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LUTHER Luce and HIS PLACE in AMERICAN BAPTIST HISTORY

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LUTHER Luce and HIS PLACE in AMERICAN BAPTIST HISTORY 508 Luther Rice in American Baptist History. LUTHER lUCE AND HIS PLACE IN AMERICAN BAPTIST HISTORY. By PROFESSOR E. B. POLLARD, D.D., CROZER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. PARl'II. This leads us to Rice's third notable contribution to denominational thought. Rice, as had no other, taught Baptists to think of their task in terms of leadership. Till the nineteenth century, Baptists imported many of their leaders from England and Wales.* He saw quickly and clearly that if Baptists would keep at the front in the task of saving the world, they must be educated, and de­ vel'op a well-equipped ministry. Other American Bap­ tist leaders had, to be sure, seen this prior to the coming of Rice. Edwards (Morgan) and I~aton and Manning and Furman and Staughton had been thinking and working to this end. But it was Rice, who, in the most persistent and concrete way, bore this thought hard upon the con­ sciences of the masses of the people. Through the mis­ sionary enterprise, he came to perceive distinctly that the coming task of the ministry of the land called for a broad outlook upon life and duty, and for the well-trained mind, if the Kingdom of God was to go forward victo­ riously. ·Well-furnished missionaries were the call of the hour, as well as ministers at home, capable of educating the people to the larger view of the Kingdom. In Rice's tours on behalf of foreign missions, he was struck with the fact that the multitudes sometimes responded more readily to the appeal than did the pastors themselves. An educated ministry now appeared to him the crux of the problem. While advocating education in general and the '" About one-third of the first Triennial Convention were natives of Great Britain. Downloaded from rae.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO on June 8, 2015 Luther Rice in A.merican Baptist History. 509 establislhment of local centers of learning, his plan was that there should be at least one central institution, chief­ ly theological in character, for the whole people. This was projected in Philadelphioa by the election of Dr. Wil­ liam Staughton and Rev. Ira Chase as the faculty of the first theological seminary for American Baptists, in the year 1818. In the year 1820, the number of theological students in attendance there was eighteen. In accordance with Rice's views, in order that the institution should be made most helpful to all sections, it was removed to Was:hington City in 1821. Here legal difficulties pre­ vented the chartering of a purely theological school, and a college of academic character was instituted, with ~ theological department. Besides, experience had already shown that the young men entering the ministry needed college education quite as sorely as theological instrulI­ tion, and there was then no school of college grade undar Baptist auspices south of Rhode Island. Rhode Island College (Brown University) alone was of 'high grade. Rice proceeded to Washington,brought together the local leaders-notably, O. B. Brown, Spencer H. Cone and Enoch Reynolds-purchased land and presented it to tl}:e next meeting of the Triennial Convention, in 1820, 'Ito promote the education of the ministry, and ultimatelyrfwr the formation of a college, under the direction of the Bap­ tist General Convention." ·While some of the more CQ.]l­ servative brethren gasped at the bold stroke of Rice. ine convention adapted its constitution so as to include the project, and passed resolutions accepting the propoUd plans and site. Thus Columbian College came into bei4g -begun by Rice and adopted by the Triennial Conventfun as their own. Rice felt in duty bound, and as agent of tb.e convention was instructed, to collect the funds necessauy to set the College firmly on its feet. At once he met wilth most gratifying and unexpected success. Money WJa6 freely given. The ,buildings were soon under way. The very progress 'being made became a cause of alarm among the more timid. But in ]-'ebruary, 1821, the theologi<lal Downloaded from rae.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO on June 8, 2015 510 Luther Rice in American Baptist History. department was opened, by the removal of ifue faculty and students which had already been brought together in Philadelphia. In the fall of ]822, the College opened itfS doors. But Columbian College was only the beginning of the educational campaign pushed vigorously by Rice. While it would be folly to attribute to him the glory of fhe founding of the large number of educational institutions which came into being among Baptists within the brief period of the decade or more of Rice '80 enthusiastic agita­ tion, yet it can be truthfully said that out of the awaken­ ings in which Rice w,as the most active personal partici­ pant, there originated Hamilton, 1819; Waterville (Col­ by), 1820; Columbian, 1821-22; Newton Theological In­ stitution, 1825; Furman, 1827; Georgetown, 1829; Rich­ mond, 1832; Wake Forest, 1834; Granville (Denison), 1832, Alton (Shurtleff), 1832. Professor H. 'T. Cook, in his volume, "A Biography of R.Furman," brings out the denomination '80 great debt to Dr. Richard Furman for leadership in education, espe­ ciallyminis:terial education among Baptists in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. But as his biographer states, "His was the Fabian policy O'f waiting, waiting, waiting on his brethren." After the American Revolu­ tion, the Charleston Association had come to the front a'S the leader in ministerial education, as the Philadelphia Association had led before the Revolution; and Dr. Fur­ man was the foremost exponent of the idea. He had un­ dou'htedly sown very much of the seed which was later gloriously harvested. Dr. li'urman, a native of New York State, who Ihadspent his entire mature life in the South, was at the very!beginning recognized as the m9st suitable man for the presidency of the General Missionary Con­ vention organized in Philadelphia in 1814. He had been in the service longer than the large majority of those who composed that first meeting. They were, for the most part, comparatively young men. Furman was a conserv­ atitve, ffi€dia:ting spirit, as well as a leader of large expe- Downloaded from rae.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO on June 8, 2015 Luther Rice in American Baptist History. 511 rience. The first definite proposal for a general movement of Baptists, in the direction of an in\stitution for minis­ terial education, through the Triennial Convention, was made by Dr. Furman in a presidential address to that body in 1817. But it is evident that the conservatism of the president w.as too slow for the dashing young spirits whose progressiveness and enthusiasm dominated the convention. At the meeting in 1820, Robert B. Semple was substituted for Furman in the presidency, and the educational plans of Rice were accepted and endorsed. If Furman's policy was Fabian, Rice's was Napoleonic. The question whether Furman or Rice deserves the greater credit for the remarkable educational advance among Baptist,s in the twenties and early thirties, resolves itself into the question whether the man who suggests plans, or the man who executes should have the greater praise. All honor to Furman for his long sustained influence in favor of ministeri.al edupation. Rice thought the time had come to act. He agitated to that end, and made a dash toward achievement, rallying the Baptist hosts to ad­ vance. As Arthur H. Clough wrote concerning Colum­ bus: "What if wise men ,as far back as Ptolemy Judged that the earth like an orange is round I None of them ever said, 'Come along, follow me, Sail to the West, and the East shall ,be found.' " Rice launched out into the deep, and left many less daring spirits upon the shore. From the year 1817 (when the convention decided to take education as well as mis­ sions into its program) till about 1825, there was every indication of Rice's signal triumph in the founding of the central institution at Washington, and in the hearty awakening of the Baptist brotherhood to its enthusiastic support. There were vigorous protests, to be sure, as there had been earlier concerning the missionary aggres­ siveness of Rice and his co-laborers, who were directing Downloaded from rae.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO on June 8, 2015 512 Luther Rice in American Baptist History. the policy of the Convention, but both the Board annually and the Convention triennially endorsed Rice's move­ ments in words of the most enthusiastic pr,aise. For ex­ ample, in 1822, in their Eighth Annual Report, the Board made this minute: "Brother Rice is again unanimously and with the glow of affectionate gratitude, elected agent of the Board, and commended to the care of a gracious providence, and to the bounteous attention of all Who take pleasure in well doing. " Among other educative for«es which Rice fostered for Baptists was the missionary periodical literature. The Baptist Missionary Magazine had been established as or­ gan of the Boston Missionary Society in 1803, but ,Rice saw yet Larger possibilities in the printed page, and so promoted first The Latter-Day Luminary, 1818, and then the Columbian Star, 1819, under the auspices of the Bap­ tist Board of Foreign Missions. From the latter came the Christian Index, the oldeS't of the Baptist weeklies 'having continuous existence. The Religious Herald and the Biblical Recorder were products of the same move­ ment. All the earliest periodicals established by Amer­ ican Baptists were of home missionary character; and the new foreign mission movement gave great impetus to the printed page as a medium of communication and impulse.
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