Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/287

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

.1 ]/,.,/_ .j/. /,. //,,,.

work before it." Few men in the country have had more to do with educational institutions than he or been more honored by them. He loved to breathe their atmosphere and was refreshed in spirit by r. >nt,u -t with thrui. Only in June last he remarked to me that he did not know any one who had attended more college commence- mriits.

Hesido Hampden-Sidney for the past fifty years, he mentioned Randolph Macon, Richmond College, the University of Virginia, Washington and Lee University, the universities of North Carolina and Mississippi, Princeton. Yale, Harvard, Oxford, in England, and then added, " many others in this country and in Europe."

Perhaps no man in the commonwealth has been so identified with our higher institutions by the delivery of literary addresses and special sermons on important occassions. Many of these have been published, either in volumes along with the addresses and sermons of other distinguished gentlemen, or in pamphlet form. If gathered together in a separate volume they would constitute a valuable contribution to the literature of the South, and give an admirable picture of the man of letters and of wide and accurate culture; the devoted servant of God; the sympathetic mentor of youth; the scribe widely instructed in all useful knowledge, bringing out of his treasures things new and old for the delectation and improvement of his fellow- men. It thus appears that few men have been more honored in their generation by those whose recognition is the highest praise, and that none have more worthily responded to the calls made upon them. Early in life he was thought worthy of the degree of Doctor of Divinity by his Alma Mater. He received the degree of LL. D. from Washington and Lee University on the occasion of its centen- nial celebration in 1886. Princeton University honored itself in selecting him for the degree of D. D. from among all the ministers of the South two or three years since, when it ceased to be the Col- lege of New Jersey and took on the form of a university.

Rev. Robert P. Kerr, D. D. , writes of him as a minister, and fur- ther portrays his character as follows:

AS A PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER.

I experience a mournful pleasure in complying with the request of

the Dispatch that I write a brief tribute to the memory of Dr. Hoge

minister of the Presbyterian Church. There are many reasons

of a personal nature, growing out of my close relations with him for

the fifteen years of my residence in Richmond, which constrain me,