tongue of flame, and men would listen and be convicted of sin,
and righteousness and judgment. When such an evangelistic
message is heard from the pulpits as Professor Rauschenbusch has written, the world will feel itself in the presence of
a Gospel that saves and condemns, and that speaks with the
authority of God.
Most of all we can find our Gospel in the presentation of
religion as a stem, high, life-demanding art. The religious
world is cursed to-day with a soft and easy conception of the
religious life, its origin, its maintenance, its destiny. The
preacher has sought too exclusively such texts as " Come unto
me and I will give you rest," neglecting the far more numerous words that tell of denying the self, taking up the cross,
losing the life, being persecuted for righteousness' sake. Let
ours be the Gospel of the straight gate and the narrow way.




91


With the new light from science, from a better understood
revelation, from psychology, we can preach, as no man ever
preached it before, the necessity of whole-souled religion, the
demand of God for a united heart and an entire life, the
challenge of Jesus to count the cost before becoming His disciple. Such a message the world has lacked these many years;
and for lack of it the world has grown indifferent toward
religion, thinking it a cheap thing. Such a Gospel we can give.
Seven years ago Dr. Theodore T. Munger wrote on " The
Church. Some immediate Questions." There was a frankness almost overpowering in his words, as of a man at the
end of life, with nothing to fear, and nothing to hide. He
has given there a vision of our Gospel:
"The creed of life, if we may so term it, will be definite,
searching, severe in its penalties and as relentless as they are
in life itself, urgent both on the restrictions and the possibilities of life, and never forgetful of those inspirations that
always come when the full meaning and import of life are revealed. Its sacrifice will be more real than that of a vicarious
oblation, for it will be of self and on the cross of obedience to
truth and duty. Its heaven will not be so clear and golden as
that of old, but it will take on such color and form as overcoming life may give it, and become as real and present as
life itself. The confusion of to-day will not be ended by
blowing it away into mist, nor by explosions of criticism,
but only by clear vision now opened by real life in a real
world."
It is time we were finding our Gospel and proclaiming it.
The world waits for it. Our training and labor come to nothing without it. We can find it, if we push forward with hearts
filled with longing unrestrained to save men, to save the world.
The sky is not wholly clear; but God still guides by a pillar of
cloud. We can bring to the world the deeper religious experience, and the more real statement of truth it needs only as we
ourselves find a deeper, richer experience of God than the
faith of the past produced, and know its sources in ourselves
so surely that we can reveal them to others. But all this can
be only as our commanding passion is for saving men. "I
preached as dying man to dying men," said Baxter. That is
not our ideal. We want to preach as living man to living men.
But we need the most solemn sense of responsibility and the
glad conviction of the power of the Gospel that the men of
Baxter's day felt so keenly.
Frederick W. Robertson, pioneer of the religion of to-day,




92


once voiced his ideal in words that may well guide our preaching:
" To live by trust in God,-to do and say the right because
it is lovely; to dare to gaze on the splendor of naked truth,
without putting a false veil before it to terrify children and
old women by mystery and vagueness,-to live by love and
not by fear; that is the life of a true brave man who will take
Christ and His mind for the truth, instead of the clamor of
either the worldly world or the religious world."
4.
The Christian Missionary and his Message in the
Twentieth Century
By the Reverend President Howard S. Bliss, D.D.
MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW ALUMNI:
I realize that in having been chosen to speak at this time
I have been chosen in somewhat of a representative capacity,
and I wish on behalf of all my fellow missionaries in the
foreign field, graduates of Union, to express our joy in this
day and our gratitude for it. I gladly represent them in these
words of felicitation. But in what I am about to say I am,
of course, speaking my own thoughts, and my brethren must
not be held responsible for what I may say. My theme is
"The Christian Missionary in the Twentieth Century and his
Message."
Man craves life. The craving is elemental and universal.
It is life for which a man struggles more than for anything
else. All his instincts are his allies in this conflict. It is because Jesus Christ came with a message that dealt with this
supreme desire for life that Jesus' message is a world-message. He claimed to know how men might live and live adequately, fully, overflowingly; and He came not with words
simply, but with a life that delivered His message even better
than His words. He gave the impression of being alive, vigorously alive, overflowingly alive, alive with a life that defied
poverty, hardship, disease, sorrow and death. Men asked Him
the secret of it all, and He answered them in terms that all
men could understand, for the terms were universal terms




93


and dealt with universal facts. And the answer was surprisingly simple. Can we ever realize how simple it is? " If you
wish to live," said Christ, "really live-not a life of mere
existence, but a life of life, victorious, eternal-you must know
God as your Father, wise, just, loving, strong; and you must
love him with every ounce of your being. You must know
yourself as God's child, docile, trustful, obedient; and you
must love yourself as such. You must know your fellowman
as your brother, and you must love him as you love your
brother; and all this force which I have called love must be
the kind of force which I have used in loving you; the love
that expresses itself in service; the love that, having loved,
loves to the very end. Do this, begin to do this, and you shall
begin to live; you shall live, and live in such peace as the
world cannot give, and possessed by a joy that nothing can
take away from you." This simple message seems to me to
be Christ's message, and this is the message he repeats to every
man in the world as a man and every community as a community, to every nation as a nation-or would fain repeat it.
And He says it with absolute assurance that the man who follows this programme will feel within himself a powerful
spring of life, overflowing and victorious.
How will the man know it? He will know it-know it as
the thirsty man knows that his thirst is quenched when once
it is quenched; know it as the hungry man knows when his
hunger is appeased; know it as a live man knows he is alive.
He will know it. This, I repeat, is the essence of the message
of Christ to the world, as I conceive it, drawn from the meagre
and conflicting but sufficient accounts of that life that have
come down to us and put into words that all men can understand. It may be variously expressed. But essentially it is
the interpretation of the universe in terms of love. Many details might be added-but they are details, splendid details, but
still details. Many questions might be started, and many,
though not all, might be answered and answered with more or
less profit to the questioner, but neither question nor answer
is essential. Without them man's great craving for life that
is life indeed, would be satisfied, and peace and joy would be
his.
Much, however, of course remains implied. For the moment a man tries to follow this programme of Christ in his
craving for the real, for the living God, in his desire to love
God with every ounce of his being and to serve Him, he becomes that moment instantly aware of the difficulty of the




94


task, of the impossibility of the task without the helping hand
of the loving God. But that helping hand is a part of the
simple message of Christ. Sin will rise up to block his way
and put down his advances, or to stab him stealthily in the
back, but there he will find God's helping, forgiving hand. A
deeper note must be struck-the note of God's power. Without a realization of the fact that God's helping hand is not
only loving and tender, but strong-strong for every emergency-man's effort will be a losing effort and the end will
be defeat.
Now, of course, it is absolutely inevitable, as it is absolutely
proper, that Christ's message, that Christ's interpretation of
the universe, should be subjected to an intellectual re-statement as varied as the mind of man, a statement more elaborate
and more closely articulated in its various parts than this
simple statement from the lips of Jesus Christ. For His
message, while expressed in this wonderfully simple fashion,
deals with the greatest things in the world, the most mysterious, the deepest, the most baffling; and it is natural that man
should wish to explore more closely and explain more minutely
and justify more completely the message. Here there must be
perfect liberty. Each temperament should be given its full
freedom for speculation, for inference, for conjecture, for
elaboration. I shall revert to this point because it is important;
but here the plea must be made-with full recognition of the
perennial honor in which the theologian must be held-that
Christ's message must remain on the lips of every one of his
messengers, simple in its assertions, ample in its outlines, universal in its terms.
Such being the message of the Christian missionary in the
First Century, we may now proceed to draw some conclusions
based upon this brief statement.
In the first place, it is evident that the message in its very
nature necessitates the messenger-creates the messenger.
Love, if it be love, must express itself. Christ's real commission to evangelize the world is not in the words spoken in
His last hours upon the earth. His message is His commission, and the reason why the world has not long ago been
evangelized is because somewhere in the long line of descendants from the early Christians the message failed to be really
received. All this means, if it means anything, that every
Christian is perforce a missionary. We are indeed beginning
to realize that all Christians are ministers, so the terms minister and missionary are interchangeable, and as to the word




95


foreign, as applied to missionaries, useful and necessary as
the adjective may be from administrative or geographical considerations, it becomes a mischievous, impertinent and dangerous word if it arrogates to itself the right of a qualitative distinction in this connection. It remains true, however, that the
missionary laboring in foreign soil or the missionary laboring
at home in America among foreign elements is confronted
with a set of problems different from those which meet his
fellow-workers in another field. This arises from the fact
that generally he is dealing with men strongly committed to
other beliefs, men whose mental processes are different from
his own race, not simply individually but racially. He is
usually speaking in a language imperfectly acquired, at the
best inadequately assimilated. To these natural difficulties
must be added the difficulties arising from hostility on the part
of his constituency, from prejudice, from inherited misconception, from resentment at what seems to him like intrusion.
Added to this, the missionary must often overcome the poisonous impressions left in the minds and hearts of the people
among whom he is working by the blunders, by the cruelty,
by the callous greed, by the selfish aggrandizement of the
so-called Christian nations.
Ask Moslem Turkey to-day what she thinks of Christian
Austria, and therefore of Christianity; ask the Jewish people
what they think of Christian Russia, and therefore of Christianity; ask heathen Congo what it thinks of Christian Belgium, and therefore of Christianity; nay, ask millions of
people in the Christian Russian Empire, with Tolstoy denied
Christian burial, what they think of Christianity, and then
realize the seriousness of the Christian Missionary's work upon
foreign soil!
Secondly, the Christian missionary must realize that his
message will have no meaning unless he himself is the product
of the message, representing and living the life which he
asserts is the true life, visualizing that life in his own experience and in his own activities, showing the great truths
of the great programme of Christ. Never were Emerson's
words more true than of the missionary, "What you are
speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say." And here is
found the practical difficulty, and here is the reason why the
extension of Christ's kingdom has so pitifully halted, why
nineteen hundred years after its proclamation hundreds of
millions of people do not know that God is their Father,
that man is their brother. The reason, I say, is that our own




96


lives have not kept up with our own words; that we do not
know really what we are talking about. "Speak things"
cried Emerson, "or hold your tongue."
I believe that the real test of Christianity is coming with
the facing of the race problem. We shall then know whether
Christ's avowed followers really believe in the Brotherhood of
Men.
In the third place, the Christian missionary in carrying
the message to all the world, must insist that Christ's message is a definite and distinct message, based, as we believe,
upon the knowledge of facts as facts. Christianity respects
all that is good in Buddhism; but Christianity is not Buddhism.
Christianity is not Brahmanism, it is not Mohammedanism,
however near these religions may come in some of their teachings to the teachings of Christ. It is a Christian message,
based upon a particular attitude to the universe, explicit, precise and unique. Men may reject it, and they have a right
to reject it; but in rejecting it they must reject something
that is a definite and coherent interpretation of the great
mysteries surrounding us.
Fourthly, in carrying the message to all the world, the
missionary, while carrying the message in its great simple
outlines, must expect and must encourage the age in which
he is living, or the people among whom he is dwelling, to
work out in their own way the details of its interpretation.
the details of the meaning of these great simple facts, very
few in number, but going down into the deepest things in
the universe.
I here revert to the point previously alluded to. In my
judgment it cannot be too strongly emphasized, and emphasized
with reference to every department of Christian thought and
Christian activity, theological, ecclesiastical, liturgical and administrative, that there must be perfect liberty. This liberty
must be insisted upon by the missionary as he realizes his
great responsibility to those races and those people; and this
liberty must be granted without recrimination, without reproach and without withdrawal.
Take such a practical question as the question of church
organization. If you adopt any one of the familiar definitions
of the Church, you will see what scope is given for local development according to the temper of the age, the necessities
of the times, the traditions of the race. Here is Dexter's definition of the Church: "A Church is an association of the
friends and followers of Christ, for the profession of the




97


Christian faith and the performance of Christian duty." But
with even so simple a definition, what a host of questions at
once crop up. How shall this association be organized? Who
shall be the organizers, who the officers, what shall be the
forms of admission, what the ritual?
The Christian missionary will be ready with his advice
drawn from personal experience, based upon his historical
reading; but he will be very careful how he attempts to control, or coerce or legislate. He will insist, on the other hand,
that all these questions shall be worked out locally. For example, among the questions that occur will be that of baptism.
Leave it to the local development. The question of the Lord's
Supper, sacred and beautiful as it is, is another which must
be left to local development.
Was Grenfell right or wrong when he told his parishioners
that Christ was not the Lamb but the seal of God? Was he
irreverent, or was he a true apostle?
Find universal terms if possible. If you cannot do this,
find local terms for different localities. For example, water
for drinking purposes is a universal term. If you go throughout the whole world with a glass of water in your hand, everywhere the thirsty man, whether he knows where you come
from or believes in you, will believe in the water and will
reach out for it. Thus they will understand when Christ speaks
of Himself as the " Water of Life." He spoke of Himself as
the Bread of Life. And yet there are millions of people who
never saw bread, or ate bread, or know the meaning of bread.
And they will not understand Christ's phrase. Eat bread in
their presence and they will know it is food and then they will
believe in it as a true symbol.
If Jesus had been born in Labrador it is inconceivable that
His message to us would have been different, so far as its
great interpretations are concerned. But it is just as inconceivable that He would have interpreted His message in the
language He used in Palestine as it would be that He would
have clothed His body in the garments of that land. Parables, similes and formulas would all have been changed-the
permanent abiding element would have been His message
about God as Father, man as brother, self as minister, all
linked together in the kind of love with which he loved the
world.
Had Paul been born a Confucian instead of a Jew, or a
Buddhist or a Brahman, and had still yielded his allegiance in
these far-off lands to Jesus, and dedicated his life to Him as




98


his Lord and Saviour, the epistles might still have been written, but in how surprisingly changed a form would the everlasting gospel which he preached have been presented! What
strange omissions of arguments which we have been led to
think indispensable or all but indispensable! What strange
additions in historical allusions! What a new world of illustration and simile and metaphor!
Temperament is a gift of God. Moulds and categories of
thought are gifts of God. Red skins and yellow skins and
brown skins are gifts of God as well as white skins. The
Orient belongs to him, and the Occident, the North Pole and
the South, and when the indefinitely varied forces of man's
complex nature cry out for individual expression, it is fighting
against God to fight against this demand of nature. Man is
man wherever man is found, one and indivisible in his essential characteristics. But men are men wherever men are found,
as rich in multiform variety of expression as they are in elemental unity.
God is still a jealous God, but God is jealous for things
and not for words. He never was and He never will be jealous about names and phraseologies and formularies. Christ
was never concerned about the outward honor paid Him. He
did not yearn to be admired; He yearned to be followed. He
wished man to come to Him, not as a Shrine but as a Door;
not as a Goal but as a Highway; not as a Memorial Tablet,
but as a window through which they could see something; not
as something to be gazed at so much as the Light whereby
men might see God and man and life and opportunity as Christ
saw it.
What are your thoughts of Christ? Formulate them in
any way you please, provided you retain the authority of His
leadership.
Does he save you from your sin? Call Him Saviour!
Does he free you from the slavery of your passions? Call
Him Redeemer!
Does He teach you as no one else has taught you? Call
Him Teacher and Master!
Does He heal you from that which seemed to be an incurable disease? Call Him Physician!
Does He shine upon the pathway that is dark to you? Call
Him Leader!
Does He reveal God to you? Call Him the Son of God!
Does He reveal man? Call Him the Son of Man!
Or, in following Him, are your lips silent in your inca



99


pacity to define Him and His power, and is your mouth dumb?
Call Him nothing, but follow Him!
Oh, how our divisive names shrivel up and disappear in
the presence of actual discipleship and under the realities of
personal experience.
The Christian missionary must recognize this, and must
recognize it not grudgingly but gladly. Tenacious of his own
favorite formulation and insisting upon his right to that formulation, he will grant to others the same liberty he claims
for himself. So far from deprecating variety he will welcome
it as increasing the cogency of the appeal of the great gospel
of Jesus Christ as it is presented to men of many races, many
types of civilization and to many grades within those types.
The old battle-cries which quickly drew swords from scabbards and set the Christian Church in battle array against
itself, will become but the mottoes of the different regiments,
fighting not against honest men's honest convictions, but against
lust and pride and irreverence and hatred and falsity. The
old words will not disappear, but they will lose their rancor;
and Arminian and Socinian and Calvinist, Trinitarian and Unitarian, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox and Protestant,
will be names that carry respect if not conviction because of
the fact that they represent formulations of belief in matters
ecclesiastical, theological and liturgical that best express for
some group of Christians, if not for you, the Message of the
Master.
And shall we not pray that long before these great and
massive buildings of this particular School of the Prophets
shall show signs of decay our Seminary shall enroll among its
teachers and its students men of as varied forms of belief as
the names which I have cited would indicate? Yes, we must
open the doors wide, but we must be sure and have wide doors
to open! For when Christ speaks of Himself as the Door, it
is well that we shall so build our Seminary that its door shall
not be narrower than the door which Christ himself represented.
The missionary must, furthermore, beware how he transmits to his constituency the historic creeds that have ceased
to mean for him the things that they meant for their framers;
have ceased perhaps in some of their articles to mean anything at all to him. Whatever justification a man may feel at
home for continuing to repeat such words (and I for one
think we are in great peril of sacrificing frankness and reality
and even plain honesty with great ensuing loss of power, for




100


men respect words that mean what they mean, in the interests
of continuity with the great historic churches), abroad there
must be some other way to preserve continuity. Otherwise a
deadly blight must follow the discovery upon the part of the
people with whom we work, that the solemn recital of I believe covers really a statement of what I half believe, or at
most a belief that I would ordinarily express in very different
words and phrases.
Do not misunderstand me. Back of every article of these
venerable creeds there is presumably some great and important
truth. I would not have the missionary neglect it, if it be indeed a part of the Message of Christ, but I would have him
realize his obligation to restate the truth in meaningful words.
At his own peril, and to the peril of his hearers, he will pass
over to them words that to-day may be only infelicitous, but
which to-morrow will become chains about their necks.
And this leads me to say that the missionary must beware
of his vocabulary. He must realize the importance of pruning his dictionary from the standpoint of brotherly appreciation. He must also be careful of his words from the standpoint of theological development. Think of the burdens that
have been laid upon workers among Moslems by the introduction of the word person in connection with the formulation
of the doctrine of the Trinity, or by the all but universal use
among Christians of the expression, "For Christ's sake." It
may be helpful to you and you understand it, but cannot a term
be found that does not suggest that God loves men less than
Christ?
Mohammed in his early life came in contact with Christians, and yet somehow got the impression that the Trinity
consisted of God the Father, God the Son, and the Virgin
Mary. He somehow got the impression that God would
answer prayer only when the saints had been asked to use
their influence with Joseph, to use his influence with Mary,
to use her influence with Jesus, to use His influence with
God. I wish to speak in great and utter reverence. Mohammed could not find God in that way, and he had to find God.
Mohammed had to have a God that was a nearer God, and
he cried out of his heart-hunger and his heart-thirst, and he
got his answer. God found him. God spoke to him. God
said, " Mohammed, I am near to you; I am nearer to you than
the great artery of your neck."
The missionary must not adopt words or phrases, however convenient and easy of use, if thereby he runs the risk




101


of confusing the minds of the coming generation, and thus
misrepresenting the truth he would fain represent. The missionary must never forget that before he begins his work in
the heart of a man, God has been already working in that
heart; indeed, the great need of the missionary is to know
that God cannot work with him unless he is working with
God. The image of God, however blurred and worn and
marred, is still in every man's heart. The light that lighteth
every man that cometh into the world is still burning in the
heart, however dimly. And hence the approach to that heart
on the part of the missionary must be sympathetic, it must be
tender, it must be appreciative. That man has some form of
religion, and the religious impulse is always from God. It
is shamefully distorted at times, devilishly twisted, but the
impulse is from God. God has been working there, and we
must work with Him in that human heart, softly breathing
upon that ember, almost dead, until it glows again and after
awhile bursts into a little flame.
We must therefore beware how we rail at that heathen
and his religion, lest we rail at God. Such words as heathens,
infidels, and heretics, are not happy words in such connection,
and he had better drop them; also such a vocabulary as crusading against the foe. And besides, they do no good, but very
great harm. The word crusade makes some of my Moslem
students white with anger, and I do not wonder. We do not
wish them to think of Christ, the meek and lowly Jesus, as
coming armed as a crusader to overcome, in the fury of battle
and the storm of slaughter, Mohammed and his followers. I
have known men who are separated indefinitely from the
gospel's influence just because of these infelicitous and these
poisonous words. On the other hand, how richly beautiful is
Christ's vocabulary in this connection: the seed, the light, the
leaven, the life!
The missionary must approach his constituency intelligently. He must not underrate the task before him. He is
not merely dealing with a sinful man, he is dealing with an
ignorant man, or with a prejudiced man, or with a bigoted
man, or a fanatical man, or he may be dealing with a man of
great and profound intellect, and he must take these men seriously, he must acquaint himself with their religious creeds,
and patiently and steadfastly must he strive to put himself into
their minds and learn their logic.
Brethren, have I pictured an infallible man? Have I demanded unattainable qualifications? I have not done so pur



102


posely. I have tried to match men with opportunities, to meet
a demand with an adequate supply. The picture has not been
drawn in vain if it succeeds in shaming us out of our sloth,
sobering us out of our easy good nature and quickening in us
a new sense of the responsibilty we have assumed in undertaking to be known officially as the messengers of our Lord,
charged with the proclamation of His message throughout the
world. I would make the task so high, so exacting, so difficult, that our ablest, our most heroic, our most chivalrous
youths, the most devoted in all our seats of learning, will be
eager to be found worthy of being enrolled among these accredited messengers of Christ. I would make the Callingone can ill spare this rich and meaningful word, compared with
which the word profession seems to have a very meager content-I would make the Calling so rich and so full and so
noble an undertaking and of such evident power for service
that once again parents would dedicate at the cradle their
sons to its high and severe and varied demands.
I have been speaking as a minister, as a missionary, as a
foreign missionary; but before I close I must speak for a
minute as a son of Union, our beloved Alma Mater. For us,
my fellow-alumni, this day is indeed a day of high festival.
We care not what the weather is outside; it is a day of bright
and beautiful sunshine, and a time of holy omen for the
oncoming kingdom of Christ in our lives, in our homes, in
our parishes, in the world. Some of you may have shared my
ignorance of Presbyterian history when, on entering the Seminary as a student, I entered it with the impression that the
name Union represented an interdenominational theological
Seminary. At the time I was mistaken, and the discovery of
the mistake brought its disappointment and its regret, but
the years have brought their changes, and all trace of disappointment has been wiped out, for now our beloved Seminary has ceased to represent in its name a noble but narrow
victory of conflicting parties struggling in a provincial field,
but, thank God, has indeed become the union of larger things,
standing for a comprehension of all the churches, yes standing for the emphasis of the great brotherhood of man, yes,
standing for the union between us and Christ and God!
It is this new Union we now hail and acclaim; new, not
simply, not chiefly because of this noble pile of recently constructed buildings, so suggestive of all that is admirable in
ancient architecture and all that is practical in modern equipment, but new because our beloved Alma Mater has turned




103
her face resolutely towards the new day, not forgetting, indeed, that to-day is the child of yesterday, and also not forgetting that to-day is the parent of to-morrow!
May God bless her in her new career! May God bless her
and keep her!  May God cause His face to shine upon her,
and may God give her His peace. AMEN.








VII


THE ADDRESSES AT
THE DEDICATION SERVICE
i The Presentation Address, by the President of the
Board, Robert C. Ogden, LL.D.
2 The Response for the Faculty, by the Reverend President Francis Brown, D.D., LL.D.
3 The Dedication Address by the Senior Professor, the
Reverend Charles Augustus Briggs, D.D., LL.D.
* ~ *   **




*.... * a
-...
* ee
* -
* ---*




I.


The Presentation Address
By President Robert C. Ogden, LL.D.
On the seventeenth of November, I908, friends of the
Seminary joined with its Directors and Faculty in the exercises incidental to laying the corner stone of these buildings.
On that occasion the Directors were represented by the President, Mr. John Crosby Brown, and the Building Committee
by one of its members, the Reverend Professor George William Knox.
From that date onward the construction of the buildings
went steadily forward in a successful and satisfactory manner,
with only slight delays and without serious accident, until
now the entire personnel of the Seminary, Students, Professors, President of the Faculty, and Executive Staff are
comfortably installed in commodious, elegant and practically
completed quarters and have fully entered upon the practical
work of the seventy-fifth Academic Year of the Seminary. In
the short space of two years a beautiful hope has passed from
a creation of the imagination to an exquisite material expression.
We are now assembled that we may complete the transaction begun two years since and dedicate these buildings by appropriate religious service and suggestive public address to
their sacred and holy purposes.
In recent years death has been busy with the ranks of
our Board of Directors. Shortly after the laying of the
corer stone our President, Mr. John Crosby Brown, passed
over to the majority of our Associates already in the life beyond. I am thus called to stand in his place and to speak to
you briefly in behalf of the Board of Directors and its Building Committee.
The occasion is in its very nature unique. The dedication
of a great group of buildings exclusively to religious education
is a very rare event. Structures devoted to science, the fine
arts, religious worship, public service and education will in
107




108


the future be numerous and their dedication not uncommon.
Some are here present that witnessed on December 9th, 1884,
the dedication of the buildings at No. 700 Park Avenue, but
it is unthinkable that any of this audience will ever witness
any departure of this Seminary from this place, or any change
of construction beyond some additions already planned.
Some quite remarkable incidents have marked the construction of these buildings. Especially noticeable was the
selection of the plans. In response to the invitation of the
Building Committee, thirty-five architects and firms submitted
plans. The authorship of the various designs was scrupulously concealed from the knowledge of every one. Under
this condition a jury of architects was selected to examine all
and advise upon the best. After this the Committee was assembled for the final decision. An extended personal examination followed and when an expression of preference was
solicited the entire Committee was a unit upon the first choice.
Upon opening the sealed verdict of the architects it was found
to be the same as that of the Committee. This remarkable
harmony and unity has supplied the keynote of the whole construction. The solemn element in the proceeding is that three
members of that Building Committee have passed away, Mr.
D. Willis James and the Reverend President Charles Cuthbert Hall before the laying of the corner stone and Mr. John
Crosby Brown, afterward. The buildings stand here essentially complete upon the lines originally chosen. There has
been no occasion to regret at any point the decision then made.
May we not take the conditions under which this group of
buildings has been created as a prophecy of the unity of
spirit, the bonds of peace, the dynamic energy, under which
this Seminary shall continue its future work, continually rising with the lengthening years to greater heights of powerful
influence!
In organizations of every sort it is impossible to overestimate the value of spiritual life. This is true in varying
degrees of business and academic corporations, of factories
and of churches, and in the highest extent of institutions for
religious education. This spirit is the product of individual
lives and character. When an educational institution, and
especially one founded for religious purposes, is rich in the
heritage of accumulated forces produced by a great aggregate
of great lives the administration of its affairs imposes a very
solemn duty. Such is the case with this Seminary. From a
study of the past there arises a group of memories, hallowed,




109


sacred, inspiring-the roll-call of its nobility may be heard in
the Court of Heaven and the whisperings of its echoes are
often in our thoughts as their names are often on our lipsButler, Dodge, Jesup, McAlpin, James, Brown, Adams, Hitchcock, Hall. The entire list is too long for repetition.
No academic heritage can be more intolerable than a financial debt to the past, but there is richness beyond the power of
money to buy, in a spiritual debt to the past. Its inspiration
can supply nerve to the weak arm, can give courage to the
timid heart, can strengthen the tired brain. From the beginning, seventy-five years ago, continuously to this very hour,
this debt of the Union Seminary has been accumulating. In
counting up its assets we can find with every instance of large
material generosity, that may be estimated in currency, a large
gift of the spirit that makes a priceless contribution of faith
and hope.
This occasion gives potential evidence of the close association of the material and the ideal existing in this institution.
While our thoughts are busy with the munificence of Mr.
James and later of Mrs. James, both supplemented by the liberality of Mr. Brown, we must not forget that we are occupied with the larger interests of a school of the Prophets of
national and international reputation. In this Seminary the
constructive note of progress takes its impulse from a living
faith that is certain and from a spirit too genuine to be measured by words, but to be sought and to be found in the ideals
of her godly sons.
The position of this Seminary has been wrought out
through the stress and strain of conflict and misunderstanding
with a spirit of tolerance such as she only desired to receive
from others. After an extended period of reconstruction, the
Seminary is now at a point where its mission is not controversy but reconciliation. The crowning official act came with
the elimination of subscription to an ancient creed as the binding official symbol qualifying Directors and Faculty and the
substitution therefor of a simple, clear, concise statement of
evangelical faith in God and in his son Jesus Christ that could
be acceptable to Christian believers of every name. That final
step was longer and higher than appeared to many. But there
were men of vision who saw more clearly the possibilities of
that advance. Prominent among them were Mr. James, Mr.
Brown and Dr. Hall, prophetic spirits, keen to discern the
truth and courageous to express it. And this dedication of
this great plant is the outcome of that action. We look at it




110


with loving admiration, we name its cost in dollars, we accept
it all with a certain honest gratitude and pride. But our
larger response is for the sympathy of the human hearts that
inspired it, that gave themselves with their gifts and thus have
built into these walls, with a grace beyond the highest capacities of art to express, their own human lives.
We do not admit in this Seminary the truth of the proposition that there must be a secular side to a religious organization. By its very nature it is all sacred whether the
transactions be in stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, the sacred
scriptures, religious scholarship or any of the sorts of training for the ministry of the Holy Gospels.
Therefore in speaking officially for the Board of Directors
I do not, in personally addressing you as the Reverend President Francis Brown, assume to speak from the secular to the
sacred elements of this Seminary. In your own person the
two forms of administration are united. You are a member
of the Board of Directors, Chairman of its Executive Committee and President of the Faculty. It is in respect of this
latter that I venture to speak a few words.
It is proper to congratulate you as the Executive head of
this Seminary upon the occupancy of these admirable, complete and beautiful premises. I think I am correct in the statement that no essential has been omitted in their construction,
although a few minor details await completion.
Appreciation from a cultivated Public of the appropriate
elegance of the architecture of these buildings is coming to
us in abundant measure. An increased number of appreciative students are responding to the opportunities of Christian
scholarship offered by the Seminary. The open-minded spirit
that marks the freedom of research prevailing here is generally recognized. The service rendered to sacred learning on
behalf of all higher education in this country through the stand
here taken for the liberty of the Gospels is gratefully acknowledged. All these points, and others not mentioned, material
and intellectual, are prominent in our minds at this hour.
You are also to be congratulated that you are the head of
an institution for religious education to which a young man
may come from any Christian communion, enjoy all its advantages in scholarship and yet be entirely free from any
proselyting influence. It is this spirit that unites five different denominations in the teaching staff and twenty in the student body. From this comes also the spirit of tolerance toward
other and positively different faiths that seek to find the points




111


of agreement for human betterment without putting undue
emphasis upon points of difference.
And all this is quite consistent with our conviction that
religious belief should be intelligent and positive, constructive
not destructive, and that it should have competent, thoroughly
equipped, courteous, kindly and tolerant defenders of the
faith. To meet this condition it is well known is the purpose
of yourself and your Faculty.
The forward movement inaugurated here to-day should,
we think, mark a new and progressive epoch in theological
education. It is not within the province of a layman even
when speaking for a Board largely composed of clergymen,
to give advice or even positive suggestion to the President of
a Faculty. Nevertheless, I venture to remark that we are
living in a period of change and expansion. It is necessary that
Christianity should look toward the saving of society and of
the State as well as of the individual, that the Fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of man imply in many human relations, and especially in religion, a democracy that should be
essentially Christian. This great fact seems just now somewhat overshadowed.
To the plain man familiar with the ordinary affairs of life
the present opportunity for the pastor seems never to have
been equalled and the need for special training never so great.
The exactions of complicated city life and the bare, hard
conditions of rural life alike demand specific instruction.
These suggestions, and others of equal import call for increasing attention that the mental and spiritual powers should
combine the wisdom of the school with knowledge of practical affairs to the end that the Kingdom of God may come.
Knowing full well that you are leader and master in all
subjects that pertain to your eminent position, that your
ideals from the past and of the present are of the highest type,
that you enjoy the affectionate allegiance of your faculty; I
now, on behalf of your brothers in the Board of Directors
confirm the loyalty expressed at your inauguration, two years
ago, and with most ardent desires for your health, happiness,
and long continued usefulness again commit the welfare of
this Seminary to your care and keeping.




112


2.
The Response for the Faculty
By the Reverend President Francis Brown, D.D., LL.D.
MR. OGDEN:
It is a great trust which you are committing to the Faculty
of this Seminary, whose spokesman I am permitted to be this
afternoon. We thank you, and the Board of Directors, and its
Building Committee, through you. We thank you for all the
arrangements made so thoughtfully for our personal convenience. These are obvious to every visitor, and we have
reason to appreciate them a hundred times a day. This is
worth mentioning here, only because it makes for our efficiency as workmen, and we thank you, most of all, for the
facilities with which you have here provided us to do the
work you have set us to do. Our students share these feelings with us, and we are sorry that the limits of room make it
impossible for all to be here, to show their enthusiasm, of
which we have constant testimony.
We are all the more grateful because we understand quite
well that you do not offer us these buildings that we may take
our ease in them, but that we may render larger service in
them. You are not spreading cushions for us to repose on.
You are opening a door into a broader field. You are not
setting us on this hill-top that we may be conspicuous objects
of envy as we bask in the sunshine of a new prosperity, but
that we may join hands with our good neighbors who are
here already in the advancement of knowledge and of personal power-and that we may look out more widely over the
world, and train our cadets in view of the whole vast battlefield. We thank you for this splendid opportunity.
The trust comes to us with the authority of an imperative.
These stones have voices and cry their summons to us. We
are stupid and unworthy if we do not hear it. What are we
to do with these buildings and in them? How are we to use
this great vantage ground? The trust-in some ways unparalleled-imposes its tremendous obligation.
It is an obligation to the benefactors who have made this
day possible. We cherish their names and feel our debt to
them in our hearts. We are bound to see to it that their gifts




113


accomplish in fact what they have so ardently wished them to
accomplish.
It is an obligation to all our past, from the first group
of Christian men who outlined this Seminary in their faithful
plan-Absalom Peters, Henry White, William Patton, Erskine Mason, William Adams, and other ministers with them
-Knowles Taylor, Richard T. Haines, William M. Halstead, Charles Butler, Fisher Howe, Norman White, Anson G.
Phelps, and other laymen with them-from this group on
through the strong Directors and wise teachers who gave the
first tone, the distinct quality, to the Seminary, down to those
who have only now left us, and those who are with us still.
Mr. Ogden has spoken of our spiritual debt to the past. All
these men who have put their good lives into the work of
the Seminary-not without toil and strain-are our creditors,
steadily insistent-not to withdraw their investment-they
could not if they would, it had already been transformed into
spiritual power-but to see their investment of life and
thought and faith yielding its increment to the end, and this,
just now, depends on our administration of the trust.
But our obligation is also to the Church of Christ. The
Seminary has been established and cherished to serve the
Church; its Directors, Professors and Graduates are servants
of the Churches. The Church needs training for its servants
and an institution like this is set to give it-training first for
those whose one occupation is church leadership and activity,
and then for those who seek fitness for some other special
function in the Church's life. If we do not do this thing for
those who come to us, we are failures, we are in the way, we
are cumberers of the ground. To make the fit ones fitter,
and to keep the unfit out, as far as in us lies, are the two
aspects of this great obligation-and the Church ought to hold
us to account-and inevitably, and almost unconsciously it
does and it will. And this is a sobering matter for us to think
about.
Among our superior obligations is the obligation to the
truth. We feel bound to take this very seriously. It means
that we must get at the truth, ourselves, to the limit of our
power, and we do not imagine that we know it all, or ever
shall. Necessity is upon us-a divine compulsion we think
it is-to search after new aspects of truth, and to teach our
students to do the same. We find the old truths unfolding
into new meaning when we regard them, not as solid blocks,
laid in cement, hard and changeless, but as a garden of plants




114


and trees with perennial life, whose blossom and fruitage the
watchful gaze can see. And because we know we can keep
our eyes on only one side of the garden, we are glad to know
that other observers have stationed themselves at other points,
and we expect what they see to supplement what we see, and
contribute to the rounded and completed truth. And our obligation is to see straight, and help our younger brothers who
come to us for guidance to see straight-with their eyes, not
with ours-because, so it seems to us, only the man who is
ready to see the truth for himself, is prepared to know God.
Our supreme obligation is to God, our Father. The
sacredness of all this great equipment, to which Mr. Ogden
has alluded, makes the crowning duty for us. We know that
we belong to God, and we believe that He belongs to us"Our Father" we say. That means that the buildings and
facilities entrusted to us are a commission from Him. Each
man and woman of you has a sacred commission; this one
is ours. We have to accept it at His hands, and discharge it,
if we can.
Our God has shown Himself to us by many tokens, but
chiefly in Jesus Christ-so that we are confident that God,
who is Lord of all, in character and purpose is what Jesus
showed himself to be-as righteous and wise and loving and
forgiving and more, and stronger, because human and earthly
conditions were present in Jesus which do not hamper Godthat as much of God was in Jesus as a human life can show.
And when we see Jesus giving himself for men, we know
that God realizes his own desire in giving himself for men,
and we see no final hope for men-no other deliverance from
selfishness and obedience to the lower impulses-except in
sharing this spirit, and adopting for themselves this divine plan
of life which Jesus lived by, and which dwells forever in
God. And our summons is to teach our students this. This
means, of course, enlisting them intelligently in the service of
spreading this spirit and manner of life in the earth. For
this service they need knowledge of the world itself in its
varied life and need, and some understanding of how the
things that are have come to be. And they need long training
in the art of applying their knowledge of God, which is meant
for use in the common ways of men, to the actual problemsthe intricate questions that vex weary hearts and proud hearts
as the earth daily turns each face to the sun again, waking the
sleepers once more to their old temptations and duties and
opportunities.




115


It is a world-wide enterprise. Men in all continents have
to learn the new lesson. And no man can work out his
problem alone. We are born into families, and the whole
world is akin, and to live with God means to live as members
of the social organism, which God has set going, and in which
his mighty plan is to be realized.
When we catch sight, as we do now and then, of that which
is to be, we see men and women living everywhere in purity
and peace, the strong bearing the infirmities of the weak and
not pleasing themselves-pleasing themselves by serving the
rest-a social life which is a life of righteousness and consideration in equal parts, and a heaven above to which ladders
rise, with angels ascending and descending on every hand.
The time is not yet-but we take it as the best expression of
our obligation to God for these splendid things about us, that
we devote ourselves as we accept this trust, devote ourselves
with all we have, including what is lent to us so generously
here, with all that we are, and can do, to patient work toward
this one end-the reproduction of the character and purpose
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shall usher in the triumphant
kingdom of God.
3.
The Dedication Address
The Ideal of the Study of Theology
By the Reverend Professor Charles Augustus Briggs,
D.D., D.LITT.
We are assembled on this occasion to dedicate the new
buildings of Union Theological Seminary to their work of
training theological students for the Christian ministry. This
is the third set of buildings in which this Seminary has been
housed. It has been the privilege of the speaker to have been
a student in the earliest of them, and a professor for thirtysix years in all of them. One of his chief joys is the friendship of the sometime President, Charles Butler, our venerable
leader in troublous times, who linked the Founders with the
present. It has also been his privilege to know by personal
acquaintance several other Founders of this Seminary, and the
most of its Directors, Professors and benefactors. On this




116


occasion many of you are asking, what is the purpose of these
splendid and costly buildings, erected by the piety and munificence of representative merchants of this metropolis. It is
only fitting that I should answer you; and I am happy to be
able to do so by simply unfolding the ideal of the Founders
of the Seminary, to which each succeeding generation of Directors and Faculty has been faithful, as the charter of our
duty and our rights, the exponent of the spirit and life of the
Seminary, to be perpetuated in all time, the Ideal of the Study
of Theology.
As I ask your attention to this theme to-day, I do so not
merely out of reverence for the past, piety to the Founders,
and fidelity to those noble men with whom I have been associated for so many years in this institution; but because my experience as a student and teacher of Theology for half a century, my studies in the history of theological education, and
my acquaintance with institutions of learning in many parts
of the world, all convince me that our Founders were altogether right in their ideal. I can subscribe to it, as I doubt not
is the case with all my colleagues, with my whole heart.
It is an ideal so simple and yet so profound, so masterly
and yet so inviting, that we and our predecessors have been
trying to realize it during three-quarters of a century; in which
this Seminary has risen, as it were from dust and ashes,
through many sad experiences of poverty and affliction, of conflict, temporary defeat and ultimate victory, to our present
magnificent situation.
We have not yet attained the fulness of our ideal, but in
this new home, where we have such great opportunities for
growth and expansion, excelling all that we had any right to
expect, we are pressing on, with a more solemn realization of
our privileges, but with fresh vigor and renewed courage,
" toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus " (Phil. iii: 13-14); for we are assured that that
mark is the Ideal of the Study of Theology.
Sadness tempers our joy as we remember those noble Directors who have so recently been taken from us: our late
vice-president, D. Willis James, whose princely gifts first made
these buildings possible; and our late president, John Crosby
Brown, whose wise administration adopted their plans and
laid their foundations; our Moses and Aaron, they saw the
promised land from afar, and led us to its very gates, but were
not permitted to enter. They are doubtless with us to-day,
in spirit, and ever will be, as we endeavor to carry on the




117


ideal of the Founders as they received it and embodied it for
us in such worthy and appropriate structures.
The Ideal of Theological Education given us by our Founders in the Preamble of our Constitution is as follows:
"Being fully persuaded that vital godliness well-proved,
a thorough education, and a wholesome practical training in
works of benevolence and pastoral labors, are all essentially
necessary to meet the wants and promote the best interests of
the Kingdom of Christ, the Founders of this Seminary design
that its students shall have the opportunity of adding to solid
learning and true piety, enlightened experience."
This Preamble gives us three constituent elements of our
ideal:
i-Vital godliness-true piety.
2-Thorough education-solid learning.
3-Wholesome practical training-enlightened experience.
The ideal of theological education of this Seminary is not
that of all theological institutions, or of all teachers of theology. There are some who think these constituents inharmonious and inconsistent. There are many, especially in Germany, who regard the practical training as irreconcilable with
a thorough scientific education; for, say they, the practical
training, with the ministry of the Church in view, limits the
study of theology to that which the Church requires, and
makes the Church the final aim rather than the Truth itself.
How can a scholar give himself to the search for the Truth,
the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth, when the Church
has already decided for him what the Truth is; and has indeed limited him to the denominational form of it, in his
teaching and in his learning? This peril was fully understood
by our Founders and wisely provided for. They say:
" It is the design of the Founders to provide a Theological
Seminary in the midst of the greatest and most growing community of America, around which all men of moderate views
and feelings, who desire to live free from party strife, and to
stand aloof from all extremes of doctrinal speculation, practical radicalism and ecclesiastical domination, may cordially
and affectionately rally."
They saw at the time of the founding of this Seminary
that the then existing Theological Seminaries, for the most
part, were subject to ecclesiastical domination, and were suffering from the evil effects of it. They saw very clearly that
any action of ecclesiastical bodies, either in the appointment
or removal of professors, or in the oversight, direction or crit



118


icism of their instruction, can only be destructive of theological scholarship. They were determined that this Seminary
should never be subject to such control; and therefore it was
organized by ministers and laymen entirely apart from any
ecclesiastical body. They obtained a Charter from the State
of New York which perpetuated the control of the Seminary
by themselves and their successors chosen by themselves. The
Directors of the Seminary in I870, in the interests of the reunion of the Presbyterian Church and to relieve the other
Seminaries of that Church from ecclesiastical domination,
agreed to give the General Assembly the right of veto on the
appointment of our Professors. But in I891, when the General Assembly used this right of veto in an effort to gain
ecclesiastical dominion over the Seminary, it was stoutly resisted, and it was soon ascertained that the Directors had
transcended their charter rights and duties, even in giving the
right of veto to the General Assembly.
Thus this Seminary was founded free from ecclesiastical
domination, and it has fought a hard but victorious fight
against it. The result of that battle has been a still further advance towards the ideal of the Founders.
As the Seminary was founded by Presbyterians, it was a
part of the plan that the instruction should embrace " a thorough knowledge of the standards of faith and discipline of
the Presbyterian Church." But it is evident that the Founders
did not mean to lay stress upon this, for it was subordinated
to the greater whole of "a full and thorough education," in
which it was embraced as a part only. And in the Charter it
is defined that "equal privileges of admission and instruction
with all the advantages of the Institution, shall be allowed to
students of every denomination of Christians." This provision involved that the teaching of these students should not
be denominational teaching; but a teaching which all students
of all denominations might attend with profit, and without
detriment to their denominational affinities. And I can testify
both as a student and a professor familiar with this Seminary
for the greater part of its history that the instruction has always been of a comprehensive character without denominational bias. This attitude of the Seminary has been appropriately expressed in the name Union, and the Directors and
Professors of this institution have ever been in the forefront
of every movement for religious co-operation and reunion.
The requirement of special instruction "in the standards
of the Presbyterian Church" implied as its complement-if




119


"equal privileges" were to be allowed to students of every
denomination of Christians-that the standards of all these
denominations should also be studied. The Directors of the
Seminary, by their generous but mistaken action of granting
a veto over the appointment of their professors to the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, were prevented for
twenty years from making any further advance towards their
ideal. But soon after the rescinding of that act the Seminary
opened its doors, not only to students, but to Professors and
Directors from the different denominations. Five denominations of Christians are represented in our Faculty and Board
of Directors, and the standards of the different denominations
are taught by representatives of those denominations on a
footing of perfect equality with the teaching of the standards
of the Presbyterian Church. Thus Union Seminary carried
out its ideal, by ruling out denominationalism as well as ecclesiastical domination.
These wise men went still further. They saw the evils
that partisanship and party strife had brought upon the Presbyterian Church, and also upon other American Churches, by
its interminable conflicts and divisions; and they were determined to separate this Seminary from them. Their ideal
of the Seminary as expressed in our Preamble was that it
should be one " around which all men of moderate views and
feelings, who desire to live free from party strife may cordially and affectionately rally."
It must be said that this Seminary has never been partisan.
It has never committed itself to any party in the Presbyterian
Church or in any other Church. Its professors have been
chiefly independent men, differing often in their views of
doctrine and order. The students have indeed heard diverse
opinions on the same subject in different class rooms. The
students have been trained to think for themselves, to form
their own opinions. No pressure has ever, so far as I know,
been put upon them to adopt the opinion of any one Professor
rather than of another. And no student has been influenced
to change his ecclesiastical position, or his attitude to any
burning question in the Church. The Professors have worked
in harmony with mutual respect and recognition of differences.
The teaching in this Seminary has ever been free from party
strife, and the Professors have been usually moderate in the
expression of their views and feelings. There have been times
when it has been difficult to be moderate, and I cannot say
that I or others have always been as temperate as we should




120


have been. But I can affirm that the Seminary, as a body,
and in all its official acts, has been faithful to the ideal of
moderation of our Founders.
The Seminary has not escaped from conflict. It has been
obliged to defend itself against wanton attacks, and its Professors have been forced into ecclesiastical contests of more
or less severity, from the foundation of the Seminary to the
present time. But such conflicts have not in the least turned
the Seminary from its great ideals of moderation, peace and
unity. We stand for these things to-day, just as we have
always done.
Everyone who knows our history must say that the Directors of this Seminary have stood manfully by the Faculty
for the rights of Christian scholarship and for the free untrammeled search for the Truth, and they have not abandoned
in any respect their practical aims. The three constituent elements of theological education are not inconsistent, but complementary. Personal piety, the Truth for the Truth's sake,
and the service of the Church are unified in God, our Creator
and Saviour. Theology can have no other final aim than God
Himself, communion with God, knowledge of God, and the
service of God.
I. True Piety
"True Piety" or "Vital godliness well proved" is the
fundamental and most essential element in the study of Theology. Our junior Professor was entirely correct when in
answer to the question: "Can Re;igion be taught?" he said
in his Inaugural Address:
"Only a mind that is already religious can be taught religion. A teacher cannot impart any absolutely new interest
into the mind; he can only intensify an interest already there,
or extend the application of it. Aristotle is right: the teaching
of virtue presupposes virtue in the pupil, and the teaching of
religion presupposes religion in the pupil."
So our great theologian Henry B. Smith said many years
ago: "A true religion and a true theology are, in advanced
culture, inseparable. True religion cannot be preserved without a true theology; nor can there be a vital theology without
a vital religious experience." (Introduction to the Study of
Theology, p. 55.)
And both reiterate the words of St. Paul, "The natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are




121


foolishness unto him; neither can he know because they are
spiritually discerned." (I. Cor. ii: I4.)
Theological education like all higher education presupposes preparatory studies. The theological student must be
prepared in vital religion as well as in knowledge. He comes
to the study of theology with the scholar's degree, or its
equivalent, which he has earned by long and patient study.
But even more essential than that, he comes with " vital godliness well proved" and attested by credible evidence. Only
such a man is competent for a student of theology.
The Theological Seminary has as one of its aims, the development of vital piety. This is one of the reasons why
Theological Seminaries were established apart from and independent of Universities, because the study of theology in
the University tends to become merely intellectual and scholastic. The provisions necessary for the development of that
kind and degree of Christian piety necessary to the Christian
minister are not so easily made, where the theological students are in the minority in a mass of all kinds and conditions
of man, as where they are kept apart by themselves. These
evils are not imaginary but real. The Church has suffered
from them many times in its history, especially in the scholastic
period of the Middle Ages and in the scholastic period of
Protestantism.
The Council of Trent saw the necessity for the education
of candidates for the ministry in Seminaries apart from the
Universities, and by this provision did much to save the
Roman Catholic Church from ruin, and bring about what is
known as the Counter Reformation. So the Protestant
Churches of Germany, Great Britain, and America have been
obliged to organize Theological Seminaries to do that which
the Universities did not or could not do-give the practical
training necessary for the ministry of the Church.
But, if there are perils in the study of theology in the Universities, there are perils just as great in the isolation of
theologians in Theological Seminaries. It is recognized by
many of the best scholars in the Roman Church that the isolation of theological students has produced a multitude of evils.
It is really the introduction of monastic methods for the training of the secular priesthood. It takes them out of the world
for a series of years, but it makes it difficult for them ever to
return to their lifework in the world. A Roman Catholic
scholar recently told me that he came back to America, after
many years of such isolation in Rome, and found himself




122


altogether unprepared for the simplest things in the work of a
parish priest. Such a training may develop an ascetic type of
piety, but it does not and cannot develop that practical type
of piety which is necessary for leadership in the religious life
of the world.
The Protestant Theological Seminaries have not gone to
such extremes as the Roman Catholic, but not a few of them
have gone far in that direction, and it should be said that the
isolation of the Theological Seminary ever tends towards a
self-centered piety and one of a mechanical institutional type.
There are several kinds of piety, originating in the religious
experiences of the several different temperaments which distinguish mankind. There are differences in piety due to the
experience of families, of religious denominations, of nations
and even of races. There is no other perfect piety than that
of Jesus Christ our Saviour, whose piety was at once so simple
and so comprehensive that it may be said to embrace all types
in harmonious union. But that cannot be said of his apostles,
or of the ministry and people of the Church in any age of
the world. We all have our own special temperaments and
experiences. These inevitably produce differences in piety,
which cannot be pressed into any one mould, without serious
injury to the growth of the divine life, in the soul of man,
and in his activities in the world. The tendency of Seminaries
is to assume a special type of doctrine, so also to manifest a
peculiar type of piety. Both alike are injurious, the one to the
scholar's quest for Truth, the other to the Christian's life in
God.
The Founders of this Seminary saw these evils in the Theological Seminaries of their day, and they devised a very excellent method of overcoming them. Listen to their wise
words.
"The Founders of this Seminary design that its students,
living and acting under pastoral influence and performing the
important duties of church members in the several churches to
which they belong, or with which they worship, in the prayermeetings, in the instruction of Sabbath schools and Bible
classes, and being conversant with all social benevolent efforts
in this important location, shall have the opportunity of adding
to solid learning and true piety, enlightened experience."
This Seminary was in its original design, not separated
from the world, but deliberately and intelligently planted "in
the midst of the greatest and most growing community in
America "; and this for the very purpose that Faculty and stu



123


dents should take an active part in the religious life of the
city, and that their piety should grow in its practical exercise
in all kinds of religious work.
The Seminary does indeed make provision for the development of the piety of the Faculty and students, in daily and
weekly exercises of various kinds, some conducted by the Faculty, others organized and conducted by the students themselves; all of which, I am glad to say, are entirely voluntary
and none of which are required. And so there is every opportunity for the development of piety without any pressure to
conform to any special type.
But the Seminary still adheres to the ideal of our Founders
that the best religious training is to be attained not in the isolation of the Seminary, but in the religious life of the city,
under the supervision of the pastors of our city churches and
the leaders in all kinds of religious and benevolent service.
The students have the same liberty of choice here, as in other
departments, as to the church with which they will worship,
and the kind of work they will do, and the nature of the religious exercises they will undertake; but this is an essential
part of their study.
Union Theological Seminary is not isolated from the great
world, but it is in it, and rejoices to be of it; and yet we may
retire from the world as much as we please, and in our own
Seminary, consecrated by so many hallowed associations, we
may be as mystic as we wish, or ascetic, as anyone will, without hindrance from anyone or anything. The most marked
features of the alumni of this Seminary is that they are Christian workers. Their piety is of a practical kind, and yet we
have had among them mystics of the best type, such as the
Missionary Bowen of India, and our late President, Charles
Cuthbert Hall.
2. Full and Thorough Education-Solid Learning
These are the terms that our Founders used to indicate
what they meant by theological scholarship. They meant by
" thorough" an education that was entire and complete, as opposed to an incomplete and partial education advocated by
some as alone important for the practical work of the ministry. And so they say: " In all the subjects taught in the best
Theological Seminaries in the United States." They designed
this Seminary to be one of the best of its kind. They meant




124


by "solid learning," learning that is the result of careful,
painstaking, scholarly investigation, that is firmly embedded in
the rock of eternal truth-Solid learning, that is, as they say,
"aloof from all extremes of doctrinal speculation."
The greatest curse of theological scholarship is the "extremes of doctrinal speculation." These have always made
mischief in the Church. They have urged the Church to
premature scholastic definitions of doctrine in order to exclude them, which, while trying to mediate between the extremes, yet became themselves doctrinal speculations. These
extremes have brought about almost all of the religious wars
of Christian history, and have ever produced most serious evils
to Christian scholarship, which often has been crushed between
their upper and nether millstones.
Speculation has its proper place and importance in Theology
as in other departments of human knowledge; but it is only
proper when it builds on the solid rock of the most thorough
knowledge thus far attained, in order to reach out towards the
unapproachable and unknown. It is the cheap and easy way
of the speculator to jump at his conclusions and to mock at
the patient plodding scholar, who builds up his material by
the use of all the resources of sound methods. He springs
lightly over the obstacles that lie in his way until at last, with
incautious self-confidence, he stumbles over something unobserved, and falls into the pit of destruction. A little patience
with speculators and they destroy themselves.
I shall not say that all of our Professors have always kept
themselves free from such speculations. But I do affirm that
this Seminary as a body has stood firmly by the Preamble in
this respect as well as in others, and that sound scholarship
has been the characteristic of our institution. In the early
days of this Seminary instruction was as full as it was practicable to make it, with the limited number of Professors; and
the Faculty and students were quite as industrious as they are
at present.
Edward Robinson gave this Seminary a reputation for Biblical scholarship that it has never lost. Henry Boynton Smith
and Roswell D. Hitchcock advanced the study of Church History to the high level it has ever since maintained. When Henry
B. Smith undertook the Chair of Systematic Theology he
made Faith and Philosophy inseparable and christologized the
entire system of Christian doctrine. Thomas H. Skinner led
the choir of saintly men, William Adams, George Prentiss
and Thomas S. Hastings, who enveloped Practical Theology




125


with a halo of glory. Time would fail if I were to attempt
to tell all that the Faculty of this Seminary has done for Theology, as in linked succession they have striven, often in poverty and affliction, to realize our Ideal of Theology, as it has
gradually unfolded into larger, fuller and more comprehensive
ranges of study.
The field of Theology is now so vast that it is impossible
to cover it in the course of three years' study. The number
of years of study is no greater now that we have twenty-one
teachers than seventy years ago when we had but four. We
are obliged to make the greater part of our teaching elective.
There are many evils involved in this situation just as there
are in the elective systems of the Colleges and the Universities.
It is difficult to draw the line properly between what is elective
and what is required. It is easier to make all elective or all
required than to pursue the middle course.
The elective system encourages students to take the easier
and more interesting courses and to neglect those that are
difficult and technical; it invites him to specialize without sufficient general knowledge to enable him to specialize aright;
it inclines him to the exaggeration of those things in which
he is especially interested and the depreciation of everything
else. And so it encourages the Professor to make his courses
interesting to the student by the undue use of rhetoric at the
expense of logic; it invites him to lecture upon subjects in
which he is personally interested rather than upon those that
will be most useful to the student; and it inclines him to overlap and intrude upon other departments, and to overlook and
disregard the unity, harmony and proper proportions of the
different departments of study.
There can be little doubt that, in the required courses of
half a century ago, the student had usually a more comprehensive outline knowledge of Theology than he can obtain
to-day by even the wisest selection of the electives. But on
the other hand there were serious omissions, and inadequate
and disproportionate treatment, in those days, even in the best
institutions. It was necessary for all who wished to make any
thorough study of theology to go to the universities of Europe for that purpose. At the present time, in Union Seminary at least, the field of Theology is as completely covered
as in any university of Europe; and every method of instruction used whether in Germany, France, Great Britain or America, is employed by one or more of our professors. We combine the use of text books and lectures, the tutorial method of




126


the English Universities with the Seminar method of the
Germans; the popular lecture of the French with the technical
of the Dutch.
The field of study is, however, so vast that it is no longer
possible for the theological student to get an adequate knowledge of Theology in a three years' course. The time required
for the study of Theology has not been increased for more than
a century. In the meantime the legal and medical faculties
have increased their requirements in time as well as in courses
of study.
Union Seminary has within recent years organized a Graduate School of Theology, in which resident students and nonresident pastors of the neighborhood may continue their studies one, two, three, four years or more with the opportunity of
winning a doctor's degree in Theology by outstanding merit.
Thus we are striving to rise to the heights of our ideal;
and yet, I must say, that in many things we still fall short.
Our present splendid plant with all its increased opportunities
is none too large. We need additions to our Graduate Faculty, a large increase in our Library and endowments of fellowships for extended study and research. Theology still
abides and will ever remain the supreme knowledge, for it is
the knowledge of God and of all things in relation to God. It
uses the methods and results of Science and Philosophy to
sum them up in the comprehensive ideas of Theology. It has
a Canon Law and a pastoral medicine which have unfolded in
parallel lines with the Civil Law and Medical Science. As a
late theologian of Glasgow so well says:
" No knowledge in any of its kinds or forms is, or can be,
alien to theology as the Science of God. For He knows all
and is known in all, and rightly interpreted, all knowledge is
knowledge of Him. It is just the function of Theology to
theologize knowledge, to give it its last and highest expression
in terms of God." (Hastie, Introd., p. 45.)
3.X:i-A. Wholesale Practical Training
The study of Theology, as the study of Law and Medicine,
is not only theoretical but practical. It not only has in view
the quest for truth and fact, but it also has the still higher aim
of using the facts and putting the truth in practice. The Faculty of Medicine supplement their teaching by clinics and
service in hospitals. The Faculty of Law add to legal learn



127


ing, the experience of moot courts and service under approved
lawyers, before admission to the bar. So the Theological Faculty add to their teaching, practical exercises for the training
of the intending minister in all those activities which are necessary for the work of the Church.
Experience teaches us that while there is peril with some
students that they may be distracted from their scholarly work
by practical training, the peril is in many cases the other way.
It is sometimes difficult to induce students to attend to this
practical training especially when it is made optional. Nothing is more needed than hard study and technical discipline
in wholesome combination. Long years of study in school and
college make it easy and natural for the theological student to
pursue his scholarly studies; but the practical training is, in
large part at least, something new and difficult, which he does
not care to undertake until he is convinced of its necessity.
Our Founders wisely provided for this practical training
which they determined should be "wholesome," because they
wished to resist and overcome that "practical radicalism"
which is the bane of all religious work. The Founders were
well-known patrons of religious revivals, but they were opposed to that radicalism which in their days would make revivals the substitutes for the regular work of the Church.
They were patrons of all kinds of religious and benevolent
institutions designed to supplement and render religious activities more comprehensive; but they were opposed to that radicalism which would substitute any of these for the historic
work of the Christian ministry.
When we consider what the Christian minister really has
to do in the practice of Theology, we are overwhelmed with
the amount of labor necessary to give that "wholesome practical training " that he needs.
The Christian minister is the representative of Jesus Christ
in his offices of prophet, priest and king; and is at once a
Church governor, a pastor, and a preacher. As a church governor, he must practice ecclesiastical law, and be the counsellor
of his people in all matters of religion; and he must be prepared to plead at the bar of ecclesiastical courts, or sit therein
as a judge of the most important matters. As a pastor he
must go about from house to house to administer pastoral
medicine, and he must conduct the worship of the people and
administer the sacraments for their soul's good. As a prophet
he has to teach in public and in private, dealing with all classes
and ages in every grade of intellectual advancement, and adapt




128


his teaching to the capacity of all. He needs all the resources
of logic, rhetoric and oratory to stir the religious emotions of
his people, persuade them to action, and lead them in those
duties and privileges necessary to the development of their
Christian life. He must furthermore be a man of affairs, of
some executive ability, with sound judgment and nice discrimination in the common affairs of life. He must interest himself in every movement for good-political, social, economical,
educational-that will improve the condition of his people. He
must have sufficient general culture to prevent him from mistakes in his discourses or in his conversation upon the topics
of the day. He should know something of church architecture,
music, instrumental and vocal; and of choice literature; and
in many religious bodies also, of painting and sculpture, and
instruct in their religious uses.
Who is sufficient for these things? How is it possible for
any man to be such a comprehensive thinker and workerlawyer, physician, teacher, preacher, artist and man of affairs?
It is impossible, and yet the people are often so unreasonable
as to look for just this encyclopedic ability in their minister.
The " wholesome practical training" that the Christian minister needs has grown in recent times to as great an extent as
solid learning. The same necessity for an elective course, and
the prolongation of years of study arises in the practical part
of our work as in the scientific. It is evident that it is no
longer possible for any one man to fulfil all the requirements
for a Christian minister. The time is rapidly passing when
congregations will be content with the services of one man.
The splitting up of the people into little denominational congregations, which has gone to such extremes in modern
Protestantism in this country, has brought the Church into the
gravest perils because of the inability of the ministry to do the
work required of them. As they vainly strive to do everything, they often fail to succeed in anything.
There must be a consolidation on such a grand scale as to
be nothing else than revolutionary. The small congregations
must be consolidated into great ones, and the denominational
congregations must unite into comprehensive Christian
churches served by a presbytery of ministers. This is the ancient way, and that of Christianity in the greater part of its
history, and so it is demanded again by the economic forces
of our age as well as by the necessity for a complete Christian
service. Then there will be one minister as the executive man
of affairs, versed in ecclesiastical law, another in pastoral af



129


fairs, another a skilful teacher, still another a soul-stirring
preacher, others active Christian workers-a well-organized
and equipped body of Christian ministers.
This may be difficult in villages where a single minister
may be all that it is possible to support, but in these there are
not the same extensive demands for variety of work as in
cities; and the smaller congregations may be associated with
others in neighboring villages, and so several ministers may
be helpful to each other in their various gifts.
A  "wholesome practical training" presupposes certain
aptitudes given to a man by birth or in regeneration. Experience shows that several different aptitudes do not, except in
rare instances, exist in any one man. The man himself does
not ordinarily become conscious of his gifts until a certain
amount of education and training has brought them out.
Therefore a general training should precede specialization, as
for the physician and the lawyer.
If the one purpose of the Theological Seminary were to
train preachers of the Gospel, we might concentrate the wholesome practical training upon that. The prophetic office is regarded as the chief function of the Christian minister in
Protestant churches, emphasized because of its neglect before
the Reformation.
St. Paul tells us that it "pleased God by the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe " and that " the preaching
of Christ is the power of God and the Wisdom of God." We
cannot exaggerate the importance of training the intending
minister in the preaching of the everlasting gospel of Christ.
At the same time it is evident that many of the most pious
and gifted men can never become real preachers. A preacher
is born with certain natural gifts and graces which cannot be
given by any education or training whatever. Many of the
best students do not succeed in the ministry because they have
not the gift of preaching demanded by the people; and there
is no sufficient provision in most congregations, as at present
organized, for the employment of the gifts with which these
ministers are endowed. The exclusive emphasis laid upon this
part of the work of the ministry and the neglect of other parts
is rapidly emptying our churches of intelligent people; because
there are few ministers capable of holding their attention by
their sermons.
Everyone knows the difficulty of procuring preachers of a
high order for important positions. It is not that the average
is any lower than in former times, but that there is a much




130


higher standard to which fewer can attain. The reasonable
way to overcome this difficulty is to have fewer preachers and
better ones. Let the fewer preachers address larger congregations into which the smaller ones should be consolidated,
and let the main body of the ministry devote themselves to
other forms of ministerial work just as important for the
growth of the Church as preaching. Those that have the gift
of preaching should receive a richer and larger practical training. This our noble Director, the late Morris K. Jesup, saw
when he endowed a Graduate Chair for the higher training of
preachers in this Seminary, in order that students so gifted
might spend several additional years both in theoretical and
disciplinary training for the prophetic work of the Christian
ministry.
The Christian prophet has two functions-that of teaching
and that of preaching. Some men excel in one of these gifts,
some in the other. Few can be successful in both. The original Presbyterian and Congregational Churches in Great Britain and America had often two ministers, the one a teacher,
the other a preacher. The preacher and teacher have quite
different gifts, training and aims. The teacher aims to instruct the mind of his auditors that they may observe and
think. The preacher aims at the will and the emotions, in
order to arouse the people and stimulate them to action. The
preacher is trained to use all the resources of rhetoric and
oratory to accomplish his purpose. The teacher uses the principles of the science of education. The teacher must be more
thoroughly trained as a specialist in the subject he has to
teach. The preacher needs a more general training, especially
in choice literature and the fine arts. The department of
Christian pedagogy has ordinarily been neglected in the Theological Seminaries, but I am happy to say that the most recent addition to our Faculty in the Skinner and McAlpin Chair
amply provides for "wholesome practical training" in this
department also.
There are ample opportunities in this city for training in
the practical work of Sunday Schools, Bible Classes, City Missions, Young People's Associations, benevolent enterprises of
various kinds, Charity Organizations and Settlement Work.
Through the munificence of the widow of one of our most
honored Directors, we have an ample endowment for the oversight of this kind of work, and the students are ready enough
to undertake training in these interesting fields.
It is in the more strictly professional activities of the min



131


ister as physician of souls and church governor that there is
the least "wholesome practical training" in our Theological
Seminaries. This is not due to any fault in the teaching of
Pastoral Theology, which, from the foundation of the Seminary until the present day, has been in the hands of veteran
pastors of our leading city churches, but to circumstances
which we have not yet been able to control. The rise and
growth of Christian Science, Faith Cure and other, the like
"practical radicalisms" are the revenges of human nature
against the neglect of pastoral medicine by the Christian
ministry. They can only be overcome by the recognition
of all that is good in them, and by the wholesome practical
training of intending ministers in the work of the Christian
priest.
The work of the minister as a Church governor has always
been considered theoretically in lectures on Church government, but no adequate provision yet exists for a thorough
practical training in the law, discipline and government of the
Church. I can from long experience in ecclesiastical courts
testify to the evil results of so great ignorance of the practice
of the law and discipline of the Church. It is folly to have
canons of law and books of Discipline when the government
of the Church is put in the hands of men who have little if
any knowledge of them.
A theoretical knowledge of the work of the minister as
pastor and Church governor is as insufficient as theoretical
knowledge is to the physician and the lawyer. It is difficult,
however, to give this kind of practical training to the intending
minister in the Seminary, for we naturally shrink from merely
trial exercises, or any kind of unreality, in our service of God.
Furthermore, the Churches forbid the most important of these
exercises to any but those whom they have licensed or ordained. We have been trying for some years to make arrangements for the service of our students as assistant ministers after graduation, in order that they may thus have
their practical training in the real work of the Church, while
they continue their scholarly study in the Graduate Department. This is the ideal for which we are striving. But it is
evident that funds are required for the support of such assistant ministers either by endowments in connection with the
Seminary or appropriations by the Churches themselves. The
Churches are improving in this respect, in some denominations
more than others; and we may hope that in time we may thus
overcome our remaining defects and give the theological stu



132


dent a complete " wholesome practical training " for the Christian ministry.
The success of the kingdom of God in this world depends
in great measure upon the practical efficiency of the Christian
ministry. If one considers how far short the education and
training of the average minister falls from the ideal, and how
incomplete even the best-trained man is, in view of the immensity of the work of the ministry as a whole, it is surprising
that the Church is so successful as it is. We recognize with
the apostle that " we have the treasure of the divine grace in
earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of
God and not of us." We know that God will fill these vessels
to their utmost capacity with this treasure if only we will use
them in giving it to our fellowmen. " For we are laborers together with God."
There is no labor so difficult and yet so inspiring as to
work for the eternal salvation of our fellowmen. Nothing can
be so awful, and yet so joyful, as to labor together with God.
To take part with the Supreme Being in the accomplishment
of this divine purpose is the greatest of honors, and in itself
the supreme reward.
Conclusion
The ideal of the study of Theology comprehends the three
constituents, "vital piety," "sound learning," and "wholesome practical training "; it involves that these shall be intertwined in just and harmonious proportions, and that all the
great variety in these departments shall be summed up in a
higher unity. This is the work of Theological Encyclopaedia,
which does not indeed attempt to give a summary statement
of the contents of all types of religion, all theological learning
and all Church work; but does strive to do the formal work
of organizing them all into a complete and harmonious system, in which each department will receive its just place and
importance, without detriment to itself or intrusion upon others. It also sets forth the varied and distinctive methods for
the study of Theology, and the helps, literary and otherwise,
necessary to do the work.
This Seminary has had an introductory course in Encyclopaedia for nearly forty years, entitled by its first teacher, Dr.
Philip Schaff, Propaedeutic or Introduction to the Study of
Theology; but it was not until the Graduate Department was
established, by the appointment of the present encumbent to




133


the first Chair in the Graduate Faculty, that the higher work
of Theological Encyclopaedia was undertaken, of summing up
the whole work of Theology into a higher unity.
And just here it is important to speak of the Library of
the Seminary, which is, or ought to be, Theological Encyclopaedia embodied in Literature. We have a Library which is
one of the richest in the world in some departments of Theology, and one of the poorest in others. The poverty is due
to the fact that the funds at the disposal of the Directors for
the Library have always been so meagre. The richness is
owing to the purchase, by the Founders, of the Van Ess Library, the most valuable theological library that has ever
crossed the ocean; and to the special gifts of many honored
givers, the chief of whom are the late Director, David H.
McAlpin, and his children, continued for the past forty years.
Nothing is more needed than funds to supply the deficiencies
of the Library and make it adequate for the use of the Faculty and students in the harmonious proportions that the ideal
of Theological Study requires, and to make it more fully what
it has always been, the theological section of the Public Libraries of the city.
There was attached to the Chair of Encyclopaedia, Symbolics or Comparative Theology, which rises above all the
differences of religious denominations into that higher unity
in which they agree, and endeavors to consider their differences in religion, doctrine and institution from an irenic point
of view. That is especially necessary for this Seminary, which
claims to be something better than undenominational or interdenominational: namely, as the late statesman bishop, Henry
Codman Potter, delighted in saying "supradenominational."
What Comparative Theology stands for as regards the
Christian religion, Comparative Religion represents for all the
other religions of the world. We must recognize that the great
mass of mankind, now as well as for the millenniums of the
history of our race, have been religious in the exercise of other
types of piety, in thinking other kinds of doctrine, and employing other practical measures than those familiar to us in
the Christian religion.
The Theological Seminary cannot safely ignore these other
Religions. They must be studied with a sympathetic spirit,
glad to recognize all that is good and valid in them, and with
the same irenic purpose that is necessary to reconcile the differences existing in the Christian Church. We cannot any
longer take the position, born of ignorance, that God has lim



134


ited the bestowal of His grace to those who are Christians.
We cannot limit the influence of the divine Spirit to Christian
lands. We see in Jesus Christ our Saviour "the true Light,
which coming into the world, lighteth every man" (John i:
9). We are assured with St. Peter that " in every nation he
that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with
him" (Acts x: 35).
How can Christianity be the universal religion unless it
recognizes, with St. Clement, that the Philosophy of the Greeks
was as truly a preparation for Christianity as the Law of the
Hebrews: and that the practice of ancient Israel of taking up
into the Old Covenant Religion elements of good, especially
from the Babylonian and Persian religions, and of the ancient
Church in appropriating from the Greek, Roman and Oriental
Religions valuable material, is the true and wise course for
modern Christianity to adopt, by enlarging this theory and
practice so as to comprehend all of the Religions of the world.
They are all in their way preparatory for Christianity, and
will, as we anticipate, eventually be absorbed into a higher,
broader and more perfect Christianity, that will be world-wide
in its conception, and which will think nothing alien to it that
is proper for union and communion with God.
The Graduate Department is not limited to the comprehensive studies thus far mentioned, but embraces advanced
work in all departments, Biblical and Historical, Doctrines of
Faith and morals, theoretical and practical, where the Professors are at work, busy as bees, searching the foundations,
and all that has thus far been acquired, by the exact methods
of sound philosophy and scientific criticism, to extract the
honey of wisdom, conserving all that is real, true and valid,
and eliminating it from all that cannot endure the tests of
truth and righteousness, reaching out in all directions to win
everything that is right and good for the service of God. I
have mentioned the more comprehensive studies because they
have their special place and importance for the Graduate
School of Theology.
It is just this expansion of Theology into such a great
number of studies, overlapping and entwined with so many
other departments of human learning, that makes it impracticable any longer to conduct the study of Theology apart from
the Universities. The Theological Seminary and the University are in mutual need of each other. When this became evident a few years ago, relations of courtesy and mutual help
were established between this Seminary and Columbia Uni



135


versity, largely owing to the wisdom of our Director, the Honorable Seth Low. This was subsequently extended to the New
York University and to other institutions also. While these
relations are valuable to undergraduates they are still more
valuable to graduates. For it is just in the higher and more
comprehensive ranges of Theology that relations with the
University become necessary. It is indeed an important part
of the work of Theological Encyclopaedia to consider the relation of all education to Theology, in the most comprehensive
classification of all knowledge, professions and arts.
The sad warfare that has too often been waged between
the partisans of Theology and Science has no place in the
higher ranges of Theology. It could never have taken place
except upon its lower levels. The ideal of Christian Theology
is to recognize all that is good and useful in all human knowledge, in all human activities and in all life, and to build all into
a temple of divine Wisdom.
Theology is now, as ever she must be, divine knowledge.
She is by nature, as the daughter of God, gentle, patient, loving, and most gracious, welcoming all learning and all workers
of good to the feast prepared in her hospitable palace. But
she has been too often misrepresented by evil spirits, who have
for a season usurped her place.
An ancient Hebrew sage saw a counterfeit of Wisdom
seated upon a lofty seat at the door of her house, ignorant and
clamorous, with loud, imperative voice, urging the passer-by
to turn in and drink of her stolen waters and eat of her secret,
soul-destroying bread. Divine Wisdom herself is busy in her
palace providing a feast for her guests. She sends forth her
maidens with the invitation:
"Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mingled.
Forsake Folly and live; and go in the way of understanding."
(Prov. ix:5).
And so St. Paul conceives of the household of God, the embodiment of Christian theology, as:
" Built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, Christ
Jesus Himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom each
several building, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy
temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for
a habitation of God in the Spirit." (Eph. ii: 20-22.)
Our Founders may have had this passage in mind in their
ideal, for it is a Theology at once vital, constructive and efficient-vital in union and communion with God in the Spirit





136
constructive, building on Jesus Christ as chief, and on apostolic
foundations, and on all teachers and workers in all ages; their
several buildings all fitly framed together in comprehensive
unity-and practically efficient: growing ever higher and larger
into that completeness and perfection of structure worthy of
the God of Glory and of Grace.


*




VIII
THE RESPONSES AT THE DINNER








THE RESPONSES AT THE DINNER


MR. ROBERT C. OGDEN:
Ladies and Gentlemen, Faculty, Alumni, and Students of the
Union Theological Seminary:
I have to say to you all on behalf of the Board of Directors at this close of a remarkable day in the history of the
Union Theological Seminary that we as a Board feel under
very great obligation to you that you have accepted our invitation for this evening's enjoyment.
The day has been a remarkable one. Its peculiar features
have been celebrated in public address at the new buildings of
the Seminary to-day, and it would ill become me to undertake
any repetition of what has been so ably said already.
At the outset of this proceeding this evening I think it
would be well to drink to the toast, "The President of the
United States," and before calling for that toast I desire to
state a word or two about the present incumbent of that high
office. Last Spring we called upon him to give him an invitation to be here to-night. He was extremely gratified and said
he would be delighted to come, for he had certain things in
his mind on the subject of Religious Education that he would
very much like to say and he would like to say them on such
a propitious occasion as this, but that he could not tell then
whether he would be able to attend when the time came. From
the nature of that conversation I was prepared for a disappointment, and the conspiracy between the Panama Canal and
the Congress of the United States so worked upon him that
he could not follow the bent of his own inclination and be
with us to-night.
He has sent us a word of greeting, however. His secretary
writes on his behalf:
" The President wishes me to express his regret at his inability to accept. He is working at great pressure on his annual message and it would simply be impossible for him to
leave Washington at this time."
I think that as this is a sort of Christian Temperance
139




140


Union we may fill our glasses with pure water, and drink not
only to the office of the President of the United States but to
the President.
After the drinking of the toast, in which all present joined
with great enthusiasm, MR. OGDEN continued:
The Union Theological Seminary has been honored in the
proceedings of this day by the large number who are representatives of other institutions, who have accepted the invitation to be present. One hundred and thirty-five delegates
from other institutions of learning from every part of America, and some not from America have been here with us today. Included in these acceptances we have responses from
Oxford, and from Cambridge, and from the University of
Durham, and from the University of Manchester, in England;
we have them from the University of Marburg, in Germany,
together with a number of sympathetic and interesting letters
and many acceptances from distinguished scholars in Germany
and elsewhere, other than those I have referred to. We therefore feel justified in claiming for the Union Theological Seminary not only a national character but an international reputation, and we are certainly gratified at the sympathy expressed
through our sister seminaries, and in such a marked degree
by the great universities of Europe.
We shall hear from two of the representatives of those
universities, one of them the honored President of Columbia,
the other the Bishop of Massachusetts, as the evening proceeds.
And this reminds me that I have here some little remark
to make concerning the extent of the program of post-prandial
prattling that we have proposed this evening. We have quite
a number of speakers, and some people evidently are a little
anxious under the circumstances as to the time as to which
this dinner would adjourn. I beg of you all to accept my
assurances that all of the addresses this evening will be of
the most interesting character; and if you will examine the
list of the speakers you will be assured I am right. But they
are all impressed, being sensitive and honorable gentlemen,
with the prominent thought in New York society to-day, which
is the thought that is given to us by the Pennsylvania Railroad with the elegance and completeness of its terminal facilities. And this applies to human corporations quite as well as
railroad corporations; and I am sure that this beneficent and
soul-satisfying thought is prominent in the minds of all the
gentlemen that will speak to us this evening.




141


The first toast on the program, as you may possibly have
noticed, is the one entitled " Our Neighbors."
Being a somewhat serious and perhaps partially well-educated group of people, in the words of the Holy Scriptures,
we may remember the question of one of the great teachers
years ago, "Who is my neighbor?" —and when the Union
Theological Seminary asks that question the response comes
very quickly, "Columbia University," and therefore it is
proper that we should first hear this evening from the loved
and honored President of that institution, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler.
PRESIDENT BUTLER:
Mr. Ogden, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is my privilege to state in a few brief sentences my conception of the significance of the coming of this Seminary to
its new home on Morningside Heights. It is significant for
this metropolitan city and for the Union.
No matter how devoted we may be to peace, we fall inevitably into the habit of speaking of many of the problems
and tasks of life in terms of struggle, of contest and of controversy. The biologist and the economist alike will have it so.
We are engaged in a most conspicuous fashion in this
modern democracy of ours in making a struggle almost desperate in character for the formation and expression of the
intellectual and the spiritual life.
The first act of a good general is to mobilize his forces, to
bring them into touch, into relation, into sympathetic co-operation, each part with the other, that the struggle may be more
effectively carried on.
It is now almost a quarter of a century since the far-seeing
men of New York have begun to occupy and fortify Morningside Heights as the citadel of our intellectual and our spiritual
life. They have planted there a great cathedral with its spires
of aspiration pointing everlastingly towards Heaven. They
have built there a great hospital with its rooms open to receive the poor, the sick and the needy. They have built there
a great university representing every aspect of letters and of
science in their theory and in their applications.
And now they have surrounded these and their allied institutions with a great school, magnificent, well equipped,
catholic and scientific for the study of the " Queen of the Sciences."




142


One more step has been taken in mobilizing the forces of
civilization to fight the everlasting fight and to exalt the no less
everlasting ideal.
I remember many years ago to have been present at the
service in celebration of the Greek Church's Easter Festival
in the City of Jerusalem. I remember that when at twelve
o'clock the supposedly holy fire made its appearance at the
very center of the shrine there were ready runners stripped
and prepared each with his candle, guarding carefully its top
with its sacred, divine flame, to carry far away to the churches
and the altars and the homes, not alone of Palestine, but to
many parts of the distant world where the Greek Church ruled.
As these men dashed away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre carrying this little bit of flame, not one but a hundred
poor peasants came up close to put each his little candle where
it could get something of this light and take it away to his
own hearthstone and domestic shrine. We are building an
altar with the everlasting fire. There will be hundreds and
thousands and tens of thousands of messengers, and runners
and pilgrims to carry out this beneficent light, this guiding
purpose, into the uttermost part of these United States and
of the world.
We are neighbors in this splendid and inspiring task, and
no neighbor, no ally, no friend could be more welcome than
the splendid company of scholars who have come under the
aegis of the Union Theological Seminary, bearing the great
traditions that we heard so splendidly described by Dr. Briggs
this afternoon, and taking their part in what is after all the
one thing in this life most worth living for, their part in the
pursuit of truth and the exaltation of the spiritual ideal.
MR. OGDEN:
Dr. Butler's remarks remind me that I was a little too
economical of your time, and still further that I do not propose to occupy but a moment of it now.
I apologize in failing to refer to the location and the completeness of the plant, that so far as we can now judge, is perfect for the accommodation of Union Theological Seminary
on Moringside Heights. Those of you who have not seen
the buildings, I would advise to see them, and I am sure that
if you will carefully preserve and refer to the souvenirs that
have been distributed here this evening, and to the views presented there in the latter part of that souvenir, they will, I




143


am sure, awaken your interest. But you should see the buildings for yourself.
The next toast on our program is " The City."
Our honored guest and associate in religious work, the
Bishop of New York, is down to respond to that toast, but he
has confidentially communicated to me that he does not care
to respond to that toast.
I am almost sure that he has forgotten a splendid speech
that I heard him make a short time ago on the spirituality of
the City of New York, a very wonderful speech, but however
that may be, the subject that interests Bishop Greer is "The
Union Theological Seminary and its Relation to Church
Unity," and on that subject he prefers to speak to us.
THE RIGHT REV. DAVID H. GREER:
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:
This is a formidable duty to which you have summoned
me. Not because of the subject-I can easily get away from
that as a preacher does from his text-but because of you,
and I cannot get away from you: you distinguished people
eminent in so many different vocations, college presidents,
teachers, preachers, doctors, journalists, men of affairs, and
yet over it all there seems to be a Presbyterian hue, and somehow strange as it may seem, I feel much at home, because I
know you so well and I love you so much.
I feel honored with the invitation to your banquet and the
privilege which it gives me of extending my sincere and cordial congratulations to you upon the formal and official opening of your splendid seminary buildings. Certainly they
occupy a great coign of vantage, not only because of their
physical site but because of their academic vicinage. Your
proximity to Columbia University will give free and convenient opportunity to the students of the Seminary to avail
themselves of the privileges of that great and growing university, over which our learned and brilliant friend, Dr. Butler, so admirably presides.
May I venture to suggest, lest some of you may not know
it, that there is another neighbor there on that great eminence
-the Cathedral of the Episcopal Church, now approaching
one stage of its completion, and perhaps your proximity to that
cathedral may have the tendency to divert some of the students of Union Seminary into the ministry of the Episcopal
Church. And when that cathedral shall be opened for regu



144


lar and steady services, as it soon will be, some of your students may be so impressed with the character of its services
that they will want to come to us, and if that is the case I am
confident of two things: First, that as far as we are concerned
they are welcome to come, and, second, as far as you are concerned, from what I have heard this afternoon, they are welcome to go if they want to go. We have no desire to devour
them nor they to be devoured; certainly not in the way of
which I recently heard when one evening last Summer I was
called to the telephone by that imperative ring, and was told
by the party at the other end of the wire that the cannibals
had just eaten two missionaries, and wanted to know what I
was going to do about it. There didn't seem anything then
that I could do-it had been done. I can only say that if any
of your bright and promising young men desire to come to us,
we will try and take better care of them.
But Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, another coign of vantage
you occupy. If I interpret aright Union Seminary, it is a
great theological university and not simply another theological
school. Your faculty, men of international reputation for
scholarly equipment and attainment, have it for their aim, if
I correctly interpret it, to train for the church at large, the
church universal, the church catholic, of any and every name,
a learned and competent ministry.
In many ways you have shown this breadth of purpose. I
heard this afternoon of the number of representatives, I forget how many, from various denominations you have upon
your Faculty and among your undergraduate body. One of
your Faculty is a member, a clergyman of the Episcopal
Church, and I think he is not exactly what we call among us a
"Low Churchman," with ultra-Protestant tendencies; he is
nevertheless your honored senior professor. You are not
warped, you are not biased, you are not prejudiced, you are
not like the Congregational Minister of whom I heard preaching to an assembly, all Congregationalists, in England, take
for his text, " If any man refuses to hear the Church, let him."
And then, still another coign of vantage you occupy: Your
students are from everywhere, not of any particular type or
school of thought or temperamental preference, and coming
thus together into personal touch and contact, they are perhaps preparing the way by a better mutual understanding for
that great union of Christendom and of all Christian forces,
which is the desired consummation of the Christian world.
I remember two years ago, when I was present at the




145


Lambeth Conference in England, and appointed to be a member of the Committee on Reunion and Intercommunion, we
were honored once with the presence of the great Congregational Divine, known on both sides of the water, the Reverend
Doctor Horton. He told us very frankly and fraternally that
the great objection to the Anglican Church, which had been in
part responsible for the creation of the Congregational Church,
was not the Episcopate, but because the Anglican Church was
supposed to be lacking in vital piety and personal religion.
And just across the table from him sat the dear old Bishop of
Lincoln, now gone to his rest and reward, one of the holiest,
humblest and devoutest men in all the kingdom. There they
had been, those two great eminent Christian divines, living side
by side almost, not quite understanding one another, working
and living at cross purposes until they met across the table of
a committee room.
If I had time, but I haven't, I would like to speak of that
great movement which has recently been started, both in the
Episcopal and the Congregational churches, for a conference
with the whole Christian world concerning faith and order;
not faith as an intellectual proposition, as a theological dogma,
as an ecclesiastical tenet, but faith as a stupendous spiritual
act, and when the whole Christian world can be lifted up to
that first and can live in that first, then and only then shall
we be prepared to consider such questions of order as then
remain to be considered.
May you in your way, gentlemen, and we in ours, and others in theirs contribute each as each can to that great and desirable consummation.
MR. OGDEN:
When I was a little more active in the Presbyterian Church
than I have been of late, I often longed for a real good bishop
of the Episcopal sort, and as years lengthen, and as I know
the Bishop of New York a longer time, I am sure that the
desire on my part does not abate.
I desire to apologize to Dr. Alexander that I slipped over
his name as the second speaker on the program this evening,
but it was just a lapsus of some sort, and I leave it to the
professors of Latin present to finish the sentence, and I now
have the pleasure of introducing Dr. George Alexander, who
is the nearest to a Presbyterian Bishop of any churchman of
our persuasion that I know.




146


THE REVEREND GEORGE ALEXANDER:
Mr. President, Friends of Union Theological Seminary, Ladies
and Gentlemen:
I appeal to you for sympathy. I thought I had obtained
my discharge, and it is only a reprieve. I confess to a certain mild surprise that I have been asked to open my lips in
this august assembly. The breach between Union Theological
Seminary and myself has been steadily widening for a quarter
of a century. When I came to New York, one of the attractions was that within a stone's throw of University Place
Church stood Union Theological Seminary with Dr. Shedd
and Dr. Shaff and others of their confreres. But my type of
orthodoxy proved so repellant that within a year Union Seminary sheered off to a distance of three miles, and that has
since been increased to six miles, and I assure you, Mr. Ogden,
that it is very delightful to receive such a tribute in my declining years, and to have once more the sense of neighborliness and brotherliness.
It is one of the penalties of longevity that one is compelled
to note the transition of material grandeurs and the instability
of human hopes. I have seen Ichabod written upon the walls
of the first home of Union Seminary, and the second home of
Union Seminary, which I heard dedicated with prophecies that
it would endure through the centuries, has already met with
the fate so well described in that bit of Psalmody to which
Dr. McKeever and I were inured in our callow days.
Dr. Ogden has referred to me as a Presbyterian. But I
suppose it is due to the fact that I am a Presbyterian that I
am permitted to sit in this company and respond to this toast.
Perhaps I should regard my invitation to speak here to-night
as indicating a lingering fondness on the part of Union Seminary for the ancestral home from which she departed nearly
a generation ago.
Union Seminary rejoices in her academic freedom and rejoices in her emancipation from ecclesiastical formulas, rejoices
in her privilege to enter into affiliations widely embracing other
communions and reaching out into other lands, but after all,
the most tender and intimate relation of human life is that
which binds together mother and child. Union Seminary, after
all, sprang from the bosom of the Presbyterian Church. It
will be a sad day for both if the mother wholly disowns her
child or the child ceases to revere her mother.
Our good Bishop has made a bid for the students of Union




147


Seminary, and we are willing that he should take all that belong to him, but speaking for the Presbyterian Church we need
a lot of them if they are of the right sort. The field is the
world, and no small section of the world is this city of ours
for which the good Bishop declined to speak.
Let me put in a plea for the Presbyterian Church in the
City of New York. Do we realize, gentlemen, that the posts
most commanding and most exacting are the posts that are
vacant and most difficult to fill. The call is for men; men
qualified to meet the demands of the new era in this land and
all around the land. That is what Union Seminary is undertaking to do. It is a great and noble task to plant what our
President Taft called "Nuclei of Civilization " in every land
beneath the skies. For this and for the manning of the
churches in our own land we need pastors and teachers, men
great in scholarship, if we may have that without the sacrifice
of things more vital, but preachers and teachers and pastors;
men of God, men of religion; above all, great believers; men
with a vision of God and a vision of the world's need that
stirs their inmost being.
The Seminary, Dr. Brown, that can do that, that can supply that need will be held close to the throbbing heart of the
Holy Church throughout all the world.
MR. OGDEN:
Harvard University is represented in the gatherings of today by a professor who has tender personal ties with Union
Seminary, in addition to the honored position that he holds in
the great university of Massachusetts, the Rev. Professor Edward C. Moore, who will speak to you on " The University."
THE REVEREND PROFESSOR EDWARD C. MOORE:
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends of the Union
Seminary:
One name has been associated with almost every greater
step of progress in the world of education in our country for
the last forty years. It is that of President Eliot. Mr. Eliot
uttered, a few years ago, a word which I think might well
apply to the situation in which Union Seminary finds itself
to-day. He said: " He who has been a pioneer in any movement for human welfare has two pleasures. He has the exhilaration of being a pioneer, of blazing the trail. And then,




148


if God grant him but a few good years, he has another joy.
It is that of seeing men jostle one another to tread broad the
path which he once walked alone."
Such happiness Union Seminary, with a few others which
I could name among our theological institutions, may claim.
It is the joy of having had its share in the early stages of a
movement concerning which one hardly needs to be a prophet
to declare that it has made plain the road, which the institutions of sacred learning in this land will be bound to follow.
It is the movement for the association of the training of
men for the ministry with the training of men for other professions. It is the path which is to lead to the organic relation
of divinity schools to universities and the representation of
sacred learning in those centers in which all other branches of
learning are fostered.
It may be interesting, however, to remind ourselves that
in this association of theological education with the life of a
university, for which Union Seminary in its new location
stands, we are but resuming a great tradition of the past. We
do but revert to a principle which formerly obtained. Indeed,
that principle has been interrupted in its application for but a
comparatively short period in the history of our own country
and in the practice of the Christian Church.
The preparation of men for the ministry was a part of the
business of all our older colleges, the ones which have more
recently grown to be the most conspicuous of our universities.
I pass almost daily through a gate on whose wall is chiseled
an inscription, the last few lines of which read thus: " After
we had provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after
was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to have an illiterate ministry to the churches when our
present ministers shall lie in the dust." Those phrases express
the purpose of the founding of Harvard College. From its
very inception that college, which has become our oldest and
foremost university, set itself this task. It was to prepare
men for the Gospel ministry in company with men who were
preparing for other walks in life. It was to maintain sacred
learning. With allowance due for the peculiar circumstances
we might say of the origin of our most ancient institutions of
learning the same thing, which is true of the rise of the great
schools of the Middle Age in Europe, that the universities had
their beginnings in the theological schools.




149


The first chair in Harvard College, which had an endowment directly attached to it, was the Hollis Professorship of
Divinity, founded in 1721. The third such chair in Harvard
College was the Hancock Professorship of Hebrew and Oriental Languages, founded in I764. Their incumbents were
college professors. There was indeed no university, in the
sense in which we now use that word, in the land. But still
less was there a Theological Seminary in the land. The college was the seat of all learning, with sacred learning in the
midst. At a much later period of its history when the university would gladly have divested itself of the responsibility
of administering those funds, the Supreme Court refused it
permission so to do, and informed it that it must continue to
afford instruction in those subjects.
Then came the second period in the relation of sacred
learning and ministerial preparation to the universities. It is
the period of the theological seminaries. It is the period of
an impulse with which indeed we have been familiar. And
because we have been familiar with it we have perhaps assumed that it belonged to the normal state of things. I refer
to the impulse which led to the founding of schools for the
preparation exclusively of ministers. These schools have
been, for the most part, under strict denominational control.
They have been bound often in the most stringent fashion to
the maintenance of denominational statements of faith. They
have in some cases purposely dissociated from other institutions of learning. Or again, even when they have existed in
the same town with those institutions, they have had no more
to do with them than had the Jews with the Samaritans. I
say that, through familiarity, we have assumed that this was
the normal state of things. In simple truth it is but a brief
episode in the history of learning in our country. And furthermore, it is a state of things with difficulty made intelligible
to the inhabitants of other countries.
The first of these isolated institutions, Andover, founded
in 1807, did indeed represent a vigorous and conscientious revolt against the liberal movement which had possessed itself
of Harvard College. But in some measure also it represented
the fear of the influence of the rationalist movement which
was felt in all our colleges. It did not then look beyond a
fixed curriculum of professional studies, for which a few
chairs sufficed. It stood for an ideal of the contemplative, not
to say other-worldly and ascetic life of the minister, for which
meditation and seclusion formed a valuable part of prepara



150


tion. The lead of Andover was followed within two decades
by almost every greater community in the United States.
There passed over the whole country a wave of denominationalism of which the founding of many of these institutions
was an expression. They did noble work. They raised up a
ministry not merely faithful but able. They made a contribution to the life of our churches and country and to the evangelization of the world which can never be forgotten.
And yet practically every one of the principles which I
above alluded to as lying at their foundation is to-day in dispute. Under the challenge of the world, through the pressure
of its needs with our own enlarging and historical and social
sense, we have come to feel that the man of God must be
thoroughly furnished with all good work, not merely for that
of the institution which calls itself the church. We feel that
the church is itself no isolated institution let down into the
world. But it is a great factor of the world, bone of its bone
and part of its very life. We feel that the so-called sacred
learning is no small and separated province of the world of
learning, but it is a vital and integral part of that same. We
feel that the institution of theological learning can never do
all that its students need if it stands by itself. We feel that
a course of study has but scant right to be called such if the
results of its investigations are all known and fixed beforehand. We feel that the walls of denominationalism, which
these institutions have done so much to build up, ought now
to come down. We feel that these institutions, in which men
of one church are gathered to the exclusion of all others, run
some risk of hindering the union of Christ's Church on earth.
We feel that a school, in which youth of many churches are
united in work and prayer, is more likely to further that union.
Under these convictions, which are more and more widely
shared, we are treading the course which will lead us, not
backwards-thank God, we do not go backward-but will lead
us forward into an association of sacred learning with the
life of the universities far broader and more magnificent than
that which in former years obtained.
The Harvard Divinity School also, despite its background
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of which I spoke,
passed through this same experience of segregation. It is true
that the men who drew up the articles constituting that school
in 1817 used these remarkable words: "No assent to the
peculiarities of any denomination of Christians shall be required either of the instructors or students." They were thus




151


the precursors by nearly ninety years of those who, in I905,
proclaimed Union Seminary free from any act of subscription
and opened its doors to professors and students of many
churches. Yet for sixty years those remarkable words described a theory rather than a fact. Indeed it would hardly
be too much to say that even the theory was sometimes lost
sight of. The Harvard Divinity School was in fact as simply
a denominational school as were the others. And it had hardly
more to do with the university, whose name it bore and under
whose authorities it was governed, than had some of the isolated schools to which we have referred. It was in fact, if
not in charter, a Unitarian School. It did a noble work for
the Unitarian Church. But in the mood which ruled the age
it would do little or nothing beyond that area. Without doubt
many of its constituency had no desire to do anything beyond
that area.
Then came the third period when, thirty years ago, the
university declared that it would not hold itself responsible for
the maintenance of a denominational school. It set before
itself the ideal of a true university school, in which the two
implications of its charter were really carried out. It set before itself the ideal of a school in which men were chosen to
teach because of a learning and character which made them
the acknowledged compeers of the teachers of any other subject. But in their choosing no other consideration was to have
any weight whatsoever. It set before itself the ideal of a
school in which students of theology, if they wished to study
philosophy or history or science, had all the treasures of the
university to draw upon. It set before itself the ideal of a
school in which, if a student under any faculty whatsoever
wished to give himself to one or more of the studies relating
to religion, he had masters in those subjects for his teachers.
He was not compelled to do this work in a sentimental and
amateurish way in strong contrast with the seriousness of all
the other work he did. If he wanted to learn something, for
example about the New Testament, why should he not be
taught by somebody who knew something about the New
Testament? It sets before itself the ideal of a theological
school, in which the spirit of a university obtained, in which
the same courses were accepted for several degrees, in which
students mingled upon equal terms, in which the wholeness
and sacredness of life was emphasized and sustained exactly
by the recognition of the society and nominality and human
loveliness of religion. Truly a great ideal. But is not this




152


the ideal to which Union Seminary hopes to render unexampled service by all the unrivaled equipment in which we rejoice
as she enters upon her new era with this day?
The representative of the most famous of the isolated seminaries said to me only a few years ago: " But think how much
it will cost us to move." I could only reply: " But did you
ever think how much it will cost you not to move? You will
have to multiply your faculty by five to give to the men what
they rightfully demand. And if you do not give it to them,
they will go elsewhere." They did go elsewhere. That institution has since moved. And now men are seeking it again.
I believe that the contention was right. I believe that the
movement is irresistible. For not even if the isolated seminary should multiply its resource by five could it do the work
so well as by passing over that work to the university to be
done by standing shoulder to shoulder with the university. It
is a matter of atmosphere. It is a spirit and life. Men are to
be educated for the ministry not merely as other men are
educated, but they are to be educated with other men, as part
of the world of educated men. They are to look into the eyes
of other educated men with understanding, and not across a
great gulf fixed. They are not merely to live and work for
other men, but they are to live and work with them. The dual
standard of life and interpretation of the Gospel, which was
the curse of the Middle Age, still lingers. It is the secret of
the alienation of many from the church and the ministry. It
must be done away.
Oh, and let me make an even greater appeal than that and
one not so often made. It is not merely that the theological
student needs the university. It is also that the university
needs the student of religion-so only that the latter be a person of the genuine quality which anybody can need. I have
spoken of the contribution which the university makes to him.
But is there nothing which he can contribute to the life of all
the other members of the university? Truly nothing and less
than nothing, if his religion is of the artificial sort. Truly
nothing, if he bring reproach upon his cause. But he has an
inestimable boon to confer if he be the right sort of a man, a
pure youth among the tempted, unconquerable idealist among
many who are sordid, generous among many who are selfish,
Christianlike among those who have found Christ, and, as well,
among those who have not, a minister by life, example, saintliness of spirit, even before he came to the ministry in the
word of the Gospel upon which his heart is set. I have charge




153


of a university chapel. I have no more faithful supporters
in my work than the Divinity School men. It would indeed
be disgraceful if it were not so. But the university is indefinitely richer by the fact that it is so. Or, from this matter of
character to recur for a moment to that other matter of learning of which I spoke. Why should the other members of a
university be deprived of the study of religious subjects altogether or else condemned to study them in an unlearned and
an unscientific way? Why should not the circulation of the
free life of learning be just as good for one set of men as it
is for the other? I stand here to plead for this side of the
question, and that most ardently. It is a great opportunity
which the old endowed universities have in this regard. For,
apparently, it is a problem which the universities under state
control find much more difficult to solve. I know a school of
which it would be true to say, that hardly a man has taken his
degree there for twenty years who has not taken one or more
courses in every year of his residence from a professor who
was not a member of the theological faculty. But the parallel
fact seems to be even more interesting. In that same interval
there have been few years when there have not been from
three to five hundred men from other departments of the university taking instruction under members of the theological
faculty. You understand, these were men who were not going
into the ministry. They were men who were going into the
law, or medicine, or business. One result of all this has been
that the old barrier, which used to be thought to separate theological education from any other, has been done away. I can
remember a time when I myself thought of a theological professor as a man of altogether different sort from any other, a
theological student as a being of an inferior sort, his studies
far less rigorous and his standards far more exacting than
other standards. Now one standard obtains for all. Fees are
equalized. The mendicancy of the profession is done away.
The standing of theological learning in the world of youth,
who after all are soon to be the laymen in our churches, is
redeemed in a manner which, for the future of the church, as
it seems to me, is important in the highest degree.
We speak often in our times of the naturalization of Christianity within the life of the different races to whom the Gospel has been preached. We mean with that phrase to describe
that contribution which the various peoples have made and
are now making to the interpretation of Christianity. We
mean that modification of the understanding and application




154


of Christianity which has taken place through the assimilation
of it to the life of different nations. One of the subjects at this
morning's session in connection with this dedication was that
of the adaptation of the Gospel in the work of missions. The
Gospel is one thing to the children of Arabia, it is another to
the Hindoos or the Chinese or the Japanese. The Gospel lives
for all of these peoples in terms of their own culture.
But that which we thus conceive as to differences of race
and place must be true also as to differences of time. There
is a constant need of the adaptation of the Gospel in the spirit
of a new time, a naturalization of it within the culture of each
succeeding age. The Gospel was one thing in the first century,
it was quite a different thing in the third. It was one thing
in the seventeenth century. It must be quite a different thing
in the twentieth. The Puritan did his work in the world because he was profoundly convinced that his statement of religion was true. But not only that. He easily convinced his
hearers that that statement was true. He did that because the
statement really was germain to the whole intellectual life of
the time. It was an integral, a vital, a congruous element of
the culture of the age. The trouble with us in our time is that
too often we seek to bring religion to men in a statement and
interpretation which is incongruous with the cultivation of the
age. It may be dear and familiar to us. But it is alien to
many men. It has no power over them. It speaks a language
which they do not know. It needs naturalization within the
vivid and vigorous life of our own time. We shall then first
stand firmly upon our feet and speak the Gospel again with
courage and with power, when we speak it in words that men
understand and in its vital relation to all the other things
which they understand. Then and then only will men feel
Christianity to be a part of life, and all life to be interpreted
and crowned in religion. There is no problem whose solution
is more vital to the church. And for the solution of this task
Seminary and University will need to work, not in hostility
the one to the other, nor even independently the one of the
other. Together, working hand in hand, they are to be the
instrumentalities for the accomplishment of this aim, which is
so much to be desired.
MR. OGDEN:
Our next speaker, as announced on the program, is the
Reverend Professor Henry Van Dyke, whom we honor alike




155


for his literary abilities and for his capacity as a great preacher,
but he is sick and not able to be here.
He writes an interesting note to Dr. Brown, the closing
words of which are these: " I could only croak with a voice
like a raven, but croaking will be out of place at the banquet,
so I will be present in the spirit and wish health, a long life
and vital powers to Union Seminary with all my heart. Faithfully yours, Henry Van Dyke."
We have no one to fill his place.
I have been very much comforted from my lapse of memory a little while ago apropos of Dr. Alexander, by remembering that Dr. Butler was to-day the delegate appointed by
the Manchester University in England, but it slipped off his
memory and into his "forgettery," and he left his gorgeous
raiment hanging in its closet and came simply in the ordinary
academic garb of the President of Columbia University. That
had a nearer relation to the whole proceeding to-day because
we have with us an honored friend. We should love to welcome him as the Right Reverend William Lawrence, we should
love to welcome him as the Bishop of Massachusetts, but he
is not himself to-day at all. He is the representative on this
occasion of the University of Durham, the most ancient university in England, and so in our academic procession to-day
he had the glory of the splendid red gown, the glory that would
have been divided with the President of Columbia if the President of Columbia's memory had been a little better.
So I have the pleasure of presenting to you, Bishop Lawrence, who will speak to you about " Our Friends Across the
Sea."
THE RIGHT REVEREND WILLIAM LAWRENCE:
Mr. Chairman:
For two or three minutes I am going to speak for myself.
I am not from across the sea. I am from the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay, where Calvinism in all its points is honored, and where, with the rising of the sun each morning we
arise still and say the Westminster Creed. I came here not
from across the sea but as a friend, and I came, not because
I was invited, but because I wanted to.
As Dean of a college or the Theological School rather
that thirty years ago in its infancy tried to plant itself close
to the greatest university in the country, a university then supposed to be under the cloud of Unitarianism, I come to tell




156


you that from our experience to be in the neighborhood of a
university is good.
Now I come to my more formal words. Through the
chance that I hold an office for a while I have been honored
by two universities, that of Durham and that of Cambridge,
and I may say honestly that I figured for Durham in a Cambridge gown to-day. But it was all honest, because Durham
knew it, and they told me to. By chance, I say, of holding
that office and through no merits of my own I have been honored by those two universities, and therefore may speak for
a moment for those two, or perhaps for one or two other
English universities.
My first words, therefore, as representative of an English
university are in the form of a question. We in old England
remember Presbyterianism of three or more centuries ago, and
some of us suffered under it; and now here we are and we
see these exercises, and we witness this dinner, and we note
the presence of the representative of Harvard University, and
of the President of Kings College of New York, and of the
Bishop of New York, and other representatives of the Anglican Church, and we ask the question, is this Presbyterianism
when it has come to its full fruition?
My next remark is one of wonderment. Do we of the ancient Universities of England hear that in this school there are
five representatives of different denominations, and among the
students studying theology to-day are representatives of
twenty denominations? Do we understand that? Are we
dreaming? Is it possible that in the new country the churches
have come to that, and the Christians have come to that, and
that young men and old men can study theology together in
the spirit of the love of truth, and in the fullness of charity,
and that without yielding to one or another their faith or holdings? If that be so, God be praised, for our traditions in
England are such that we have been unable to do that; but
God be praised that a land has risen where that can be done.
And a word of congratulation and of God-speed. Now we
begin to see how America has worked out the problem of
Christian thought and love and of spiritual freedom. You by
the separation of Church and State, with all your laws, avoid
questions of which you still don't know the nature. With
freedom of Church, liberty of thought, with the readiness on
the part of the Church to let every man seek his own way in
the seeking of the truth, we have such confidence in Christ,
the truth, that we believe that in that freedom there will be




157


a grasp of Christian truth and a search for Christian love
and a consummation of Christian character that is beyond that
that has been the fruitage of any Christian nation up to this
day.
Therefore, in the name of old England we give you of the
new country in all your Christian aspirations and in your spirit
of full liberty, we give you God-speed.
MR. OGDEN:
Those two last speeches were from Boston.
There sits down here just in front of this table a modest,
quiet man from Boston who furnished us all the final designs
and has superintended the construction of the buildings whose
dedication we celebrated this afternoon.1
There sits at this table a member of the Faculty of the
Union Seminary who as a business man can give points to a
great many people who are engaged in worldly professions,
a man who has been of the greatest possible service to the
building committee as he has been to the architects, and whose
reputation as a scholar is one of the glories of the Union Theological Seminary.
I refer to the Reverend Professor George William Knox,
who will have a few words to say to us about the Seminary.
THE REVEREND PROFESSOR GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX:
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is my privilege to respond for the Faculty of the Seminary and to express our pleasure, brethren of the Universities
and of the Churches, at your presence with us to-night and
also in the occasion of this assemblage-the completion of the
group of buildings on Morningside Heights.
For years we dreamed our dreams and saw our visions,
and often the doubt arose that these were too good to be true.
Yet, as ever in the providence of God, it has proved that our
highest visions and dearest dreams were not good enough to
be true, for the realization surpasses our most ambitious anticipations.
Deeper than the joy which fills our hearts is our sense of
indebtedness and of obligation. First of all to the noble laymen who through so many years have stood strong in support
of ministerial training, making this Seminary possible in the
1 The reference is to Mr. Francis Allen, the architect who designed the
seminary buildings.




158


beginning, throughout its history enlarging its facilities, adding to its resources and now crowning all by the splendid gift
which we celebrate to-night. We remember them with deep
gratitude, sensible of the responsibility the guardianship of
their gifts involves.
We would next acknowledge indebtedness to the Board of
Directors for their attitude toward us. In our day we hear
much of a certain aloofness of Directors from Faculties, but
in this instance there has been thoroughgoing co-operation. It
was characteristic of the policy adopted by the Board from
the beginning that when Mr. James, its Vice President, made
his great gift, the Faculty were asked to prepare a statement
of needs. Months were given to the study, and when the
plans were completed they were embodied in the program
prepared for the architectural competition, without addition,
subtraction or modification. As I have indicated, the instance
is typical, and the Faculty is never unmindful of the friendship, the confidence and the co-operation given fully and freely
by the Board.
We would acknowledge also our indebtedness to the architects, to Mr. Allen and to Mr. Collens, who gave our plans the
artistic realization which excites the admiration of all who
view the new buildings. Their skill, their familiarity with the
traditions of Gothic architecture, their clear conception of
what was desired, made possible the realization of our dreams.
Never in all this work have they permitted their keen artistic
sense to interfere with utility; never did men work in closer
sympathy with their clients or strive more earnestly, even in
the smallest details, to meet their wishes. So long as these
buildings endure will the sons of Union Theological Seminary
recognize their debt.
Not only do we feel our indebtedness to givers, to Directors
and architects, but we recognize our indebtedness to the Universities of New York. Our long friendship has not been
distant nor casual, but intimate, and the debt has been ours.
There have been the heartiest co-operation and the freest liberty. Our students have been welcomed to the class-rooms
and we have welcomed the instruction that they have there
received. Our harmony with the University is not some
chance reconcilement of theology with science, for there is no
trace of that supposed antagonism, and this is not because we
compromise or ask compromise, but because we recognize that
the instruction of the University in many subjects like biology,
psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, is given as we would




159


have it given, without fear and without favor by men intent
upon knowing and teaching the truth. We do not look upon
the university as something foreign in which we have no part,
for in earnest seeking after truth there is no distinction between scientists and theologians-for where truth is there is
God. Moreover, the so-called hostility has passed because today the method of theological study is none other than the
method of the sciences. We may have our differences, as
biologists differ from psychologists, but beneath all such superficial diversities is the deep unity that comes from a spirit
devoted to truth and from the understanding that in the same
way and by the same methods all truth is to be attained. Thus
recognizing our indebtedness, it is our desire that it may be
repaid, though only in part can it be repaid.
We recognize our indebtedness to men without representative here to-day, who were not present in the Chapel this
afternoon and yet without whom our dreams would have remained dreams, without whom all the artistic skill of the
architects would have been futile. We recognize our indebtedness to the community of so-called common men, to the men
who dug the stone from the foundations, who laid it strong
and well, to the artisans of every class, the representatives of
more than fifty trades, to the laboring men of New York.
From an intimate association with them in the two years past,
I bear testimony to their faithfulness, their thoroughness, their
ability, their earnestness, their honesty, their thoroughgoing
sympathy with their work. While we dwell in the structure
which they have reared, which, alas, has known the death of
some of them, we shall hold them in grateful remembrance
and recognize our debt.
Recognizing this indebtedness to benefactors, Directors,
architects, universities, artisans-a question presses for an answer-what return can Union Seminary make, what gifts has
it for the community which has made the Seminary possible?
What gift has religion for this age, this democratic, scientific,
progressive age whose watchword is evolution, whose philosophy is the philosophy of change-for this age with its marvelous advance in things material, with its sublime self-confidence and throbbing life? What gift has religion for this
city, for its financiers, its students, its artists, its politicians, its
artisans, its endless varieties of sorts and conditions of men?
Can Union Seminary help to answer that question?
These buildings constitute for us a challenge. In some
way this great question will be answered so that the state and




160


nation and lands beyond the sea shall understand that as in
the ages past religion wrought its message into the life of the
race, so for our time also it has a message, true, essential,
vital. That we may have our part in forming this answer will
be our repayment of our indebtedness-that it shall be answered we know, as we believe in the God of truth whose we
are and whom we serve.
MR. OGDEN:
We are fortunate in having present as one of the representative guests on this occasion the Reverend President James
G. K. McClure, of McCormick Seminary in Chicago, who will
speak to us on "Our Sister Seminaries."
THE REVEREND PRESIDENT JAMES G. K. MCCLURE:
Mr. Ogden, Ladies and Gentlemen:
The message that I am to bring you to-night is this, in two
words, Congratulation and Confidence. The Seminaries that
are represented here to-night, widely scattered as they are,
diversified in their form and teaching, are interested most
deeply in that which has been spread before our eyes to-day.
Every casual observer has been immediately impressed by the
beauty and the accommodations of the buildings, but we who
represent the Seminaries have examined these buildings from
the lowest basement to the topmost story, and we have noted
how complete in every respect is the provision for the work
that is to be done. We congratulate Union Theological Seminary not alone upon the material plant which is the most
stately and dignified of all institutions of the kind in the world,
but we congratulate Union Seminary upon this assemblage of
to-night.
We know the experiences of our own lives, when we were
facing the great question as to whether we should give ourselves to the ministry or not, and we recall our prayers which
brought us into sweet fellowship with God.
We know that gathered here to-night are men, ministers
and laymen who have come to express the high hope that every
wish that Union Theological Seminary has for herself may be
fully accomplished, and that there shall be indeed beautiful
piety here, and profound scholarship and application to all the
needs of humanity. That is our word of congratulation, and
it is from a full heart.




161


Our other word is a word of confidence, confidence in the
product of the Theological Seminary, the ministry. We believe with our whole being that there is no need so great in
the entire earth as the need of the minister of God who goes
to spread the ideals that are so essential to the truest welfare
of the people, and who professes the faith so that the vision
of God becomes clear, and who sees it in its relationship to
society and to true righteousness before God. The man who
can lift the heart of his brother up to highest heaven is the
man of all the earth in his kingship and in the dignity that
God has conferred upon him.
The glory of the ministry is a wondrous glory. Here tonight we sit in our luxurious surroundings. The graduates of
this Seminary are scattered to every portion of the earth, many
of them in little bits of places where they are dealing with
hardships that are scarcely intelligible to us. Those men in
their places, doing the work that God has assigned to them,
are our brothers: this Seminary has given them, and they are
for the glory of God and the good of the world.
What I long for when I see such buildings as these is that
not only out of the homes of the common people, out of the
homes where thrift is a necessity, there shall be brought the
young men who are to be our ministers, but that out of the
homes of the greatest wealth there shall come the consecrated
sons who shall have refinement bred into them from all the
atmosphere of their home surroundings, and who shall be able
to go anywhere and everywhere and stand in perfect equality
with those of the highest gifts and station; who shall always
have back of them, as they preach the truth as God has revealed it to them, such a substance of material power that they
are elevated above mere dependence upon salary, and can sway
men as a man sways his fellowmen when they are upon the
same platform of equality.
And this, also, is what I wish, that we who believe in God
-and once again register our belief-when we have given
scholarship and when we have given the appeals of piety, and
when we have set before men the appeals of truth, that we
insist that every man of them shall have a character of personal piety. Blessed is the man that shall always create an
atmosphere wherever he goes, making it evident that he is a
man of God, so that the wicked man shall be rebuked in that
presence, and the discouraged man find the vision of heaven
open to him with a new benediction.
And I have a second word of confidence. The Church of




162


Jesus Christ-I do not attempt to make a definition of it,
though to me it consists of those who believe in the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and rejoice in worship, fellowship, and the advance of the Kingdom-the Church of
Jesus Christ to-day in her potentialities is sufficient for the
needs of the hour. We hear so often criticism upon our weakness, upon our inability to cope with that which to-day is calling for solution. In spite of this the Church is being led on
step by step; but she will be led by very rapid steps in a very
short time, for Christ is in his Church, and he is with us all
and these problems are to be solved: and the ministers that
Union Theological Seminary is preparing, and all other Seminaries are preparing, through the Church are to bring in the
Kingdom, and it is to be a glorious Kingdom, sufficient for
the needs of every man, the highest as well as the lowest.
Before I go away to-night, I have another word of confidence, confidence in the purpose of God. There is such a
purpose. The good pleasure of God is that to such as ourselves, instructed in this and other seminaries, and those who
were under us, shall be given the Kingdom.
Some years ago, when the Westminster Confession was
being revised, the Committee which had in charge the work
visited Washington, and audience was given them at the White
House, and Mr. McKinley courteously turned to one of the
Committee and he said, " I hope that in the revision you will
not take out 'predestination.'" The representative of another
communion, a brother of Charles Wesley, said, "Who can
resist His will?" And I believe that there is no man anywhere in our world who understands what the ministry is
striving for, what the mission of the Church is, what the needs
of mankind are, what the problems of the present are, who
does not realize strength in the fact that he can look up into
the skies and he can believe that there is an Eternal Purpose.
He himself has seen its effect. All through history there
comes the direct assurance in fact that evil cannot live, that
good must live, and that there is the instruction for every minister, "Fight against Caesar." And as we separate to-night
I would have every man of us go out with the voice of triumph
on his lips. Union Seminary and all our Seminaries are set
to do a mighty work, the remaking of the human heart, the
bringing of the manhood into the likeness of Jesus Christ Himself, and that is the result that we seek, and you and I, representing the Seminaries that are near to our hearts, must part
to-night knowing that the purpose of God will not fail.




163


MR. OGDEN:
It is all summed up in the title of the next speech, which
will be on the " Spirit of Service." The speaker will be the
Rev. President William H. P. Faunce, of Brown University.
THE REV. PRESIDENT WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE:
I seem to be the only barrier left between this assembly
and one whom it is eager to hear, President Brown. I promise
you that this barrier will very speedily vanish, but not until I
have offered greeting to this Seminary from the city of Roger
Williams.
In the old meeting-house where we hold our annual commencements, at the foot of College Hill, there is a quaint inscription on the old church records of 1775, which reads:
"This meeting-house was built for the worship of God, and
to hold commencements in." That shows how education and
religion were united in the minds and the hearts of some of
our founders of the institutions of our eastern states.
Every building is a confession of faith. Somehow a man's
creed gets itself uttered in the structure he erects. Oftentimes
the building expresses the faith more deeply than any possible
formula. I would not judge a whole nation by a single instance, but is there no suggestion in the fact that the central
building of London and Great Britain is the House of Parliament? In that nation where freedom "has slowly broadened
down from precedent to precedent," there the home of law,
and of liberty under law, finds the central place. And when
we cross the Channel-again I would not generalize from a
single instance-is there no suggestion in the fact that the center of Parisian life is the opera house?
What faith, then, is here confessed in the superb new
structures of Union Theological Seminary? Certainly a profound faith in religious education; in religion as central in
human life; and in the Christian prophet as exercising indispensable function in a democracy. Clearly also the Seminary
has here put in buildings its faith in the closer articulation, the
essential unity of the modem church and modern society. This
style of architecture is one which no school in this country
probably would have attempted fifty years ago. The old-time
college or seminary buildings incorporated the Puritan individualism. Each structure on the hill at Andover Seminary
stands plain, severe, rectangular, owing no allegiance to any
other building on the horizon. The buildings of Newton The



164


ological Seminary, where I studied, have a similar isolation
and obliviousness to the presence of any other structure. But
here in Union henceforth will be preached each day, in this unified group of buildings, our faith in the solidarity of society
and our prayer for the visible unity of American Christianity.
I have attended three great educational functions during
this autumn. One was the inauguration of the President of
Smith College, where I saw seventeen hundred women students-the largest assemblage of women ever gathered for
educational purposes in one institution. The second was the
very brilliant function at Bryn Mawr College-whose president is happily with us to-night-when that college celebrated
its twenty-fifth anniversary. But this function at Union Seminary we must acknowledge does not suffer in comparison
with any academic festival that has gone before.
It will do New York City good to have a " School of the
Prophets" loom big in the public eye. It is good for "the
city of the flatiron " to be also the site of magnificent structures
devoted to the equipment of the modern prophet. It is good
for the city of sky-scrapers and railroad stations and subways
to have also a great habitation for ministers of the Christian
faith-a habitation which no traveler can ignore, of whose existence no business man can long be ignorant.
Without the prophets all our captains of industry and all
our scholars will lead us astray, for the function of the prophet
is to tell us what is worth while; to give us the true perspective
of life in the twentieth century. We have no great background of history as has Europe; no long ancestral customs
like the orient. We see things vividly, instantaneously, as it
were by snap-shot, and we confuse the things of passing moment with the things that abide. It is good for this city to
be told in clear voice what is worth while.
When the beloved former president of this Seminary
passed into the unseen, I took up a newspaper and found a
dozen lines devoted to his great career, while two columns in
the same journal were given to the death of a famous race
horse. It is useless to find fault with the newspapers in such
a case. It is you and I, it is the city of which we are a part,
which is to blame-exalting the thing of the moment and ignoring the essential. The prophet is to make us see the difference.
So I want to tell you that institutions far outside the
metropolitan district rejoice with you. Denominations outside
your own are getting weary of questions of procedure and




165


ceremony, and long for the essential verities of the Christian
faith. Every man who is filled with such longing must be
glad to-night in your gladness. At these tables we see the
foreglimpse of the time of which William Watson sang-if I
may change one word in his musical verse:
"The coming of the mor divine,
When churches shall as forests grow;
Wherein the oak hates not the pine,
Nor beeches wish the cedars woe;
But all in their unlikeness blend,
Confederate to one golden end."
MR. OGDEN:
The last number is "Retrospect and Prospect," to which
the head of the Union Theological Seminary, the Rev. President Francis Brown, will respond.
THE REV. PRESIDENT FRANCIS BROWN:
Mr. Ogden and Friends of the Seminary:
We appreciate all the kind words that have been spoken,
and the tribute which this assembly has paid to the Seminary.
It is too late either to spend time in reviewing the past or to
attempt any elaborate sketch of the future, but we are glad to
have offered the occasion for a meeting like this, for the notable presences that have graced it and for the significant words
that have been uttered in it. And if, as you carry them with
you in your minds-these strong, able, clear words-you will
associate with them some thought of the Union Theological
Seminary, we shall be glad of that too.
It might seem to an onlooker as though the occasion of
this day's celebration and of this great gathering were a very
small one-two hundred students, twenty instructors-what is
that compared with the thousands of the great institutions?
The real significance of it all has been expressed here more
than once to-night. It simply means that you as well as we
are in your inmost hearts aware that the world is ruled by
things out of sight, and that the testimony of things out of
sight is that testimony which wins a response from the deepest
depth of the human heart, and that the reality of the things
out of sight is the reality that controls the world.
We are trying-and we know in some measure the difficulty of our task-we are trying to express the old religion in




166


terms that can be understood by the new generation and that
can lay hold of the heart and conscience of that generation.
It is no light thing to undertake, and we do not claim to be
alone in undertaking it, but we feel ourselves committed to it.
We try to express in our actions, as in our words, our sense
of human brotherhood without losing our religion in our
brotherhood, and in all our activity we are conscious that we
are only servants and not masters, and we desire to be used
and not simply to control.
Most of our work is very quiet, apart from public gaze.
We publish some books; few of you read them-and why
should you read them? We offer some public lectures, some
courses of sermons, occasional indications of our presence in
the community; but after all our real, steady work is quite
out of sight, and there it must remain, like the work of all
teachers, except as its result appears at some remove in time
and space from our workshop, and in a connection where few
if any can think of the workshop from which it came-and
that is all as it should be.
But we shall be glad if, when the temporary impression of
this day and this evening is fading out of your minds, you will
still sometimes remember that we are all the while, and year
after year, trying earnestly and patiently and quietly and with
what power we have to accomplish this service, which is a
service not to ourselves but to you and to the community of
people, reaching on and on throughout the world-and to God
to whom the world belongs.
We are not ashamed to say that we still need the aid of
those who can aid us in material things. No institution ever
had such friends as we have had and have. It is their generosity and the place in which they have set us that enlarge
our needs. And I speak of this only that you may not be
surprised, or think us grasping, if now and then you learn of
some appeal from us for things we need to do a larger work
for our Master.
A single last word of retrospect. I remember, and some
of those here will remember, how the year after we entered
the home of the Seminary on Lenox Hill, Doctor Hitchcock
observed the thirtieth anniversary of his connection with the
Seminary, and in words of deep feeling, few but choice and
powerful, he referred to the history of those past years, and
the strong lives that had filled them. Then he told that story
of Kossuth, who, when he was here long ago, spoke for Hungary, and in the midst of an impassioned period, suddenly




167


stopped and stood silent for half a minute, and then brushed
his hand over his face, and said, "Pardon me, gentlemen, I
saw the shades of my ancestors! "
At a time like this we see the spirits of those whose bodies
are not here with us, of those who, humanly speaking, ought
to be standing where we stand, and sitting where we sit, and
we rejoice to know, as in our hearts we do know, that their
sympathy is with us and that their souls rejoice.
And now as we look forward, we do it not without some
touch of apprehension and yet not without a large and radiant
hope. You may not always agree with us: you will, I think,
believe that our wishes at least are high, and our purposes not
wholly ignoble, and we beg of you to feel that you and we
are united, and united with all people throughout the world
who aim at the best things, in " looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God."


PNIV. OF


MICHIGA lt


FER 23 1912




.,~~lra0




I
-1
ft
I
i
f




\
x




UNIVERSIT OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 02328 0210




m
I
I
I
I                        m
I
m