Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/135

 THE FIRST PRESIDENT 107 Dr. Harper's disinclination toward the presidency must have been very strong to take away all hope from Dr. Northrup whose heart was set upon it. But his refusal to consider the question was made still more emphatic by an attack made at this time, December, 1888, on his orthodoxy. This was made by high authority, not publicly, but privately to Mr. Rockefeller himself. While the latter did not withdraw his confidence from Dr. Harper he was disquieted. Under the first stress of the attack Dr. Harper wrote to his friends messages like the following: You will see that there is difficulty ahead. I feel this morning very much as if I were ready to pull out of the whole concern The question is whether the brethren in the West will stand by me or not. As matters now stand Mr. Rockefeller still has confidence in me, and he is waiting simply to see whether the brethren will stand by me, or whether .... they will brand me as a heretic and throw me overboard I have never been able to persuade myself that it was my duty to leave New Haven I see as I have never before seen the necessity of great caution in statement of views, and I shall exercise this caution more carefully in the future than in the past, although / am not conscious of having said anything that ought in any way to compromise me I have peremptorily refused to consider the matter [i. e., the presidency]. It may here be said that Dr. Harper defended himself with success against the charges brought against him. His friends stood loyally by him. This will be made very evident from a letter from Dr. Northrup to Mr. Rockefeller written January i, 1889. The biographical value of this letter makes its omission impossible. I certainly would not take the liberty of writing you this letter, were it not at the urgent request of others especially Drs. Goodspeed and Smith whose views I shall substantially express in all the statements here made. .... I have been in relations of the greatest intimacy with Professor Harper throughout his whole public career, and .... I have a firm conviction, based on a large amount of evidence, personal interviews, letters, the testimony of the most capable and conservative of his students, etc., that he is coming more and more fully into harmony, in all vital points, with the faith of our people. I regard him, taken all in all, as the most remarkable young man in the reli- gious history of our country in this century. His intellectual abilities are of the highest order; his scholarship is accurate, thorough, and wide; he possesses a remarkable genius for organization, has extraordinary power of creative enthusiasm, and is a born leader of men. He is exerting more influence today than any ten men holding similar positions in the same department of work.