Sober Consent of the Heart: The Bowdoin College Chapel Messages of its First President

Joseph McKeen, First President of Bowdoin

Compiled and edited by Robert B. Gregory

It is impossible to spend any time in the Bowdoin chapel and not be impressed with the influence that Bowdoin's first president Joseph McKeen continues to have on the life of the college.  Those few words about the "common good" taken from his inaugural message which are printed on the walls of the McKeen Center provided clues to the editor of this volume that some time in the Bowdoin College Archives might yield deeper insights into the ideas of this remarkable man.  My first reading of the handwritten sermons that McKeen had preached to the first eight Bowdoin students disclosed a man with remarkably clear thoughts about first principle, and the importance of recognizing that the inner voice of subjective preference and feeling does not own the last word on matters governing the human heart.

-From the back cover.

Paperback.