Religion and Higher Education: An Historical Perspective

Abstract

After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the Civil Government: one of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust. And as we were thinking and consulting how to effect this great Work; it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly Gentleman, and a lover of Learning, there living amongst us) to give the one-half of his Estate (it being in all about 1700 pounds) towards the erecting of a College: and all his library: after him another gave 300 pounds others after them cast in more, and the public hand of the State added the rest: the College was, by common consent, appointed to be at Cambridge, (a place very pleasant and accomodate) and is called (according to the name of the first founder) Harvard College. 1