The Cambridge of eighteen hundred and ninety-six: a picture of the city and its industries fifty years after its incorporation
Arthur Gilman, Ed.

‘ [255] in the United States of America,’ appropriated to that end the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. The phrases of the formal statement are not to be read merely in their conventional sense. Every word was weighed. The school was to be American and not English, and was to uphold the great truths of the Reformation. It was the purpose of the founder that the teachings of the school ‘shall at all times embody and distinctly set forth the great doctrine of justification by Faith alone in the Atonement and Righteousness of Christ, as taught in the “ Articles of Religion,” commonly called the thirty-nine articles, according to the natural construction of the said articles (Scripture alone being the standard) as adopted at the Reformation, and not according to any tradition, doctrine, or usage prior to said Reformation, not contained in Scripture.’

The school was, therefore, set to train men for the ministry of the Episcopal Church who should be learned in the Scripures and in sympathy with American institutions, and against all attempts at ritualism and sacerdotalism. The institution was established at Cambridge on account of the advantages to be had from the near neighborhood of Harvard College.

In order to secure the perpetual maintenance of Mr. Reed's good purposes, and to remove the future of the school from the changing fortunes of church parties, a board of lay trustees was chosen, made up of men in sympathy with these purposes and having power to fill vacancies in their number. This wise provision has been approved by the experience of nearly thirty years. The school is doing to-day the work for which it was planned; so that Bishop Brooks said of it: ‘We may well be specially and profoundly thankful that we have in our great seminary at Cambridge a home and nursery of faith and learning which no school in our Church has ever surpassed. Full of deep sympathy with present thought; quick with the spirit of inquiry; eager to train its men to think and reason; equipped with teaching power of the highest order; believing in the ever-increasing manifestation of the truth of God; anxious to blend the most earnest piety with the most active intelligence; and so to cultivate a deep, enthusiastic, reasonable faith; the Cambridge school stands very high among the powers which bid us hope great things for the work which the servants of Christ will do for his glory and the salvation of the world in the years to come.’