CAMBRIDGE AND HER SCHOOLS.
CAMBRIDGE, _July 21, 1902_.
The Cathedral route from London to Edinburgh takes one through an
interesting stretch of eastern England, part of which is as flat as
Holland, with fens and canals and windmills, yielding, however, in the
north to a more rolling country, vestibule, as it were, to the hills
of Scotland. As its name indicates, this route affords the opportunity
of seeing in rapid succession the great cathedrals at Ely, Lincoln,
York, and Durham, not to speak of others. But nothing on this side of
England equals in interest the university town of Cambridge, with its
twenty colleges and three thousand students, its venerable collegiate
buildings, its far-famed "backs" (that is, the lovely lawns and stately
avenues behind the colleges), its clear and placid little river, and
its memories of great men and great causes. It is an exceptionally
clean town, of some forty-five thousand inhabitants.
[Illustration: CLARE COLLEGE AND KING'S CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE.]
[Sidenote: The Two University Towns.]
Oxford, farther west, is a somewhat larger city (about fifty-three
thousand), with twenty-three colleges and about three thousand
students, contains an unparalleled collection of picturesque academic
buildings, and has some single features which are not surpassed
anywhere, such as Magdalen (pronounced Maudlen) College, "the loveliest
of all the homes of learning," Addison's Walk, The Broad Walk, and the
"streamlike windings of that glorious street," to which Wordsworth
devoted a sonnet. But Cambridge, too, has some features which cannot
be paralleled, even in Oxford. For instance, Cambridge has, in
Trinity, the largest college in England. It has, in the chapel of
King's College, a building of marvellous beauty; Oxford cannot match
it, nor can it be matched anywhere in England save by that "miracle of
the world," the Chapel of Henry VII., in Westminster Abbey. The roll
of Cambridge's alumni is illustrious to a degree, having such names as
Bacon, Erasmus, Newton, Milton, Cromwell, Macaulay, Byron, Thackeray,
Tennyson, Wordsworth, Harvey (discoverer of the circulation of the
blood), Darwin, and many, many others equally well known.
[Sidenote: Cambridge more Progressive than Oxford.]
But the chief difference between Cambridge and Oxford is in the spirit
and influence of the two upon the nation and the world, and here the
glory of Cambridge excelleth. It used to be said in the fourteenth
century, "What Oxford thinks to-day, England thinks to-morrow."
But, as a matter of fact, it is Cambridge which has represented the
true progress of England and her modern political and intellectual
development, in such men as Milton and Cromwell, Isaac Newton and
William Pitt, Darwin and Tennyson. Oxford has stood chiefly for the
reactionary ideas of the High Church Anglicans.
The difference was sharply marked in the great testing time of the
seventeenth century, when the East supported the Parliament, and the
West supported the king. London and Cambridge were the centres of the
Puritan strength, Oxford was the capital of Charles I. Cromwell's
home was but a short distance from Cambridge, and he was a student at
Sidney-Sussex College, where we had the pleasure of seeing his rooms,
and the celebrated crayon portrait of him in the college hall. Roughly,
we might say, Cambridge has stood for the Parliament and the people,
Oxford for the king and the priests. At least, there has been more of
the spirit of freedom, democracy and progress at the eastern university
town than at the western.
[Sidenote: The Presbyterian Element.]
That the same difference still exists was indicated to us by a simple
fact. When we inquired at Oxford for a Presbyterian church, the
maid-servant said, "That is Protestant, isn't it?" She was evidently
a Romanist, but it is likely that most of the Church of England
people resident in Oxford never heard of Presbyterians, though our
denomination is so much larger than theirs. Oxford is the head centre
of Anglicanism, and there is no Presbyterian church there, though the
Congregationalists and Wesleyans are represented. But at Cambridge we
found a flourishing, though not yet a very large, church of our faith
and order, under the pastoral care of a gifted and earnest man, the
Rev. G. Johnston Ross, whose addresses at the Winona Conference, in
Indiana, this summer, gave so much satisfaction. We had the pleasure
of meeting him, and many of his people, at a pleasant garden party, to
which all the Presbyterians of Cambridge were invited.
By the way, we saw a thing in that church which we had never seen
before. When the minister read the Scripture lesson from the Old
Testament, in the English Version, the two ladies in whose pew we were
sitting opened the Hebrew Bible, and followed the reading in that,
and, in like manner, when the New Testament lesson was read, they
followed in the Greek text. To these two ladies whose learning has
been recognized by the Universities of St. Andrews and Heidelberg, in
the bestowment upon them of the degree of LL. D., and whose services
to the cause of biblical learning, in the discovery and editing of
the old Sinaitic Syriac manuscripts of the New Testament, have made
them famous throughout the world of scholars,[1] we had a letter of
introduction from a relative of theirs in Virginia, who is a kind
friend of ours. And thus we had the pleasure of meeting at their table
some of the choice spirits of the University, including the professors
in Westminster College, which is the theological seminary of the
Presbyterian Church in England.
[Sidenote: Westminster College.]
It was largely through the munificence of Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson,
the two elect ladies referred to above, that this institution was
transplanted from its former undesirable location, and established in
the city of Cambridge, thus bringing the Puritan theology back to its
original home in England. The financial agent who canvassed the English
Presbyterian Churches for the supplementing of the donation of these
two large-minded and large-hearted ladies was the Rev. Dr. John Watson,
of Liverpool, better known to the general reader as "Ian Maclaren,"
author of _Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush_, and other popular works; and
for special reasons it was with no ordinary interest that I examined
the result of his toils in the outfit with which the institution has
been provided. It is admirable. The location, indeed, is not so good or
so beautiful as that of Union Seminary, in Richmond, with its breezy
sweeps of green campus, and the building, which is of red brick like
ours, is not nearly so imposing as the handsome group at Richmond.
Everything, in fact, is on a much smaller scale, naturally so, as the
English Presbyterian Church is a much smaller body than our Southern
Church. But, on the other hand, there are some features that are
superior, _e. g._, the stairways are of stone, not of wood as with us.
The dining-hall is spacious, comely, cool, inviting, with ornamental
windows, and walls hung with portraits of Presbyterian worthies, and
the tables are heavy and handsome, of hard wood. No seminary in our
Southern Church, or in the Northern, has a sufficiently attractive
refectory. The one at Union Seminary is better than most of them, but
it, too, is below the mark. Some benevolent person can do a great work
for our future ministry by presenting that institution with a properly
equipped refectory building.
The rooms occupied by the students at Westminster are much smaller
than ours at Union, and seem in some cases cramped, but there is a
bath-room for every four students. I fear this will seem almost a
sinful degree of cleanliness to those brethren who a few years ago were
so much opposed to the introduction of any bath-rooms and other modern
conveniences into our seminary.
There are three professors at Westminster College, Cambridge: Principal
Dykes, Dr. Gibb, and Professor Skinner; and twenty-three students, a
slightly smaller number than last year.
[Sidenote: The same Difficulties about Candidates.]
The churches here are facing the same problem that confronts those in
America as to an adequate supply of ministers. The number of candidates
is decreasing rapidly in Scotland. Some attribute this decline to
the stagnant spiritual condition of the churches throughout Europe
and America, and connect it with the spread of devitalizing critical
theories concerning the Scriptures. But the zeal and activity of the
churches do not seem to be deficient in other particulars. It is not a
question to discuss here, but it is one for Christian people to think
about and pray over.
The identity of our difficulties in America and Britain may be
seen again in the fact that here also the theological schools are
complaining that the universities are graduating men with the degree of
A. B. who have never studied Greek. How can a man without Greek master
the New Testament in the original? Is it not clear that no man can be
a thoroughly furnished minister who has not studied Greek? Yet some of
our own colleges in America, conducted under Presbyterian auspices, are
encouraging this crippling omission by offering an A. B. course without
Greek.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Of the value of this find Prof. Adolf Harnack says: "As the text is
almost completely preserved, this Syrus Sinaiticus is one of the most
important witnesses; nay, it is extremely probable that it is the most
important witness, for our gospels."