Tag Archives: Sylvester Burnham

p. 273 – The Bryan Period, 1908-1922

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dent to enable it to give greater attention to teacher training courses.

The Seminary failed to keep pace with the College in growth or performance. A major reason seems to have been the practice of admitting many poorly prepared students, several of whom enrolled in the abbreviated English course as an easy academic short cut to the ministry. In 1918 provision was made for such students by establishing a four-year course for non-college graduates to be taught by both Seminary and College faculties which would lead to the Bachelor of Theology degree. Further accommodation came in 1919 when the requirements for the Bachelor of Divinity degree, hitherto totaling seven years of college and theological work, were reduced to six and non-college men were admitted to the program.

Changes in the Seminary included the resignation of Dr. Sylvester Burnham as Dean in 1910 and the appointment of William H. Allison, A.B., Harvard, ’93, and a Chicago Ph.D., as his successor and Professor of Ecclesiastical History. Dr. Allison was followed in 1915 by John F. Vichert, a former student at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, and Chicago, who taught Theology. Dr. Hinton S. Lloyd, for thirty-eight years Corresponding Secretary of the Baptist Education Society and, in effect, its chief officer, resigned in 1915 to be succeeded by Dean Vichert. Frank A. Starratt, A.B., Acadia, ’92, was Professor of Theology from 1909 to 1919 and Dr. William M. Lawrence, ’70, former President of the University Board of Trustees, in 1912 became Lecturer in Christian Ethics.

Though the Library did not play as vital a part in the educational process as later, this resource of the University nearly doubled its holdings in the Bryan period, growing from about 50,000 volumes to more than 90,000. Dr. David F. Estes, who had retired from the Seminary in 1920 as Professor of New Testament, retired as Librarian the next year. His successor was Charles W. Spencer, the former Professor of History who had resigned in 1905 and now returned after teaching at Princeton and the University of Nevada and receiving his  Ph.D. from Columbia. He was the first full-time University Librarian.  Perhaps best known on the staff were Miss Alice A. Guller, Circulation  Librarian, who came in 1914 and Miss Lida C. Vasbinder, Reference  Librarian, who came a year later; both will be remembered for their  generous assistance to generations of students and faculty.

` After several years of decline Colgate Academy closed its doors in

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George E. Merrill elected as president (p. 242)

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Chapter XII – THE MERRILL PRESIDENCY 1899-1908

It was with heartfelt fervor that a great crowd of students sang to the tune of “Old Colgate Is the Place For Me” (or “The Pope”)

Oh, Prexie, we’re so glad you’re here,
We’ve waited for you many a year,
And now we greet you loud and true
Oh, Prexie Merrill, here’s to you

as the President-elect and his wife arrived on the 1:36 p.m. train at the Hamilton station on January 25, 1899. They were helped into a coach on sleigh runners to which the undergraduates had attached a long rope and were drawn in joyous procession to the home of Dean and Mrs. Burnham where they were to stay while they got acquainted with the University and town. Dr. George Edmands Merrill was not a complete stranger, however, since he had lectured on the campus the year before and had been a friend of the Dean’s since their student days at Newton Theological Seminary in the 1870’s; Dr. Burnham had been primarily responsible for bringing about his election as Colgate’s sixth president.

Dr. Merrill’s qualifications augured well for a successful term of office. He was fifty-three, a New Englander, a Harvard graduate (1869) and successful pastor. His tastes and attitudes reflected his scholarly and cultural interests and to them he joined considerable ability in business and architecture. He was a Biblical scholar and had traveled rather extensively in Europe. He enjoyed riding horseback and buggy driving. Always described as a “gentleman,” he had a “quiet firmness which was entirely consistent with his graciousness of manner” and “his purposes went forward surely but without noise.” He brought a “refining influence” to faculty and students who seemed to

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p. 232 – Colgate in the 1890’s

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Society, reported that the churches were alarmed and the situation became so grave that Schmidt was urged to seek a non-theological chair at some other institution.

In response to questions from Samuel Colgate, President of the Education Society, Professor Schmidt made a detailed statement to Mr. Colgate of his views which he defended as in accord with those usually held by Baptists. The heart of the matter as Schmidt saw it was

 

 

whether there is room in the Baptist denomination for a consistent application of scientific principles in the interpretation of the Bible and for progressive theology to which it invariably leads and what is the true conception of the duty of a theological professor in a Baptist seminary.*

 
Dean Burnham, who seems to have kept to the sidelines at first, threatened to resign if Schmidt remained on the faculty. He considered his associate’s views more Unitarian than Baptist and asserted that the real issue was whether the Seminary was to have a faculty who taught “the generally accepted Baptist truth.” He did concede, however, that in a college the professors might teach “truth as by their studies, they come to believe it to be.”**

Matters came to a climax at the June 1896 meetings of the University and Education Society Trustees. Both Boards, in accordance with their Compact of 1893, appointed a joint committee to recommend action on the Education Society Board’s request that Schmidt be dismissed for teachings which tended “to weaken the confidence of young men in the Scriptures and to alienate the sympathy of our churches from the institution.” The committee promptly recommended that his services be terminated as soon as possible, James C. Colgate, alone of the committee, protesting on the ground that no proper cause of action had been presented. The Education Society’s Board at once unanimously approved the Committee’s recommendation. Since the University Board had already adjourned, Mr. Colgate, as Secretary, informed Schmidt that the University Board was certain to dismiss him at its next meeting in December and advised him to find a new position. At Cornell, meanwhile, President Jacob G. Schurman, himself a Baptist and aware of the Colgate situation, had persuaded one of his

*Letter, Nathaniel Schmidt to Samuel Colgate, May 25, 1895.

**Letter, Dean Sylvester Burnham to Samuel Colgate, February 5, 1896.

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p. 221 – Colgate in the 1890’s

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President George W. Smith, 1895-97, Presidential Photographs (Artificial Collection), p221

public lectures for the recently established University Extension Program were all, no doubt, contributing factors toward his breakdown.

During the latter part of Smith’s, presidency, Professors Crawshaw and Brigham had jointly shared the duties of the office, amicably and harmoniously. From 1897 to 1899 Crawshaw was Acting President and in 1897 also he was made Dean, a position he was to fill with great distinction for 33 years. Though the double load from 1897 to 1899 was a heavy one, the generous support which James C. Colgate gave enabled him to carry the burden.

The Seminary, too, experienced administrative change. Professor William H. Maynard was made its first-Dean in 1891. He resigned in less than three months to be succeeded by the saintly and beloved Professor Hezekiah Harvey who served until his death in 1893. Professor Sylvester Burnham followed him from 1893 until 1913. In each instance these men continued their teaching while serving as Dean.

Reorganization in ‘the Treasurer’s Office included the resignation of William R. Rowlands in 1896 and the appointment of William M. West, President of the Hamilton bank, as his successor. Bookkeeping was modernized to provide closer supervision of accounts and, beginning in 1890, Treasurer’s Reports were published annually for distribution to the Trustees.

For all but two years during the period, 1890 to 1899, the accounts showed yearly deficits, often running to’ as much as $35,000. James B.

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p. 197 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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Prof. Alexander M. Beebee Jr., '47, Henry Hill Photographs-10, p197Prof. William H. Maynard, Henry Hill Photographs-10, p197

 

 

Interest in the University Library developed slowly in the Dodge period. In addition to teaching and being Dean, Professor Andrews served as Librarian from 1868 to 1880 and Professor Burnham from 1880 to 1892. The book collection was kept in a single room on the second floor of Alumni Hall. It numbered about 7,500 volumes in 1869, and 18,500 twenty years later. The establishment in the 1870’s of an endowment fund of $25,000, the income of which was for book purchases, brought about a steady increase on the shelves. James B. Colgate occasionally made gifts of luxurious art books and special sets. Dr. Dodge, who was something of a bibliophile, presented his library of some 3,500 volumes which was especially rich in art and theology. He had never spared expense in acquiring his treasures, many of which he valued for their fine colorful bindings as well as their contents. Despite his counsel to students to read the best English novels, the Library was seriously deficient in English and American literature. Few students, however, seem to have had a taste for leisure-time reading, nor did the fact that the Library was open only three hours a day and lacked an adequate catalog encourage them to acquire one. The opening of the James B. Colgate Library in 1891 was to create new opportunities for reading and study.

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p. 195 – Administration, Faculty, and Instruction in the Dodge Era

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theology, pastoral theology and homiletics. During the 1880’s, innovations began to reflect the new Biblical criticism and the interpretations of leading scholars both within and outside the Baptist denomination. There was renewed stress on the languages of the Bible by Professor Burnham, a specialist in Old Testament Hebrew, and by Professor Nathaniel Schmidt, also an expert in Biblical Greek and the Semitic languages, who joined the faculty in 1888. A native-born Swede, he had attended Stockholm University and in 1884-87 he studied at the Seminary where Dr. Dodge’s liberal attitudes had profoundly shaped his own views.

Professor Burnham, a Bowdoin graduate in 1862, had studied at Heidelberg, Gottingen, and Leipzig. He had also been a pastor and was closely associated with William Rainey Harper in the field of Old Testament scholarship. One student remembered that “His raven locks and beard, his large features, his vigor of body, mind and spirit, made him a veritable Elijah as he stood before his classes.” By the middle ’80’s he seems to have arrived at the position of constructive criticism of the orthodox view. In less than a decade, however, he was to take the role of the conservative in a bitter dispute with his younger associate, Professor Schmidt.

The advances of science were not overlooked in the Seminary. In 1887-88 Dr. Brooks gave a series of lectures on the relations of science and religion and after his death, his widow maintained the series in his memory until 1900. Dr. Alexander Winchell, eminent geologist of the University of Michigan who had been expelled from Vanderbilt University some years previously for his liberal views, lectured in 1889 and in 1890; his topics included: “The Place of Man in Creation” and “The Theistic Interpretation of Evolution.” So great an impression did he make that the Seminary faculty in 1891, on learning of his death, extended condolences to the President of the University of Michigan and noted his passing as “a most serious loss to the cause of religion & science.”

A sign in the direction of liberalization is to be found in a statement which first appeared in 1885 in a Seminary Catalogue that the object of instruction “has been, not to impress a common stamp upon the minds of its students, but to secure the best development of individual power consecrated to Christ.” The Trustees of the Baptist Education

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Phi Beta Kappa (p. 194)

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four years in college and were designed to provide them a set of standards for meeting problems of religion and of public and private morality. His role as teacher, he filled as effectively as that of president. He encouraged students to examine all kinds of ideas without restraint. One observer and friend stated, “Most fervently did he believe in free thought. He held it to be an indispensable requisite to large discovery of truth. Fetters on the mind he utterly abhorred, and he would have cut off his own right hand before he would have helped to bind them upon any human being.”

Professor Beebee gave most of his attention to his courses in homiletics in the Seminary but he did teach logic to college juniors. Professor Sylvester Burnham, appointed to the Seminary faculty in 1875, by student request, first offered an elective course in Biblical Literature for college seniors in 1887. His approach was an analysis of the Bible as national literature in comparison with other ancient literatures. The course won acceptance and was adopted by other colleges.

Academic incentives in the form of prize competitions numbered three in 1869 and twelve in 1890, and at the latter date rewarded distinguished achievement in the classics, chemistry, history, mathematics, English composition, public speaking, and debate. Professor Lewis had been active in instigating and promoting those in the last three areas. He also encouraged the University to join the Intercollegiate Literary Association in 1876. This organization staged an annual contest among the colleges for the best essays, orations, and examinations in literature which to some extent rivaled in interest the intercollegiate athletic contests of the time. Madison entrants were among the winners in 1878, 1879, and 1880.

The University’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Eta of New York, owes its existence primarily to Professor Lewis. He forwarded an application for a charter to the Union College chapter, Alpha of New York, in 1873 but, apparently through inadvertance, favorable action was delayed until 1878 when Alpha complied. Associated with him as founding members were President Dodge and Professors Maynard, Burnham and Judson and they in turn elected to membership six seniors, the seven remaining faculty members, and 21 alumni.

Throughout the Dodge period the Seminary curriculum retained its major divisions of Old and New Testament, ecclesiastical history,

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