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Chapter Four explores the early education and character formation of Charles Hodge. Hodge’s mother was indefatigable in her efforts to educate her sons, and she took a great personal interest in their daily activities even when she sent them away to School in Somerville, New Jersey. The roots to Hodge’s lifelong dedication to duty, systemization and service are rooted in both his early religious and secular educational experiences.

Chapter Three explores the parents and early family life of Charles Hodge. Hodge’s father, Hugh Hodge, was a Philadelphia physician who played an important role in the Philadelphia Yellow Fever epidemics of the 1790s. Hugh Hodge stood against Benjamin Rush’s form of treatment, but eventually succumbed to the disease himself after years of exposure. His death left his family in a poor financial state. Hodge’s mother was a beautiful, bright and determined woman, who had been born in Boston.

Chapter twenty-four follows Hodge into a feverish period of publishing as he completes some twenty articles for the Repertory along with three variations of his Romans commentary. During this period, he struggles with whether he is making the best use of his abilities as life’s brief and precarious nature are brought home to him as his mother dies, the Asiatic Cholera breaks out in New England, and he is confined to his study by lameness in his right leg.

Chapter forty tells of one of the most grief-stricken periods of Hodge’s life. Hodge had been fortunate to have not lost a wife or child for nearly fifty years of his life. Within a period of six years, however, he lost a good friend (Albert Dod), a nephew, his wife Sarah, and the three men who had been most important in founding and forming Princeton Theological Seminary: Ashbel Green, Archibald Alexander, and Samuel Miller. He now stood alone as the institution’s most senior colleague and institutional leader.

Chapter forty-nine examines Hodge’s early engagement in the events surround the beginning of the Civil War. Hodge was strongly pro-Union, and wrote early about the need to keep the Union intact. In this effort, he wrote one of his most famous and widely read Repertory articles: “The State of the Country.” Once it became clear that Lincoln’s election would lead to succession, Hodge attempted to keep Southern and Northern Old School Presbyterians united. This effort also failed as James Thornwell and Benjamin Morgan Palmer led Southern Old School Presbyterians to form their own denomination. Hodge had little sympathy for the South, who he saw unlawfully seceding as it turned its back on the Constitution, but he worked hard to attempt to avoid the breakup of the Union.

Chapter fifty-five examines Hodge’s fifty-teaching jubilee celebration held at the Seminary in 1872. More than five hundred attended, and he called the event: “the apex of my life.” It was the first such academic celebration of a professor to be held in the United States, following a tradition that was common in European institutions of higher learning. It was during these ceremonies that Hodge uttered his oracular statement: “a new idea never originated in this Seminary.” Just nine months after the event, Hodge’s brother, Hugh, died.

Chapter Five recounts how the Hodge family relocated to Princeton, New Jersey so that Hodge and his brother, Hugh, might attend the College of New Jersey (hereafter referred to as Princeton College). The founding and history of the College and its Presbyterian roots is examined. Hodge first attended Princeton Academy for six months before entering Princeton College as a sophomore.