Article June 7, 1900 Issue

Religious Items

May 20 was the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Stephen Girard, the wealthy Philadelphia merchant who founded and munificently endowed Girard College, that great institution for the support and education of orphan boys. This recalls the remarkable provision in Girard's will excluding ministers and missionaries even from the grounds of the college Following is the exclusio clause taken from the Church Standard with that paper's comment:—

"I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatever shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty in the said college; nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor, within the premises appropriated for the purposes of the said college. In making this restriction I do not mean to cast any reflection upon any sect or person whatsoever, but as there is such a multitude of sects, and such a diversity of opinion amongst them, I desire to keep the tender mnds of the orphans who are to derive advantage from this bequest free from the excitement which clashing doctrine and sectarian controversy are so apt to produce; my desire is that all the instructors and teachers in the college shall take pains to instil into the minds of the scholars the purest principles of morality, so that, on their entrance into active life, they may from inclination and habit, evince benevolence toward their fellow-creatures and a love of truth, sobriety, and industry, adopting at the same time such religious tenets as their matured reason may enable them to prefer." These are not the words of a misanthrope or an infidel.

The Boston Transcript says: "Something new in Bible making has been thought of by a Coventry, Eng., publisher, who has had the temerity to put the New Testament before the Old. He explains himself as follows: 'The Old Testament is meant as a candlestick upon which the New Testament should stand: yet we have largely made it an extinguisher which puts out its light. .. If the Christian Scriptures is the medium by which we draw near the supreme manifestation of God on earth, should it not be placed first in fact as well as in theory?' "

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