Anniversary Address Delivered on the Second Commencement of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary - At Greenville, S. C. Monday, May 27th, 1861 #271101

Does it not remind us to-day, although it has yet no outward show to commend it, of those comprehensive foundations to which, in the twelfth century, the name of "University" was first applied - the Sorbonnes and Oxfords where science and religion collected their diverse and yet harmonious schools beneath the Gothic arches - those institutions that seemed to have discovered the secret of perpetual youth - that in the conflicts of centuries stood fast, rearing their holy towers above the mists of morning and the dusts of noon, and "pointing in silence heavenward."<br><br>It would be of deep interest, did the time serve and the occasion permit, to trace the links which bind our Institution to the general history of learning. It would be pleasant to enumerate those convocations and those saintly spirits who, age after age, have devoted themselves to instruction because of their great love to Christ and to the souls of men; who asserted that knowledge must be freely imparted, because it was religious - because God had assigned to sinners, saved by grace, to erect the new Kingdom of Light upon the ruins of the classic world; and who often illustrated the condescensions of learning by marching with their pupils, after the recitations were over, back to their homes, lest some harm or temptation should befall them by the way. Pleasant it would be to revisit that Mother-School of Alexandria, illustrious with the names of Clement and Origen, where the most magnificent intellects of the age deduced from the Bible the essential principles "of philosophy, of politics and legislation, of eloquence and poetry, of all truth, all inspiration, all beauty."