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 MEMORIAL SERVICE 
 
 HELD BY 
 
 THE ALUMNI OF BELOIT COLLEGE, 
 
 IN THE COLLEGE CHAPEL, 
 
 SO, 1803- 
 
P. F. PETTI BONE & CO. 
 PRINTERS, 
 
 48-50 JACKSON ST. 
 CHICAGO. 
 
The addresses and letters which follow were prepared for 
 the meeting in memory of President Chapin, which was held 
 by the Alumni of Beloit College in the College Chapel on 
 the evening of Tuesday, June 20, 1893. The President of 
 the Alumni Association, Rev. S. P. Wilder, of the Class of 
 1871, presided. The order of exercises was as follows: 
 
 Organ Prelude, by Choirmaster H. D. Sleeper. t 
 
 Hymn : “ Rock of Ages, cleft for me.” 
 
 Prayer by Rev. H. T. Rose, Northampton, Mass., of the Class of 1866. 
 
 Address by Rev. G. S. F. Savage, D.D., Chicago, of the Board of Trustees. 
 
 Tributes from absent Alumni and Friends. Read by Professor F. C. 
 Porter, Ph.D., New Haven, Conn., of the Class of 1880. 
 
 Poem by Professor T. L. Wright, Beloit, of the Class of 1880. 
 
 Address by Professor T. C. Chamberlin, LL.D., Chicago, of the Class of 
 1866. 
 
 Address by President E. D. Eaton, D.D., Beloit, of the Class of 1872. 
 
 Hymn : “ For all thy saints, who from their labors rest.” 
 
 Benediction by Rev. S. W. Eaton, U.D., Roscoe, 111 . 
 
 The address of Professor Joseph Emerson, delivered at 
 the Funeral Services, July 25, 1892, is added, as written out 
 by him in an abbreviated form. ' 
 
 r 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/aaronluciuschapiOObelo 
 
JUtbre## of doctor gtava^e. 
 
 President Aaron Lucius Chapin, D.D., LL.D., to whose 
 memory we are met to pay the grateful and loving tribute of our 
 minds and hearts, was born in Hartford, Conn., Feb. 6, 1817. 
 He finished his long and useful earthly life in this city, July 22, 
 1892, and entered into the rest and blessedness of the life 
 eternal. 
 
 In early years he consecrated himself to the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and to his service in the Christian ministry. Enter- 
 ing Yale College in 1833, he graduated with honor in 1837. 
 He received his ministerial education in Union Theolog- 
 ical Seminary, New York City, from which he graduated in 
 1842. While pursuing his theological studies in the Sem- 
 inary he was for a time a teacher in the celebrated Deaf and 
 Dumb Institute of New York. 
 
 In 1843 he came to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian 
 Church in Milwaukee, Wis., where he remained six years in 
 faithful and successful service as a pastor. 
 
 In 1 849' he was called from that pastorate to the responsi- 
 ble and onerous duties of the first President of Beloit Col- 
 lege, serving in that capacity for thirty-six years, and retain- 
 ing his connection with the college as President Emeritus, 
 Trustee and Member of the Executive Committee until his 
 removal by death. 
 
 In all these relations he won the highest respect and con- 
 fidence by the ability, fidelity and success with which he met 
 and discharged the varied duties and responsibilities which 
 devolved upon him. But his great life-work, that for which 
 he will be especially remembered and honored, was his leader- 
 ship in laying deep and broad the foundations of this beloved 
 college, which, we believe, is for generations to pour out its 
 rich blessings upon the world ; and for his administration of 
 its affairs, during the long period of his presidency, — a length 
 of time rarely if ever equaled by any college president in our 
 country. 
 
 And it is peculiarly fitting that, upon this first anniversary 
 
6 
 
 of the college since his removal, we should as Trustees, 
 Faculty, Alumni, students and friends of the college, here 
 assembled, unite by this memorial service in paying our 
 heartfelt tribute to his memory. The best years of his life 
 were sacredly devoted, in unison with his associates, to 
 making this college what it now is, the peer of the best 
 institutions for higher Christian education in this great Interior 
 and Northwest. The college itself, in its present growth and 
 large prosperity, now presided over by one of her own choicest 
 sons, and aided by an able and devoted corps of instructors, 
 is both an evidence of the wisdom and success of President 
 Chapin’s long administration of its affairs and an enduring 
 monument to his memory. 
 
 It may seem presumption in me to attempt, in this pres- 
 ence and on this occasion, to voice the tribute which all our 
 hearts would pay to the character and life-work of this revered 
 and beloved man of God. My only apology is the fact of my 
 long acquaintance and association with him and my high 
 appreciation of the nobility of his character and of his eminent 
 services. Natives of the same State ; Alumni of the same 
 college ; Associate Trustees of this college from the time he 
 entered upon its presidency — forty-three years ago ; privi- 
 leged to share his friendship and frequently to enjoy the hos- 
 pitalities of his home, I have learned both to love and to 
 honor him for the superior qualities of mind and heart which 
 characterized him and for the good which he accomplished. 
 With a glad and grateful heart do I cherish a profound regard 
 for his memory. 
 
 Leaving it for others who are to follow to analyze the 
 elements of character which made President Chapin what he 
 was, and to bear testimony to his useful services, permit me 
 very briefly to trace some of those steps in his life which 
 molded his character and fitted him for his special life-work. 
 The early environments of individuals have much to do in 
 shaping their after life and preparing them for the providential 
 work to which they are called. If we were to trace back the 
 influences which molded and fixed the character of Presi- 
 dent Chapin, and were a providential preparation for the, 
 presidency of this college, we should find their happy begin- 
 nings in the atmosphere of a typical New England Christian 
 
7 
 
 home, where from earliest childhood he received a genial 
 Christian nurture. 
 
 Back of the home, he was connected with an intelligent 
 and godly ancestry. Among my earliest recollections was 
 that of one of these godly ancestors, the venerable and dis- 
 tinguished Rev: Dr. Calvin Chapin, an uncle of President 
 Chapin, one of the renowned five who in 1810 met in the 
 parlor of Dr. Porter, in Farmington, Conn., to organize the 
 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and 
 who was its first and for more than a generation its Record- 
 ing Secretary. I can to-night almost feel the touch of his 
 hand, as it was laid upon my youthful head, and hear his 
 voice, as he offered the prayer of consecration when I was 
 ordained — forty-six years ago — as a Home Missionary. In 
 the earlier years of President Chapin’s life in his native city 
 he was privileged with the friendship, the counsels, the edu- 
 cating and stimulating influences of such scholarly and godly 
 pastors as Dr. Horace Bushnell and Dr. Joel Hawes, — men 
 of masterly minds and great practical wisdom, to whom he 
 always gratefully acknowledged his indebtedness for encour- 
 agement and guidance in his preparation for college. His 
 early association with these men of rare ability and worth, 
 and with the intelligent and cultured society of his native 
 city, was' no unimportant factor in developing and molding 
 his after character and life. And he was no less happy in 
 the associations of his college days. He was a member of 
 the famous Yale class of 1837, numbering such men as Chief 
 Justice Waite, Hon. Wm. M. Evarts, Hon. Edwards Pierre- 
 pont, Gov. Samuel J. Tilden, Professors Benjamin Silliman, 
 B. N. Martin, Chester S. Lyman, Rev. Drs. D. B. Coe, A. L. 
 Stone, and others distinguished in church and state and as 
 educators. 
 
 After his graduation from college he was for a time asso- 
 ciated as a teacher in the Deaf and Dumb Institute in New 
 York City with scholarly and practical instructors, some of 
 whom became eminent in their professions. Of one of these, 
 Dr. A. L. Stone, Dr. Dwinell said, “He was one of the most 
 eloquent, commanding, highly finished speakers ” he had 
 ever heard, and I can testify that to this he added a grace of 
 manner and a personal magnetism seldom equaled. It was 
 
8 
 
 while President Chapin was an instructor in this institution 
 that I made my first personal acquaintance with him,-^an 
 acquaintance which afterward ripened into a friendship which 
 has been one of the cherished privileges of my life. 
 
 Of his pastorate in Milwaukee I need not speak at length. 
 Its success gained him a wide reputation as one fitted to fill 
 a larger and wider sphere of labor than any single pastorate 
 could afford, and it was also a preparation by its experiences 
 for the manifold duties which would devolve upon him in his 
 administration of college affairs. 
 
 In assuming the presidency of the college he was for- 
 tunate in having associated with him, from the very first, as 
 professors, men having received their training in the same 
 Alma Mater, — of marked ability and scholarship, — of kindred 
 spirit, — consecrated and self-sacrificing, — apt to teach, and 
 in full sympathy with himself in the purpose and effort of 
 building up a first-class Christian college worthy of the name. 
 Need I mention their names? — the sainted Bushnell, of 
 blessed memory, and the cultured and scholarly Emerson, 
 whom God has graciously spared to this present time, loved 
 and honored of all. And in subsequent years President 
 Chapin was no less happy in having the cordial support and 
 cooperation of the noble company of Christian scholars and 
 teachers, who have followed closely in the footsteps of these 
 first two professors, and who have contributed so much to 
 make the college what it is to-day, the joy of all our hearts. 
 In all his administration, efficiently aided by his gifted asso- 
 ciates, he held the institution true to the high ideal of a 
 Christian college. President Chapin took an active part in 
 the conventions which were held preliminary to the organiza- 
 tion and locating . of the college, and was a charter trustee. 
 His colleagues in the first Board of Trustees were men like- 
 minded with himself, — men of far-seeing vision, of practical 
 wisdom, of executive ability, ready for the self-sacrifices and 
 labors which were needful at that early day to plant and sus- 
 tain. an institution which should be the “Yale of the West.” 
 Their motto was “ Scientia Vera cum Fide PuraF They 
 were men who appreciated their opportunities — “men who 
 had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to 
 do.” You will readily recall the names of those wise and 
 
9 
 
 godly men, who as founders and Trustees were leaders in 
 this enterprise, — Peet, Clary, Kent, Bascom, Fisher, Talcott 
 and others. They were a noble body of men, with unbounded 
 confidence in the new young president of their choice, and 
 were always ready to sustain him by their experienced coun- 
 sels, their generous gifts, their harmonious decisions, as well 
 as by their prayers and widely extended influence. 
 
 They made no mistake in electing him as their president. 
 A single fact will illustrate the estimation in which President 
 Chapin was held at the East at the time of his election to 
 the presidency of the college. He was appointed by the 
 Trustees chairman of a committee to write to leading men 
 at the East, asking them to recommend some one for presi- 
 dent. They wrote back that they knew no one better fitted 
 to fill that place than the pastor of the First Presbyterian 
 Church of Milwaukee. 
 
 He was one whose scholarship, business sagacity, sound 
 judgment, devoted Christian character and past experience 
 abundantly qualified him for the responsible position and 
 duties to which he had been called. His good sense and 
 business qualifications, as well as his personal labors and 
 widely extended influence, aided essentially in the solution 
 of the many difficult problems in finance and administration 
 which were encountered in the early history of the college. 
 
 The Trustees had great confidence in the sound judgment 
 and leadership of President Chapin, and such confidence 
 was fully warranted. Seldom, if ever, did any disagree- 
 ments arise between them. There was a delightful and 
 single-hearted agreement in the adoption of any and all 
 measures which would best secure the prosperity and useful- 
 ness of the college so dear to all their hearts. And could 
 those lips, now sealed in death, speak to us to-night, they 
 would doubtless gladly bear testimony to the invaluable and 
 harmonious aid he received in the thirty-six years of his 
 presidency, not only from that first Board of Trustees, but 
 also from all their successors. 
 
 In the closing years of President Chapin’s life, after his 
 committal of the presidency of the college to the man of his 
 choice, he found great joy in noting the large strides forward 
 which the college was making under his efficient and success- 
 
IO 
 
 ful administration. He watched with keen interest and 
 delight the needed addition to its funds, its buildings, its 
 faculty, and the increased number of students. I should 
 transcend the limit of time allotted me were I to attempt any 
 analysis of the character and work of President Chapin. 
 
 Of his work in the college, and his relations to faculty 
 and students, others will speak. It is enough for me to say 
 that under his fostering care, and with his stamp upon them, 
 hundreds of trained students have gone forth who are to-day 
 faithfully serving God and country and humanity as mission- 
 aries, ministers, teachers, lawyers, physicians, editors or 
 business men, — filling spheres of usefulness and doing honor 
 to their Alma Mater, for which we thank God, and take cour- 
 age for the future. 
 
 It should be added that while President Chapin was loyal 
 to the college, giving to it his best thoughts and energies, his 
 interest and usefulness were by no means limited to it. What 
 he was to the churches of Wisconsin as an active, influential 
 member of the Wisconsin Convention, ever ready to share in 
 its counsels and labors, is well known to many of you. As a 
 corporate member of the American Board he rendered most 
 valuable service, not only at the annual meetings of the Board, 
 but also in special emergencies, as in his mission to Turkey. 
 All our great missionary and benevolent societies had his 
 hearty interest and cooperation. For many years he was a 
 Director of the Chicago Theological Seminary, and I can 
 testify to the value of his counsels and labors there. 
 
 We shall all cherish with grateful hearts the memory of 
 his intellectual and scholarly attainments, his manly bearing, 
 his Christian character, his wise counsels, his self-denying 
 and successful labors for the college, his widely extended and 
 beneficent influence as a Christian minister ; for what he was 
 in himself and what he did for Christian education and for the 
 upbuilding and extension of Christ’s Kingdom in the world. 
 
 “ To tell of such a life, all words are weak. 
 
 In presence of those deeds which make the sum 
 Of his humanity. 
 
 We loved him, learned on his sweet life to lean, 
 
 Yet dare not mourn that such a life should cease, 
 
 When the Great Reaper takes his ripened grain.” 
 
gettere UHtrittett for tljio meeting. 
 
 From Rev. Thomas D. Christie, D.D., of the Class of 1872. 
 
 Si monumentum queer is, circumspice ! The best monument 
 to President Chapin is the body of Alumni that Beloit College 
 has sent forth into the world. I well remember a sentence in 
 the first letter my father wrote after my graduation : — “ How 
 much do I owe to those men at Beloit — men whom I have 
 never seen ! They have given me a new son ! ” 
 
 Yes, brothers, I say to the Alumni, we were made anew at 
 Beloit College ; we owe these new selves to President Chapin 
 and the men who worked with him ; and if we have done 
 anything in the world to make anew other young lives, this 
 also is but a continuation of the work to which President 
 Chapin gave all his years and all his energies. It will be well 
 for us and well for our work if, in our service to his Master 
 and ours, we shall be enabled to show something of the faith- 
 fulness to duty, the devotion to high ideals, the forgetfulness 
 of self, the. calm, orderly movement onward, ever onward, of 
 that noble spirit that knew neither haste nor rest. 
 
 I can say for myself that the thought of him has often 
 strengthened me for toil or for endurance; he was a man 
 whom it did one good to know. Would that he could stand 
 beside me here, if but for the briefest period, to teach me 
 how a new Beloit is to be nurtured on the banks of the 
 Cydnus ! Of counselors, he was one among a thousand. 
 There was such a practiced wisdom in him, such a power of 
 looking at all sides of a question - — looking over, and under, 
 and through it — of foreseeing consequences and measuring re- 
 sults ; and, above all, he so habitually applied the very highest 
 principles to the solution of the matter in hand, that after he 
 had stated his opinion there was usually no doubt left as to 
 what was just the right thing, just the best thing, to be done. 
 The secret of this was the purity of his spirit ; he sought no 
 selfish ends ; his eye was ever on his Master — that is why men 
 went to consult him as an oracle of God. 
 
12 
 
 With all this, there was his unaffected humility. I was 
 talking about him in New York with his classmate, Mr. Walter 
 T. Hatch, the Treasurer of our Board of Trustees. “We 
 entered Yale,” he said, “ sixty years ago. I remember Waite, 
 Evarts and Chapin best among my classmates. Chapin was 
 so modest, so shy and retiring in his disposition that he had 
 been with us two years before we really found him out — found 
 out the real strength of his mind and the solidity of his at- 
 tainments. But we always knew, after that, that he would 
 make his mark in the world.” Those who knew Dr. Chapin 
 best can bear testimony that in this case the boy was father to 
 the man ; his genuine lowliness of mind obscured, to the or- 
 dinary eye, the massive strength and greatness of his powers. 
 That it was, too, that made him seem cold and distant some- 
 times to his students. 
 
 I must say that I never really knew the President until 
 after I had left college and was called back to teach in the 
 Preparatory School. I then had occasion to consult him more 
 frequently and to associate with him more familiarly, and it 
 was only then that I learned to know the sweetness, the at- 
 tractiveness, of his nature. He had in him a readiness of 
 sympathy unsuspected by his students. 
 
 Yes, for sincerity, for humility and strength, President 
 Chapin might well have suggested to Macaulay his famous 
 pen-portrait of “The Puritan;” he might have served as a 
 model instead of his ancestor, Deacon Chapin, for that noble 
 statue of “The Puritan,” which is one of the best things our 
 New England Springfield has to show. 
 
 He is gone, but his works do follow him. His memory — 
 the memory of our first President— will live as long as Beloit 
 College and its work shall endure in the world. Others can 
 but continue to build on the foundations he laid, and laid so 
 well. As one of my classmates writes, “ The heroic days in 
 Beloit’s history, when President Chapin and that little band 
 of home missionaries that gathered around him prayed and 
 planned and labored and sacrificed for the infant college, can 
 never be forgotten.” Prosperity has come. Buildings and 
 endowments are increased ; year by year the throng of 
 Alumni and of friends is growing in numbers and in power ; 
 the blessing of God is manifestly upon the old college and 
 
upon all its influences in the world. We rejoice in all this, 
 and pray that it may be but the beginning of good things for 
 Alma Mater. 
 
 But even as we look forward and press on with eager eye 
 and step towards the better future, it is well that we throw our 
 glance backward, from time to time, upon that group of 
 heroes and their chief, who despised not the day of small 
 things, who sowed in tears what we are reaping in joy, and 
 whose virtues and work it will be well for us to emulate as 
 we may. 
 
 President Chapin’s grave ought to be in the centre of the 
 College grounds, and the inscription on his tomb should be, 
 “If you seek for my memorial, look around you! Look 
 around upon these buildings and endowments ; look around 
 upon these throngs of youth ; look around upon the Alumni ; 
 look around in all the lands of the world, wherever a church, 
 a school, or any other saving and uplifting agency is minis- 
 tered to by a Beloit boy; look around and try to measure the 
 ever-spreading influences for good that have had their birth 
 here on the banks of the Rock, but are to live and grow for- 
 ever, — look around on all this if you seek for that which shall 
 perpetuate the memory of the first President of Beloit 
 College.” 
 
 THOMAS D. CHRISTIE. 
 
 Saint Paul’s Institute, Tarsus, Asiatic Turkey. 
 
 From Professor J. D. Davis, D. D., of the Class of. 1866. 
 To the Alumni of Beloit College : 
 
 Dear Brethren : — I came to Beloit College a poor young 
 man in the spring of i860, entering the Freshman class. I 
 shall never forget the kindness with which the President re- 
 ceived me when I called at his study that first morning as an 
 entire stranger, nor the few other similar kind receptions and 
 kind offices during the year and a half which preceded my • 
 four years’ absence in the army ; they won my heart and held 
 it so that his presence in the class-room or on the campus was 
 a benediction to me, and I remember his Sabbath afternoon 
 sermons in the Chapel on the life of Christ almost as if they 
 were of yesterday. After the war, while I was in college 
 
14 
 
 again, I sometimes had occasion to defend the President from 
 unjust and mistaken criticism ; but all my subsequent inter- 
 course with him, whether in college, on the platform of the 
 American Board at Salem, Mass., in 1871, or at Des Moines, 
 Iowa, in 1886, or in his own home as a guest, only served to 
 confirm and deepen my first impressions of the deep well of 
 love and kindness which was in his heart. Of his influence 
 and work for the college and for the cause of Christ in the 
 world, I need not speak ; he was one of the chosen few who 
 gave his life to the college and laid the foundations on which 
 the grand structure, as it stands before the world to-day, has 
 arisen. He helped to mold and hold the great Interior for 
 Christ and for liberty, and the “ lines of his influence have 
 gone out through all the world.” The longer I live, the more 
 am I impressed with the fact that men are like composite 
 photographs, largely made and molded by the men who pow- 
 erfully influence them during the forming period of their lives, 
 and I am conscious that President Chapin and Professors 
 Fisk, Emerson, Porter and Blaisdell, of Beloit, and Profes- 
 sors Fisk, Haven and Bartlett, of Chicago Seminary, have 
 probably made and molded my character and life more than 
 all other human influences combined, and among these my 
 patterns and molders I owe a large debt of gratitude to Pres- 
 ident Chapin ; and thus, being dead, he yet liveth and speak- 
 eth and worketh in hundreds of hearts and lives up and down 
 through the earth to-day. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 J. D. DAVIS. 
 
 Kyoto, Japan. 
 
 From Rev. Arthur H. Smith, of the Class of 1866.* 
 
 When I was in college I am sorry to say that I was one of 
 those who did not appreciate Dr. Chapin at his true value. 
 But we were then much too near to be able to take in the full 
 range of all his wide and beneficent influence, of his clear, 
 steady, never-failing good judgment, his loyalty to the truth 
 as he saw it, and his sympathy with every good word and 
 work. He was the central figure of Beloit College, a 
 
 * Mr. Smith’s letter was delayed in the mails, so that it could not be read at the 
 meeting. 
 
15 
 
 pillar of the churches, and a tower of strength to many causes 
 in the interest of which he was constantly sent into regions 
 near and far, on important, delicate and difficult errands. He 
 seemed indispensable while he lived ; but his faithful work has 
 opened for his successor wider avenues. 
 
 When he dropped out of the ranks, a prince of Israel fell. 
 In the infinite Somewhere beyond, his spirit must be glad- 
 dened by the great development in the line of work to which 
 he gave his life, and the ultimate fruits of which, we may 
 believe, will go on unfolding forever. 
 
 ARTHUR H. SMITH. 
 
 Pang Chuang, Shantung, China. 
 
 From H. S. Osborne, Esq., of the Class of 1862. 
 
 My heart is full of love and grateful feelings as I think of 
 President Chapin. We students of Beloit College do not 
 easily realize the large part exerted in our college education 
 by the unconscious daily influence of such a character and 
 life. 
 
 It has been said (by President Cleveland) to be one of the 
 great disadvantages of a college education that a young man 
 there is studying, during his formative period, dead books in- 
 stead of living men. It is undoubtedly true that a - pro- 
 nounced and noble personality in the teacher not only goes 
 far to do away with the force of whatever truth there is in this 
 remark, but also, by the very fact of remoteness from active 
 business, exerts a far greater influence upon young men than 
 would otherwise be possible, and is apt to remain and grow 
 into their future lives more than later things. 
 
 And the personal character of President Chapin has been 
 such an influence — a very helpful influence — with me, living 
 and, instead of fading, growing stronger with the passing 
 years. I wish I could be with you to speak of some of the 
 things which come to mind, — the history class, the quiet, help- 
 ful, uplifting Sunday afternoon service in the Chapel, the 
 measured, yet brave, stirring thoughts as he preached to the 
 class just going out into the world from the words, “ Watch 
 ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” 
 More than all, I value the daily contact with a Christian gen- 
 
tleman, the kindly dignity and purity and wisdom, the serene 
 and patient strength of character and perseverance in a noble 
 purpose, which have left their impress for blessing on many 
 a life. 
 
 The mind kindles with enthusiasm over stories of old 
 heroes. Grand as they are, there is a heroism infinitely 
 grander and far more difficult to attain, of which the story is 
 more often written in the annals of heaven than on the pages 
 of men ; and as we look back through the lives of President 
 Chapin and his associates, and the long college years of 
 struggle and storm and discouragement, and see them stead- 
 fastly pursuing their way, splendidly upholding the college 
 standards and true to the trust committed to them by God, 
 there shines out that other greater heroism, the heroism of 
 Christian patience. 
 
 God bless Beloit College and keep her always true to the 
 noble ideals and purposes and example of her founders, and 
 worthy of the memory of her loved and revered first President. 
 
 HENRY S. OSBORNE. 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 From N. G. Clark, D.D., Secretary of the A. B. C. F. M. 
 
 At the time of Dr. Chapin’s resignation as a corporate 
 member of the American Board, there were but two who had 
 been longer connected with it. Elected in 1851, his service 
 extended over a period of thirty-eight years. After the first 
 few years, during which he was becoming acquainted with the 
 situation, hardly an annual meeting passed at which he was 
 not called to serve on one or more important committees. 
 He was thus a prominent figure on these occasions. He was 
 known and honored for his good judgment and practical wis- 
 dom in dealing with difficult questions. It was but natural, 
 therefore, when in 1883 misunderstandings of a grave charac- 
 ter had arisen between the missionaries in the Turkish Empire 
 and the Protestant Armenian communities, that Dr. Chapin 
 should be selected as the head of a deputation to visit Con- 
 stantinople for a general conference with missionaries and 
 delegates from the native churches. His fine presence, his 
 manifest sympathy and interest, his patient attention to all 
 
details, and his calm judicial temper won for him the respect 
 of all and secured the happiest results in a harmony and good 
 feeling which continue to this day, and have contributed 
 greatly to the welfare and progress of the missionary enter- 
 prise in Turkey. 
 
 N. G. CLARK. 
 
 Boston. 
 
 From Rev. Henry P. Higley, D.D. 
 
 To the Alumni of Beloit College , and all who honor the memory 
 of President Chapin: 
 
 It is a privilege to enter — by a share in this service — into 
 the goodly fellowship of the sons of Beloit College ; that 
 privilege is increased by the purpose which controls this year 
 your annual assembly, — to render a tribute of love and respect 
 to the memory of him who among the founders of Beloit 
 College was primus inter pares. 
 
 Whatever advantage other colleges may have, this at least 
 is unique in Beloit’s history, from her founding to -this day 
 there has been no alumnus of the college that has not known 
 President Chapin. 
 
 I am not to attempt any exhaustive analysis of President 
 Chapin’s service to college and city, or of the character which 
 was back of the service and made it possible. I only bring, 
 in a few words, my tribute of memory from the twenty-five 
 years of association in the religious and educational work of 
 this highly favored city. Ce'rtainly the Beloit of that memory 
 would have been quite different — a good deal poorer than the 
 case now stands — if it did not include President Chapin. I 
 cannot think of it now, its Sabbath assemblies, its com- 
 mencement services, the college campus or the city streets, 
 without a vivid sense of loss, now that his presence no longer 
 presides over and blesses them. 
 
 A character less full than his might offer for that very 
 reason more angles for notice and remark. His was a rare 
 combination of force and caution ; a radical on the side of 
 conscience, but with balance and control from judgment, and 
 keeping the conservatism of charity. It was a great help for 
 a pastor in Beloit to have so fair and clear a source whence 
 to draw counsel. 
 
 Much as President Chapin cared for the college, and bore 
 
i8 
 
 it ever on his heart ; and wide as was his interest, that went 
 out to the kingdom of Christ in state, and nation, and all 
 the world ; the narrower view did not hide nor the broader 
 view dissipate his vision of Beloit as the city of his home. 
 Its business and civic and social life were all matters of in- 
 terest to him. He was a part of its life ; and as such he 
 valued its good name, and its substantial worth in every way. 
 
 The founders of Beloit College built into its first life cer- 
 tain elements of a finer and more lasting success than the 
 enlarged equipment and continually advancing science that 
 are tributary to her later progress can alone supply. Happy 
 for her that President Chapin and his co-laborers honored 
 scholarship, but recognized character as a higher end than 
 scholarship, and sought to make the less subject to the 
 greater ! They held no mechanical theory of life as exhaust- 
 ive of man and his powers. They expected the best only in 
 the recognition and use of spiritual forces, only as lives were 
 opened to receive from above. To seek character from any- 
 thing else as a substitute or equivalent for Christly endow- 
 ment and likeness is to miss the highest lesson of the more 
 than forty years of service that President Chapin gave to 
 Beloit College. May the inspiration from her truly good 
 and great men never fail Beloit and Beloit College ! And 
 the memory of this hour links everywhere with hope. Did 
 I seem to call Beloit the poorer now this life has ceased from 
 her presence? Let me hasten to change this to a larger and 
 truer thought. Such well filled lives make it richer, not less 
 when they are finished than while they are in progress. They 
 are abiding wealth : such treasure has not passed, because this 
 year we star this honored name. In honoring the memory of 
 Aaron L. Chapin, the alumni of Beloit College, his associates 
 in the Christian life of the city, and in the care for this insti- 
 tution, join in the renewed testimony — Beloit's richest endow- 
 ments have been those of Christian Manhood. And for him we 
 have neither regret nor fear to-day. 
 
 “ And doubtless unto thee is given 
 A life that bears immortal fruit, 
 
 In such great offices as suit 
 
 The full-grown energies of heaven. ” 
 
 HENRY P. HIGLEY. 
 
 Redlands, California. 
 
19 
 
 From Rev. George Bushnell, D.D. 
 
 To the President and Alumni of Beloit College : 
 
 Dear Brethren : — I am glad to know that you are to 
 hold, in connection with your approaching commencement, 
 a memorial service in honor of ex-President Chapin, and 
 quite willingly, in compliance with your request, I offer a 
 few words of testimony from my point of view as pastor and 
 associate in Ghurch work. 
 
 Men of strong character are, I believe, generally single- 
 minded men. Their characters are shaped and their course 
 determined by some one central and all-controlling principle. 
 It is this fact which renders all questions which relate to them 
 easy of interpretation. If I mistake not, this is delightfully 
 so in the case of him whom we now propose to honor. He 
 had a stock of good and great qualities, by any one of which 
 he might be said to be distinguished. Thus, I believe he is 
 credited, by those who are in position to know, with unusual 
 administrative ability. In the pulpit he was a model of that 
 manly eloquence, the chief element of which is the power 
 of clear and impressive statement. In the conference meet- 
 ing or deliberative assembly he was remarkable for the ease 
 and acceptableness with which he formulated the business of 
 the meeting, whatever it was. In the social gathering or 
 home prayer-meeting he entered with great zest into the exer- 
 cises, and spoke and sang with an inspired and inspiring 
 ardor. Yet no one of these things, nor all of them taken 
 together, is sufficient to give a true idea of the man as he 
 was. There was hidden in his soul some greater and more 
 central power, of which these things were but the emana- 
 tions, and it is this grandly inspiring and controlling quality 
 which we need to see if we know and honor the man as he 
 deserves. We may not agree exactly in naming this central 
 and formative quality ; but I venture to call it faith, a deeply 
 religious, a peculiarly firm and victorious faith. It was this, 
 I imagine, more than all things beside, that made him so 
 good a business man. A sound judgment, a firm purpose, 
 promptitude in action, — where were these qualities so likely 
 to be engendered and become habitual as in those keen and 
 stern conflicts by which the truth and the right were dis- 
 
20 
 
 cerned and adhered to in the face of all the enemies of the 
 soul and of God? What better or other equipment for the 
 pulpit can you suggest, than such convictions, wrought out 
 by conflict, and, when proved, living in the soul? Who would 
 be so ready in hours of perplexity and responsibility, to 
 formulate correct decisions as this man, whose eye was so 
 single and so thoroughly practiced? And why should not 
 this exact and, at times, apparently cold man break out in 
 ardent petitions and rapturous songs, as his loyal soul yearned 
 for the coming of that kingdom to which he was supremely 
 devoted, and among its friends anticipate its triumphs? 
 
 In him I think we see demonstrated with unusual clear- 
 ness and certainty the supreme value of Christian faith to 
 enlarge and ennoble the soul, to correct its eccentricities, 
 and give force and unity to its unfolding life. 
 
 From this source of sanity and power it was that our 
 friend was so manly a man, exempt to so remarkable an 
 extent from all weak vacillations and moodiness of temper. 
 For the same reason he was a ready man. To my eye he 
 never wore the aspect of a man slowly spelling out or anx- 
 iously readjusting his course, but that of a man moving right 
 on to his duty in obedience to relations which God had 
 planned for him and which, once for all, he had loyally and 
 thankfully assumed. And so it was that he was ever found 
 in his place and ready for his post, in the work of the church, 
 the community and the nation, no less than in that of the 
 college. Was there debate or hesitation, his mind was 
 usually made up and his voice was heard leading the way, 
 with so little of the spirit of dictation or self-will, and usually 
 so wisely, that he was thankfully followed. Was money 
 wanted for any good purpose, especially for meeting a real 
 need in the church or to enlarge its charities, his hand was 
 the first to open and with a large generosity. Finally, let me 
 tell in few words what he was to me. Most distinctly do I 
 remember what he was to me on my first coming to Beloit, 
 to consider and take up my pastorate there. Some of you 
 will possibly recollect that it was a time of deep depression, 
 both as respects the affairs of the town and of the church. 
 Both were taxed and overtaxed to meet railroad obligations, 
 and to erect and furnish the buildings of the church. It was 
 
21 
 
 midwinter, and the weather extremely cold. Congregations 
 in the large and unfinished edifice were scanty, and abundant 
 echoes seemed to mock rather than applaud all efforts to be 
 impressive, or even audible. And here was the question to 
 be faced at once, of a new pastorate to be undertaken, under 
 circumstances which perhaps a strong man, accustomed to 
 the buoyancy and quick reaction of Western life, might easily 
 have borne up against; but my spirit, I confess, was appalled 
 and well nigh quenched by the prospect. I did not especially 
 hunger for sympathy, I did not care to have the difficulties of 
 the position alleviated, least of all explained away. If I were 
 weak enough to lean on such supports I was not to be accom- 
 modated, especially by Dr. Chapin. But I did find in him 
 and his associates something quite to the purpose — a man 
 and men who had neither time nor disposition to take counsel 
 of their fears, men who only needed to see their work and to 
 know that it was theirs. This one thing I saw in Dr. Chapin, 
 then and ever afterwards, and his associates were scarcely 
 behind him in this respect. If any man wants to see faith in 
 its highest perfection, I should commend for his study and 
 imitation those whom God has called to the honored task of 
 founding and nursing into strength our western colleges. 
 Surrounded by these men, I should have been ashamed to be 
 frightened at anything or to complain. If I was not at once 
 cheered, I was braced, made strong, at least in spots. Had 
 these men stooped to flattery, 1 should have been frightened ; 
 had they indulged in over-sweet sentimentalities, I should 
 have been disgusted ; but as they simply moved forward to 
 their task quietly and, as I thought, somewhat grimly, I did 
 the same, till a better day dawned in the church and at last, 
 as I am glad to say, in the college also. 
 
 While, therefore, I sincerely congratulate the alumni of 
 Beloit upon the high character and faithful services of the 
 first President, I would have them see in him something 
 more than a great and wise administrator of their trust — even 
 a man called of God and shaped to their ends long before- 
 hand, and divinely upheld and inspired for his many-sided 
 task. It was as such that I came to know him at first, 
 and afterwards to trust him as a most valued friend and 
 helper. At times I used to pity him and his associates, who 
 
22 
 
 had to endure so much at my hands, but I learned to love 
 them even for this, with such exemplary patience and discre- 
 tion did they bear with me. 
 
 From his position in the college and in the church I saw 
 much of Dr. Chapin, in public and in his family and study, 
 and with ever increasing confidence and love, at least on my 
 part. I count it among the best of Heaven’s gifts that I was 
 permitted to know him so well. That chapter of history 
 which closed with his life on earth is to me most precious 
 and comforting. If there was little in it that the world calls 
 great, there was in it an illustration not to be questioned, of 
 the dignity and beauty of Christian fellowship. Shall we not 
 all accept his true and noble life as a sure prophecy and 
 pledge of a yet fuller and diviner life hereafter ? 
 
 Yours fraternally, 
 
 GEORGE BUSHNELL. 
 
 New Haven, Connecticut. 
 
Paper by Horace White, Esq., of the Class of 1853. 
 
 My earliest recollection of Dr. Chapin is that of visiting 
 his home, on some errand, very soon after his arrival in Beloit, 
 and seeing on his book-shelves a set of the British poets. 
 There was no similar collection in the town at that time. I 
 was then fifteen years of age. 1 approached the books, read 
 the titles on the backs, and timidly asked him if I might look 
 at them. He replied that I might not only look at them, but 
 I might come and read them at my own pleasure, or take them 
 home with me and read them there. I greedily availed my- 
 self of this offer, and I think that I read every volume in the 
 collection through, and some of them more than once. The 
 acquaintance thus begun was more than the ordinary acquaint- 
 ance between student and college president. It was a deep- 
 seated, continuing and growing friendship, which terminated 
 only with his death. It was my pleasure and privilege to meet 
 him frequently after I left college, and after I left Beloit as a 
 place of residence in 1853. During the succeeding years of 
 his presidency there were very few in which I did not meet 
 him at least once. I never came to Beloit without visiting 
 him if he were at home, and he often visited me in Chicago 
 and New York. Once it was our good fortune to meet in 
 London. 
 
 In this way I came to know our honored President full 
 well. Others can tell more of his labors in building up the 
 college. None outside of his own immediate family can have 
 a higher appreciation of his character and his intellectual en- 
 dowments. To me he was always the noblest type of the 
 Christian gentleman, and I am sure there can be no higher or 
 nobler type. But he was more than this. He was an affec- 
 tionate guide and monitor. The sweetness that is so happily 
 depicted on his face in Professor Whitney’s historical sketch 
 of Beloit College was always the portion of himself that he 
 gave to me, both when I was a boy and after I became a man. 
 Even the paralysis that fell upon him a few years before his 
 death could not efface this admirable characteristic. I met 
 
24 
 
 him once after this affliction came upon him, and I shall al- 
 ways remember the generous effort he made in his feebleness 
 to give me the usual pleasant greeting and to take his part in 
 our accustomed conversation, to which his wife lent her 
 needed assistance. When hopeless disability befalls us, to- 
 gether with the weight of years, we must needs look upon 
 death as a deliverance, yet there never could be a time when 
 the loss of the companionship of such a man as Dr. Chapin 
 could be other than a sore deprivation to all who were in near 
 relationship to him, nor can there be a time when the world 
 will not feel the loss of such men. 
 
 Fortunate is it for us, and for those who shall come after 
 us, that the example of such lives as Dr. Chapin’s does not 
 perish with the body, but remains to guide and inspire other 
 generations. It was Matthew Arnold, I believe, who said 
 that “ character is three-fourths of life,” meaning that in the 
 sum total of this world’s affairs character outweighs, in 
 that proportion, all other achievements, gains and things 
 whatsoever, and contributes more than all else to what we 
 call civilization and human progress. The more this propo- 
 sition is studied, the more true will it appear, that morality 
 is the only sure basis of human institutions. Dr. Chapin’s 
 life was not only a perpetual example of that morality which 
 makes society and government permanent and worth having, 
 but it was devoted entirely to the cultivation of it in the 
 minds and hearts of others. How successful he was in this 
 life-work, the 'gratitude of all his pupils will testify, as my 
 own does gladly ; and when we too are dead, the institution 
 over which he presided in its infancy and during the first 
 thirty-six years of its being will remain as his enduring mon- 
 ument. I was one of those who saw the corner-stone of the 
 old Middle College laid on the 24th day of June, 1847. I 
 was then attending the seminary in the basement of the old 
 stone church, under the admirable superintendence of Sereno 
 T. Merrill. My father, Dr. Horace White, had charge of the 
 building of that church, and my step-father, Deacon Samuel 
 Hinman, had charge of the building of Middle College. 
 Both are of blessed memory in the annals of Beloit. So it 
 has come about that I can better appreciate the growth of 
 the College, and Dr. Chapin’s agency therein, than those who 
 
25 
 
 did not see the small beginnings. It is a privilege, which I 
 would not willingly forego, to bear my testimony and to 
 express my homage for the grandeur and usefulness of his 
 career. 
 
 It was fated that Dr. Chapin’s time and talents should be 
 largely absorbed in the task of providing ways and means for 
 the sustenance and growth of the College. It is the condi- 
 tion of existence of every institution of learning that it must 
 have new supplies of money, or it will “get left.” (That 
 phrase is of Homeric origin ; hence, I need not apologize for 
 using it here.) It was Dr. Chapin’s task to see to it that 
 Beloit College did not get left. Asking for money is always 
 an irksome task, but somebody has to do this work for 
 every college ; even for the richest it cannot be dispensed 
 with. It is laborious, absorbing and never ending. The per- 
 son upon whom such a task devolves will have little time for 
 other work. He ought not to be expected to do class-work 
 also ; yet Dr. Chapin gave instruction continuously in the 
 class-room, besides serving on a great many educational and 
 religious boards which involved time, labor and travel to 
 distant states and countries. 
 
 Although thus engrossed by pressing occupations, Dr. 
 Chapin found time for contributions to the science of politi- 
 cal economy. Proficiency in this department of knowledge 
 requires the power of abstract reasoning in a high degree, 
 and to communicate one’s thoughts requires the use of lan- 
 guage not less precise than that of the mathematics. We all 
 think that we know what wealth is, but if we undertake to 
 tell what it is so that the definition shall include all things 
 that are wealth, and exclude all that are not wealth, we shall 
 probably make several ineffectual attempts before we suc- 
 ceed, especially if we have Socrates in front of us asking 
 questions. Then if we try to define value, capital, credit, 
 money, rent and the rest of the things with which political 
 economy concerns itself, we shall discover how much need 
 there is for precision of thought and language. The defini- 
 tion of political economy itself — that is, the marking of its 
 boundaries in the sphere of knowledge, has lately become a 
 matter of dispute, to the great confusion and discourage- 
 ment of its students. A school has arisen which insists upon 
 
26 
 
 giving a place to religion and the higher moral nature of man 
 in the domain of economics, with which they have no more 
 to do than they have to do with mineralogy or chemistry. 
 Political economy has always recognized justice and the 
 administration of law as helps to the production of wealth. 
 It has never arbitrarily excluded the action of the State as a 
 factor in production, or distribution, but has always insisted 
 that the burden of proof in each particular instance is upon 
 those who advocate State intervention. When such interven- 
 tion is proved to be advantageous, as in the case of the coin- 
 ing of money, the carrying of letters, or the establishment of 
 public schools, political economy no more disputes them than 
 it disputes the rule of three. Those facts become part and par- 
 cel of its own armory. But when anybody tells us that it is a 
 part of political economy to pay higher wages than the mar- 
 ket rate, or to “sell all that thou hast and give to the poor,’* 
 or to turn the left cheek, when the right one has been struck,, 
 we reply that all those things may be a part of our duties, 
 and yet political economy may refuse to consider them. 
 This is not saying that political economy merely teaches how 
 to get rich. It does not necessarily show you how to make 
 money, any more than astronomy shows you how to get to 
 the moon. It does show how wealth comes into the world, 
 how it moves about, and how it disappears and reappears. 
 
 This is a digression. I have introduced it merely to say 
 that Dr. Chapin, although a moral and a religious man in the 
 highest sense, rejected the conclusions of those who would, 
 make morality and religion factors of the science of political 
 economy. He could not logically mingle them together. 
 “Political economy,” he said, “is the science which shows 
 how things intended to satisfy our wants are produced, and 
 how they are consumed ; how they are distributed among a 
 people, and how they are exchanged one for another all over 
 the world.” This is the first paragraph in his elementary 
 work entitled “First Principles of Political Economy,” pub- 
 lished in 1880. This little work I consider almost perfect, so 
 far as it goes, — perfect in the clearness of its definitions, and 
 in the soundness of its deductions. 
 
 When I was in college, Wayland’s Political Economy was 
 our text book, and Dr. Chapin our instructor. At that time 
 
27 
 
 the tariff was not a political issue. There was no controversy 
 about protection and free trade. We learned from our text- 
 book and our instructor that free trade was the system most 
 conducive to the national well-being, yet we learned it in a 
 languid sort of way, very much as we learned that the divi- 
 sion of labor was conducive to the national well-being. 
 Nobody disputed either proposition, consequently nobody 
 cared much about them. But after scwne years protection 
 had a revival in the legislation of the country and began to 
 be talked about. It became my duty as a journalist to know 
 the reasons for and against it. As a Republican in politics 
 I had a leaning toward protection ; as a pupil of Dr. Chapin 
 I had a leaning toward free trade.. I was not slow in discov- 
 ering that all, or nearly all, the men who had any reputation 
 as writers and teachers of political economy agreed with Dr. 
 Chapin. I was told by those on the other side that these 
 men were doctrinaires, and that while free trade might be 
 true in theory it was false in practice. I remember putting 
 that proposition to Dr. Chapin once in the class-room, when 
 this very subject was before us, and I remember also his 
 answer. He replied by asking me whether a thing could be 
 both true and false at the same time ? He said that a true 
 theory must always agree with the facts. To hold that a 
 thing might be true in theory and false in fact was paralyzing 
 to the human intellect, and if accepted by the student would 
 block his pathway to knowledge completely. 
 
 This leads me to say that I consider Dr. Chapin’s argu- 
 ment for free trade, beginning at page 195 of his “ First 
 Principles,” the best and most comprehensive one that I 
 have ever seen. Upon this question his convictions were so 
 strong that he would make no compromise, although he de- 
 sired and expressly invited debate in the class-room. In his 
 tolerance of opposing opinions he was as democratic as he 
 was frank in the expression of his own. In his preface to the 
 book from which I have quoted he said : 
 
 “ Generally the author’s aim has been to give a clear 
 statement of principles, avoiding the advocacy of one side or 
 the other of disputed questions. In the last chapter, how- 
 ever, positive opinions are expressed on the issue between 
 protection and free trade, partly as an example of the appli- 
 
28 
 
 cation of principles to pending questions, and partly to indi- 
 cate the present strong drift of both philosophical and 
 practical economists on that question. If it shall serve to 
 elicit opposite views for full discussion in the class-room, the 
 author’s aim will be best accomplished ; for it is his earnest 
 hope that this introduction of this important branch of science 
 to the study of our schools may tend to a more intelligent 
 apprehension of economic laws on the part of our people 
 generally.” 
 
 Although holding these very decided opinions, he remained, 
 I believe, a member of the Republican party down to a late 
 period, perhaps to the end of his life. Of this I am not en- 
 tirely sure, but I recall one conversation with him in recent 
 years in which he said that although he was in accord with 
 the Democratic party on the tariff question, he disagreed with 
 it on so many other questions, and so strongly, that he was 
 not prepared to turn the government over to it. Others can 
 speak more precisely than myself on this point, which is per- 
 haps not very important after all. What we know is that, 
 in the expression of his political opinions, as of .his economic 
 opinions, he was absolutely fearless. Whatsoever word he 
 said, and whatsoever vote he gave, was the outgrowth and 
 manifestation of the truth as it has come_ to maturity in a 
 noble mind. 
 
 Dr. Chapin prepared for college use a revision of Way- 
 land’s Political Economy, but as I have never compared it 
 with the original, I am not able to speak of its merits. 
 
 I deeply regret that I am not able to be personally present 
 at this memorial service. An engagement made several 
 months ago, having relation to the World’s Fair, which hap- 
 pens to fall on the same day and hour, prevents me from 
 being with you this evening. I am thankful to the friends 
 who have allowed me to pay my tribute in this manner to the 
 memory of my instructor and benefactor. 
 
 HORACE WHITE. 
 
 New York. 
 
29 
 
 BY PROFESSOR T. L. WRIGHT. 
 
 OUR FIRST PRESIDENT. 
 
 To the Alumni of Beloit College , June 20, 1893. 
 
 O blessed, holy-hearted boys ! 
 
 Who was that different, elder one 
 That shared and amplified our fun, 
 
 Had secret joy in half our joys, 
 
 And keyed high music of his own 
 Amid our wild, ecstatic noise? 
 
 O fellows, madly idle-hearted ! 
 
 Whose sober presence calmed us so, 
 
 Till with his broader, deeper flow 
 Of spirit keener wit was started, 
 
 Whose fine enthusiasms glow 
 After the presence has departed? 
 
 O youth, too airily up-reaching 
 
 To be all things that could not be ! 
 
 What strong ideal did we see, 
 
 Whose hoary glory, with his teaching, 
 
 Shall live in a vivacity 
 As helpful as his pulpit preaching? 
 
 O students of the book and bat, 
 
 O double lives of sport and toil ! 
 
 What voice could still the storm turmoil, 
 And thrill the drudgeries we were at 
 
 With waves that beat beneath the oil, — 
 And oil that kept the tempests flat? 
 
30 
 
 O campus-men of year on year, 
 
 O nudest braves that heaped the mound, 
 
 O storied founders, legend-crowned, 
 
 0 past and future lads, draw near, 
 
 And ask of this enchanter’s ground 
 What Aaron’s rod has budded here. 
 
 We saw his homely carriage roll 
 Along our Via Sacra’s dust ; 
 
 It was his triumph-car we trust ; 
 
 But common school-boy eyes were dull 
 To know him then as now we must, 
 
 And cheer the quiet conqueror’s soul. 
 
 Cheer loudly for our quiet Man, 
 
 First President of a holy place ; 
 
 For you have known upon his face 
 The sternness of our Puritan 
 
 Grow warm with Washingtonian grace 
 That made him our American ! 
 
 Man is not here as everywhere; 
 
 Beloit tells Beloit, Hail ! 
 
 Beloit is no Western Yale ; 
 
 She is herself, and she shall dare 
 Exalt her type that shall avail 
 To shine and shine and never glare. 
 
 Here was Wisconsin’s Man, forsooth ! 
 
 The calmness of New England breeds 
 Went venturing where the West-star leads, 
 Timely as comes the sun — or Truth, — 
 
 And saying in his simple creeds : — 
 
 1 do believe in God — and Youth. 
 
3i 
 
 of ©Ijcmtberltn. 
 
 The full merit of a statue whose excellence lies in the 
 symmetry of its proportions, the grace of its attitude, and 
 the fitting relationship of its parts, can only be appreciated 
 when studied from all points of view. Many a statue im- 
 presses us powerfully at first glance and from a selected 
 standpoint, which, if studied longer, and viewed from other 
 sides, discloses imperfections and disproportions and falls in 
 our esteem from the first impression of greatness to one of 
 merely unbalanced intensity. So too the deeper merit of a 
 work whose excellence is inwrought and pervasive, rather 
 than external and obtrusive, can only be realized when it is 
 viewed again and again, and when time is given that the 
 impressions it makes may grow into maturity and take on 
 their full significance. Not only this, but he who views it 
 must himself grow by the experiences of life until his ex- 
 panded nature shall comprehend and appreciate in some 
 adequate degree that which is expressed in the work before 
 him. So it is in the study of human character. So it is, I 
 think, in a peculiar sense in the study of the character we 
 delight to commemorate to-night. No single point of con- 
 tact with Dr. Chapin sufficed to give an adequate perception 
 of the breadth and depth and symmetry of his personality. 
 It was only by contact with him in many relations, extended 
 through a long period of years, that there could come a just 
 estimate of his deeper and truer nature. Far more than 
 with most men, the character of Dr. Chapin lingers with one 
 and returns again and again for a fresh and ever larger inter- 
 pretation. And so, his personality has grown in apprecia- 
 tion as the years go by, in a way and to a degree that is true 
 of very few characters which I have known. It was my 
 good fortune to come into contact with Dr. Chapin in an 
 unusual variety of relations, stretching over a period of 
 thirty years. In view of the contributions of others, I know 
 you will pardon me if I speak from a personal point of view 
 and with a brevity not at all commensurate with the subjects 
 
3 2 
 
 I knew him as a college boy knows a college president, or 
 thinks he knows him ; a relationship from which spring esti- 
 mates of character ofttimes very erroneous. I knew him as 
 a pupil knows a teacher ; a relationship out of which better, 
 but still incomplete, views are wont to spring. I knew him 
 as a graduate, while struggling for my start in the world ; a 
 relationship that revealed a personal interest and helpfulness 
 on his part which disclosed an element of his character I had 
 not before recognized. I knew him as a member of his fac- 
 ulty ; a relationship which brought the closest contact with 
 the inner characteristics of his real personality. I knew him 
 as a member of the community, seeking to reform its evils, 
 but curbing his earnest desires by a recognition of metes and 
 bounds and by a judgment based on possibilities and actual- 
 ities rather than idealities ; judgment, the wisdom of which 
 the enthusiasm of youth and of moral earnestness failed then 
 to realize, but which time and experience have amply justi- 
 fied. I knew him as a citizen, endeavoring to promote legis- 
 lation in behalf of the higher and better interests of our 
 commonwealth. 
 
 As students in college, while we could not fail to be im- 
 pressed by the dignity of his character, by the grace of his 
 bearing, by the equanimity of his temperament, by the refine- 
 ment of his every characteristic, we failed to recognize the 
 real depth of soul and of feeling, of kindly interest and of 
 sympathy which lay concealed beneath his polished and con- 
 trolled manner. His reserved and controlled bearing we 
 failed to correctly interpret. It came in part, I judge, from 
 the ideals of a generation from whose courtly ways we have 
 departed, in part from the self-constraint which grave official 
 responsibility naturally, if not necessarily, engenders, but 
 chiefly, I think, from a natural diffidence and sensitiveness of 
 nature which, however admirably controlled by cultivation, 
 yet permeated all his actions and gave them an expression of 
 reserve, the nature of which was not correctly interpreted by 
 us because of the very perfection of its control and conceal- 
 ment. In later and more intimate relations, this expression 
 of seeming reserve entirely ceased to be recognizable, and 
 was replaced by a cordiality and freedom of approach and 
 
33 
 
 intercourse that was at once gratifying and inspiring. This 
 was the real and true expression. 
 
 As an instructor, Dr. Chapin dwelt upon the more gen- 
 eral and basal factors of his subject, and upon the interplay 
 and balance of influences that determined the outcome of the 
 contending elements of human affairs — the field of his in- 
 struction — rather than upon specific details. His view was 
 comprehensive rather than special. In my judgment as 
 a boy, this more general view did not fully compensate for 
 what seemed to be a lack of overflowing fullness of dates 
 and details in history and striking externals and apothegms 
 in economics. These latter I could appreciate ; the former 
 were more shadowy and intangible. But, in my present 
 judgment, I have no doubt that in directing attention con- 
 stantly to the more intangible play of the real forces of his- 
 tory and economics, there was laid in us the groundwork for 
 a broader and better appreciation of the interaction and 
 balance of influences in human movements. And this, we 
 must all concede, is the great essential in the study of human 
 affairs. How little does the soil know the character of the 
 seed planted in it ! How little does the boy know what will 
 prove most vital in his instruction ! 
 
 After leaving college, there comes to us a new revelation 
 of Dr. Chapin’s personality. He came to stand to us in a 
 fuller sense as a true representative of our Alma Mater 
 through the fostering interest with which he followed us as 
 we went forth, and in the helpful but very undemonstrative 
 way in which he aided us in the struggle for a start in life. 
 His way was a very quiet, practical way, not an effervescent 
 expression of feeling. A gushing greeting would have given 
 a moment’s pleasure and satisfied us, but would have been 
 far less real and effective than the opportunities which he 
 placed unobtrusively in our path, opportunities when these 
 were all in all to us. The kindly but discriminative interest 
 with which he followed our earlier efforts, the real apprecia- 
 tion with which he noted our little successes, and the kindly 
 words that he dropped here and there that came around to us 
 in due time disguised in the form of the good opinion and 
 the ready aid of those who had been influenced by him in 
 
34 
 
 our behalf, these were solid tokens of the affection he bore 
 toward the sons of the college. 
 
 It is not unnatural that, as a member of the faculty, there 
 should have come a new and still greater revelation of the 
 deeper elements in Dr. Chapin’s personality. In the close 
 contact of the faculty room, where the realities of college 
 administration bring forth the realities of character, where 
 the deeper questions of development draw out the deeper 
 elements of the nature, where the perplexing issues of col- 
 lege discipline reveal the moral fibre, and where the stress 
 and struggle for progress under hampering conditions draw 
 forth the full resources of personality, it is not strange that 
 we should come to know our president as we had never 
 known him before. Neither dignity of bearing, nor culture 
 of manner, nor trained control, nor personal grace, nor any 
 of the externalities of personality counted for much in the 
 estimate there formed. It was the deep, unswerving earnest- 
 ness, the complete devotion, the equipoise of judgment, the 
 equanimity of temper, the pervading charity, the steadfast- 
 ness of purpose, and the resolute faith that made up Dr. 
 Chapin’s personality as we saw it behind the doors of the 
 faculty room and in the even closer confidence of the presi- 
 dent’s office. 
 
 It was my good fortune to know something of the inner 
 views and feelings of Dr. Chapin concerning those questions 
 that relate to the moral advancement of society ; questions 
 which, in those times, stirred some to effervescent enthu- 
 siasm, sometimes wholesome, sometimes wasteful or harm- 
 ful ; that stirred others to action, sometimes wise and helpful, 
 sometimes foolish and harmful, and that impelled others to 
 hostility or indifference. Here, as elsewhere, he was pos- 
 sessed by a profound interest in that which made for the 
 elevation of the race ; but there was no abandonment of that 
 good judgment of relations, that insight into the dependence 
 of results upon ways and means, which led so many enthu- 
 siasts into impracticable efforts and which wasted so much 
 of the energies of moral enthusiasm which, more rightly 
 directed, would have accomplished more substantial results. 
 His view was considerate of all the factors that entered into 
 these intricate, complex problems. It was at once judicial 
 
35 
 
 and judicious, conservative and progressive. Were there 
 more such men there would be greater progress. 
 
 It was my privilege to know something of the personal 
 influence of Dr. Chapin upon those who made our laws and 
 upon the higher officials that carried them into execution, 
 and I feel warranted in saying that we owe to his influence 
 much of the progress made by our State in legislation respect- 
 ing our charities and our educational interests. It is a great 
 error to suppose that men of his pure and lofty character do 
 not profoundly influence our legislators when they approach 
 them as he did in a courteous and manly presentation of the 
 higher interests of our commonwealth, and when they lay 
 before them, as he did, the higher considerations that should 
 control their actions, absolutely free from any taint of illegit- 
 imate argument or of specious persuasiveness, and without 
 any suggestion that they would be actuated by other than 
 the highest motives. If the good influences of such men, 
 brought to bear with simple directness and courteous consid- 
 erateness, were more generally marshalled at our capitols, 
 the higher interests of our States and the good character of 
 our legislatures would be greatly conserved and promoted. 
 Through his influence on public men, Dr. Chapin was a pub- 
 lic benefactor. 
 
 It has happened to us all to change our early estimates of 
 men ; to slide some up the scale and to slide others down the 
 scale ; to re-arrange the order of rank and of esteem. We 
 have done this, partly because we have come to know more 
 of those upon whom we place estimates, and partly because 
 of changes in ourselves by which our criteria are modified 
 and our insight is strengthened and deepened. In the case 
 of Dr. Chapin, although the original estimate was high, in- 
 creased knowledge of him, increased knowledge of other men 
 in like position and circumstances, and increased knowledge 
 of the issues of life have forced me, and I think have forced 
 you all, to push the estimate upward and upward steadily 
 from first to last. 1 There was no rocket-like ascent born of 
 burning enthusiasm, but a steady, permanent rise into higher 
 and higher estimation, just as one ascends a great plateau 
 almost unconscious of the rise, and perchance unconscious of 
 the real altitude which is at length attained because of the 
 
very breadth and massiveness of the substructure on which 
 the ascent is made. 
 
 Dr. Chapin’s monument should not be a granite shaft, 
 for that would not grow larger with time, but rather crumble 
 away. It should rather be like a great rising plateau, quietly, 
 slowly, constantly lifting itself by its own inherent forces, 
 always greater than it seems, always growing into ampler pro- 
 portions, always most impressive when measured by what it 
 is rather than by what it seems. Mountains are greater than 
 monuments, plateaus are greater than mountains. The world 
 does not always see it so, but it is so. 
 
37 
 
 of tyvz&xbznt on* 
 
 In these closing moments I will add to the wreath woven 
 to-night for our father and friend but a single spray of loving 
 remembrance. 
 
 One of our most thoughtful poets has said : 
 
 “Endurance is the crowning quality, 
 
 And patience all the passion of great hearts ; 
 
 These are their stay, and when the leaden world 
 Sets its hard face against their fateful thought, 
 
 And brute strength, like a scornful conqueror, 
 
 Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale, 
 
 The inspired soul but flings his patience in — 
 
 And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe, — 
 
 One faith against a whole earth’s unbelief ; 
 
 One soul against the flesh of all mankind.” 
 
 There are certain traits of leadership more captivating ; 
 as the capacity for originating brilliant projects in counsel, 
 or gallant daring in action ; but patience is more fundamen- 
 tal as it is more enduring ; and it is more indispensable in the 
 founders of a college in a new commonwealth. “Ye have 
 need of patience,” was the apostolic injunction to the pio- 
 neers of Christianity, as the clasp and crown of their virtues, 
 to secure the permanence of their achievements in the Gospel. 
 To a marked degree this grace w T as conferred upon him of 
 whom we think this evening with gratitude to God who gave 
 him to us and to the world. 
 
 The buggy in which, nearly fifty years ago, the young 
 pastor drove across prairies brilliant with flowers from Mil- 
 waukee to Beloit, was a true caravel. That billowy landscape 
 was an uncertain sea to many eyes that sought to descry the 
 future of this region. Young Chapin’s soul had discernment 
 enough and patience enough to think not merely on finding a 
 new world, but on making a new world. 
 
 Three college presidents of the generation that molded 
 our own stand out as leading representatives of the New 
 England ideal in education — Woolsey, Hopkins and Chapin ; 
 of the three, Dr. Chapin was not the least. In the great 
 

 quality which the poet extols was he not the first ? Woolsey 
 was called to be president of one of the leading institutions 
 of the land, a position for which he had baen prepared by 
 years of congenial labor in one of its departments of instruc- 
 tion. To Hopkins was committed a trust involving greater 
 faith and self-sacrifice; but it was in behalf of his own Alma 
 Mater , already older than Beloit was when Dr. Chapin laid 
 down its presidency. The younger of the three was led a 
 thousand miles from his own Yale, into a region destitute of 
 resources or educational traditions, and bidden to take charge 
 of a college without a single graduate, rich only in its neces- 
 sities, and its faith in God and in the higher educational 
 ideals. That he had the heart to respond to this rather than 
 to other calls which sought to draw him back to responsible 
 leadership in the East ; that for more than a generation he 
 could front the perplexities, disappointments, dishearten- 
 ments of the college enterprise with such dignity, composure 
 and grace ; does not this write his name high among those 
 who through faith and patience inherit the promises ? 
 
 Keen as has .been our sorrow that for these last years our 
 leader has been withdrawn from participation in the affairs 
 he had guided so long, and even from the social converse he 
 had so adorned, do we not in hours like the present, in which 
 we view the work of God in its longer reaches, rise into a 
 truer apprehension of the divine method and purpose ? What 
 supreme test God has throughout these years been applying 
 to the faith of his servant, even as He tested Abraham upon 
 Moriah ; and what a consummation of his patience we have 
 seen! Unable longer to counsel us, he has become himself a 
 revelation to us. Secluded from the customary intercourse 
 of life, we have beheld him walking with God. Often, as I 
 have sat beside him, have I perceived the thrill of his spirit 
 vibrating along the chords of his physical being. It has 
 always been when some special Christian experience or some 
 cheering progress in the kingdom of Christ was spoken of, or 
 else something concerning the honor and advancement of the 
 college. I learned to expect that either of these would move 
 him, as a breath from the high hills ruffles for a moment the 
 surface of a calm mountain lake. The kingdom of God, and 
 the college as a vital member of it ; these were the objects of 
 
39 
 
 his strong and self-forgetting love ; for these he wrought, for 
 these he endured to the end. We rejoice to believe that the 
 memory and the influence of his faith and patience will abide 
 with the college, a priceless inheritance, forever. 
 
40 
 
 from tlje ^btureea of Urofeeexnr (!Emev®mt.* 
 
 I would not dare to comply with the kind request of 
 friends, nor even with the commands of my own heart, if it 
 were required to meet the public importance of the occasion. 
 For we are bearing to his rest a man of national and of inter- 
 national eminence. His peculiar qualities were such as shone 
 as sunlight shines, and wherever there was a call for calm, 
 clear light, men turned, as by instinct, to where they saw and 
 felt its searching but genial shining. When there were quiv- 
 ering issues in great churches or centres of influence, or in 
 great ecclesiastical or benevolent organizations, or in far-off 
 missions, they called for him as for one who “ walked in the 
 light,” and so they had “fellowship one with another.” 
 Whensoever there was need of a wise guiding hand to order 
 and conduct business, they called on him whose “eye was 
 single and therefore his whole body full of light.” 
 
 So even the view of these public relations brings us back 
 to that simple home view of the life which has been among 
 us as he walked in his daily life in that path which was as the 
 shining light, shining more and more to perfect day. What 
 others have seen from afar has been ours at home. We have 
 felt the throbbing of that heart kept with all diligence, out of 
 which were all the issues of the life ; not the diligence of a 
 painful servitude but “the power of an endless life,” like the 
 glad diligence of a lily perfecting its bloom. Such is the life 
 of the soul which has received the spirit, not of bondage and 
 fear, but that spirit of adoption whereby we cry “Abba, 
 Father.” As we have seen that characteristic smile, which 
 blossomed so involuntarily from that heart so full of grace 
 and truth, have we not had some hint of how those first dis- 
 ciples discovered the glory as of an only begotten of a Father 
 in that Word made flesh which dwelt among them ? So even 
 our most quiet life may reflect the vision of that manifested 
 “Word of life.” And to our friend was given a work some- 
 
 *Delivered at the Funeral Services in the College Chapel, July 25, 1892. 
 
4i 
 
 what correspondent to that of Him who “came from God as 
 a teacher.” 
 
 How interesting it would be if we could trace the lines of 
 light which have passed through centuries and continents to 
 the faces which we have looked upon. In the lineage of our 
 friend the British Puritan truth seems to have been tempered 
 by the French Huguenot grace. He was of the seventh 
 generation of the Chapins in the Connecticut valley. He 
 was born February 6, 1817, within a month of the decease of 
 the illustrious Dr. Timothy Dwight, the great reorganizer 
 and re-inspirer of that American college system, which seems 
 to us a central part of the hope of the world’s salvation. 
 Dr. Dwight was born in 1752, so that the united lives of those 
 educators cover 140 years, — more than half the time in which 
 the Puritan educational system has been forming and doing 
 its work of salvation. Aratus Kent, the first president of 
 the Trustees of Beloit College, was, I think, one of the last 
 pupils of Dr. Dwight, and the last paragraph of his charge to 
 President Chapin illustrates the vital influence of that man. 
 He says : “You and I are sons of Yale, and I know not how 
 better to magnetize you to a high standard of excellence than 
 to point to the portraiture of your old President and mine. 
 As I sat musing in my study anticipating the exercises of this 
 day, my eyes met the searching glance of the venerable ex- 
 president Day and the sainted Dwight. They seemed to be 
 looking down from the wall where they hung and come to my 
 aid just in time to administer the oath of office. Methinks I 
 hear them say, ‘Young man, yours is a high destiny, an en- 
 viable station — yours an awful responsibility, a delightful 
 work. Take this charter and observe its provisions. Exe- 
 cute these laws with the firmness of Caesar, with the meek- 
 ness of a Christian. Make the impress of this seal the symbol 
 of literary excellence unrivalled between the oceans.’ ” 
 
 Dr. Dwight became President, of Yale in 1795, nearly a cen- 
 tury ago. After his twenty-two years came the twenty-nine 
 years in which President Day — a man so like to President 
 Chapin in depth and breadth, serenity and symmetry — and his 
 colleagues, pupils also of Dwight, — Silliman and Kingsley and 
 their younger associates, such as Goodrich and Olmstead and 
 
42 
 
 Woolsey, — carried on his work till 1846, when Mr. Chapin 
 was already a leading spirit in the plan of Beloit College. 
 
 Brought up in Hartford, Connecticut, under such influ- 
 ences as the 'Stalwart piety of Joel Hawes and the devout 
 philosophy of Horace Bushnell, he was educated at Yale 
 College in the illustrious class of 1837, under those great 
 teachers of whom we have spoken. After a few years of the- 
 ological study and- of teaching, which was also a preparation 
 for his future usefulness, he came to young Wisconsin in 
 May, 1843, to the First Presbyterian Church in Milwaukee, of 
 which he was ordained pastor January 24, 1844. But his 
 coming life was gathering around him. His practical aptness 
 brought him to the front in all good things, and a good thing 
 which that young New England then thought upon was a 
 college. He was one of the little company who, in June, 
 1844, began the movement out of which Beloit College grew. 
 His efficiency and practical wisdom in the development of 
 the plan seemed so essential to its success, that when in 1849 
 the American Home Missionary Society invited him to a sec- 
 retaryship, the College interposed its claim — a claim which 
 prevailed over the desire of the national Society, and over the 
 attachment of the important church, and he was elected pres- 
 ident of the College November 20, 1849, entered upon his 
 duties February 1, 1850, and was inaugurated July 24, 1850. 
 The conclusion of his inaugural address gives the keynote of 
 his life and work. It is as follows : 
 
 “I have nothing here to pledge or to promise, but the 
 devotion of an honest purpose, so long as it shall please God 
 to keep me here, to give my undivided energies to the build- 
 ing up of this college, for the service and glory of him who 
 is the Head of all, by whose will I would be guided and 
 whose blessing I crave.” Great and simple words, and we 
 are all witnesses how greatly and simply they have been made 
 good, through all the more than forty years during which he 
 has been here. They are words to study and to analyze, like 
 the sunbeams. There are the devotion, the honesty, the 
 purpose, the piety, the one endeavor, the high plan, the 
 grand motive, the consecration. 
 
 Out of that heart we have seen developed, in its measure, 
 the history of Beloit College; and how much more of mani- 
 
43 
 
 fold good, like the twelve manner of fruits growing beside the 
 river of Life. His high purpose and his work remain with 
 us for a thanksgiving, an inspiration and a call. It has been 
 his to see the good work go on through the morning, the 
 noon and the decline of a good life, and as rest came to him, 
 to see his work still onward. In his long summer twilight he 
 saw under the setting sun, the smile, so like his own, of this 
 chapel, emblem of the answer to the prayers of his life. 
 
 And now he has seen and passed the Pearly Gates, and 
 we “stand looking up into heaven.” It remains for us to 
 return with new joy to the work, now more sacred than ever, 
 in which he has led us, in all lines of life, of striving to bring 
 earth nearer heaven ; and now that it seems so near, we will 
 each pray for such an abundant entrance and welcome to the 
 joy of the Lord. 
 
* 
 
 t