LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Class 
 
 8061 13 -NVP "i 
 
 AN - 3Sf)OVHAS 
 
2-* 
 
 HIDEOUT UNIVERSITY, 
 
 NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE. 
 
 OCT. 3, 4, 1875. 
 
DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 . VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, 
 OCT. 3, 4, 1875. 
 
 PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH. 
 
 1875. 
 
FACULTIES OF THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 LANDON C. GARLAND, LL.D., CHANCELLOR. 
 
 DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, AND LITERATURE. 
 
 L. C. GARLAND, LL.D., Professor of Physics and Astronomy. 
 
 NATHANIEL T. LUPTON, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry. 
 
 J. C. GUAXKKRY, M.A., D.D., Acting Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy. 
 
 MILTON W. HUMPHKEYS, M.A., Ph. D., Professor of Greek. 
 
 B. W. ARNOLD, M.A., Adjunct Professor of Latin. 
 
 EDWARD S. JOYXKS, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Modern Languages and English. 
 
 ANDREW A. LIPSCOMP., D.D., LL.D., Professor of Philosophy and Criticism. 
 
 JAMES M. SAFFORD, M.A., M.D., Ph. D., Professor of Mineralogy, Botany, and 
 Economical Geology. 
 
 ALEXANDER WIXCHELL, LL.D., Professor of Zoology, and Historical and Dynam 
 ical Geology. 
 
 WM. LEROY BKOUN, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Mathematics. 
 
 BIBLICAL DEPARTMENT. 
 
 T. 0. SUMMERS, D.D., Dean, Professor of Systematic Theology. 
 A. M. SHIPP, D.D., Professor of Exegetical Theology. 
 J. C. GRAXBERY, D.D., Professor of Practical Theology. 
 R. M. MoIxTOSH, Professor of Vocal Music. 
 
 LAW DEPARTMENT. 
 
 THOMAS H. MALOXE, M.A., Dean of the Faculty, Professor of Commercial Law 
 and Insurance, Equity Law, Jurisprudence of the Courts of the United States, and 
 Pleading and Practice in Civil Cases. 
 
 W. B. REESE, Secretary of the Faculty, Professor of the Law of Real Property, 
 Criminal Law and Procedure, Torts, and International and Constitutional Law. 
 
 E. BAXTER, Professor of the Law of Domestic Relations, Agency, Partnership, 
 Corporations, Evidence, Wills, and Executors. 
 
 MEDICAL DEPARTMENT. 
 
 THOMAS MEXEES, M.D., Dean of the Faculty, Professor of Obstetrics. 
 JAMES M. SAFFORD, M.D., Secretary of the Faculty, Professor of Chemistry. 
 PAUL F. EVE, M.D., Profosfcpr.Rf Operatt^eJaJidtfSiiJcal Surgery. 
 WILLIAM T. BRIGHS, M.D., Srttfessor af VheP5*tciples and Practice of Surgery. 
 THOMAS L. MADDIN. M.D.,.Prof,ess<jr <jf l\& JnstitiUes a^d Practice of Medicine. 
 WILLIAM L. NICHOL, ItfjDi, ^*ij>iVs*<V^f*h .Pseaea .of" ^ onicn ^d Children, 
 and ofSClinical Medicine* 
 
 VAX S. LIXDSLEY, M.D., Professor of Physiology. 
 
 THOMAS A. ATCHISOX, M.D., Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics. 
 THOMAS 0. SUMMERS, JR., M.D., Professor of Anatomy and Histology. 
 JOHN II. CALLENDER, M.D., Professor of Psychological Medicine. 
 CHARLES S. BRIGGS, M.D., Demonstrator of Anatomy. 
 
Preface., 
 
 DEDICATION EXERCISES. 
 
 Sermon by Bishop DOGGETT : 
 
 SUBJECT "The Dynamics of Christianity; or, Its System of 
 
 Moral Forces" 12 
 
 Dedication Hymn.. 25 
 
 Sermon by Bishop WIGHTMAX : 
 
 SUBJECT "Christ the Center and Bond of the Universe".... 27 
 
 Dedication Ode... 36 
 
 INAUGURATION EXERCISES. 
 Address by His Excellency Governor PORTER , 37 
 
 Address by the Rev. CHARLES F. DEEMS, D.D. : 
 
 SUBJECT "Relations of the University to Religion" 39 
 
 Address by the Rev. A. A. LIPSCOMB, D.D. : 
 
 SUBJECT "Relations of the University to G-eneral Educa 
 tion" G7 
 
 (3) 
 
 225809 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 Bishop McTYEiRE s Address to the Faculties 89 
 
 Chancellor GARLAND S Response 90 
 
 Inauguration Ode 98 
 
 Resolutions of the. Board of Trust and the Faculties. 95 
 
 Discourse by THOMAS 0. SUMMERS, D.D. : 
 
 SUB JECT " Character and Design of the Biblical Department 
 of the University" 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS volume is meant to be the beginning of a series, to be issued 
 annually. Addresses on Commencement and other special occa 
 sions, Baccalaureate Sermons, and such Scientific Discourses and Lectures 
 as may be delivered in the Course of Instruction, and be thought proper 
 for publication, will constitute the material for future volumes of the 
 VAXDERBILT UNIVERSITY Series, of uniform edition with the present one. 
 
 It is proposed, in this way, to make a contribution to general literature 
 that shall possess permanent value. Unlike the justly celebrated Bamp- 
 ton Lectures, and other similar courses of lectures which generous 
 founders have provided for, the subjects of this and following volumes 
 will be found to be various suited to the times in which they appear: 
 but like them, it is to be hoped, in this the best thoughts of the best 
 minds on problems most worthy of public attention. A history of current 
 thought, and a defense of truth against present existing objections, will, 
 therefore, be a feature of these publications. The first volume will be 
 accepted as a fair specimen of this style. 
 
 The Alumni of the older institutions of learning cannot but regret that 
 productions similar to those herein and hereafter to be preserved pro 
 ductions of orators and essayists of the first order, stimulated to their 
 highest effort by appreciative surroundings have never been given to 
 the world. If published, they exist now only in fugitive pamphlets, 
 scarcely to be found, or are bound up with other miscellaneous works of 
 their authors, and not readily accessible. 
 
 The candid reader will require no apology for being presented, along 
 with graver matter, with the connecting incidents of the Dedication and 
 Inauguration Exercises which are peculiar to the beginning. And he 
 will also be pleased to have, as a part of this Preface, some account 
 of the foundation of the Institution of which this volume is a kind 
 of first-fruits. 
 
 The University owes its foundation to the munificence of Mr. CORXE- 
 LIUS VAXDERBILT, a citizen of Xew York, who, on the 27th of March, 
 1873, made a donation of Five Hundred Thousand Dollars for this pur 
 pose, to which he afterward added more. 
 
 (5) 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 The acknowledged want of the means of a higher Christian education 
 than could be obtained within their bounds led several Annual Confer 
 ences, in the year 1871, to appoint delegates to a Convention, to "consider 
 the subject of a University such as would meet the wants of the Church 
 and country." The Convention met in Memphis, January 24, 1872, and 
 was composed of delegates from Middle Tennessee, West Tennessee, Ala 
 bama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. 
 
 The Convention was in session four days, and adopted a plan for a Uni 
 versity. Under the plan a Board of Trust was nominated and authorized 
 to obtain a Charter of Incorporation, under the title of "The Central 
 University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South." 
 
 A liberal Charter was obtained that year, and the Board of Trust met 
 January 16, 1873, and completed its organization. By-laws were adopted, 
 and agents appointed to solicit funds. A University in fact, as well as in 
 name, had been determined on; in the words of the Convention, "An in 
 stitution of learning of the highest order and upon the surest basis, where 
 the youth of the Church and the country may prosecute theological, lit 
 erary, scientific, and professional studies to an extent as great, and in a 
 manner as thorough, as their wants demand." The members of the Con 
 vention were not ignorant of the vastness of the undertaking, nor of the 
 magnitude of funds essential to success. Their judgment in the matter 
 was expressed in the form of a resolution declaring that One Million of 
 Dollars was necessary to perfect their plans and realize fully their aims; 
 and so important was it, in their estimation, to avoid an abortive effort, 
 that they refused to authorize steps toward the selection of a site and 
 the opening of any department of the University until the public showed 
 itself to be in sympathy with the movement by a valid subscription of 
 Five Hundred Thousand Dollars. 
 
 Such, however, was the exhausted condition of the South, and so slow 
 its recuperation under the disorganized state of its labor, trade, and gov 
 ernments, that the first efforts to raise funds showed the impossibility of 
 the enterprise. The yearning desire of our people seemed destined to 
 disappointment for this and following generations, and the well -laid 
 scheme was already in the judgment of some of its warmest friends a 
 failure. At this crisis Mr. VANDERBILT came to their help. In his sym 
 pathy for a people struggling to revive their fortunes, and to secure for 
 their posterity the highest blessing of Christian civilization, he stepped 
 forward and, by his princely gift, gave form and substance to the plan. 
 The Board of Trust, in accepting the donation, as an expression of grati 
 tude resolved to change the name of the projected Institution to VAX- 
 DERBILT UNIVERSITY; and on their petition the Charter was so amended. 
 Thus the VANDERBILT, like the more successful institutions of learning 
 in our country as Harvard, Amherst, Dartmouth, Cornell, Peabody 
 inherits the name of its founder. 
 
 The following important paper the original proposition of Mr. VAN- 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 DERBILT concerning the University is here inserted as the fundamental 
 
 fact in its history: 
 
 NEW YORK, March 17, 1873. 
 
 To BISHOP II. $". McTYEiRK, of Nashville: 
 
 I make the following offer, through you, to the corporation known as The Central 
 
 University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South : 
 
 FIRST I authorize you to procure suitable grounds, not less than from twenty to 
 fifty acres, properly located, for the erection of the following work. 
 
 SKCOXD To erect thereon suitable buildings for the uses of the University. 
 
 THIRD You to procure plans and specifications for such buildings, and submit them 
 to me ; and, when approved, the money for the foregoing objects to be furnished 
 by me as it is needed. 
 
 FOURTH The sum included in the foregoing items, together with the " Endowment 
 Fund" and the "Library Fund," shall not be less in the aggregate than Five 
 Hundred Thousand Dollars ($500,000); and these last two funds shall be fur 
 nished to the corporation so soon as the buildings for the University are com 
 pleted and ready to be used. 
 The foregoing being subject to the following conditions: 
 
 FIRST That you accept the Presidency of the Board of Trust, receiving therefor a 
 salary of Three Thousand Dollars per annum, and the use of a dwelling-house, 
 free of rent, on or near the University grounds. 
 
 SECOND Upon your death, or resignation, the Board of Trust shall elect a President. 
 
 THIRD To check hasty or injudicious appropriations or measures, the President 
 shall have authority, whenever he objects to any act of the Board, to signify 
 his objections, in writing, within ten days after its enactment ; and no such act 
 is to be valid unless, upon reconsideration, it be passed by a three-fourths vote 
 of the Board. 
 
 FOURTH The amount set apart by me as an "Endowment Fund" shall be forever 
 inviolable, and shall be kept safely invested, and the interest and revenue, only, 
 used in. carrying on the University. The form of investment which I prefer, 
 and in which I reserve the privilege to give the money for the said Fund, is in 
 seven per cent. First Mortgage Bonds of the Xew York Central and Hudson 
 Eiver Railroad Company, to be "registered" in the name of the corporation, 
 and to be transferable only upon a special vote of the Board of Trust. 
 
 FIFTH The University is to be located in, or near, Nashville, Tennessee. 
 
 Respectfully submitted : C. VANDERBILT. 
 
 At a called meeting of the Board of Trust, on March 26, 1873, the 
 
 above letter, containing Mr. VANDERBILT S proposition, was duly presented, 
 
 and the following resolutions were adopted: 
 
 RESOLVED, That we accept with profound gratitude, this donation, with all the 
 terms and conditions specified in said proposition. 
 
 RESOLVED, That, as an expression of our appreciation of this liberality, we instruct 
 the Committee hereinafter mentioned to ask the Honorable Chancery Court to 
 change the name and style of our corporation from The Central University of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to THE VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY; and that 
 the Institution, thus endowed and chartered, shall be from henceforth known 
 and called by this name. 
 
 Mr. VANDERBILT afterward added to his original gift, without any mate- 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 rial change of conditions. In a letter to Bishop McTYEiRE, dated New 
 York, March 24, 1874, he says: 
 
 Referring to your letter of the 17th inst., I beg to say that the plans you have 
 shown me, as therein stated, are approved. 
 
 As you express some doubt whether the " Endowment Fund " of Three Hundred 
 Thousand Dollars can be preserved, if these plans are fully carried out, and as you 
 consider such a Fund of vital importance to the success of the Institution, I have 
 decided to add One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($100,000) to the whole Fund. 
 
 An eligible site was selected in the West End of Nashville a plat lying 
 in an oblong square, and containing seventy-four acres. Ground was 
 broken for the main edifice of the University September 15, 1873, and the 
 corner-stone was laid April 28, 1874. By October, 1875, the various build 
 ings and apparatus were in a condition of readiness for opening the Uni 
 versity ; and a Library of about six thousand volumes had been collected. 
 
 The main building contains Chapel, Library and Reading-room, Museum, 
 Laboratories, and Lecture-rooms, and Offices for Professors. In all its 
 arrangements it is ample and well ventilated, built according to the most 
 approved models, and suitably furnished, and warmed throughout by 
 steam. On the grounds are eight professors houses, recently constructed; 
 also, a commodious building, capable of accommodating thirty or forty 
 young men, appropriated to the use of a certain number of students in 
 the Divinity School. 
 
 These structures, together with Observatory, outhouses, and accommo 
 dations for the Janitor and other employes of the University, present, at 
 convenient distances from the principal building, a group of eleven brick 
 and an equal number of frame buildings. The grounds have been well 
 inclosed and suitably improved with roads and walks, water and gas 
 pipes, and the planting of about one thousand trees. 
 
 While these expensive improvements were in progress a financial 
 panic fell upon the country: banks closed, and even Government works 
 were suspended; but Mr. VAXDEKBILT steadily furnished the funds, and 
 there was no delay, at any time, on that account. 
 
 The Professor of Chemistry, who formerly studied at Heidelberg with 
 Bunsen, returned to Germany, after his election, for the purpose of inves 
 tigating the latest methods and instruments of scientific teaching, and to 
 purchase a complete outfit for his Department. The Chancellor inspected 
 the leading institutions of the country before making out the Curriculum 
 of the University, and in April went abroad to procure, on personal in 
 spection, the Physical and Astronomical Apparatus. The United States 
 revenue laws allowing such articles to be imported free of duty, by an 
 institution of learning for its own use, this arrangement was econom 
 ical, in view of the large outlay for these purposes, and also secured the 
 latest improvements in scientific furniture. 
 
 The situation of Nashville could not fail to commend itself to the 
 comprehensive views and practical judgment of such a man as Mr. VAX- 
 
PREFACE. 9 
 
 DERBILT when founding an Institution of Learning for Southern youth. 
 In the midst of a food-producing country, it meets the first conditions 
 of good and cheap living. The climate is salubrious, equally free from 
 the rigor of Northern winters and. the debilitating heat of lower lati 
 tudes. Central between East and West, its railroad system makes it 
 accessible to students from every part of the country, and especially 
 is it convenient to the teeming populations of the Valley of the Mis 
 sissippi. 
 
 It is allowable, in this connection, to allude to the effect of this bene 
 faction upon public sentiment. It was without precedent. A citizen of 
 the North, Mr. VANDERBILT could have found there ready acceptance of 
 his gift, and built up an institution rivaling those which abound in that 
 wealthier and more prosperous section of the country; but to the South 
 he looked, and extended to her people what they needed as much as 
 pecuniary aid a token of good-will. The act, timely and delicately as 
 munificently done, touched men s hearts. It had no conditions that 
 wounded the self-respect, or questioned the patriotism, of the recipients. 
 The effect was widely healing and reconciling, as against any sectional 
 animosities which the late unhappy years had tended to create. A dis 
 tinguished statesman remarked: "Commodore VANDERBILT has done more 
 for reconstruction than the Forty-second Congress." And when the life- 
 size portrait which adorns Central Depot in New York, as duplicated by 
 the skill of Flagg, the original artist, was unveiled in the Chapel at Nash 
 ville, thousands looked upon it then, and look on it still, as upon the face 
 
 of A FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR. 
 
 It happened unavoidably when was it ever otherwise ? that the cost 
 of completing plans of such magnitude outran the most careful estimates. 
 No architect or builder can foresee all the items of expense that are de 
 veloped as such a work progresses. So it was in this case; but the con 
 siderate generosity of Mr. VANDERBILT was equal to the occasion, as the 
 following letter shows, on his transmitting to the Board the Endowment 
 
 Fund ($300,000), being notified of their readiness to take charge of it: 
 
 * 
 
 No. 25 WEST FOURTH STREET, NEW YORK, December 2, 1875. 
 BISHOP H. N. McTYEiRE, President Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Term. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR : I have looked over, in a general way, the statement of expendi 
 tures made and to be made on account of the at first called " Central University of 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South," which name was subsequently changed 
 to " VANDKRBILT UNIVERSITY " the compliment of which action, on the part of your 
 Board of Trust, I fully appreciate. 
 
 Your statements show that the expenditures already made, with the additional 
 ones necessary to be made to cover all the cost of grounds, buildings, books, and ap 
 paratus, and all salaries and incidental expenses to the first day of December, 1875, 
 so that the Institution will, on that day, be entirely free from all debt and obli 
 gations, amount to $392,831 46. Of this amount you have already drawn on me 
 for. and I have paid, $360,000. For the balance, 832,831 46, you may draw on me 
 whenever, and as fast as, the items, to the payment of which it is applicable, can 
 be paid off. 
 
10 PREFACE. 
 
 At this point I desire to say that I am fully satisfied as to the faithfulness and, 
 also, the judiciousness with which the expenditures have been made, and with the 
 clearness with which they have been classified and stated. 
 
 When I made my proposition, under date of March 17, 1873, to give not less 
 than $500,000 to the Institution, it was, as you will remember, expected that at least 
 300,000 of that amount could be preserved as an " Endowment Fund," which was 
 to be kept "forever inviolate and safely invested, and the interest or revenue 
 thereof, only, used in carrying on the University." 
 
 Under the representations made in your letter of March 17, 1874 (just one year 
 after my proposition was made), that the cost of completing the erections, and their 
 suitable appurtenances, would, under the plans that had so far been worked upon, 
 impair to some considerable extent the originally-intended amount of the "Endow 
 ment Fund," I agreed, in my letter to you dated March 24, 1874, to "add $100,000 
 to the whole fund " making it $600,000 upon the condition that not over $300,000 
 (including what had already been paid) should be used for the grounds, buildings, 
 etc., and that at least $300,000 should be reserved as an " Endowment Fund," to be 
 kept inviolate, as provided in my original proposition. 
 
 When I saw you at Saratoga Springs, last summer, you stated that the comple 
 tion of the work would impair the "Endowment Fund," even as fixed in my 
 second offer; and I said that whatever obligations were incurred on account of the 
 work must be paid off, so that the Institution would be absolutely free from debt, 
 even although it required all the "Endowment Fund," my opinion being that no 
 real fund of that nature could exist so long as any indebtedness was outstanding 
 against the Institution. 
 
 When the amounts you have herein been authorized to draw for shall have been 
 paid, so that the Institution will be clear from all debt to the first day of December, 
 1875 making, as hereinbefore stated, an aggregate of $392,831 46 it will leave 
 but a trifle over $200,000 for the "Endowment Fund," instead of $300,000, which 
 last, from the outset and all through the progress of the work, was considered a 
 matter of very great, if not of vital, necessity. 
 
 Upon a careful review of all the circumstances, and consideration of the ob 
 jects sought to be accomplished by the Institution, and feeling that its beneficial 
 operations should not be restricted, now that its material structures are so well 
 adapted to success, I have decided to make an additional contribution, sufficient to 
 bring the "Endowment Fund" up to the full amount of $300,000, as originally 
 contemplated thus making an aggregate contribution of $692,831 46. 
 
 [Here follows a description of the sixty Bonds, of $5,000 each, sent as the in 
 vested Endowment, seven per cent., payable semi-annually.] 
 
 And now that I have fulfilled my undertakings in this matter, I beg, in closing 
 these statements, to say that to you, my dear sir, who have labored so actively and 
 so earnestly in carrying out the plans for the University and have labored so effi 
 ciently, too, as its inauguration within thirty months shows and who will, as the 
 President of the Board of Trust, have the chief responsibility in respect of the ac 
 complishment of the educational purposes for which it was undertaken, I tender 
 my personal expressions of extreme regard, trusting that the healthful growth of 
 the Institution may be as great as I know it is your desire and determination to 
 make it. And if it shall, through its influence, contribute, even in the smallest 
 degree, to strengthening the ties which should exist between all geographical sec 
 tions of our common country, I shall feel that it has accomplished one of the 
 objects that led me to take an interest in it. 
 
 Very truly yours, C. VANDEKBILT. 
 
DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 
 
 THE Dedication and Inauguration Exercises of the VAN- 
 DERBILT UNIVERSITY took place October 3, 4, 1875. 
 At ten o clock on Sunday morning, October 8, the Chapel 
 of the University being filled, the Dedication exercises opened 
 with a voluntary by the Choir followed by Hymn 77 (tune, 
 Lenox) : 
 
 Young men and maidens, raise 
 
 Your tuneful voices high: 
 Old men and children, praise 
 
 The Lord of earth and sky: 
 Him Three in One, and One in Three, 
 Extol to all eternity. 
 
 The universal King 
 
 Let all the world proclaim; 
 Let every creature sing 
 
 His attributes and name! 
 Him Three in One, and One in Three, 
 Extol to all eternity. 
 
 In his great name alone 
 
 All excellences meet, 
 Who sits upon the throne, 
 
 And shall forever sit: 
 Him Three in One, and One in Three, 
 Extol to all eternity. 
 
 Glory to God belongs: 
 
 Glory to God be given, 
 Above the noblest songs 
 
 Of all in earth and heaven: 
 Him Three in One, and One in Three, 
 Extol to all eternity. 
 
 en) 
 
12 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 Prayer was offered by Bishop McTYEiRE, and the Lessons 
 were read by Bishop DOGGETT. 
 
 Hymn 155 (tune, Coronation) was sung: 
 
 All hail the power of Jesus name! 
 
 Let angels prostrate fall: 
 Bring forth the royal diadem, 
 
 And crown him Lord of all. 
 
 Ye chosen seed of Israel s race 
 
 A remnant weak and small 
 Hail him, who saves you by his grace, 
 
 And crown him Lord of all. 
 
 Ye Gentile sinners, ne er forget 
 
 The wormwood and the gall: 
 Go, spread your trophies at his feet, 
 
 And crown him Lord of all. 
 
 Let every kindred, every tribe 
 
 On this terrestrial ball, 
 To him all majesty ascribe, 
 
 And crown him Lord of all. 
 
 that, with yonder sacred throng, 
 
 We at his feet may fall! 
 We ll join the everlasting song, 
 
 And crown him Lord of all. 
 
 Then followed the Sermon by Bishop DOGGETT: 
 
 THE DYNAMICS OF CHRISTIANITY; OR, ITS SYSTEM OF 
 MORAL FORCES. 
 
 " The powers of the world to come." Heb. vi. 5. 
 
 In the economy of God, we stand in intimate relations to 
 two worlds at the same time : the world of sense and the 
 world of faith the world temporal and the world spiritual 
 the world present and "the world to come." 
 
 The object of Christianity is to aggrandize our natures, 
 to elevate us above the pressure of the world of sense, to 
 make us acquainted with the spiritual and eternal world, 
 and to bring us into contact and conformity with it. It 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 13 
 
 possesses a perfect capacity to accomplish this object. Our 
 text announces its capacity, in speaking of "the powers of 
 the world to come." 
 
 I propose to discourse to-day, by the help of God, upon 
 what I may call the dynamics of Christianity : in other 
 words, upon the moral forces which it employs in order to 
 accomplish its object the laws by which its grand econ 
 omy is regulated. Let us, however, contemplate, 
 
 I. The wonderful dispensation of which the text speaks 
 the new order of things to which it refers in the phrase, 
 "the world to come." 
 
 It is not, in any absolute or exclusive sense, the future 
 state which is spoken of, as commonly understood, and as ap 
 parently indicated in the terms themselves. We have a 
 strictly parallel allusion in the fifth verse of the second 
 chapter of this Epistle, decisive of this interpretation, in 
 which the author says: "For unto the angels hath he not 
 put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak?" 
 It is manifest that he had not been speaking directly or ex 
 clusively of the future state at all. 
 
 Of Avhat, then, had he spoken ? and of what does he 
 speak in the language of the text ? Unquestionably, of the 
 Christian dispensation the kingdom of heaven the world 
 of redemption, established by Christ in the midst of the 
 present world. This dispensation is a special, divine or 
 ganization, instituted for the purpose of introducing into 
 our world a system of restorative agencies, to reach and to 
 rectify our ruin. 
 
 We pause a moment to delineate, in some sort, this ex 
 traordinary department of the divine administration to set 
 forth several of its distinctive features. 
 
 One of them is its intrinsic character. In this respect 
 it is purely spiritual, as contradistinguished from every 
 form of temporal government. It is spiritual in its genius, 
 
14 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 in its subjects, and in its methods of operation. Said 
 Jesus Christ, "My kingdom is not of this world." 
 
 It is distinguished by peculiar external exhibitions. It 
 embodies itself, of necessity, in such visible forms as are 
 expressly declarative of its existence and results such as 
 evince its true and living realization amongst men. So much 
 it assumes, and no more. 
 
 It is denoted by its comprehensive range. It includes 
 within its appropriate scope the present life, with all its in 
 terests; the invisible world, with all its population; and 
 the future state, with all its issues. What an empire, 
 therefore, is "the world to come" in its extent! 
 
 Its designation is remarkable. Why is it described as 
 "the world to come?" Evidently, in part, in respect to 
 prophecy, the fulfillment of which the author wns showing 
 in its establishment. He was writing, from the prophetic 
 point of view, to those who held and reverenced the 
 prophecies. It was the coming age of the prophets the 
 coming kingdom to which they all referred. It is so called 
 in respect, also, to the settled expectation of the Jewish 
 nation previously to, and at the time of, writing. However 
 mistaken they were as to the character of the Messiah s 
 reign, the great national idea was the establishment of his 
 future kingdom in the world. It was, in fact, "the world 
 to come" to them the world which had actually begun to 
 the apostle the transition period from the old to the new. 
 At the same time, it was literally and really "the world to 
 come" in respect to its development and perpetuity, viewed 
 especially from its then incipient stage. It was,, truly, the 
 coming world a world ever to come, and never to end. 
 
 "The world to come," thus defined, is essentially and in 
 tensely present at all times. It is all around us ; we are 
 in the midst of it; it interpenetrates the world of sense 
 and sin in which we live. 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 15 
 
 Withal, it is real and permanent. Nothing is so real; 
 nothing is so permanent. All else is a comparative illusion. 
 In reference to it St. Paul says: "We look not at the 
 things which are seen, but the things which are not seen: 
 for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things 
 which are not seen are eternal." They alone abide. The 
 visible world is the shadow of the invisible. It is the cur 
 tain which hangs between the spectator and eternity. 
 Presently the curtain will rise; the wondrous scene will 
 burst upon us, and we shall find ourselves in a contracted 
 theater, environed with the startling realities of an un 
 changeable existence. The visible world is the scaffold 
 the temporary substructure upon which we now stand. 
 The pending catastrophe shall dissolve it; but we shall sur 
 vive, and be transferred to the imperishable foundations of 
 "the world to come." 
 
 We proceed now to consider more particularly what w r e 
 have taken occasion to denominate, 
 
 II. The dynamics of Christianity. The term is not 
 chimerical : it is the literal rendering of ,? W/^:c, the word 
 employed in the original text. Christianity has its dy 
 namics as well as natural science, and in advance of it. 
 It signifies powers, forces, active agencies, energetic influ 
 ences. 
 
 Christianity, as a system, is replete with moral forces 
 with active agencies with which it effects its benign pur 
 poses. It is not a negative, inert organization, consisting 
 of a faultless but impotent ideal of conceivable excellence. 
 It is infinitely potential. It possesses the inherent capacity 
 of self-subsistence, of victorious aggression, and of indefinite 
 reproduction. 
 
 We speak habitually of the laws of nature of the forces 
 by which its vast and varied machinery is regulated of 
 the vital energies by which it performs its functions; and 
 
16 VAXDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1375, 
 
 we speak correctly, so far as phenomena are concerned. 
 These categories comprise our philosophy of nature. The 
 apostle speaks with stronger warrant, and with better pro 
 priety, of "the powers of the world to come"- the forces 
 which operate in the sphere of revealed religion those 
 higher laws which pervade the realm of redeeming grace, 
 and which constitute the sum of its exhaust/less efficiency, 
 and of its imperial grandeur. 
 
 It remains for us to inquire, briefly, what those forces are. 
 This inquiry plunges at once into the region of the super 
 natural. It cannot be avoided; it is a necessity and a joy. 
 The very phrase, "the world to come," indicates a super 
 natural order of things actively existing, and about to be 
 fully displayed. The whole condition of things with which 
 Christianity brings us in contact is grandly supernatural. 
 If it is not supernatural, it is nothing it is a myth and a 
 delusion. Emasculate it of this quality, and it collapses 
 like any other mythological bubble. But it is something 
 a very decided something an irresistible and a mysterious 
 something. It is a fact a tremendous, a transforming fact 
 in the world s history, an impracticable fact to its oppo 
 nents ; in a word, it is a supernatural fact. It cannot be 
 emasculated, and it will not collapse ; and Ave are as pre 
 cisely conscious of its supernatural character as we are of 
 the facts of nature. The whole hue and cry on this sub 
 ject is a preposterous fallacy. For myself, I will not sur 
 render my consciousness, or iny common sense, to its 
 exorbitant exactions. 
 
 Let us now attempt to define some of " the powers of 
 the world to come." We commence by remarking that they 
 do not include those temporary miraculous endowments 
 which distinguished the primitive movement of Christianity 
 those charisms, or special gifts, which attested its intro 
 duction into the world. Though necessary, they were in- 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AXD IXAUGUBATIOX. 17 
 
 cidental and transient. The " powers " here claimed are in 
 herent in and inseparable from it, and, as the context assures 
 us. may be tasted, or experienced, as the disciplinary and 
 subsidiary process of our salvation. They pertain to the 
 constitution of the kingdom of God; they comprise the 
 whole class of moral agencies which enable a man to work 
 out his own destiny the entire volume of hallowed influ 
 ences of which the Scriptures give us information. We 
 enumerate amongst them, 
 
 1. The Truth-power. " The world to come " is the world 
 of truth. It is replete with truth. Truth is its funda 
 mental element, not only in the sense of the apprehended 
 reality of that world, but in the sense of the explicitly 
 formulated expression of the truth which pervades it. That 
 truth is not an abstraction of the human intellect : it is the 
 revealed word of God, of which Jesus Christ, in appealing 
 to his Father, said, "Thy word is truth"- the pure, the 
 absolute, the eternal truth, in respect to finite intelligences. 
 It is the law of their natures the universal standard of 
 moral excellence. Nor is the truth, thus expressed, only 
 an infinitely perfect moral code : it possesses, likewise, the 
 quality of an infinitely energetic moral force, perpetually 
 working out its salutary results with imperial authority and 
 efficiency. It is quick and powerful" in asserting its be 
 nignant prerogative, not merely when first realized, but ever 
 afterward, intrenching itself in the understanding, revealing 
 
 o O" O 
 
 itself in the consciousness, and unfolding itself in the char 
 acter, of all who are the subjects of it. This, then, is one 
 of " the powers of the world to come " one of those 
 sublime forces which, without intermission, perform their 
 functions in the realm of grace. 
 
 2. Another of these forces, and no less wonderful in its 
 effect, is the Life-power the power of imparting and sus 
 taining life in its original import. The kingdom of Christ 
 
18 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 is the empire of life, as well as of truth. He is its infinite 
 repository, and its unfathomable fountain. " In him was 
 life" from all eternity, and he is " the life" to all eternity. 
 The world of redemption w 7 as constituted that life, through 
 him, might he restored to "the dead in trespasses and in 
 sins," and that they might be reunited to the living universe. 
 From him it is ever flowing, and actively exerted by the 
 Holy Ghost upon all who are in fellowship with him. It 
 transforms and elevates, purifies and glorifies, them. It 
 works mightily, and pulsates w r ith vigorous strokes, in the 
 souls of believers. It sends its vitalizing current, without 
 cessation, throughout the world of redemption. It is the 
 "w r ell of water springing up into everlasting life ; " it is the 
 "pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding 
 out of the throne of God and of the Lamb," rolling its 
 stream of blessing through avenues of paradisiacal trees, 
 laden with fruits Avhose taste is joy, and. luxuriant with 
 foliage whose touch is health. This divine life circulates, 
 with spontaneous activity, in all the members of that great 
 family of which Christ is the Head, " changing them into 
 the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit 
 of the Lord." And, to complete its transcendent object, 
 its resistless impulse will reach the domain of natural death, 
 and startle and evoke from its shades the slumbering bodies 
 of the saints, and invest them with the attributes of a ro 
 bust and gorgeous immortality. "Then shall be brought to 
 pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in 
 victory ;" then will the scene of its desolation be reversed, 
 and the vision of life from the dead burst upon the new 
 heavens and the new earth. 
 
 See truth, love, and mercy in triumph descending, 
 And nature, all glowing, in Eden s first bloom ; 
 
 On the cold cheek of death smiles and roses are blending, 
 And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb. 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 19 
 
 What a marvelous force is life in the natural world ! How 
 productive, how multifarious, how irresistible ! How richly 
 it replenishes and embellishes the face of nature! How 
 irrepressible, for example, is the outburst of vegetable life 
 when the earth presents her responsive bosom to the genial 
 rays of the vernal sun ! Were repression possible, its recoil 
 would shatter the globe into atoms. How much grander is 
 the Life-force in the kingdom of God, by which redeemed 
 humanity, in obedience to its laws, after " groaning and 
 travailing in pain together, will be delivered from the bond 
 age of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of 
 God!" 
 
 3. One of "the powers of the world to come" is the 
 Light-force which it contains its capacity to enlarge and 
 illuminate the horizon of the soul. It is a world of light, 
 as well as of life, in correspondence with the order of God 
 in the physical creation: "For God, who commanded the 
 light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to 
 give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the 
 face of Jesus Christ." Christ is the central Light the Sun 
 of righteousness in the kingdom of grace; and those who 
 obey him. "walk not in darkness, but have the light of 
 life." The light of this kingdom is the light of divine 
 knowledge of a clear and vivid apprehension of the great 
 questions of " life and immortality brought to light by the 
 gospel," compared to which all other questions are but 
 "vanity and vexation of spirit." This knowledge is not 
 speculation, but demonstration added to demonstration in 
 an ever- ascending scale of indefinite progression. The 
 kingdom of Christ is the school of inspired knowledge 
 the august temple of infallible wisdom in all that apper 
 tains to the moral perfection and eternal destiny of man. 
 The entrance into it is a passage "from darkness to light;" 
 and to continue in it is to "walk in the light, as Christ is 
 
20 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 in the light." What an unspeakable happiness, to enjoy 
 correct ideas of divine truth to expand and expatiate with 
 its endless discoveries to gaze, with imblenching eye, upon 
 its undiminished effulgence! 
 
 But divine illumination is more than a happiness: it is a 
 power. Natural light not only reveals the forms of life by 
 which we are surrounded : it is necessary to their existence 
 and development. So the light of "the world to come" is 
 one of its essential forces : it quickens and stimulates the 
 growth of Christian manhood, and adorns it with its beau 
 teous proportions. Gentle as it is, it puts the moral ma 
 chinery into motion; it starts and stirs the faculties of the 
 soul into a holy and healthy activity. If ever the maxim 
 that "knowledge is power" was true, it is sublimely true 
 in the world of Christianity. 
 
 4. Again, to accomplish its purposes, it employs the 
 Love-power. Supreme love to God and universal love to 
 man is the cardinal impulse the constraining motive of 
 the gospel kingdom; it is the sovereign affection of the re 
 generated soul; it is the foundation of obedience, the sum 
 of morality, the compendium of the commandments. It is 
 the climax of all moral forces, the consummation of all pre 
 cepts, and the harmony of all relations. In loving God, we 
 adore his perfections, delight in his service, and promote his 
 glory; in loving man, we honor his nature, pity his mis 
 eries, and seek his happiness. Love is, therefore, equally 
 the law of attraction and the law of action in "the world 
 to come." 
 
 5. Besides, it brings into constant requisition, as one of 
 its effective agencies, the power of Hope. The influence 
 of hope upon human activity and endurance is an acknowl 
 edged force in the enterprises of life. It sheds an alluring 
 luster on its pathway, and flickers even in its expiring mo 
 ments. 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 21 
 
 Hope springs eternal in the human breast: 
 Man never is, but always to be, blest. 
 
 The kingdom of God is the theater and the asylum of 
 hope: it is never delusive there. In that sphere it is "as 
 an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which en- 
 tereth into that within the vail; whither the forerunner is for 
 us entered, even Jesus, made a high-priest forever, after the 
 order of Melchisedec." The world of redemption is thronged 
 with objects of desire, and enriched with the rewards of 
 obedience. Hope rises to the contemplation and anticipa 
 tion of them, and fires the soul with unquenchable ardor in 
 their pursuit. It fortifies with patience and animates with 
 exertion all its faculties, to obtain "the prize of the high 
 calling of God in Christ Jesus." 
 
 6. In this category of moral forces we assign a place to 
 the law of sanctified reciprocity. The effect of it on the 
 character and condition of the Christian is a proof of its 
 intensity and its value. It is "the bond of perfectness" 
 which unites into one vast brotherhood the whole Church 
 of the living God, identifying each with all, in the contest 
 for victory. When one approaches the gate of the king 
 dom, he is solitary and desolate ; he leaves the world of sin 
 and sinful men behind him; he needs new sympathies, new 
 affections, and new associations. When he enters, Chris 
 tianity brings him into instant contact and companionship 
 with "the general assembly and Church of the first-born, 
 which are written in heaven with the spirits of just men 
 made perfect," and with all on earth who are making "their 
 calling and election sure." He is surrounded with their 
 presence, supported by their fellowship, encouraged by their 
 example, and assisted by their prayers. What a wealth of 
 advantage is comprised in the communion of saints! What 
 a moral force resides in the collective strength of the house 
 hold of faith! 
 
22 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 7. The Christian system includes amongst its vital forces 
 a special arrangement to meet the emergencies of the Chris 
 tian life. It does not precipitate us into the arena of duty 
 and of danger, and abandon us to the perils of the strife: 
 it subsidizes in our behalf the aid of divine grace, and the 
 interposition of divine providence. The life of faith is 
 a struggle exhausting in its labor, and a battle fearful in 
 its conflict. God is not so much a spectator of our fortunes 
 as an omnipotent Friend in our distress working in us of 
 his good pleasure, and enabling us to work out our salva 
 tion. He hastens to our relief. His seasonable assistance 
 is one of the constitutional provisions of " the world to 
 come," in order to secure our ultimate success. We may, 
 therefore, "come boldly unto the throne of grace, that 
 we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of 
 need." 
 
 8. It subordinates to its benevolent purposes the angelic 
 power the ministry of the unfallen angels. Throughout 
 their celestial gradations they are rendered subservient to 
 the welfare of the saints, and perform official functions in 
 their behalf. If we cannot define their functions, we are 
 acquainted with their office and relations : "Are they not 
 all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who 
 shall be heirs of salvation?" Every member of the impe 
 rial hierarchy, from the highest archangel to the lowest 
 functionary in their resplendent ranks, contributes the 
 measure of his capacity to promote the salvation of the 
 children of God. Do they not fan our fevered brows with 
 ambrosial plumes? Do they not whisper cheering words 
 in the hour of dismay? Do they not rush into the breach, 
 to protect and to rescue, in the moment of danger? Are 
 not our departing souls "carried by angels into Abraham s 
 bosom?" 
 
 9. Finally, "the world to come" is pervaded by the ex- 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 23 
 
 ecutive power of the divine administration. It is a perfectly- 
 organized government, over which Jesus Christ himself pre 
 sides. It is plenipotentiary, self-subsistent, and self-suf 
 ficient. It will take care of itself and of its subjects, and 
 will surviA r e all obstacles. It will redeem all its pledges, 
 and will indemnify the losses sustained in its service by an 
 " eternal weight of glory." 
 
 These, my brethren, are some of "the powers of the 
 world to come, whereof we speak" some of those moral 
 forces which enter into and augment the plenitude of re 
 sources which pertain to the kingdom of grace, and which 
 it employs to facilitate, and to secure for us, "an abundant 
 entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Sav 
 iour Jesus Christ." 
 
 Our theme to-day is fertile in conclusions. 
 
 It defines the position of man in the scale of being. He 
 is the paragon of the creation, the heir of two worlds, and 
 the connecting link between them. How magnificent is 
 man, viewed in his relations to the visible and invisible uni 
 verse! How 7 he towers aloft, as he stands revealed in the 
 light of that manhood and monarchy with which God has 
 endowed him! 
 
 It shows the interest awakened in the heavenly places in 
 his behalf. He is the focus of a thousand merciful con 
 trivances; he is the object of an amazing system of agen 
 cies to rescue and to raise him to the platform of a majestic 
 maturity and a glorified immortality; he is the center of 
 a circle radiant with divine benedictions, and Deplete with 
 benevolent instrumentalities. 
 
 Our subject foreshadows the grade of moral culture which 
 awaits his earnest concurrence. What transformations, 
 what purity, what dignity, will crown his faithful exertions! 
 The chief of sinners may become the elect of God. The 
 soiled mantle of earth may be exchanged for the clean and 
 
24 VANDEEBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 white linen of the saints, and he may walk the streets of 
 the New Jerusalem as a king and a priest unto God for 
 ever. 
 
 It behooves him to place himself in contact with the 
 divine apparatus prepared for his benefit. He must invoke 
 its power, and adjust himself to its salutary influence. He 
 must arouse himself to the greatness of his destiny, and 
 assert his manhood in the achievement of it. 
 
 Our subject defines the responsibilities of those who are 
 engaged in the education of youth. The cultivation of the 
 intellectual nature must recognize and respond to the cul 
 tivation of the moral nature. We have seen the divine 
 arrangements for the one : we must adopt corresponding 
 methods for the other. The robustness and completeness 
 of the human character consist in their harmonious combi 
 nation. There must be no antagonism between them; 
 otherwise, the result will be a distortion, and not a model. 
 
 Our subject indicates the legitimate career of this great 
 institution. This is neither the time nor the place to eulo 
 gize its munificent benefactor : that commendation will be 
 deferred until to-morrow. The VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY 
 arises under the auspices of Christianity amidst the pray 
 ers and blessings of the Church. It must vindicate its 
 vocation by fidelity to its claims; it must link its fortunes 
 to the plastic "powers of the world to come." The Church 
 must settle, in the seats of learning, the true correlation 
 between science and religion, and rescue Christianity from 
 the charge -of incompatibility with the higher culture of 
 humanity. A great vocation this a grand problem to be 
 worked out! Happily, we enjoy to-day the evidences of 
 this design. Christian services anticipate the scholastic 
 inauguration; Christian ideas and Christian faith assert 
 their prerogatives in advance; and side by side with halls 
 of literature and science stands this beautiful Christian 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AXD IXAUGUBATION. 25 
 
 temple, to offer a sanctuary and an asylum to Christian 
 truth. 
 
 Our theme evinces the inexhaustible grandeur of Chris 
 tian thought. Rapid as is the advancement of natural sci 
 ence, and brilliant s are the discoveries of human research, 
 the progress and development of Christianity transcend 
 them all; for, while the one unfolds the wonders of the 
 natural world, the other discloses the glories of "the world 
 to come," and elicits the rapturous exclamation, "0 the 
 depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of 
 God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways 
 past finding out!" 
 
 God grant that the benefits of a solid education in science 
 and literature, imparted in this institution, may be conse 
 crated by the experience of a sound conversion, and by a 
 growth in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ! "Now unto him that is able to keep us from falling, 
 and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory 
 with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be 
 glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. 
 Amen." 
 
 After the Sermon was sung the following Dedication Hymn 
 (tune, Duke Street) : 
 
 Father Almighty! hoar our cry! 
 Sovereign of all on earth, on high: 
 Lord God of power and might, thou art 
 The strength and hope of every heart! 
 
 Eternal Wisdom! Light have we 
 Only as it beams forth from thee: 
 Let the refulgent rays divine 
 On our poor darkling spirits shine! 
 
 Fountain of Love! Without thy grace 
 Earth is a dreary, cheerless place: 
 Thy all-comprising peace impart, 
 Spirit Divine, to every heart! 
 
26 VAXDEKBILT UNIVEESITY. \i875. 
 
 Great Three in One! Now s from above 
 Give power, give wisdom, and give love, 
 As thus we consecrate to Thee 
 With joy our University! 
 
 Lord, let thy work to us appear, 
 Thy glory to our children here; 
 Our work shall then established be 
 To us and our posterity. 
 
 Patrons and benefactors bless 
 To teachers, students, give success: 
 We pray in faith, assured thou wilt 
 Shine forth upon our Vanderbilt! 
 
 After Prayer by Bishop PAINE, the Doxology was sung, in 
 Old Hundred : 
 
 Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; 
 
 Praise him, all creatures here below; 
 
 Praise him above, ye heavenly host; 
 
 Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 
 
 The Benediction was pronounced by Bishop DOGGETT. 
 
 IN the afternoon, at three o clock, the congregation reas 
 sembled, and after a voluntary by the Choir, Hymn 771 (tune, 
 Howard) was sung : 
 
 How T shall the young secure their hearts, 
 
 And guard their lives from sin? 
 Thy word the choicest rule imparts 
 
 To keep the conscience clean. 
 
 When once it enters to the mind, 
 
 It spreads such light abroad, 
 The meanest souls instruction find, 
 
 And raise their thoughts to God. 
 
 Tis like the sun, a heavenly light, 
 
 That guides us all the day; 
 And through the dangers of the night, 
 
 A lamp to lead our way. 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 
 
 Thy word is everlasting truth; 
 
 How pure is every page! 
 That holy book shall guide our youth, 
 
 And well support our age. 
 
 Prayer was offered by the Kev. CHARLES F. DEEMS, D.D., 
 Pastor of the Church of the Strangers, !N"ew York. 
 
 The Lesson was read by Bishop WIGHTMAN. 
 
 Hymn 794 being a part of a Hymn written by Charles 
 Wesley for the Kingswood School, founded by John Wesley 
 in 1748 was sung in Creation, as follows: 
 
 Come, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
 To whom we for our children cry; 
 
 The good desired and wanted most, 
 Out of thy richest grace supply! 
 
 The sacred discipline be given 
 
 To train and bring them up for heaven. 
 
 Unite the pair so long disjoined, 
 
 Knowledge and vital piety: 
 Learning and holiness combined, 
 
 And truth and love, let all men see, 
 In those whom up to thee we give, 
 Thine, wholly thine, to die and live! 
 
 Then came the Sermon by Bishop WIGHTMAN, as follows: 
 
 CHRIST THE CENTER AND BOND OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 " By Him all things consist." Col. i. 17. 
 
 The context fixes, beyond doubt, the meaning of the 
 word "Him" in the text: it is, and can be, none other than 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 "Consist" is a word transferred from the Latin to our 
 tongue, from the Greek equivalent of which we derive the 
 word system; the idea in both being that of a "standing to 
 gether" a mutual dependence, one part upon another, each 
 for all the whole scheme pervaded by a controlling idea 
 giving law to the arrangement. The conception of the text 
 seerns to be that Christ is the great center of unity and bond 
 
28 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 of connection between the grand departments of universal 
 being; or, as Bengel long since expressed it, "all things in 
 him have come together into one system." As Mediator, 
 God manifested in the flesh, he is the nexus between the 
 mighty objective whole and the unseen, infinite, eternal 
 Father. 
 
 This system embraces Nature the whole region of neces 
 sitated things, controlled by cause and effect the realm of 
 the conditioned. 
 
 It embraces, also, Humanity, as in part supernatural, be 
 cause a spiritual, immaterial essence the soul is united 
 to a material organism the body. This is the sphere of 
 the rational, ethical, immortal. 
 
 It comprehends, also, the realm of purely spiritual intel 
 ligences, of which revelation gives us distinct intimations 
 in angel and archangel, principalities, dominions, and powers. 
 
 This is the scope of the all things in the text. 
 
 This universal whole, in the verse preceding the text, is 
 affirmed, distinctly and peremptorily, to have been created 
 by the Son, w T ho is the image, the visible manifestation, of 
 Deity. Since he is Creator, so this universal whole has 
 in him subsistence, consistence. Hence his own sublime 
 affirmation, "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the 
 last." 
 
 Look at Christ in the sphere of nature. 
 
 As the Son of God, he created this planet that it might 
 be part of his vast scheme of order, might be the fit plat 
 form for the training of man, of mind, for a glorious future 
 immortal destiny. For man s use, not he for its, were 
 formed its soils and ores, its coal-fields and forests; for him 
 are its atmosphere, its light, its waters; for him its laws 
 were established, its wheels roll. All its arrangements are 
 but means, never ends. It is, and ever must be, unintelli 
 gent : showing forth the glory of God, but never compre- 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 29 
 
 bending its own purpose ; eternally thing, never person ; to 
 be used bV intelligent mind, itself forever unconscious. 
 
 Into this world came the Son of God, taking upon him 
 the condition of man "born of a woman, born under the 
 law, that he might redeem" the fallen race. His object was, 
 by coming down into humanity, to lift humanity to God. 
 It has been nobly said that "it is the especial glory of our 
 race that it should have furnished that point of contact at 
 which God has united himself not to man only, but also 
 through man to his own universe, to the universe of matter 
 and of mind." 
 
 He is in the sphere of cause and effect in nature; but is 
 it wonderful that at his birth a great company of angels 
 sang, " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, 
 good-will toward men?" Is it wonderful that at pleasure he 
 controls the wheel-work of nature, creating food for thou 
 sands, turning water into wine, walking the foam-crested 
 waves of the sea, healing diseases by a touch, saying to 
 stormy winds, "Be still," and by the mandates of his will 
 plucking the prey from the grasp of death ? Well might 
 nature, so to speak, have come and fallen at his feet, and 
 confessed him its absolute Lord and Master ! 
 
 Behold him in the sphere of the human supernatural! 
 The true man, according to St. Paul, is the inner man. The 
 spirit belongs not to the region of nature s cause and effect; 
 it is not subject to nature s fixed necessitations: it moves 
 in the sphere of spontaneity, and is autonomic and free 
 the will capable of originating action above necessity, by 
 reason of the power of self-determination vested in it. 
 
 Its law is not the law of cause and effect in nature, but 
 the "moral law" that moral law within which, with the 
 starry heavens above, are the two things which Kant, the 
 greatest of German philosophers, said overwhelmed him 
 with astonishment and awe. This spiritual essence, as free 
 
30 VANDEKBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 and ethical, is capable of knowing the right and doing it; 
 yet it feels a strange proclivity to the wrong. Fallen from 
 original rectitude, depraved man acknowledges, neverthe 
 less, the imperatives of duty. Conscience is his dread 
 prerogative. He may be that terribly magnificent thing, 
 a sinner; hence the strange discords within him, partly 
 angel, partly demon, with capacities wonderfully lofty, with 
 tastes as wonderfully sordid a lost Pleiad, broken loose 
 from the heavenly attractions. Under sin, manifestly; 
 listen to the groan which now and then breaks from his 
 agonized spirit: "0 wretched man that I am! who shall 
 deliver me?" 
 
 Into this region Christ comes as a Deliverer. His vicari 
 ous, sacrificial death has solved the problem how God can 
 be just and justify the ungodly. Even as he unites in his 
 own person the manhood and the Godhead, he is mighty to 
 suffer, and "mighty to save." "When we were enemies, 
 we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son." In 
 Christ s redemptive-work behold the great, stupendous con 
 sideration of reconciliation! The love of the Father to the 
 Son, who thus bore the malediction due to the sinner, is an 
 ineffable, unfathomable love ; it goes into all the provisions 
 of redemption, into all the plan of salvation. Redemption 
 once accomplished, there needs, indeed there can be, no 
 other altar, no other blood, no other priest none, none to 
 come between the sinner and his Saviour. The way is open 
 to the holiest by the blood of Christ. 
 
 Now, beyond cavil, this is supernatural work for the ele 
 ment in humanity which is above nature s fixed necessita- 
 tions. It is God that justifieth, not man working out 
 some such result by self-development. And so is the gra 
 cious work wrought in man. To them who receive Christ, 
 who believe on his name, "he gives power to become the 
 sons of God." This power renews the soul; this power 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 31 
 
 brings the affections into harmonic play with the dictates of 
 conscience; the result of its operation is being "born of 
 God." And thus adoption comes with justification. But 
 all this is supernatural work. Christ is the binding, unify 
 ing principle. Without him, there is no redemption, no 
 pardon, no sanctification, no final glorification. Abiding in 
 him by constant faith, we have real and constant fellowship 
 with the Father. The central point of the supreme desire 
 and aim of an immortal spirit is reached in this union with 
 God, and all perturbations cease. 
 
 But man needs reconciliation with himself. In Christ he 
 finds this. 
 
 His reason and his faith are reconciled in Christ. As 
 God-man, Christ is the union of the absolute with the rela 
 tive. He is the living realization of the loftiest of the 
 reason s ideals; he is the supreme manifestation of love to 
 the sentiment of the heart. He that leaves the principles 
 of the doctrine of Christ, and goes on to perfection, reaches 
 that shining summit at which, to adopt the noble expression 
 of Dr. Arnold, "faith is reason leaning on the bosom of 
 God." 
 
 The sense of obligation and the freedom of love are recon 
 ciled. There is law; but the soul, pardoned, renewed, and 
 bathed in the light and warmth of the love of Christ, cries, 
 "0 how love I thy law: it is my meditation all the day!" 
 Not that Christ has obeyed for him, and made virtue a 
 thing of proxy: the obedience is real, but loving, cordial, 
 constant, because Christ s gospel has become a "law 7 of lib 
 erty." Let the sense of responsibility be deep and urgent, 
 but take with it the word of Christ, applicable to all occa 
 sions of duty, all emergencies, all suffering: "My grace is 
 sufficient for thee ; for my strength is made perfect in weak 
 ness." Over and beyond all natural force of will all the 
 strength which comes from a bracing self-discipline w r e find 
 
32 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 in Christ the "enabling principle" of obedience, and then 
 we "can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth 
 
 us." 
 
 Prayer and effort are harmonized. In the last analysis 
 prayer is the expression of absolute dependence on God for 
 every thing; it is the abandonment of all self-assertion, 
 all self-trust. But if you wish to find the fountain-head of 
 all the noblest achievements for the good of humanity of 
 the unnumbered activities by which Christendom has been 
 beautified and blest of the time, labor, self-sacrifice, that 
 have been freely given for the maintenance and propagation 
 of truth, go to the closet where the pleading, beseeching 
 prayer, made potent with God through the advocacy of the 
 crucified, ascended, and glorified Son, asks for help in the 
 time of need. Ay, the banners which wave in triumph 
 over all battle-fields are banners which have been laid in 
 humble devotement on the altar of an incarnate God. 
 
 Thus, too, the loftiness of hope and the lowliness of hu 
 mility coexist in the heart w r hich has enthroned Christ, the 
 man of sorrows, the Lord of glory. 
 
 How beautifully might the great truth of the text be 
 shown by referring you to the harmony and true relation, 
 the one to the other, of a life in the flesh, and a life by the 
 faith of the Son of God ! 
 
 How T forcibly might it be shown that all competent, 
 worthy, and noble conceptions of education must find, as 
 the complement of what is secular and merely intellectual, 
 the distinct recognition of Christ s influence his teachings, 
 his grace as the "bright, consummate flower," the crown 
 and glory of the whole educational process! 
 
 But I have not time to carry your thoughts much farther 
 along the line of illustration so fruitful, so boundless, so 
 joy-inspiring suggested by the thesis of the text. I must 
 not attempt to show how Christ, as the great connecting 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AXD INAUGURATION. 33 
 
 force, binds man to man. Certainly, I have no capacity of 
 thought or expression, no wing of inspiration, to lift you 
 to the starry altitudes of my theme, in any attempt to 
 show you how this Christ of yours will bind the most ex 
 alted intelligences of the wide and populous universe to 
 God to man, God s human, redeemed, immortal offspring. 
 It is enough to repeat the glowing words of St. Paul: 
 " That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he 
 might gather together in one all things in Christ, both 
 which are in heaven and which are on earth." u To the 
 intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heav 
 enly places might be known by the Church the manifold 
 wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which 
 he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Cherubim and 
 seraphim stand unsandaled and uncovered in the presence 
 of the glorious manifestations of the interior nature arid 
 essence of Deity, of the boundless wisdom a.nd the love 
 unfathomable displayed in the whole redemptive scheme : 
 an immeasurable store of truth and life, illustrated in all 
 the past, never to be exhausted in all the future. 
 
 To the young men who are present, ready to matriculate 
 in this new seat of learning, who stand as the representa 
 tives of the great company of young men who, in the suc 
 cession of generations, shall fill these ample halls, and be 
 trained by the most eminent masters and instructors of the 
 times in all learning, philosophy, and science, and go out 
 to fill positions in society full of responsibility as well as 
 honor to you, allow me, before I sit down, a parting word. 
 
 It is this word of warning: Never to substitute culture 
 for personal godliness. This is an error may I venture 
 to say the error, the fatal error to which you will be most 
 exposed on the intellectual side. No mere knowledge, 
 even theological knowledge, can safely be put in the place 
 of a personal regeneration brought into the spirit by the 
 
34 VAXDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 full, entire, unquestioning, irrevocable commitment of the 
 soul to Jesus Christ as a Saviour. Knowledge will point 
 out the path to this Saviour; a penitent faith, which has 
 abandoned sin and broken with the world, walks in this 
 path, and at the feet of the Son of God makes the actual, 
 all -important surrender. This process never has been, 
 never can be, superseded by mere education, since human 
 nnture has in itself no recuperative, self-reconstructive en 
 ergies to be drawn out by culture. Our religion is the re 
 ligion of salvation; and God s plan, which has settled the 
 matter for all time, connects repentance toward God and 
 faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ with salvation, as nec 
 essary conditions. 
 
 I know how strong are sometimes the excitements of the 
 imagination ; how liable we are to substitute these excite 
 ments in the place of a genuine faith in the Son of God. 
 A refined taste may be quick to discern the sentiment of 
 the beautiful in nature and art, in the breezy morn and the 
 dewy eve, in mountain, and sky-glassing lake, and foaming 
 water-fall the sentiment of the sublime in the azure sky 
 and rolling thunder, in the storm-swept sea, and under the 
 midnight stars. 1 It may linger along the haunts and drink 
 at the fountain of the Muses may be thrilled with the 
 melting harmonies which swell through some grand old 
 temple, or stand awed in the presence of smoking incense, 
 white or scarlet robed processions, and priestly genuflec 
 tions. Meanwhile, the conscience may never have weighed 
 the imperatives which link the soul inextricably to a future 
 retribution, the heart never have felt the bitterness of sin, 
 the will never have accepted God s method of salvation, 
 the spirit s free activities never have been turned to Christ 
 as the only way to God. 
 
 But, with this word of warning, let me utter, also, the 
 parting word of high, confident assurance, that Christ will 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 35 
 
 bind into blessed agreement, bring into joyous accord, blend 
 in beauteous symmetry, all that is truly valuable in the 
 culture of intellect, in the play of sentiment and taste, all 
 that is noble in secular learning, in philosophy and science, 
 with all that is divine in a supernatural salvation, all that 
 is deepest and loftiest in the knowledge and love of God. 
 "By Him all things consist." "Put ye on the Lord Jesus, 
 and make no provision for the flesh." Make a sincere sur 
 render, an irrevocable commitment, to Him. Then, with an 
 abiding consciousness that these are your own and real 
 states of the mind, with " the peace of God, which passeth 
 all understanding," keeping heart and mind, susceptibility 
 and intellect, you will have the gates of the w r ill guarded 
 by sleepless sentinels. Infidel sophistry, false philosophy, 
 the sneer and banter of a proud and daring scientism, the 
 fury of an audacious criticism, denying the possibility of 
 the supernatural, materializing the soul, grinding it to 
 powder under the ponderous wheels of natural law, along 
 with the body in death, and proclaiming annihilation as the 
 goal of all aspiration forces such as these, aided by the 
 witchery of sensual pleasure, the waving plume, the painted 
 cheek, the blazing diamond, the more lustrous eye of 
 beauty, leading youth into the gas-lit halls of revelry all 
 these, and whatever else a state of trial for the unseen and 
 eternal may allow or present, as antagonistic, and therefore 
 as tests, to the faith of the Christian, you will be able to 
 withstand, Christ being " in you the hope of glory." Or, 
 if adversity befall, if health fail, if darkness come down, 
 and great winds blow, and the vessel be tossed on a sea of 
 tempests, over the troubled waves your faith shall see 
 Him who of old, amid storm and darkness, said, " It is I, 
 be not afraid!" 
 
 And, in fine, for all the possibilities, hazards, and hopes 
 of the dread, sublime, "all-hail hereafter," Christ mani- 
 
36 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 fested in the flesh, put to death under Pontius Pilate, risen 
 from a sealed and eiwrded crave, ascended, invested with 
 
 c_j O 7 7 
 
 the " power of an endless life," behold the foundation of 
 a hope that grasps the Infinite; see the tie between earth 
 and heaven, between man and the eternal God. 
 
 May this great doctrine of Christ form the foundation- 
 principle of every sermon and lecture which shall hereafter 
 be delivered within these grand, echoing, and now conse 
 crated, walls ! To Him, the substance and supreme end of 
 all preaching, of all culture, in all ages of time, to Him, 
 "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever," be 
 glory and dominion everlasting! "For thou only art the 
 Lord ; thou only, Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most 
 high in the glory of God the Father." 
 
 The Dedication Ode (tune, Albion, or America) was sung, 
 as follows: 
 
 Father Omnipotent, 
 Our offering we present, 
 
 And trust thou wilt 
 Deign to accept what we, 
 "With a glad heart and free. 
 Gratefully offer thee 
 Our Vanderbilt! 
 
 Incarnate Word Divine, 
 We offer thee this shrine, 
 
 And trust thou wilt, 
 Great Sun of righteousness, 
 Beam forth with special grace, 
 And consecrate and bless 
 
 Our Vanderbilt! 
 
 Creator Spirit, come, 
 
 And consecrate this dome! 
 
 We trust thou wilt! 
 Descend from heaven above, 
 Like the symbolic dove, 
 And hover o er, in love, 
 
 Our Vanderbilt ! 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 37 
 
 All-glorious One in Three, 
 This shrine we offer thee, 
 
 And know thou wilt, 
 For thy own mercy s sake, 
 In condescension take 
 The offering which we make 
 
 Our Vanderbilt! 
 
 Prayer was offered by Dr. J. B. McFERRiN, followed by the 
 
 Doxology : 
 
 To the great One and Three 
 Eternal praises be 
 
 Hence evermore ! 
 His sovereign majesty 
 May we in glory see, 
 And to eternity 
 
 Love and adore. 
 
 Bishop WIGHTMAN closed the service by pronouncing the 
 Benediction. 
 
 ON Monday morning, October 4, at ten o clock, under 
 the escort of the Chief Marshal of the Day, His Excellency 
 Governor PORTER, with the Bishops, Board of Trust, and 
 Faculties, followed by the students, went in procession from 
 the Chancellor s office to the Chapel. 
 
 After Music by the Band, a voluntary by the Choir, and 
 Prayer by Bishop McTYEiRE, a splendid full-length portrait 
 of Commodore VANDERBILT was unveiled, amid great ap 
 plause. 
 
 The Governor was introduced by Bishop McTYEiRE, and 
 His Excellency made a brief and pertinent Address, as fol 
 lows : 
 
 Gentlemen of the Faculty, and Trustees of Vanderbilt University: 
 
 No event of its kind has awakened more of popular 
 sympathy in the South, and especially in Tennessee, than 
 the opening of this University. At the laying of the corner- 
 
38 VAXDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 stone of this magnificent building, my predecessor was here, 
 and gave voice to the sentiments of his constituents; and I 
 am here to-day to repeat the expression of satisfaction, 
 common to the people of Tennessee, at the location of a 
 great University at the capital of their State, and to ex 
 tend to you, dignitaries of the Church trustees, professors, 
 and students a cordial welcome to Tennessee; and I wish 
 I could add a welcome to him w r ho has given his name to 
 the University, and whose munificence has given it life. 
 His name must forever stand preeminent for its claim to a 
 grateful recollection. His benevolence is superior to sections 
 and to parties, and his liberality illustrates that character 
 of men, common to our country, who raise trade and com 
 merce above a mere selfish pursuit of individual gain. 
 
 The State offers to you no exclusive privileges, but it 
 generously relieves your property from the ordinary bur 
 dens, and will afford to it the full protection of its laws. 
 The Constitution of the State provides that "it shall be 
 the duty of the General Assembly, in all future periods of 
 this Government, to cherish literature and science." This 
 provision in the fundamental law of the land is the warrant 
 of the people of Tennessee that this institution shall have 
 their protection and support. 
 
 Gentlemen, the mission of this University is above mere 
 commonplace. It must be more than a place where aca 
 demical instruction is imparted; it must be more than a 
 school for the training of candidates for " the three learned 
 professions." Steam and electricity are driving us forward 
 at a tremendous pace, and, to meet the demands of the 
 hour, you who are charged with the administration of this 
 great trust, must, as I believe you will, make it a universal 
 school, in which are taught all branches of learning: a 
 studium generate et Universitas studii generalis, where archi- 
 techts, chemists, engineers, farmers, and miners, can be ed 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 39 
 
 ucated, and where original inquiries and investigations are 
 stimulated. The duty assigned to me is simply to welcome 
 you, Churchmen and school-men. I repeat my greeting, 
 and bid you Godspeed. 
 
 After Music by the Band, the Rev. CHARLES F. DEEMS, 
 D.D., delivered the following Address: 
 
 RELATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY TO RELIGION. 
 
 Your Excellency, Mr. President of the Board of Trust, Mr. Chancellor, 
 Gentlemen of the Faculties, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 God, the Father of lights and of spirits, knows how pro 
 foundly I feel the responsibility of making the Opening 
 Address of the VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY an institution dear 
 to me for many reasons, an institution which I hope will 
 endure forever. Trusting in the God of nature and of 
 gnice, and resting on your friendly interpretation of all I 
 shall say, I go forward. 
 
 Looking up, as in prayer, he said: 
 
 " Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my 
 heart be acceptable in thy sight, Lord, my strength and 
 my Redeemer." 
 
 It has been thought fit that a minister of religion should 
 make the first utterances at the opening of a school which 
 professes to intend to teach what is known, and to stimulate 
 research, in every department of intellectual investigation. 
 If, for a moment, any man could suppose that it would be 
 proper to assign the initial speech to a teacher of religion as 
 indicating that religion should take haughty and undue prece 
 dence of science, the thought would be most infelicitous. 
 The present speaker would not assume any such position. 
 It would misrepresent his convictions of the truth and his 
 sense of the proprieties of the occasion. 
 
40 VAXDEKBILT UNIVERSITY. [137.5. 
 
 This recent cry of the ""Conflict of Religion and Science" 
 is fallacious, and mischievous to the interests of both science 
 and religion ; and would be most mournful if we did not 
 believe that, in the very nature of things, it must be ephem 
 eral. Its genesis is to be traced to the weak foolishness of 
 some professors of religion, and to the weak wickedness of 
 some professors of science. No man of powerful and healthy 
 mind, who is devout, ever has the slightest apprehension 
 that any advancement of science can shake the foundations 
 of that faith which is necessary to salvation. No man of 
 powerful and healthy mind, engaged in observing, record 
 ing, and classifying facts, and in searching among them for 
 those identities and differences which point to principles and 
 indicate laws, ever feels that he suffers any embarrassment 
 or limitations in his studies by the most reverent love he 
 can have for God as his Father, or the most tender sympathy 
 he can have for man as his brother, or that hatred for sin 
 which produces penitence, or that constant leaning of his 
 heart on God which produces spiritual-mindedness, or that 
 hope of a state of immortal holiness which has been the 
 ideal of humanity in all ages. 
 
 All this dust about "the conflict" has been flung up by 
 men of insufficient faith, who doubted the basis of their 
 faith; or by men of insufficient science, who have mistaken 
 theology or the Church for religion; or by unreasonable and 
 wicked men, who have sought to pervert the teachings of 
 science so as to silence the voice of conscience in themselves, 
 or put God out of their thoughts, so that a sense of his 
 eternal recognition of the eternal difference between right 
 and wrong might not overawe their spirits in the indulgence 
 of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of 
 life. It may be profitable to discriminate these ; and if badges 
 and flags have become mixed in this, fray, it may be well to 
 readjust our ensigns, so that foes shall strike at only foes. 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 41 
 
 It is, first of all, necessary to settle distinctly what sci 
 ence is, as well as what it is not; and, also, what religion 
 is, as well as what it is not. 
 
 We can all afford to agree upon the definition rendered 
 by the only man who has been found in twenty-two centu 
 ries to add any thing important to the imperial science of 
 logic. Sir William Hamilton defines science as "a comple 
 ment of cognitions, having in point of form the character 
 of logical perfection, and in point of matter the character 
 of real truth." Under the focal heat of a definition like 
 this, much that claims to be science will be consumed. It 
 is the fashion to intimate, if not to assert, that it is much 
 more easy to become scientific than to become religious ; 
 that in one case a man is dealing with the real, in the other 
 with the ideal; in the one case with the comprehensible, in 
 the other with the incomprehensible; in the one case with 
 that which is certain and exact, and in the other case with 
 that which at best is only probable and indefinite. 
 
 There can be no doubt, among thoughtful men, of the 
 great value of both science and religion. A thinker who 
 is worth listening to is always misunderstood if it be sup 
 posed that he means to disparage either. An attempt to 
 determine the limits of religion is no disparagement thereof, 
 because all the most religious men who are accustomed to 
 think are engaged in striving to settle those limits, in order 
 that they may have advantage of the whole territory of re 
 ligion on the one hand, and on the other may not take that 
 as belonging to religion which belongs to something else. 
 
 Now, if Sir William Hamilton s definition is to be taken, 
 we shall perceive that he represents science in its quality, 
 in its quantity, and in its form. Cognition of something is 
 necessary for science. Then, (1) the knowledge of things 
 known must be true; (2) that knowledge must be full, and 
 (3) it must be accurate; it must be in such form as to be 
 
42 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1875. 
 
 most readily and successfully used by the logical under 
 standing for purposes of thought. 
 
 This sets aside very much that has been called science, 
 and, as it seems, perhaps nearly all that which has been the 
 material used by those who have raised the most smoke 
 over this "conflict" question. 
 
 Guesses at truth" are valuable only as the pecking at 
 a plastered wall, to find where a wooden beam runs, is use 
 ful; but a guess is not knowledge. A working hypothesis 
 would not be to be despised, although the student of science 
 might feel quite sure in advance that when he had learned 
 the truth in this department he would throw the hypothesis 
 away. A working hypothesis, like a scaffold, is useful; 
 but a scaffold is not a WM.11. Art is not science. Art deals 
 with the appearances, science with the realities, of things. 
 Art deals with the external, science with the internal, of a 
 thing ; art with the phenomenon, science with the noumenon. 
 It must be the "real truth" which we know, and know 
 truly. 
 
 Weak men on both sides have done much harm the weak 
 religionists by assuming, and the weak scientists by claim 
 ing, for guesses and hypotheses the high character and full 
 value of real truth. The guesses of both have collided in 
 the air, and a real battle seemed impending; but it was 
 only "guesses." which exploded bubbles, not bombs; and 
 it is never to be forgotten that a professor of religion has 
 just as much right to guess as a professor of science, and 
 the latter no more right than the former, although he may 
 have more skill. 
 
 No man can abandon a real truth without degradation to 
 his intellectual and moral nature; but Galileo, Kepler, and 
 Newton, in their studies from time to time, employed and 
 discarded theory after theory, until they reached that which 
 was capable of demonstration. It was only that which took 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 43 
 
 its place as science. In the case of Kepler, it is known 
 what great labor he spent in attempting to represent the 
 orbit of Mars by combinations of uniform circular motion. 
 His working hypothesis was the old doctrine of epicyclic 
 curves. But his great labor was not fruitless, as has been 
 carelessly asserted. The theory was false, and therefore 
 not a part of real science; but, working on it, he discovered 
 that the orbit of Mars is an ellipse, and this led him to the 
 first of his three great laws of planetary motion, and ena 
 bled him almost immediately to discover the second. Here 
 was a great intellect employing as a working hypothesis a 
 theory which has always been false, and now is demonstra- 
 bly false. It was not science. 
 
 Now if, while scientific men are employing working hy 
 potheses merely as such, men representing religion fly at 
 them as if they were holding those hypotheses as science, 
 or if men representing science do set forth these hypotheses 
 as if they were real knowledge of truth, and proceed to 
 defend them as such, then much harm is done in all direc 
 tions. 
 
 In the first instance, the religious mnn shows an impa 
 tience which is irreligious. "He that believeth doth not 
 make haste." It is unfair to criticise any man while he is 
 doing. Let him do what he will do; then criticise the deed. 
 The artist has laid one pigment on his palette, and he is 
 criticised before it is known what others he intends to mix 
 with it, to procure what shade, to produce what effect. Wait 
 until all the paint is on the canvas, and the artist has 
 washed his brushes and drawn the curtain from his picture; 
 then criticise the picture. 
 
 This impatient and weak criticism on the part of relig 
 ious men is injurious to scientific progress, as well as to the 
 progress of religion. For the latter, it makes the reputation 
 of unfairness; for the former, it does one of two bad things : 
 
44 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 it obstructs free discussion among students of science, or 
 pushes them into a foolish defiance of religion. Men must 
 co- work with those of their own sphere of intellectual la 
 bors. They must publish guesses, conjectures, hypotheses, 
 theories. Whatever comes into any mind must be examined 
 by many minds. It may be true, it may be false; there 
 must be no prejudgment. Now if, because our scientific 
 men are discussing a new view, our religious men fly among 
 them and disturb them by crying "heresy," "infidelity," 
 "atheism," those students must take time to repel the 
 charges, and thus their work be hurt. If let alone, they 
 may soon abandon their false theory. Certainly, if a propo 
 sition in science be false, the students of science are the 
 men likeliest to detect the falsehood, however unlikely they 
 may be to discover the truth that is in religion. Nothing 
 more quickly destroys an error than to attempt to establish 
 it scientifically. 
 
 The premature cries of the religious against the scientific 
 have also the effect of keeping a scientific error longer alive. 
 Through sheer obstinacy, the assailed will often hold a bad 
 position, which, if not attacked, had been long ago abandoned. 
 And we must have noticed that nature seems quite as able 
 to make scientific men obstinate as grace to do this same 
 work for the saints. 
 
 No man should be charged with being an atheist who 
 does not, in distinct terms, announce himself to be such ; 
 and in that case the world will believe him to be too pitiful 
 a person to be worth assailing with hard words. But as 
 you may drive a man away from you by representing him 
 as your enemy, so a scientific man may be driven from the 
 Christian faith, if convinced that the Christian faith stands 
 in the way of free investigation and free discussion; or, 
 he may hold on to the faith because he has brains enough 
 to see that one may be most highly scientific and most 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 45 
 
 humbly devout at the same time; but by persecution he 
 may be compelled to withdraw from open communion with 
 "those who profess and call themselves Christians." Then 
 both parties lose what neither can well afford to lose the 
 respect and help which each could give the other. When 
 the son of a religious teacher turns to the works of a man 
 whom he has heard that father denounce, and finds in any 
 one page of those books more high religious thought than 
 in a hundred of his father s commonplace discourses, a sad 
 state of feeling is produced, and many mistakes are likely 
 to follow. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton s definition of science has for genus 
 " a complement of cognitions/ and for differentia " logical 
 perfection of form/ and "real truth of matter." The defi 
 nition is a demand for a certain fullness. We can only con 
 jecture, in the case of any particular science, how much 
 knowledge such a man as Sir William Hamilton would re 
 gard as a "complement." But students of science do well 
 to remind themselves that it is impossible to exceed, and 
 very difficult to succeed, and the easiest thing imaginable 
 to fall short. In other words, we have never been able to 
 collect more material of knowledge than the plan of any 
 temple of science could worJc in, and really did not demand 
 for the completion of the structure, and that very few tem 
 ples of science have been finished, even in the outline, 
 while all the plain of thought is covered with ruins of 
 buildings begun by thinkers, but unfinished for want of 
 more knowledge. Even where there has been gathered a 
 sufficient amount of knowledge to be wrought by the log 
 ical understanding into the form of a science, so that such 
 a mind as Hamilton s would admit it as a science i. e., a 
 sufficient complement of cognitions of truths put in logical 
 form another age of labor, in other departments, would so 
 shrink this science that, in order to hold its rank, it would 
 
46 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 have to wor/c in the matter of more knowledge, and, to 
 preserve its symmetry, be compelled to readjust its archi 
 tectural outlines. In other words, what is science to one 
 age may not be science to its successor, because that suc 
 cessor may perceive that, although its matter had the char 
 acter of real truth, and its form the character of logical 
 perfection, as far as it went, nevertheless, there were not 
 enough cognitions; not enough, just because in the later 
 age it was possible to obtain additional cognitions, which 
 could not have been obtained earlier. 
 
 And, in point of fact, has not this been the history of 
 each of the acknowledged sciences ? And can any signifi 
 cance be assigned to Sir William Hamilton s definition 
 without taking the word "complement" to mean all the cog 
 nitions possible at the time? Now, unless at one time men 
 have more cognitions of any subject than at another time, 
 one of two things must be true: either (1) no new phe 
 nomena will appear in that department, or (2) no abler 
 observer will arise. But the history of the human mind in 
 the past renders both suppositions highly improbable. If 
 no new phenomena appear we shall have observers abler 
 than have existed, because, although it were granted that 
 no fresh accessions of intellectual power came to the race, 
 each new generation of observers would have increased 
 ability, because each would have the aid of the instruments 
 and methods of all predecessors. When we go back to con 
 sider the immense labor performed by Kepler in his inves 
 tigations which led to his brilliant discoveries, we feel that 
 if his nerves had given w r ay under his labors, and domestic 
 troubles, and financial cares, or his industry had been just a 
 little less tenacious, he would have failed in the prodigious 
 calculations which led him to his brilliant discoveries, and 
 gave science such a great propulsion. Just five years after 
 the publication of Kepler s "New Astronomy" the Laird of 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 47 
 
 Merchison published, in Scotland, his "Mirifici Logarithmo- 
 
 rum Canonis Description If Kepler had only had Napier s 
 logarithms! But succeeding students have enjoyed this 
 wonderful instrumental aid, and done great mental work 
 with less draught on their vital energies. 
 
 c_^ < 
 
 The very facts, then, which make us proud of modern 
 science should make scientific men very humble. It will 
 be noticed that the most arrogant cultivators of science are 
 those who are most ready to assail such religious men as 
 are rigid, and hold that nothing can be added to or taken 
 away from theology; and such scientific men make this 
 assault on the assumption that physical sciences are fixed, 
 certain, and exact. How ridiculous they make themselves, 
 a review of the history of any science for the last fifty 
 years would show. Is there any department of physical 
 science in which a text-book used a quarter of a century 
 ago would now be put into the hands of any student? The 
 fact is that any man, who is careful of his reputation, has 
 some trepidation in issuing a volume on science, lest the 
 day his publishers announce his book the morning papers 
 announce, also, a discovery which knocks the bottom out 
 of all his arguments. This shows the great intellectual 
 activity of the age a matter to rejoice in, but it should 
 also promote humility, and repress egotism in all well- 
 ordered minds. There is, probably, no one thing known in 
 its properties and accidents, in its relations to all abstract 
 truths and concrete existence. No one thing is exactly 
 and thoroughly known by any man, or by all men. Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer well says : "Much of what we call science 
 is not exact, and some of it, as physiology, can never 
 become exact," (Recent Discussions, p. 158.) He might 
 have made the remark with greater width, and no less 
 truth, since every day accumulates proof that that depart 
 ment of our knowledge which we call the exact sciences 
 
48 VAXDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1875. 
 
 holds an increasingly small proportion to the whole domain 
 of science. 
 
 There is one important truth which seems often ignored, 
 and which should frequently be brought to our attention 
 viz.: that the propositions which embody our science are 
 statements not of absolute truths, but of probabilities. 
 Probabilities differ. There is that which is merely prob 
 able, and that which is more probable, and that which is 
 still much more probable*, and that which is so probable 
 that our faculties cannot distinguish between this probabil 
 ity and absolute certainty; and so we act on it as if it 
 were certain. But it is still only a " probability," and not 
 a "certainty." It seems as though it would forever be im 
 possible for us to determine how near a probability can 
 approach a certainty without becoming identical with that 
 certainty. 
 
 Is not all life a discipline of determining probabilities? It 
 would seem that God intends that generally the certainties 
 shall be known only to himself. He has probably shown 
 us a very few certainties, more for the purpose of furnishing 
 the idea than for any practical purpose, as absolute certainty 
 is necessary for him, while probabilities are sufficient for us. 
 All science is purely a classification of probabilities. 
 
 We do not Jcnoiu that the same result will follow the same 
 act in its several repetitions, but believe that it will; and we 
 believe it so firmly that if a professor had performed a suc 
 cessful experiment before a class in chemistry, he would not 
 hesitate to repeat the experiment after a lapse of a quarter 
 of a century. Scientific men are not infidels. Of no men 
 may it be more truly said that they "walk by faith." 
 They do not creep, they march. Their tread is on made 
 ground, on probabilities ; but they believe they shall be 
 supported, and according to their faith so is it done unto 
 them. 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 49 
 
 And no men better know than truly scientific men that 
 this, probability can never become certainty. In the wild 
 est dreams of fanaticism and there are fanatics in the 
 laboratory, as there are in the sanctuary of God and in the 
 temple of mammon it has never been believed that there 
 shall come a, man who shall know all things that are, all 
 things that have been, all things that shall be, and all things 
 that can be, in their properties, their attributes, and their 
 relations. Until such a man shall arise, science must always 
 be concerned with the cognition of that which is the real 
 truth as to probabilities, or with probable cognitions of that 
 which is not only real truth, but absolute truth. A scien 
 tific writer, then, when he states that any proposition has 
 been "proved," or any thing "shown," means that it has 
 been proved probable to some minds, or shown to some 
 perhaps to all intelligent persons as probable. If he have 
 sense and modesty, he can mean no more, although he does 
 not cumber his pages or his speech with the constant repe 
 tition of that which is to be presumed, even as a Christian 
 in making his appointments does not always say, Deo volente, 
 because it is understood that a Christian is a man always 
 seeking to do what he thinks to be the will of God, in sub 
 mission to the providence of God. 
 
 A scientific man ridicules the idea of any religious man 
 claiming to be "orthodox." It must be admitted to be 
 ridiculous, just as ridiculous as the claim of a scientific man 
 to absolute certainty and unchangeableness for science. The 
 more truly religious a man is, the more humble he is; the 
 more he sees the deep things of God, the more he sees the 
 shallow things of himself. He claims nothing positively. 
 He certainly does not make that most arrogant of all claims, 
 the claim to the prerogative of infinite intelligence. There 
 can exist only one Being in the universe who is positively 
 and absolutely orthodox, and that is God. In religion, as 
 
<- r >0 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1875. 
 
 in science, we walk by faith that is, we believe in the 
 probabilities sufficiently to act upon them. 
 
 So far from any conflict being between science and relig 
 ion, their bases are the same, their modes are similar, and 
 their ends are identical viz. : what all life seems to be, 
 that is, a discipline of faith. 
 
 It is not proper to despise knowledge, however gained : 
 whether from the exercise of the logical understanding, or 
 from consciousness, or from faith; and these are the three 
 sources of our knowledge. That which has been most un 
 dervalued is the chief of the three that is, faith. 
 
 We believe before we acquire the habit of studying and 
 analyzing our consciousnesses. We believe before we learn 
 how to conduct the processes of our logical understanding. 
 
 We can have much knowledge by our faith without no- 
 
 , o */ 
 
 tice of our consciousness, and without exertion of our 
 reasoning faculties; but we can have no knowledge without 
 faith. We can learn nothing from our examination of any 
 consciousness without faith in some principle of observation, 
 comparison, and memory. We can acquire no knowledge 
 by our logical understanding without faith in the laws of 
 mental operations. 
 
 This last statement, if true, places all science on the 
 same basis with religion. Although so familiar to many 
 minds, we may take time to show that it is true. 
 
 For proof let us go to a science which is supposed to 
 demonstrate all its propositions, and examine a student in 
 geometry. We will not call him out on the immortal 47:1 
 of Euclid. We can learn all we need from a bright boy 
 who has been studying Euclid a week. The following may 
 represent our colloquy : 
 
 "Q. Do you know how many right angles may be made 
 by one straight line upon one side of another straight line? 
 
 "A. Yes; two, and only two. Innumerable angles may 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 51 
 
 be made by two straight lines so meeting, but the sum of 
 all the possible angles will be two right angles. 
 
 "Q. You say you know that. How do you know that 
 you know it? 
 
 "A. Because I can prove it. A man knows ev ery propo 
 sition which he can demonstrate. 
 
 "Q. Please prove it to me." 
 
 The student draws the well-known diagrams. If he fol 
 lows Euclid, he begins with an argument like this : 
 
 "A. There are obviously two angles made when a straight 
 line stands on another straight line. 
 
 "Q. My eyes show me that. 
 
 "A. Well, then, those angles are either two right angles 
 or, together, are equal to two right angles. And I prove 
 that in this way: If the two angles made by the lines be 
 equal, each is a right angle according to the definition of a 
 right angle, which may be stated thus : A right angle is one 
 of the two angles made by a straight line on one side of 
 another straight line when both angles are equal. If each 
 is a right angle, and there are only two, because they have 
 taken all the space on that side of the line, it is proved that 
 two right angles are made by two lines in the relation sup 
 posed, and only two." 
 
 Bat if each be not a ri^ht an^le, our youner friend pro- 
 
 { o /O 
 
 ceeds, by the well-known demonstration of Euclid, to show 
 that the sum of the two angles is equal to two right angles ; 
 and when he has finished and reached the Q. E. D., he and 
 his examiners Imoiv that this proposition is true, because he 
 has proved it, But when we examine his argument we find 
 that he has made three unproved assumptions namely, (1) 
 that a thing cannot at the same time foand not be; (2) that 
 if equals be added to equals the wholes are equal; and (3) 
 that things which are equal to the same are equal to one 
 another. It so happens that each of these propositions 
 
52 YANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 which he has assumed to be true is, if true, much more im 
 portant than the proposition which he has proved. Let us 
 point out these three assumptions to our bright student, 
 and then resume our catechism. 
 
 " Q. Could you possibly prove this proposition in geome 
 try if any one of those three assumed propositions were not 
 granted ? 
 "A. No. 
 
 "Q. Then, if we deny these assumptions, can you prove 
 them ? 
 
 "A. No; but can you deny them? 
 
 "No, we cannot deny them, and cannot prove them ; but 
 we believe them, and, therefore, have granted them to you 
 for argument, and know your proposition of the two right 
 angles to be true, because you have proved it." 
 
 Now, here is the proposition which Euclid selected as 
 the simplest of all demonstrable theorems of geometry, in 
 the demonstration of which the logical understanding of a 
 student cannot take the first step without the aid of faith. 
 
 From the student let us go to the master. We go to such 
 a teacher as Euclid, and in the beginning he requires us to 
 believe three propositions, without which there can be no 
 geometry, but which have never been proved, and, in the 
 nature of things, it would seem never could be proved 
 namely, that space is infinite in extent, that space is in 
 finitely divisible, and that space is infinitely continuous. 
 And we believe them, and use that faith as knowledge, and 
 no more distrust it than we do the results of our logical 
 understandings, and are obliged to admit that geometry lays 
 its broad foundations on our faith. 
 
 Now, geometry is the science which treats of forms in 
 their relations in space. The value of such a science for 
 intellectual culture and practical life must be indescribably 
 important, as might be shown in a million of instances. No 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 53 
 
 form can exist without boundaries, no boundaries without 
 lines, no line without points. The beginning of geometric 
 knowledge, then, lies in knowing what a "point" is, the ex 
 istence of forms depending, it is said, upon the motion of 
 points. The first utterance of geometry, therefore, must 
 be a definition of a point. And here it is : "A point is that 
 which has no parts, or which has no magnitude." At the 
 threshold of this science we meet with a mystery. "A 
 point is" then, it has existence "is" what? In fact, in 
 form, in substance, it is nothing. A logical definition re 
 quires that the genus and differentia shall be given. What 
 is the genus of a "point?" Position, of course. Its dif 
 ferentia is plainly seen. It is distinguished from every 
 thing else in this, that every thing else is something some 
 where, and a point is nothing somewhere; every thing HAS 
 some characteristic, a point has none. A point is visible or 
 invisible. Is it visible ? Then, we can see that which is with 
 out parts or magnitude. What is it we see when we do not 
 see any part, do not see any magnitude ? Is it substantial 
 or ideal? If substantial, how 7 do we detect its substantial 
 existence ? If ideal, how can an idea have motion, and by 
 simple motion become a substantial existence? Are we not 
 reduced to this ? Ideals produce substantiate, or invisible 
 substantials, upon motion, produce visible substantiate; or 
 that which is necessary to matter namely, form owes its 
 existence to that which is neither substantial nor ideal to 
 nothing, in fact. The entire and sublime science of geom 
 etry, at one time the only instrument of culture among the 
 Greeks, and so esteemed by Plato that he is said to have 
 written over his door, "Let no one enter here who does not 
 know geometry," in all its conceptions, propositions, and 
 demonstrations, rests upon the conception of that which has 
 no parts, no magnitude. The old saw of the school-men 
 was, "Ex nildlo nihil fit" If each visible solid owes its 
 
54 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 form to superficies, and each superficies its form to lines, and 
 each line its form to a point and a point has no form, be 
 cause it has no parts then, who shall stone the man that 
 cries out, "Ex nihilo geometria fit?" 
 
 But lay the first three definitions of geometry side by 
 side: 1. "A point is that which has no parts, or which has 
 no magnitude." 2. a A line is length without breadth." 
 3. " The extremities of a line are points." Study these, 
 and you will probably get the following results: That 
 which has no parts produces all the parts of that which 
 occupies space without occupying space, and which, al 
 though it occupies no space, has extremities, to the ex 
 istence of which it owes its own existence ; and those 
 extremities determine the existence of that which has 
 parts made up of multiplications of its extremities which 
 have no parts. Now, you must know at least that much, 
 or else stay out of Plato s house. 
 
 This useful science, without which men could not meas 
 ure their little plantations, or construct their little roads on 
 earth, much less traverse and triangulate the ample fields 
 of the skies, lays for its necessary foundation thirty-five 
 definitions, three postulates, and twelve axioms, the last 
 being propositions which no man has ever proved; and these 
 fifty sentences contain as much that is incomprehensible, 
 as much that must be granted without being proved, as 
 much that must be believed, although it cannot be proved, 
 as can be found in all the theological and religious writings 
 from those of John Scotus Erigina down to those of Ilich- 
 ard Watson, of England, or Charles Hodge, of Princeton. 
 
 Does any man charge that this is a mere logical juggle? 
 Then, he shall be called upon to point out wherein it differs 
 from the methods of those who strive to show that there is 
 a real conflict between real science and real religion. If 
 any man shall charge me with being an infidel as touching 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 5o 
 
 geometry, and try to turn me out of the church of science, 
 I shall become hotly indignant, because I know that Euclid 
 did not believe more in geometry than I do, and I believe 
 as much in the teachings of geometry as I do in the teach 
 ings of theology, regarding them both, as Aristotle did, as 
 mere human sciences, ranking theology with psychology, 
 geology, and botany. And, being by profession a theolo 
 gian, I certainly believe in theology. 
 
 And this brings us back to what was stated in the begin 
 ning, as one of the causes of this cry of "conflict." It is 
 the confounding of theology with religion. Theology is not 
 religion any more than psychology is human life, or zoology 
 is animal life, or botany is vegetable life. Theology is a 
 human science ; religion is a real life. Theology is object 
 ive; religion is subjective. Theology is the scientific 
 classification of what is known of God; religion is a loving 
 obedience to God s commandments. Every religious man 
 must have some theology, but it does not follow that every 
 theologian must have some religion. We never knew a 
 religious man without some kind of a theology, nor can we 
 conceive such a case. But we do know some theologians 
 who have little religion, and some that seem to have none. 
 There may be a conflict between theology and some other 
 sciences, and religious men may deplore that conflict, or may 
 not, according to their measure of faith. There are those 
 whose faith is so large and strong that they do not deplore 
 such a conflict, because they know that if, for instance, a 
 conflict should come between geology and theology, and ge 
 ology should be beaten, it will be so much the better for 
 religion; and if geology should beat theology, still so much 
 the better for religion: according to the spirit of the old 
 Arabic adage, If the pitcher fall on the stone, so much the 
 worse for the pitcher; and if the stone fall on the pitcher, so 
 
56 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 much the ivorse for the pitcher. Geologists, psychologists, 
 and theologists, must all ultimately promote the cause of re 
 ligion, because they must confirm one another s truths, and 
 explode one another s errors; and a religious man is a man 
 whose soul longs for the truth, who loves truth because he 
 loves God, who knows if the soul be sanctified it must be 
 sanctified by the truth, even as the mind must be enlarged 
 and strengthened by the truth. He knows and feels that 
 it would be as irreligious in him to reject any truth found in 
 nature as it would be for another to reject any truth found 
 in the Bible. 
 
 But there is no necessary conflict between even theology 
 and any other science. Theology has to deal with prob 
 lems into which the element of the infinite enters. It will 
 therefore have concepts some two of which will be irrecon 
 cilable, but not therefore contradictory. For instance, to 
 say that God is "an infinite person" is to state the agreement 
 of two concepts which the human mind is supposed never 
 to have reconciled, and never to be able to reconcile. But 
 they are not contradictory. If one should say that there 
 is in the universe a circular triangle, we should deny it, not 
 because the concept of a triangle is irreconcilable with the 
 concept of a circle, as consistent in the same figure, which 
 is quite true, but because they are contradictor y. What is 
 irreconcilable to you may be reconcilable to another mind, 
 because "irreconcilable" indicates the relation of the con 
 cept to the individual intellect; but what is contradictory 
 to the feeblest is contradictory to the mightiest mind, be 
 cause "contradictory" represents the relation of the con 
 cepts to one another. 
 
 In the definition of a person there is nothing to exclude 
 infinity, and in the definition of infinite there is nothing to 
 exclude personality. There is no more exclusion between 
 "person" and "infinite" than between "line" and "infin- 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 57 
 
 ite;" and yet we talk of infinite lines, knowing the irrecon 
 cilability of the ideas, but never regarding them as con 
 tradictory. 
 
 Writers of great ability sometimes fall into this indis 
 crimination. For instance, a writer whom I greatly admire, 
 Dr. Hill, former President of Harvard College, in one 
 paragraph (in "The Uses of Mathesis") seems twice to em 
 ploy " contradictory " in an illogical sense, even when he 
 is presenting an illustration which goes to show most clearly 
 that in other sciences, as well as in theology, there are 
 propositions which we cannot refuse to accept, because they 
 are not contradictory, although they are irreconcilable ; in 
 other words, that there are irreconcilable concepts which 
 are not contradictory, for we always reject one or the other 
 of two contradictory concepts or propositions. 
 
 That is so striking an illustration of the mystery of the 
 infinite that I will reproduce it. On a plane imagine a 
 fixed line, pointing north and south. Intersect this at an 
 angle of ninety degrees by another line, pointing east and 
 west. Let this latter rotate at the point of intersection, 
 and at the beginning be a foot long. At each approach of 
 the rotating line toward the stationary line let the former 
 double its length. Let each approach be made by bisect 
 ing the angle. At the first movement the angle would be 
 forty-five degrees and the line two feet in length ; at the 
 second, the angle twenty-two and one-half degrees and the 
 line four feet; at the third, the angle eleven and one-fourth 
 degrees and the line eight feet; at the fourth, the angle five 
 and five-eighths degrees and the line sixteen feet; at the 
 fifth, the angle two and thirteen-sixteenths degrees and the 
 line thirty-two feet, and so on. Now, as this bisecting of 
 the angle can go on indefinitely before the rotating line can 
 touch the stationary line at all its points, it follows that be 
 fore such contact the rotating line will have a length which 
 
58 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1375. 
 
 cannot be stated in figures, and which defies all human com 
 putation. It can be mathematically demonstrated that a 
 line so rotating, and increasing its length in the inverse ratio 
 of its angle with the meridian, will have its end always re 
 ceding from the meridian and approaching a line parallel to 
 the meridian at a distance of 1.5708. We can show that the 
 rotating line can cross the stationary line by making it do so 
 as on a watch-dial, and yet we can demonstrate that if it be 
 extended indefinitely it can never touch the stationary line, 
 nor come at the end even as near as eighteen inches to it. 
 
 Here are two of the simplest human conceptions, between 
 which we know that there is no contradiction, rendered ab 
 solutely irreconcilable to the human intellect by the intro 
 duction of the infinite. There is no religion here. And 
 yet there is no mystery in either theology or religion more 
 mysterious than the mystery of the infinite, which we may 
 encounter whenever we attempt to set our watches to the 
 right time if they have run more than an hour wrong. 
 
 Another error has been the occasion of this cry of "con 
 flict." It is the confounding of "the Church" with "re 
 ligion." This confusion has led many an honest soul astray, 
 and is the fallacy wherewith shrewd sophists have been able 
 to overthrow the faith of the ignorant. If the Church 
 and, in all my treatment of this topic, I must be understood 
 as using "the Church" not as signifying " the holy Church 
 universal," but simply in the sense in which antagonistic 
 scientists employ it if the Church and religion be the same, 
 the whole argument must be given up, and it must be ad 
 mitted that there is a conflict between religion and science, 
 and that religion is in the wrong. Churchmen are guilty 
 of helping to strengthen, if indeed they are not responsible 
 for creating, this error. It has at length been presented 
 plurnply to the world in the book of Professor John William 
 Draper, entitled a "History of the Conflict between Re- 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 59 
 
 ligion and Science." The title assumes that there is such 
 a conflict. See how it will read with synonyms substituted: 
 "History of the Conflict between Loving Obedience to God s 
 Word and Intelligent Study of God s Works" Does Dr. 
 Draper believe there is such a conflict? It is not to be 
 supposed that he does. How, then, did he come to give his 
 book such a title? From a confusion of terms, as will be 
 observed by the perusal of three successive sentences in his 
 preface: "The papacy represents the ideas and aspirations 
 of two-thirds of the population of Europe. It insists on a 
 political supremacy, .... loudly declaring that it 
 will accept no reconciliation with modern civilization. The 
 antagonism we thus witness between relic/ion and science," 
 etc. Now, if "the papacy" and "religion" be synonymous 
 terms, representing equivalent ideas, Dr. Draper s book 
 shows that all good men should do what they can to extir 
 pate religion from the world ; but if they are not and 
 they are not then the book is founded on a most hurtful 
 fallacy, and must be widely mischievous. Their share of the 
 responsibility for the harm done must fall to Churchmen. 
 
 No, these are not synonymous terms. "The Church" is 
 not religion, and religion is not "the Church." There may 
 be a Church and no religion; there may be religion and no 
 Church, as there may be an aqueduct without water, and 
 there be water without an aqueduct. God makes water, 
 and men make aqueducts. Water was before aqueducts, 
 and religion before Churches. God makes religion, and 
 men make Churches. There are irreligious men in every 
 Church, and there are very religious men in no Church. 
 Any visible, organized Church is a mere human institution. 
 It is useful for the purpose of propagating religion so long 
 as it confines itself to that function "and abstains from all 
 other things. The moment it transcends that limit, it is an 
 injurious institution. In either case it is merely human, 
 
60 VAKDEKBILT UNIVEKSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 and we wrong both religion and the Church when we claim 
 for the latter that it is not a human institution. The 
 Church of England is as much a human institution as the 
 Royal Society; and the same may be said of the Church 
 of Rome and the Royal Florentine Academy. A Church 
 is as much an authority in matters of religion as a society 
 is in matters of science, and no more. "The Church" has 
 often been opposed to science, and so it has to religion; but 
 "the society" has often been opposed to religion, and so it 
 has to science. "The Church," both before and since the 
 days of Christ, has stood in opposition to the Bible, the 
 text-book of Jewish and Christian religionists, quite as 
 often as it has to science. But "the society," or "the 
 academy," has stood in opposition to science quite as often 
 as it has to religion. Sometimes the sin of one has been 
 laid upon the other, and sometimes the property of one has 
 been scheduled as the assets of the other. It is lime to pro 
 test, in the interests of the truth of God, and in the name 
 of the God of truth, that religion no longer be saddled with 
 all the faults of the Churchmen, all the follies of the scien 
 tists, and all the crimes of the politicians. It was not relig 
 ion which brought Galileo to his humiliating retraction, 
 about which w 7 e hear so much declamation; it w r as "the 
 Church." 
 
 But why should writers of the history of science so fre 
 quently conceal the fact that "the Church" was instigated 
 thereunto not by religious people, but scientific men by 
 Galileo s collator ateurs? It was the jealousy of the sci 
 entists which made use of the bigotry of the Churchmen to 
 degrade a rival in science. They began their attacks not 
 on the ground that religion was in danger, but on such sci 
 entific grounds as these, stated by a professor in the Uni 
 versity of Padua namely, that as there were only seven 
 metals, and seven days in the week, and seven apertures in 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 61 
 
 man s head, there could be only seven planets! And that 
 was some time before these gentlemen of science had insti 
 gated the sarcastic Dominican monk to attempt to preach 
 Galileo down under the text, Viri Galilcei, quid statis adspi- 
 cientes in coelum ? 
 
 In like manner, politicians have used "the Church" to 
 overthrow their rivals. "The Church" is the engine which 
 has been turned against freedom, against science, against 
 religion. It would be as logical and as fair to lay all "the 
 Church s" outrages against human rights and intellectual 
 advancement at the door of religion as it would be to lay 
 all its outrages against religion at the door of science and 
 government, because "the Church" has seldom slaughtered 
 a holy martyr to the truth without employing some forms 
 of both law and logic. 
 
 Science exists for the sake of religion, and because of 
 religion. If there had been no love for God in the human 
 race, there had been no study of the physical universe. 
 The visible cosmos is God s love-letter to man, and religion 
 seeks to probe every corner of the sheet on which such love is 
 written, to examine every phrase, and study every connec 
 tion. A few upstarts of the present day, not the real men 
 and masters of science, ignore the fact that almost every 
 man who has made any great original contribution to science, 
 since the revival of letters, was a very religious man; but 
 their weak wickedness must not be charged to science any 
 more than the wicked weakness of ecclesiastics to religion. 
 
 Copernicus (born 1473), who revolutionized astronomy, 
 was one of the purest Christians who ever lived a simple, 
 laborious minister of religion, walking beneficently among 
 the poor by day, and living among the stars by night; and 
 yet one writer of our day has dared to say, in what he bikes 
 to be the interest of science, that Copernicus was " aware 
 that his doctrines were totally opposed to revealed truth." 
 
62 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 Was any thing worse ever perpetrated by theologian, or 
 even ecclesiastic ? Could any man believe in any doctrine 
 which he knew was opposed to any truth, especially if he 
 believed that God had revealed that truth ? It were impos 
 sible, especially with a man having the splendid intellect 
 and the pure heart of Copernicus, who died believing in his 
 "Dc Orbiwn Ccelestium Revolutionibus" and also in the Bible. 
 And this is the inscription which that humble Christian or 
 dered for his tomb : "Non par em Paulo veniam requiro, gra- 
 tiam Pctri neque posco ; scd quam in crucis ligno dederis 
 latroni) seduhis oro" 
 
 Tycho Brahe (born 1546), who, although he did not 
 produce a system which won acceptance, did, nevertheless, 
 lay the foundation for practical astronomy, and build the 
 stairs on which Kepler mounted to his grand discoveries, 
 was a most religious man. He introduces into one of his 
 scientific works ^Astronomies Instauratio Mechanica" p. A) 
 this sentence: "No man can be made happy, and enjoy 
 immortal life, but through the merits of Christ, the Re 
 deemer, the Son of God, and by the study of his doctrines, 
 and imitation of his example." 
 
 John Kepler (born 1571) was a man in whose life the 
 only conflict between science and religion seemed to be as 
 to which should yield the most assistance to the other. 
 He wrought as under Luther s motto, " Orasse est studisse" 
 He prayed before he worked, and shouted afterward. The 
 more he bowed his soul in prayer, the higher his intellect 
 rose in its discoveries; and as those discoveries thickened 
 on his head, it bowed in humbler adoration. And so that 
 single man was able to do more for science than all the 
 irreligious scientists of the last three centuries have 
 accomplished, while he bore an appalling load of suffering 
 with a patience that was sublime, and, dying, left this 
 epitaph for his tomb-stone: "In Christo pie obiit" 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 63 
 
 Of Sir Isaac Newton s, and Michael Faraday s, and Sir 
 William Hamilton s, and Sir James Y. Simpson s religious 
 life, not to mention the whole cloud of witnesses, we need 
 not tell what is known to all men. But the history of 
 science shows that not the most gifted, not the most 
 learned, not the most industrious, gain the loftiest vision, 
 but that only the pure in heart see God. And all true 
 science is a new sight of God. 
 
 Herbert Spencer says: "Science may be called an exten 
 sion of the perceptions by means of reasoning." (Recent 
 Discussions, p. 60.) And we may add, Religion may be 
 called an extension of the perceptions by means of faith. 
 And having so said, have we not paraphrased Paul? "Faith 
 is confidence in things hoped for, conviction of things not 
 seen." (Heb. xi. 1.) Science has the finite for its domain, 
 religion the infinite; science deals with the things seen, 
 and religion with the things not seen. When Dr. Hutton, 
 of Edinburgh, announced, in the last century, " In the 
 economy of the world I can find no traces of a beginning, 
 no prospect of an end," it is said that scientific men were 
 startled and religious men were shocked. Why should they 
 be ? The creation of the universe and its end are not 
 questions of science, and can be known only as revealed to 
 faith. And so Paul says: "Through faith we apprehend 
 intellectually that the worlds have been framed by the 
 word of God, so that that which is seen may have sprung 
 from that which is not seen." (Heb. xi. 3.) 
 
 But we must close. 
 
 While preparing this Address it has been my almost 
 daily custom to pass the massive Masonic Temple recently 
 erected in the city of New York. Before its portals stand 
 two stately columns, known to the brethren of the Masonic 
 Order as Jachin and Boaz. On each rests a globe. In 
 
64 VANDEBBILT UNIVERSITY. [1875. 
 
 going to my study in the morning I pass first the column 
 which supports the celestial globe, and as I return to my 
 home in the evening I pass first the column which supports 
 the terrestrial globe. One day it came to me that here 
 there stood, in solid symmetry and solemn resemblance, the 
 symbols of these twins of God, who did not struggle in the 
 infinite womb as Isaac s sons contended before they were 
 born, and whose children should not fight on the fields of 
 the finite as the descendants of Jacob and Esau have con 
 tended for inheritances which are corruptible and which 
 pass away. 
 
 The most sacred thing in the " Sanctum Sanctorum" of the 
 ancient Hebrew tabernacle and temple was the Ark of the 
 Covenant, the Law, God s testimony to his sense of right, 
 the solitary autograph in human letters of the Eternal, 
 written on stone, inscribed by the very fingers of the Lord 
 God Almighty. Over the Ark which held the Law, God 
 ordered that a Mercy-seat should be placed. " His tender 
 mercies are over all his works," and so his Mercy-seat 
 covered his Testimony. When Adarn and Eve had been 
 driven forth, the cherubim had stood at Eden s gate, while 
 a flaming sword turned every way. They were placed 
 there as guardians to keep the way of the tree of life. In 
 the tabernacle the cherubim reappear, but come without 
 the sword, stretching forth their wings on high, covering 
 the Mercy-seat with their wings, and gazing down on the 
 awful mystery of Love overlapping Law, and Law uphold 
 ing Love. 
 
 Behold, I have a vision of the cherubim. 
 
 The Ark is carried into the temple not made with hands, 
 eternal in the heavens. The cherubim are instinct with 
 life to the outermost tip of each mighty pinion. The very 
 glory of God descends to make his everlasting throne upon 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 65 
 
 the everlasting Mercy-seat, which covers the everlasting 
 Seat of Law. Before the infinite majesty of that Glory 
 the cherubim arise, and stand in front of God; and, as they 
 arise, the sounds of their quivering wings are heard to the 
 outer court of all the temple of the universe, as the voice 
 of the Almighty God when he speaketh. 
 See how they stand, so vast and so superb! 
 The One who has the place by the right hand of the 
 Omnipotent lifts up himself, and all the glory of all the 
 suns is on his brow, and each great wing is like an un 
 measured milky-way, ashimmer with the mystic splendor 
 of all stars. 
 
 The One who has the place nearest the infinite heart of 
 Immortal Love lifts up himself. His brow is fairer than 
 the light of that morning when all the sons of God shouted 
 for joy. His eyes are lovelier than the sapphired tent that 
 pavilions the eternal throne. His lips are ravishingly 
 sweet with the best beauty that comes from the kisses of 
 the Lord. His wings are pinions whose plumes of white 
 ness shed thoughts of purity down on angelic minds, and 
 whose immense sw T eep fans all the love-flames glowing in 
 seraphic hearts. 
 
 Twain they stand, and twain they turn, until hierarchic 
 circles kindle into rapture at the sight. Even God delights 
 himself in their surpassing glory, and smiles upon them 
 until their vast hearts can no longer hold their divinest joy. 
 Twain they sing. The cherub of the snow-white wings 
 and palpitating heart breaks heaven s ecstatic silence with 
 the chant, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts!" 
 
 The cherub of the starry wings and throbbing brain gives 
 antiphone, "Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of 
 thy glory." 
 
 The heavens can keep silence no more, but seraphim and 
 cherubim, angels and archangels, shout, shout up at the 
 
66 VANDEEBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 throne of Love and Law, "Glory be to thee, Lord Most 
 High !" and, from the farthest reach of thought and feeling, 
 all the company of heaven fill the temple of God with the 
 multitudinous and musical thunder of the united and over 
 whelming, "Amen, and Amen !" 
 
 And the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise 
 God our Saviour, wraps those interlocked cherubim in his 
 loving arms, and thrills the heavens with his royal edict, 
 "What God hath joined together let not man put asunder." 
 
 Those cherubim sublime are science and religion. As 
 they had no struggle with each other when God gave them 
 birth, as they had no conflict guarding the Ark of Law and 
 Love, as they shall have no discord when leading the choirs 
 of eternity, so they have no conflict now. At the opening 
 of this great University, heaven and earth unite in saying, 
 "If any man in these halls shall ever teach that there is 
 real conflict between real science and real religion, let that 
 man be Anathema Maranatha" 
 
 Pausing a moment at the close of his Address, Dr. DEEMS 
 turned to Governor POUTER, and said : 
 
 YOUR EXCELLENCY: Our friend, whose name this Institu 
 tion bears, has communicated with you by letter, expressing 
 his appreciation of your Excellency s courtesy in giving the 
 emphasis of your official solicitation to the consideration 
 extended him by the municipal authorities of Nashville, in 
 the expression of their desire to make him the city s guest 
 during these festive days of the inauguration of the Uni 
 versity. 
 
 He did me the honor to request me to bring to your Ex 
 cellency his respectful salutations, and to assure you that 
 good and sufficient reasons exist for his absence, which is 
 due to no lack of interest in this great Commonwealth of 
 Tennessee, nor in this good city of Nashville, nor in this 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 67 
 
 young University, for which he has done what he has done 
 trusting that it will promote the general interests of learn 
 ing, and of this whole nation, without regard to sect or 
 section. [Applause.] 
 
 I have taken this occasion to make to you, publicly, a 
 communication which might have been rendered in private 
 had fitting opportunity occurred. 
 
 Since I came to my place in this Chnpel, sir, a telegram 
 has been handed me, which I shall take the liberty of read 
 ing to the whole audience. 
 
 The speaker then took from the desk an envelope, which he 
 opened, and read the following telegram : 
 
 NEW YOKE, Oct. 4. To Dr. CHARLES F. DEEMS: Peace and good-will to 
 all men. C. VANUEKBILT. 
 
 This evoked hearty and prolonged applause from the audi 
 ence. 
 
 Gazing a few moments on the portrait of Commodore VAN- 
 DERBILT, which hung on the wall to his left, Dr. DEEMS, with 
 great tenderness of feeling, quoted the passage of Holy Script 
 ure (Acts x. 31) : 
 
 CORNELIUS, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance 
 in the sight of God. 
 
 The eyes of the audience having been turned to the Com 
 modore s portrait, this remark of Dr. DEEMS kindled a degree 
 of enthusiasm that found vent in an emphatic outburst of 
 approval. The scene was one of a highly impressive and 
 even dramatic force. 
 
 After more Music, the Rev. A. A. LIPSCOMB, D.D.. late 
 Chancellor of the University of Georgia, delivered the fol 
 lowing Address: 
 
 RELATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY TO GENERAL EDUCATION. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: Great ideas, like great men, are 
 capable of unlimited growth. This is the inborn sign of 
 
68 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 their prerogative, this the outward seal of their sovereignty, 
 that they are full of instructive life; so that one may de 
 scribe them as Milton his angels "vital in every part." 
 Whether you take them in their sterner logic, or in their 
 gentler sentiment, they expand with steady aim toward 
 those ideals in which they are consummated. "Be ye there 
 fore perfect" is God s command to every grand truth ; and 
 the. edict is sure of obedience. Like John the Baptist, they 
 may go into the wilderness, but as the " locusts and wild 
 hone?/" nourished his strength and courage, so they find 
 even in dreary solitudes the means of constant nurture. 
 Whatever the eagle feeds on turns to eagle; and so, too, 
 no matter what may be the nutriment of great ideas, they 
 are certain to rise into loftier proportions and reach forth 
 into broader compass. Nay, more: the very souls into 
 which they enter, conscious of a supreme power to vitalize 
 every thing they embrace, breathe into them a new vigor; 
 and thus from within no less than from without these truths 
 press forward to their destiny. For in this faith we must 
 abide, that every* fa ct involving the well-being of our race 
 has somewhere in its keeping the blessed Christ of humanity; 
 and only give it time and opportunity, and the Infinite Pres 
 ence will make itself known. 
 
 But "time and opportunity" are not always words of the 
 same meaning. It pleases God at certain seasons to accel 
 erate the movements of human society, to enhance rapidly 
 the development of great ideas, and compress ages into a 
 day- The electricity may gather slowly, but the lightning 
 flashes quickly. So, then, we must take account of im 
 pulse as well as of uniform law, remembering that Jehovah 
 "maketh the clouds his chariot" and "waUceth upon the wings 
 of the wind" Between the Hebrew of the Judges and the He 
 brew of the monarchy only a small space lay, and yet what 
 a moral reach of intervening years ! From the Greece of 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 69 
 
 Herodotus, who stood in the transfiguring glories of her 
 Marathon and Platsese, to the Greece of Thucydides, in the 
 sunset of her Periclean age only three-fourths of a cen 
 tury what mighty periods and marvelous transitions in 
 terpose! Rome, too, was many Homes from the career of 
 the Gracchi to the fall of Antony and Cleopatra. Nearer 
 home, from Elizabeth to Cromwell, what an England 
 sprang into power by means of domestic parties and foreign 
 policy ! Still nearer, if you look at that phase of American 
 civilization which began with George Washington.and ended 
 with Robert E. Lee, how significant the series of amaze 
 ments ! To prevent men s minds from hardening under the 
 monotony of law, it sometimes happens that Providence 
 imparts a sudden momentum to moral and spiritual agencies; 
 and thus we learn to wonder while we adore, and acquire, 
 at the same time, a rational distrust of those mechanical 
 sequences which, to a careless eye, seem to govern the 
 social world. 
 
 Our day and our continent afford many typical illustra 
 tions of the force of great truths of their prodigious 
 vitality, of their steady expansion, and, moreover, of those 
 quickening vivifications to which allusion has been made. 
 The new world we inhabit under the skies of the West has 
 lost most of its aborigines, and many of its close forests, 
 and much of the old look of the landscapes; yet it is a 
 newer world than when Plymouth Rock and Jamestown 
 first received their immortal names. Recent astronomy has 
 vastly enlarged our conception of the universe, but what 
 shall we say of the widening out in all directions of the 
 sphere* of modern life ? How the ancient Methuselah felt 
 patriarch of patriarchs, nine centuries gathered moment 
 by moment into his heart how he felt in that early Asia, 
 none can imagine; but if our great-grandfathers could re 
 turn to this land, we can easily conceive what changes 
 
70 YANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1875. 
 
 would most fascinate their eyes. Franklin and Bowditch; 
 the old minister Maury, who sketched for the boy Jeffer 
 son, three generations ago, the water-courses beyond the 
 Rocky Mountains; Lewis and Clarke; later still, Fulton 
 and Whitney these men would see the magnitude of phys 
 ical transformations that have gone on, partly by regular 
 growth and partly by violent convulsion, since they left the 
 earth. Nothing, however, would touch them so deeply as 
 the progress of mind by means of education, and especially 
 that aspect of education in which we gain a clear compre 
 hension of the providential law under which man is ordained 
 to recover the lost sovereignty over nature. This is, in 
 deed, the foremost wonder of the times, since all other 
 wonders are but its offspring. 
 
 Among the growths, then, of the century, we are war 
 ranted in putting a marked emphasis on the enlargement of 
 the idea of education. You are the witnesses how won- 
 drously it has developed. Look at the range of subjects 
 taught, and you feel the force of a remark made to me by 
 a learned friend, a graduate of fifty years since, that the 
 science of chemistry now covers more ground than all the 
 sciences covered together when he was a student in college. 
 Look at the co-relations of the arts and sciences their mu 
 tuality of action and interaction, their potent interchanges of 
 impulse and influence, and their singular convergence in the 
 same predestined ends ! Look at the aid that philosophy has 
 rendered to history and criticism, and the invaluable service 
 that mental physiology has afforded to metaphysics ! Classify 
 your schools the common, the academic, the industrial, the 
 scientific those for arts and those for professions, and fol 
 low them out in the work they do and the way they do it, 
 and learn something of the area, of modern education. Turn 
 your eye to Bell and Lancaster, to Pestalozzi, to John 
 Pounds, the poor shoemaker, with his ragged boys, to the 
 
DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 71 
 
 genius of Seguin, in his " Idiot School," and then to the uni 
 versities that send forth Pitt and Burke, Macaulay and 
 Gladstone, ready-made, to enter on a national arena and 
 bring instant help to their country. Passing from this sur 
 vey, consider more carefully the introduction of a clearer 
 and broader philosophy into the art of instruction the im 
 provement in modes and methods, the enlarged scope of 
 relations between teachers and students, and the increased 
 proportion of educated minds under these recent systems 
 of education and this growth will be still more obvious. 
 Can you not discern these "signs of the times?" The ex 
 tremes of utilitarianism and esthetics, of monarchy and 
 democracy, of Church and State, have met here in the 
 unanimity of generous enthusiasm. 
 
 Bear in mind, then, that it is not merely, or even mainly, 
 in the extension of art and science we are to study the 
 growth of education. The sentiment itself is quite differ 
 ent from the materials on which it works, and the products 
 it creates. As a sentiment, education had at first a narrow 
 range. Its advantages, such as they were, belonged to a 
 few. Castes and classes afterward shared its patrimony. 
 In part by its own inherent force, in part because of political 
 and social revolutions, its domain has enlarged. Whether 
 we go back to the invention of printing, or to the rise of 
 Methodism, or to the effects of the French Revolution, one 
 thing is clear, that the idea of education has been outreach- 
 ing its former limitations, and finding "fresh woods and 
 pastures new." To-day its stronghold is the education of 
 the community, the nation, the race. And it shows its di 
 vine power in this, that it was once and so long "a little 
 leaven;" for had it not been so "little" it could never have 
 permeated the bulky whole. Nor should we forget that the 
 perfection of education, viewed as a sentiment, cannot be 
 reached until we share its benefits with others. One of the 
 
72 VAKDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1875. 
 
 many points at which true culture blends with true religion 
 is in fulfilling the words, "It is more blessed to give than to re 
 ceive ;" while it is equally certain that the grandest thoughts 
 lose their inspiration and fall back dead upon the heart un 
 less w r e impart them to the world. A student of astronomy 
 has much to learn beyond the boundary which Sir Isaac 
 Newton touched. The pupil Faraday outstripped, by many 
 brilliant leagues of space, his great teacher, Sir Humphrey 
 Davy. But when we congratulate ourselves on the advance 
 of knowledge, let us remember, too, as a ground of devout 
 thanksgiving, that the recipients of the blessings of educa 
 tion embrace all orders and gradations of society. I con 
 sider no festival of scholars complete without the presence 
 of this joy. And on a day like this, when we celebra.te 
 the advent of a new university, let it give a richer melody 
 to our anthems of praise, that the idiot boy is now emanci 
 pated from the tyrannic bondage of the body; that the 
 little children exchange their mothers arms for the tender 
 companionships of the kindergarten; that industrial schools 
 extend a helping hand to the sons and daughters of the 
 unhappy poor; and that all classes of people, from the 
 humblest to the highest, are strengthened, cheered, enno 
 bled, by those varied agencies of beneficence which modern 
 education includes. 
 
 Looking at the historic development of education, we see 
 that the few have given intellectual guidance and impulse to 
 the many; or. in other words, the universities have been the 
 fountain-heads whence have issued the streams of knowledge. 
 For a long period the ancient universities of Oxford, Cam 
 bridge, Paris, Salamanca, and Bologna, were the only centers 
 of instruction in Europe. These antedated by centuries 
 the great school systems which are now acting on the 
 masses. But for Oxford and Cambridge, Christ s Hospital, 
 and Rugby, and Winchester, would not have been known. 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 73 
 
 About the year 1800 Humboldt presented to the King of 
 Prussia the scheme of the Royal University of Berlin, and 
 out of that have come the gymnasia which have done so 
 much for that kingdom. Had not Harvard and Yale been 
 early founded in the colonization of this country, the com 
 mon schools of New England could not have sprung so soon 
 into existence. To this rule there seem to be no valid ex 
 ceptions. Mountains supply fertility to valleys; rivers that 
 measure continents have sources lofty and remote; clouds 
 may gather over this or that section of the globe, but they 
 owe their waters to the immense oceans; and just so the 
 higher universities have sent down their fertilizing power 
 into every department of learning. This has not been an 
 accident. It is one of the oldest and grandest of those 
 laws by which the Eternal Wisdom has assured the world 
 of its sovereign presence. Sometimes one man, at other 
 times several men single stars or constellations of splen 
 dor in the firmament the few leading the many; so has it 
 ever been as far back as we can penetrate. Out of Abra 
 ham, the elect Hebrew nation; out of Moses, all legislators; 
 out of Homer, the culture of Greece; out of Julius Cesar, 
 Augustus and the Empire. And how strikingly the Lord 
 Jesus exemplified this divine method! Twelve men were 
 taught and trained to spread Christianity throughout the 
 world. In these chosen apostles, each fitted for his special 
 task, Samaria, Syria, Asia Minor, Italy, lay imbedded for 
 future development. 
 
 Bat a general statement is not enough. If we descend 
 to particulars, we find that the best text-books in all depart 
 ments of instruction, the progress made in the science of 
 teaching whereby such an advance has been effected in the 
 methods of acquisition and creation, the growing dignity 
 of the teacher s office, have all proceeded from that kind of 
 thought, and those modes of research, and preeminently 
 
74 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 from that philosophy of mind, which it is the function of 
 the university to foster. More than this, the university 
 devotes itself to those abstruse investigations, common 
 alike to mind and matter, which are essential as the founda 
 tions of practical knowledge. A world without abstract 
 truths, without the profundity of logic, without the subtle 
 analyses of metaphysics, without the rules nxi& formulae of 
 rigid science, could not be the world of either student or 
 scholar; nor, indeed, could it be, in any significant sense, 
 the world of political economy, or government, or trade 
 and commerce. On the one hand, then, the simple match 
 that lights your fire ; the cooking-stove which educates 
 your servant in a thoughtfulness and skill impossible in an 
 open fire-place; higher far in the scale, chloroform and 
 other anaesthetic agents, that conquer pain in the hiding- 
 places of the nerves; and yet, again, those applications of 
 mechanics which have made the earth so much worthier a 
 habitation and a home for man none of these things, in 
 their varying degrees of utility and beneficence, could ever 
 have been known except for that higher science which has 
 its seat of authority and its scope of original action in the 
 university. 
 
 On the other hand, take those books that are libraries 
 in themselves. Call over such works as Butler s "Analogy, 
 P.-dey s "Evidences," Blackstone s " Commentaries," Mil 
 ton s "Paradise Lost," Adam Smith s " Political Economy," 
 Bridgewater s "Treatises," Ranke s " History," and Ilum- 
 boldt s " Cosmos," and show me how these could have been 
 possible but for that maturity of intellect and vastness of 
 erudition which the university encourages and sustains. 
 When, therefore, you think of the relations of the univer 
 sity to general education, recall the names of the Herschels, 
 of Cuvier and Owen, of Dugald Stewart and Sir William 
 Hamilton, of Black and Liebig, of Carpenter and Miiller, 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 
 
 of Neander and Chalmers, and in the light of their labors 
 estimate the worth of this rarer culture. The standards 
 of intellectual excellence which these men set themselves 
 to attain were not self-originated, nor, indeed, can we affirm 
 that their efforts were altogether self-directed. All una 
 wares to themselves, and in entire accord with their per 
 sonality, the spirit of university-culture shaped their minds 
 and pursuits, and insensibly made them what they were in 
 science and literature. Think, too, of Luther, and the 
 indebtedness of the Reformation to the university. And 
 think, likewise, of Wesley, and bless the providence that, 
 amid its other signs of grace, ordained the birth-place of 
 Methodism beneath the overshadowing centuries of Oxford 
 University. 
 
 Having thus noticed the relations of the university to 
 general education, I pause a moment to say that the atti 
 tude of the university is one of deep interest. Unques 
 tionably, it is a formative force, a supreme force, in the 
 world of mind. The more truthful its ideal, the higher 
 will be that ideal. Men cannot outgrow its guidance and 
 help. Men will be educated and ennobled just in the pro 
 portion that they reverence its spirit. 
 
 By virtue, therefore, of its position and accredited 
 claims, the university has an authority peculiar to itself. 
 Among us this authority rests on grounds intellectual and 
 moral, and exerts itself ,in an influence subtle and perva 
 sive. Without the appliances of secular power, it has a 
 certain sovereignty which acts on public opinion, and 
 still more on public sentiment. Although it cannot be 
 measured by a palpable standard, it is none the less opera 
 tive and controlling. Its very quality, so silent and unob 
 trusive, determines its commanding force; and for this 
 reason its responsibilities, both as to the limits of its sphere 
 and the duties within that sphere, are momentous. Only 
 
76 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875, 
 
 in the realization of its solemn trust, only in the profound 
 feeling that it is a providential agency, called and commis 
 sioned for a great work, can the university find the suste 
 nance of its strength and activity. It must be free from 
 that worklliness which tremulously consults the tastes of a 
 fugitive hour, panders to inconsiderate caprices, and bribes 
 patronage into its support. Its creed cannot be taken from 
 the exchange, nor its code from the street. The moment it 
 undertakes to do its business after the manner of trade and 
 commerce, its heart dies. It must be independent; it 
 must stand above noisy clamor and passionate criticism; 
 it must call no man master; but in the spirit of noblest 
 manliness calm, self-poised, and bravely earnest it must 
 obey the law of its vocation. 
 
 Standing, then, in this attitude, the university is bound, 
 in duty, to recognize every department of true thought, 
 every branch of genuine knowledge, every mode of thor 
 ough culture, and, moreover, to give each and all its sym 
 pathy, its support, its furtherance. It owes this to itself, 
 to its historic antecedents, to the cause of education. Nar 
 rowness, overloaded bias, chronic prejudices, are fatal to its 
 aims. One-sided universities make one-sided men, and one 
 sided men are never honest students nor reliable scholars. 
 A true university has no pets, no hobbies. Holding itself 
 sternly aloof from the partisanships which writhe the age 
 into all sorts of distortions, it must be " dowered with the 
 scorn of scorn and hate of hate," and press closely to its 
 heart this truth, that Pharisaism is as deadly in science 
 and art as in religion ; its deadliness lying in this, that it is 
 dogmatic, exclusive, denunciatory. The fault in all our 
 thinking is want of breadth. A bird may sing in its con 
 fining cage, a lion be a lion behind his imprisoning bars, 
 but a man shut up in pettiness and conceits is a fractional 
 creature. What is best in the university is the catholicity 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 77 
 
 of its views. Far more than its scope of technical inquiry, 
 or its contributions to the world s stock of knowledge, is 
 that majestic vigor of mind which has no taint of selfish 
 ness, which lives on disinterested service as its daily bread 
 from heaven, which "looks before and after/ and which, 
 not content to go 
 
 Round the daily scene 
 Of sad subjection and of sick routine, 
 
 is ever striving to widen the reach of its horizon, and ever 
 longing to see its zenith rise to a height more distant and 
 more effulgent. 
 
 The infinite wisdom and power of Christianity cannot be 
 embodied at present in any one Church. There are, conse 
 quently, many Churches, each sharing in that glory which 
 is ineffable. The compass of humanity is too big to be 
 limited in one nationality, and hence the variety of nations. 
 Just so, education is a vast idea, needing many forms to 
 give it shape and accommodate its substance. Chief of 
 these is the university. Because of this superiority, its 
 excellence mainly dwells in its broad and generous senti 
 ment. Not otherwise can it be in coalescence with civiliza 
 tion arid Christianity. Against what is local and sectional, 
 against what is spasmodic and romantic, against every thing 
 even tinged with self-idolatry, it must resolutely set itself, 
 and take its stand on whatever is large-minded and enduring. 
 It will never flatter the present at the expense of the past; 
 still less will it be mean enough to thank God that it is 
 "not as other men are" Fraternity with all schools and 
 colleges; sympathy with the proper work of the press, the 
 bar, the medical profession, and the pulpit; heartiness of 
 accord with the mechanic, the agriculturist, the navigator, 
 the engineer, the manufacturer, and the merchant these 
 are the attestations of its office. Actuated, yea, inspired, 
 by this sentiment, it will make itself felt in mines, and 
 
78 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [ISTS. 
 
 foundries, and workshops, in the cottages of the poor, and 
 the mansions of the rich. For immediate results, it will 
 walk abreast with the age; for yet grander results, it will 
 transcend the age. But, in its diversified activity, it will 
 keep paramount a simple unity of purpose; nor will it ever 
 forget that its electness of ministration consists in bind 
 ing together as one "ivliatsocver things are true, whatsoever 
 tilings are honesty whatsoever tilings are just, whatsoever things 
 are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of 
 good report^ 
 
 Too much stress can scarcely be laid on the point now 
 under consideration. As we ascend in the scale of educa 
 tion, we approach nearer to the moral and spiritual nature 
 of man. At every step of progress manhood is more and 
 more a vital issue. Culture is not religion; no matter how 
 complete and beautiful, it is culture, and nothing else. 
 Nevertheless, as it advances, it increases its capacity to 
 assimilate with Christian virtue and be absorbed in its in 
 comparably higher excellence. Now, in this respect, the 
 university can accomplish much for learning and piety by 
 the spirit animating its efforts. If selfishness of intellect 
 is here engendered, if a cold and carping criticism is en 
 couraged, if the disguises and deceits of bigotry are allowed, 
 the effect is inevitably hurtful to both education and relig 
 ion. Is it nothing to display an open-handed hospitality to 
 all truth? Is it nothing to mediate between antagonistic 
 elements, to reconcile hostile forces, to draw men together 
 in the unity of a scholarly temper, and in the bonds of in 
 tellectual brotherliness ? Is it nothing to promote humility 
 of judgment? Is it not, indeed, a great thing to feel that 
 somewhat of the mind of St. Paul may be ours, when, in 
 the consciousness of his manifold gifts, he declared that he 
 was a debtor to all mankind ? 
 
 Indirectly, then, as well as directly, the university may 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 79 
 
 stimulate men to the practice of that "charity" which, in 
 the realm of learning no less than in the realm of Chris 
 tianity, is the "greatest" It can help men to be brethren. 
 In our day, what humiliating conflicts between men of let 
 ters are going on! No one supposes that these struggles 
 of opinion can be arrested; but the bitterness of the strife 
 might be ended, for a debate need not be a duel. Right 
 here the university has an open door of usefulness; for it 
 is not what this or that branch of knowledge is in itself, nor 
 what the professions or industrial interests are in them 
 selves, but what they are united as auxiliaries to the growth 
 of society and to the completeness of manhood, that decides 
 their ultimate value. By appreciating this inter-relation 
 ship of all intellectual activities, and blending them in fel 
 lowship, the university may assume the leadership of mind. 
 To combine, as far as practicable, the working brain, and 
 the working heart, and the working hand, of this disjointed 
 
 O O ~J 
 
 world is one of the worthiest of achievements. It is media 
 tion, and therefore godlike. The human heart has been 
 sadly dissevered from intellect, so that our truest organ of 
 vision has been well-nigh lost; but this spirit restores it to 
 its rightful place in the university. Men cannot love the 
 truth and not love humanity. If this genial sympathy rule 
 the university, one of the effects will be the education of 
 well-bred intellects. Such minds are always rare. A thor 
 oughly well-bred intellect is the perfection of good-breeding; 
 and the university ought to make sure, at least, of this ad 
 mirable product. An intellectual bully is the extreme of 
 scholarly degradation; but is this odious sight uncommon in 
 our time ? Delicate refinement in unison with sturdy vigor, 
 tenderness lending its grace to heroism, noble magnanimity 
 side by side with unswerving integrity, truthfulness com 
 pact like a rock, and beauty garlanding the bare massiveness 
 these are the authentic seals of university work. In pro- 
 
80 YANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 moting this unity of culture, the university arrays itself 
 against all sectionalism; it encourages internationally, and 
 widens one s country beyond its shores. Nor is this the 
 sum of its blessings. By teaching men how much they have 
 in common, by awakening in them the sense of harmony in 
 all the varieties of knowledge, by honoring every kind of 
 educated mind, by inclosing with its emblematic girdle every 
 interest of cultivated society, it facilitates our progress to 
 ward that holy unity which is so touchingly symbolized in 
 the words, " One fold and one shepherd" 
 
 Of late years the disposition to extend the sphere of 
 education has been intensely active. It is a marked and an 
 energetic impulse; and though, like all impulses, it has been 
 at times fitful and wayward, yet it is a movement in the 
 right direction. Without doubt, it has vitalized the pursuits 
 of knowledge by the introduction of more generous sym 
 pathies and a freer range of activity. It has added new 
 territories to the old domain; and while the mountain sum 
 mits are no loftier, the table-land has been raised higher. 
 Of course, there have been hot discussions and sharp dissen 
 sions. Classical scholars, mathematicians, scientists, meta 
 physicians, the advocates of modern languages, have joined 
 in the strife regiments of the same army confronting one 
 another; but the conflict can be only temporary. It is a 
 question, at last, of mere relativity and methodic adjust 
 ment. The instincts of cultivated intellect may be trusted 
 to settle this debate; for if any thing in this world may be 
 relied on to regulate itself by the principles of sound philos 
 ophy, it is education. 
 
 Let us take an illustrative example. If we approach the 
 human mind from the material world, we gain access through 
 the avenues of the senses to its awaiting faculties; and on 
 this ground mathematics and physical science have the ar 
 gument on their side. On the other hand, if we start from 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 81 
 
 the opposite point and advance to the more spiritual instincts 
 and sensibilities, classical language has the force of logic in 
 its favor. It is a thing of method, no more. It is initial, 
 and not final; preparatory, and not ultimate. The occult 
 forces, which are latent in each individual, are subsequently 
 evoked, and these determine the kind and extent of future 
 development. So far, then, as one s personality is concerned, 
 these invaluable modes of cultivating the mind are mainly 
 tentative, their virtue lying in this fact, that they tend to 
 give a student the consciousness of his capacity, and test 
 his power to turn that capacity into practical ability. 
 Aside from this, whether you. take the intellect as operating 
 through the senses or the sensibilities, it is most wisely 
 trained by respecting its reciprocal action in these two dis 
 tinct forms of thought. Unlike as they seem, they draw 
 nearer together as they advance toward the goal of com 
 pleted culture. Pascal was all the better in his " Thoughts" 
 and "Provincial Letters" for his achievements in science, 
 and Chalmers was the sublimer in his "Astronomical Dis 
 courses" for his knowledge of mathematics. One may at 
 tend Newton in his pathway to the Infinite, or Milton as he 
 soars in his "singing robes" to heights untouched before, 
 but in each case vastness of conception and grandeur of 
 sentiment exalt the spirit. 
 
 Viewing the subject of education in one light, we have a 
 single ideal; looking at it under other aspects, it has sev 
 eral ideals. If we accept the former, the mind, in its 
 structure, in its self-contained powers, in its philosophy of 
 growth, is the predominant thought; if the latter, the man 
 in all his relations is the object of contemplation. Now, 
 what appears best from one of these stand-points may not 
 appear best from the other. The intellect and the man are 
 not always on the same level. They touch different spheres; 
 they often inhabit unlike worlds. Taste works one way 
 
YANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1375. 
 
 and power another. Capacity has certain characteristics, 
 and positive ability very dissimilar features. At times we 
 see a great manhood by the partial forfeiture of intellectual 
 development, and then again we see intellect draining off 
 the vital resources of manhood; so that we cannot uni 
 formly correlate the mind and the man. If this be true, it 
 should teach us caution, lest we overestimate the absolute 
 benefits of specific methods of education to the exclusion 
 of all other instrumentalities. Until we get a comprehen 
 sive knowledge of the human mind, we must have conflict 
 ing ideals of education. Meanwhile, it is wisdom to be as 
 liberal as possible, and to show the utmost cordiality in 
 welcoming all modes and means of culture. The waters of 
 the ocean rise into graceful clouds, float in vapory wreaths, 
 bend in the rainbow, lie in long, level lines over the setting 
 sun, moisten the lower air, and descend in nightly dews, and 
 so make firmament and atmosphere a sea of blessing; while 
 yet the same ocean, undiminished in fullness and unabated 
 in majesty, bears the products of commerce around the 
 
 globe. 
 
 When, therefore, we try to measure the final force of 
 education, the scholar is lost in the man. Modes and 
 methods disappear, as food and air vanish out of the blood. 
 What remains is what has been assimilated: bone and mus 
 cle, heat in the lungs, light in the eye these are results. 
 Of this, then, we may rest assured, that only noble men can 
 do noble work; and to have this nobility, w^e must give 
 truth an ample sphere such a one as embraces every ele 
 ment of freedom and every constituent of magnanimity. 
 Faith in men as they are must precede faith in men as they 
 may become, and this faith is the soul of education. Raise 
 your platform a few inches, and where are your multitudi 
 nous distinctions ? Whether the flash of the lightning and 
 the roll of the thunder are above or below you is a matter 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 83 
 
 of altitude. If you shut up utility within the pitiful in- 
 closure of earthly greed and gain, you put it beyond the 
 pale of philosophy. So, too, when you confine heauty in 
 the circle of esthetics, you destroy half its charms. Far 
 wiser were the Greeks. Winckelmann says that "the best 
 workman in the most humble craft might succeed in render 
 ing his name immortal; and we are told that the Greeks 
 were accustomed to pray the gods that their memories 
 might never die. You may ask of utility, " Why was this 
 waste made?" with the same sort of pretext that you ask it 
 of beauty, and in each case the question comes from the heart 
 of Judas. Utility may be spiritual, as well as worldly; so 
 may beauty. Each is capable of visibility and invisibility. 
 Both may do God s work; and this is the stamp of their 
 excellence; for the skill and toil that prepared the alabaster 
 box of ointment have their place and reward in God s king 
 dom, as well as the tenderness of Mary when she made it 
 an offering to her Lord. 
 
 How wisely, how beautifully the Lord Jesus reconciled 
 these seeming contrarieties! You may view him as coming 
 to man on the two sides of his nature, the spiritual and the 
 material. Each of these his hand touched; against each 
 of them his holy heart throbbed. Our twofold life and its 
 strange interblendings were ever under his thoughtful eye; 
 nor did he for an instant overlook the needs of the one or 
 of the other. Man, in the serene light of his omniscience, 
 was the fallen image of God and the fallen image of the 
 universe. Inasmuch as the two are closely and vitally in 
 terlaced, and are in union for the sake of a union higher 
 than we now understand, he gave to each its rightful place 
 and just consideration. To restore him to moral law, that 
 he might know, and love, and serve God as his Father; to 
 restore him to physical law, that he might possess and en 
 joy the material universe as his home and empire, he taught, 
 
84 VANDEKBILT UNIYEESITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 labored, healed, suffered, died. Drawing near to man in 
 that large section of his nature which language represents, 
 and of which it is the only interpreter, yo.u can easily see 
 why St. John should designate him as the " Word" Nor 
 can language ever need an advocate while that first chapter 
 of the fourth Gospel stands in the forefront of Christian evi 
 dences. Apart from its immediate and divine purpose, it is 
 an unanswerable argument in behalf of the profound study 
 of language, whether regarded as a means of outward com 
 munication or as an introversive instrument to quicken and 
 call forth the deepest intuitions of our moral being. 
 
 Turn to another aspect of the Redeemer s life. The 
 " Word " was also the Worker, and in the same breath he 
 spoke of "words" and "works" as though they were one. 
 One indeed they were in him, but to us they belong to dif 
 ferent realms. To show his infinite love for man, as dwell 
 ing on the earth, subjected to sorrow, and tortured by evils, 
 and preyed on by demons, he wrought miracles to bless, 
 and cheer, and save; out of his living heart flowed those 
 streams of beneficence that watered his native land, as out 
 of his dying heart there afterward issued the blood of a 
 world s redemption. Not for the sake of their evidential 
 force only, nor for the sole benefit of those immediately 
 interested, did he multiply bread, and heal the sick, and 
 walk the waters of the Galilean sea. Beyond their instant 
 purpose they had a. far-reaching intent, and in this end 
 they expressed their highest import ; for he designed to 
 teach that these wonders contained seminal influences 
 which, in other climes and under fairer skies, should ger 
 minate a hundred-fold. Miracles were they then, and 
 their moral might and glory are prolonged even yet. 
 Wherever art and science call to their aid the supreme 
 agencies of natural law, and employ them in a ministration 
 of Christian sympathy and helpfulness, there the divine 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. So 
 
 Spirit in these miracles is repeated; there the ancient 
 majesty of goodness comes back again unalienated ; and 
 there the eye softens into the same sweet stillness, and the 
 ready hand imitates its holy Exemplar. 
 
 Believe it, friends, believe it : the Son of God is yet in 
 our midst. In his house on this earth are " many mansions" 
 and they are luminous with his presence. See all around 
 you scientific agriculture lessening toil and cheapening food ; 
 see machinery increasing production ; see the auxiliaries to 
 industry; see the progress of the medical art in soothing 
 pain, checking epidemics, and rescuing men from the arms 
 of death; and see the myriad ships that sail in the re 
 splendent wake of those footsteps that trod the waves of 
 the Lake of Gennesarct. "I will not leave you comfortless; 
 and here is one of the manifold fulfillments. Here, too, is 
 the harmony between those studies and pursuits which 
 consult the wants of the inward and outward man; and 
 here, finally, is the highest of proofs that education and 
 culture must be many-sided to do Christ s work in Christ s 
 world. 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that we have made small 
 progress in attaining this ideal. Unfortunately for the 
 advancement of our race, the mass of men even our ad 
 vanced thinkers are as fatally bent on rejecting Christ in 
 providence as in the Cross of Calvary. " What have ive to 
 do with thec, thou Jesus of Nazareth?" is the oft-uttered cry 
 of the spirit possessing the carnal mind. Sometimes, in 
 the blind homage paid to material law, then in the fierce 
 struggles of worldly competition, now in the frigid conclu 
 sions of logic, and then in the outbursts of frantic passion, 
 this rebellious exclamation repeats its profane unbelief. 
 Alluding to certain evils connected with " Progress," Froude 
 speaks of " a public confession of despair of human nature;" 
 nor indeed can we see how any other conclusion than "de- 
 
86 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1375. 
 
 spair" can be reached when Christ, as the Head of human 
 ity, is disowned. Man, as the child of Providence, never 
 appeared to such advantage as now. But, amid this grow 
 ing splendor, the question forces itself on us, " What man 
 ner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?" 
 
 "The ivinds and the sea" do truly "obey him;" nay, all 
 things are beginning to bow down under his lordly rule. 
 Find man where you will, he is girded with power. In the 
 magnificent laboratory of the universe he unlooses new and 
 prodigious forces to do his proud behests. Backed by in 
 ventions and discoveries, he has boundless scope for every 
 sort of intelligent energy, so that he has well-nigh corre 
 lated himself with the globe he occupies. But, after all, 
 what is he? Look for your answer in .the gross worldliness 
 everywhere abounding; in the fearful decay of obedience to 
 authority, of loyalty to love, of fidelity in marriage, of 
 trustworthiness in business, of reverence for God. If you 
 had the making of a man to suit these times to fight his 
 way to the high places of ambitious success, and win the 
 renown of earthly triumph you would give him wondrous 
 activity of intellect, its powers compacted in an animal 
 brain, every sense and every nerve disciplined to serve a 
 despotic will. This should be his outfit : the cunning of 
 the fox, the stealthiness of the snake, the eye of the eagle, 
 the spring of the tiger, the strength of the lion ; and these 
 the weapons of his organized fatality. 
 
 "What manner of man is this"-- this representative man 
 of the saddest aspects of the nineteenth century? Study 
 him, probe him, and then say whether art and science are 
 not creating mind and muscle they cannot control; whether 
 government is not liberating a force too audacious and too 
 reckless for it to hold in check; whether the very successes 
 of modern civilization are not arousing appetites and lusts 
 which are too brutal for the puny arm. of its restraint. 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGUEATION. 87 
 
 Fitly and most worthily were the words " What manner of 
 man is this?" spoken of Jesus Christ. But this ideal Man 
 tell us of what virgin s heart he has been born; in what 
 manger cradled; in what lowly toil reared; in what Naza 
 reth silently nurtured. What sacramental Jordan baptized 
 him? What wilderness brought him face to face with the 
 tempter? With what woe and wretchedness, sorrow and 
 shame, sin and guilt, has he been in long and weary conflict, 
 bearing burdens not his own, and quickening and inspiring 
 the hopeless spirit of humanity? Where are his Tabor, 
 and Olivet, and Calvary? 
 
 But let no man despair the modern Samson may commit 
 suicide, but he can never throw down the fabric of Chris 
 tian civilization. It is humiliating to behold the decay of 
 sentiment, to see honor losing even its ancient prestige, and 
 to witness the growth of a debasing materialism in the very 
 heart of our most sacred interests. Notwithstanding all 
 these painful spectacles, the advanced portions of the race 
 have built themselves upon high vantage-ground, and never 
 can they surrender the massive work of bitter centuries. 
 Happily enough, the dangers from outside barbarism are 
 extinct. The womb of the old Gothic forests is childless, 
 and the breast of the Danube gives no nurture. The evils 
 of the age are among ourselves, plain and patent; and, as 
 they are internal and simply domestic, they can be met and 
 managed. Despite of adverse signs, Christianity has been 
 too long in the world, and too severely tested, to be perma 
 nently injured by any assault. It has taken hold of the 
 instincts of the race; it has ascended from reasoning into 
 reason itself; and though it may now be approaching an 
 other epoch of trial, it can be but an epoch in the eternity 
 of its grandeur. 
 
 Is not this an hour of inspiriting hope to your hearts? On 
 yesterday, amid the sanctities of the Sabbath, Ave dedicated 
 
88 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 this temple of learning to God. To-day, under fairest aus 
 pices, we inaugurate its work among men. Among the 
 many witnesses to the presence and power of Christian civ 
 ilization, the VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY this morning takes its 
 place and begins its career. Whether it has "five talents" 
 or less, committed to its keeping, none of us can know. The 
 supreme thing is to acknowledge God in what we have, and 
 put our stewardship to diligent uses. As yet the institu 
 tion has no history; but yesterday and to-day ought to 
 be prophecies; nor could it write better annals than to fulfill 
 these prefigurations. The last years of this century are 
 hastening to make themselves memorable in endowing insti 
 tutions of learning.- A new era has commenced in this 
 order of beneficence; yet, among the instances of thought 
 ful bounty, not one has been better timed, nor more consid 
 erate of urgent need, nor more gratefully appreciated, not- 
 likely to issue in larger good, than the munificence which 
 has established this University. 
 
 If one follows the River Rhone from the Mediterranean 
 to Lyons, from Lyons up the valley, and thence through 
 the district of the Jura to the rocky gorge of the mountain- 
 chain where the turbid stream forces its passage, and still 
 on to the junction of the Arne, and farther yet till he sees 
 it rush in proud swiftness through the Lake of Geneva, and 
 on again to the western side of Mount St. Gothard, among 
 the Sw T iss Alps, he reaches at last the Valley of the Rhone. 
 There the glaciers lift themselves to the sky; and even on 
 those summits, where winter chills the heavens, huge masses 
 of snow are piled up, sublimity crowning sublimity, and 
 splendor overflashing splendor. Far down underneath those 
 compacted blocks of ice, the River Rhone glides from the 
 solitude of its source, and gathers from frost and snow- the 
 impulse of its resistless waters. Like that river, the course 
 of great events has often started in desolate places ; like 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INATJGUKATION. 89 
 
 it, the stream of civilization has taken its rise, at times, 
 among dreary mountains and remote fastnesses, and flowed 
 long and far before its current blessed the world. Not so 
 with the fountain which this day gushes forth in our midst; 
 its waters are full of warmth and fertility, and they roll on 
 ward to the swell of their own gladness. And may it ever 
 be, as the river which St. John saw in the vision of Patmos, 
 "dear as crystal* proceeding out of the tlirone of God and of 
 the Lamb /" 
 
 After another performance by the Band, the Installation of 
 the Faculties took place. 
 
 Bishop McTYEiRE, as President of the Board of Trust, ad 
 dressed the Faculties, all the members of which stood during 
 his Address, at the close of which he delivered over the keys 
 of the University to L. C. GARLAND, LL.D., Chancellor of the 
 University. The Bishop spoke as follows: 
 
 BISHOP McTYEIRE S ADDRESS TO THE FACULTIES. 
 
 It is with great satisfaction we approach this hour of 
 installation of the Faculties of the University, which, 
 though it be important, will be brief. His Excellency, the 
 Governor, closely outlined the scope of our University. 
 The two speakers who followed him declared the spirit in 
 which we propose to carry on the University. It remains 
 now for us to formally invest those chosen as instructors, 
 teachers, professors. Thus far all is dust convenient and 
 elegant forms of dust it may be. Now is to be breathed 
 into it the breath of life, that the University may become a 
 living soul. It is to these scientific and literary gentlemen 
 we look to give character to the University. For two years 
 we have been building, piling one stone and one story upon 
 another. Pari passu we have been gathering our Faculties. 
 The Board has been censured by some for delay. The first 
 professor was elected two years ago the last one, two 
 
90 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 weeks ago. All that time the eyes of the Trustees have 
 been going through the land to find men suitable for intrust 
 ing this work to. They felt that they could not afford to 
 make a mistake in this matter. The time will come when 
 the fact that any man is connected with the Faculty of the 
 VANDERBILT will give assurance of his ability. Then the 
 institution will make the reputation of its professors; but 
 now the professors must make the reputation of the insti 
 tution. Our four Faculties are now complete. They are 
 before you, and I proceed now, by the authority and in the 
 name of the Board of Trust, to install them. 
 
 Here the Bishop turned to his right, and addressed the 
 gentlemen, who rose and stood: 
 
 MR. CHANCELLOR AND GENTLEMEN OF THE FACULTIES: We 
 congratulate ourselves that we have been able to procure 
 your services. I will say of VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY as the 
 King of Macedon said when his son, Alexander, was born, 
 writing to Aristotle: "We count ourselves happy, for that 
 a son has been born to us at a time when you may be his 
 instructor." We think it providential and fortunate for this 
 Universit}^, which has sprung out of a benefaction which 
 we accept and acknowledge with gratitude, that it has come 
 to us in the South when we may enjoy the benefits of your 
 acknowledged ability as instructors and governors of youth. 
 This high responsibility the Board of Trustees would now 
 devolve upon you, in full confidence of your ability and of 
 your fidelity ; and, in token of this, I now commit to you 
 the keys of the University. 
 
 Chancellor GARLAND responded as follows : 
 CHANCELLOR G-ARLAND S RESPONSE TO BISHOP McTYEIRE. 
 
 PRESIDENT MCTYEIRE: This is a day which many of us 
 now present have hoped for, and prayed for, and labored 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGUKATION. 91 
 
 f or a day on which we should see inaugurated, under the 
 patronage of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, an 
 institution where, in its halls and academic groves, we 
 might see Learning and Religion walk hand in hand, the one 
 shedding its enlightening, and the other its benign, influ 
 ences over the length and breadth of the land; and where our 
 sons might receive the largest intellectual culture without 
 detriment to their moral habits and religious sympathies; 
 and where full provision should be made for professional as 
 well as academic studies, so that in no part of their train 
 ing should our sons pass from under the fostering care of 
 the Church. 
 
 You know, sir, on that cold and dismal winter day of 
 January, 1872, in the basement of the Second -street 
 Church in Memphis, where you and I, and others, were 
 assembled in convention for devising the ways and means 
 of establishing such an institution, how gloomy was the 
 prospect of success. How hopeless did it appear to make 
 an appeal to a down-trodden and impoverished people for 
 the sum of five hundred thousand dollars, which was de 
 clared to be the least sum necessary for the incipiency of 
 the measure, and how absolutely chimerical to expect from 
 the same source the million of dollars requisite to crown it 
 with success ! But, sir, there was in our midst one spirit 
 which did not quail, one breast which hope did not forsake; 
 and if there be any man whose portrait deserves to hang 
 on these walls by the side of that which has just been un 
 veiled, it is that of the wise, the prudent, the brave, the 
 gentle, and the now sainted, A. L. P. Green. Without him, 
 we should have postponed, probably to an indefinite period, 
 the matter in hand; but he encouraged us by undertaking, 
 with the assistance of an agent within the bounds of each 
 patronizing Conference, to raise the minimum sum referred 
 to. If mortal man could have succeeded in this business, 
 
92 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 he would so have done ; but the result proved how utterly 
 hopeless was the task how inadequate our resources for 
 such an enterprise. Yet, God s favor was upon the work. 
 He was devising means, of which we knew not, for its 
 accomplishment; and, when all other resources failed, He 
 put it into the heart of our noble patron, whose name the 
 institution bears, to come to our relief, and to do for our 
 afflicted people what they were not able to do for them 
 selves. But for his timely aid, none of us present on that 
 wintry day would have lived to see what our eyes this day 
 behold. 
 
 Were our munificent benefactor present, I would tell him 
 how by this act he has implanted himself in the affections 
 of more than a million of grateful people, and how from 
 their hearts go up daily supplications that the blessings of 
 God may rest upon him that he may be preserved in 
 health and happiness long to live, that his last days may 
 be his brightest and his best, and that when he shall be 
 called to pay that last debt which we all owe to nature, he 
 may, through the infinite merit of Christ, be admitted to 
 an inheritance incorruptible, and that fadeth not away, in 
 heaven. But, sir, this magnificent donation lays peculiar 
 responsibilities upon a variety of persons responsibilities 
 upon you, the Board of Trust, of which it is not proper 
 that I should speak ; responsibilities upon the community 
 in the midst of which this institution is located, of which I 
 shall not speak now, as you have expressed the wish that 
 I should do so more at large on some other occasion; re 
 sponsibilities upon these young men who have come to 
 enjoy the first fruits of this liberality, and of which I shall 
 have many opportunities of speaking in the future; and, 
 lastly, responsibilities upon the several Faculties of this 
 University, which you have just now in form imposed, by 
 the delivery to them of the usual symbols of authority. So 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 93 
 
 late, however, is the hour, and so wearied are the audience, 
 that I will speak no farther of these responsibilities than to 
 say that w r e are all fully aware of the difficulty and delicacy 
 of the task imposed upon us. But, with your forbearance 
 toward our infirmities, with the sympathy and good-will of 
 the public, and, above all, with the aid of Almighty God, 
 without whose blessing nothing great or good can be 
 accomplished, we enter upon our duties hopefully and 
 cheerfully, promising fidelity to the trusts committed to us, 
 and pledging our best exertions to make this University all 
 that its founder and friends desire it to be. 
 
 After the Installation, a part of the following Inauguration 
 Ode, composed for the occasion by the Rev. A. A. LIPSCOMB, 
 D.D., was sung by the Choir, in Old Hundred: 
 
 INAUGURATION ODE. 
 
 Beneath the temple s stately height, 
 Midst pomp of gold midst pearls of light, 
 While priestly chant with incense blends, 
 The crown of empire lowly bends; 
 The toil that awed the listening air 
 Now vocal breathes with praise and prayer, 
 And flames ne er seen in sun or sky 
 Their splendors flash on Israel s eye. 
 
 II. 
 
 The heavenward Alps, sublime and lone, 
 Echo but faint the thunder s tone; 
 The mighty sea but rolls to shore 
 The dying cadence of its roar; 
 But priests and people blessings share 
 Far richer than their monarch s prayer; 
 Though myriad hearts in one may yearn, 
 Answers more full from God return. 
 
 in. 
 
 Hath not this house been reared by Thee? 
 Thy thought, thy grace, naught else we see; 
 
94 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Thy hand did seal its corner-stone, 
 Long waiting till thy favor shone: 
 Take now thine own, and evermore 
 Enrich it from thy bounty s store; 
 Each hour shed light upon our way, 
 Each step advance tow rd perfect day. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Earth, thou footstool of the Throne, 
 This glory thine thine all alone; 
 Thy throb in air, thy throb in sea, 
 Our pulses ask this day of thee, 
 That in the thrill of gladdened heart 
 Our praise of thine may be a part, 
 While, rolling far, thy anthems tell 
 What raptures high within us swell. 
 
 v. 
 
 Not like the stones which Jesus taught 
 Should prophets be, with judgments fraught, 
 If scornful men should doom his name 
 With curse of silence born of shame: 
 Nay, every rock within these walls 
 Shall answer back when Jesus calls, 
 Each marble block a tablet be 
 Of laws proclaimed, Lord, by thee. 
 
 Here arts and sciences shall meet, 
 Bright, festal hours, their coming greet; 
 Here Faith shall stand, archangel fair, 
 Her diadem of grandeur wear; 
 Here Truth, a pilgrim wandering far, 
 Shall tranquil rest neath Hope s fixed star; 
 And Beauty touch with sandaled feet 
 The turf with Sharon s fragrance sweet. 
 
 VII. 
 
 We bless thee to thy toiling hours 
 Mid fertile fields and fruitful showers; 
 We bless thee to the love that hastes 
 To barren sands and arid wastes: 
 Go noblest types of manhood rear, 
 Each brother-man to man more dear; 
 Go fill thy measure of renown, 
 Then wreathe around the cross thy crown. 
 
 [1875. 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 95 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Alma Mater of the years 
 Beyond our day of toil and tears; 
 Alma Mater of a race 
 Whose future glows with largest grace, 
 Gird on the old heroic might, 
 Battle forever for the right, 
 And dare to do and dare to be 
 Whate er is great, majestic, free! 
 
 At the conclusion of the Ode, this dispatch from Commo 
 dore VANDERBILT was read : 
 
 NEW YORK, Oct. 4. To Bishop H. N. MCTYEIRE : We send greeting to 
 you all. May your institution be ever blessed by the great Governor of 
 all things. C. VANDERBILT. 
 
 The dispatch was received by the audience with great en 
 thusiasm. 
 
 The Benediction was pronounced by Bishop DOGGETT. 
 
 RESOLUTIONS OF THE BOARD OF TRUST AND THE 
 FACULTIES. 
 
 AT a meeting of the Trustees and Faculties, held imme 
 diately after the Inauguration exercises, Bishop McTYEiRE 
 presided, and the Rev. ROBERT A. YOUNG, D.D., acted as Sec 
 retary. 
 
 On motion of the Rev. C. D. OLIVER, D.D., seconded by T. 
 A. ATCHISON, M.D., it was resolved that the entire proceedings 
 of Sunday and Monday be published in book-form, embracing 
 the Sermons of Bishops DOGGETT and WIGHTMAN, the Ad 
 dresses of Drs. DEEMS and LIPSCOMB, the Speeches of Bishop 
 MCTYEIRE and Dr. GARLAND, the original Odes, etc. 
 
96 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. .\isiz. 
 
 On motion of E. S. JOYNES, LL.D., a Committee of Publi 
 cation was ordered to be appointed. 
 
 On motion of Dr. JOYNES, the thanks of the Trustees and 
 Faculties were tendered to the Chief Marshal and his staff, 
 and to the Organist and Choir. 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 97 
 
 CHARACTER AND DESIGN OF THE BIBLICAL 
 DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 BY THOMAS 0. SUMMERS, D.D., 
 
 Professor of Systematic Theology. 
 
 THE character and design of the Biblical Department of the 
 University were set forth in a Discourse delivered in the Chapel 
 of the University on Sunday afternoon, October 17, 1875, as 
 
 follows : 
 
 " Search the Scriptures." John v. 39. 
 
 In entering upon the duties which lie before us, we find 
 it necessary to vindicate the high rank to which we have 
 assigned the science which is to engage our attention. 
 
 It has become quite common to put Theology in contrast 
 with Science, confining the latter to natural phenomena ar 
 ranged in systematic order. But there is no good reason 
 for this. Theology is as much a science as Biology, or any 
 other logia which engages the philosophic mind. 
 
 Our great lexicographer defines Theology, "The science 
 of God and divine things the science which teaches the 
 existence, character, and attributes of God, his laws and 
 government, the doctrines we are to believe, and the duties 
 we are to practice." 
 
 This is the general view of Theology. But this science 
 is divided into Natural Theology and Revealed Theology. 
 
 Natural Theology teaches what may be known of God by 
 7 
 
98 VAXDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1375. 
 
 the light of nature. Revealed Theology teaches us what we 
 may know of God by the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 The term is used in both a general and a specific sense. 
 
 In the general sense, it embraces all that we comprehend 
 in divinity, or religion whether natural or revealed. 
 
 In the specific sen.se, it is one department of the great sci 
 ence of religion, which comprehends Theology in the proper 
 sense, which treats of the being and perfections of God; 
 Christology, which treats of the person and work of Christ; 
 Pneumatology, which treats of the person and work of the 
 Holy Spirit; Anthropology, which treats of the nature, ori 
 gin, duty, and destiny of man; Hamartiology, which treats 
 of sin; Soteriology, which treats of salvation; Eschatol- 
 ogy, which treats of the four last things, Death, Judgment, 
 Heaven, and Hell; not to note numerous subdivisions, such 
 as Cosmology, Angelology, Demonology, etc., which treat 
 respectively of the World, Angels, Demons, etc. 
 
 It is obvious that there can be no sharply-defined logical 
 division of the Science of Divinity into departments which 
 will mutually exclude each other. Any attempt at this 
 would be puerile and vain. 
 
 From the importance of the subjects comprehended in 
 Theology, it is clear that this is the Science of Sciences. 
 It subordinates all other sciences to itself. Like Emerson s 
 "Representative Man," it subsidizes all besides. Even the 
 Atheist, who ransacks creation to prove that there is no 
 God, is made to yield his quota to the Theologian, who has 
 the true philosopher s stone, with whose touch he turns all 
 the baser metals to gold. 
 
 Mr. Locke, therefore, is justified in his eulogy of this 
 sublime science. " Theology," he says, "is a science in 
 comparably above all the rest. It is the comprehension of 
 all other knowledge directed to its true end that noble 
 study which is every man s duty, and every one that can 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 99 
 
 be called a rational creature is capable of. This is that sci 
 ence which would truly enlarge men s minds were it studied, 
 or permitted to be studied, everywhere, and with that free 
 dom and love of truth and charity which it teaches." 
 
 When we say that Theology teaches the being and per 
 fections of God, we do not affirm that natural religion, apart 
 from divine revelation, demonstrates the existence and at 
 tributes of a Supreme Being. This subject will in future 
 engage our serious attention. 
 
 Our business is primarily with revealed religion collater 
 ally only with natural religion. Revealed religion is positive, 
 authoritative, demonstrative; and Hagenbach has well ob 
 served, "It can never be the object of a positive religion to 
 prove the existence of God. inasmuch as it always presup 
 poses the knowledge that there is a God." 
 
 There is nothing so peculiar in our condition, living in an 
 age long posterior to the miraculous inauguration of the 
 Christian religion, which makes our case essentially differ 
 ent from that of the Apostles and Fathers of the Church. 
 They assumed, and we also assume, as a fundamental fact, 
 the being of God. As Hagenbach says, "Christianity stood 
 on the basis of the Old Testament idea of God now puri 
 fied and carried beyond the limits of national interests as 
 a personal God, w T ho, as the Creator of hea.ven and earth, 
 rules over the human race; who had given the law, sent 
 the prophets, and manifested himself most perfectly, and in 
 the fullness of his personal presence in his Son Jesus Christ. 
 Consequently, the believing Christian needed as little as his 
 Jewish contemporary a proof of the being of God. But 
 in the farther development of the Christian system, it be 
 came necessary, on the one hand, that Christians should 
 defend themselves (apologetically) against the charge of 
 Atheism, which was frequently brought against them; on 
 the other hand, they had to demonstrate to the heathen 
 
100 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 (polemically) that their pagan worship was false, and con- 
 s equently in its very foundation was a denial of the living 
 God (Atheism). When, therefore, the writings of the 
 Fathers contain any thing like a proof of the existence of 
 God, it is either the spontaneous expression of religious 
 feeling in a rhetorical and hymnological form, or it is inti 
 mately connected with other definitions about the nature of 
 God, with the doctrine of his unity, or with the doctrine 
 concerning the creation and government of the world. But 
 the Fathers of this period generally recurred to the innate 
 knowledge of God testimonium animce, u-foq ff>j.sp!w.rc/.6q 
 which (as they thought) could be traced even in the hea 
 then, and on the purity of which the knowledge of God 
 depends." 
 
 That is to say, they held that the pure in heart can see 
 God. "God is seen," says Theophilus, "by those who can 
 see him, when they open the eyes of their soul. All men 
 have eyes, but the eyes of some are blinded, that they can 
 not see the light of the sun. Thus it is with thee, man! 
 The eyes of thy soul are darkened by sin, even by thy 
 sinful actions. Like a bright. mirror, man must have a pure 
 soul. If there be any rust on the mirror, man cannot see 
 the reflection of his countenance in it; likewise, if there be 
 sin in man, he cannot see God." 
 
 This is as much as to say that, apart from divine tuition, 
 no man can acquire the knowledge of God, because all men 
 are born in sin. This is what the primitive Fathers meant 
 by "the innate knowledge of God." 
 
 "With this," as TLigenbach says, "they connected, but in 
 a popular rather than in a strictly scientific form, what is 
 commonly called, The Physico-theological, or teleological, 
 proof, inferring the existence of a Creator from the works 
 of Creation. More artificial proofs, such as the cosmological 
 and the ontological, were unknown in this period. Even 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 101 
 
 the more profound thinkers of the Alexandrian school 
 frankly acknowledged the impossibility of a strict proof of 
 the existence of God, and the necessity of a revelation on 
 God s part," 
 
 This is not the place for a discussion of the necessity of 
 divine revelation. On this point we could furnish abundant 
 testimony from the ancients as well as the moderns heathen 
 philosophers as well as Christian divines and the foremost 
 laymen as well. Thus Lord Bacon, in his " Prayer, or 
 Psalm" a production unsurpassed in sublimity by any 
 thing uninspired uses this language: "Thy creatures have 
 been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have 
 sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens; but I have 
 found thee in thy temples." 
 
 Milton, who was a theologian, though not a preacher, 
 says : " True religion is the true worship and service of God, 
 learned and believed from the word of God only. No man 
 or angel can know how God would be worshiped and served 
 unless God reveal it: he hath declared and taught us in the 
 Holy Scriptures by inspired ministers, and in the Gospel by 
 his own Son and his Apostles, with strictest command to 
 reject all other traditions or additions whatsoever." 
 
 Macaulay, in his review of Ranke s "History of the 
 Popes," says : " Natural religion is not a progressive science. 
 All divine truth is, according to the doctrine of the Protest 
 ant Churches, revealed in certain books; nor can all the 
 discourses of all the philosophers in the world add a single 
 verse to any of these books. It is plain, therefore, that in 
 divinity there cannot be a progress analogous to that which 
 is constantly taking place in pharmacy, geology, and navi 
 gation. A Christian of the fifth century with a Bible is 
 neither better nor worse situated than a Christian of the 
 nineteenth century with a Bible, candor and natural acute- 
 ness being supposed equal. It matters not at all that the 
 
102 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 compass, printing, steam, gas, vaccination, and a thousand 
 other discoveries and inventions, which were unknown in 
 the fifth century, are familiar to the nineteenth. None of 
 these discoveries and inventions has the smallest bearing 
 on the question whether man is justified by faith alone, or 
 whether the invocation of saints is an orthodox practice." 
 
 Thus the necessity of a written revelation is affirmed in 
 opposition to the proud assumptions of infidels of every 
 class; and its sufficiency, in opposition to the boasted dogma 
 of " development," whether as held by Romanist or by 
 Rationalist. The Apostle Jude found it needful to exhort 
 the Christians of his day that they "should earnestly con 
 tend for the faith once delivered unto the saints." It was 
 " delivered," as a divine revelation, and " once," that is, 
 once for all. Woe to Popes or Councils that add one jot or 
 one tittle to this perfect system of truth ! woe to Neologists 
 who diminish aught from it ! Hear the voice of prophetic 
 antiquity: "To the law and to the testimony: if they 
 speak not according to this word, it is because there is no 
 light in them/ (Isa. viii. 20.) Hear the voice of the 
 Master, as it echoes down the Christian ages: "Search the 
 Scriptures." This is the platform on which we stand. The 
 Charter of the VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY recognizes a Biblical 
 Department in this institution. The Bible, therefore, is to 
 be our great text-book. We are to teach nothing not 
 contained in it at least, nothing that is contrary to it 
 nothing that may not be directly or indirectly proved by it. 
 
 But what a task is thus exacted of us ! Biblical science 
 is theology with a witness ! It embraces all its departments. 
 
 Here is a book which we call the Bible the Book, by 
 eminence. We label it, "TiiE WORKS OF GOD." But thou 
 sands deny it this preeminence. They say it is a cunningly 
 no, not even that a stupidly devised fable as con 
 temptible as the Talmud or the Koran inferior to the Rig- 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 103 
 
 Veda or the Zend-Avesta and no more divine than the 
 Book of Mormon. Hence the necessity of Apologetics and 
 Criticism, comprehending the Evidences of Christianity and 
 Ecclesiastical History. We must prove the divine origin 
 of our religion. We can do this. By God s grace, we will 
 do this so that every student leaving these halls may say: 
 
 Should all the forms that men devise 
 Assault my faith with treacherous art, 
 
 I d call them vanity and lies, 
 
 And bind the gospel to my heart. 
 
 But this book was written in Hebrew, Chaldee, arid Hel 
 lenistic Greek. If we would know what it contains, and 
 especially if we are set to teach it to others, we must 
 either depend upon scholars who are acquainted with those 
 languages for the interpretation of the sacred oracles, or 
 we must learn the languages in which they are written, and 
 interpret them ourselves. Now, every one knows that it is 
 not necessary, in order to comprehend the plan of salvation, 
 or even to teach it to others, that we should understand 
 the sacred tongues, because, with all its defects, our incom 
 parable English version of the Scriptures, with Commen 
 taries, and other helps, will enable us to acquire the knowl 
 edge of revealed truth, and to become able ministers of the 
 New Testament. But in every age it is necessary that 
 some should be learned in the original tongues, and it can 
 not be denied that it is a great advantage to every minister 
 to be able to consult the sacred text in the very words 
 which were written by the inspiration of God. It is 
 superfluous to argue a point which all will admit none 
 more readily than those who deplore their lack of this 
 ability. Hence the necessity of Hertneneutics and Exeget- 
 ics a knowledge of the principles of interpretation and 
 their special application. 
 
 But as Theology is a science, it is necessary that the 
 
104 VAXDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 leading truths contained in the Bible scattered up and 
 down through its sixty-six books should be arranged in 
 regular order, so that their harmony, and consistency, and 
 relative importance, may be seen, and the effect of the 
 whole may be realized. There can be no Analogy of 
 Faith " without this. Hence the necessity of Systematic 
 Divinity. 
 
 But it is not enough that those who are called to the 
 sacred office should understand the word of God, and be 
 able to systematize its teachings ; they must know how to 
 impart the knowledge of the truth to others. Thus the 
 Apostle to Timothy: " Thou therefore, my son, be strong 
 in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that 
 thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same 
 commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach 
 others also." It is a great thing in a preacher to be able 
 to "speak justly, readily, clearly"- as, with epigrammatic 
 point, Mr. Wesley expresses it. To this end, there are few 
 who do not need instruction, so that they may avoid any 
 thing awkward or affected in voice and gesture, as well as 
 any improprieties in the matter of their discourses. Hence 
 the necessity of Homiletics. 
 
 But men may preach like angels, yet their ministry be 
 comparatively fruitless, because of their want of skill, or 
 tact, or zeal, in the work which belongs to their office out 
 of the pulpit. What a work is that! What a world of 
 wisdom does it require for its due performance! And how 
 many ministers are there that can preach passable sermons, 
 and yet are mere children among their parishioners! They 
 luncjle in performing the various offices of their ministry. 
 They know not how to act when called either "to the 
 house of mourning" or " to the house of feasting." Of 
 such it is frequently said, When they are in the pulpit they 
 never ought to go out of it, and when they are out of it 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INATJGUKATION. 105 
 
 they never ought to go into it. They were never properly 
 taught their duty. If they had been duly instructed be 
 fore they entered on their ministry the responsibilities of 
 the sacred office being properly impressed upon them, with 
 a divine unction qualifying them for the same-; they might 
 have proved an honor and a blessing, instead of a shame 
 and a curse, to the Church. Hence the importance of 
 Pastoral Theology. There can be no controversy about 
 the necessity of all these studies. The only question 
 which can arise concerns the time and manner in which 
 they should be pursued. In regard to this there is a differ 
 ence of opinion. 
 
 Some think that if a man is called to the work of the 
 ministry, he should enter upon it at once, and study all the 
 subjects we have named in connection with his pastoral 
 work. This may be best for some men. We are not dis 
 posed to take issue on the subject. Let those who are of 
 this mind enter upon the work in the name of their Divine 
 Employer, and study to show themseh r es approved unto 
 God, workmen that need riot to be ashamed, rightly dividing 
 the word of truth. Many of our most acceptable and most 
 successful ministers have pursued this course. We have 
 no controversy on this point. 
 
 But there are others who think that they can learn bet 
 ter with a teacher than without one -better without the 
 responsibilities and interruptions of the pastoral care than 
 with them better where they have books and other facili 
 ties for study than in places where they have them not. 
 For such men we wish to furnish the privileges and advan 
 tages which they need. 
 
 There is abundance of precedent for this. 
 
 Under the Theocracy there were the " Schools of the 
 Prophets," where the "sons of the prophets" that is, 
 their disciples were instructed in sacred lore. They were 
 
106 VAXDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 thus qualified to become instructors of the people. God 
 did not, indeed, confine himself to men thus scholastically 
 trained for those whom he employed in the sacred office 
 as Amos, for example, " was no prophet, neither was he a 
 prophet s son;" "but," says he, "I was an herdman, and a, 
 gatherer of sycamore fruit; and the Lord took me as I 
 followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, proph 
 esy unto my people Israel." It is safe to say that God 
 never will confine himself to any particular guild, or order 
 of men, when he sends forth laborers into his harvest. 
 But it is not unreasonable to suppose that those who have 
 been trained to husbandry will know better than others 
 how to wield the sickle and guide the plow. 
 
 The apostles, indeed, were not learned in Rabbinical lore 
 which is what is meant when it is said "that they were 
 unlearned and ignorant men;"* but then they had enjoyed 
 two or three years daily communion with their Master 
 had heard "the gracious words" of eternal life from his 
 own lips and finally had them all reproduced with infalli 
 ble certainty in their minds by the plenary inspiration of 
 the Holy Spirit. How small are all our acquirements, 
 though we may have sat at the feet of Gamaliel, compared 
 with their divine endowments ! The last and greatest of 
 the apostles had been thoroughly drilled in Rabbinical 
 learning and perhaps in Grecian, too but Avhat was all 
 this compared with the plenary inspiration vouchsafed to 
 him by the Holy Ghost? 
 
 Their .successors in the sacred ministry, who had not 
 their supernatural qualifications, prepared themselves for 
 their important work by a careful study of the word of 
 God. In the early Church men were trained for the min- 
 
 #"0n av&rjurrot cr/pau/iaroi. slot iial Iditirai. Wiclif : " That thei werein vnlet- 
 trid and lewid men." Tyndale : " That they were vnlerned men and laye 
 people." Cranmer: " That they were vnlerned and laye men." 
 
DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 107 
 
 istry in ecclesiastical seminaries, which were multiplied in 
 all parts of the Christian world. 
 
 During the Middle Ages monastic institutions were 
 founded for this purpose as, for example, lona, Banger, 
 Oxford, Cambridge, in the British Isles, and so on the con 
 tinent of Europe, and also in the East. 
 
 During the Dark Ages many of these institutions degen 
 erated into hot-beds of superstition, and even immorality, 
 and not a few became extinct. But at the Reformation a 
 fresh impulse was given to the cause of clerical education, 
 and the Reformers put forth strenuous efforts to supply the 
 Churches with "a godly learned ministry." The Puritans 
 were very zealous in this matter not only in the mother- 
 country, but also in America; and many are the monuments 
 of their enlightened zeal. 
 
 Mistakes, indeed, were made by all the Churches, the 
 principal of which was this: in many instances learning, or 
 a show of learning, was considered all-sufficient, and men 
 who were never converted nor called to the ministry were 
 sent forth from theological schools as pastors of the flock 
 of Christ, thus creating a prejudice against "the schools 
 of the prophets." The Methodists, who will not tolerate a 
 mere man-made ministry, naturally shared largely in this 
 prejudice. The Wesleys and their clerical associates, of 
 course, did not, as the} had been trained for the ministry 
 in one of the most renowned universities of the world; yet 
 they infinitely preferred what was stigmatized as an igno 
 rant ministry to mitered infidels and cassocked libertines, 
 not a few of whom cursed the Church in their day. But 
 they w r anted " learning and holiness combined" in those who 
 ministered in holy things. Hence John Wesley early in 
 quired what could be done for the training of the preachers. 
 Year after year the question was asked in their Conferences, 
 and the answ r er was the same : Nothing yet; when the Lord 
 
108 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. [1375. 
 
 shall send us men with means to enable us to found a sem 
 inary for preachers, then we will have one, but not before. 
 
 Wesley had a great horror of debt; and, besides, he did 
 not wish to proceed in so grave an enterprise till the path 
 of duty was made "straight and plain before his face." He 
 did not want the camp to move while the cloud rested upon 
 the ark! Earnestly did he desire to see this work under 
 taken before he finished his course; but, like Moses, he 
 came to the borders of the promised land, but was not al 
 lowed to come into its possession. How would he have 
 rejoiced if Providence had raised up for him a THOMAS 
 FARMER or a CORNELIUS VANDERBILT ! 
 
 But what was not granted to Moses was vouchsafed to 
 Joshua, Dr. Bunting arid Mr. Watson, on whom Wesley s 
 mantle fell, matured the plan, and Providence raised up 
 men with the means to execute it; and first Richmond was 
 purchased and endowed, and then another, and still a third 
 institution, to which "the sons of the prophets" have been 
 sent, and hundreds upon hundreds have been taught the 
 way of the Lord more perfectly in their halls than it was 
 ever taught before since the days of the apostles. 
 
 At first prejudice, deep-rooted opposition, was encoun 
 tered; but the wisdom and prudence which marked all their 
 movements, and the manifest blessing of Heaven which 
 rested upon all their operations, vindicated the policy 
 adopted; and now if there be any prejudice, any opposi 
 tion, in England, to the Theological Institution, it never 
 comes to the surface. 
 
 Even the Primitive Methodists, who were supposed to be 
 specially averse to progress in this direction, have their 
 seminary for ministers, adapted to their peculiar character 
 and wants, with the practical good sense which marks their 
 Connection, and from which we may profitably take some 
 lessons. 
 
1875.] 
 
 DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. 109 
 
 The Northern Methodist Church encountered still stronger 
 antagonism; but the movement was not to be suppressed. We 
 watched with interest the fierce contest, with no misgiving, 
 however, as to the result. The men who led in the move 
 ment were no fanatics, no ultraists. They did not wish to 
 force their views upon their brethren who could not see the 
 matter in the same light with themselves; nor did they at 
 tempt to make a scholastic training a sine qua non for the 
 ministry. But they were resolved that all young men who 
 were called to the sacred office, and who wanted a better 
 preparation for it, and could profit by the instruction which 
 such institutions afford, should not go without it, or be 
 forced to seek it from others not "of our faith and order." 
 
 Nothing succeeds like success! They have succeeded. 
 We have yet to learn that those who have gone forth from 
 their halls of instruction into the pastoral work are at a dis 
 count among their brethren that the Bishops find it more 
 difficult to get places for them than for others that they 
 ;ire less efficient in the great Avork of saving souls. On the 
 contrary, they are at a premium, as everybody knows. In 
 deed, this itself has been brought as an objection to the 
 movement, that educated men are sought after by the peo 
 ple and by the appointing power in preference to those who 
 are not educated. Hinc illce laclirymce. But we can forgive 
 this wrong ! 
 
 We have sufficiently indicated the character of the Bib 
 lical Department of the VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. Its de 
 sign is, as Adam Clarke said it was his in writing his " Com 
 mentary," to give a better understanding of the sacred 
 Scriptures than young ministers can acquire without some 
 man to guide them. My honored colleagues, who will have 
 to bear the burden and heat of the day, will instruct you, 
 my young brethren, in all that you need to know r in Her- 
 
110 VAKDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 [1875. 
 
 meneutical and Exegetical Science in Homiletical and 
 Pastoral Theology and if I can render you any aid in 
 Systematic Divinity, as far as may be compatible with 
 other duties, and as my limited acquirements will allow, I 
 shall do it, in the name of God, with all my heart and soul; 
 and I can assure you it will be a labor of love. 
 
 I shall endeavor to assist you in your study of the great 
 standards of our faith the Bible "first, middle, and with 
 out end," like its Divine Author. Then, for the better 
 study of the sacred volume, we shall endeavor to master 
 those great monuments of Christian antiquity, the Three 
 Creeds the Apostles , the Niceno-Constantinopolitan, and 
 that miscalled the Athanasian all of which w r e cordially 
 indorse, excepting the interpolated clause in the first, of 
 the descent into hell, which may be interpreted in an inno 
 cent sense, but which is sometimes perverted to a sinister 
 use, and which is therefore eliminated from our recension 
 of that symbol ; and the damnatory clauses in the Atha 
 nasian, which are so foreign from the genius of the gos 
 pel. The FiUoque in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan we 
 admit, though we cannot justify its interpolation by the 
 Latins. 
 
 But these three great Creeds especially the so-called 
 Apostles Creed, the Creed of our baptism, the Creed of 
 Christendom we consider invaluable monuments of ortho 
 dox Christian antiquity, and shall use them accordingly. 
 
 Of equal importance, in its place, is the Catechism of the 
 Church of course, I allude to what is known as the "Sec 
 ond Wesleyan Catechism." This is one of our recognized 
 standards, and well does it deserve this distinction. It was 
 digested from the Catechisms of the Churches of England 
 and Scotland and Wesley s " Instructions," by that ripe 
 theologian, Richard Watson, by appointment of the British 
 Conference, and has received the sanction of universal 
 
1875.] DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. Ill 
 
 Methodism. What a blessing it would be if every minister 
 knew by heart this good form of sound words ! 
 
 But, as seems meet and proper, we shall make our Con 
 fession the grand text of this Department. Our Twenty- 
 five Articles at least, twenty-four of them were prepared 
 for the Methodist Episcopal Church in America by John 
 Wesley himself. He judiciously abridged them from the 
 Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. Though 
 we do not expect the laity (much as it may be desired) to 
 study and formally subscribe this Confession, yet we do ex 
 pect the ministry to do so. And no one can minister at a 
 Methodist altar in any part of the world who does not pro 
 fess to believe these Articles. 
 
 But it is necessary, in order to a rational belief, that 
 there should be an understanding of them. To this end, 
 we must inquire into their origin what gave birth to par 
 ticular articles and special clauses the meaning of the terms 
 employed, the Scripture proofs of the positions assumed, 
 the objections of adversaries and how they are to be met, 
 and the practical uses of the doctrines advanced. No sane 
 man can deny the reasonableness of all this. 
 
 All that we have said on this subject is in the spirit of 
 that exquisitely beautiful and highly suggestive passage in 
 John Wesley s Preface to his Sermons: "I have thought 
 I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow 7 
 through the air. I am a spirit come from God, just hover 
 ing over the great gulf; till a few 7 moments hence, I am no 
 more seen ! I drop into an unchangeable eternity ! I want 
 to know one thing, the way to heaven : how to land safe 
 on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to 
 teach the way; for this very end he came from heaven. He 
 hath written it down in a book! give me that book ! At 
 any price give me the book of God ! I ha.ve it : here is 
 knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo wrius libri. 
 
112 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Here, then, I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit 
 down alone : only God is here. In his presence I open, I 
 read, this book ; for this end, to find the way to heaven. Is 
 there a doubt concerning the meaning of what I read ? 
 Does any thing appear dark or intricate ? I lift up my 
 heart to the Father of lights. Lord, is it not thy word, 
 ( If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God? Thou 
 givest liberally and upbraidest not. Thou hast said, If 
 any be willing to do thy will, he shall know/ I am willing 
 to do ; let me know thy will. I then search after, and con 
 sider parallel passages of Scripture, comparing spiritual 
 things with spiritual. I meditate thereon, with all the at 
 tention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If 
 any doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced 
 in the things of God ; and then the writings whereby, be 
 ing dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I 
 teach." 
 
 " Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scriptures to 
 be written for our learning, grant that we may in such 
 wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest 
 them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy word, we 
 may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of ever 
 lasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. Amen." 
 
YC 65372