C. L. S. C. Alumni Hall
We can only quote a sentence or two from a few of these letters.
Dr. Lyman Abbott wrote:
It seems to me if you can lay out such plans of study, particularly in the departments of practical science, as will fit our boys and young men in the mining, manufacturing, and agricultural districts to become, in a true though not ambitious sense of the term, scientific and intelligent miners, mechanics, and farmers, you will have done more to put down strikes and labor riots than an army could; and more to solve the labor problem than will be done by the Babel-builders of a hundred labor-reform conventions.
Professor Luther T. Townsend, of Boston University:
Your plan for the promotion of Christian culture in art, science, and literature, among the masses of the American people, strikes me as one of the grandest conceptions of the nineteenth century.
Dr. A. A. Hodge, of Princeton:
The scheme is a grand one, and only needs to insure its success that efficient administration which has so eminently characterized all your enterprises. History and nature are the spheres in which God exercises his perfections, through which they are manifested to us. All human knowledge should be comprehended in the one system of which Christ is the center, and illuminated with the light of revelation.
Dr. Arthur Gilman:
Your fears of "superficiality" do not trouble me. For your course will probably aim rather to direct the mind toward the way in which you wish it to develop, than store it with the details of knowledge. You wish to awaken, rather than cultivate.