An article about a statue of Christ that stands in Johns Hopkins:

Ever since it was erected in 1896, “Christus Consolator” has been a source of inspiration, hope and consolation for countless patients, doctors, students and visitors of all faiths from around the world.

A replica of an 1820 work by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, the statue was cut from a single block of Carrara marble and shipped to Fells Point, where it was pulled by a team of horses up Broadway to its permanent home at Hopkins.

Three brick columns beneath the marble floor in the building’s rotunda were erected to support the six-ton behemoth.

The statue was a long-awaited acknowledgement of God that had been conspicuously lacking when the university was dedicated in 1876. Johns Hopkins, a Quaker businessman who endowed the institution named after him, intended the hospital-university to be a non-sectarian center of scientific advancement.

But after many across the country were outraged that there was no reference to the Almighty at the university’s dedication, Daniel Coit Gilman, president of the university and hospital, asked for someone to donate a replica of the Thorvaldsen statue. William Wallace Spence, a Baltimore businessman, funded the artwork.