Happy birthday to my undergraduate alma mater Wheaton College (IL) which was chartered on February 15 of 1860.

I believe Jonathan Blanchard’s–the first president–reflections on the purposes of higher education still hold relevance in our thoroughly disenchanted era:

“A sound and thorough education is of priceless value,” Blanchard wrote. “Yet an education without moral and religious excellence, an enlightened intellect with a corrupt heart, is but a cold gas-light over a sepulcher, revealing, but not warming the dead.”