DIVINITY CENTENNIAL THURSDAY

The Alumni Association of the University Divinity School is planning to observe on October 5th the 100th anniversary of its recognition as a professional school distinct from Harvard College. The alumni do not admit that the School is only a century old for they date its foundation back to October, 1636, when the General Court of the newly settled colony voted money to establish the college, "dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministry shall lie in the dust." Instruction in theology was given in the college from the time of its first opening, and the first professorship instituted was the Hollis professorship of divinity, established in 1721. The differentiation of the divinity school from the College was very gradual and for many years previous to 1816 students for the ministry were registered as "resident graduates," spending a single year in the advanced study of Hebrew, reading the Greek Testament, and in the discussion of theological and moral problems. Indeed, the late Dean Everett's witticism was at least half true when he claimed that the Divinity School represented the original foundation of 1636 and that the College as we know it has developed out of the Divinity School.

The year 1816 does, however, mark an important epoch in the history of theological education in Cambridge and the beginning of a new era, for in that year the Divinity School was definitely distinguished from the College, though the Divinity Faculty was not formally organized until 1819. On February 3, 1816, a committee appointed by the corporation issued an appeal for subscriptions for the extension of the means of theological education in Cambridge. The letter states that the President of the University has officially declared that "neither the object nor the consequence, 'of enlarging the theological funds of the University, is to be the communication of a sectarian character to that institution, or to inculcate the peculiarities of any sect,' but that the beneficent and laudable design is 'to place students of divinity under the most favorable circumstances for inquiring for themselves into the doctrines of Revelation.'"

A little later a group of alumni issued a call for the organization of a society to raise money for this purpose, which resulted in the formation of the "Society for the Promotion of Theological Education in Harvard University" on July 17, 1816. In the Corporation records for October 18, 1816, appears for the first time the mention of "Theological Seminary of the University." The first class from the School graduated in December, 1817. The Society for Promoting Theological Education in Harvard University (as it is now known) is still in existence and holds in trust certain funds for the benefits of the School. Under its auspices a hundred years ago an endowment fund was raised, considerable for those days, and ten years later it secured the money for Divinity Hall.