As it approached completion there came a proposal which opened a new era in our university life. Mr. Dean Sage, the eldest son of him who had given us the women's college and the chapel, proposed to add an endowment for a chaplaincy, and suggested that a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church be appointed to that office. This would have been personally pleasing to me; for, though my churchmanship was ``exceeding broad,'' I was still attracted to the church in which I was brought up, and felt nowhere else so much at home. But it seemed to me that we had no right, under our charter, to give such prominence to any single religious organization; and I therefore proposed to the donor that the endowment be applied to a preachership to be filled by leading divines of all denominations. In making this proposal I had in view, not only the unsectarian feature embodied in our charter, but my observation of university chaplaincies generally. I had noticed that, at various institutions, excellent clergymen, good preachers, thorough scholars, charming men, when settled as chaplains, had, as a rule, been unable to retain their hold upon the great body of the students. The reason was not far to seek. The average parish clergyman, even though he be not a strong preacher or profound scholar or brilliant talker, if he be at all fit for his position, gradually wins the hearts of his congregation. He has baptized their children, married their young men and maidens, buried their dead, rejoiced with those who have rejoiced, and wept with those who have wept. A strong tie has thus grown up. But such a tie between a chaplain and bodies of students shifting from year to year, is, in the vast majority of cases, impossible. Hence it is that even the most brilliant preachers settled in universities have rapidly lost their prestige among the students. Iremembered well how, at Geneva and at Yale, my college-mates joked at the peculiarities of clergymen connected with the college, who, before I entered it, had been objects of my veneration. I remembered that at Yale one of my class was wont to arouse shouts of laughter by his droll imitations of the prayers of the leading professors--imitations in which their gestures, intonations, and bits of rhetoric and oratory were most ludicrously caricatured. Iremembered, too, how a college pastor, a man greatly revered, was really driven out of the university pulpit by a squib in a students' paper, and how several of his successors had finally retreated into professorships in the Divinity School; and I felt that leading men coming from week to week from the outside world would be taken at the value which the outside world puts upon them, and that they would bring in a fresh atmosphere. My expectations were more than fulfilled. The preachership having been established, I sent invitations to eminent clergymen along the whole gamut of belief, from the Roman Catholic bishop of the diocese to the most advanced Protestants.
The bishop answered me most courteously; but, to my sincere regret, declined. One or two bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church also made some difficulties at first, but gradually they were glad to accept; for it was felt to be a privilege and a pleasure to preach to so large a body of open-minded young men, and the course of sermons has for years deepened and strengthened what is best in university life. The whole system was indeed at first attacked; and while we had formerly been charged with godlessness, we were now charged with ``indifferentism''
--whatever that might mean. But I have had the pleasure of living to see this system adopted at other leading universities of our country, and it is evidently on its way to become the prevailing system among all of them. I believe that no pulpit in the United States has exercised a more powerful influence for good. Strong men have been called to it from all the leading religious bodies; and they, knowing the character of their audience, have never advocated sectarianism, but have presented the great fundamental truths upon which all religion must be based.
The first of these university preachers was Phillips Brooks, and he made a very deep impression. An interesting material result of his first sermon was that Mr.
William Sage, the second son of our benefactor, came forward at the close of the service, and authorized me to secure a beautiful organ for the university chapel.[8] In my addresses to students I urged them to attend for various good reasons, and, if for none of these, because a man is but poorly educated who does not keep himself abreast of the religious thought of his country. Curious was it to see Japanese students, some of them Buddhists, very conscientious in their attendance, their eyes steadily fixed upon the preacher.
[8] Sunday, June 13, 1875.
My selections for the preachership during the years of my presidency were made with great care. So far as possible, I kept out all ``sensational preaching.'' I had no wish to make the chapel a place for amusement or for ground and lofty tumbling by clerical performers, and the result was that its ennobling influence was steadily maintained.
Some other pulpits in the university town were not so well guarded. A revivalist, having been admitted to one of them, attempted to make a sensation in various ways--and one evening laid great stress on the declaration that she was herself a brand plucked from the burning, and that her parents were undoubtedly lost. A few minutes afterward, one of the Cornell students present, thinking doubtless, that his time would be better employed upon his studies, arose and walked down the aisle to the door. At this the preacher called out, ``There goes a young man straight down to hell.'' Thereupon the student turned instantly toward the preacher and asked quietly, ``Have you any message to send to your father and mother?''
Our list of university preachers, both from our own and other countries, as I look back upon it, is wonderful to me.
