USA > New York > The centennial history of the Protestant Episcopal church in the diocese of New York, 1785-1885 > Part 31
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HISTORICAL MEMORANDA .- The last meeting of the corporation before the Revolution was held in Philadelphia, October 4, 1775. The first meeting after the Revolution was held in New York, October 5, 1784. The Rev. Dr. William Smith was the first president ; the Rev. Benjamin Moore the first secretary. Mr. J. Alsop was treasurer for New York, Mr. J. M. Wallace for New Jersey, Mr. Samuel Powel for Pennsylvania. Dr. Smith having resigned, "on account of his advanced age," the Rt. Rev. Bishop White was elected president in 1789. In the act of the Legislature (1798), estab- lishing "The Corporation for Relief," etc., in New York, the Rt. Rev. Bishop Provoost was made the first president of the
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corporation ; the Rev. Dr. Benj. Moore, secretary ; Mr. W. Rutherford, treasurer. The Rev. Dr. Moore (bishop, 1801) was elected president in 1800, and Bishop Hobart in 1812. Since 1816, the Bishop of New York has been president of the corporation, ex officio. The Legislature of New York, in February, 1797, passed an " Act to amend the Charter of the Corporation for the Relief of the Widows and Children of Clergymen in the Communion of the Church of England, in America," by which the name or style thenceforward was to be, " The Corporation for the Relief of the Widows and Children of Clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America." In March, 1798, the Legislature passed an act establishing "a new corporation within this State." From this date, the Corporation for Relief, etc., in New York, dates its proper history. By " An Agreement," ratified November 27, 1806, it was arranged that the funds of the original corporation should be equitably divided, as follows : Whole amount, $26,485; of which New Jersey was entitled to $4,289; Pennsylvania, $10,390; New York, $11,806. With this capital, the funds of the corpora- tion in New York have increased, by good investments and liberal donations and bequests, during the past seventy years, to over $230,000.
Treasurers of the corporation: the Rev. Dr. T. B. Chandler, 1769-1774; Walter Rutherford, 1798-1811; Peter A. Jay, 1812-1842 ; G. G. Van Wagenen, 1843-1857 ; William Betts, 1858-1872; R. M. Harison, 1873 .- Meetings of the corporation were held from year to year, but the records are sadly defective. All the minutes from 1769 to 1775 are lost, as are also minutes of seven years between 1798 and 1810, and of the years 1817 to 1838 inclusive. Since 1839, how- ever, the minutes have been guarded with care and are com- plete.
In 1852, owing to loss of records by fire or otherwise previous to 1839, it was deemed best to have a formal election of members, both clerical and lay. The lists preserved show : 1789, clerical members, 18, lay, 64=82 ; 1808, clerical mem- bers, 22, lay, 32=54; 1852, clerical members, 19, lay, 8=27;
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1867, clerical members, 65, lay, 12=77; 1877, clerical mem- bers, 58, lay, 8=66; 1882, clerical members, 51, lay, 8=59; 1882, contributors to the fund, not members of the corpora- tion, 58.
OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION (All Saints' Day, 1885) .- Rt. Rev. Horatio Potter, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L., presi- dent, ex officio ; Rt. Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, D.D., LL.D., senior vice-president, ex officio; Rt. Rev. Abram Newkirk Littlejohn, D.D., LL.D., second vice-president, ex officio ; Rt. Rev. William Croswell Doane, D.D., LL.D., third vice-president, ex officio ; Rt. Rev. Frederic Dan Hunt- ington, D.D., fourth vice-president, ex officio ; Rev. Joseph H. Price, D.D., vice-president (annually elected); Rev. Jesse Ames Spencer, S.T.D., secretary ; Richard M. Harison, Esq., treasurer. Cadwalader C. Ogden, Esq., Henry Drisler, LL.D., Charles C. Haight, Esq., Rev. Thomas M. Peters, D.D., Rev. William N. Dunnell, together with the president, treasurer, and secretary, standing committee.
THE NEW YORK BIBLE AND COMMON PRAYER BOOK SOCIETY. 1809.
This society (known at first as the Bible and Common Prayer Book Society) was founded in 1809 by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Hobart. It was incorporated under its present name in 1841, and has for its work the distribution of Bibles, New Testaments, and Prayer Books. It has no building of its own, but its head-quarters are at Mr. James Pott's, 14 Astor Place. This society is one of the oldest in the country for the free distribution of the Word of God, dating back beyond the formation of the American Bible Society. In Prayer Books it has published translations in German, French, Span- ish, and in the Dakota language. The work of this society is not confined to New York by any means, for it supplies Bibles and Prayer Books to all parts of the United States, and distributes more than 50,000 volumes annually.
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THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL TRACT SOCIETY. 1809.
This society was founded in 1809 by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Hobart. It has for its work the free distribution of religious literature in the form of tracts and volumes of various sizes. It has no building of its own, but its publications are on hand at and distributed from No. 14 Astor Place, the office of the society's agent, Mr. James Pott. In the carrying out of its work this society publishes and sends forth chiefly Church tracts, as well in defense of the faith held by the Prot- estant Episcopal Church, a branch of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ, as for the promotion of godly living and obedience to the Master. It has distributed of late years, on an average, 500,000 to 700,000 pages annually.
THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 1819.
The General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church is the creation of the General Convention, and must continue always under its control. It owes its existence to the necessity, which was felt by those who organized the Church in this country, of having an institution for the education of its candidates for Holy Orders, which should be under the supervision, and meet the wants, not merely of the Church in any one diocese, but of the Church at large. As early as 1814 the General Convention, urged thereto by the Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina, appointed a joint committee of both houses to take into con- sideration and report a plan for the institution of a Theo- logical Seminary. Bishop Moore of Virginia, and Bishop Hobart of New York, had already directed their efforts to the same purpose. In 1817 the General Convention, after an able report of this joint committee, adopted in both Houses a series of resolutions, drafted by Bishop Dehon, of South Carolina, declaring it " expedient to establish, for the better education of the candidates for Holy Orders in this Church, a General Theological Seminary, which may have the united support of the whole Church in these United States, and be
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under the superintendence and control of the General Con- vention," locating this seminary in the city of New York, and appointing a committee to devise a plan for establishing and carrying it into operation as soon as sufficient funds should be subscribed for the purpose. Thus, as the Rev. Dr. Samuel R. Johnson quaintly writes, "It was in the city of New York, in Trinity Church, on Tuesday, the 27th of May, 1817, in the morning, that the General Theological Seminary was born."
The plan was earnestly supported by the bishops and the leading clergy of the Church. Bishop White expressed "his own anxious desire, and that of his brethren the other bish- ops, for the success of the enterprise." Bishop Hobart described the appeal for funds to establish it, in an address to his convention, as "no ordinary call on the liberality of Episcopalians," and exhorted each of the laymen of his dio- cese, when called on for a subscription, to "consider that he was to make his contribution to an object of more importance to the interests of religion and the Church, than any other for which he can be solicited, and which, therefore, demanded the largest exercise of beneficence."
In 1818, a plan sketched by Bishop White and Bishop Hobart was adopted, foreshadowing the institution and its several professorships as they exist to-day. Shortly after this Dr. Clement C. Moore of New York, offered his munifi- cent gift of the ground on which the seminary now stands, on condition that its buildings should be erected thereon. The Rev. Drs. Turner and Jarvis were appointed professors, and the institution opened in May, 1819, with a class of six stu- dents, among whom were the late Bishops Doane and Eastburn and the Rev. Dr. Dorr, of Philadelphia. The students met the professors first in a room in St. Paul's Chapel, afterward in the vestry-room of St. John's Chapel, and then in a building on the north-west corner of Broadway and Cedar Street. In 1820, in consequence of the difficulty of procuring sufficient funds to support the seminary in New York, it was removed by the General Convention to New Haven. The Bishop and the deputies from the Diocese of New
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York gave their reluctant consent to this removal, only on the understanding that steps would be immediately taken for the establishment of a diocesan school in the city of New York. With characteristic energy Bishop Hobart, in less than six months, opened his diocesan school. The death, how- ever, of Mr. Jacob Sherred, of New York, in 1821, leaving a noble legacy of $60,000 for a seminary in New York, gave the General Convention an opportunity to correct a mistake which would have proved fatal to the continuance of the seminary as a general institution of the Church, and to re- move it back from New Haven to New York.
Thus the great question of one general seminary, to be permanently established in New York, was finally decided and practically settled. The decision was largely due to Bishop Hobart's far-seeing wisdom and sagacious judgment. His position required him to weigh carefully the whole ques- tion of diocesan schools or one general institution; and he foresaw from the outset that if the seminary was to continue the General Seminary it must be located in the city of New York. In this view, as well as in the development of his plans for its organization, the procuring its charter, and adopting its constitution, he was sustained and aided by lay- men whose legal ability has rarely been equaled, and never surpassed in the history of this city. As has been well said, "Jurisprudence culminated in New York in the time of Bishop Hobart. There were the Chancellors Kent and Jones ; Justices Livingston, Thompson, Van Ness, Irving, and Colden ; the Ogdens, Hoffmans, Wells, Emmetts, Spen- cers, Harisons, Verplanck, Troup, Johnson, Duane, Clarkson, and others; men of the highest professional attainments, admirers of Bishop Hobart, and he in friendly, social inter- course with them. Rufus King, too, was particularly intimate with the bishop. It is seldom that such legal ability and practical knowledge can be readily resorted to as that which the bishop was in a condition to avail himself of. An endur- ing monument remains. In the charter, constitution and statutes, indeed, in the whole structure of the seminary, may be seen the impress of minds which knew what they were
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about, foreseeing and providing for contingencies, which, however unexpected, failed not to happen. Those who have had occasion to look carefully into these documents may have been surprised at the forecast and prudence which seemed to have prepared for exigencies, and to find when unexpected dangers have threatened that the interests of the institution were protected already. Even when a vote of the General Convention was procured for some fundamental alterations, it was found upon investigation, that the thing could not be done; that the institution was a General Seminary, settled in that position at its origin under circumstances which drew out and tasked the greatest and best efforts of the best and great- est minds then extant, as well in the legal and financial, as in ecclesiastical and devotional departments of thought." To such men we owe, under God, the existence to-day of " THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES."
Thus constituted, the seminary was reopened with 23 students, in New York, February 13, 1822. An introduc- tory address was delivered by Bishop Hobart in Trinity Church, and the classes were assembled in the rooms of Trinity School, on the north-east corner of Canal and Varick Streets-an arrangement which was continued until they removed to the present East Building on the seminary grounds. Churchmen did not, however, respond to appeals in its behalf as liberally as was expected. Notwithstanding earnest efforts on the part of the friends of the institution, funds came in but slowly. Still, the number of students seek- ing to avail themselves of its privileges, and the hope that the erection of a building to insure its permanency would awaken greater interest in the seminary, induced the trustees to enter into contracts for the erection of what is now known as the East Building. The corner-stone was laid by Bishop White, on the 28th day of July, 1825, in the presence of the professors, students, and a large assemblage of citizens. At that time the site was a rural one, far removed from the noise and bustle of the now crowded city, and looked out on the noble Hudson, whose waters then came east of the present
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Tenth Avenue. It was, however, then, as now, noted for being one of the healthiest portions of the island on which the city is built, and was recommended by a committee of the Board of Trustees, of which Bishop Bowen was chairman, as affording an open and salubrious retreat to those clergy and others devoted to the study of theology, who in the summer wished to retire from the city.
The trustees soon discovered that the erection of this building, without waiting for sufficient funds to complete it, was a serious financial mistake. It embarrassed the institu- tion, and compelled them in the following year to take the "painful but necessary " step of reducing the already small salaries of the professors. Unfortunately, at this period the munificent legacy of Mr. Frederick Kohne, of Philadelphia, was made known by his death. Unfortunately for the semi- nary, because Church people, unmindful of the fact that the legacy was subject to a life interest which would delay its payment, and did delay it for twenty-four years, seemed to think that it at once rendered the seminary independent of all external aid, and immediately began to slacken their efforts and to withhold contributions so urgently required- thus allowing the future legacy to become a cause of " present impoverishment." Added to this source of embarrassment, the land presented by Dr. Clement C. Moore was burdened from time to time with heavy assessments, caused by the growth of the city, and a very considerable expenditure of money was required to fill in the water lots adjoining it on the west. The latter, though seriously crippling the seminary in the past, will hereafter more than repay all that has been expended upon them, and prove a valuable source of income, though by no means so large as some have supposed.
Meanwhile the expenses of the seminary went regularly on, the increase of students requiring an additional outlay to provide another building for their accommodation, and while Church people withheld their contributions in the expecta- tion that the Kohne legacy, when it came, would provide all that was required, funds which would otherwise have been retained as a permanent endowment were gradually but
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steadily absorbed in meeting the daily wants of the institution. When we add to this the excitement which was created by the unfortunate party spirit which was aroused in those days, of which the seminary was too often made the battle-ground, it is a marvel that its doors were not closed, and this wise and noble foundation, which our fathers bequeathed to us, lost to the Church. But all honor to whom honor is due. At the time when there was not a dollar in the treasury to pay its professors, clergymen of distinction and learning came forward and voluntarily gave their services to the institution. And the Churchman of to-day, who takes the trouble to study its past history, while he may feel mortified at the meager pittances which this, his chief school of the prophets, has paid to its professors, in comparison with the salaries paid in other institutions of learning, will also feel an honest pride as he compares the personal character and literary qualifications of those who have filled its professorial chairs with those of the most richly endowed institutions in our country. Not to speak of its present Faculty, a body which the present writer does not hesitate to say, in learning, ability, and devotion, will not suffer by comparison with any other theological fac- ulty in the land, where shall we look for superior instructors in Biblical Interpretation to the learned Turner and Seabury, or in Systematic Divinity to the accurate, judicial Wilson and the self-devoted Johnson, or in Pastoral Theology to Bishops Hobart and Onderdonk and Dr. Haight, or in Ecclesiastical History to the consecrated learning of Bishop Whittingham, and Drs. Ogilby, Mahan, and Seymour? A brighter galaxy of distinguished divines cannot be found in the annals of the American Church. And it is no small part of the noble heritage of our General Seminary that men such as these, whose names will be held in honor as long as our Church shall last, should have devoted the best years of their lives to its service.
ADVANTAGES OF A GENERAL SEMINARY.
Whatever may be said in behalf of Diocesan Divinity Schools for the benefit of particular localities and particular
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interests, and to meet the wants of different sections of this vast country, they never can supply the superior advantages or take the place of a General Seminary. The able, far-seeing founders of the General Seminary knew that both would be necessary in their place, and made provision in the original constitution for branch schools to be established in various localities. Still the General Seminary will always offer advan- tages superior to those of any local institution, to which we may be allowed to refer.
Placed, as it is, under the government of the whole Church, every bishop having visitorial power, it protects its students from narrow and extreme views. The via media is secured by the very structure of the institution. "A diocesan school will naturally (as the venerable Dr. Edson remarks) take its cue from its bishop or other local circumstances of influence. And if a young man wishes to be educated for a particular diocese, and be patterned after a particular bishop, he may properly prefer the local school. But if he wants a more general type of churchmanship and of ministerial cult- ure, he will find his way to the General Seminary; or even if he intends to strike off into one ideal religion, the general course will give him a better point to start from, and will put him in a position for a far better appreciation of the whole subject and a better conception of his favorite idea. The general institution is wonderfully constructed for firmness and moderation. This is most happily illustrated in the even and moderate course which the seminary preserved through the agitations and the panic of 1844. With what intelligence and steadfastness the Faculty of that day stood on the firm foundations of truth and breasted the storm was known to observers at the time, and is better appreciated now than then. The position could not have been sustained, nor even taken, by any Diocesan Divinity School in this Church." Again, the General Seminary will always attract the largest proportion of the candidates for Holy Orders, and from this fact alone be able to offer them superior advantages. Already it has had at times under its care nearly one-half of all the candi- dates in all the dioceses of our Church, and the proportion is
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likely to increase rather than to diminish in the future. In such an institution will be found the highest type of the theological education of the time. A central point for the whole Church-with every diocese represented in its Board of Trustees, and every bishop having an official interest in its welfare, its course of study mapped out by the House of Bishops-it is certain, unless the Church fails in her duty, to send out from year to year able ministers of the New Testa- ment, amply furnished with a sound theology and thoroughly fitted with " things old and new " to do the Master's work in this sin-stricken and sorrowing world.
GENERAL CHARACTER.
The seminary was founded, and must be conducted as long as its charter and constitution remain, on a basis as broad and comprehensive as the Church itself. Any effort to make it serve and advance the interests of a party must necessarily come to naught. The General Convention elects its Board of Trustees. Every diocese is entitled to representation in the Board. The course of study is prescribed by the House of Bishops. And each bishop of the Church is not only ex officio a trustee, but made by the constitution a visitor of the seminary, with all the powers that that involves. Among its trustees there are Churchmen of every shade of opinion. In its Standing Committee are to be found the Rev. Dr. Dix and the Rev. Dr. Dyer, working side by side in perfect har- mony, and only vieing with each other in the desire to pro- mote its interests and to enable it to raise the standard of clerical education in our country. This is the spirit which animates all who are now in authority in it. Witness the efforts which have been made of late to bring to bear upon the students the impress of the ablest minds in the Church of all schools of thought, and impart to their future lives a breadth which can never be secured within any narrow party lines. Among the lecturers appointed within the last few years to address the students have been Bishops Williams, Coxe, Littlejohn, Huntington, McLaren, and Harris, the Rev. Drs. Washburn and John Cotton Smith, Professors Drisler,
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Short, Egleston, and Morris, and the Hon. Judge Shea ; while among the occasional preachers invited during the same period to preach in the chapel of the institution are to be found such men as the Rev. Drs. Dix, Potter, Hall, Swope, Courtney, Snively, Cooke, Shackelford, McKim, Mulchahey, Houghton, Schenck, Abercrombie, Beach, and Tiffany. Noth- ing is needed but a united effort to secure endowments which will make it, what it was designed to be by its founders, the great central School of the Prophets to our whole Church.
FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESOURCES.
To understand its present financial condition and how sorely it is crippled for want of endowment, it is necessary to go a little into details and to give the exact figures. Happily we are enabled to do this the more readily by referring to a very careful and most exhaustive report recently prepared by the Standing Committee. From this report it appears, after a thorough examination of the records, that not a single dol- lar of its trust funds has ever been lost. Of the thousands of dollars which have been handled by its treasurers during the more than sixty years of its existence, a comparatively small amount of a legacy left for general purposes was lost by an investment which turned out badly in consequence of the financial panic by which it was followed. Where is there an institution in the land which can point to a better, we had almost said as good, a financial record ?
But to make assurance doubly sure, to surround the care of the trust funds hereafter with every precaution which human wisdom and experience can suggest, and to remove even the temptation to apply their income to any other pur- poses than those for which they were specifically given, the Board of Trustees at its last meeting embodied in the statutes the admirable plan, which was adopted first by our General Board of Missions, and afterwards in several of the largest charitable corporations in our country, of placing all trust funds in the hands of a special committee, composed mostly of laymen of acknowledged financial ability, who give con- stant attention to their care, and report all their acts to the
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Standing Committee every two months. It is doubtful whether any more perfect plan can be devised for their safe keeping. Not a dollar of these funds can ever be misapplied unless by the criminal collusion of three individuals, each of whom is selected because of his reputation for business in- tegrity. In the hands of this committee the trust funds of the seminary, amounting to $387,698.54, are now placed. With the exception of $63,078.78 of the scholarship endow- ments, which are secured, largely by the consent of the donors, by the leasehold property of the seminary west of the Tenth Avenue, these trust funds are all safely invested in bonds and mortgages on real estate worth double the amount of the sum invested, or in bonds of undoubted stability and strength which were given by the original donors with direc- tions that they should be retained. The interest on these endowments, with the revenue derived from the real estate west of the Tenth Avenue, constitute the only reliable income on which the seminary can depend to carry on its varied and most important work of supporting and educating a large proportion of the candidates for Holy Orders in our Church.
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