LD 157 
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 1877 
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 The Relations of Learning and Religion. 
 
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 ADDRESSES 
 
 INAUGURATION OF 
 
 Rev. Julius H. Seelye, 
 
 PRESIDENCY OF AMHERSUCOLLEGE, 
 
 June 27, 1S77. 
 
 PUHI.ISHFD RY VOTF. OF TIIK TRUSTEES. 
 
 L£ 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS.: 
 
 CLARK W BRYAN & COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
 
 1877. 
 
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The Relations of Learning and Religion, 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 INAUGURATION OF 
 
 Rev. Julius H. Seelye, 
 
 PRESIDENCY OF AMHERST COLLEGE, 
 
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 \^' 
 
 u 
 
 June 27, 1877. 
 
 Published by Vote of the Trustees. 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS.: 
 
 CLARK W. BRYAN & COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
 1877. 
 

1 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The public exercises in connection with the Inau- 
 guration of Rev. Julius H. Seelye as the fifth Pres- 
 ident of Amherst College, took place at the College 
 Hall, Amherst, Wednesday, June 27, 1877, at three 
 o'clock, P. M., and consisted of Prayer, by Rev. 
 Edmund K. Alden of Boston; the address, on the 
 part of the Trustees, by Rev. Roswell D. Hitchcock 
 of New York, and the address of President Seelye ; 
 followed by the singing of an ode, composed for the 
 occasion, by Rev. Albert Bryant of West Somerville, 
 Mass. The addresses are herewith published by vote 
 of the Trustees. 
 
ADDRESS TO PRESIDENT SEELYE 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. DR. HITCHCOCK, 
 
 Reverend and Honored Sir : 
 
 The whole College bids you welcome to its 
 highest seat. Trustees, alumni, teachers and stu- 
 dents are all united and earnest in the persuasion of 
 your eminent fitness for this new position, united and 
 earnest also in the expectation of your eminent suc- 
 cess. You are no stranger here, and nothing is 
 strange to you. Made President of the College 
 after eighteen years of constant and conspicuous 
 service in one of its departments of instruction, the 
 element of novelty is almost wholly wanting. Re- 
 taining the chair in which you have earned your 
 fame, you now merely add to its familiar duties that 
 general oversight of the institution, with which you 
 must be almost equally familiar. 
 
 You are also well across the threshold of the new 
 office. The class that graduates to-morrow carries 
 with it the memory of your first presidential year. 
 And neither you, nor we, have anything to ask for 
 
now but a repetition of this year's record for many 
 and many a year to come. 
 
 The College is happy, and proud, to be led at last 
 by one of its own alumni. Your four predecessors 
 were all providential men. The four administrations 
 lie in our history like so many geological deposits. 
 The future need not contradict, nor criticise, the past; 
 but a robust vitality instinctively asserts itself in better 
 and better forms. We salute you, therefore, at once 
 as the fifth, and as the first of our Amherst presidents. 
 
 To-day we promise, and we promise not, a new de- 
 parture. There wdll be some new methods, and, we 
 trust, new vigor, but essentially no new aim. Insti- 
 tutions, of whatever sort, are partly made, but for the 
 most part they grow ; so that no two institutions are, 
 or ever ought to be exactly alike. This institution has 
 its own most pronounced and most sacred traditions. 
 Its original design, the training of Christian ministers, 
 was soon widened to take in the broadest and most 
 liberal culture. Sharp, solid, generous, manly Chris- 
 tian scholarship is now, and long has been our watch- 
 word. It is a very marked and precious feature in 
 our history that, from the very beginning, science and 
 religion, the science even of nature, have been equally 
 emphasized. Our first president, and our third, were 
 both of them distinguished for their zeal and for their 
 attainments in natural science. In the great conflict 
 that is now upon us, the conflict between science and 
 religion, this institution has nothing to fear — I might 
 
almost say it has nothing to learn. It is well armed, 
 and looks forth boldly in both directions. It dares to 
 say with one of old, " Veritas, a quocunque dicitur', a 
 Deo est.'' And then it goes on to say, with Pious of 
 Mirandola, " Philosophia quoerit, theologia invenit, re- 
 ligio possidet veritaiem." 
 
 The standard of required attainments in order to 
 admission to college has been of late very consider- 
 ably raised. Something more may still be done in 
 the same direction. But, in my judgment, we have 
 very nearly reached the proper limit. To require 
 much more than is now required, will be to make, or 
 try to make, the college into something else than a 
 college. And the result will be that we shall lose our 
 college, and get no university in place of it. Post- 
 graduate courses of instruction may, however, be or- 
 ganized, and so we shall be able to push our brightest 
 scholars to their utmost. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the three grand sta- 
 ples of a liberal culture are Mathematics, Greek and 
 Latin ; and in this order. No mountain of facts can 
 make any man a great scholar. His mind must be 
 trained like a wrestler's muscles. He must have 
 insight. He must master laws and principles. He 
 must see the forest in spite of its trees. 
 
 The real instinctive scholar is also instinctively a 
 gentleman. But scholarship may be acquired ; and 
 so, too, may the gentlemanly habit. It is one of the 
 good signs of our time that so many of the old bar- 
 
barous customs of college life have already been out- 
 grown. Let none of them be spared. The memory 
 of them is all we need for our cabinet of fossils. Let 
 this institution be known as one within whose pre- 
 cincts no freshman is ever outraged, no son of poverty 
 despised, no faithful instructor insulted, and it shall 
 wear a crown of glory among its rivals 
 
 But this occasion does not belong to me, nor to 
 those whom I represent. We have given the college 
 its new President, and now he must speak for himself 
 and for it. 
 
 Henceforth, my dear sir, the college is yours in a 
 pre-eminent and peculiar sense. We have no painful 
 solicitude about its future. Your scholastic training, 
 though ample, has not been exclusive. You have 
 had recent experience in quite another sphere. You 
 have also been round the globe, and stood face to 
 face with civilizations older than our own. You 
 will inspire, encourage and illustrate here the broad- 
 est culture. We shall send you raw boys, to be sent 
 back to us accomplished Christian scholars and gen- 
 tlemen. 
 
 And so, with good heart and hope we hand you 
 these insignia of your high office. We put into your 
 keeping the charter, the seal and the keys of the col- 
 lege. And you we put, and the college with you, 
 into the keeping of Him who only is wise, and good, 
 and great, the end of all science, and Lord of the 
 rolling years. 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 Amherst College was founded by Christian people 
 and for a Christian purpose. It was an association of 
 Christian ministers, who, at Shelburne, May 10, 1815, 
 started measures for the foundation of the College, 
 and it was the Christian men and women of Franklin 
 and Hampshire Counties by whom these measures 
 were carried to their consummation. The inspiring 
 sources of the whole movement were devotion to 
 Christ and zeal for His kingdom. When the first 
 college building was dedicated, and its first president 
 and professor were inaugurated, September 18, 1821, 
 " the promotion of the religion of Christ " was de- 
 clared to be the special object of the undertaking, 
 and the prayers which were then offered for " the 
 guidance and protection of the great Head of the 
 church, to whose service," — in the lanij^uao-e then 
 used, — " this institution is consecrated," have been 
 since repeated with undiminished earnestness and 
 faith, on every similar occasion. At the first meeting 
 of the trustees after the legislative act of incorpo- 
 ration, steps were taken for the organization of a 
 Christian chinxli, which, when formed, was named the 
 
10 
 
 Church of Christ in Amherst College, as indicative 
 no less of the Catholic than the Christian spirit which 
 should here reign. 
 
 It was the original purpose, from which the friends 
 and guardians of the college have never swerved, 
 that there should be here furnished the means for the 
 highest attainable culture in science and literature 
 and philosophy. The college was not to fall below 
 the best in its intellectual provisions. But the con- 
 stant and chief aim of its founders was to establish 
 here an educational institution in which Christian 
 faith might dominate, and whose power might sub- 
 serve the knowledge of Christian truth. From Presi- 
 dent Moore, in whose saintly zeal the earliest students 
 of the college found both instruction and inspiration, 
 to President Stearns, whose purity and faith sur- 
 rounded his presence like a halo, ennobling him and 
 enlightening and elevating all who had contact with 
 him, the controlling purpose of the college has been 
 to provide the highest possible educational advan- 
 tao-es, and to penetrate these with a living faith in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, and a supreme devotion to His 
 kingdom. 
 
 In all this Amherst College is not peculiar. Other 
 institutions of learning have been founded and car- 
 ried forward with the same purpose. Indeed, here is 
 the source from which directly and obviously, or in- 
 directly, all our influences of education flow. The 
 schools of the Christian world trace their actual 
 
11 
 
 historical origin to the Christian church. As early as 
 the third century we find it recognized as a Christian 
 duty to plant schools for the nurture of the children 
 and youth wherever churches were planted. In sub- 
 sequent centuries, by recommendations and decrees 
 of councils and synods, the attention of Christian 
 ministers was everywhere directed to the establish- 
 ment of town and village and parochial schools " be- 
 cause," — as the third council of Lateran in 1179 
 decreed, — " the church of God as a pious mother is 
 bound to provide opportunity for learning." It was 
 under this influence that England, in the time of 
 Edward 111., was called the land of schools, every 
 cathedral and almost every monastery having its 
 own. 
 
 The precise time and way in which the oldest 
 universities of Europe arose cannot be definitely ascer- 
 tained, but the evidence is clear that they directly 
 owed their origin to the church, and were subject to 
 her control. The University of Paris, the oldest of 
 them all — with the possible exception of that at 
 Boloo-na — was designated as " the first school of the 
 church," and the oldest public documents extant 
 , respecting it are ecclesiastical decrees for its manage- 
 ment. The thousands on thousands who flocked to 
 these seats of learning during the Middle Ages, exceed- 
 ino" by far, — whether we take their actual number or 
 their relative proportion, — the classes since attending 
 the same, were drawn thither, — so far as we can 
 
12 
 
 judge from the results, — not so much by zest for 
 study as by zeal for the service of the church. When 
 kings and emperors added their efforts to those of 
 synods and councils for the advancement of learning, 
 as when Charlemagne extended schools through his 
 empire for the education of the clergy, or Alfred, ac- 
 cording to the old Warwick chronicler, erected the 
 first three halls at Oxford in the name of the Holy 
 Trinity, they sought for learning as the handmaid of 
 religion, because they saw that religion was the con- 
 servator of the state. When the Reformation arose, 
 its great religious quickening was a wide-reaching 
 inspiration toward education, as well. The great 
 reformers were well nigh as zealous in the work of 
 education as in that of religious purification. " It is 
 a grave and serious thing," says Luther in his Ad- 
 dress to the Common Councils of all the Cities of 
 Germany in Behalf of Christian Schools, written in 
 1 524, " affecting the interest of the kingdom of. Christ 
 and of all the world, that we apply ourselves to the 
 work of aiding and instructing the young. I entreat 
 you in God's behalf not to think so lightly of this 
 matter, as many do." Melancthon equaled Luther 
 in his zeal and surpassed him in his practical activity 
 for the advancement of learning. He wrote text- 
 books on dialectics, rhetoric, physics and ethics, which 
 were more widely used in schools than any other 
 books of his time. No man, not even Erasmus, con- 
 tributed so profoundly to the culture of the age as 
 
13 
 
 did Melancthon. It was through a visitation of the 
 churches and schools of the electorate of Saxony in 
 1527, in which more than thirty men were engaged 
 through a whole year, that the so-called Saxon school 
 system, wiiich may properly be termed the basis of 
 the modern German system of education, was drawn 
 up by Luther and Melancthon. The great universi- 
 ties of Konigsberg, Jena, Halle, Giittingen, and after- 
 wards Berlin, ow^ed their existence directly to the 
 reformation, while those of Tiibingen, Wittenberg and 
 Leipsic received their character and power from the 
 same source. 
 
 All our educational frame-work owes its corner- 
 stone and informing law to the interests of religion. 
 Our oldest college, founded less than sixteen years 
 after the landing of the Pilgrims, and six years after 
 the first settlement of Boston, had, says Johnson in 
 his Wonder - Working Providence, " its end firmly 
 fixed on the glory of God and good of all his elect 
 people the world throughout in vindicating the truth 
 of Christ and promoting His glorious kingdom." The 
 original charter of Yale college declares the motive 
 for the undertaking to be " a sincere regard to and 
 zeal for upholding and propagating of the Christian 
 Protestant religion." The first order made upon this 
 continent for the establishment of common schools, 
 was issued by the united colonies of Connecticut in 
 1644, and copied and re-declared by the colony of 
 
14 
 
 Massachusetts Bay in 1647, in these remarkable 
 words : 
 
 " It being one chiefe project of y*ould deluder, 
 Satan, to keepe men from the knowledge of y® Scrip- 
 tures, as in form*" times by keeping y™ in an iniknowne 
 tongue, so in these latf times by pswading from y® 
 use of tongues, y* so at least y® true sence & mean- 
 ing of y*" originall might be clouded by false glosses 
 of saint seeming deceivers, y* learning may not be 
 buried in y® grave of o'' fath''^ in y® church & com- 
 onwealth, the Lord assisting o'" endeavors, — 
 
 " It is therefore ord^'ed, y* ev^'y towneship in this 
 jurisdiction aff y^ Lord hath increased y"" to y" num- 
 ber of 50 household'^, shall then forthw*^ apoint one 
 w^'^in their towne to teach all such children as shall 
 resort to him to write & reade, whose wages shall be 
 paid eith"" by ye® parents or masf® of such children, 
 or by y*' inhabitants in gen'^all, by way of supply, as 
 y® maior- p^'t of those y* ord'' y® prudentials of y® towne 
 shall appoint; provided, those y* send their children 
 be not oppressed by paying much more y" they can 
 have y^ taught for in oth' townes ; & it is furth"" or- 
 dered, y* where any towne shall increase to y® numb"^ 
 of 100 families or household", they shall set up a 
 gramer schoole, y® m'" thereof being able to instruct 
 youths so farr as they may be fited for y® university, 
 provided, y* if any towne neglect y® pformance hereof 
 above one yeare, y* every such towne shall pay 5<£ 
 to y*" next schoole till they shall p'forme this order." 
 
15 
 
 Though all our colleges and systems of common 
 schools do not start so obviously from a religious im- 
 pulse, though it is claimed for some that their source 
 and aims are purely secular, there has not yet ap- 
 peared any prominent and long continued educational 
 influence, among us or elsewhere, wholly dissociated 
 from a religious origin and inspiration. " I have 
 always despaired," said a superintendent of public 
 schools in Ohio, " of maintaining even a good com- 
 mon school, where there is not a Christian church to 
 help it." 
 
 Is this wide-reaching^ relation of relig-ion and edu- 
 cation after all only accidental and temporary, or has 
 it a rational ground, which is therefore abiding and on 
 which, if we are wise, we shall still continue to build ? 
 There is at the present time no graver or more practi- 
 cal question relating to education than this, and none 
 also on which more hasty and inconsiderate answers 
 apt to be given, perhaps, on either, side. It will help 
 us to a clear view and correct conclusion, if we divest 
 ourselves at the outset of the very common but quite 
 superficial notion that there is an inherent law of 
 progress in human nature, by which it is constantly^ 
 seeking and gaining for itself an improved condition. 
 Such a notion is not supported by the facts, either of 
 history or of human nature itself. The fxcts of his- 
 tory certainly show a far more prominent law of de- 
 terioration than of progress. Over by far the larger 
 portion of the globe to-day, and with by fjxr the larger 
 
16 
 
 portion of mankind, retrogression reigns instead of 
 progress, and this is true as we look back through all 
 ages. Progress not only has never been universal, 
 but so far as records reach, it has always been con- 
 fined to the few ; wherever yet its fertilizing streams 
 have flowed, they have been rivers in narrow beds, 
 never covering; the earth as the waters cover the sea. 
 Moreover, in unnumbered instances where progress 
 has begun, it has died out and disappeared. The evi- 
 dences of this are as striking as they are mournful. 
 No historical fact is clearer than that human prog-* 
 ress has never revealed any inherent power of self- 
 perpetuation. Arts, languages, literatures, sciences, 
 civilizations, religions, have, in unnumbered instances, 
 deteriorated and left a people to grope in the shadow 
 of death, whose progenitors seemed to rejoice in the 
 light of life. There is as yet no induction of facts 
 sufficiently broad, if we had nothing else, to warrant 
 the conclusion, that any progress that the world now 
 knows is certain to be permanent or likely to be uni- 
 versal. 
 
 But 'these facts of history would not surprise us 
 if we did but see that they represent, on a broad 
 scale, only a deep-seated fact in human nature itself. 
 Strange, and startling, and sad as it is, the fact will not 
 be doubted by a close observer, that there is a much 
 deeper impulse in human nature to throw away its 
 privileges than to retain them. Endow a man with 
 any possessions you please, give him any kind or de- 
 
17 
 
 gree of culture, let his culture be clothed and crowned 
 with virtue till he shines like the sun, and lesser stars 
 fade in his light, and then leave him to himself; take 
 away the restraints and incentives of society, free his 
 thoughts from the claims of God and duty, and let 
 only the dictates and desires which are bounded by 
 his individual will control him, and how long before 
 his glory will be gone, and you might search in vain 
 among the ashes of his wasted privileges for a single 
 spark of his former fire ? The influences which per- 
 petuate a man's culture, which give it strength and 
 jxrowth and fruitfulness are not of the man's own 
 creation. They are not his in any sense, save as he 
 receives them, and he can no more retain them than 
 can he retain to-morrow, the light of the siwi by 
 which he walks to-day, and without whose continued 
 shining he walks in darkness. 
 
 And it is no more within the power of human nature 
 to originate than it is to perpetuate its progress. 
 There are many current notions upon this point which 
 a clear discernment would at once dispel. We crudely 
 talk as though human nature by the evolution of its 
 own inherent forces could lift itself from a lower to 
 a higher plane, but in no case was this ever done. 
 The historical fact has always been that the higher 
 has first descended upon and breathed its inspiration 
 into the lower before the latter has shown any im- 
 pulse to improvement. In our processes of education, 
 the higher schools have not grown out of the lower 
 
18 
 
 and do not rest upon them, but the higher school is 
 historically first, and the lower one is not its precursor 
 but its product ; there is no law of evolution by 
 which the common school grows up into the college, 
 for as an historical fact, the college is actually first, 
 and gives birth to the common school. It is not by 
 the lower education of the many that we come to 
 have the higher education of the few, but the exact 
 converse of this is the universal rule. 
 
 A great man who leads his nation or his age to a 
 higher state is no mere product of forces belonging 
 to the time of his appearance. What forces belong- 
 ing to his time produced Moses, or Confucius, or 
 Sakya-Muni, or Zoroaster, or Socrates ? A great man 
 is a God-bestowed gift upon his time, giving to his 
 time a new day for which there is no approaching 
 dawn, and whose coming is as unexplained by the 
 conditions when he came, as it was unexpected by 
 the people to whom he came. They are lifted by 
 him to a higher plane, because he stands already, and 
 from the outset, on a higher plane than they. So far 
 as records of history go, no nation ever originated its 
 own progress. No savage has ever civilized himself 
 The lamp which lightens one nation in its progress, 
 has always been lighted by a lamp behind it. 
 
 But whence, then, does progress originate, and by 
 what means is it perpetuated ? A general answer to 
 this question is not difficult. Divesting ourselves of 
 all theories which prejudge the facts, and looking 
 
19 
 
 only at the facts themselves, it is quite clear that the 
 prime impulse toward human improvement, is not 
 any desire for what may be called the arts or advan- 
 tages of civilization. These have no attraction to a 
 people which does not already possess them. They 
 are not attractive to a savage ; on the contrary, he 
 finds them repulsive. This, in fact, is what makes 
 him a savage, that he hates the very condition in 
 which the civilized man finds his joy. He is con- 
 scious of but few wants, and these of the simplest 
 sort, which it needs but few efforts to satisfy ; and 
 the gifts of civilization for which he feels no necessity, 
 offer him, therefore, no advantages which he can ap- 
 preciate, and can excite in him no efforts to obtain 
 them. The first mipulse to any improvement of a 
 man's outward condition must come from the quick- 
 ening of some inner inspiration, without which all the 
 blandishments of civilization could no more win a 
 savage to a better state than could all the warmth of 
 the sun woo a desert to a fruitful field. 
 
 But the seed of this inner quickening can never 
 be planted in the soul of the savage by advancing 
 knowledge. He does not desire knowledge any 
 more than he desires the power which knowledge 
 brings. He is not only indifferent to his ignorance 
 but he is unconscious of it, for ignorance is first of all 
 and always ignorant of itself. An ignorant people 
 has never yet leaped from its ignorance into advanc- 
 ing knowledge without some other impulse than the 
 
20 
 
 knowledge furnished. In order that knowledge may 
 be attractive and thus attained, the soul must be kin- 
 dled by some inspiring sentiment, and thus we find 
 as an historical fact that the quickened heart is the 
 precursor of the enUghtened intellect and the origin 
 of progress with any people. 
 
 In the history of human knowledge, science is 
 always preceded and quickened by art, yet art does 
 not spontaneously originate. While the mother of 
 science, she herself is the child of religion. These 
 sentiments of the soul in which art finds its fountain, 
 and from which all the streams of science spring, are 
 the deep convictions of the soul's religious wants and 
 its religious capabilities. Take to illustrate this any 
 of the arts which mark the culture of a people and 
 trace their origin and history. It might be crudely 
 supposed that architecture arose from a natural ne- 
 cessity man has of furnishing himself a shelter and a 
 dwelling-place. But allowing this natural necessity 
 to exist, and supposing it to have found its natural 
 expression, the result need have no more resemblance 
 to architecture than have the huts of a Hottentot 
 kraal to the palaces of Vienna and Versailles. Man's 
 natural want of a shelter can be supplied, and if we 
 look simply at numbers, is supplied by a great major- 
 ity of men, with as little beauty and as little archi- 
 tectural skill as are found in the habitations of the 
 ant or the beaver. But, aside from this, the truth is 
 that the history of architecture does not begin with 
 
21 
 
 the history of human homes. The oldest remains of 
 architecture are symbols and monuments of religious 
 faith. Columns and colonnades and temples, struc- 
 tures erected for worship, or to symbolize some object 
 or doctrine of religion, — these, and not human dwell- 
 ings, are the earliest indications we have of the dawn 
 of architecture. Looking now, not in the light of 
 any theory which prejudges the facts, but only at 
 the facts themselves, we are obliged to say that it 
 was not the construction of his dwelling-house that 
 taught man to build his temple, but exactly the 
 other way. 
 
 The same is true with sculpture, painting, poetry, 
 music. It was a religious impulse which gave to all 
 these their first inspiration. The oldest monuments 
 we possess of any of these arts are associated with 
 some religious rite or faith. But more than this, we 
 must also notice the undoubted fact that the arts 
 have grown in glory just as the religious sentiment 
 has grown in power. The j)eriod of decadence in art 
 is always indicated by a prior decline in religion. 
 There is no high art, as I suspect we may also say 
 there is never a great genius uninspired by some sort 
 of a religious sentiment and impulse. As the seed 
 whose growth shall fill the fields with plenty, and 
 clothe the earth with beauty, slumbers in the earth 
 in darkness, and with no signs of life till the warmth 
 of the sun comes nigh, so all the thoughts of men, 
 with whatever capabilities of art and science en- 
 
22 
 
 dowed, lie dormant in the soul till some divine com- 
 munication stirs the soul with the sense of its ac- 
 countability and its sin, and kindles it with a longing 
 for the favor of its God. If, as all the facts would 
 indicate, even if we had no evidence from Scripture, 
 man originally started on the high plane of these 
 divine communications, from which he fell, all his 
 subsequent degradation has had its stages exactly 
 marked by the prior degree in which his knowledge 
 of God has been clouded. The knowledge of God is 
 the light of our inner life, and when this light grows 
 dim or dies, the glory of great thoughts and noble 
 deeds fades also and expires. I know not elsewhere 
 so profound a statement of the law of history when 
 men do not retain God in their knowledge, as Paul's 
 in the first chapter of Komans : " Because that when 
 they knew God they glorified him not as God, nei- 
 ther were thankful, but became vain in their imagin- 
 ations and their foolish heart was darkened. Profess- 
 ing themselves to be wise they became fools, and 
 changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an 
 image like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four- 
 footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God 
 also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts 
 of their own hearts." 
 
 All this is quite contrary, I am well aware, to many 
 current theories. I read in a late book by a noted 
 author, " To believe that man was originally civilized 
 and then suffered utter degradation in so many re- 
 
23 
 
 gions, is to take a pitiably low view of human na- 
 ture." But, alas, this is exactly the view which the 
 sad facts of history oblige us to take, and we must 
 square .our views of human nature to the actual facts 
 of the case, whether or not it would better suit our 
 desires and our theories to have them otherwise. All 
 the facts of history point backward not to an original 
 savage state, but, as the deep thinkers of antiquity 
 in the pagan world were constantly declaring, to an 
 original golden age of peace and purity. 
 
 Aureus liaiic vitam in terris Saturnus agebat. 
 
 Man became corrupt and degraded instead of being 
 originally such, and as all his degradation comes from 
 the darkness into which he plunges when he turns 
 away from God, so it is not strange that his purity 
 and upward progress are restored to him only as the_ 
 light of God's communications shines again upon his 
 soul. Here is not only the first impulse to human 
 progress, but the only one which in our time, or pre- 
 viously, has shown any permanent power. Wild, 
 uncivilized, barbarous, savage people are changing 
 to-day to a state of peace and purity and advancing 
 civilization, not by commerce or conquest of arms, 
 not by letters, or science, or the knowledge of the so- 
 called useful arts, but by the simple preaching of the 
 gospel, by the story of God's grace, which makes a 
 man feel that he is a sinner, and gives him his first 
 longing for a better state. He who does not see the 
 
24 
 
 exhibitions of this now taking place on different parts 
 of the. globe is blind to some of the most obvious and 
 most important events of the present age. A naked, 
 filthy savage, who has heard the story of the gospel 
 and been brought to a living application of its strange 
 truths, wishes at once to be clothed and clean, and 
 becomes thus for the first time conscious of wants 
 which his industry must relieve. Civilization, edu- 
 cation, all progress starts with this inner quickening, 
 which they could no more themselves originate than 
 could the brooks which beautify the meadows, orig- 
 inate the mountain springs from which they fl.ow. 
 Clear observers now acknowledge the mistake of at- 
 tempting to civilize a savage people through any 
 other process than by a prior religious renovation. 
 Plato saw this when he argued in The Sophist, that 
 men merged in sensualism need to be improved be- 
 fore they can be instructed, they must first become 
 virtuous before they can be made intelligent. 
 
 The basis and life of all our present civilization are 
 clearly seen to be in the Christian spirit and the 
 religious quickening it has wrought. It was not the 
 capture of Constantinople by the Turks, and the con- 
 sequent scattering of Greek scholars over Europe, 
 which led to the modern revival of learning. And it 
 was not the grander proportions which the natural 
 world assumed through the discoveries of Columbus 
 and Kepler, nor the new method furnished by Bacon 
 for the instauration of the natural sciences which has 
 
25 
 
 led to so vast an increase of the study of nature in 
 these modern times. The light before which the 
 I)ark Ages rolled away, and in which all the germs 
 of our modern life have been quickened, was the 
 dawn of the Reformation, which, long before the_ 
 time of Luther, was falling on the vision of Tauler, 
 and Eckhart, and Nicolas of Basle, and the Gottes- 
 freunde, and the saintly men who wrote the Theolo- 
 gia Germanica and the Imitation of Christ. 
 
 And not only the dawn but the day of which we 
 boast, has proceeded step by step from the clearer 
 shining on the human soul of some truths which the 
 Bible first revealed. It is a simple but most signifi- 
 cant truth, that every stage of our modern progress 
 has been preceded and inspired by a closer study of 
 the Scriptures and a deeper reverence for them as 
 the word of God. 
 
 These historical facts will not surprise the profound 
 student of human nature. To such a student not 
 only are the religious feelings seen to spring from the 
 deepest susceptibility of the soul, but they are seen 
 also to form the very ground work of intellectual 
 development. The first impulse to know is always 
 a feeling. The thoughts of the intellect are started 
 and sustained by the sentiments of the soul. But 
 
 " These first affections, 
 These shadowy recollections, 
 Which, be they what thej' may. 
 Are yet the fountain-light of all our day. 
 Are yet a masterlight of all our seeing," 
 4 
 
26 
 
 do not have their object, do not find their source in 
 jfinite things. The knowledge of the finite, instead 
 of producing, presupposes the knowledge of the in- 
 finite. The disposition to measure and grasp the 
 finite is not derived from the finite, for the finite, 
 with no standard to measure, and no power to grasp 
 itself, can originate no impulse to attempt these 
 achievements. The first movement of thought, in so 
 far as it differs from the thoughtless perceptions of 
 the brute, is a movement to learn the ground and 
 meaning of things. The first question asked by the 
 human mind, and which also marks the mind's prog- 
 ress in all its stages, is the question. Why. But this 
 question never could be asked save for the deep con- 
 viction that it could be answered. The disposition 
 to seek the explanation of things could never arise 
 but for the ineradicable conviction that the explana- 
 tion can be found. But what does this imply when 
 thoroughly considered ? An explanation needing 
 itself to be explained does not answer the mind's in- 
 quiries. These inquiries cease only when an ultimate 
 and self-sufficient ground is reached. The mind rests 
 only on what is itself at rest. But nature does not 
 rest. Nothing in nature rests. Life in unnumbered 
 generations rolling like a flood, light and heat pene- 
 trating space in perpetual pulsations, the winds, the 
 waves, the stars sweeping, swelling, circling in cease- 
 less change, mark the restlessness of nature every- 
 where. Up and down this realm of things the human 
 
27 
 
 thought wanders in its inquiries, seeking rest and 
 finding none. One inquiry only answered by an- 
 other, one fact of nature expounded by a farther fact, 
 which needs itself an explanation by something still 
 bej^ond, keeps thought ever baflled, keeps its prod- 
 ucts of philosophy and science ever tossing to and 
 fro, and makes the mind in its thirst for truth like 
 the traveler thirsting for water in the desert, before 
 whose eye floats the distant mirage of flowing fount- 
 ains and shining streams, which keeps beyond him as 
 he travels toward it, and still mocks him with its de- 
 lusion as he sinks exhausted in the sand. Only rea- 
 son rests ; only the supernatural rests, and the human 
 mind in its inquiries into nature in its eager search 
 for the unseen meaning of the things it sees, finds 
 joy and peace only when it finds the supernatural. 
 
 But the supernatural marks the end no more than 
 it does the beginning of the mind's inquiries. The 
 supernatural is the alpha as well as the omega of the 
 human thought. We never should be impelled to 
 seek it but for its own stirrings already within us._ 
 That which the thoughts of our intellect are striving 
 to formulate is already present in the sentiments of 
 the soul. The mind's pursuit of science and philos-- 
 ophy is only its impulse to know what it already feels, 
 is only its effort to become conscious of what is al- 
 ready its unconscious possession. The saying of Les- 
 sing is often quoted, "If the Almighty should hold 
 out to me in His right hand all truth, and in His left 
 
28 
 
 the search for truth, and deign to offer me which I 
 would prefer, I would say, Lord, pardon the weakness 
 of thy servant, yet grant me the search for truth 
 rather than all truth." But could the human mind 
 ever take such an attitude as this ? Could we ever 
 choose a progress which has no goal save the endless 
 repetition of its own steps, — a way like that of Sysi- 
 phus rolling his stone up the steep mountain side, 
 only to find it slipping from his grasp before it reached 
 the summit, and ever rolling back into the valley 
 again ? No, no, we seek that we may find. The hope 
 without fruition dies, and the hopeless search would 
 not be undertaken by one who knew its hopelessness. 
 The search for truth is excited only by the love of 
 truth, and the love of truth bears witness to the pres- 
 ence of the truth within the soul, whose face that 
 soul alone desires to see which has already felt its 
 quickening embrace. But truth is inconceivable 
 without God. Neither truth, nor beauty, nor good- 
 ness would have any meaning, or be anything more 
 than words, which the unthinking brute might speak 
 as well as man, unless they point to Him and come 
 ^Jrom Him in whom all beauty, truth and goodness 
 find alone their exhaustless and eternal source and 
 sun. They are not God ; they are not parts of Him ; 
 but they are revelations of Him in whom we live and 
 move and have our being, who is not thus far from 
 any one of us, and who declares something of His 
 glory to the eye which he has opened to behold it in 
 
29 
 
 these radiant expressions of Himself. We call him 
 glorious, whether artist, sage or hero, who has seen 
 and made known to us the glory of these divine 
 manifestations, and we link his name with immortal 
 renown. But the glory is not in what he is, but in 
 what he beholds. This it is which has furnished him 
 his exaltation, and his fame, and which continually 
 suffices to 
 
 " Disturb him with the joy of elevated thoughts, 
 A sense sublime of something far more deeply interposed, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the deep blue sky, 
 And on the mind of man." 
 
 Thus the whole intellectual life hangs on what, in 
 the most comprehensive sense, may be termed the 
 religious life. Its original impulse comes from the 
 religious life, and it will be strong and fruitful, only 
 as this is profound and penetrating. That self-con- 
 sciousness wherein we are distinguished from the 
 brute, and in which the very being of reason consists, 
 has not only as its constant attendant, but as • its es- 
 sential prerequisite, the consciousness of God. " To 
 know God," says Jacobi, " and to possess reason, are 
 one and the same thing, just as not to know God and 
 to be a brute are one and the same thing." This 
 knowledge may be very vague ; its first dawnings 
 may be so dim that they can hardly be discerned 
 from the feelings out of which they rise ; it may 
 often remain quite obscure, and may even be denied 
 or derided by the very intellect which has derived 
 
80 
 
 all its light and life therefrom, but the truth, still and 
 forever remains that there can be no illumination of 
 the intellect without a prior inspiration of the heart, 
 and this inspiration of the heart is as meaningless 
 and groundless without a divine impulse, as would be 
 the light and warmth of earthly nature without the 
 quickening presence of the sun. 
 
 In all this I have only uttered what the deepest 
 students of human nature have, in all ages, seen and 
 acknowledged. The truth I have stated is, I think, 
 exactly what Plato saw when he said, in The Republic, 
 " In the same manner as the sun is the cause of sight, 
 and the cause not merely that objects are visible, but 
 also that they grow and are produced, so the good is 
 of such power and beauty that it is not merely the 
 cause of science to the soul, but is also the cause of 
 being and reality to whatever is the object of science, 
 and as the sun is not itself sight, or the object of 
 sight, but presides over both, so the good is not 
 science and truth, but is superior to both, they being 
 not the good itself, but of a goodly nature." 
 
 It is therefore not accidental that the actual his- 
 torical progress of mankind in art, science, philoso- 
 phy or virtue should depend, as we have seen, upon 
 some religious impulse for its beginnings and continu- 
 ance. Nor is it strange that schools and systems of 
 education should have had no other source. It is 
 only surprising when we fancy that the currents of 
 progress can now be made to flow from any different 
 
31 
 
 springs, or that the himp of learning can be lighted 
 or kept burning with any other flame. If we are 
 wise we shall not only learn, but be guided by lessons 
 which history and human nature both teach, that 
 education divorced from religion is like a tree severed 
 from its nourishing roots, which thereby falls to the 
 ground, leaving its leaves to wither, its fruit to per- 
 ish, and itself to decay. From such folly we turn, 
 leaving the blind to lead the blind, not doubting what 
 the end to them both will be. 
 
 What then are the practical consequences of this 
 truth ? What adjustments does it require in the pro- 
 cesses of our higher education? It requires, obvi- 
 ously, that the corner stone and the top stone and 
 the informing law of our whole educational fabric 
 should be Christian faith and Christian freedom, the 
 faith in which the true religious life finds its only 
 sufficient root, and the freedom in which that same 
 life finds its only adequate expression. We need 
 Christian faith to perpetuate and perfect what Chris- 
 ti-an faith has begun. For, even if the fabric built 
 upon this basis could be kept standing when its foun- 
 dations were removed, its increasing beauty and liv- 
 ing growth would then be gone. A Christian college, 
 therefore, looking not at transient but at permanent 
 ends, sowing seed for a perennial harvest of the far- 
 thest science and the fiiirest culture, will be solicitous, 
 first of all, to continue Christian. If it is to be in the 
 long run truly successful in the advancement of learn- 
 
32 
 
 ins:, it will have the Christian name written not alone 
 upon its seal and its first records, but graven in its life 
 as ineff aceably as was the name of Phidias on Athene's 
 shield. It will seek for Christian teachers and only 
 these, — men in whom are seen the dignity and purity 
 and grace of Christ's disciples, and whose lips instruct, 
 while their lives inspire. It will order all its studies 
 and its discipline that its pupils through the deep and 
 permanent impulse of a life by the faith of the Son of 
 God, may be led to the largest thoughts and kindled 
 to the highest aims, with an energy undying and an 
 enthusiasm which does not fade. It will not be 
 ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, nor remiss in preach- 
 ing that gospel to its students " till they all come in 
 the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the 
 Son of God unto a perfect man." 
 
 But this is to be taken in no narrow sense. Chris- 
 tian faith does not fetter, it emancipates the mind. 
 "Just in proportion to its depth and power is its pos- 
 sessor liberated from prejudice and superstition and 
 all narrowness of thought. Christian faith is not only 
 not hostile to free thought, but it finds its normal 
 exercise and expression- in this very freedom. It is 
 itself in such exact accord with all the original endow- 
 ments and deepest instincts of the soul — whose foun- 
 dations were not laid in falsehood — that it is only set- 
 tled more firmly in its seat by free inquiry. It is only 
 when the thought becomes fettered and is no longer 
 free that it fails to return — over whatever field it 
 
33 
 
 may have ranged — to the faith which has inspired 
 it. 
 
 In Raphael's famous School of Aiheiis the great 
 artist has represented Plato looking upwards and 
 pointing to the heavens, but holding in his hand as 
 his most characteristic work, the Tima^us, wherein he 
 seeks to bring upon the created earth the light of the 
 imcreated heavens, while Aristotle, standing by his 
 side, his eye lost in thought, but his fingers directed 
 toward the earth clasps as his most significant trea- 
 tise, the Ethica, wherein he would find the heavenly 
 principle which should regulate the earthly life. The 
 representation is worthy of the great genius who 
 made it. Philosophy, where its inspiration is highest, 
 and its investigations are deepest, reaches the same 
 result, no matter in what direction it starts. Plato 
 beginning with the heavens, looked so comprehen- 
 sively that he saw the earth shining in the light of 
 the skies, and Aristotle beginning with the earth, 
 looked so deeply that he saw the heavens beneath it, 
 the same heavens which Plato saw above. It is a 
 mistake, though one often and easily made, to sup- 
 pose that Plato and Aristotle only represent the 
 opposite poles of idealism and empiricism. They 
 differ in their method rather than in their end, for 
 the idea, as Aristotle apprehended it, was just as 
 much the object of his search, as of Plato's. They 
 both agreed that the essence of the individual thing 
 is in the idea, and that only ideas can be truly known. 
 
34 
 
 And it is because of this original agreement, — this 
 __original unity of insight and aim — that in the end 
 which each reached, the method and results of the 
 one were justified by the method and results of the 
 other. 
 
 In like manner Christian faith, if that be the object 
 sought, may be reached by divers methods of inquiry, 
 and we shall wisely welcome any tendency of thought, 
 starting from whatever source and moving in what- 
 ever direction, which has this faith for its presupposi- 
 tion and is zealously bent upon discovering and declar- 
 ing its sufficient grounds. Only that tendency of 
 thought which divorces itself from God and the super- 
 natural and the Christian atonement shall we wisely 
 discard from our processes of education, and this not 
 simply because such a tendency is untrue, but because 
 it is necessarily empty and vain, because it has no 
 power of permanent progress, and because the schools 
 and systems of education left to its control, will be- 
 come first superficial and formal and then barren and 
 dead. We discard it just as Plato and Aristotle would 
 both have discarded any speculations which did not 
 presuppose and seek the idea as their starting point 
 and goal, such speculations belonging, as Plato would 
 'say, only to a world of darkness and shadows, and 
 being, as Aristotle would say, of necessity fruitless 
 and dead. A philosophy which should expend itself 
 upon the natural and ignore the supernatural and the 
 spiritual world, would be, according to Plato, only a 
 
35 
 
 phantasm deluding our vision and vanishing at our 
 touch, and a science which should content itself with 
 looking into the earth without looking through it 
 unto the heavens, Avould, according to Aristotle, be 
 buried in Cimmerian darkness or lost in Tartarean 
 fires. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Trustees and the Faculty, Students 
 and Friends of Amherst College : I take up the work 
 assigned me, in the spirit, and with the aims I have 
 thus endeavored to express. Far distant be the day 
 when one intrusted with the interests of this institu- 
 tion in any degree, should set before him any other 
 than the lofty aim which has prevailed in the history 
 of Amherst College from its beginning to the present 
 time. To Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior, 
 the College was originally dedicated, and to Him be it 
 now again presented in a new consecration, ever liv- 
 ing and all embracing. May He reign and ever be 
 acknowledged in all its aifairs ! May He keep the 
 College strong and progressive, and give it increasing 
 power through the increasing strength of its faith in 
 Him ! May this faith be so firmly fixed, and so in- 
 telligently held that it shall be free and fearless in its 
 exercise, emancipated from all intolerance and bigotry, 
 showing itself in largest charity and sympathy, and 
 giving speed and cheer to whatever seeks the knowl- 
 edge of Christ, in whatever avenue the search be 
 made, and yet, because it is a living and not a dead 
 faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, tolerating 
 
36 
 
 nothing which makes its aim to set aside His claims ! 
 May He guide continually the guardians of the Col- 
 lege, and live in the life and speak through the lips 
 continually of every teacher, and may all the students 
 who, from the east and the west, the north and the 
 south, shall throng these halls, be made complete in 
 Him who is the head of all principalities and powers ! 
 As the wise men from the East came and laid their 
 gifts in adoring homage at the feet of the babe at 
 Bethlehem, so may Amherst College ever show that 
 the learning of the world, where it is highest, and 
 deepest, and widest, and best, is content to sit at His 
 feet and receive instruction from Him, who is not 
 only wise but Wisdom, not only a true teacher but 
 Himself the Truth, and whose words, which contain 
 the sum of our faith, reach also, and ever beyond the 
 summit of our philosophy ! 
 
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