About a dozen of these tracts settled the infidel and the whole mass of unbelief from the time of Celsus downwards. The President’s task was all the easier because he knew nothing of German literature; and, indeed, the word “German” was a term of reproach signifying something very awful, although nobody knew exactly what it was.
Systematic theology was the next science to which the President directed us. We used a sort of Calvinistic manual which began by setting forth that mankind was absolutely in God’s power. He was our maker, and we had no legal claim whatever to any consideration from Him. The author then mechanically built up the Calvinistic creed, step by step, like a house of cards. Systematic theology was the great business of our academical life. We had to read sermons to the President in class, and no sermon was considered complete and proper unless it unfolded what was called the scheme of redemption from beginning to end.
So it came to pass that about the Bible, as I have already said, we were in darkness. It was a magazine of texts, and those portions of it which contributed nothing in the shape of texts, or formed no part of the scheme, were neglected. Worse still, not a word was ever spoken to us telling us in what manner to strengthen the reason, to subdue the senses, or in what way to deal with all the varied diseases of that soul of man which we were to set ourselves to save. All its failings, infinitely more complicated than those of the body, were grouped as “sin,” and for these there was one quack remedy. If the patient did not like the remedy, or got no good from it, the fault was his.
It is remarkable that the scheme was never of the slightest service to me in repressing one solitary evil inclination; at no point did it come into contact with me. At the time it seemed right and proper that I should learn it, and I had no doubt of its efficacy; but when the stress of temptation was upon me, it never occurred to me, nor when I became a minister did I find it sufficiently powerful to mend the most trifling fault. In after years, but not till I had strayed far away from the President and his creed, the Bible was really opened to me, and became to me, what it now is, the most precious of books.
There were several small chapels scattered in the villages near the college, and these chapels were “supplied,” as the phrase is, by the students. Those who were near the end of their course were also employed as substitutes for regular ministers when they were temporarily absent. Sometimes a senior was even sent up to London to take the place, on a sudden emergency, of a great London minister, and when he came back he was an object almost of adoration. The congregation, on the other hand, consisting in some part of country people spending a Sunday in town and anxious to hear a celebrated preacher, were not at all disposed to adore, when, instead of the great man, they saw “only a student.”
By the time I was nineteen I took my turn in “supplying” the villages, and set forth with the utmost confidence what appeared to me to be the indubitable gospel. No shadow of a suspicion of its truth ever crossed my mind, and yet I had not spent an hour in comprehending, much less in answering, one objection to it. The objections, in fact, had never met me; they were over my horizon altogether. It is wonderful to think how I could take so much for granted; and not merely take it to myself and for myself, but proclaim it as a message to other people. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that theological youths are the only class who are guilty of such presumption. Our gregarious instinct is so strong that it is the most difficult thing for us to be satisfied with suspended judgment. Men must join a party, and have a cry, and they generally take up their party and their cry from the most indifferent motives.
For my own part I cannot be enthusiastic about politics, except on rare occasions when the issue is a very narrow one. There is so much that requires profound examination, and it disgusts me to get upon a platform and dispute with ardent Radicals or Conservatives who know nothing about even the rudiments of history, political economy, or political philosophy, without which it is as absurd to have an opinion upon what are called politics as it would be to have an opinion upon an astronomical problem without having learned Euclid.
The more incapable we are of thorough investigations, the wider and deeper are the subjects upon which we busy ourselves, and still more strange, the more bigoted do we become in our conclusions about them; and yet it is not strange, for he who by painful processes has found yes and no alternate for so long that he is not sure which is final, is the last man in the world, if he for the present is resting in yes, to crucify another who can get no further than no. The bigot is he to whom no such painful processes have ever been permitted.
The society amongst the students was very poor. Not a single friendship formed then has remained with me. They were mostly young men of no education, who had been taken from the counter, and their spiritual life was not very deep. In many of them it did not
