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Jesus Christ-I do not attempt to make a definition of it, though to me it consists of those who believe in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and rejoice in worship, fellowship, and the advance of the Kingdom-the Church of Jesus Christ to-day in her potentialities is sufficient for the needs of the hour. We hear so often criticism upon our weakness, upon our inability to cope with that which to-day is calling for solution. In spite of this the Church is being led on step by step; but she will be led by very rapid steps in a very short time, for Christ is in his Church, and he is with us all and these problems are to be solved: and the ministers that Union Theological Seminary is preparing, and all other Seminaries are preparing, through the Church are to bring in the Kingdom, and it is to be a glorious Kingdom, sufficient for the needs of every man, the highest as well as the lowest.

Before I go away to-night, I have another word of confidence, confidence in the purpose of God. There is such a purpose. The good pleasure of God is that to such as ourselves, instructed in this and other seminaries, and those who were under us, shall be given the Kingdom.

Some years ago, when the Westminster Confession was being revised, the Committee which had in charge the work visited Washington, and audience was given them at the White House, and Mr. McKinley courteously turned to one of the Committee and he said, “I hope that in the revision you will not take out 'predestination."" The representative of another communion, a brother of Charles Wesley, said, "Who can resist His will?" And I believe that there is no man anywhere in our world who understands what the ministry is striving for, what the mission of the Church is, what the needs of mankind are, what the problems of the present are, who does not realize strength in the fact that he can look up into the skies and he can believe that there is an Eternal Purpose. He himself has seen its effect. All through history there comes the direct assurance in fact that evil cannot live, that good must live, and that there is the instruction for every minister, "Fight against Cæsar." And as we separate to-night I would have every man of us go out with the voice of triumph on his lips. Union Seminary and all our Seminaries are set to do a mighty work, the remaking of the human heart, the bringing of the manhood into the likeness of Jesus Christ Himself, and that is the result that we seek, and you and I, representing the Seminaries that are near to our hearts, must part to-night knowing that the purpose of God will not fail.

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MR. OGDEN:

It is all summed up in the title of the next speech, which will be on the "Spirit of Service." The speaker will be the Rev. President William H. P. Faunce, of Brown University.

THE REV. PRESIDENT WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE:

I seem to be the only barrier left between this assembly and one whom it is eager to hear, President Brown. I promise you that this barrier will very speedily vanish, but not until I have offered greeting to this Seminary from the city of Roger Williams.

In the old meeting-house where we hold our annual commencements, at the foot of College Hill, there is a quaint inscription on the old church records of 1775, which reads: "This meeting-house was built for the worship of God, and to hold commencements in." That shows how education and religion were united in the minds and the hearts of some of our founders of the institutions of our eastern states.

Every building is a confession of faith. Somehow a man's creed gets itself uttered in the structure he erects. Oftentimes the building expresses the faith more deeply than any possible formula. I would not judge a whole nation by a single instance, but is there no suggestion in the fact that the central building of London and Great Britain is the House of Parliament? In that nation where freedom "has slowly broadened down from precedent to precedent," there the home of law, and of liberty under law, finds the central place. And when we cross the Channel-again I would not generalize from a single instance is there no suggestion in the fact that the center of Parisian life is the opera house?

What faith, then, is here confessed in the superb new structures of Union Theological Seminary? Certainly a profound faith in religious education; in religion as central in human life; and in the Christian prophet as exercising indispensable function in a democracy. Clearly also the Seminary has here put in buildings its faith in the closer articulation, the essential unity of the modern church and modern society. This style of architecture is one which no school in this country probably would have attempted fifty years ago. The old-time college or seminary buildings incorporated the Puritan individualism. Each structure on the hill at Andover Seminary stands plain, severe, rectangular, owing no allegiance to any other building on the horizon. The buildings of Newton The

ological Seminary, where I studied, have a similar isolation and obliviousness to the presence of any other structure. But here in Union henceforth will be preached each day, in this unified group of buildings, our faith in the solidarity of society and our prayer for the visible unity of American Christianity.

I have attended three great educational functions during this autumn. One was the inauguration of the President of Smith College, where I saw seventeen hundred women students the largest assemblage of women ever gathered for educational purposes in one institution. The second was the very brilliant function at Bryn Mawr College-whose president is happily with us to-night-when that college celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. But this function at Union Seminary we must acknowledge does not suffer in comparison with any academic festival that has gone before.

It will do New York City good to have a "School of the Prophets" loom big in the public eye. It is good for "the city of the flatiron" to be also the site of magnificent structures devoted to the equipment of the modern prophet. It is good for the city of sky-scrapers and railroad stations and subways to have also a great habitation for ministers of the Christian faith-a habitation which no traveler can ignore, of whose existence no business man can long be ignorant.

Without the prophets all our captains of industry and all our scholars will lead us astray, for the function of the prophet is to tell us what is worth while; to give us the true perspective of life in the twentieth century. We have no great background of history as has Europe; no long ancestral customs like the orient. We see things vividly, instantaneously, as it were by snap-shot, and we confuse the things of passing moment with the things that abide. It is good for this city to be told in clear voice what is worth while.

When the beloved former president of this Seminary passed into the unseen, I took up a newspaper and found a dozen lines devoted to his great career, while two columns in the same journal were given to the death of a famous race horse. It is useless to find fault with the newspapers in such a case. It is you and I, it is the city of which we are a part, which is to blame exalting the thing of the moment and ignoring the essential. The prophet is to make us see the difference.

So I want to tell you that institutions far outside the metropolitan district rejoice with you. Denominations outside your own are getting weary of questions of procedure and

ceremony, and long for the essential verities of the Christian faith. Every man who is filled with such longing must be glad to-night in your gladness. At these tables we see the foreglimpse of the time of which William Watson sang-if I may change one word in his musical verse:

"The coming of the morn divine,

When churches shall as forests grow;
Wherein the oak hates not the pine,
Nor beeches wish the cedars woe;
But all in their unlikeness blend,
Confederate to one golden end."

MR. OGDEN:

The last number is "Retrospect and Prospect," to which the head of the Union Theological Seminary, the Rev. President Francis Brown, will respond.

THE REV. PRESIDENT FRANCIS BROWN:

Mr. Ogden and Friends of the Seminary:

We appreciate all the kind words that have been spoken, and the tribute which this assembly has paid to the Seminary. It is too late either to spend time in reviewing the past or to attempt any elaborate sketch of the future, but we are glad to have offered the occasion for a meeting like this, for the notable presences that have graced it and for the significant words that have been uttered in it. And if, as you carry them with you in your minds-these strong, able, clear words-you will associate with them some thought of the Union Theological Seminary, we shall be glad of that too.

It might seem to an onlooker as though the occasion of this day's celebration and of this great gathering were a very small one-two hundred students, twenty instructors-what is that compared with the thousands of the great institutions? The real significance of it all has been expressed here more than once to-night. It simply means that you as well as we are in your inmost hearts aware that the world is ruled by things out of sight, and that the testimony of things out of sight is that testimony which wins a response from the deepest depth of the human heart, and that the reality of the things out of sight is the reality that controls the world.

We are trying-and we know in some measure the difficulty of our task-we are trying to express the old religion in

terms that can be understood by the new generation and that can lay hold of the heart and conscience of that generation. It is no light thing to undertake, and we do not claim to be alone in undertaking it, but we feel ourselves committed to it. We try to express in our actions, as in our words, our sense of human brotherhood without losing our religion in our brotherhood, and in all our activity we are conscious that we are only servants and not masters, and we desire to be used and not simply to control.

Most of our work is very quiet, apart from public gaze. We publish some books; few of you read them-and why should you read them? We offer some public lectures, some courses of sermons, occasional indications of our presence in the community; but after all our real, steady work is quite out of sight, and there it must remain, like the work of all teachers, except as its result appears at some remove in time and space from our workshop, and in a connection where few if any can think of the workshop from which it came—and that is all as it should be.

But we shall be glad if, when the temporary impression of this day and this evening is fading out of your minds, you will still sometimes remember that we are all the while, and year after year, trying earnestly and patiently and quietly and with what power we have to accomplish this service, which is a service not to ourselves but to you and to the community of people, reaching on and on throughout the world-and to God to whom the world belongs.

We are not ashamed to say that we still need the aid of those who can aid us in material things. No institution ever had such friends as we have had and have. It is their generosity and the place in which they have set us that enlarge our needs. And I speak of this only that you may not be surprised, or think us grasping, if now and then you learn of some appeal from us for things we need to do a larger work for our Master.

A single last word of retrospect. I remember, and some of those here will remember, how the year after we entered the home of the Seminary on Lenox Hill, Doctor Hitchcock observed the thirtieth anniversary of his connection with the Seminary, and in words of deep feeling, few but choice and powerful, he referred to the history of those past years, and the strong lives that had filled them. Then he told that story of Kossuth, who, when he was here long ago, spoke for Hungary, and in the midst of an impassioned period, suddenly

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