February 26 Today in OPC History

On February 26, 1937, the Rev. Caspar Wistar Hodge, Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and close personal friend of J. Gresham Machen, died at Princeton Hospital after a week's illness of pneumonia, at the age of 66. Dr. Hodge represented the third generation of his illustrious family (father, Caspar Wistar Hodge, uncle A. A. Hodge, grandfather, Charles Hodge) to serve on the faculty of Princeton Seminary.

Mr. John Murray, of Westminster Seminary and a former student at Princeton under Dr. Hodge, paid this tribute to his memory:

Dr. Caspar Wistar Hodge was a devoted exponent of the Faith in the cause of which his forebears at Princeton, Charles Hodge, his grandfather, Archibald Alexander Hodge, his uncle, and Caspar Wistar Hodge, his father, had rendered such distinguished service. He had brought to bear upon his exposition and defense of this, the Reformed Faith in its integrity, remarkable carefulness of thought, accuracy of knowledge and breadth of scholarship. It was just such qualities that made him admirably worthy of the great Princeton tradition and placed him in the front rank of the Reformed theologians of this generation.

The service he rendered in this regard to the whole Christian world and, in particular, to those of us who were privileged to sit at his feet, no words of ours can adequately estimate. The pure light that will one day shine from the judgment seat of Christ will duly disclose it.

In the last few years of his life Dr. Hodge witnessed the tragedy of seeing the institution, the glory of which had been to so large an extent summed up in the name 'Hodge,' drift away from her historic moorings. His was the sadness of finding himself, since the reorganization of Princeton Theological Seminary in 1929, in an atmosphere that became increasingly indifferent or hostile to the great tradition of which he himself was the representative and of which the old historic Princeton had been the bulwark.

Picture: Caspar Wistar Hodge