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A Learned Minister at Harvard Willard Learoyd Sperry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
On the wall in the hallway directly outside the newly refurbished Sperry Lecture Room at Andover Hall, Harvard Divinity School, hangs an oil portrait of the older Willard Learoyd Sperry. It is somewhat dull with age but that probably does not matter to the students and visitors who pass it by. It is doubtful that they know who Sperry was, even though he served as Dean of the Divinity School from 1922 until 1953, longer than any other person. He was not only Dean of the Divinity School, but a preacher to Harvard University for a generation.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1987
References
1 Sperry, Willard Learoyd, What You Owe Your Child (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935) viii.Google Scholar
2 Classics of Religious Devotion (Boston: Beacon, 1950) Preface, unpaginated.Google Scholar
3 Sperry, Willard L., Strangers & Pilgrims (Boston: Little, Brown, 1939) 96.Google Scholar
4 Arthur Darby Nock dedicated his 1938 study of St. Paul “To Willard and Muriel Sperry.” In the spring of 1984 I visited the Sperry graveside at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge; the Sperry stone is in the new section of the cemetery and reads:
Willard Learoyd Sperry April 5, 1882 May 15, 1954
Muriel his wife September 3, 1882 January 3, 1958
Their Friend Arthur Darby Nock February 21, 1902 January 11, 1963
Under the names is inscribed, in the plural, Requiescant in pace.
5 Many of these facts have been taken from the Sperry essay in Finkelstein, Louis, ed., Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953) 231–51. Sperry used a number of the incidents included there as illustrations in his books and lectures throughout his active life. At the time of his death he was working on a fuller treatment of his autobiography, but according to his wife it was in a rough state and needed revision. It was apparently her intention to give a copy to the Harvard University Archives when the editorial work was accomplished, but no copy ever came.Google Scholar
6 Mrs. Sperry reportedly enjoyed shocking the students. One fall, when there was the regular tea at the Dean's house for the new students, Mrs. Sperry stood at the door of No. 11 Francis Avenue, the staircase behind her, greeting each arriving student with the announcement that Willard could not be with them because he was upstairs in bed with Abishag. The students, of course, did not realize that Abishag was the name of the Sperry's hot water bottle; it was also the name of the young lady given to King David in the Old Testament to keep him warm during his old age. At another tea at the house, one of the students served as an usher. While he was on duty, a married student came with his two little girls for whom he and his wife had been unable to get a sitter. The student acting as usher took a plate of cookies and offered them to the children. Suddenly, someone pulled his arm, saying, “Don't give them any. They weren't invited.” It was Mrs. Sperry. Then there was the sad relationship between the Sperrys and the Pfeiffers which is perhaps better left undocumented—at this time. (Conversation with Amos N. Wilder, 9 January 1985; letter to the author from W. Hollis Tegarden, 27 April 1984).
7 Letter to the author from Irving R. Murray, 8 May 1984.
8 The special nature of Willard Sperry as teacher, Dean, and college preacher can be found in his final words to the graduating class at his last Harvard Commencement: “It is good to have you as classmates” (letter to the author from William A. DeWolfe, 30 May 1984).Google Scholar
9 Willard L. Sperry, “The Dilemma of Christianity” (Russell Lecture, Tufts College, 1941; Boston: Universalist Publishing House, n.d.) 3.
10 Sperry, Willard L., “Man's Destiny in Eternity,” in Man's Destiny in Eternity: The Garwin Lecture (Boston: Beacon, 1951) 192.Google Scholar
11 Sperry, Willard L..Jesus Then and Now (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949) 177.Google Scholar
12 Sperry, Willard L., What We Mean By Religion (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940) 170–71.Google Scholar
13 Sperry, Willard L., “Yes, But—”: The Bankruptcy of Apologetics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1931) 46.Google Scholar
14 Sperry, What We Mean, 18.
15 Ibid., 64.
16 Sperry, Willard L., The Paradox of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1927) 21.Google Scholar
17 Ibid., 26–27.
18 Sperry, “Yes, But—,” 70.
19 Sperry, Paradox of Religion, 6.
20 Sperry, Willard L., Rebuilding Our World: Sermons in the Harvard College Chapel (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943) 156.Google Scholar
21 Sperry, What We Mean, 162.
22 Sperry, Willard L., We Prophesy in Part (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938) 50. See also his “The Dilemma of Christianity,” esp. 10.Google Scholar
23 Sperry, We Prophesy in Part, 169.
24 Conversation with Amos N. Wilder, 15 January 1985. See Sperry, Jesus Then and Now, 195–205. See also The Christian Century 7 September 1949; 12 October 1949; 9 November 1949; 30 November 1949.Google Scholar
25 George H. Williams, Dean's Report (Harvard Divinity School, 1952–53) 3.
26 If the Dean were writing today it seems probable that he would use language and terms that would be more inclusive than the language of his day.
27 Conversation with Amos N. Wilder, 9 January 1985.
28 Letter to the author from Max D. Gaebler, 2 January 1985.
29 In Finkelstein (ed.), Thirteen Americans, 250.
30 Sperry, We Prophesy in Part. 152–53.
31 Sperry, What We Mean, 67–68.
32 Sperry, Willard L., ed., Prayers for Private Devotions in War Time (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943).Google Scholar
33 Letter to the author from Irving R. Murray, 8 May 1984.
34 Sperry, Willard L., Wordsworth's Anti-Climax (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935).Google Scholar
35 See, e.g., the selected bibliography in Abrams, M. H., ed., Wordsworth: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972). When the book first came out it was termed “lucid,” “scholarly,” “thoughtful,” and “instructive.“It was not by chance that Sperry had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.Google Scholar
36 In Dunklin, Gilbert T., ed., Wordsworth: Centenary Studies Presented at Cornell and Princeton Universities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951).Google Scholar
37 Sperry, Wordsworth's Anti-Climax, 30–31.
38 Ibid., 191, 202.
39 The chapter on the “Imitation of Christ” is reprinted in Classics of Religious Devotion.
40 Sperry, Willard L., Reality in Worship (New York: Macmillan, 1925) 39, 41.Google Scholar