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history of
Indober Theological Seminary
THANH OEIN CEIY EAEY MAC
PROPERTY OF THE MEMORIAL HALL LIBRARY
ANDOVER Gift of ANDEVE -MENTON THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL
3 1330 00133 7777
M
RY
MEMORIAL HALL LIBRARY Andover, Massachusetts 475-6960
DENCO
HILLS LIBRARY AND FARWELL HALL IN NEWTON
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013
http://archive.org/details/historyofandover00rowe
PHILLIPS HALL
BARTLET CHAPEL, OLD ANDOVER, BEFORE 1878
BARTLET HALL
Rowe, Henry Kalloch. 1869-
HISTORY OF
Andover Theological Seminary
BY HENRY K. ROWE
NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS 1933
Thomas Todd Company CBJ. 33 Printers Boston
And Room R 207 Row
DEC 1 2 1933
TO VAUGHAN DABNEY
350º
PREFACE
T HE various interests of mankind are served by social institutions which have arisen and have been sanc- tioned by society because they are valuable for the preservation and better ordering of the achievements of civ- ilization. Among these are churches and schools. Ministers of colonial churches in America had been educated overseas or went to Harvard, Yale, and other colonial colleges. Late in the eighteenth century the time came when a distinctively theological school seemed preferable, and the Seminary was the answer to the need. Andover was the first such institu- tion among the Congregationalists, the first in New England of any Christian denomination.
The eminence of Andover among American theological schools, the new departure which it is making in its affilia- tion with Newton, and the arrival of the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the Seminary, seem sufficient reason for this historical sketch. Andover alumni have been distinguished in the parish ministry, in home and foreign missions, in education and literature. Andover professors- Stuart, Phelps, Park, Smyth, Tucker, Harris, Thayer, Moore and Evans-have given the school an enviable reputation for scholarship.
In spite of hindrance, misfortune, even near tragedy, the old institution still lives, and by the faith that has sustained it faces the future with courage. The history of Andover Theological Seminary is a story worth the telling ; may it be an inspiration to those who read it.
V
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE FOUNDING OF THE SEMINARY I
II. SEMINARY LIFE IN THE EARLY YEARS 23
III. £
STUDENTS AND FACULTY 40
IV. THE MIDDLE DECADES . 62
V. ANDOVER MEN IN THE PARISH MINISTRY 86
VI. ANDOVER MEN IN FOREIGN MISSIONS . III
VII. ANDOVER MEN IN EDUCATION AND LITERATURE 136
VIII. THE NEW THEOLOGY 159
IX. LIBERTY AND UNION 185
vii
CHAPTER I THE FOUNDING OF THE SEMINARY
H IGH up from a beetling cliff in the White Mountains of New Hampshire the Old Man of the Mountain thrusts his rugged profile, keeping ward over the Franconia valley. From a tarn at his foot a tiny stream be- gins to flow its fretted way through the forest until, grown larger, it emerges into the ampler reaches of the valley below. Increased in volume by tributary streams, it becomes the Merrimac. Even well down stream its way is hindered by rocks and ledges, and at length it is forced to leave its south- ward course and find an uncharted route in another direction. Yet unconquered it moves steadily towards its goal until it merges with the open sea.
Herein is a parable of Andover Seminary.
Old Andover stood on an ancient hill whose northern slope blends with the valley of the Merrimac. Its undergirding rock is older than the strata of the mountains where the river had its birth. On that rock New England Congregationalism fitly built its ecclesiastical foundation. As the Merrimac was born under the majesty of the Great Stone Face, the school at Andover was cradled under the stern sovereignty of Cal- vinism. As the stream is hindered on its way by rocks, so Andover has been buffeted by theological controversy. As the Merrimac found a new direction to the sea, so Andover Seminary after the career of a century changed its course, but not its goal.
Andover Seminary was built sturdily to breast the gales that beat against Puritan orthodoxy, as Brick Row on An- dover Hill fronted the northern blasts that in winter sweep unchecked from the far Laurentian highlands of Canada. The halls of the Seminary were permeated by a theology as
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cold and as irresistible. The sunset sky at times was reddened with a glow that was lurid enough to remind a student of the destiny of the damned. Coffins fashioned in the workshop by student hands were grim reminders of the brevity of life. The chapel bell rang its compelling summons to classes and funerals, with that "sweet, solemn solemnity" which was so tuneful to the ears of the elect, but boded only ill to those who were unregenerate. And hard by the winter snows drifted over the graves of students who had died before their time and lay in the winding sheet of God's Acre.
Andover was different in summer. Then her fields lay lush and green, and her elms drooped gracefully over the shaded campus. Students attended classes even in July, but there were walks and talks on the campus and about town, and the men rambled at times over the surrounding country. Classes were not dull to those who enjoyed logic and argument, and in summer bird song mingled with theological phrases and the scent of new-mown hay drifted through the open windows. On occasion classes were dismissed because a professor wanted the help of the students in getting in his crop of hay. Professors' families in time even went on picnics. Eventually Puritan rigor relaxed until the church sociable was invented, a pastime neither grave nor gay, but enjoyable to those who might not venture to break the taboos against lighter amuse- ment. When the eminent Dr. Tholuck of Germany was call- ing upon Professor Park he remarked: "How do you get along without the opera and theatre?" And the reply was prompt : "You forget that we have the church and the sewing society." And there was always Commencement Day to an- ticipate and recall.
And the theology of Andover mellowed with the years.
In the lower valley the first settlers of Andover made their homes within fifteen years of the colonization of Boston. By 1644 land had been purchased from the Indians, scattered farms had been occupied, and a village had been started at the northern end of the town. There in the North Parish the first Congregational church was organized in 1645. By mid-century Andover people were making highways to
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Ipswich, Rowley, and Newbury. At times the town suffered materially from Indian raids down the Merrimac valley, but it was disturbed in mind even more by the witchcraft delusion, which resulted in the judicial murder of three persons. In the mental sanity of the eighteenth century they laid the foundations of Andover's educational reputation.
Among the best people of the community the Phillips family took first rank. Its ancestor was Reverend George Phillips, who went from Salem to Watertown in the earliest days of Massachusetts settlement. His son Samuel was minister of the Congregational church in Rowley for nearly half a cen- tury. Samuel's grandson and namesake settled over the South Parish in Andover in 1710. His son Samuel was prominent in Andover, and before he died he could write Honorable before his name. A second son, John, settled in Exeter, and became as respected as his brother. These two brothers founded and endowed Phillips Academy on Andover Hill in the year 1778. But it was the influence of Samuel's son, Samuel, Junior, which led them to establish the foundation. The young man was the only heir of his father and his uncle, but he was eager to sacrifice a part of his inheritance for the sake of a school, and it was he who had most to do with the establishment of the Academy. Later, as Judge Phillips, he was admired by his fellow-townsmen, and was honored by the Commonwealth with the office of Lieutenant Governor. He died at the age of fifty, but his widow and his son John continued to take an interest in education. It was they who became sponsors of Andover Theological Seminary.
The south village of Andover rises in a southerly direction to the crown of a hill. It was there that the Academy was located and there that the Seminary was to rise. Not a few of the hilltops of New England have been set apart as shrines of education or religion. Whether it seemed as if an aureole of divinity rested peculiarly upon the hills, or as if the expand- ing mind might reach out to distant horizons, the fathers chose the hills for their institutions. As altars smoked on the high places of ancient Palestine, so the shrine of Andover smoked at times with the fires of theological controversy, for the early
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nineteenth century was an open season for polemics. But sac- rifice and devotion sent up their invisible breath of the spirit to an unseen God, and the main purpose of the Seminary was constructive.
The Phillips family was loyal to religion as well as to edu- cation. The blood of the Puritan ran in their veins. They would preserve the best traditions of the fathers at a time when liberalism was threatening to weaken, or at least to change, those traditions. In their original deed of gift, com- monly called the Constitution of Phillips Academy, they there- fore provided that "whereas many of the students in this Seminary may be devoted to the sacred work of the gospel ministry," the school should teach the fundamentals of Chris- tian theology, "as the age and capacities of the scholars will admit, not only to instruct and establish them in the truths of Christianity, but also early and diligently to inculcate in them the great and important Scripture doctrines of the existence of the one true God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; of the fall of man, the depravity of human nature; the necessity of an atonement, and our being renewed in the spirit of our minds; the doctrines of repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ; of sanctification by the Holy Spirit, and of justification by the free grace of God, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; together with the other important doctrines and duties of our Holy Christian Religion."
It was in the minds of the founders of the Academy to establish a chair of divinity in the school, and Dr. John Phillips of Exeter provided a scholarship fund of twenty thousand dollars "for the education of youth of genius and serious dis- position in the Academy." In 1795 he left a legacy, giving one-third of his estate to Andover Academy to furnish aid to students who should study with a Calvinistic minister, until an instructor should be appointed in Andover or Exeter academies as a professor of divinity. It is easy to understand how such a man could be the grandfather of Phillips Brooks. To this fund William Phillips of Boston added four thousand dollars. On that foundation twelve students of divinity were
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aided before the establishment of the Seminary, while they studied theology with Reverend Jonathan French, the min- ister of the South Parish.
At the opening of the nineteenth century the people of New England were taking a new interest in religion. The devo- tion to their Puritan faith, which was characteristic of the first generation of colonists, had yielded long since to the claims of everyday living. There had been extensive lands to develop, and many a pioneer in Maine and New Hampshire had helped to push back the New England frontier. Others had turned their energies to the promotion of industry and commerce, which promised more profit than the cultivation of a grudging soil. Religion held an honored place in the lives of the people, but it tended to be formal. They had had diffi- culty in satisfying the early requirements of church member- ship, and had lowered the standards of admission. The result was a lukewarmness regarding the claims of religion that boded ill for the continuing strength of Congregationalism. There was need of a revival of religious interest.
The Great Awakening came marching up the Connecticut valley a century after the beginnings of colonization. The beacon fires of a renewed faith blazed along the coast and from many an interior hilltop. At Northampton in Massa- chusetts, where Jonathan Edwards preached in the second most prominent pulpit in New England, a revival swept the community. Edwards lashed the consciences of his hearers with his fiery discourses, and George Whitefield staged a triumphal progress up the coast, and preached irresistibly to thousands of persons on Boston Common. But again dis- tractions of various kinds intensified the natural reaction against religious excitement. The political excitement of the Revolutionary period, absorption in the repairing of damages of war, the interest in the experiment of making a federal government, and the economic problems that vexed the people, chilled religious enthusiasm. The blight of indifference was made worse by the skepticism of many persons. French in- fidelity was popular. Atheism was flaunted in the colleges. President Dwight of Yale found it expedient to go thoroughly
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into the basic questions of theology in his lecture room. Then as the reaction against the Edwardean revival had led to in- difference and even hostility, a reawakening of religious interest came as a reaction against the indifference and unbelief.
The Evangelical Reawakening, as it is called, began about the close of the eighteenth century. It produced no conspicu- ous evangelist. Local preachers kindled the feelings of their people. Revivals flamed out like beacon lights of the gospel from hill town to hill town in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The beginnings of the movement had come even earlier in the Middle States, and it penetrated to the newer settlements of the Southwest. On that frontier the camp meetings produced emotional excitement similar to that of the Great Awakening, but in New England the movement was saner and more per- manent. It continued intermittently for several decades, swell- ing from time to time to increasing volume and then subsiding only to rise again.
The effects of the religious revival appeared in evangelism, missionary activity at home and abroad, and increased interest in Christian education. Pastors of churches preached with new fervor and visited neighboring communities with evan- gelistic intent. Societies were formed for the purpose of send- ing out preachers to the expanding frontiers. It was a time for the planting of academies and colleges. They soon dotted the landscape of New England, and accompanied the new churches along the expanding frontier.
It was in this stirring period that Andover Seminary had its birth.
Among the Congregationalists three schools of religious thought disputed the field. The first was known as the Old or Moderate Calvinists. Inheriting the theological convictions of their Puritan ancestors, they adhered to the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterians as their standard of doctrine. Except with regard to the right wing of Strict Calvinists, time had softened somewhat the ancient rigor. They believed in the untrammeled will of God, the inherited depravity of man and his helplessness because of the imputation of Adam's sin,
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and the grace of God as the sole means of salvation. But they thought it advisable to use such means of grace as the church provided in its worship and ordinances, even though they would not avail if the persons themselves were not among the number of God's elect. Baptism or the Lord's Supper might make them more easily salvable if the Spirit of God should come their way. A man hoped that thus the mercy of God would make his calling and election sure.
A second group was called Hopkinsians from their doctrinal spokesman, Samuel Hopkins, a pupil of Jonathan Edwards in theology. Edwards, besides being an evangelistic preacher, was a profound thinker on the problems of the divine will and human salvation. If his sermon on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" stirred the consciences of his hearers, his theological arguments appealed to the reason of his readers and made him the exponent of New England theology. Him- self a graduate of Yale, he put his stamp on a whole genera- tion of Yale divinity students. Samuel Hopkins was his understudy, and others took his interpretations of Calvinism as superior to the theories of the Old Calvinists. To a layman of these days the distinctions of that time seem of small account, but the ministers regarded them as supremely im- portant.
Both parties accepted the Westminster standards for sub- stance of doctrine, but the Hopkinsians stressed certain prin- ciples to an extreme. Their pulpits reverberated sonorously with the echoes of divine sovereignty and predestination, of foreknowledge and election, of total depravity and reproba- tion and eternal retribution, but they had improved explana- tions of their own as to how the divine and human minds worked. Particularly did they explain the difference between a natural will which man possesses and which makes him capable of exposing himself to divine influences, and a moral will which must be energized by the Spirit of God before the soul can make its way into His presence. The Hopkinsians condemned specific means of grace as sinful, because such means were used for selfish spiritual gain, whereas the true attitude was one of disinterested benevolence, like that of God
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Himself, and unconditional surrender to the sovereign will of God. As sweet a saint as Mrs. Jonathan Edwards had brought herself to the state of mind where she was able to say that she was willing to be damned if God could be glorified thereby. Because the Hopkinsians emphasized the eternal de- crees of a sovereign God, they were dubbed hyper-Calvinists ; but because they made so much of the divine benevolence, they were suspected of being Arminian, which was another way of saying that they were heretics in the eyes of the ortho- dox Puritans. They liked to speak of themselves as Con- sistent Calvinists.
The Old Calvinists included many of the people of high social position, and their clergy were highly respected men. They were most numerous in the eastern part of New Eng- land. They were not in sympathy with revivals as among the means of grace. The Hopkinsians on the contrary were sym- pathetic with the revival, or New Light, Movement. They were vigorous in their convictions and unyielding in their debates. Their strength centered at Yale College, and they numbered a majority of the Congregational ministers in Connecticut and western Massachusetts. Hopkinsianism was proud of its designation as the New England theology.
A third party in Congregational circles was more liberal in its theological interpretations. It had found its inspiration in Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, who had protested against the extravagances of eighteenth century revivalism. It cherished a belief that God was not so unap- proachable as the Calvinists maintained, nor so implacable in His attitude towards the human creatures whom He has made. The thoughtful men who represented the Liberals put less stress on the necessity of an atonement for men through Christ and more on human righteousness as a recommenda- tion of the soul to God. They were few in number at first and with few exceptions lived under the shadow of Beacon Hill or nearby, but as the nineteenth century advanced, they were conscious of an access of strength, and their representatives became more outspoken in the village pulpits of Greater Boston. A few of them were avowed Unitarians. When
Reverend Henry Ware of Hingham was elected to the Hollis professorship of divinity at Harvard College in 1805, New England Congregationalism felt the shock, for it was well understood that Ware was really a Unitarian, and that at Cam- bridge his influence would be radical. It was altogether likely that such an event occurring at the heart of Puritan tradition would set in motion a desire for a more orthodox training center for the ministry in Massachusetts.
The main purpose of New England Congregationalists in founding Harvard and Yale had been to educate colonial min- isters. There they were wont to absorb divinity as a part of their college education. If students could not have the ad- vantages of Oxford and Cambridge in Old England, they could at least imitate the discipline. Harvard had felt liberalizing influences, but as staunch a Christian as Thomas Hollis, the London Baptist, had chosen Harvard for his munificence in endowing a chair of divinity. His generosity showed his con- fidence in the essential orthodoxy of the college, though the Hollis professor was required to take a specific pledge scarcely less stringent than the one adopted for Andover. But the tendency of the period was to introduce other studies in place of the older discipline, as science and modern literature became more popular in learned circles than Hebrew and Greek. Theology lost its position as queen of the sciences. The Hollis professor continued to give two courses for those who planned a ministerial career, but French might be substituted for Hebrew, an ill omen, when one recalls the skeptical and revo- lutionary character of the literature of contemporary France. Specific study in divinity became advisable after graduation from college, and it became customary for students to ask a prominent minister for the privilege of living in his home, reading under his direction, and enjoying the practical advan- tages that his parish supplied. Reverend Joseph Bellamy in his parish at Bethlem, Connecticut, indoctrinated many a youth in the New Divinity of Hopkinsianism, and Reverend Nathaniel Emmons in Franklin, Massachusetts, taught nearly one hundred such students. The method had the advantage of personal contact and parish experience, and, not least valu-
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able, it gave opportunity for intensive cultivation of the ac- quaintance of ministers' daughters, which partly explains why so many of them married ministers. But the doctrinal stamp of a single man tended to narrow the outlook of the student, and the method was criticised as lacking systematic instruction in biblical exegesis and ecclesiastical history.
These were among the circumstances that favored the thought of a theological seminary. The idea fermented in several minds about the same time. Reverend Jonathan French, who was the instructor of certain students in divinity in the Academy, made a suggestion for a seminary as early as the foundation of the Academy. In a letter to Nathaniel Niles of Vermont, expressing the wish for a theological seminary, he said : "The students should be such only as have been grad- uated at some college, or are otherwise qualified to enter upon the study of divinity ; should tarry three years at the Academy and be boarded in common. None should be allowed to enter but persons of sobriety and good morals. The president should be the first in the land for good principles, learning, and piety, if to be had ; the best of libraries for the purpose be procured, and a whole course of divinity be studied, and everything practicable that may assist to qualify young gentlemen for the work of the ministry be taught."
Dr. Eliphalet Pearson was disturbed gravely by the liberal trend at Harvard. Pearson was one of the outstanding men of the time in educational circles. He had been the first prin- cipal of Phillips Academy and had established its reputation, and after eight years he had been elected to a professorship at Harvard. There he served with such acceptance that Leonard Woods could say of him: "No other officer in the college had equal influence in promoting improvement in lit- erature, and the higher interest of morality and piety." When President Willard died in 1804 Pearson was acting president for over a year, and presumably he hoped to be elected Wil- lard's successor. He was one of the five members of the Board of Fellows, and, with Jedediah Morse of Charlestown, he op- posed the appointment of a Unitarian to the Hollis professor- ship of divinity. When he failed to stem the tide of liberalism
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in 1805, and then when Professor Webber was chosen presi- dent the next year, Pearson resigned his office and went back to Andover, convinced that something needed to be done to defend orthodoxy. The Academy, of which he was a trustee, cordially welcomed his return and gave him a year's rental of a new house nearby. Then he began to plan for the establish- ment of a theological institution "which should maintain the doctrines of the fathers of New England against the threat- ening apostasies of the times."
Dr. Pearson interested Andover residents in his plans. Among these residents was Samuel Abbot. He was an An- dover citizen who had made money in a mercantile business in Boston. He shared his wealth with Harvard students and with ministers, and planned to make a generous bequest to Harvard. But his concern over orthodoxy made him transfer his interest to Andover and a possible theological center there. He was a trustee of the Academy, and so active did he become in the counsels of the time that Pearson, French, and Samuel Farrar were spoken of as his privy council. It was these men who wrote the constitution of the original Foundation, and so wisely did they outline the functions of each department that little change was necessary in subsequent decades. The Phillips family kept its interest in theological education, and Madam Phillips, the widow of Judge Phillips, and her son John readily agreed to make the plan concrete by providing accommodations for sixty theological students in a new build- ing, which should include also a lecture hall and a library.
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