University of Virginia Library

XL. Religious Exercises

Before the Great Reformation, the general system of
education in England was organized and controlled by
the Catholic clergy; and during the first centuries following
Protestant ascendancy, all the colleges there persisted,
—some to a greater, and some to a lesser degree,—
in maintaining the original bond of wedlock with the
Church. This was discernible even in America, although
it was settled to such a large extent by men who
had sought its remote forests in order to escape from
ecclesiastical restraints and persecutions. Of one hundred
and nineteen of the higher seats of learning that
were earliest established on the soil lying within the
present boundaries of the United States, one hundred
and four had their roots mainly in a religious motive.
Harvard College was founded to supply a continuous

succession of educated ministers for the pulpits of Massachusetts
when the living incumbents, who had been
trained in English schools, should have passed away; and
it was not until 1886 that every formal shackle inherited
from the Puritan past was struck from the religious limbs
of that institution. The College of William and Mary
obtained its charter for the specific purpose of providing
the Established Church in Virginia with clergymen, and
spreading the Christian faith among the barbarous Indians.
One of the central aims which the College of
Yale kept fixedly in view from the hour when its lecture
halls were first thrown open, was to qualify young men
of a religious bent for a career in the ministry. As late
as 1784, prayers were held at the College of Hampden-Sidney
at six o'clock every morning, and five o'clock
every afternoon; and each student was subject to a severe
penalty should he fail to attend, or attending, forget to
deport himself with "gravity and decency."

When the University of Virginia was incorporated in
1819, the opinion was still general that the dignity of
every important seat of learning required that either a
bishop or a doctor of divinity should preside over its
temporal and religious affairs. Neither the French nor
the American Revolution, destructive as both were of
ecclesiastical and political inheritances of all sorts, had
been able to undermine this scholastic tradition. But
there was an ever growing number of persons who had
no sympathy with it whatever; and the most conspicuous
among these iconoclastic spirits was Jefferson. We have
seen that it was principally through his determined initiative
that the bonds between Church and State in Virginia
were disrupted. While he made no pretension to
being an orthodox Christian,—indeed, he was a deist or
unitarian in faith,—he never failed to exhibit reverence

for religion; but, with equal consistency, he never omitted
to show his detestation of sectarianism; for sectarianism,
in his opinion, was the deformed foster-mother of intolerance,
bigotry, hatred, and selfishness even when every
denomination was compelled by law to stand on a footing
of equality with its fellows.

Had he, like some of the modern philanthropists, been
able to found a great seat of learning by his own gifts
and endowments, he would still have seen to it that
every branch of this malignity was barred from its
threshold. As the institution which he did establish was
a State institution, dependent upon all classes and all
denominations for support, it would have been the climax
of presumption as well as of folly in him to propose that
the authority of any single Church should predominate in
its government. Had he been an Episcopal bishop himself,
with the longest and whitest of lawn sleeves, he still
would not have ventured to make such a suggestion as
this to the General Assembly, or slyly, and on his own
responsibility alone, have plotted to encourage the growth
of but one ecclesiastical influence in the University after
it had been founded. "Education and sectarianism
must be divorced," was an iteration as characteristic of
him as "Carthage must be destroyed" was of Cato.
He did not mean a divorce between education and religion;
certainly not religion so far as it denoted a great
system of morals. There could be no religious freedom,
he thought, in any seat of learning in which an atmosphere
of pestilential sectarianism existed, for religious
freedom consisted of the absolute possession by every one
of the unbounded right to follow the dictates of his own
spiritual cravings whithersoever they might lead. How
could this be made practicable within the precincts of a
university with a doctor of divinity pulling its scholastic

strings? Put such a dignitary over the University of
Virginia,—nay, more, fill the chairs with professors of
the same denominations, whether it were the Episcopal,
Baptist, Methodist or Presbyterian, and in Jefferson's
opinion, it would be the first step towards the re-establishment
of a State Church. And even should those chairs
be divided among ministers of the gospel of different tenets,
that policy would still have a tendency to introduce
ecclesiastical influence into the heart of the environing
civic life, with all its demoralizing train of consequences
to the political and religious welfare of the people. To
persons in our own times, accustomed as they are to
tolerance and liberality of view in the relations of the
sects, these apprehensions seem exaggerated, if not
groundless, but it must be recalled that Jefferson had
grown up under the colonial system, which was indisputably
accompanied by many serious abuses.

It would have been presumed that the exclusion of all
forms of sectarianism from the University of Virginia
would have been satisfactory to every denomination because
preference was given to none. All of them must
have acknowledged that such preference, had it been
shown, would have been out of harmony with the character
of a State institution; and yet no citizens of the
community were more active than some of the apostles
of the several churches in spreading abroad the report
that the new seat of learning had been really founded to
disseminate the principles of infidelity. It was to be
the seed-plant in America of Parisian atheism and
Genevan rationalism, while the European professors had
been imported to fill its chairs, not because they had been
cultivated at Oxford and Cambridge to the ripest scholarship,
but because they were deeply tainted with the impiety
of Hume and Voltaire. As a matter of fact,

Tucker, Long, Key, Dunglison, and Bonnycastle had been
reared strictly in the tenets of the Anglican Church; Emmet
of the Catholic; and Blaettermann of the Lutheran;
and there is no reason to suppose that there was a single
scoffer among them.

Even if Jefferson had been an ardent disciple of Tom
Paine rather than of Doctor Priestley, he was still too
shrewd to imagine that the foundations of his infant
University could rest safely upon a corner-stone that
discarded all moral teachings in the larger sense. "The
relations which existed between man and his Maker, and
the duties resulting from these relations," said he, "are
the most interesting and important to every human being,
and the most incumbent on his study and imitation."
Policy and principle alike dictated to him irresistibly that
religion, in some form or other, direct or indirect, should
be recognized in his new institution. How could this be
done without countenancing this or that branch of sectarianism?
The methods which he adopted at first to
accomplish his purpose, could only have been satisfactory
to a moralist interested in the purely historical
aspects of the subject. These methods were, (1) instruction
in the Greek, Latin and Hebrew languages,
which would enable the students to read the "earliest
and most respected" authorities of the Christian Faith;
and (2),—which was more pertinent in a general way,—
instruction, through the professor of moral philosophy,
in those abstract principles of virtue, in which all sects
believe and which all endeavor to practise. "The proof
of the being of a God," said he, "the Creator, Preserver,
and Supreme Ruler of the Universe, the author of all the
relations of morality, and the laws and obligations which
these infer, will be in the province of the professor of
ethics." And to supplement these purely scholarly lessons

in natural piety, a large number of volumes, embracing
the most learned commentaries on the Evidences
of Christianity, were purchased for the library to assist
the inquiring student in his search after religious truth.

Rationally enough, Virginians of a very fervent religious
temperament found little satisfaction in these very
vague provisions, for they seemed to place the University
of Virginia on the platform of an institution that
did equal honor to Christ, Confucius, and Buddha, and
the other great exemplars of general morality. "Why
was no chair of Divinity created?" they asked. In reality,
Jefferson did not object to the establishment of a
purely historical chair. But apart from the expense of
this additional professorship, who could probably fill it
but a clergyman, and how could a clergyman be obtained
without going to one of the denominations, and thus upsetting
the equilibrium which he considered to be so indispensable?
He candidly acknowledged that "the want
of instruction in the various creeds of religious faith
among our citizens was a chasm" in his new seat of
learning; and in admitting this, he confessed that his
critics were correct in asserting that the teachings of
Professor Harrison and Professor Tucker, in their respective
courses, were a very impoverished substitute for
the teaching of a professor of Historical Divinity. Such
a chair, under a different name, has been erected in recent
years, and has been found perfectly consistent with that
religious toleration which he guarded with such jealous
fidelity.

Jefferson was determined that the University should
be neutral; and in its original shape, he made no real
concession to religious feeling beyond providing a room in
the Rotunda, as we shall see, for religious worship. The

religious sentiment of Virginia, however, demanded more,
and this demand he met by putting forward a proposal
that was, on its face at least, as practical as it was ingenious.
This proposal,—which is stated in one of his
reports to have been suggested to him by "some pious
individual,"—provided that each of the principal denominations
should establish its own theological school
just without the confines of the institution. By this
means, its pupils would obtain prompt and convenient
access to the lectures delivered by the different professors
and enjoy all the benefits of the library. In their turn,
the students of the University would be able to attend
religious services, each under the clergyman of his own
particular sect; and their exercises might be held, either
in the Rotunda,—in the room set apart there for religious
worship,—or in the neighboring chapels of the
different seminaries.[41] Jefferson, as the spokesman of
the Visitors, expressed their readiness to assure to the
young men who would enter these theological schools
every facility for improvement which the University could
extend. The only reservation would be that each school
of theology should be independent of the University and
of the other denominational schools in its vicinity. In
this way, the constitutional freedom of religion, "the
most invaluable and sacred of all human rights," he said,
"would be preserved inviolate."

The apparent cordiality with which Jefferson assented
to this memorable proposal is a further proof that his attitude
towards religious exercises at the University was
not one of fixed hostility, provided that there was an
equality in the relation to it of all the sects. No one,
after the publication of this report, could justly accuse
him of a desire to place the institution in permanent antagonism
to the Christian Faith; nor was it his fault that
the several denominations declined to accept an offer that
would have conferred the highest scientific advantages on
their students. Indeed, there would have been an element
of grandeur in the situation of these great schools,
had they been, not dispersed, as they are at present, at
different spots in the State, but planted in the form of a
splendid girdle around Jefferson's central institution, receiving
scientific light from it, and in their turn, radiating
religious light back to it,—a light reflected, not from the
doctrines of one sect, but from the combined doctrines of
all the principal sects.

The Presbyterian Church alone exhibited a disposition
to transfer its seminary to the vicinity of the University,
but not until Jefferson had been dead for a generation.
A committee was appointed in 1859 to ascertain the terms
on which its students would be admitted to the lectures
and the library; but temporary obstructions to the progress
of negotiations soon arose, and as the shadow of war

was already falling over the land, all further steps were,
in 1860, postponed.[42]

Jefferson has been criticized for not foreseeing and
adopting the system which was afterwards introduced;
namely, the annual appointment of chaplains belonging
to the four great Protestant denominations in succession,
and their support by the voluntary contributions of the
students, professors, and Visitors. Such a system was
entirely in harmony with that principle of religious freedom
which he had always advocated, and which was so
essential to the character of a State institution; and at
the same time, it directly subserved the spiritual needs of
each set of young men, by supplying them in turn with a
minister of the gospel of their own religious doctrines.
It was the only practical solution of a very embarrassing
problem, and it was one that has proved eminently happy
and satisfactory in its operation. As a matter of fact,
Jefferson had, by his action, at least suggested this solution
when he accepted, with so much cordiality, the proposal
that the University should surround itself with an
enciente of independent theological schools whose clergymen
would be called upon, one after the other, to preach
within the precincts. Whether he anticipated it or not,
he had, independently of these schools, provided for this
very solution by furnishing an apartment for religious
worship in the projected Rotunda, for, in that apartment,
religious exercises could, in the future, be held by ministers
of the different sects invited in turn from Sunday to
Sunday to conduct them.

If Jefferson failed to give more distinct form than this
to the plan that was afterwards adopted, Madison, his

successor in the rectorship, could not justly be accused of
the like neglect. "I have indulged the hope," he wrote
Chapman Johnson, in 1828, "that provision for religious
instruction and observance among the students would be
made by themselves or their parents and guardians, each
contributing to a fund to be applied in remunerating the
services of clergymen of denominations corresponding
with the preference of the contributors. Being altogether
voluntary, it would interfere neither with the
characteristic peculiarity of the University, the consecrated
principle of the law, nor the spirit of the country."

The proposal to encompass the University with theological
seminaries having failed to obtain an affirmative
response from the several denominations, and the room
reserved for religious worship remaining too often silent
and empty on Sunday, the only course left open was to
adopt the plan suggested by Madison. This, however,
was not done at once. In the meanwhile, the want of
some steady rule for holding religious exercises within
the precincts continued to be taken by many as a confirmation
of the charge of infidelity which was still so loudly
raised against the institution. When the epidemic of
typhoid fever broke out there in 1829, fanatical persons
looked upon it as a punitive visitation from God; and this
idea found reflection, as already pointed out, in the sermon
delivered at this time before the students and Faculty
by Rev. William Meade, of the Episcopal Church,
afterwards a very distinguished Bishop of Virginia. He
eloquently and forcibly maintained the doctrine of a conscious
and overruling Providence in all the multitudinous
affairs of men, as opposed to the unpiloted action of unconscious
chance. Institutions as well as men, he said
in substance, should be governed by Christian influences
and principles,—otherwise they must fall under the ban

of reproach for atheism, and sink into temporal decay
and collegiate futility.

This discourse was heard with undisguised indignation
by the congregation, for it was considered to be a covert
attack on the University, the Visitors, the Faculty, and
the memory of Jefferson. The furtive injustice of it was
probably most deeply felt by the Faculty because they had,
but the year before, turned to the only means at their
disposal then to establish a permanent course of religious
services, for, in their private capacity, they had invited
the Rev. F. W. Hatch, the Episcopal clergyman of Charlottesville,
and the Rev. Mr. Bowman, the Presbyterian
minister of the same town, to preach on alternate Sunday
afternoons in the apartment in the Rotunda reserved
for religious worship. No additional salary was guaranteed
them for this pastoral task. The arrangement
was voluntary on both sides, and might be discontinued
on seven days' notice. Previous to the delivery of these
sermons, the young men of a devout temper had no recourse
but to attend the morning services in Charlottesville.
"I have been three or four times," wrote Robert
Hubard, of Buckingham county, to his sister, "and
would go more often, but it is so long a walk, and the dust
all the way has become so disagreeable, that I could not
undertake the journey." The same element, quite probably,
was an equal impediment to many of his companions.