Charles Cuthbert Hall

Charles Cuthbert Hall, fifty-six at death [sic: fifty-five], eleven years a frequenter of these rooms, a New Yorker by birth and affection, a graduate of Williams and of the Union Seminary, minister of the Gospel, presbyter, author, and lecturer, President for a decade of Union Seminary and martyr to duty—such is the record of a consecrated life. The mortal disease which killed him so untimely he contracted in the service of humanity, explaining to the Orient, at its own behest, what Western culture was; mediating with singular acceptability between the systems which have warred perpetually and are again on the verge of fanatic outbreaks. Life is not necessarily measured by years: this life was like a cup overflowing with opportunity well employed. Its duties were multifarious, complex, exacting: as a preacher its climax was in a city of churches where [Henry Ward] Beecher, Storrs, [Thomas De Witt] Talmage, and his namesake were renowned as orators; as an administrator his service was in a period of polemic, of readjustment, and of some bitterness; as an interpreter, the Indian world which welcomed him was in a dangerous ferment. But all these services he performed with tact and firmness, his own anchor never dragged, and his motto might have been “saevis tranquillus in undis.” Indeed his recreation and avocation was music, for he was a trained hymnologist; his writings were all studies in harmony, and his life was a hymn of praise. But, with all his sweetness and tenderness of soul, he was fearless as prophet and seer. The lowering of moral standards in his native land was of such concern to him that with no fear but that of God he warned, exhorted, and denounced, to the many whose higher life it endangered, not merely wickedness, but sloth, indulgence, the down-slide wherever he could notice it, and without respect of persons.

William Milligan Sloane
1909 Century Association Yearbook