sentences:  In 1897, he entered the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to prepare for the priesthood, and received his bachelor of divinity degree in 1900, although it was not until 1925 that he formally became a priest.In 1899, Stokes took the post of Secretary of Yale University, second in command to the university's president, and he also served as assistant rector of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in New Haven, Connecticut, from 1900 to 1918.Stokes was a favorite to replace Arthur T. Hadley as president of Yale in 1921, and was said to have had the support of a majority of the Yale Corporation, but a vociferous minority insisted that an outsider was needed at the helm of the university, and Stokes was passed over for James Rowland Angell.