Abstract
It is by intention and design that the order of service for this inauguration is both churchly and academic. Apart from my own proclivity in the matter, however, there is much to commend it, historically. Higher education in America grew out of the desire of early evangelical Christianity to educate a “literate and godly clergy” and to rear all youth in schools and colleges where “knowledge and vital piety” would be united in such a way that faith and wisdom would be nourished as an inevitable occurrence.