I.

The Presentation Address

By President Robert C. Ogden, LL.D.

On the seventeenth of November, 1908, friends of the Seminary joined with its Directors and Faculty in the exercises incidental to laying the corner stone of these buildings. On that occasion the Directors were represented by the President, Mr. John Crosby Brown, and the Building Committee by one of its members, the Reverend Professor George William Knox.

From that date onward the construction of the buildings went steadily forward in a successful and satisfactory manner, with only slight delays and without serious accident, until now the entire personnel of the Seminary, Students, Professors, President of the Faculty, and Executive Staff are comfortably installed in commodious, elegant and practically completed quarters and have fully entered upon the practical work of the seventy-fifth Academic Year of the Seminary. In the short space of two years a beautiful hope has passed from a creation of the imagination to an exquisite material expression.

We are now assembled that we may complete the transaction begun two years since and dedicate these buildings by appropriate religious service and suggestive public address to their sacred and holy purposes.

In recent years death has been busy with the ranks of our Board of Directors. Shortly after the laying of the corner stone our President, Mr. John Crosby Brown, passed over to the majority of our Associates already in the life beyond. I am thus called to stand in his place and to speak to you briefly in behalf of the Board of Directors and its Building Committee.

The occasion is in its very nature unique. The dedication of a great group of buildings exclusively to religious education is a very rare event. Structures devoted to science, the fine arts, religious worship, public service and education will in the future be numerous and their dedication not uncommon. Some are here present that witnessed on December 9th, 1884, the dedication of the buildings at No. 700 Park Avenue, but it is unthinkable that any of this audience will ever witness any departure of this Seminary from this place, or any change of construction beyond some additions already planned.

Some quite remarkable incidents have marked the construction of these buildings. Especially noticeable was the selection of the plans. In response to the invitation of the Building Committee, thirty-five architects and firms submitted plans. The authorship of the various designs was scrupulously concealed from the knowledge of every one. Under this condition a jury of architects was selected to examine all and advise upon the best. After this the Committee was assembled for the final decision. An extended personal examination followed and when an expression of preference was solicited the entire Committee was a unit upon the first choice. Upon opening the sealed verdict of the architects it was found to be the same as that of the Committee. This remarkable harmony and unity has supplied the keynote of the whole construction. The solemn element in the proceeding is that three members of that Building Committee have passed away, Mr. D. Willis James and the Reverend President Charles Cuthbert Hall before the laying of the corner stone and Mr. John Crosby Brown, afterward. The buildings stand here essentially complete upon the lines originally chosen. There has been no occasion to regret at any point the decision then made. May we not take the conditions under which this group of buildings has been created as a prophecy of the unity of spirit, the bonds of peace, the dynamic energy, under which this Seminary shall continue its future work, continually rising with the lengthening years to greater heights of powerful influence!

In organizations of every sort it is impossible to overestimate the value of spiritual life. This is true in varying degrees of business and academic corporations, of factories and of churches, and in the highest extent of institutions for religious education. This spirit is the product of individual lives and character. When an educational institution, and especially one founded for religious purposes, is rich in the heritage of accumulated forces produced by a great aggregate of great lives the administration of its affairs imposes a very solemn duty. Such is the case with this Seminary. From a study of the past there arises a group of memories, hallowed,

sacred, inspiring-the roll-call of its nobility may be heard in the Court of Heaven and the whisperings of its echoes are often in our thoughts as their names are often on our lipsButler, Dodge, Jesup, McAlpin, James, Brown, Adams, Hitchcock, Hall. The entire list is too long for repetition.

No academic heritage can be more intolerable than a financial debt to the past, but there is richness beyond the power of money to buy, in a spiritual debt to the past. Its inspiration can supply nerve to the weak arm, can give courage to the timid heart, can strengthen the tired brain. From the beginning, seventy-five years ago, continuously to this very hour, this debt of the Union Seminary has been accumulating. In counting up its assets we can find with every instance of large material generosity, that may be estimated in currency, a large gift of the spirit that makes a priceless contribution of faith and hope.

This occasion gives potential evidence of the close association of the material and the ideal existing in this institution. While our thoughts are busy with the munificence of Mr. James and later of Mrs. James, both supplemented by the liberality of Mr. Brown, we must not forget that we are occupied with the larger interests of a school of the Prophets of national and international reputation. In this Seminary the constructive note of progress takes its impulse from a living faith that is certain and from a spirit too genuine to be measured by words, but to be sought and to be found in the ideals of her godly sons.

The position of this Seminary has been wrought out through the stress and strain of conflict and misunderstanding with a spirit of tolerance such as she only desired to receive from others. After an extended period of reconstruction, the Seminary is now at a point where its mission is not controversy but reconciliation. The crowning official act came with the elimination of subscription to an ancient creed as the binding official symbol qualifying Directors and Faculty and the substitution therefor of a simple, clear, concise statement of evangelical faith in God and in his son Jesus Christ that could be acceptable to Christian believers of every name. That final step was longer and higher than appeared to many. But there were men of vision who saw more clearly the possibilities of that advance. Prominent among them were Mr. James, Mr. Brown and Dr. Hall, prophetic spirits, keen to discern the truth and courageous to express it. And this dedication of this great plant is the outcome of that action. We look at it with loving admiration, we name its cost in dollars, we accept it all with a certain honest gratitude and pride. But our larger response is for the sympathy of the human hearts that inspired it, that gave themselves with their gifts and thus have built into these walls, with a grace beyond the highest capacities of art to express, their own human lives.

We do not admit in this Seminary the truth of the proposition that there must be a secular side to a religious organization. By its very nature it is all sacred whether the transactions be in stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, the sacred scriptures, religious scholarship or any of the sorts of training for the ministry of the Holy Gospels.

Therefore in speaking officially for the Board of Directors I do not, in personally addressing you as the Reverend President Francis Brown, assume to speak from the secular to the sacred elements of this Seminary. In your own person the two forms of administration are united. You are a member of the Board of Directors, Chairman of its Executive Committee and President of the Faculty. It is in respect of this latter that I venture to speak a few words.

It is proper to congratulate you as the Executive head of this Seminary upon the occupancy of these admirable, complete and beautiful premises. I think I am correct in the statement that no essential has been omitted in their construction, although a few minor details await completion.

Appreciation from a cultivated Public of the appropriate elegance of the architecture of these buildings is coming to us in abundant measure. An increased number of appreciative students are responding to the opportunities of Christian scholarship offered by the Seminary. The open-minded spirit that marks the freedom of research prevailing here is generally recognized. The service rendered to sacred learning on behalf of all higher education in this country through the stand here taken for the liberty of the Gospels is gratefully acknowledged. All these points, and others not mentioned, material and intellectual, are prominent in our minds at this hour.

You are also to be congratulated that you are the head of an institution for religious education to which a young man may come from any Christian communion, enjoy all its advantages in scholarship and yet be entirely free from any proselyting influence. It is this spirit that unites five different denominations in the teaching staff and twenty in the student body. From this comes also the spirit of tolerance toward other and positively different faiths that seek to find the points of agreement for human betterment without putting undue emphasis upon points of difference.

And all this is quite consistent with our conviction that religious belief should be intelligent and positive, constructive not destructive, and that it should have competent, thoroughly equipped, courteous, kindly and tolerant defenders of the faith. To meet this condition it is well known is the purpose of yourself and your Faculty.

The forward movement inaugurated here to-day should, we think, mark a new and progressive epoch in theological education. It is not within the province of a layman even when speaking for a Board largely composed of clergymen, to give advice or even positive suggestion to the President of a Faculty. Nevertheless, I venture to remark that we are living in a period of change and expansion. It is necessary that Christianity should look toward the saving of society and of the State as well as of the individual, that the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man imply in many human relations, and especially in religion, a democracy that should be essentially Christian. This great fact seems just now somewhat overshadowed.

To the plain man familiar with the ordinary affairs of life the present opportunity for the pastor seems never to have been equalled and the need for special training never so great. The exactions of complicated city life and the bare, hard conditions of rural life alike demand specific instruction. These suggestions, and others of equal import call for increasing attention that the mental and spiritual powers should combine the wisdom of the school with knowledge of practical affairs to the end that the Kingdom of God may come.

Knowing full well that you are leader and master in all subjects that pertain to your eminent position, that your ideals from the past and of the present are of the highest type, that you enjoy the affectionate allegiance of your faculty; I now, on behalf of your brothers in the Board of Directors confirm the loyalty expressed at your inauguration, two years ago, and with most ardent desires for your health, happiness, and long continued usefulness again commit the welfare of this Seminary to your care and keeping.