The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-12-10
DIR. J. w. BASHFORD'S
CHARGE TO DIR. HUGHES
Responsibilities That Rest on the
Head of a University Presented
in a Forcible Manner.

The charge to President Hughes, deliv-
cred by DR.. James MILFORD Bashford, pres
ident of Ohio Wesleyan University, DR..
Hughes's alma mater, was both effective
and impressive, presenting in a forcible
manner the responsibilities that rest upon
the head of a great educational institu-
ton. DR.. Bashford said:
president Hughes-Your conscience will
make possibilities spell responsibilities;
hence my charge consists in spolnting out
the new field Of service to which you have
been called. The first and perhaps the
greatest possibility which awaits you Is the
vidual students There is no Influence equal
to that of character But character, how
ever strong and unselfsh, cannot do its
work unless ones spirit Is known. Nor, in
deed, can you secure the deepest hold upon
a student unless you know his spirit; and
this implies mutual acquaintance. L need
not urge you to cultivate the young men
and women committed to your trust.
1.-THE influence of Professor Baker over
the brilliant senator who has spoken so
wisely to-day; the influence of a teacher like
our DR.. McCabe over your own life or that
Of Senator Fairbanks; the influence Of Pres
ident Eliot over Theodore Roosevelt, of
Alexander, of Socrates over Plato, of the
great Teacher over st. John, are illustra-
tons of the unmeasured power which a
beginning of their careers.
BEST of all, you are Christian president
in a Christian college; 1t is possible for you
not only TO appeal to ambition and to rouse
the conscience, but to touch the deepest
springs of spiritual life. You have been a
pastor with a personal sway over perhaps
five thousand people. But you enter to-day
upon the greatest pastorate In your career.
In personal contact during the next few
years with hundreds and thousands of
young people who will help mold our civil
izof cir Nv in
finite.
POTENT SOURCE OF INFLUENCE.
but a second and even more potent
source of influence lies In your selection of
fellow-teachers. L sure that you do
not dream Of any immediate and revolu-
tionary reconstruction of your faculty. But
if De Pauw grows. as 1 am sure she will,
you will be called upon next June TO name
two three young people to serve as tu-
tors. Members Of the faculty will make
helpful suggestions; the members of your
board of trustees will prove wise counsel
ors; but the responsibility Of selecting
teachers who. during the next thirty or
forty years will be moding students at De
Paw and even at other universities, will
rest upon you. You may indeed be thank
full If you are called upon to nominate only
young people who may be elected on trial;
| because your Judgment in forecasting the
| future influence of a teacher will not prove
| infallible; and you will be glad at times to
| make changes before fixing professor
upon a university for life. Only common
sense and experience and the inspiration of
| the Omniscient One can guide to right
choices of fellow-workers. Here Is little
recognized but exceedingly important re-
| sponsibiity which rests upon you. When
| President Berry nominated Samuel A. Lat
| timore tutor in Asbury University one
| college as he accomplished throughout his
| personal administration. When Mathew
| Simpson selected w. G. Larrabee for the
| chair of mathematics at Asbury he was
| guided in this as in many turning point
| in our history of wisdom from on high.
| SLOW as the changes may seem to take
with the inevitable losses through sickness
| and death. and with the assured growth of
| De PAW. in case you remain here ten
years, you will name fifteen or twenty men
! for lifelong positions and hundreds for
| similar positions elsewhere in which they
| will mold the thinking and stamp their in
| fiuence upon the lives of thousands of stu
dents at just that age when young peoples
| lives are ready to be touched to finer issues
| or degraded to sordid aims. In meeting
| this responsibility you may not increase
/ an influence upon De PAW and upon the
church and the Nation which are simply
| incalculable. A world has forgotten IL 1t
| ever knew who nominated Simpson for De
| Paw, Thompson for Ohio Wesleyan, War
rem for Boston University. Hopkins for
| for Harvard; the world does not remember
| who nominated Agassiz for Harvard, Guyot
| for Princeton and Goslet for Neuchatel;
| the world never knew what teacher trained
| these three students and coming teachers
/ of Neuchatel; the world does not know who
| nominated Sir William Hamilton for Edin-
| burgh, Jewett and Cairo and Green for
| Oxford and Cambridge. Kaut for Koenigs-
| burg Julius Muller and Mommsen for Ber-
lin; the world would scarcely know even
| the universities at which Wesley and CAL
| vim and Luther, Abelard and Aquinos and
Augustine studied and taught; but the men
who select such teachers are the creators
of civilizations. Better is one former than
| a thousand reformers.
A THIRD TASK.
But there is a third task which must
never supplant your personal work with
students and the building up of great
| faculty at De Pauw, but which must sup
plement these tasks, If your work is to
prove eternal. That task is the discovery
of prophetic. far-seeing spirits among great
laymen and women and the unfolding to
them of their possibilities In broadening the
functions of the university. 1t is divine
task to select a teacher who, like your old
professor in Greek. will. during half CEN
fury, stamp his character upon 10000 young
people, who in their turn will shape the civ
ilization Of the century. But while Profess
do no 5nf that his 5h fnr
services exhausted the benefaction of his
boyhood companion and lifelong friend Mr..
Wright, who was known only of
business, but who endowed the chair which
made Professor Wiliiams's services possible
The endowment Is permanent and IL the
world lasts so long Professor Williams will
have a score or hundred or even a thou
sand SUCCESSORS whose work is made posi-
BILE by the Wright foundation. College en-
dowments are even more permanent than
the civil governments under whose protec-
ton the universities are founded. The foun-
cations of Cambridge and Oxford were un-
touched by the English revolution and the
civil wars. The Sorbonne and the Univer.