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a grasp of Christian truth and a search for Christian love and a consummation of Christian character that is beyond that that has been the fruitage of any Christian nation up to this day.

Therefore, in the name of old England we give you of the new country in all your Christian aspirations and in your spirit of full liberty, we give you God-speed.

MR. OGDEN:

Those two last speeches were from Boston.

There sits down here just in front of this table a modest, quiet man from Boston who furnished us all the final designs and has superintended the construction of the buildings whose dedication we celebrated this afternoon.1

There sits at this table a member of the Faculty of the Union Seminary who as a business man can give points to a great many people who are engaged in worldly professions, a man who has been of the greatest possible service to the building committee as he has been to the architects, and whose reputation as a scholar is one of the glories of the Union Theological Seminary.

I refer to the Reverend Professor George William Knox, who will have a few words to say to us about the Seminary.

THE REVEREND PROFESSOR GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX:
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is my privilege to respond for the Faculty of the Seminary and to express our pleasure, brethren of the Universities and of the Churches, at your presence with us to-night and also in the occasion of this assemblage-the completion of the group of buildings on Morningside Heights.

For years we dreamed our dreams and saw our visions, and often the doubt arose that these were too good to be true. Yet, as ever in the providence of God, it has proved that our highest visions and dearest dreams were not good enough to be true, for the realization surpasses our most ambitious anticipations.

Deeper than the joy which fills our hearts is our sense of indebtedness and of obligation. First of all to the noble laymen who through so many years have stood strong in support of ministerial training, making this Seminary possible in the beginning, throughout its history enlarging its facilities, adding to its resources and now crowning all by the splendid gift which we celebrate to-night. We remember them with deep gratitude, sensible of the responsibility the guardianship of their gifts involves.

The reference is to Mr. Francis Allen, the architect who designed the

seminary buildings.

We would next acknowledge indebtedness to the Board of Directors for their attitude toward us. In our day we hear much of a certain aloofness of Directors from Faculties, but in this instance there has been thoroughgoing co-operation. It was characteristic of the policy adopted by the Board from the beginning that when Mr. James, its Vice President, made his great gift, the Faculty were asked to prepare a statement of needs. Months were given to the study, and when the plans were completed they were embodied in the program prepared for the architectural competition, without addition, subtraction or modification. As I have indicated, the instance is typical, and the Faculty is never unmindful of the friendship, the confidence and the co-operation given fully and freely by the Board.

We would acknowledge also our indebtedness to the architects, to Mr. Allen and to Mr. Collens, who gave our plans the artistic realization which excites the admiration of all who view the new buildings. Their skill, their familiarity with the traditions of Gothic architecture, their clear conception of what was desired, made possible the realization of our dreams. Never in all this work have they permitted their keen artistic sense to interfere with utility; never did men work in closer sympathy with their clients or strive more earnestly, even in the smallest details, to meet their wishes. So long as these buildings endure will the sons of Union Theological Seminary recognize their debt.

Not only do we feel our indebtedness to givers, to Directors and architects, but we recognize our indebtedness to the Universities of New York. Our long friendship has not been distant nor casual, but intimate, and the debt has been ours. There have been the heartiest co-operation and the freest liberty. Our students have been welcomed to the class-rooms and we have welcomed the instruction that they have there received. Our harmony with the University is not some chance reconcilement of theology with science, for there is no trace of that supposed antagonism, and this is not because we compromise or ask compromise, but because we recognize that the instruction of the University in many subjects like biology, psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, is given as we would

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have it given, without fear and without favor by men intent upon knowing and teaching the truth. We do not look upon the university as something foreign in which we have no part, for in earnest seeking after truth there is no distinction between scientists and theologians-for where truth is there is God. Moreover, the so-called hostility has passed because today the method of theological study is none other than the method of the sciences. We may have our differences, as biologists differ from psychologists, but beneath all such superficial diversities is the deep unity that comes from a spirit devoted to truth and from the understanding that in the same way and by the same methods all truth is to be attained. Thus recognizing our indebtedness, it is our desire that it may be repaid, though only in part can it be repaid.

We recognize our indebtedness to men without representative here to-day, who were not present in the Chapel this afternoon and yet without whom our dreams would have remained dreams, without whom all the artistic skill of the architects would have been futile. We recognize our indebtedness to the community of so-called common men, to the men who dug the stone from the foundations, who laid it strong and well, to the artisans of every class, the representatives of more than fifty trades, to the laboring men of New York. From an intimate association with them in the two years past, I bear testimony to their faithfulness, their thoroughness, their ability, their earnestness, their honesty, their thoroughgoing sympathy with their work. While we dwell in the structure which they have reared, which, alas, has known the death of some of them, we shall hold them in grateful remembrance and recognize our debt.

Recognizing this indebtedness to benefactors, Directors, architects, universities, artisans a question presses for an answer-what return can Union Seminary make, what gifts has it for the community which has made the Seminary possible? What gift has religion for this age, this democratic, scientific, progressive age whose watchword is evolution, whose philosophy is the philosophy of change for this age with its marvelous advance in things material, with its sublime self-confidence and throbbing life? What gift has religion for this city, for its financiers, its students, its artists, its politicians, its artisans, its endless varieties of sorts and conditions of men? Can Union Seminary help to answer that question?

These buildings constitute for us a challenge. In some way this great question will be answered so that the state and nation and lands beyond the sea shall understand that as in the ages past religion wrought its message into the life of the race, so for our time also it has a message, true, essential, vital. That we may have our part in forming this answer will be our repayment of our indebtedness-that it shall be answered we know, as we believe in the God of truth whose we are and whom we serve.

MR. OGDEN:

We are fortunate in having present as one of the representative guests on this occasion the Reverend President James G. K. McClure, of McCormick Seminary in Chicago, who will speak to us on "Our Sister Seminaries."

THE REVEREND PRESIDENT JAMES G. K. MCCLURE:
Mr. Ogden, Ladies and Gentlemen :

The message that I am to bring you to-night is this, in two words, Congratulation and Confidence. The Seminaries that are represented here to-night, widely scattered as they are, diversified in their form and teaching, are interested most deeply in that which has been spread before our eyes to-day. Every casual observer has been immediately impressed by the beauty and the accommodations of the buildings, but we who represent the Seminaries have examined these buildings from the lowest basement to the topmost story, and we have noted how complete in every respect is the provision for the work that is to be done. We congratulate Union Theological Seminary not alone upon the material plant which is the most stately and dignified of all institutions of the kind in the world, but we congratulate Union Seminary upon this assemblage of to-night.

We know the experiences of our own lives, when we were facing the great question as to whether we should give ourselves to the ministry or not, and we recall our prayers which brought us into sweet fellowship with God.

We know that gathered here to-night are men, ministers and laymen who have come to express the high hope that every wish that Union Theological Seminary has for herself may be fully accomplished, and that there shall be indeed beautiful piety here, and profound scholarship and application to all the needs of humanity. That is our word of congratulation, and it is from a full heart.

Our other word is a word of confidence, confidence in the product of the Theological Seminary, the ministry. We believe with our whole being that there is no need so great in the entire earth as the need of the minister of God who goes to spread the ideals that are so essential to the truest welfare of the people, and who professes the faith so that the vision of God becomes clear, and who sees it in its relationship to society and to true righteousness before God. The man who can lift the heart of his brother up to highest heaven is the man of all the earth in his kingship and in the dignity that God has conferred upon him.

The glory of the ministry is a wondrous glory. Here tonight we sit in our luxurious surroundings. The graduates of this Seminary are scattered to every portion of the earth, many of them in little bits of places where they are dealing with hardships that are scarcely intelligible to us. Those men in their places, doing the work that God has assigned to them, are our brothers: this Seminary has given them, and they are for the glory of God and the good of the world.

What I long for when I see such buildings as these is that not only out of the homes of the common people, out of the homes where thrift is a necessity, there shall be brought the young men who are to be our ministers, but that out of the homes of the greatest wealth there shall come the consecrated sons who shall have refinement bred into them from all the atmosphere of their home surroundings, and who shall be able to go anywhere and everywhere and stand in perfect equality with those of the highest gifts and station; who shall always have back of them, as they preach the truth as God has revealed it to them, such a substance of material power that they are elevated above mere dependence upon salary, and can sway men as a man sways his fellowmen when they are upon the same platform of equality.

And this, also, is what I wish, that we who believe in God -and once again register our belief-when we have given scholarship and when we have given the appeals of piety, and when we have set before men the appeals of truth, that we insist that every man of them shall have a character of personal piety. Blessed is the man that shall always create an atmosphere wherever he goes, making it evident that he is a man of God, so that the wicked man shall be rebuked in that presence, and the discouraged man find the vision of heaven open to him with a new benediction.

And I have a second word of confidence. The Church of

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