SKETCH OF WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER. 265 



have seen the propositions of that sort which have been put for- 

 ward within twenty years. I have lost sight of all my associates 

 at- Oxford who are still living. So far as I know, I am the only 

 one of them who has become professionally occupied with social 

 science." • 



Mr. Sumner returned to the United States in the autumn of 



1866, having been elected to a tutorship in Yale College. Of this 

 he says : 



" The tutorship was a great advantage to me. I had expected 

 to go to Egypt and Palestine in the next winter, but this gave me 

 an opportunity to study further, and to acquaint myself with 

 church affairs in the United States before a final decision as to 

 a profession. I speedily found that there was no demand at all 

 for ' biblical science ' ; that everybody was afraid of it, especially 

 if it came with the German label on it. It was a case in which, 

 if a man should work very hard and achieve remarkable results, 

 the only consequence would be that he would ruin himself. At 

 this time I undertook the translation of the volume of Lange's 

 ' Commentary on Second Kings.' While I was tutor I read Her- 

 bert Spencer's ' First Principles ' — at least, the first part of it — but 

 it made no impression upon me. The second part, as it dealt with 

 evolution, did not then interest me. I also read his ' Social Stat- 

 ics ' at that period. As I did not believe in natural rights, or in 

 his 'fundamental principle,' this book had no effect on me." 



Mr. Sumner was ordained deacon at New Haven in December, 



1867, and priest at New York, July, 1869. He became assistant to 

 Dr. "Washburn at Calvary Church, New York, in March, 1869. 

 He was also editor of a broad church paper, which Dr. Wash- 

 burn and some other clergymen started at this time. In Septem- 

 ber, 1870, he became rector of the Church of the Redeemer at 

 Morristown, N. J. 



" When I came to write sermons, I found to what a degree my 

 interest lay in topics of social science and political economy. 

 There was then no public interest in the currency and only a 

 little in the tariff. I thought that these were matters of the most 

 urgent importance, which threatened all the interests, moral, 

 social, and economic, of the nation, and I was young enough to 

 believe that they would all be settled in the next four or five 

 years. It was not possible to preach about them, but I got so 

 near to it that I was detected sometimes, as, for instance, when a 

 New Jersey banker came to me, as I came down from the pulpit, 

 and said, ' There was a great deal of political economy in that 

 sermon.' 



" It was at this period that I read, in an English magazine, the 

 first of those essays of Herbert Spencer which were afterward 

 collected into the volume 'The Study of Sociology.' These 



