Cornell's approval I embodied
stringent provisions to this effect in the charter.
It had certainly never entered into the mind of either
of us that in all this we were doing anything irreligious or
unchristian. Mr. Cornell was reared a member of the Society
of Friends; he had from his fortune liberally aided
every form of Christian effort which he found going on about
him, and among the permanent trustees of the public library
which he had already founded, he had named all the clergymen
of the town--Catholic and Protestant. As for myself,
I had been bred a churchman, had recently been elected a
trustee of one church college, and a professor in another;
those nearest and dearest to me were devoutly religious;
and, if I may be allowed to speak of a matter so personal to
my self, my most cherished friendships were among deeply
religious men and women, and my greatest sources of enjoyment
were ecclesiastical architecture, religious music, and
the more devout forms of poetry. So, far from wishing to
injure Christianity, we both hoped to promote it; but we
did not confound religion with sectarianism, and we saw in
the sectarian character of American colleges and universities
as a whole, a reason for the poverty of the advanced instruction
then given in so many of them.
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