USA > Washington DC > The centennial of the beginning of Presbyterianism in the city of Washington > Part 6
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In one of the oldest cities of the East, we have a college that claims in its annual catalogue that its classical instruction "includes the authors gener- ally studied in colleges." Yet the most advanced classical course for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, admits to freshman class boys with no Greek, and with only a year of Latin. I have known a sea - board college to accept a youth who had been told that he must take another year in order to enter
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classical freshman in New York University, and to graduate him within that same twelve months as a Bachelor of Arts, so that he was at once admitted to a Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Cannot Presbyterians attempt the work of re- form in regard to our entire classification of univer- sities and colleges ? Cannot the United States find some way of calling nothing a university save what the civilized world have agreed shall be a univer- sity ? To call only that a college which does part of the work of a University, at least the principal work in arts and science.
Presbyterians have a vocation as reformers. They are surpassed by Methodists in far reaching activities ; by Congregationalists in assertion of in- dividual liberty ; by Baptists and Episcopalians and Lutherans in adherence to sacramental and liturgical forms, but they have a genius from the days of John Knox and John Calvin for calling things by their right names, for plain speaking, for a devotion to order and system.
My old teacher Dr. Charles Hodge used to claim that though our banner did not bear in largest let- ters the word "liberty," or the word "worship " or " order," yet it did blaze forth the word " truth." Well, we want truth as to higher education.
John Locke says : "The best way to come to truth is to examine things as really they are, and not to conclude they are, as we fancy of ourselves or have been taught of others to imagine." To dream that we are in anything like satisfactory shape as to
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higher education in the United States, is to dwell in a fool's paradise.
Our honored ex-President, Benjamin Harrison, last Friday in New York, declared that Presbyter- ians were the pioneers of higher education in a great part of America. That is true. But these are not pioneer times any more. We cannot sub- sist any longer on the log college tradition. Rail- roads and telegraph make all our States Eastern States. Let no State plead youth any longer as an excuse for sham or superficialty.
I am here to make you restless-to render you dissatisfied-to rally you to new activity in educa- tion. In the Revolution, whether in Congress or battle, or constitutional convention, Presbyterians were leaders. A revolution and reform of our sys- tem of education is needed. Who will dare take the leader's part ?
I should rather see the Presbyterians inaugurate and carry through such measures as would put the United States on the same platform with Presby- terian Scotland as regards system and order in edu- cation, and the truthful naming of her schools, than to see them endow a university as richly as the Baptists have endowed that of Chicago.
I urge upon the Presbyterians of Washington City, this work of reform. It can be achieved only by legislation, and you who live near the Capitol, know best how to legislate. The Christian men that lived near the Cæsars in Rome, were wise in using their neighborship to governmental power
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and activity for many a good purpose. This was the chief reason that the Church of Rome became a leader. They helped their fellow-citizens in every corner of the Empire. You, in some degree, can, like them, influence the Government for good ends.
The task I propose, is a difficult one. It includes the establishment by all our States in common, of a minimum standard for schools to be known as colleges, and a broader standard for schools to be known as universities. The assisting of many schools throughout our forty-four States to reform their work if need be, so that they may take a place in one or the other of these classes, or the aid- ing of them to become high schools or academies. The securing probably by the appropriation of money, of the consent of from one hundred to two hundred of the schools now possessing charters as universities or colleges to take instead the more modest name of high schools or academies. By giving them solid endowment you may tempt the so-called university that now starves at few teachers, and cheats a few students, to become an honest, self-respecting country academy.
The most liberal gift to education ever made by the United States was the gift to the States for the agricultural colleges a generation ago, in 1862. Each State received 30,000 acres of land for each Senator and Representative in Congress. In all, 48 colleges and universities have been aided thereby. The total value of the gift was not far from five millions of dollars. Able statesmen
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could, by apportioning among our 44 States, no larger sum than was given in '62, and renewing it for a few years, secure from each of them such action as would organize on a common basis, the universi- ties, colleges and high schools of our continent. The problem would be a difficult one, but for that reason ought to be attractive to statesmen and Pres- byterians. The work may seem to some a costly one, but the return would be larger for the outlay than for any appropriation Congress can offer.
Why should not this centennial lead to the or- ganization, by the Presbyterians of Washington, of an association for the reform of higher education in the United States ? I do not mean to monopolize it ; simply that you take the lead, asking all others to join. Your neighbors here are doing important work for higher education. Methodists in Wash- ington are building the American University ; Bap- tists in Washington are sustaining the Columbian University ; Catholics are endowing the Catholic University. Your fellow-citizens in other cities are attempting large things for universities, espec- ially the people of Chicago and New York. In the Western Metropolis million upon million has been placed in the coffers of the three universities. In New York the amounts given are less imposing, but a great beginning of liberality has been mani- fested within the last five years. Within six months half a million dollars has been pledged to me for the New York University, chiefly by Pres- byterians. Presbyterians in other cities are giving
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money for higher education; cannot Presbyterians in Washington City resolve to-night to inaugurate an effort for legislation that would send a new cur- rent of life into every state of the Union ? Albeit, our American people are involved in a complication of false pretenses in regard to education; it does not follow that they are in love with this business. They would welcome deliverance, they would bless the name of the statesman that would redeem every State of the Union from presenting to the world as broadcloth what is only shoddy, as pure milk that which is half water, as universities what are gram- mer schools, as colleges what are only tolerable private academies.
Were we to spend for river and harbor improve- ments by the coming Congress, only three-fourths of the twenty millions proposed and give a fourth of it to systematizing higher education it were better than to let things drift as they have drifted for a generation. I recognize fully the lack of power in the Central Government to shape directly the work of education in any State. But money answereth all things, and the people really want to be led in this matter. The suggestion of this entire address came from letters written to me from west of the Mississippi. It were not a difficult task to sketch alegis lative measure which would cover the objects, which need to be accomplished.
This act of Congress should appropriate for a few years in succession a certain amount of money to be apportioned to all the States according to the
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population of each. No payment to be made to any State until proof shall have been given the Government at Washington that such State has by statute provided fully for the four objects named below, subject to any restrictions imposed upon the State by its own Constitution, especially restrictions in regard to sectarian institutions. The four objects are :
1st. The acceptance by the State of the minimum property standard (to be prescribed uniformly for the entire nation in the act of Congress) for every corporation hereafter to be chartered to confer col- lege degrees in art and science, the same also for every corporation giving degrees in medicine, law, pedagogy and technology.
2d. The acceptance by the State in like manner of the recommendation of Congress respecting a minimum entrance standard and minimum gradua- tion standard to be required of every college and university hereafter to be incorporated.
3d. The distribution by the State of a certain sum (to be prescribed by the act of Congress) to existing corporations chartered as universities and colleges, but which fall below the recommended standard, on condition that they become secondary schools henceforth and surrender their right to confer degrees.
4th. The distribution by the State of a certain sum, prescribed by Congress, to those universities and colleges in each State that may already possess the minimum property requirement for college
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work or for university work, on condition that they accept and enforce the national standard for entrace and graduation, as respects each and every degree in arts and science, medicine, law, pedagogy or technology.
In the meantime a preliminary act should be passed by Congress instructing the Commissioner of Education to classify in his annual reports all degree-giving corporations, first, according to a certain property standard carefully arranged ; sec- ond, according to entrance and graduation stand- ards clearly defined.
The German Empire has given recently to the single university of Strassburg, a new foundation in the conquered province of Alsace-Lorrain, lands and buildings costing near four millions of dollars, equal to six or seven millions in the United States, and a yearly appropriation of nearly a quarter of a million dollars, equal to an endowment of six or seven millions of dollars more. It was a magnanimous gift to the people taken away from France. A gift no larger than this by the United States, appor- tioned by population to our forty-five States, would regenerate our higher education.
You may answer, this would tax the richer Eastern States who pay most of the duties for the benefit of that half of the population which lives west of the Ohio. Why not? The surplus wealth flows eastward. Send back part of it, with at least as much generosity as Germany showed when she used the French war indemnity to build a great university west of the Rhine.
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I approve Mr. Rockefeller for sending his mil- lions to Chicago. He could hardly have done bet- ter. But he has simply made one more university, albeit, a great university. I ask the United States to give no more than this gift of a single man, to repeat it for a few years, and to do it wisely, and, instead of building merely one university, it will give a better life to every one of the four hundred and forty schools, named colleges and universities, to the four thousand to five thousand, named high schools and academies, and so will touch and affect every common school and every home in our nation.
As the compelling of our banks to be strong and honest in their issues of money touches the busi- ness of the smallest street stand in your city, or the pettiest country store in Arizona, so, to make our higher schools strong and honest in their send- ing out of bachelors, masters and doctors in each branch of study, will give impulse to every school on our broad continent.
As I came into Washington from New York and approached your city, rising magnificently against the bright western sky, I looked from the car win- dow and marked how there now rises a trinity of architectural grandeur, the National Library, the National Capitol and the Monument of Washing- ton. They seemed to my point of view as if standing in one group. I said to myself, "These three rep- resent knowledge and law and highest character. The nation cares for knowledge for the sake of right government and laws, but after all the ultimate is
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the perfect man." I looked, and while at first the Library seemed to be foremost and nearest, and the Monument of Washington furthest away, as the train came on its way the Monument seemed to ad- vance and took the first place against the sunset heaven. Character, after all, is the first thing. Government and knowledge are merely means to the end.
I speak to-night for a better system of higher education, not for the sake of mere knowledge, not for the advancement of government alone and law, but because it will promote individual well-being and manhood. It will make knowledge and law and manly worth, each of them brighter in America against all the western sky.
Wednesday Evening, November 20, 1895. The Rise, Progress and Influence of PRESBYTERIANISM
In the District of Columbia.
B. F. BITTINGER, D. D.
In the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, visitors are shown a black marble slab bearing the following inscription, referring to Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of the edifice : " Si monumen- tum requiris, circumspice."-If you ask for his monument, look about you. So, in answer to the question which may be suggested by these centen- nial services, " What does Presbyterianism in this city and district stand for, and what its influence during the past hundred years ?" I would say, " Look about you." Look in your pulpits ; look in your halls of learning ; look in your courts of justice ; look in your Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation ; look in your public schools ; look in your Bible Society ; look in your learned professions ; look in the several Departments of the Govern- ment, and look in the office of Presidents of the nation, for it is a fact that in all these various po- sitions of honor and usefulness, aye, in almost
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every position of public trust, have been, or are now, those who have been brought up under Pres- byterian training and influences, and have been either communicants or regular attendants upon the services of our local churches. Lest it may seem to some to be an extravagant claim, so far as the attendance of Presidents is concerned, I make a slight digression to say that Washington and Jef- ferson were known to have worshipped in the old . Bridge Street Church ; William Henry Harrison . and Buchanan in the F Street Church ; Adams and Jackson in the Second Church ; Lincoln in the New York Avenue Church ; Jackson, Polk, Pierce and Cleveland in the First Church, and Benjamin Har- rison in the Church of the Covenant. Yes, to-day, as in former days, and here, as in all other places where its scriptural doctrines have been preached and its equally scriptural form of government ob- served, Presbyterianism stands for education, intel- ligence, morality, patriotism and the conservation and maintenance of those divine principles, the practical application of which to human character and conduct changes the moral nature of men, re- stores them to the favor of God and secures for them the highest form of happiness, both in the present world and in that which is to come.
I would not be understood, however, as setting up for Presbyterianism an exclusive claim to the possession of the exalted excellencies just men- tioned. I simply magnify its predestined glorious heritage, and am willing to share it with all others
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who recognize the sovereignty of God, accept the Lord Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God and all-sufficient Saviour, adopt the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the divinely inspired and authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, and, recognizing a Spiritual brotherhood, labor together in preserving the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
But important as may be these principles, it is not my purpose this evening to illustrate or defend them in their application to the present character and the future destiny of men. The part assigned to me on the present occasion is rather to magnify them as operative in the rise, growth and progress of our beloved Church in this city and district, from its origin to the present time.
For the sake of convenience, and as a simple ar- rangement of the facts and incidents embraced in the history of Presbyterianism during the past hun- dred years, I will classify them under three periods; the first period extending to 1823, the time of the organization of the Presbytery of the District of Columbia : the second extending to 1870, the time of the formation of the Presbytery of Washington City, and the third embracing the intervening years to the present day. Recognizing and emphasizing the fact that to this church belongs the honor of instituting efforts leading to the establishment of Presbyterianism in this city, I also recognize the necessity for recording the beginnings of Presby- terianism in the District of Columbia, dating as far
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back as 1780, under the missionary labors of the Rev. Dr. Stephen Bloomer Balch, in what then, and until recently, was known as Georgetown. Prior to this time, however, about the year 1761, there was a church at "Captain John's," now known as "Cabin John," of which Rev. James Hunt was pastor, and upon the services of which many of the early Presbyterians residing at or near the site of Georgetown attended. Indeed, the Leg- islature of Maryland passed an act enabling Mr. Hunt to convey to William Deakins, Jr., a lot of ground called " Scotland lot " in exchange for other ground which is believed to be the site of the old Bridge Street Church, the same having been con- veyed to said Hunt and his successors in trust for- ever for the Presbyterian Society and members of the Church of Scotland, the successors of said Hunt being regular ministers of the gospel .* Sub- sequently Mr. Hunt became the principal of an academy, one of the pupils of which was William Wirt, afterwards Attorney-General of the United States.
* I am indebted to the courtesy of Hugh T. Taggert, Esq., As- sistant District Attorney, for a photographic fac-simile, which, as a curiosity, I reproduce verbatim et literatim, spelling, punctua. tion and all :
" Be it Remembert that in the year 1768 I Jacob Funk Laid out a certing pece of ground liing betwin Rock Grik and Goos Grick on petomik in prince georges county mariland into lots for atown Called Hamborg. I solt two lots in the year 1768 to the duch gearmings in sead Town of hamborg, one No. 75 to the gearming prespoterings Congregeation, for a churg & bearing ground for wich sead lot I have Receaved five pounts Corent money of the aforsead Congrogeation it being in full for the above lot. And
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Simply by way of magnifying the honorable lin- eage of Presbyterian ministers, Rev. Hezekiah James Balch, brother of Dr. Stephen Bloomer Balch, was appointed, with two other Presbyterian ministers, a committee to prepare the famous Declaration adopted by the Mecklenburg Convention, and which contained the germ of the grander Declaration of July 4, 1776. Of the members of this Convention it is said one-third were Presbyterians.
In 1780 the Rev. Dr. Balch, then a licentiate under the care of the old Presbytery of Donegal, under whose authority the earliest of our Church organizations in this region were effected, and, com- missioned as an evangelist, preached to a few per- sons, principally of Scotch and New England descent. So favorable was the impression made upon the people that they invited him to settle among them with the view of gathering a congrega- tion on the basis of adherence to the form of wor- ship and government in which they had been
also lot No 183 to the gearmon lutharing Congrogation for a Churg & Bearing ground for which sead lot I Receaved five pounts Co- rent money of the luthering Congrogation it being in full for said lot -- -
" Rec By JACOB FUNK.
" To the cear of andonis gosler and Daniel Reinzel."
In connection with the above, I state that in 1881, in a suit in equity brought by J. W. Ebbingaus against J. G. Killians et al., in- volving the legal right of the Concordia Lutheran Church to the lot of ground adjoining it, Judge Hagner delivered the decision of the court that the exchange of lot No. 9, in square 80, by D. Rein- zel for lot 75 on Funk's plat, for the benefit of the "Calvin Society," was vested in the First Reformed Church, Washington, D. C., as the successor in faith of the Calvin Society. What connection may have been between the "Calvin Society " and the "Presby- terian Society " before mentioned, I have not been able to ascertain.
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instructed and trained. At first they worshipped in the woods skirting the settlement, and from house to house ; afterwards in a little log building on the site of the Lutheran burying-ground, corner of High and Fourth streets. Subsequently Dr. Balch preached for a short time in a small wooden building at the corner of Bridge and Market streets, not far from the present terminus of the Washing- ton and Georgetown street railway. Unfortunately for historical accuracy, we have no official record of the precise date of organization of a church, the records of the Session being destroyed in the burn- ing of Dr. Balch's dwelling, in 1831, he and his wife barely escaping with their lives.
Tradition, however, dates the organization of the church, afterwards and until 1879, known as the Bridge Street Church, in the latter part of the year 1780, with a Mr. Orme the first, and for many years, only ruling elder. At the first communion only seven persons participated in the holy ordinance. In 1783 a church edifice was erected on the site of the Bridge Street Church. The congregation rapidly increased, so that the church building, originally erected in 1782, was enlarged in 1793, 1801, 1810. The increase of attendants was due not only to the popularity of Dr. Balch as a man and a preacher, but also to the fact that at that time there was no other Protestant church this side of Alex- andria, while Washington came from Mt. Vernon to worship in the church. Mr. Jefferson, then a resident of Georgetown, frequently attended upon
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its services, as also did the first Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, both of whom were con- tributors to the afore-mentioned enlargement of the church building .* Indeed, it was customary for the officers of the Government to attend worship in this church. And what is worthy of honorable mention is the fact that for many years all denomi- nations, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Baptists, worshipped with Presbyterians in the same house, and sat together at the same communion table, thus furnishing a beautiful illustration of the commun- ion of the Saints. Subsequently, when other denom- inations erected houses of worship, the same frater- nal feeling prevailed, Dr. Balch being invited to take part in the dedication services of the Episco- pal and other churches, and all the pastors and their people uniting in prayer meetings from church to churches.
Organic denominational union may not yet seem to be practicable, but it must be confessed that, at the time referred to, there was, at the least, the recog- nition of the parity of the ministry, the interchange of pulpits, and the practical acknowledgment among Christians that there is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, and one God and Father of all. Let his-
*A short time ago one of the " oldest inhabitants " of George- town pointed out to me the house in which Mr. Jefferson, after- wards President of the United States, resided. The house is sit- uated on a street called by his name, on the east side of the street, and directly south of the canal. At the time, he was Secretary of State under President Washington. More recently it was occupied as an office by Mr. Benjamin R. Mayfield, an Elder of the West Street Presbyterian Church.
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tory in this form of union repeat itself among us at the present time, and the world will be compelled to admit that Christians can dwell together in unity ; the five points of Calvinism, the remon- strances of Arminianism, the frowning canons of Episcopacy, and the excessive water claims of Bap- tists to the contrary notwithstanding.
In 1821 a new building was erected, of large and commodious dimensions, which remained as the church home of Presbyterians until the year 1879, when it was abandoned as a place of worship, and the present West Street Church dedicated
Dr. Balch continued his pastorate until his death, September 7, 1833, he being at the time in the eighty-seventh year of his age, and in the fifty-third year of his pastorate; and if the claim be well founded, the oldest Presbyterian in the United States. In respect for his worth the municipal authorities attended his funeral in a body, business was suspended, and the streets were draped in mourning.
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