On this date in 1902, Dr. Francis L. Patton resigned as the eleventh President of Princeton University. Shortly after leaving the University, Patton became the first President of Princeton Theological Seminary. He served the seminary until 1913, when he retired and returned to his ancestral home in Bermuda. Patton was ordained by the Presbytery of New York (PCUSA) on June 1st, 1865. He pastored churches in New York City until 1871, when he relocated to Chicago. In addition to his pastoral work, he became a professor at McCormick Theological Seminary. In his role as editor of a Presbyterian weekly called Interior, Patton denounced the growing theological liberalism he observed in Chicago. Patton rose to national prominence in 1874 when he brought heresy charges against the Rev. David Swing. In 1878 he was elected as Moderator of the General Assembly of the PCUSA. The year 1881 found Patton teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was surrounded by like-minded colleagues B.B. Warfield and Caspar Hodge. In 1891 Patton became embroiled in a conflict with Dr. Charles A. Briggs, a leading American advocate of German Higher Criticism. When the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy gained strength, Patton sided with the theological conservatives in opposing theological liberalism. In his funeral sermon for Caspar Wistar Hodge Sr. in September of 1891, Patton spoke prophetically when he said, “I may be wrong, but it seems to me that American Christianity is about to pass through a severe ordeal. It may be a ten years’ conflict. It may be a thirty years’ war; but it is a conflict in which all Christian churches are concerned. The war will come, the Presbyterian Church must take part in it, and Princeton, unless her glory is departed, must lead the van in the great fight for fundamental Christianity. It is no amendment; it is not revision; it is not a restatement, it is a revolution that we shall have to face. The issue will be joined by and by on the essential truth of a miraculous and God-given revelation, and then we must be ready to fight, and, if need be, to die, in defense of the blood-bought truths of the common salvation.” On his gravestone in his native Bermuda, Patton is remembered as “Eminent in Philosophy and Theology, Profound and Brilliant in Thought, Most Eloquent in Utterance, Gracious in Manner, Charitable in Spirit, A True Minister of the Gospel of Christ.”
