{1}The voyager along the coast of the Levant wonders at the Old Towers on the headlands.  The tradition is that they were built by order of Constantine the first, Christian Emperor, when his mother was searching for the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, and were meant to convey glad tidings by signal fires to Constantinople.  The evening after the Cross was unearthed a light was struck on Zion's tower.  The watcher at Ramah saw it and kindled his flame.  The Eureka was flashed on to Lebanon where the cedar wood blazed up in joy.  It was shouted at Antioch by the Mother Church of us Gentiles.  It leaped on through the land of the Seven Churches.  The Asian Olympus flung the news bearing light into the city of Constantine, where rang the glad words, still ringing in the City of Christ, "The Cross is found."

{2}The story of the towers may be a mere legend growing out of that faith in the wooden cross which men really believed had been found.  That faith was long a mighty force in human lives and in national histories.  That faith enchanted the Christian world for centuries, materialized Christianity, rose to fanaticism in pilgrimages, attained heroism in the Crusades, moved Empires, and baffled reformations until the days of revived truth.  Yet those towers may stand as symbols of enlightening colleges, which proclaim nobler discoveries than that of Helena, and promote a mightier faith than that which swayed the Middle Ages.

{3}After ancient art, literature and liberty seemed lost, there came the Renaissance -- that wonderful time when genius and learning were reborn.  Art and truth were found again.  Lines of men from Anselm to Dante to Luther and Holbein were finding lost elements of culture.  They found the poet's pen, the painter's brush, the sculptor's chisel.  They brought from the dust the buried literatures of Greece & Italy, of Judea and the early Christian Church, and invented the press to fling them as sun-light upon a dark age.  They found the human intellect & larger mental freedom.  They discovered the needy and the powers of a Reformation.  They found, not the mere cross of wood, but the real Christ crucified for the sins of men, and the true faith in His redemption.  They found the best elements of our modern civilization.  They must send the knowledge of them down the ages.  Every discoverer kindled his light, the watchers let the signal flames, & the new Knowledge went flashing over a continent.  Thus rose those towers of light, the colleges and universities of Europe, nearly one hundred of them, between the 12th and 16th centuries.

{4}The time came when the discovered knowledge of Europe must be flung over the Western world.  It struck on the tower of Harvard where light flamed out for New England.  It shined into Virginia from the college, of William and Mary.  It radiated from Yale and Princeton.  And now lines of colleges, extending to the Pacific Ocean, throw their gladdening rays over all our national domain.  Here is one of them, and in its fiftieth year one to thank God for the hand that first kindled the flame on this headland, and to resolve again that the law for Hanover shall be the very law given for the Hebrew altar, "The fire shall ever be burning; it shall never go out."

{5}Here have stood men with a keen eye for all the best knowledge of the Old Ages, and the valuable discoveries of the passing time.  They were eager to impart the science, and to advance the crusade against ignorance, sin, and the realm of unbelief.  They were as resolute as Constantine to make the cross a power in the world; even more determined to give it the true meaning and secure for Christ a spiritual Empire.  The founders and first presidents, now exalted to heavenly honor, had little secular fame.  The future Gibbon may ignore them.  In general history they may be as unnamed as the watchers on the old signal towers, Cyclopaedias may still omit them.  Yet in each of them there must have been some element of greatness, if his name deserve the tribute of this occasion.  The greatness is to be estimated in its relations to this institution -- it may not have been merely in one kind of talent, or force; not in mere breadth of reputation, nor in vast learning, nor in authorship, nor in masterly eloquence, nor in rigorous logic, nor in the profoundness of original thought; but rather in a combination of qualities needed for the time & place, in good sense, in useful energies, in working powers, in devotedness to one purpose, in self-sacrifice & endurance.  In their day it was a great thing to found here a college & render it permanent.  Their greatness may be tested by two questions -- 1st.  Has this college been, and is it yet to be, a power for good in the world?  2nd. Did they contribute any force to make it capable of a powerful influence?

{6}We must remember that they were pioneers.  As the word president means one who presides over an organized body of men, with dignity & authority, and as they were hard workers in nearly every kind of service, they may seem not to have attained its high significance.  It is likely that they presided a good deal in the saddle and over the horse that bore them through bad roads to Mission Stations; or presided over the education of corn in hope of cultivated ears, or over the green log which they were converting into sad fuel; or, sitting in a splint chair by the fire and meditating upon the adjustment of demand and supply in the home department, they leaned against wall of the chimney, often somewhat discouraged, yet never willing to say of their toils for the college jam jam desino -- "I stop at once."

{7}The time came when they, or their successors, might have desisted in the face of strong rivalry.  It is often said that too many colleges were projected in the West.  They grew out of an earnest missionary spirit and denominational energy.  Our wisdom might have planned fewer of them, with better endowments, and wider patronage.  But we did not live then to give our advice.  They acted upon the ruling advice of their time.  The founders were not Darwinians; yet they projected colleges in excessive numbers, and left them to "the survival of the fittest."  In the long run of time the fittest in location, working forces & methods of culture, will survive.

{8}But Hanover was founded before there was any such excess of college enterprise, or rivalry, in the West.  It has the fitness of priority.  It hath antiquity.  The time seems long since the population of Indiana was but 200,000, and nearly the entire lay in the Presbytry of Salem, or since the frontier synod was a vast spiritual realm which covered Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, and stretched westward ad libitum, having seventeen ministers and about sixty churches.  The Synod felt the need of a school for the training of men to supply the West with missionaries and pastors.  That was the time when John Finley Crowe and six boys, on New Year's morning 1827 met in a loom-house, where our Alma Mater --

          Then a coy and homeless maiden
          Having skilful hands well laden
          With the warp and woof of science,
          And the heart for an affiance
          To the wise --

began to weave the endless web of wisdom from which her sons have taken their outfit.  Not only  did science win those lads, but the Spirit of God came upon them.  A revival sanctified the effort when these foundations were laid.

{9}That year the heart of Pestalozzi ceased to beat for poor children whom he had taught self-help.  La Place closed his eye on the stars and went beyond them; Thomas Arnold was entering on his career as a prince of educators, and England was making such advances in public schools & popular knowledge that Lord Brougham soon let drop the phrase "the Schoolmaster is abroad."  The names of Sir Humphrey Davy, and Dugald Stewart, and Sir Walter Scott, seem to us of later date than that of Dr.  John Finley Crowe, when he began labors of which Hercules might have halted, for Hercules never attempted a Manual Labor School, nor a college endowment.

{10}Dr. Crowe was then in his prime, vigorous, heroic, persevering, indomitable, trustful in God, faithful to his Church, amiable, peace-loving, courteous, hopeful, a seer indeed gifted with foresight, and he lived long to be endeared to this college as its father and founder; active as its vice president; giving half his fame and his whole heart to it; collecting the funds for its first edifice which he saw burned down, undaunted by fire and tornado, and listening for the still small voice after the storm; never doubting the wisdom of its location on this height; holding on to one its roots, when the tree was removed to Madison, and nurturing the growth of its second establishment.  His very persistence rose to the sublime.

{11}This young college, the child of a missionary spirit, had a little brother -- almost a twin -- the Indiana Theological Seminary.  "The boys grew."  Neither was Esau exactly but the Jacob was the one who, in his tenth year, went down the river and sojourned until he wandered "seeking a city" in the Lake country, where he now abides.  He is a little lame now, for the sinews of his financial thigh have shrunk somewhat, and this is a good time for the two brothers to express their fiscal sympathies, recognize their mutual interests and renew their old affection.  Fifty-five men, who studied theology at Hanover, are reckoned among the alumni of the Seminary at Chicago. . . .

* * * *

{12}A tourist, in the old cemetery of Geneva, was quite unwilling to think that the grave of her most famous man could not be surely identified and at last he said, "Well, John Calvin is dead, that much is certain."

{13}"Dead!" exclaimed the sexton with a look of amazement, and gesturing in every direction: "Dead?  Yes, he is dead here, but, my dear Sir, he lives everywhere."  Thus one may say of deceased professors, according to the degree of their influence.  They live in the instructions given to their surviving students, and in the successors who continue their work.  Professors die, but the faculty lives on in vigor and activity.

{14}And now, fellow Alumni and younger students, do not the lives, labors and endurances of these presidents afford some commendation of the two institutions which here began their history.  The names and influence of some of them are identified with two other theological seminaries happily represented here today, and by us honored; but most of them toiled for this college and for the theological school which is of the same lineage.  These institutions were the outgrowth of the same purpose, and that was to help furnish the West with educated men -- men earnest to hold this great land for Jesus Christ -- men who would try mightily to keep the Bible shining in every home and school, in every chapel and church, and maintain Christianity as the vital element in our civilization.  Their common origin is a reason for their co-operation.  Though separated now in space, the original purpose unites them in spirit.  One of them is here on the river whose waters flow southward into the great gulf and thence eastward into the Ocean.

{15}The other is on Lake Michigan whose waters drift northward & thence eastward into the same ocean -- and there the pure waters of both currents united to bear the commerce of all nations, and mingle in waves that roll toward all continents and strike upon all shores.

{16}So these institutions send their graduates in different directions, and into various professions & pursuits.  Their sons may be found in all the nobler spheres of duty.  Yet if they live for the grand objects set before them they will unite in promoting the advance of true science, culture & Christianity.  Their lives shall pass into the same ocean of history.  Their words and deeds may reach all shores, and all continents in civilization; and finally, if true to their mission, they will have their lasting reunion in the same land of eternal song and endless rest.