HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE Theological Seminary of the Diocese of Chic, AND KENYON COLLEGE. PREPARED BY REV. WM. B. BODINE, A.M. THE Legislative Acts which bear upon these Institutions are three in number. The first was passed December 29th, A. D. 1824; the second, January 24th, 1826; the third, March 10th, 1839. By the provisions of the first act the Right Rev. PHILANDER CHASE, the Rev. Messrs. ROGER SEARLE, INTREPID MORSE, EZRA B. KELLOGG and SAMUEL JOHNSTON, and Messrs. BEZALEEL WELLS, WILLIAM K. BOND, JOHN JOHNSTON and CHAS. HAMMOND, and their successors, were constituted a body Corporate and politic by the name of the THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE DIOCESE OF OHIO, and to this body as a Board of Trustees the care and management of the Seminary and its estate and property were committed.* The second act provided that the President and Professors of said Seminary should be considered as the Faculty of a College, and as such should have the power of conferring degrees in the Arts and Sciences, and of performing all such other acts as pertain unto the Faculties of Colleges for the encouragement and reward of learning, and that the name and style by which the said degrees should be conferred, and the Certificates of Learning given should be that of the "President and Professors of KENYON COLLEGE in the State of Ohio." * For the full text of this Act of Incorporation, see Journal of Convention of the Diocese of Ohio, A. D., 1874. By the third act, provision was made for the establishment of a College, and Halls for Preparatory Education, the power of conferring degrees in the Arts and Sciences was committed to the President and Professors of Kenyon College, and the power of conferring degrees in Theology given to the President and Professors of the Theological Seminary. The founder of the THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Ohio and KENYON COLLEGE, was the Right Rev. PHILANDER CHASE, D.D., the first Bishop of the Church in Ohio, and the pioneer Bishop of the West, a man of great energy and extraordinary force of character. Before coming to Ohio he was comfortably settled in Hartford, Conn., but he had in him the spirit of a conqueror, and he felt that he must move to the "regions beyond." So he left Hartford March 3d, A. D. 1817, "not for a more wealthy and opulent parish, but literally for the Wilderness, under the patronage of no missionary or other associated body of men, for then there were no such in being, but depending on his own limited means, under Providence." He was elected Bishop of Ohio, June 4th, A. D. 1818, and consecrated in Philadelphia, February 11th, A. D. 1819. His chief need in his new field was laborers. At first three Clergymen were his fellow-work men-this number within four years being increased to six-but what were "they among so many"? So deeply and constantly did this need press upon him that in 1823 he determined to cross the ocean, and to solicit funds in England for the establishment of a School of Theology in Ohio, where, under his own supervision, he might have educated for the ministry some “sons of the soil." This resolution of his to secure, if possible, foreign aid in his great necessity, was strenuously opposed by some high in ecclesiastical authority, but the opposition seemed only to add firmness to his purpose and strength to his determination. He sailed from New York, October 1st, 1823, and reached Liverpool safely after the lapse of the month which was then required for the ocean voyage. Among the letters which he carried with him was one from the Honorable HENRY CLAY to the Right Honorable Lord GAMBIER, (these two distinguished statesmen having met as Commissioners at the Treaty of Ghent in 1815.) This letter was of great service to him in opening his way. Friends were raised up to him in large numbers, among the most efficient and distinguished of whom were Lords Gambier, Kenyon and Bexley, Sir Thomas Ackland, and the Right Hon. Dowager Countess of Rosse, the Rev. Geo. Gaskin, D.D., Henry Hoare and Geo. W. Marriott, Esqs., and Mrs. Hannah Moore. Some thirty thousand dollars came to Bishop CHASE as the result of this his foreign appeal. Upon his return, the Bishop reached New York in August, 1824, and in the following November the Constitution of the Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Ohio, was agreed upon at the meeting of the Diocesan Convention in Chillicothe. The location of the Seminary was temporarily fixed upon the Bishop's farm in Worthington. A beginning was made in the shape of a Grammar School. The incipient School consisted of one teacher, and from eight to ten scholars. Among those who attended this school in Worthington, however, was one destined to rise to great eminence and usefulness, SALMON P. CHASE, late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In the matter of the choice of a permanent location for the Seminary, opinion was divided, some preferring a site in some town, others having a decided choice for the country. Bishop CHASE earnestly advocated the latter, because he believed that not only would the students gain thereby in health and morality, but because also he saw that wherever the Seminary should be fixed, there property would at once advance in value, and by |