resumed the power which for the time it had surrendered. But if it was a mistake, it was a mistake that honored those who made it. The same spirit of catholicity accounts for the last step taken by the Seminary in its progress toward complete freedom, namely, the abolition of the requirement of subscription to the Westminster Confession. This action was taken on November 15, 1904, when Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall was President of the Faculty. In place of the previous requirement it was provided that each new member of the Board and of the Faculty should in the presence of the Board express his adherence to the principles of the institution as set forth in the Preamble of January 18, 1836, and the Charter of March 27, 1839. Further action provided that the Directors should be members in good and regular standing in some evangelical church, that the professors of Systematic Theology and Pastoral Theology should be ordained ministers of the Gospel, and that all the members of the Faculty should satisfy the Board of their Christian faith and life. This action must not be understood as a departure from the original principles of the Seminary. On the contrary it was their natural consummation. If subscription was abolished it was not that we wished to believe less, but that we might be free to believe more. Above all, it was that we might open our doors to Christians of every name, that they might enter in and share our work with us. For years this principle had been applied to the student body. Now at last it has been extended to the members of the Faculty and of the Board. I have said that this action was taken under Dr. Hall's presidency, and with the name I mention one who was himself the very embodiment of the spirit of catholicity. I can see him to-day as he stood in the old library at 700 Park Avenue, when he first met the student body as President-elect, his face radiant with that sunny smile which we came to know so well. I need not remind you how quickly he won his way to the hearts of all whom he touched, or speak of the many improvements which he introduced into the Seminary life. The readjustment of the scholarship system on its present basis, the provisions of the Social Room and of the social spirit, without which the room would have been useless, the baths and the handball courts, the new home for the Union Settlement, the redecoration of the Adams Chapel, and the institution of the new service, the quiet communion seasons at eventide, the kindled enthusiasm for missions, all of these and more we owe to him whose face we miss to-day. Much as he did for us, he was more than all that he did, and, as we survey these spacious buildings and study their refined decoration and graceful form, they seem to be the incarnation in stone of that exquisite personality, himself the expression in human life of the spirit of religion pure and undefiled. Two final impressions, and I am done. One is of the spirit of service, the other of the wealth of personality which the story of Union reveals. On the first I can touch lightly, not because it is less important, but because it is all important. It is that for which all the rest of which I have spoken exists. If our fathers trusted the truth, it was because they had proved its power in service. If they believed in thorough preparation, it was in order that they might serve better. If they were courageous in conflict, it was because they valued the right to serve so highly that they would suffer no man to rob them of it. If, finally, they were catholic in spirit, it was because they were disciples of him whose kingdom is worldwide and who came to seek and to save the lost. We have not realized our ideal-far from it—but at least we can say that we have never appreciated our ideal more clearly or cherished it more whole-heartedly than we do today. If we have established ourselves on these heights, close by the great university whose throbbing life we can feel pulsing through our own veins, it is not that we would abandon the city to its need, but that we may gain added knowledge to aid us in the solution of its problems. The Settlement on East One Hundred and Fourth Street, with its spacious play-ground, surrounded by crowded tenements, is as truly a part of the Seminary as this stately pile on Morningside Heights, and far away on the frontiers of the distant West, or in the lumber camps of Maine, or among the Negroes of the Southland, or in China and Japan and India and the islands of the sea, wherever a son of Union in the spirit of his Master is grappling hand to hand with the problems of human misery and human ignorance, there the spirit of Union is present and the heart of the Seminary finds expression. The other impression is of the wealth of personality. To no other institution on God's earth, I verily believe, has it been given in a similar space of time to gather so large a cluster of devoted friends. What a roll it is that passes before the mind as imagination recalls those who have gone before. Clergymen like Absalom Peters, Erskine Mason, Albert Barnes, Samuel Hanson Cox, George L. Prentiss, Edwin F. Hatfield, Henry B. Smith, Edward Robinson, William Adams, William G. T. Shedd, Philip Schaff, Roswell D. Hitchcock, and Charles Cuthbert Hall. Laymen like Knowles Taylor, Richard T. Haines, William M. Halstead, Norman White, Anson Phelps, Fisher Howe, Frederick Marquand, James Brown, Edwin D. Morgan, Charles Butler, D. Hunter McAlpin, William E. Dodge, Morris K. Jesup, and last but not least that far-sighted merchant and simple follower of Jesus Christ, whose name this chapel commemorates. Others in this company will speak his praises in words more eloquent than mine, but I cannot deny myself my tribute to his memory. For more than forty years a Director of Union Theological Seminary, for ten years its Vice-President, always its generous benefactor and wise counselor, he was its faithful friend in adversity as in prosperity, and his final gift was but the crown of a life which was full of giving. One other there is, of whom piety will not suffer me to be silent, though piety makes it difficult for me to speak. We miss to-day one face that was with us at the laying of the corner-stone a year ago. It is a face that has grown familiar to many generations of Union Seminary students, not only through his official position as President of the Seminary, but in the more informal intercourse of the home. Bound to the Seminary by ancestral ties, for forty years identified with its interests as Director, Vice-President and President, intimately associated with the smallest details of its affairs, it was to him that Mr. James first communicated his generous purpose, and it was to him that he confided the execution of his trust. It was not his privilege to see the completion of these buildings, into whose every stone he had built his thought and love, but to the end he carried them on his heart. They were the last responsibility which he laid down, and the last continued conversation which I had with him only a week before his death had to do with them. What was the secret of this devotion? What spell does Union possess which can bind to her service men such as these whose names we have mentioned? Let us find our answer in the words spoken by our late President at his last public appearance with us, when he laid the corner-stone of the new buildings: "As the representative of the Board of Directors," so the solemn words run, "I have been requested to lay the cornerstone of this group of buildings, the future home of the Union Theological Seminary, an institution founded in 1836 by godly men to prepare young men for the service of Christ in the work of the ministry.' Sharing with the Founders the belief that for all enduring religious work 'other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ,' the Directors set apart this stone as the symbol of the spiritual foundation upon which this Seminary rests." Six and twenty years ago the friends of Union Seminary met upon another hilltop to dedicate a new home. How little they anticipated what the next quarter of a century would bring forth. "The present location," said Dr. Hitchcock, in his memorable dedicatory address, "is apparently for many decades, if not for all time. This commanding site, so near the centre of the island, is in little danger of losing its advantages. Right behind us is the great Central Park, close around us are hospitals, schools and galleries of art, trophies and adornments of an advancing civilization, but this institution of sacred learning which we dedicate to-day, interpreter of God's word, herald of God's grace, outranks them all." Only yesterday I stood on the old site, now a heap of ruins, and as I recalled the words which I have just quoted in your hearing, these other words, spoken by an older member of the Seminary many years before, rose unbidden to my lips: "Nothing, my brethren, is great in this world but the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Nothing but that to a spiritual eye has the air of permanency.' Nothing in this world is great but the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, nothing else is permanent. Brick and mortar may decay, stones may crumble into dust, one generation of workers after another may pass away, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ endures forever. This is the ground of our confidence as we look forward to the new and splendid future that we face. These noble buildings, massive as they are, are to us but the symbol of a reality far more enduring, even the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, God manifest in man, the same yesterday, to-day and forever. 2. Some Elements of Religious Progress Address by President Jacob Gould Schurman, After the very scholarly and instructive and inspiring address of Dr. Brown, to which you have listened, I need offer no apology for saying, that the thing about Union Theological Seminary which most impresses an outsider, like myself, among all the characteristic things which he has mentioned is its catholicity. When your President honored me with an invitation to speak on this occasion, he didn't limit me inexorably to thirty minutes, but as he understood that I was very busy, he diplomatically remarked that it was not necessary to speak more than thirty or forty minutes. I think I can not do better than attempt to describe as I see them, and as I have tried to give them expression in my own mind, some of the phases of religious progress which our generation has witnessed. It seemed to me, as I have said, the Union Theological Seminary was the embodiment of that spirit. And when I thought of the scholars who have been and are of its Faculty, the names of many of whom you have heard this evening, I felt that it in no inconsiderable measure had contributed to this religious progress in America. Nevertheless, I recognize that the movement is larger than any institution, and therefore it seemed to me that in a sense it might be said that Union Theological Seminary was the effect of that spirit. And a notable institution this Seminary is, notable, and as it seems to me unique. Free and unfettered it devotes itself to the pursuit of truth in the whole realm of theological science and at the same time it trains young men to the noble calling of the Christian ministry. As it devotes itself to effort in this field it is akin with the university, and I appeal to this kindred spirit for sympathy and tolerance. To that spirit I appeal as I endeavor to describe some of the phases of progress of which we have been conscious in the religious sphere in the last thirty or forty years. In the first place, and to put it strongly, I think we have witnessed a shifting of emphasis from individualism to the |