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." 1 I. Historical Address By the Reverend Professor William Adams Brown, 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 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 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 1852; secondly, the period of reconstruction, financial and educational, from 1852 to the reunion of the old and new schools in 1870; thirdly, the period of enlarging activity and growing usefulness, including the presidency of William Adams, from 1873 to 1880, 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 1891, the resumption by the Seminary in 1892 of the independence which it had surrendered in 1870, and the trials of Dr. Briggs and of Dr. McGiffert, and ending with the alteration of the terms of subscription in 1904. Finally, the new era of opportunity and service, in the dawn of which we stand to-day: 1835 to 1852; 1852 to 1870; 1870 to 1884; 1884 to 1904; 1904 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 |