Science; and all of them are professed and taught in this Institution. But there is yet one Science behind necessary to com pleat all the rest, and without which they will be found at best but very defective and unsatisfactory. 'Tis the Science of Christianity and the Great Mystery of Godliness; that Sublimest Philosophy, into which even the angels themselves desire to be further initiated.
A new departure in higher education Mr. Smith felt was needed in the colonies. Up to this time, the aim of our earlier colleges had been primarily to prepare young men for the ministry. The conditions attendant upon the organization and the circumstances surrounding its progress forbad this to the new Philadelphia institution, however much Mr. Smith may have thought of it, of which however their appears no evidence.[1] While tutoring in Long Island he must have had knowledge of the curriculum at Yale, and he may have visited New Haven; his acquaintance with its distinguished alumnus Samuel Johnson possibly ensured this. The chief thought here, as it was in like manner at Harvard College, seemed to be to fit the pupils to assume the clerical profession; the President and Fellows, or Tutors, for it was not until 1755, that the term Professor was known at Yale and that was upon the appointment of Dr. Daggett as Professor of Theology, were mostly clergymen, whose professional sympathies would lead to such a training; and while the curriculum might of itself not bear such bias, those who administered it would perhaps insensibly give to it a theological discipline. But it must, at the same time, be admitted that Yale "was a seminary which was intended for the training of ministers as much as for any purpose; "[2] and it was on this ground that the head of the College, Rev. Timothy Cutler, " was excused from all further service as Rector," when he led off in
- ↑ It is doubtless true, that the studies of the English universities, from which the American Colleges are historically derived, were originally arranged with special reference to the clerical profession, and that to this day some of the peculiarities thus induced 'have not been entirely outgrown. The first American Colleges were also primarily founded as training schools for the clergy, but as the other professions came to require a liberal culture, this special reference to the clerical profession was laid aside. President Porter, American Colleges and the Ameiican Public, p. 93. And President Clap of Yale said in 1754 " the original End and design of Colleges was to instruct and train up persons for the work of the ministry * * * The great design of founding this school was to educate ministers in our own way."
- ↑ President Woolsey in Kingsley's Yale College i. 53-54.
