MARK HOPKINS

(1802-1887.)

THE celebration at the Church of the Puritans in 1853 was addressed by that master among teachers, Dr. Mark Hopkins, for thirty-six years president of Williams College, and for thirty years the strong and wise head of the American Board of Foreign Missions. Eminent as a student, thinker, and speaker, he was greatest in his personal influence on those about him. When he took its leadership, Williams was still a small institution. Under his wise and self-denying presidency, it became one of the powerful colleges of the country. Dr. Hopkins was a native of Stockbridge. He graduated from Williams in 1824, and shortly returned to it as a tutor. An offer of the chair of philosophy and rhetoric changed his arrangements for entering medical practice in New York, and made Williamstown his permanent home. Six years later, at thirty-four, he was elected president. Many of his courses of lectures were published, receiving wide attention, and it is interesting to note that Dr. Hopkins was a forerunner of those who now emphasize the value of study of the natural sciences.

ORATION

THE

HE celebrations and amusements of a people indicate their character. A populace, such as despotism and superstition produce and imply, require to be amused by pageants, and processions, and sports, and masquerades. Giving up the care of their government to the king, and of their salvation to the priest, what have they to do but to convert their holy-days into holidays, and when a prescribed formality has satisfied the conscience, to follow a monkey, or a tumbler, to visit the cock-pit or the gaming-table, to be gay, and, shall I say, happy,-no, not happy-but to be amused and managed like grown-up children. To such, the idea of a Sabbath as a day of holy rest, is inconceivable.

A people, on the other hand, reflective, self-governed, feeling their individual and immediate responsibility to God, will create an atmosphere stifling to all pageantry and mummery. They will keep their Sabbaths; their festivities will be irradiated by a rational joy, and their celebrations and holidays will not be without something to strengthen principle, and nourish the affections. These days will be consecrated to the progress of the peaceful arts; they will commemorate the bounties of Providence, the struggles and triumphs of freedom, the piety and heroism of Pilgrim Fathers.

Pilgrim Fathers! What wealth of hallowed associations is garnered in these words! By what others in

the English language should we prefer to designate our ancestors?

They were Pilgrims—and such Pilgrims. They sought no shrine already hallowed. Not by superstition, or fanaticism, or the love of adventure, or desire for gain, singly or combined, were they moved; but, like Abraham, they went out in the grandeur of simple faith, not knowing whither they went. They went, as they themselves say, "with the great hope and inward seal they had of laying some good foundation for the propagating and advancing the kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the world." 1

That the object assigned by them was their great object, God has been careful to make evident, not from testimony alone, but precisely as he did in the case of the Apostles and first Christians. So close indeed is the parallel, in circumstances, in character, and in results, that the same language will apply to both.

It was only through long inward struggles, and searchings of the Scriptures, and much prayer, that both were brought to separate themselves from a Church in which they were born, but which had substituted the traditions of man for the word of God, and the forms of religion instead of its spirit. And in making this separation, the temper and sincerity of both were tried to the utmost. Both were forbidden to preach or to teach under heavy penalties, were imprisoned, deprived of their property, put to death, driven from their country and scattered abroad by persecution. Both were placed socially under ban, and utterly scorned by all that passed for refinement in their day-were regarded as "the filth of the earth, and the off-scouring of all things." Against both, Providence itself and the very elements sometimes seemed to conspire, as when 'Young's Chronicles.

Paul was imprisoned for years, and was shipwrecked, and was a night and a day in the deep; and when the Pilgrims attempted to leave England, and the enemy came upon them and divided their families, and the

storm arose.

But in these trials they were alike patient and confident in God. Paul could say, "I know whom I have believed." John Penry could say just before his martyrdom, "I testify unto you for mine own part, as I shall answer it before Jesus Christ, and his elect angels, that I never saw any truth more clear and more undoubted than this witness wherein we stand." Paul could say, "I am ready to be offered." Penry could say, "And I thank my God, I am not only ready to be bound and banished, but even to die for this cause, by his strength." Paul could say, "I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better"-but added-"Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you." Penry could say, "I greatly long, in regard of myself, to be dissolved and to live in the blessed kingdom of heaven with Jesus Christ and his angels." And he too could

add, "I would indeed, if it be his good pleasure, live yet with you to help you bear that grievous and hard yoke which ye are like to sustain, either here or in a strange land." And if the Apostle had had a wife and children, he could hardly have committed them with stronger faith to exile and the promises. "And here," says Penry, "I humbly beseech you, not in any outward regard, as I shall answer it before my God, that you would take my poor and desolate widow, and mess of fatherless and friendless orphans, with you into exile whithersoever you may go, and you shall find, I doubt not, that the blessed promises of my God made to me and mine will accompany you.

Only I be

seech you, let them not continue after you in this land, where they must be forced to go again into Egypt."

Such was their spirit. Persons of all conditions and of all ages were thus sustained through years of destitution and suffering. Some dying in prison, as Neale says, "like rotten sheep," and some enduring the perils and hardships of the wilderness; but all cheerful and confident in God.

Nor were these persons, as a body, more than the early Christians, narrow, or bigoted, or sour, or fanatical, or turbulent, or seekers of novelties. Says Robinson: "As they that affect alienation from others make their differences as great, and the adverse opinion or practice as odious as they can, thereby to further their desired victory over them, and to harden themselves and their side against them, so, on the contrary, they who desire peace and accord, both interpret things in the best part they reasonably can, and seek how and where they may find any lawful door of entry into accord and agreement with others: of which latter number I profess myself, by the grace of God, both a companion and a guide, especially in regard of my Christian countryaccounting it a cross that I am compelled, in any particular, to dissent from them, but a benefit and matter of rejoicing when I can in any thing, with good conscience, unite with them in matter, if not in manner, or, where it may be, in both."1 "We uphold," says he, "whatsoever manifest good we know in the Church of England, whether doctrine, ordinance, or personal grace, to our utmost. We do acknowledge in it many excellent truths of doctrine which we also teach without commixture of error; many Christian ordinances which we also practice-being purged from the pollution of Anti-Christ—and for the godly per1 Works, vol. iii., p. 354.

men