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In evaluating the history of that great institution known as Princeton Theological Seminary, many would consider that “she” died in 1929 when the seminary was reorganized on modernist terms. But in a letter to his mother dated February 20, 1921, J.G. Machen wrote these sad words (quoted in Ned B. Stone, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (1954), p. 310):
Dr.Warfield's funeral took place yesterday afternoon at the First Church of Princeton . . . It seemed to me that the old Princeton — a great institution it was — died when Dr. Warfield was carried out.
B.B. Warfield, the great defender of historic Protestant orthodoxy, who carried that banner for Old Princeton, entered into glory on February 16, 1921.
Born near Lexington, Kentucky on November 5, 1851, Warfield completed his undergraduate studies at the College of New Jersey at Princeton, and then, after a tour of Europe, embarked on theological studies at the seminary in Princeton. He graduated from the seminary in 1876, and then, after a period of transition, he was ordained to the ministry in 1879, and in 1880, he was inaugurated as a professor at Western Theological Seminary in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh). Eight years later, in 1888, he was inaugurated as Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, succeeding both Charles and A.A. Hodge, and he remained at Princeton for the next four decades of his life, contributing to the cause of Christ as an outstanding theologian, a remarkable teacher, and a prolific author.
He was stricken by a first heart attack on December 24, 1920 while walking in front of the home of Geerhardus Vos, which was witnessed by his son, J.G. Vos (this account came from J.G. Vos to R.C. Sproul and was repeated in the April 2005 issue of Tabletalk Magazine, although the account repeated there makes it seem as if the event was the fatal heart attack, which did not happen until February 16, 1921).
William Childs Robinson was a student in Warfield’s class on that day in February (his recollection too fudged a detail but it is worth repeating here [see his 1974 review of Warfield’s The Lord of Glory titled Warfield’s Witness to Christ]):
I was in the class he taught on Feb. 17, 1921, the day of his death. In an exposition of I John 3:16, he pointed out that for Christ to lay down His life was great, but the stupendous thing was that He — being all that He was and is, the Lord of glory — laid down His life for us, mere creatures of His hand, guilty rebels against our gracious Maker.
Up until his final hours, B.B. Warfield testified of Christ our Lord, and that, we may rightly conclude, was the true banner and testimony of Old Princeton. Warfield’s personal witness to Christ was so powerful and outstanding, and the dramatic spiritual downfall of the institution that he loved which followed soon after was so much the opposite of Warfield’s own testimony, that it seems Machen was right — when Warfield died and was laid to rest in the Princeton Cemetery, Old Princeton itself indeed died that day.