USA > New York > New York City > The Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York : historical and biographical sketches of its first fifty years > Part 3
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In April, 1850, at a meeting of the Finance Committee at the house of Caleb O. Halsted, the estimate required for the annual support of the Seminary, including the salaries of four Professors and one Assistant, was $10,900, and the estimate of available assets, or resources, was $9,400, from all sources. Of this sum $4,000 was counted on from the Mercer Street Church ; $2,400 from the Roosevelt legacy, which had just been decided in favor of the Seminary; and the balance of $3,500 it was hoped might be collected from friends and all the other Presbyterian churches. As the result of the delib- erations at this meeting, it was resolved to open a subscrip- tion to raise the sum of $11,000 annually for five years ; but the risk and uncertainty of such a plan, involving the very existence of the Seminary, were so obvious, that carly in 1852 the Directors resolved if possible to secure an endow- ment which would provide for the salaries of the Professors, then fixed at the moderate sum of $2,000 a year, and other indispensable expenses.
I cannot close these reminiscences without an expression of the feeling of regard and affection, often too deep for ut- terance, which I have always cherished in memory of two of my associates in the Board, who, in those early years of trial and disappointment, were conspicuous in bearing the burden and heat of the day. I refer to William M. Halsted and Richard T. Haines. The demand for means to sustain the institution during this period of extraordinary commercial disaster and ruin was constant and pressing; and but for the support rendered by these two noble men in money and credit, it must inevitably have failed. I do not exaggerate the importance of the aid which they rendered. I was one
3
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of the Finance Committee, and in constant intercourse with them. My associate Directors of the period, if living, would, I am sure, unite with me most cheerfully in bearing testi- mony to the unfaltering patience and fortitude with which the pecuniary burden was carried by them, at great inconve- nience and sacrifice. That it was so borne by them was not only from a conviction of its necessity to avert bankruptcy, but from a deeper feeling ; namely, that on it depended the maintenance of an institution, founded in faith and hope, for the training of ministers, and to advance the Redeemer's kingdom throughout the world. In other words, they were prompted by Christian zeal and piety, for which they were so distinguished in their lives.
Such are some of the pecuniary trials which the Seminary passed through during the first eighteen years of its existence. Of its financial history during the rest of the half-century I shall speak later.
V.
EARLY ECCLESIASTICAL AND THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF THE SEMINARY.
IT will be next in place to speak of the early ecclesiastical and theological position of the Seminary. This position was the natural result of the providen- tial training of its founders, and of the circumstances in the midst of which they found themselves. They were, as we have seen, men of high standing and large influence, both in the Presbyterian Church and in the
1
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whole Christian community. Without exception they seem to have been inspired by two ideas: first, the New Testament idea of the church as a company of faithful people, vitally united to Christ, living for Him, and doing His work in the world ; secondly, by what I may call the American religious idea, namely, that our country, by heritage and of right, belongs to Christ, and that it is the first business of His Church, by the power and preaching of the Gospel, to bring every part of it into obedience to Him. This most urgent business they believed to be greatly hindered by the contentious and divisive spirit that ruled the hour. They were "men of moderate views and feel- ings, who desired to live free from party strife." This desire was strengthened by the trials for heresy of Lyman Beecher and Albert Barnes, which had been going on while they themselves were conferring to- gether respecting the establishment of a new theologi- cal seminary. Dr. Beecher was admired and honored by them as the champion of orthodoxy in its memora- ble contest with Unitarianism, as the bold assailant of intemperance, and, just then, as the Christian patriot who, on the verge of old age, had left one of the first pulpits in New England and himself gone out as a laborer in the Great Valley of the West, thus setting an example that surpassed even his own eloquent pleas in enforcing the claims of home evangelism.
The case of Albert Barnes came home still closer to the founders of this Seminary. Of some of them he
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was the intimate personal friend. They regarded him as an eminently useful servant of Christ, - meek, upright, and God-fearing, - whose preaching had been signally blessed in the conversion of souls. His Notes on the New Testament had also endeared him, not to them only, but to their families and to thou- sands of Christian people, as a devout and very help- ful interpreter of Holy Scripture. And yet he was now under suspension "from the exercise of all the functions proper to the Gospel ministry." Several of them, I think, had again and again supplied his pulpit while his own voice in it was silenced. Is it strange that their ideal of a theological seminary was one around which all men, who desired to stand aloof from the extremes of "ecclesiastical domina- tion," might cordially rally ?
These statements will serve to explain, on the one hand, the original autonomy of the Union Theological Seminary, - its independence of ecclesiastical control ; and, on the other hand, the fact that, after the dis- ruption of the Presbyterian Church, it belonged to all intents and purposes to the New School branch, although never directly subject to its authority. Not only was it in full sympathy with the New School churches of New York and vicinity, but it was sus- tained by their contributions, and in the persons of its Professors was represented in New School Pres- byteries, Synod, and General Assembly. It was, however, wholly independent, I repeat, of direct ec-
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clesiastical control ; and so it continued until 1870. At that time, in the interest of reunion and of larger freedom of other Theological Seminaries, whose Pro- fessors had heretofore been chosen by the General Assembly, it generously relinquished a portion of its own autonomy.1
The same causes that fixed thus the early eccle- siastical position of the Seminary determined also its theological character. Its founders, ministers and lay- men alike, were practical men, with definite practical ends in view. Not one of them regarded himself, or was regarded by the Christian public, as a theologi- cal leader ; not one was noted as a religious partisan. What interested them far more than the local con- troversies and speculations of the day was the pro- gress of the kingdom of God at home and abroad. For this they prayed and labored continually. For this
1 The action of the Board of Directors was as follows. It memorial- ized the General Assembly of 1870 to this effect, viz .: " That the General Assembly may be pleased to adopt as a rule and plan, in the exercise of the proprietorship and control over the General Theological Seminaries, that, so far as the election of Professors is concerned, the Assembly will commit the same to their respective Boards of Directors, on the following terms and conditions: First, That the Board of Directors of each Theo- logical Seminary shall be authorized to appoint all Professors for the same. Second, That all such appointments shall be reported to the General Assembly, and no such appointment of Professor shall be con- sidered as a complete election, if disapproved by a majority vote of the Assembly."
The Directors further declared : " If the said plan shall be adopted by the General Assembly, that they will agree to conform to the same, the Union Seminary in New York being, in this respect, on the same ground with other Theological Seminaries of the Presbyterian Church."
The plan was adopted by the General Assembly at Philadelphia, June 1, 1870.
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they gave liberally of their money, time, and influ- ence. This had been their chief object in establishing the new Seminary. New York stood foremost as a centre of American evangelism. It was the head- quarters of the American Bible Society, the Ameri- can Tract Society, the American Home Missionary Society, and other national agencies for the spread of the Gospel.
New York was also a religious publishing centre for the whole country. In this respect the previous decade had formed a new era in its history. Not to speak of the numerous and excellent volumes issued by the American Tract Society, select works of some of the ablest Puritan divines of the seventeenth cen- tury, like Howe, Baxter, and Flavel, were reprinted ; the complete works of President Edwards appeared ; the writings of Robert Hall and Isaac Taylor, who represented the old Calvinistic evangelical faith of England with such originality and literary power, were republished. These last-named authors, who had little in common with current ecclesiastical and doctrinal disputes, were widely read by laymen as well as ministers, and did much, no doubt, to give tone and character to the religious sentiments which animated the founders of this institution. The same may be said of Albert Barnes. If they did not agree with all his views, they none the less admired the pious good sense, clearness, ability, and reverence with which he unfolded the meaning of the inspired
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oracles ; and they sympathized heartily with his beau- tiful Christian spirit. It is to be remembered, too, that The Observer and The Evangelist were already established, circulated far and wide, and powerfully influenced opinion in the Presbyterian Church on the various questions - whether relating to faith, morals, or policy - by which it was agitated.
Already, too, New York showed signs of becoming a seat of theological culture. In January, 1834, Leon- ard Woods, Jr., a member of its Third Presbytery and a young New Englander of rare gifts, had started The Literary and Theological Review, which aimed to be an organ, at once liberal and conservative, of the best thought of the age. The first three volumes of this Review, published before its editor was transferred to a chair in the Bangor Theological Seminary, con- tain articles that now, after fifty years, are fresh and instructive. Among its contributors were such men as President Humphrey, Dr. Sprague of Albany, Drs. Leonard Woods and Skinner of the Andover Semi- nary, Prof. C. E. Stowe, D. R. Goodwin, now Pro- fessor in the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School at Philadelphia, the Rev. C. S. Henry, S. G. Howe of Boston, Cyrus Hamlin, Leonard Withington, Enoch Pond, Theodore Frelinghuysen, and others then or since well known throughout the country. Such were some features of the immediate environment in time and place and ruling influences, that helped to decide the early theological position of the Seminary.
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THIE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
But in order to understand this position fully, we should also consider it in the light of certain general facts in the history of American Presbyterianism. From the first, that history had been deeply affected by two leading tendencies. Both alike went back to the Long Parliament, which ordered and adopted, and to the Westminster Assembly, which framed, our standards. But while they had in so far a common origin, they differed not a little in character and in their development in this country. One had wrought chiefly through the Scotch, or Scotch-Irish, element in our population ; the other, rather through the Puritan or New England element. For the most part, their natural affinities and vital points of agreement caused them to coalesce and work in harmony, as in the first American Presbytery. But now and then they came into bitter conflict. Twice the antagonism between them issued in a violent rupture ; once in 1741, and again in 1838. The points of controversy in 1741, it is true, differed materially, as well as in name, from those of 1838; still the same leading tendencies, modified by special causes, are clearly discernible. In 1741 it was " Old Side " and "New Side," " Old Lights " and "New Lights"; in 1838, " Old School " and "New School."
In both cases, it was largely a conflict between new and old, - between the progressive and conser- vative spirit; and in both cases the ruling tendencies still wrought largely through the Scotch-Irish and
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the Puritan or New England elements. And then fifty years ago, let us remember, the Presbyterian Church and the churches of New England were in much closer relations with each other than they are to-day. They had co-operated for a quarter of a cen- tury in the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; they co-operated in the American Home Missionary Society, in the Central American Education Society, and in other national Evangelistic agencies. Look over the annual reports of these so- cieties between 1830 and 1836, or read the addresses made at their anniversaries in this city during that period, and you will be struck with the fact that a state of things then existed of which few vestiges now remain. The sharp disputes and differences of opinion about measures and policy, about orthodoxy and about slavery, alluded to at the beginning of this address, long since culminated, spent their force, and passed away. In order, however, to understand the early history of this Seminary, they must be con- stantly kept in mind.
In view of this brief exposition, it is not difficult to answer the question, How happened it that Union Seminary, established two years before the disrup- tion of 1838, was so emphatically on the New School side ? For the simple reason, I reply, that its Pres- byterianism was mainly of the type that had been shaped by Puritan and New England influences. These influences had been most potent in founding
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and building up the churches upon whose sympathy and support the Union Seminary so long depended for its very existence ; and, naturally, the same in- fluences decided its doctrinal position. Of its original clerical Directors, a single one only found himself, after the division, in the Old School connection ; and he had recently come from a Congregational pas- torate in New England, and was in full accord with the motives and design of the Seminary. Its close affinity with New England at that time may be illus- trated by the fact, that in choosing its first Professor of Systematic Theology the Board of Directors selected as candidates two such men as Heman Humphrey, President of Amherst College, and Justin Edwards, afterwards President of Andover Seminary ; and that later, upon the death of Dr. White, Mark Hopkins, then President of Williams College, was unanimously elected as his successor.
But when I speak of the influence of New England and of New England ideas, it is, of course, in no mere sectional, or partisan, sense; I mean an influ- ence that had incorporated itself with the organic life of American Presbyterianism ; as when, for example, in the person of one of its greatest representatives, Jonathan Dickinson, a son of Massachusetts and a graduate of Yale College, it framed the Adopting Act of 1729, aided in founding the College of New Jersey, and asserted so strenuously what Dr. John Holt Rice called "a sound orthodoxy without any cramping
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irons or hoops about it." In this sense the Puritan and New England influence had been a great power in moulding the theological sentiment of American Presbyterianism all through the eighteenth century and the first third of the nineteenth; and its power was never more distinctly or more wisely manifested than in our own early history. Nor can we be too thankful to-day that from the first it wrought rather as a power than as a special theological school or creed. The Seminary formulated no creed of its own. The only system of doctrine to which it bound either itself or its teachers, it held in common with the Old School; namely, the system contained in the Westminster Confession of Faith. It simply inter- preted that system in its own way; and its own way was in the main according to the type of Calvinism taught by such men as Jonathan Dickinson, Jonathan Edwards, Bellamy, Hopkins, and the first President Dwight, modified by later American divines, and also, more or less, by the writings of Andrew Fuller, Robert Hall, John Foster, and the Evangelical school of the Church of England. The following is the pledge required of its Professors, touching both doc- trine and polity : -
I believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice ; and I do now, in the presence of God and the Di- rectors of this Seminary, solemnly and sincerely receive the Westminster Confession of Faith as containing the system
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of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures. I do also, in like manner, approve of the Presbyterian Form of Government ; and I do solemnly promise that I will not teach or inculcate anything which shall appear to me to be subversive of said system of doctrines, or of the principles of said Form of Gov- ernment, so long as I shall continue to be a Professor in the Seminary.
VI.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEMINARY IN ITS SCOPE AND TEACHING FORCE.
No careful reader of the preamble to the consti- tution of the Seminary can fail to be impressed with the practical wisdom, good sense, largeness of views, and devotion to the cause of sacred learning, as well as the pious zeal, which inspired its founders. They had studied and discerned clearly the signs of the times. It was their "design to furnish the means of a full and thorough education in all the subjects taught in the best Theological Seminaries in the United States; also, to embrace therewith a thorough knowledge of the Standards of Faith and Discipline of the Presby- terian Church." But in order to realize this high ideal, time and experience were needed. It could not be extemporized. We have seen what financial difficulties stood in its way at the very outset, and for many following years. But while the ideal of the founders, in the nature of the case, could not at
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once be realized, they never lost sight of it. From the first it has been a ruling purpose, alike of the Board of Directors and of the Faculty, as far as possible, to make the Union Theological Seminary perfect and entire, wanting nothing. When I said, therefore, at the beginning of this sketch, that the institution is essentially what fifty years ago it was intended to be, I meant that its growth has been in substantial accordance with the original design and spirit of its founders. But this does not imply that they made no mistakes, or that they foresaw distinctly the working and outcome of their plan in all its details. They were modest men, and the last to claim for them- selves any such pre-eminence. One has only to com- pare their design in the matter of students with their design in the matter of instruction and training, in order to perceive that they were as short-sighted in the former as they were wise and far-sighted in the latter. The second section of the preamble to the constitution, for example, reads as follows : -
This institution (while it will receive others to the advan- tages 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.
In view of the history of the institution during half a century, how strange, how almost ludicrous, all this sounds in our ears ! Hardly were its doors open,
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when young men began to flock to it from every quarter. Its situation, as well as its principles and spirit, made it at once a school of divinity, not for New York and Brooklyn chiefly, but for the whole land.
It must ever be regarded as a special favor of Providence, that the great department of Biblical Lit- erature was intrusted to the man better fitted than any other in the country to organize and shape it. Dr. Robinson's letter of acceptance seems to have been written with special reference to its " bearing upon the future influence and interests of the Semi- nary." What could be more admirable in this respect, or more prophetic, than the following passages ?
The constitution properly requires every Professor to de- clare that he believes "the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice." This is placing the Bible in its true posi- tion, as the only foundation of Christian Theology. It follows as a necessary consequence, that the study of the Bible, as taught in the department of Biblical Literature, must lie at the foundation of all right theological education. To under- stand the Bible, 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 ex- pected to do his work well. A bare enumeration of the par- ticulars that fall within the department of Biblical Literature will show that it covers a wider field than is generally sup- posed. To it, properly, belong full courses of instruction in
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DEVELOPMENT IN SCOPE.
the Hebrew, Greek, and Chaldee languages, and also, as aux- iliaries, 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 appli- cation of those principles to the study and interpretation of the sacred books ; in Biblical Antiquities ; and, further, a sep- arate consideration of the version of the Seventy, as a chief source of illustration for both the Old and New Testaments.
I do not make this enumeration in order to magnify my own department, -far from it; but rather to lead your minds to see and inquire, " Who is sufficient for these things ?" Certainly it does not lie within the power of any one man, whoever he may be, to do justice to all these important topics. But there must be to every great undertaking a day of small things ; there must be months and even years of weakness, though yet of growth; and my object in these remarks will be accomplished if they serve to draw your attention to the im- portance of the general subject, and thus prepare the way for further action, whenever God in his providence shall seem to render it expedient.
The Seminary was not only highly favored in ob- taining for the chair of Biblical Literature a Christian scholar of the very first grade, but it was much fa- vored also in securing the services of able assistants in the same department during Dr. Robinson's absence in the Holy Land, and in later years. Our list of instructors in Sacred Literature between 1836 and 1874 contains the names of some eminent Oriental scholars ; such names as George Bush, Isaac Nord-
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heimer, Elias Riggs of Constantinople, and Cornelius Van Allen Van Dyck of Beyrout.1
No department in the Seminary has been so en- larged as that of Sacred Literature, nor has any one developed in greater power. Upon the death of Dr. Robinson, in 1863, William Greenough Thayer Shedd was appointed to the chair. Upon his transfer, in 1874, to the chair of Systematic Theology, he was succeeded by Philip Schaff, who in 1870 had been made Professor of Theological Cyclopedia and Chris- tian Symbolism, to which Hebrew was added in 1873.
1 I cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting three of our instructors in Sacred Literature, who long since passed away from earth. They were scholars of the best quality and much beloved by the stu- dents. I refer to Nordheimer, Turner, and Hadley.
ISAAC NORDHEIMER (1838-42) came here from Germany about fifty years ago. He was a Jew, and warmly devoted to the faith of his fathers. I have the pleasantest personal recollections of him, having spent many months under his tuition in the study of Hebrew and German. Later, I passed several years at the Universities of Halle and Berlin, but never found a teacher who surpassed him in skill and enthusiasm. His early death I have always regarded as an almost irreparable loss to the cause of Oriental learning in this country. His Hebrew Grammar shows what might have been expected of him, had he not been cut down in the flower of his days. He lived with a younger sister in the Univer- sity building, and was as simple-hearted and affectionate as a child in all his ways.
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