It required no great acuteness to see that a system of
control which, in selecting a Professor of Mathematics or
Language or Rhetoric or Physics or Chemistry, asked first
and above all to what sect or even to what wing or branch of
a sect he belonged, could hardly do much to advance the
moral, religious, or intellectual development of mankind.
The reasons for the new foundation seemed to us, then,
so cogent that we expected the co-operation of all good
citizens, and anticipated no opposition from any source.
As I look back across the intervening years, I know not
whether to be more astonished or amused at our simplicity.
Opposition began at once. In the State Legislature it
confronted us at every turn, and it was soon in full blaze
throughout the State--from the good Protestant bishop
who proclaimed that all professors should be in holy orders,
since to the Church alone was given the command, "Go,
teach all nations," to the zealous priest who published a
charge that Goldwin Smith--a profoundly Christian scholar
--had come to Cornell in order to inculcate the "infidelity
of the _Westminster Review_"; and from the eminent divine
who went from city to city, denouncing the "atheistic and
pantheistic tendencies" of the proposed education, to the
perfervid minister who informed a denominational synod
that Agassiz, the last great opponent of Darwin, and a devout
theist, was "preaching Darwinism and atheism" in
the new institution.
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