Letter to President Thomas Chase, LL. D.
AMESBURY, MASS., 9th mo., 1884.
THE Semi-Centennial of Haverford College is an event that no member of
the Society of Friends can regard without deep interest. It would give
me great pleasure to be with you on the 27th inst., but the years rest
heavily upon me, and I have scarcely health or strength for such a
journey.
It was my privilege to visit Haverford in 1838, in "the day of small
beginnings." The promise of usefulness which it then gave has been more
than fulfilled. It has grown to be a great and well-established
institution, and its influence in thorough education and moral training
has been widely felt. If the high educational standard presented in the
scholastic treatise of Barclay and the moral philosophy of Dymond has
been lowered or disowned by many who, still retaining the name of
Quakerism, have lost faith in the vital principle wherein precious
testimonials of practical righteousness have their root, and have gone
back to a dead literalness, and to those materialistic ceremonials for
leaving which our old confessors suffered bonds and death, Haverford, at
least, has been in a good degree faithful to the trust committed to it.
Under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty, it has endeavored
to maintain the Great Testimony. The spirit of its culture has not been
a narrow one, nor could it be, if true to the broad and catholic
principles of the eminent worthies who founded the State of
Pennsylvania, Penn, Lloyd, Pastorius, Logan, and Story; men who were
masters of the scientific knowledge and culture of their age, hospitable
to all truth, and open to all light, and who in some instances
anticipated the result of modern research and critical inquiry.
It was Thomas Story, a minister of the Society of Friends, and member of
Penn's Council of State, who, while on a religious visit to England,
wrote to James Logan that he had read on the stratified rocks of
Scarborough, as from the finger of God, proofs of the immeasurable age
of our planet, and that the "days" of the letter of Scripture could
only mean vast spaces of time.
May Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who,
in investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who,
to use the words of Fenelon, "Silenced themselves to hear in the
stillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ." Holding
fast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light and
Word, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrous
quarrel of religion with science. Against the sublime faith which shall
yet dominate the world, skepticism has no power. No possible
investigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter and
tradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts.
That Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities as
an approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophy
which can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it for
universal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect,
is giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses in
the Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances of
Chunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.