Johns Hopkins’ Seal and Jesus’ Words
Posted on December 27th, 2007 by John Mansfield
Danithew at Mormon Mentality wrote a little on Yale’s seal featuring the motto “Light and Truth” emblazoned in Hebrew and Latin. Continuing on the theme, here follow some observations of The Johns Hopkins University. Hopkins’ seal, adopted on May 4, 1885 (to commemorate the 43rd anniversary of the temple endowment and 81st year till my coming in the flesh) features the motto “Veritas vos Liberat,” a familiar promise by Jesus found in John 8:32. Perhaps it’s to be laid at Harvard’s feet that other schools like Yale and Johns Hopkins were also fond of Veritas, but Hopkins’ motto is also a glimpse at the liberal room for religious thought that existed at a deliberately non-ecclesiastical institution.
In the fall of 1874, Reverdy Johnson, Chairman of the Johns Hopkins Board of Trustees, wrote to Daniel Coit Gilman, at that time the second president of the University of California, inviting him to become Hopkins’ first president:
Dear Sir:
I believe you are apprised of the existence and character of the Institution which I represent. It is the recipient of a fund of some three and a half millions of dollars–with no shackles of state or political influence, and with no restriction but the wisdom and sound judgment of the Board of Trustees. Not denominational–freed from all sectional bias, and entirely plastic in the hands of those to whom its founder has entrusted its organiztion and development.
Two and a half weeks later, Gilman replied:
Dear Sir:
Your communications in behalf of the authorities of the Johns Hopkins University reached me on the fourth instant and has engaged my most serious consideration. The guidance of such a trust as you represent seems to me one of the most important educational responsibilities in our country, and I regret exceedingly that the distance between us is so great that I cannot propose a personal conference at an early day on a subject of so much moment. Will you therefore allow me to write informally and familiarly about it.I am deeply sensible of the honor and usefulness of the post to which your letter refers and am grateful to you and your associates for confidence which has led them to communicate with me. My personal inclinations would lead me to resign my position here at once irrespective of any call elsewhere, on the ground that however well we may build up the University of California, its foundations are unstable because dependent of legislative control and popular clamor. These conditions are different from what they were represented to be at the time of my coming here, the so-called Political Code having essentially altered the Original Act of the University.
On the other hand, my relations to the Board of Regents of the University of California and my daily occupations are so satisfactory that I naturally hesitate about changing them. Besides, I do not know how the Regents will feel and think in respect to my withdrawal, for I have only had the opportunity of consulting one member of the Board.
I must therefore ask a few days’ time to consider these points.
But, as I look at the opening sentences of your letter and read that this munificent gift is free from any phase of political and ecclesiastical interference, and is to be administered according to the judgment of a wise and judicious body of Trustees; when I think of the immense fund at your control; and when I think of the relations of Baltimore to the other great cities of the East, and especially of the relations which this University should have to the recovering states of the South, I am almost ready to say that my services are at your disposal.
Freedom from political or religious interference at the new university didn’t mean that religion would be absent. It meant that when President Gilman would lead devotional services, no one was required to participate. Gilman’s biographer wrote in 1910:
So great a change has taken place throughout the country in the thirty-three years since the foundation of the Johns Hopkins that it is difficult to realize that non-sectarianism, which is now almost universal, was then an exception in our colleges and universities. It was a conspicuous feature of the Johns Hopkins from the start. Not that the Trustees or the President were not religious men,–quite the contrary. Of the fundamental part which religion played in Mr. Gilman’s life nothing need be said at this point; and of the twelve Trustees, seven were Friends, four were attendants at Episcopal churches and one was an Independent Presbyterian. The entire exclusion, however, not only of sectarianism but of anything savoring in the least of religious compulsion or pressure was a feature of the University from the beginning. Those who remember the early years of the University will recall the notice that was posted on the bulletin board at the start and which was renewed each successive year for some time. It was worded somewhat as follows: “A brief religious service will be held every morning at 8.45 in Hopkins Hall. No notice will be taken of the presence or absence of anybody.” In this simple and unobtrusive way the attitude of the University was declared, with the result of putting everybody completely at his ease on the subject.
Of more particular interest to Latter-day Saints, even more than Yale’s Urim and Thummim, would be the statue in the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s original lobby. Benefactor W.W. Spence paid 20,000 Danish crowns to have a replica of Thorvaldsen’s statue of Christ carved by Theobald Stein, director of the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen. Christus Consolator was unveiled by Spence’s four-year-old great-granddaughter on October 14, 1896, and stands there today, a spot unusually quiet for how focal it is in an institution that is bustling everywhere else. The inscription on its base reads “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
Stephen L. Richards, David O. McKay’s first counselor in the Church’s First Presidency, several decades later presented another replica of this statue as a gift to President McKay. In 1966, seven years after President Richards died, the statue was placed in the North Visitors’ Center on Temple Square, and new copies continue to appear in LDS visitors’ centers to this day.
I am curious though. Where was the statue before 1966? Did President McKay tear out the ceiling of his living room and keep it there? How could President Richards afford to buy it? Was he still practicing law while serving in the Quorum of the Twelve? If, instead of being pretty darn rich, he had been super filthy rich, would he have commissioned an original work?
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The Life of Daniel Coit Gilman by Fabian Franklin; Dodd, Mead and Company, 1910.
Baltimore: Its History and People, Clayton Colman Hall, general editor; Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1912.
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I think it has to do with the Illuminadae and the Council on Foreign Relations.