Freshmen Who Changed Yale

Freshmen who Changed Yale

Over the years, thousands of freshmen have come to Yale. They have studied four years, graduated, and passed into obscurity. But others have left an indelible mark on the university. One of the first of these was David Brainerd, a sophomore who stirred Yale during the 1740 Great Awakening, confronting each student with the Gospel. In 1802, freshmen prayed and initiated a revival that converted one-third of the campus, setting the stage for a series of revivals equaled in no other university in the world.
Other students left their impact on Yale in the revivals of 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823 and 1824. A single freshman shook the campus by starting the 1825 revival, followed by another awakening in 1827 and the great revival of 1831, “the most far-reaching and permanent in its effect of any that Yale has witnessed.” During the 20th century, Tracy Pitkin inspired men by his death as a martyr in China. Before he left Yale, Pitkin had “raised up a dozen of the strongest men in Yale, many of whom followed him to China.” Yale’s missionary movement swelled and became the largest among all the Eastern colleges.
Yale today needs a revival. In spite of all its intellectual prestige, there is something lacking underneath. Students acquire the “Yale cool” but still find themselves painfully isolated. They try to “relate” to other students by a forced cheerfulness or nonchalance, but it does not work.
The answer is simple honesty—honesty with God and with your neighbor. A revival began a few years ago at Wheaton College when a number of students simply confessed their personal failures and renewed their commitment to Christ as their Savior. Several frankly admitted resentments and were reconciled. Lost and lonely young men and women found new purpose, and many students found lasting answers to nagging problems.
Such revivals come when students ask for them. Often in the past, a few freshmen have agreed to meet together regularly and pray for Yale. Over and over again in the university’s history, God has answered by bringing large numbers of Yalies to their knees. He has brought unsaved students to conversion and lukewarm Christians back to life.
Any student who enters Yale has a choice: he can “just get by,” joining an activity here and there, or he can join God’s purpose to totally transform Yale. If you take the first course, you will accomplish nothing worth being remembered, as Jesus said, “Without me, you can do nothing.” If you choose God’s way, you will get involved in His business of changing men’s lives. You can continue the work of students who molded Yale with the force of their lives and are known all over the world for it. You can be among those remembered by men and remembered by God. “He who does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2:17)
“We are God’s remembrancers: we will take no rest and we will give Him no rest until He establish and make Yale a praise in the earth.” (Henry Burt Wright, Yale Professor of Classics and Divinity, 1877-1923)
Henry Burt Wright capture

(plaque in Dwight Hall Library)
Henry Burt Wright
1867-1923
HE THAT DOETH THE WILL OF GOD ABIDETH FOREVER
Scholar – Teacher – Evangelist – Friend
“A university can be wholesome only when a large group of determined men set their faces in that direction – we will take no rest until He establish and make Yale a praise in the earth.”

Freshmen Started Revival: Their Teacher Converted

A small group of freshmen that arrived at Yale in 1801 came with a peculiar purpose. They wanted to take Yale out of its philosophical confusion and convert it in Christ. The freshmen “agreed to meet day by day in earnest prayer that the college might be included in the general awakening,” a revival that was spreading over the whole country. They prayed for fellow students and for the faculty.

The result was not spectacular at first. There were no special services, and classes continued as usual. One by one, however, Yale men were “born again” and joined the movement. Half the college was converted before the year was over, including one of the teachers, Benjamin Silliman.

Before his conversion, Silliman was mainly concerned with his own social position: “I find no propensity in my system stronger than a wish to be highly respectable and respected in society.” But his conversion changed his whole attitude. He wrote in his private journal, “Dispose of me according to thy own good pleasure; employ me in thy service, save me in thy own way.”

“Dispose of me according to thy own good pleasure; employ me in thy service, save me in thy own way.”

Silliman’s conversion was no emotional impulse. After his first year as a Christian, he wrote: “This year has been attended by mercies,–yes, innumerable and of incalculable worth. I have enjoyed a state of health unexampled for many years, with great vigor of body and activity of mind.” At age 84, one year before he died, he wrote: “My life has been prolonged to fourscore and four. I trust, heavenly Father, that I am deeply grateful. To recite my mercies would be to recount the story of my life.” A group of mere freshmen changed the life of a man later called “the father of American science,” whose name Silliman College bears today.

Freshman Pitkin—Yale’s First Martyr

IN MEMORY OF
HORACE TRACY PITKIN
BORN IN 1869 AT PHILADELPHIA
GRADUATED
IN 1888 AT EXETER ACADEMY
AT YALE COLLEGE IN 1892
AND AT UNION THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY IN 1896
THREE YEARS MISSIONARY IN CHINA
KILLED AT HIS POST
IN PAO TING FU
BY THE BOXERS: JULY 1900.

WHOSOEVER SHALL LOSE HIS LIFE
FOR MY SAKE AND THE GOSPEL’S
THE SAME SHALL SAVE IT.

Tracy Pitkin graduated from Exeter and came to Yale at the age of 19. He was not content with drifting with the college crowd. His friend Henry Luce said of him: “Immediately upon entering college, he identified himself with its religious interests. Not a few men made shipwreck of their college Christian life, or at least made it null and void of power, during those four precious college years, just because they waited to see how things ‘went’ religiously in college, not realizing that the position one takes the first few weeks will, in the majority of cases, determine the religious trend of one’s whole college life. Not so Pitkin.” Tracy Pitkin took his stand immediately and held it till the end.

A student who lived across the hall from him said: “His sincerity was shown once when, speaking of the cause to which he gave his life, he said to me, ‘I would die for it.’ And how little I could comprehend then a Boxer uprising and his name among those who gained a martyr’s crown.”

Another classmate said of Pitkin: “He did not postpone his life, he lived then. Before ever setting foot in China, he had raised up a band of the strongest men in Yale (many of them followed him to China) and planted the missionary interest so deeply in the religious life and organization of Yale that it never died out.” Other colleges besides Yale felt the influence of Pitkin when he visited them after his graduation. He spoke at the major colleges in all the states from Ohio to Colorado, calling for missionaries to the Far East. Later, he himself went to China as a missionary.

Pitkin had not been in China long before a fanatical political-religious sect called the Boxers began taking over the country and burning Christian missions. On July 1, 1900, a mob organized by the Boxers attacked Pitkin’s mission compound from the front and back. The mob burst in the gate very soon and captured Pitkin in the schoolyard of the mission. “There he suffered death by the sword, which severed his head from his body.” Pitkin died defending the women and Chinese children at the mission.

Read more: Horace Tracy Pitkin: Yale’s First Martyr.

The Unknown Freshman

In the spring of 1825, Yale was shaken by an unassuming freshman. He was a Christian who became deeply affected by the thoughtless behavior of his classmates who did not know the Lord. He was even more disturbed that other Christians did not care enough to talk to them about their need of salvation.

Finally, he decided to take the matter into his own hands. He invited the Christians, one by one, to his room for prayer and urged them to wake up to the need of their classmates. He did not care whether he was talking to an exalted senior or a leading Christian; he made his point.

The results came swiftly. “Some of the leading members of the church were reclaimed from their backslidings, and a spirit of fervent supplication was given them from on high.” Then a revival followed in which one-fifth of the students at Yale were converted. Another revival followed in 1827, notable for “the conversion of a knot of very wicked young men, whose piety at a subsequent period became equally eminent.” The movement spread to New Haven, and for every Yale man converted, nine New Haveners were converted. The college and the city were changed because of one freshman who would not keep silent.