funds. They asked for books in philosophy, history, science, and theology though they gladly accepted any volume offered. The largest single contribution, about ninety books, was the entire collection of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary which came after that institution united with the one in Hamilton. Some can be identified by the bookplate of John Withington who gave them to the New York City school. In 1824 the Institution’s library contained about 400 titles, those in theology and Biblical studies holding chief place. There were also duplicate copies of texts for students too poor to buy their own. Under Hascall’s directions books were first purchased in 1819, but funds for buying books were always inadequate. The students were alive to the situation and in 1829 or 1830 voluntarily gave up using tea or coffee with their meals that the money saved might be “devoted (where it was most of all needed), to the enlargement of the library.” The Executive Committee noted “no sacrifice in enjoyment” and a great gain “in health and intellectual powers.”* A few volumes bearing on the bookplates “anti-tea books” are still to be found in the University library.
Except in the early 1820’s when “young gentlemen not having the ministry in view, for the time being were admitted by paying reasonable bills for their privileges,” the Institution was closed to all non-ministerial students until 1839. This restriction was reasonable in view of the fact that the school was set up for training clergymen. Only those who could furnish evidence to the churches of which they were members and to the Executive Committee “of their personal piety and call to the gospel ministry” were to be accepted, according to the Constitution of the Education Society. In this way the “founders” and officers could show Baptists prejudiced against educated preachers training those selected by the churches themselves. The Society hoped that the churches would “not be unmindful of their power to guard the Institution from impositions” and cautioned them against recommending young when “of whose piety and call to preach they have any doubts” because, they asserted, the “glare of talents and ambitions in youth should never be substituted in the christian ministry for the one thing needful” [i.e. the call to preach].**
Many of the colorful characteristics of American student life in the
* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report , 1830, 10.
** Baptist Education Society, Annual Reports , 1820, 7; 1822, 6; 1827, 4.
