Protestant. As for myself, I had been bred a
churchman, had recently been elected a trustee of one church college,
and a professor in another; those nearest and dearest to me were
devoutly religious; and, if I may be allowed to speak of a matter so
personal to my self, my most cherished friendships were among deeply
religious men and women, and my greatest sources of enjoyment were
ecclesiastical architecture, religious music, and the more devout forms
of poetry. So, far from wishing to injure Christianity, we both hoped to
promote it; but we did not confound religion with sectarianism, and we
saw in the sectarian character of American colleges and universities as
a whole, a reason for the poverty of the advanced instruction then given
in so many of them.

It required no great acuteness to see that a system of control which, in
selecting a Professor of Mathematics or Language or Rhetoric or Physics
or Chemistry, asked first and above all to what sect or even to what
wing or branch of a sect he belonged, could hardly do much to advance
the moral, religious, or intellectual development of mankind.

The reasons for the new foundation seemed to us, then, so cogent that
we expected the co-operation of all good citizens, and anticipated no
opposition from any source.

As I look back across the intervening years, I know not whether to be
more astonished or amused at our simplicity.

Opposition began at once. In the State Legislature it confronted us at
every turn, and it was soon in full blaze throughout the State--from the
good Protestant bishop who proclaimed that all professors should be in
holy orders, since to the Church alone was given the command, "Go, teach
all nations," to the zealous priest who published a charge that Goldwin
Smith--a profoundly Christian scholar--had come to Cornell in order
to inculcate the "infidelity of the Westminster Review"; and from the
eminent divine who went from city to city, denouncing the "atheistic
and pantheistic tendencies" of the proposed education, to the perfervid
minister who informed a denominational synod that Agassiz, the last
great opponent of Darwin, and a devout theist, was "preaching Darwinism
and atheism" in the new institution.

As the struggle deepened, as hostile resolutions were introduced into
various ecclesiastical bodies, as honored clergymen solemnly warned
their flocks first against the "atheism," then against the "infidelity,"
and finally against the "indiff