With this view he attended medical lectures in Pittsfield during the ensuing year, while teaching a part of the time in his native town. The two following years, 1825-27, we find him a tutor in Williams College, and at the close of this period delivering a master's oration on Mystery, which must have marked an epoch in his career. It was a clear, scholarly, and, for so young a man, remarkable oration.

At the time of his tutorship, in the year 1826, he united with the church in Stockbridge. In 1827 he resumed his medical studies, partly at Pittsfield and partly in New York City, and two years later received his degree of M.D. at Pittsfield. He was now a full-fledged doctor, and the question naturally arose, where to begin practice. He seems to have been in no haste to settle this important matter. In the summer of 1830 he had about decided to go to New York to practice, when, most unexpectedly to himself, he was elected to fill the professorship of rhetoric and moral philosophy in Williams College, just made vacant by the death of Professor William A. Porter. The young tutor who had given so keen and striking an analysis of Mystery three years before had not been forgotten.

The mind of the young professor now turned into a wholly different channel. Medicine gave place to the consideration of philosophical and spiritual themes. He here found a fitting field for his noblest powers. As his mind dwelt upon these themes, and as he discussed them in the classroom and in private, his religious life deepened. He was led to think seriously of using his gifts as a preacher. We find him appearing before the Berkshire Association, at Dalton, in May, 1833, and receiving their approbation to preach. Seldom was a young licentiate so thoroughly equipped for the presentation of the gospel of Christ. On the preceding Christmas day, December 25, 1832, he had married Mary Hubbell of Williamstown. For more than half a century they walked together in happiness, and to her his last words on earth were spoken.

The years now passed pleasantly. He was full of physical and intellectual vigor. His home and college surroundings were pleasant; his mental powers were expanding, and all saw in him one of the coming great men. Those who have been the

leaders of thought in this century were then young men with him, or even boys. Emerson was one year younger; Longfellow, five; Holmes, Lincoln, Winthrop, Tennyson, and Gladstone, seven; Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner, nine; Henry Ward Beecher, eleven. The great works in our American literature were almost all unwritten in the year 1833; the movement for the abolition of slavery had hardly begun. Professor Hopkins went on quietly but with earnest enthusiasm in his work. During this year, 1833, he published A Review of the Argument from Nature for the Divine Existence. In 1834 he published an address on Human Happiness, which was followed the next year by an oration on Originality. The man was now fitted for the graver duties and weightier responsibilities about to be placed upon him.

Dr. Griffin having resigned the presidency of the college at commencement in the summer of 1836, it did not take the trustees long to decide upon the proper man to succeed him. They proceeded with great unanimity to elect Professor Hopkins to the presidency of the college and to the professorship of moral and intellectual philosophy. On the fifteenth day of September, 1836, he was formally inducted into the office, and also ordained to the pastorate of the college church. His inaugural address was a calm, broad, and powerful production. "I enter upon the duties of the office to which I am called," he said in closing, "with no excitement of novelty, with no accession of influence to the college from abroad, and with no expectation of pleasing everybody. I have no ambition to build up here what would be called a great institution; the wants of the country do not require it. But I do desire and shall labor that this may be a safe college; that its reputation may be sustained and raised still higher; that the plan of institution I have indicated may be carried out more fully; that here there may be health and cheerful study and kind feelings and pure morals; and that in the memory of future students college life may be made a still more verdant spot. . . . This college has for a long time been regarded, and not without reason, with interest and affection by the churches. Of its whole number of graduates as many as one-third have devoted themselves to the

Christian ministry, and recently a larger proportion. It is on this ground that American missions had their origin. It was here that Mills and Hall prayed, and their mantle has so descended on the institution that now we can hardly turn our eyes to a missionary station where one or more of its sons are not to be found." He desired that his students should find study "nerved to its highest efforts by Christian benevolence, and young men shall grow up at the same time into the light of science and the beauty of holiness."

He was the fourth president of Williams College. Dr. Fitch, the first incumbent, had assumed the position in 1793. During his administration, which lasted twentytwo years, 460 young men were graduated. Dr. Moore filled the position for the next six years, in which time only 90 were graduated. The third president, Dr. Griffin, entered upon the duties of the position in 1821, the same year that Mark Hopkins entered Williams as a sophomore, and continued in it fifteen years, during which period 311 names were added to the list of graduates. The new president found larger classes; for of those then in college, 111 were added to the list of graduates, and 896 in the first twenty-three years of his administration. During all these years the percentage of those entering the ministry (one-third) was still maintained.

The new president was very popular with the students. They realized the strength of his noble manhood and his deep interest in their welfare. They felt that he stood near to them, and yet, because of his exalted character and enthusiasm in duty, no one was likely to be overfamiliar with him. There was that about him which placed a proper barrier and warned the student that the kindly instructor was not to be trifled with. That divinity which hedged him about shielded him from all disrespect and caused every student to honor, to love, and in a measure to fear him. He had a high ideal before his own mind, and he placed high ideals before theirs. But, best of all, they saw him before their very eyes going on from strength to strength, from height to height. And this living example served as a constant and mighty incentive to noble exertion. The Williams College man must be a hard student; for his president not only

pointed the way to the heights, but walked that way himself.

He

for

President Hopkins was a very busy man. During the first years of his administration there was a great deal to be done. instructed the seniors in anatomy, this his medical training had specially fitted him, — in rhetoric, ethics, and metaphysics. He preached a large part of the time on Sunday. He prepared and delivered important public addresses. During the year 1837, for example, he delivered an address at Andover, a lecture on State and Morals, and a sermon in commemoration of Dr. Griffin, all of which were published. But there was much else to be done, for the college was poor and its existence a struggle. He had to devote no little time, thought, and energy to obtain the necessary funds both for running expenses and endowments, and for the enlarging of the college's field of work by the erection of new buildings and the securing of new apparatus. His position was no sinecure. Mark Hopkins did not wish to occupy any sinecure position.

Honors began to flow in upon him. Dartmouth honored itself by bestowing the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon him in 1837; and Harvard College did the same in 1841. In 1857 he was made a Doctor of Laws by the Board of Regents of New York. The same year (1857) he was elected to the presidency of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, at its annual meeting at Providence, Rhode Island, a position which he filled with consummate ability for thirty years. He proved himself a worthy successor to the Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen; and his mantle has fallen on an admirable successor in the person of Dr. Storrs. In these thirty years of his connection with the American Board, hundreds of thousands of people looked on his imposing presence, and listened to his clear, comprehensive, luminous addresses.

President Hopkins was an exceptionally tall man, and rather thin, but he was wiry and quick in motion. His shoulders were broad, but slightly bent, and his forehead ample, rising above a pair of mild hazel eyes.

He spoke with reasonable deliberation, in clear, full tones, which commanded instant respect; every one felt at once that some word of wisdom which he would not willingly lose was about to fall from those

eloquent lips. He did not gesticulate much; it was unnecessary to the expression of his thought. He did not grow excited. Each thought carried its own weight. Gently but powerfully his own mind was working, and well he knew it would leave an indelible impression upon the mind of each hearer. In raising funds for Williams College Dr. Hopkins did not resort to such measures as the trustees of the Free School, out of which it grew, had done half a century earlier. According to the records, that body voted on August 19, 1788, to build a brick house for school purposes, seventytwo by forty feet, and three stories high; and in order to secure the necessary funds therefor, they petitioned the General Court to grant them the privilege of a lottery. Their request was granted, and the lottery netted them, not the full 1200 expected, but £1037 185. 2d. Times had changed in the fifty years. For a time the longedfor funds came in very slowly, and it was especially vexatious to the new president, for he had plans of enlargement which called for a large outlay of money. At one time he speaks of this, not complainingly, but in sorrow. Being so far away from Boston, it was hard to interest her citizens deeply in the college among the distant hills. We must remember that in those days Williams College was as far away from Boston comparatively as Chicago is to-day. But it was not long before the fame of President Hopkins attracted both many more students and influential friends who were ready to contribute liberally to its support. One

of the foremost of these was Amos Lawrence, who gave nearly forty thousand dollars to Williams College at different times. Year by year, under President Hopkins's quiet, thoughtful, earnest leadership, the college went steadily forward. As Mr. Field well says: "He was a prince among teachers. He made his pupils think and ask questions, as well as listen." He could be both kind and firm. The number of students rose to about two hundred. Inspired by his example, the students showed courage, energy, and power to think and act for themselves; for he continually "allured to brighter worlds and led the way." He was simple and direct in his manner of thinking, and he taught his pupils to hate all equivocation and all sham.

All these years he was publishing more or less. Thus, in 1838, appeared his ad

dress before the American Educational Society, and the next year his Election Sermon, delivered in May. In 1840 three addresses were published: one before the American Bible Society, another at South Hadley to the students of Mount Holyoke Seminary, and the third at Pittsfield. In the decade 1841-50, he published three addresses at Williston Seminary, at the semi-centennial of Williams College, and a temperance address; also nine sermons, including one before the American Board at Brooklyn, in 1845, another at Plymouth, December 22, 1846, and a baccalaureate on Faith, Philosophy, and Reason. In 1846 appeared the Lowell Institute Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity, a book which met with the warmest reception. The year following, a book made up of twenty-two discourses and addresses of his was published under the title, Miscellaneous Essays and Discourses. These excellent volumes increased his reputation the country over.

This

From 1851 to 1859 he preached seven baccalaureate sermons, which were published under these titles: Strength and Beauty, Receiving and Giving, Perfect Love, Self-Denial, Higher and Lower Good, Eagles' Wings, The Manifoldness of Man; also a sermon on Amos Lawrence (1853), on Science and Religion (Albany, New York, 1856), on The Promise to Abraham (Bangor, Maine, 1857), on Religious Teaching and Worship. last discourse was preached at the dedication of the college chapel in 1859. To these we must add four addresses, delivered before the Williams College Society, Boston (1852); the Congregational Library Association (1855); at a Missionary Jubilee (1856); and at Havana, New York (1858). He also delivered an oration on The Central Principle, New York, December 22, 1853; published an article in the American Theological Review for 1859, on "The Atonement as related to Sin and to a Divine Law-Giver." Since then a great number of his sermons, addresses, and more extended writings have been given to the public. Many of them were addresses at commencements, courses of lectures at other colleges, and addresses at the annual meetings of the American Board.

Among his more extended works the most important is The Law of Love and

Love as a Law, which was published in 1869. This book grew out of a course of Lowell Institute lectures, delivered in Boston during the winter of 1867-68. It is "an exposition of the cardinal principles of Christian philosophy, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.' This law requires love, which carried out, gives "love as a law." The end of love is the good of the person loved. Six years before this, in 1863, President Hopkins published Lectures on Moral Science. These lectures met with much favor and formed a text-book in various colleges. In 1873 appeared An Outline Study of Man, which also grew out of a course of twelve Lowell Institute lectures in which, by the aid of a blackboard, he had succeeded in popularizing metaphysics. In this the gifted lecturer set forth the law of the universe, a law of conduct for man, and how to carry this law into the details of life. In 1874 Prayer and the Prayer Gauge was published. In these forty-four pages we find an able and lucid discussion of the subject then so much striven over. In the Boston Monday Lectures for 1880-81 is printed a lecture which he delivered that winter in Tremont Temple, on "The Place of Conscience." In 1883 a thin volume entitled The Scriptural Idea of Man was published, containing six lectures which President Hopkins had delivered at the New Haven Theological Seminary in 1875, and repeated afterwards at Chicago and at Oberlin. In March, 1883, after having been revised and somewhat rewritten, they were given to the students at Princeton, and in that form printed.

moorings. His was a kindly, generous, broad, tolerant nature. He had no desire to push an antagonist to the wall. His whole desire was to harmonize opposing factions and with all his great powers to build up the interests of his Master's kingdom.

His life extended to above eighty-five years, during sixty-two of which he ably and faithfully served his alma mater. In the beautiful month of June, 1887, his long, symmetrical, beautiful life drew to a close. Very touchingly his life-long friend, David Dudley Field, describes its sunset. On the day preceding his death, he drove out at twilight, stopped to drink at a familiar spring, spoke of feeling quite well, and came home to rest well. The next day, his last day on earth, he remained indoors, being a little restless. After retiring at night he became more restless, and finally, rising, took two or three turns about the room, and then sitting down in a chair by the bed, said to his aged and dearly loved wife, "This is a new sensation; I think it must be death." It was indeed death, and it came at once. "Without lying down or saying another word, he fell gently into the sleep of death." No pain, no sense of suffering, no agonizing delay. In a moment the aged philosopher and saint had slipped off the worn-out tenement, and his freed spirit was rejoicing amid the immortal glories.

With his bereaved wife and sorrowing children mourned the whole college community, the townspeople, the widely scattered alumni of Williams, and a great company in all lands, who looked upon him as one of the ablest and staunchest defenders of true religion. Men forgot their differences over his grave. He was their friend. They recalled the gentle, noble qualities of that luminous intellect and loving heart. His great soul is with God. His body rests under the waving trees of Williamstown.

flicting with some known law or theory. The solution is the "discovery of the discovery of the manner in which the mysterious fact conforms to the general law." The highest pleasure is found in the discovery of a law to account for mysterious facts. All events are really equally mysterious, said the young tutor, but our senses are deadened to some. Intelligence and experience help us to partial solutions, yet all that is in our power is to reduce physical facts to general laws and general laws to the volition of the Almighty.

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Nearly twenty years later (December 22, 1846), President Hopkins preached a sermon at old Plymouth, from the words: And all ye are brethren." He said that the Pilgrims had in view religious freedom, the right education of their children, and the extension of true religion among the savages. "Thank God, their blood runs in our veins." Equality and affection form the basis of a perfect society. Equality means the largest liberty to the individual compatible with the good of the whole. Government is not an end but a means. It should secure personal liberty and equality, the diffusion of knowledge, security, the prompt administration of justice and religious freedom. The government must appeal to the higher principles of man's nature. Its rule should be not by fear but by affection; then it will call forth sacrifices and quicken the intellectual powers. The government is a great school for the discussion of questions relating to the interests, rights, and duties of social man. The English and American character is what it is because it has been trained in such a school. Christ had struck down the old systems of religion, the systems of Greece and India. What was needed was not blind submission and superstition, but reverence for God. In this spirit were wrought the institutions of our fathers. Let men judge this gov

ernment by its fruits. The star of hope is a universal Christian brotherhood. The vessel the fathers launched is yet upon the deep. Let every man be at his post, hearing the voice of duty and of God.

What a long and rare career of usefulness was this of Mark Hopkins! He did not expect to live so long. At the semi-centennial, in 1843, he said: "When another half-century is past and the call shall go forth for the centennial gathering, we shall not hear it. Long before that time the most of us will have done what we have to do for the weal or the woe of man. The impressions which we choose to make in the yielding material of time will before that have been made, and have become set in the eternal adamant of the past. . . . Let us then throw ourselves upon the tide of this great movement - the advancing tide of Christian progress, which we trust is to rise and swell and flow over the earth." He lived on forty-four of these fifty years, and did more than any other to round out and fulfil his own prediction of "a high career of usefulness for the half-century to come" at Williams College.

"But for Williams College," he once said, "I have no reason to suppose I should myself have been liberally educated." Few men have ever so grandly paid back their debt to an alma mater. He kindled fires which will burn as long as human intellects respond to great thoughts. He lives on in the nobler lives of his students. Thousands respond to the lamented Garfield's hearty acknowledgment of mental indebtedness to him; and millions of men who never saw Williams College have felt their souls kindle under the glow of his splendid intellect. As the centennial of Williams College draws near, her sons will prepare to sing again the praises of her greatest alumnus and renowned president. The passing years make more evident how great a place he filled.