BISHOP LAWRENCE

Unless he is already familiar with the facts, the Freshman is certain to be informed that a discriminating use of dates shows that the college has been English longer than American and that it was designed primarily to train ministers for service in the hamlets of Puritan New England. But long before President Eliot expanded the college into a modern university it had broken from those early ecclesiastical traditions, and with further development that spirit has been lost almost entirely. In a measure the career of the Right Reverend William Lawrence, Bishop of Massachusetts, recreates the atmosphere of early Harvard. Graduating from the college in 1871 and receiving his ministerial degree at the Episcopal Theological School he has at once reached the highest honors in his profession and achieved distinction as professor, author, and educator.

His close association with Harvard as student and Fellow makes Bishop Lawrence an excellent interpreter of the problems facing the undergraduate who plans to enter the ministry; and his long experience in that profession makes his judgement of its opportunities of unusual value to the man who is undecided as to his career. And the ministry with its requirement of unselfish devotion to church and congregation and its incommensurate rewards in the luxuries of life is a profession which more than any other demands an inspiring interpreter.