May the work which you
do in the discharge of your sacred trust be regarded with sympathetic
and expectant forbearance by the present generation, and with admiration
and gratitude by posterity.
"The University which is to take its rise in the splendid benefaction of
Johns Hopkins must be unsectarian. None other could as appropriately be
established in the city named for the Catholic founder of a colony to
which all Christian sects were welcomed, or in the State in which
religious toleration was expressly declared in the name of the
Government for the first time in the history of the Christian world.
There is a too common opinion that a college or university which is not
denominational must therefore be irreligious; but the absence of
sectarian control should not be confounded with lack of piety. A
university whose officers and students are divided among many sects
need no more be irreverent and irreligious than the community which in
respect to diversity of creeds it resembles. It would be a fearful
portent if thorough study of nature and of man in all his attributes and
works, such as befits a university, led scholars to impiety. But it does
not; on the contrary, such study fills men with humility and awe, by
bringing them on every hand face to face with inscrutable mystery and
infinite power.
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69