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Page 350

 

THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG

Catechism a compromise of the two wings of Calvinism, and destined to constitute what has been known as the Andover theology. This creed has remained unaltered from the first, but since 1900 formal subscription to it has not been demanded of the professors, either at their inauguration or at five-year intervals, as formerly. The seminary was established at Andover, as a branch of Phillips Academy, and under the management of its Board of Trustees; and a Board of Visitors was established which should represent the theological views and protect the interests of the Associate Founders, as the Newbury men were called. At the formal opening, Sept. 28, 1808, thirty-six students were in attendance, and the summary of the attendance during one hundred years is as follows: graduates in the regular course, 2,170; non-graduates, 1,066; students in the special course (1869-82), 45; resident licentiates, 509; advanced class (1882-93), 108; graduate students (1901-07), 11; or a total of 3,538 students, of whom 1,082 are supposed to be living. Of the total number, 3,031 were ordained, 2,378 of them as Congregationalists, 373 as Presbyterians. Foreign missionaries numbered 247; college presidents, 96; college professors, 271; seminary professors, 132. The seminary, always holding graduation from college as a condition of graduation, has made exception only in the cases of ninetynine men. A special examination of the figures of the second fifty years shows that three-fourths of the graduates of that period, entering the service of the churches as pastors, remained directly and technically in their service for life, or until the present. Including the professions for which a seminary training is the natural preparation, ninety-five per cent of the graduates have carried out faithfully the purpose which brought them to the seminary. Since the year 1899, the degree of S.T.B. has been conferred upon the graduates.

The list of the faculty contains many noted names, some of which may be mentioned. Eliphalet Pearson was the first professor of sacred literature, but only for a year (trustee until 1826). Leonard Woods (q.v.) was the first professor of theology, holding the position for thirty-eight years, and his theological attitude and personal influence were important factors in securing the union of the two enterprises at the outset. Other well-known names of men now deceased are Moses Stuart (q.v.), Edward Robinson (q.v.), Bela Bates Edwards (q.v.), Calvin Ellis Stowe (q.v.), Elijah Porter Barrows, and Joseph Henry Thayer (q.v.), in the department of Biblical literature; Edwards A. Park (q.v.) in theology; in history, James Murdock (q.v.), Ralph Emerson, William G. T. Shedd (q.v.), and Egbert Coffin Smyth; and in sacred rhetoric, Edward Dorr Griffin (q.v.), Ebenezer Porter (q.v.), Thoxrias Harvey Skinner (q.v.), Austin Phelps (q.v.), and Charles Orrin Day (q.v.). Prof. J. Wesley Churchill, serving the seminary for thirty years in the department of elocution, occupied a unique and enviable position among teachers of his art. The history of the seminary has been identified with many religious and philanthropic movements of the country. The students' secret missionary society, " The Brethren," and the insistent zeal of Judson, Newell, Nott, and

Hall had prominent place in the brganization of the A. B. C. F. M., while the American (now Congregational) Education Society, the American Temperance Society, the American (now Congregational) Home Missionary Society, the American Tract Society, the Andover House (now the South End House, a social settlement in Boston), and the plan for the first religious newspaper in the U. S., had their origin in whole or in large part on Andover Hill. The Andover press was noted for nearly a century in the publication of religious works. The American Biblical Repository was published here from 1831 to 1838, and the Bibliothxca Sacra from 1844 to 1883; and the Andover Review was edited by Andover professors during the ten years of its publication, 1884-93.

In the eighties there were several changes in the faculty, and prolonged theological controversies, involving questions as to the prerogatives of the Board of Visitors in the administration of the seminary. The legal questions were carried to the supreme court of the commonwealth in a protracted trial, and the controversies extended, in a train of deplorable results, to the relation of the seminary and its students to the churches, and especially to the A. B. C. F. M. During the same decade, arid later, the classes became very uneven, with-marked diminution in numbers, until from 1900 (when several other faculty changes occurred) they numbered no more than six men. It became increasingly difficult to secure men to fill the vacancies in the teaching force, for reasons obvious from the recital above, and from the isolated situation of the seminary. After prolonged deliberation covering several years, and in the exercise of powers expreasly vested in the trustees, in the year 1908 the seminary was removed to Cambridge. Already in 1907 the general feeling on the part of friends of academy and seminary, that the interests of both schools demanded separate boards of control, had led to the incorporation of the seminary as a separate institution, with gradual changes in the membership of the board of trustees. The extensive, though somewhat antiquated, plant at Andover was readily sold to the academy, which needed the buildings.

The relations established between Harvard University and the seminary, and especially between the divinity school and the seminary, are as novel and as interesting as was the establishment of the seminary a century previous. The terms of afMiation provide for the maintenance of the seminary as a separate organization, with its own trustees, faculty, buildings, registration of students, ca£alogue, and degrees. The two institutions agree to avoid rivalry and unnecessary duplication, and to develop the resources of each in such way as to offer to students the best possible training. Vacancies in the faculty have been filled, and a building is in process of erection, to be occupied in 1911. More recent negotiations in the spirit of the terms of affiliation provide for the combination of the libraries of the two schools in the new Andover building, as the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, comprising at the outset over 100,000 volumes.

2. Atlanta: This divinity school is situated in tl