Timothy Dwight Speaks
Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), for whom Timothy Dwight College is named, was probably the best president Yale has ever had. When he arrived on campus in 1795 morale was low and the financial prospects of the college were dim. Buildings were falling apart and discipline was lax. During his tenure, Dwight transformed the ailing “Collegiate School” of 100 students and 3 teachers into a nascent university, with a pioneering science department, a medical school, an expanding library, and the beginnings of a law school and a divinity school.
But more important yet was how Dwight altered the whole atmosphere of Yale. In 1795 students were, by and large, skeptics whose French rationalism doubted God and sneered at the Bible. They were surprised to find in Dwight a man unafraid to face arguments and challenges. At their instigation, Dwight debated with his senior class the question, “Is the Bible the word of God?” He urged the students to gather their most convincing arguments, and take whichever side they chose. When they had done their best, Dwight delivered his reasons for believing in the divine origin of the Bible.
There is no other such foundation on which you may stand, and from which, you will never be removed. There is no other such foundation, but the Rock of Ages.
Skeptics found their reasoning dashed to pieces. Those who had professed “infidelity” found Dwight’s arguments irresistible, and deistic rationalism began to lose its hold on the college. In 1802 God sent spiritual revival to Yale, and many students and some faculty members (including Benjamin Silliman) became believers in Christ. The revival of 1802 was the first in a string of revivals under Dwight’s preaching that transformed Yale and spread out from Yale to the nation.
In February 1816, about a year before his death, Timothy Dwight fell ill with a sickness that was nearly fatal. He recovered his health briefly, and wished to tell his students what he had discovered as he lay near death. The following is excerpted from his words to them after his recovery:
“Let me exhort you, my young friends, now engaged in the ardent pursuit of worldly enjoyments, to believe that you will one day see them in the very light in which they have been seen by me. The attachment to them, which you so strongly feel, is unfounded, vain, full of danger, and fraught with ruin. You will one day view them from a dying bed. There, should you retain your reason, they will appear as they really are. They will then be seen to have two totally opposite faces. Of these, you have hitherto seen but one. That, gay, beautiful, and alluring as it now appears, will then be hidden from your sight; and another, which you have not seen, deformed, odious, and dreadful, will stare you in the face, and fill you with amazement and bitterness. No longer pretended friends, and real flatterers, they will unmask themselves; and appear only as tempters, deceivers, and enemies, who stood between you and heaven; persuaded you to forsake your God; and cheated you out of eternal life.
“But no acts of obedience will then appear to you to have merited, in any sense, acceptance with God. In this view, those acts of my life concerning which, I entertained the best hopes, which I was permitted to entertain, those, which to me appeared the least exceptionable; were nothing and less than nothing. The mercy of God as exercised towards our lost race, through the all-sufficient and glorious righteousness of the Redeemer, yielded me the only foundation of hope for good beyond the grave. During the long continuation of my disease… I had ample opportunity to survey this most interesting of all subjects on every side. As the result of all my investigations, let me assure you, and that from the neighborhood of the eternal world, confidence in the righteousness of Christ, is the only foundation furnished by earth, or heaven, upon which when you are about to leave this world you can safely, or willingly, rest the everlasting life of your souls. To trust upon any thing else, will be to feed upon the wind, and sup up the east wind. You will then be at the door of eternity; will be hastening to the presence of your judge; will be just ready to give up your account of the deeds done in the body; will be preparing to hear the final sentence of acquittal or condemnation; and will stand at the gate of heaven or hell. In these amazing circumstances you will infinitely need;—let me persuade you to believe, and to feel, that you will infinitely need, a firm foundation on which you may stand, and from which, you will never be removed. There is no other such foundation on which you may stand, and from which, you will never be removed. There is no other such foundation, but the Rock of Ages…. Then you will believe, then you will feel, that there is no other. The world, stable as it now seems, will then be sliding away from under your feet. All earthly things on which you have so confidently reposed, will recede and vanish. to what will you then betake yourselves for safety?”
Earlier, Dwight had pointed the way to safety when he said in the 1814 Baccalaureate Address, “Christ is the only, the true, the living way of access to God. Give up yourselves therefore to Him with a cordial confidence, and the great work of life is done.”
Marena Fisher, Graduate ‘91
For more information, see Timothy Dwight 1752-1817, A Biography by Charles E.
Cunningham (New York: Macmillan, 1942).