RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Theological Seminaries
In 1910 the seminary had four instructors and fifteen students, all Universalists, and coming from states as remote as Maine and Louisiana. It is governed by a board of nine trustees. Its invested funds and property have increased to about $300,- 000, while the separate endowment of the seminary is $165,000; and it also shares an undivided interest in grounds and buildings with the College of Letters of St. Lawrence University. The library contains 12,000 volumes. Almon Gunnison.
2. Crane: This theological school is a department of Tufts College, which is located at Tufts College, Middlesex Co., Mass. It was recognized as a separate department in 1869, and arose from perception of the fact that a general college training needed to be supplemented by specific professional work for the proper training of ministers. The first foundation was given by Mr. Sylvanus Packard, and the largest gift was made in 1906 by Mr. Albert Crane, of Stamford, Conn., in fulfilment of the expressed intention of his father, Mr. Thomas Crane, Df New York. The school is not under denominational control, but is Universalist in sympathy. The first instructor was Rev. Thomas J. Sawyer. The history of the institution has been entirely uneventful so far as matters of outside change or controversy are concerned. It has stood steadily for the application of sound scholarship to the materials Df religious knowledge, for serviceable and practicable preaching, and for a type of religious thinking in close contact with the realities and problems Df daily life. It has always held scholarship above convention, truth above tradition, and life above creed, but at the same time it has realized the importance of orderly and well-regulated thought as the basis of right living. It has emphasized the Human relations of the minister's work, and has sought to strengthen the hold of its students upon reality by identifying them as closely as possible with the general life of the college, so that the theological students are not a class apart, but are associated with the general student body as an integral part of the college community. The Crane Theological School has shared with the sister school at St. Lawrence University the intellectual leadership of the Universalist denomination, not in rivalry but in generous emulation; and it has done much to prevent the thinking of the denomination from becoming stereotyped and to keep its life thoroughly modern. The special movement of most significance which originated under its influence was that which made Universalism a creedless church, by transforming the Winchester Profession and its later alternative, the Boston Declaration, into simple statements of things commonly accepted among Universalists, and abrogating all subscription requirements. Its more prominent instructors have been Dr. Thomas J. Sawyer, its first dean; his successor, Dr. Charles H. Leonard; Dr. Hinckley G. Mitchell (q.v.), in Old Testament; Dr. William G. Tousey, a teacher of ethics and logic; Dr. George M. Harmon, its professor of New-Testament literature and criticism; and Dr. George T. Knight (q.v.), professor of systematic theology.
The number of professors directly assigned to the school by the catalogue for 1909-10 is five, but
the relations of the school to the college bring the students under instruction of the teaching force of the School of Liberal Arts, twenty-three in number. The school is under the absolute control of the thirty trustees of Tufts College, twenty of whom are selfperpetuating, while ten are elected by the graduates. No other supervision or control exists. The president of the college has the general direction of the school, which is organized with a dean and a department faculty. There were in the school in 1910 fifteen students, all Universalists, the majority from the New England states, and one Englishman. The separate endowment of the seminary, including grounds and buildings, amounts to $345,000, although its close relations to the college are of great financial advantage to it, and it also uses the college library, which numbers 61,000 volumes and 46,000 pamphlets.
Frederick William Hamilton.
3. Ryder: This divinity school constitutes the theological department of Lombard College, Galesburg, Knox Co., 111., and was opened Sept. 5, 1881, being established to meet the needs of the Univerversalist denomination in the Middle West. In 1890 its trustees voted to change its name to Ryder Divinity School in honor of the late Rev. William Henry Ryder, whose gifts to the institution amounted to more than $50,000, another generous benefactor being Hon. A. G. Throop, of California, The school is open to all candidates for the Christian ministry, although its main work has been training men and women for the Universalist denomination. Among its noteworthy instructors have been Nehemiah White, E. H. Chapin (q.v.), and Isaac Parker. It has never been a large school, having had but about 150 students throughout its entire history. Of these about forty have graduated with a degree, and about fifty are now engaged in active ministerial work. Lewis B. Fisher.
XXI. Undenominational. — 1. Harvard: This seminary is located in Cambridge, Mass., and was so closely associated with Harvard College that no special year can be named as that of its foundation, since one of the objects of Harvard from the very beginning was the training of men for the ministry. The earliest instruction for theological students apart from the regular college courses, however, was in 1811, and classes were conducted in this way until 1819, when a distinct faculty of theology was established. With this establishment J. T. Kirkland (q.v.), then president of Harvard, had probably more to do than any other man, and the original faculty consisted of Henry Ware, Sr. (q.v.), Sidney Willard, Levi Frisbie, and Andrews Norton (q.v.). The initial constitution of the school, as made in 1816, provided " that every encouragement be given to the serious, impartial, and unbiased investigation of Christian truth; and that no assent to the peculiarities of any denomination be required either of the students, or professors, or instructors." The distinct organization of the school was legally due to the formation in 1816 of the Society for the Promotion of Theological Education in Harvard University, and from 1824 to 1830 the school was under the direct oversight of the directors of this society, though they acted under the corporation of Harvard
Theological Seminaries Theology as a Science