Francis Greenwood Peabody, Plummer professor of Christian morals in
Harvard University, recently retired from its faculty after service
extending over a generation.
To the observant public he is known chiefly as author of several works
on social ethics, such as The Approach to the Social Question and Jesus
Christ and the Social Question or as a preacher and speaker whose
inspiring thoughts are clothed in remarkably well chosen words. At
Harvard he was a college preacher, and had a leading part in changing
the religious exercises of the College Chapel so that attendance was
voluntary instead of required, and there were ministrations from
clergymen of different denominations. He helped to place the divinity
school on a board basis.
His chief work in the academic world was the significant one of
beginning and developing systematic instruction in the application of
principles of ethics to pressing social problems. Just thirty-three
years ago he began a course of lectures on that subject in the divinity
school of Harvard. Four years later it was made a general university
course for advanced students. In this said Mr. Peabody, there is “a new
opportunity in university instruction. With us it has been quite without
precedent. It summons the young men who have been imbued with the
principles of political economy and of philosophy, to the practical
application of those studies.”
That course at Harvard, with the instruction begun at Cornell in 1884 by
Frank B. Sanborn, under President White, was the beginning of academic
work in this country, specialized and practical, in that field, and at
Harvard it has continued, a systematic development. It is within the
division of Philosophy. This means no lack of appreciation of the
economic forces in society, but it points to the broad highway to
solving vital problems though the field of ethics. This teaching so won
the confidence of a generous donor, prominent alike in business and
philanthropy, that the erection of Emerson Hall was made possible, with
ample quarters for the Department of Social Ethics. Thus Mr. Peabody
leaves the department which he has built up on the solid ground of
continuity.
Among the hundreds of young men who have taken Mr. Peabody’s general
course and his seminary courses, many have been helped by him to be
better citizens and neighbors. Not a few have carried stimulus caught
from him into professional life in social service the country over.
The recent and really remarkable activity of Harvard students in social
service, centering at Phillips Brooks House, was largely founded and
fostered by Mr. Peabody. He has been identified with Prospect Union from
its opening in 1891: a piece of university extension, in whose evening
classes the teachers are college students and the students are all sorts
and conditions of men from mercantile and industrial life in Cambridge.
Long ago, he helped to start co-operative stores, a method of bringing
forward democracy and thrift—which is none the less sound because many
persons were not ready for it. He urged the trial in Massachusetts
cities, under local option, of the foreign system of government
administration of the sale of liquor—to which worse systems may yet
bring us.
He was a leading founder of the Associated Charities of Cambridge. In
these and many other ways he has brought the knowledge of a college
professor, with warm interest, into the affairs of the community.