Cornell University's lack of church affiliation made it suspect in some quarters. Ezra Cornell's young university, said its critics, was a godless cesspool of vice. After Ezra Cornell was "read out" of the Society of Friends (Quakers), he never joined another sect, but he did attend the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca until his death. As Morris Bishop writes, "The religion that Ezra Cornell made for himself was an uncritical deism, which dispensed with sin, the atonement, all formal Christian theology. ... science was the newest means of God's revelation." This attitude was confirmed in 1997, when a letter Cornell had laid in the Sage Hall cornerstone was found. Dated May 15, 1873, it reads in part: "From these halls, sectarianism must be forever excluded, all students must be left free to worship God, as their conscience shall dictate, and all persons of any creed or all creeds must find free and easy access, and a hearty and equal welcome. ..."

-- Adapted by George Lowery from Morris Bishop's "A History of Cornell."