“A Tale of Two Seals”
by Richard H. Earl
In the autumn of 1865, the trustees of the
newly founded Lehigh University met to develop a symbol which would epitomize
the ideals, goals and character of the newly birthed institution. They chose
a seal for this purpose and it’s description and definition are found in this
entry from Book One on page 9 of the official minutes of the Board of Trustees:
“The seal of the Lehigh University is
of an oval form. In the upper part a Sun on which is inscribed the word Lux
(Light): below is an open Bible on which is written Veritas (Truth); on the
Bible lies a heart bearing the inscription Amor (Love); thus bringing in the
three Persons of the Godhead, the Ever Blessed trinity; the God of Love, Christ
as the Light of the world, and the Holy Spirit as the inspiration of the Word
and the Spirit of Truth. At the same time, these emblems indicate the love
to God and man that will characterize this noble endowment; the Truth of Religion
which the University will seek to diffuse and the Light of Science and Philosophy
which will illuminate the mind with true and celestial wisdom…..The seal is
simple and expressive and it is hoped that the University will ever send out
its Love and its Light and its Truth, elevating, enlightening and purifying
all who are brought within it’s influence.”
It may surprise many alumni and friends of Lehigh
to learn that the seal sought to express a deeply held belief that love to
God and man (the two great commandments according to Jesus) should be the
chief expression of this new venture. The emblem stood for over 125 years,
though it’s message has seen atrophy, and during my undergraduate work in
the late 1970’s, no attempt was made to explain this profound symbol to our
anxious and impressionable young minds. With the dawn of the 1990’s would
come the dissembling of this time-honored seal.
On December 31, 1991 there came a new mission
statement for our beloved Lehigh. Whether this was an historically naive attempt
to “Restore the Vision” or an active campaign to “Revolutionize the Vision”
is not for me to say. But with it came a redefinition, or should I say a miniaturization
and hollowing out, of the original seal. Borrowing the three elements of a
book, a heart, and a sun, the new seal proves to be a shallow and vague caricature
of the original. The new guiding lights would be Research, Teaching, and Service
to others, replacing Father, Son and Holy Spirit- sort of like trading glistening
diamonds for chunks of coal.
“Our Vision is to lead” the new Mission statement
boasts, but it does not say where. “To advance learning”, it says, but with
no ultimate or absolute goal in mind. As the scriptures say in Tim. 3:7 “always
learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Nowhere is
truth mentioned as a goal. If truth is no longer a goal we are lost. Learning
and Research are not goals, but rather a means to find truth! No mention is
made of this pursuit of truth, but instead we have a striving for the subjective
goal of “excellence”. There is an expectation that Lehigh students will “live
by a set of mature cultural and personal values” but are never told what those
values might include. Is truth one of them?
“Service to others” it proclaims, but why,
and under what conditions? Is that free service out of a heart of love, or
service for pay, as part of daily commerce? Are we speaking of humanistic
altruism, or merely a dedication of our talents and abilities toward the greater
common good?
Noah Webster defined “seal” as “that which authenticates
or confirms”. Formerly Lehigh’s seal contained guiding principles, ie. Love,
Light and Truth, but we are now left with mere activities. Do learning, research
and service authenticate us, or are these just means to an end?
The former symbols produced a depth of character
and knowledge that brought Lehigh to it’s present status. Where will the latter
send us? The moral element, which Lehigh historian William Ross Yates declares
Asa Packer intended for Lehigh, has been gradually removed from it’s station,
and some alumni would like to know why.
Lehigh must ask whether it is ashamed of it’s
own past, or whether we believe we have progressed beyond what our founders
decided was important and necessary. They clearly ruminated over what Lehigh
was to stand for. Does anyone care that the men upon whose shoulders we stand
are being taken out at the knees? Why have we traded a profound and powerful
representation of the Trinity of Almighty God for flimsy, sentimental humanistic
pap? We were founded on a rock, and have opted for shifting sand!
I see this as a form of “historical cleansing”
whereby the richness of our Judeo- Christian legacy is traded for an impostor,
an imitator, a hollow man. Such a doctrine can only produce what CS Lewis
calls in his “Abolition of Man” a “Trousered ape” or an “Urban Blockhead”.
Men and women with a sort of cold scientific rationality, based upon subjective
instinct rather than objective truth.
Bishop William Bacon Stevens, a father of Lehigh,
and the architect of her structure and goals, in his seminal speech entitled
“The Lehigh University It’s Origins and Aims: an Historical Discourse” delivered
in the Chapel of Packer Hall on June 24th, 1869 says, “This education
to be really valuable must be moral as well as scientific and practical. The
God of nature and the God of the Bible are one. All the researches of human
philosophy, all the discoveries of science, all the application of science
to arts, and manufactures are but researches, discoveries and applications
that busy themselves with what God has opened before the mind in the world
of nature.”
We have taken the golden fruit of this ideal,
and built a great university, while at the same time we are destroying the
tree from which it has sprung! It is clear that Lehigh has been swept away
with the rest in believing that man is the center of all things. As a result,
truth will elude her. She will nibble around the edges and fail to produce
the noble, the great, and the world-changing individuals she strives to. We
are missing the main ingredient to help produce virtuous men and women of
integrity. Why have we been so obsessed with what Francis Schaeffer in his
volume How Should We Then Live called “beating to death the basis which
made our freedoms and culture possible?”
The pursuit of mammon and a materialist mindset
these new alumni will have, but a sure device to act as moral compass will
elude them unless they arrive with one firmly in place. What will our graduates
in the 21st century take away from Lehigh? They will surely have
the technical ability to succeed in any number of fields. They will probably
be able, in just a few short years, to own a house-on-the-hill, several cell
phones, a palm-top computer, and other symbols that they have “succeeded”.
But where will that leave them? Excuse me for questioning this modern ethic,
but it leaves me breathless to consider where it will leave us in the next
generation. Those of us who have lived long enough know that many of our peers
have reached the top of the ladder and ask “What was it for?” Will Lehigh
grads be able to keep their footing when faced with the many moral dilemmas
in the world of business, technology, education, family and the like?
CS Lewis describes what he calls “Men Without
Chests.” Listen: “As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man
must rule the mere appetites by means of ‘the spirited element’. The head
rules the belly through the chest---the seat…of Magnanimity, of emotions organized
by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest—the Magnanimity—Sentiment—these
are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man.
It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for
by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal…..the operation
is to produce what may be called “Men Without Chests”.
Lewis prophetically saw the result of a movement
in its infancy in his day that has come to fruition in our day and in our
most important institutions. The removal of the spiritual and moral, and the
right view of objective truth in our halls of learning is producing, and will
produce, generations chasing the wind. Men with large heads and large bellies,
but no heart, no well-developed moral compass. In former days, Lehigh character
was developed in daily chapel services, and mandatory classes on ethics and
moral philosophy. Did our forerunners err in striving to develop a sense of
integrity as well as intellect? One would think so to look at our present
course.
C.S. Lewis again, “such is the tragi-comedy
of our situation---we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering
impossible. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand
the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate
and bid the geldings be fruitful.” The world cries out for excellence and
integrity in leadership. Will Lehigh be a source of such men and women, or
merely a fountain of technocracy?
Consider this a call to return to our legacy.
Listen to Bishop Stevens again, “….though there can be no science without
God, no laws of nature without Him, no nature itself aside from Him, yet human
science too blindly constructs its theories and schemes totally apart from
God, leaves Him out altogether, as if the presence of God was the great disturbing
factor in the region of their study.” What are we afraid of? God is good,
and we owe Him more honor than we give Him. Yes, I know it is not politically
correct or pluralistic to say so, but it is Truth, and was good enough for
our founders. Don’t we owe them this much?
Even the name Lehigh is a Biblical one. We see
it in Judges 15:14-19 regarding Samson:
“When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him. Then the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him; and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands. [15] He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and killed a thousand men with it. [16] Then Samson said:
"With the jawbone of a donkey,
Heaps upon heaps,
With the jawbone of a donkey
I have slain a thousand men!"
[17] And so it was, when he had finished speaking, that he threw the jawbone from his hand, and called that place Ramath Lehi. [18] Then he became very thirsty; so he cried out to the Lord and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” [19] So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out, and he drank; and his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore he called its name En Hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.”
The name Lehigh represents strength and refreshing.
For it was at Lehigh that Samson won an historic victory, and was also miraculously
renewed by a divine spring.
Consider this also a call for Lehigh to lead,
and to be that source of strength and refreshing that our culture needs. Institutions
that excel in the technical disciplines are important, but technology will
not sustain us. Science is only as good as the people who use it. Francis
Schaeffer also quotes Daniel Bell of Harvard University, “A post-industrial
society cannot provide a transcendent ethic….the lack of a rooted moral belief
system is the cultural contradiction of the society, the deepest challenge
to its survival.” We have never been more advanced and prosperous as today,
but neither have the foundation stones of our society been so severely eroded,
ie. the nuclear family, common sense of morality, public education, world
stability, confidence in government, etc…
In it’s attempt to redefine the mission of Lehigh,
the architects of the new mission statement of the University utilized, knowingly
or out of ignorance I do not know, several errors of historical fact. A case
in point: “since Lehigh’s founding in 1865, the faculty has emphasized the
integration of the academic disciplines, combining the cultural with the professional,
the theoretical with the practical, the humanistic with the technological
in a modern, liberal education that serves as preparation for a useful life.”
While this is true on the one hand, it is also true that Lehigh was not founded
as a humanistic institution, but had a distinct Christian character inculcated
through its core course of study and mandatory chapel requirement into this
century. This is a half truth at best, and reveals a bias that is wholly unacceptable
if we seek to “restore the vision”.
Regrettably, the ideals which provided a basis
for hope for our founding fathers have been almost imperceptibly ebbing away
these many years, and they have not survived the tumultuous 20th
century. The sentiment from that early trustee meeting in 1865 that “it is
hoped that the University will ever send out it’s love and it’s light and
it’s truth, elevating, enlightening and purifying all who are brought within
it’s influence” has been expunged from our memory. It is a hope unfulfilled,
and we have stopped seeking it’s attainment, and have settled for the temporal
instead. We have drifted dreamlike, until the peaceful shore is barely discernible.
We have no mooring, no anchor, and our fate in a storm is anyone’s guess.
To quote Alexander Solzhentisyn, “Dwell on the
past and you’ll lose an eye, forget the past, and you’ll lose both eyes.”
I do not know how to turn a ship as large as Lehigh has become. She is a fine
vessel, and we are proud of her. But she is heading off course, and it will
take men and women of skill and strength to move her back where she belongs.
It is indeed time for Lehigh to restore the vision, but first we must have
the courage to learn and accept what formed the basis of that vision . Nothing
else will suffice.
