Interest in education.
The explanation of all this, besides the fact of his wonderful power of speech and his attractive grace as a man, is to be found in his deep devotion to the place, his pride in its history, his sympathy in its aspirations, and his thorough and absorbing belief in Christian education as auxiliary and essential to the real and permanent progress of the
Christian religion.
Dr. Hoge was not only a Christian, a gentleman, a minister of the Gospel, a scholar, and a man of the finest culture, but he was educator.
He believed in it. He distrusted that kind of religion which willingly remains in ignorance or willingly allows others to continue in this deplorable state.
Immediately after graduation he was chosen to teach in the college.
During the earlier years of his ministry, under the force of circumstances, he conducted in his own house a seminary for young ladies which gained high repute and at which many of the finest women of the land were trained.
He was for years a valued trustee of Union Theological Seminary, and had much to do with the founding and success of ‘The Home and School’ at
Fredericksburg and of ‘Hoge Academy,’ at
Blackstone.
He was always in thorough sympathy with the young.
He understood their possibilities and was anxious to see them make the most of themselves, and in order to do this, to afford them the best opportunities for improvement.
His sincerity in the cause of education was abundantly shown by his generosity in bestowing his time, his efforts, and his money in its behalf.
He was not only a benevolent but a beneficent man, and gave of his means freely and to nothing more liberally than to the
Christian educational institutions.
Hampden-Sidney has again and again participated in his bounty.
He once spoke to his congregation in my presence almost in these identical words: ‘I have often thought that if I were suddenly endowed with wealth, the first use I would make of it, before attending to any other claim or even making provision for the members of my own family, I would adequately endow Hampden-Sidney College in order that it may be fully prepared for the great
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work before it.’
Few men in the country have had more to do with educational institutions than he or been more honored by them.
He loved to breathe their atmosphere and was refreshed in spirit by contact with them.
Only in June last he remarked to me that he did not know any one who had attended more college commencements.
Besides
Hampden-Sidney for the past fifty years, he mentioned
Randolph-
Macon, Richmond College, the University of Virginia, Washington and Lee University, the universities of
North Carolina and
Mississippi,
Princeton, Yale, Harvard,
Oxford, in England, and then added, ‘many others in this country and in
Europe.’
Perhaps no man in the commonwealth has been so identified with our higher institutions by the delivery of literary addresses and special sermons on important occassions.
Many of these have been published, either in volumes along with the addresses and sermons of other distinguished gentlemen, or in pamphlet form.
If gathered together in a separate volume they would constitute a valuable contribution to the literature of the
South, and give an admirable picture of the man of letters and of wide and accurate culture; the devoted servant of God; the sympathetic mentor of youth; the scribe widely instructed in all useful knowledge, bringing out of his treasures things new and old for the delectation and improvement of his fellowmen.
It thus appears that few men have been more honored in their generation by those whose recognition is the highest praise, and that none have more worthily responded to the calls made upon them.
Early in life he was thought worthy of the degree of
Doctor of Divinity by his
Alma Mater.
He received the degree of Ll. D. from Washington and Lee University on the occasion of its centennial celebration in 1886. Princeton University honored itself in selecting him for the degree of D. D. from among all the ministers of the
South two or three years since, when it ceased to be the College of New Jersey and took on the form of a university.
Rev. Robert P. Kerr, D. D., writes of him as a minister, and further portrays his character as follows:
