Through the school: The experiences of a mill boy in securing an education

THE fifty-year-old elms are budding; the shapely Norway maples are bursting into May leafing; the sun, after having melted away the ice and packed snow in the north corners, is now pouring down over the sloping field in front of the dormitory porch; the snow shovels which the students have used through the snowy winter months in clearing gridirons of paths—a task which they have chosen by lot—these tools of winter have been packed away in remote corners of the vaulted cellar. There is a slack fire kept in the stoves, a sure sign of a seminary spring. One or two bicycles are seen leaning against the steps of the chapel, waiting for their owners to come from class and take a ride over the hills. Nature has set the campus for loafers, but the professors have chosen the dramatic month of May for the hard grind of final examinations! Just about this time the students begin to debate very seriously on this matter, of acute interest—to them: “Resolved: That Examinations Do Not Gauge the Mental Fitness of a Student,” and substantiate their proposition by the following proofs:

“That examinations induce nervousness, prohibiting the student from actually expressing what is actually in his mind.

“That all knowledge cannot be put on paper, for it is possible for a man to profit by study and yet not be able to give proof of it when asked.

“That examinations depend upon memory: that all students are not perfect in memory—” and the many other usual arguments which examinations, from the earliest times, must have had against them.

But, in the Seminary, these examinations on paper, while almost decisive, were supplemented by oral examinations, made in public, with full liberty given to any visitors, especially visiting ministers, to ask questions. Immediately it is seen what a heresy-hunting, heretic-discovering opportunity these oral examinations gave: for if ever a study has brought men’s thumbs into the screw and men’s necks into nooses, and caused the suspicions of men to flame into white heat, has it not been Theology?

For two years I had sat with my fellow victims in the little chapel where our hymns of praise and our prayers had been wont to ascend. Class by class we sat, the lower classes unimportant in dramatic possibilities because they were to be examined merely on Hebrew and Church History, and surely it would have taken a persecutor with a keener nose than Hildebrand or a Scotch vestryman to cull a heresy on the Trinity or the Virgin Birth from a hiphil or a hophal or a padrigram with a kametshhatauph in it! In fact, after a minister has been away from the Seminary a few years, he attends these oral examinations in Hebrew, merely to nod his head at the recital of every jot and the pronunciation of every drunken row of consonants, as if it were a matter of every-day understanding with him, and needed no comment! At least, it seemed so to me as I watched during my first experience as a participant in an oral examination in Hebrew. Neither is there much of a chance for heresy-hunting in Church History, for is it not, in itself, a record of heresy after heresy? But “the senior class in Theology!” The mere announcement of such an event is enough to lure from his tombs every theological ragger who ever drew breath. Think of the chance: to be given carte blanche with eight young students who are ready to be quizzed on their theology!

The senior class sit in their students’ chairs hardly comprehending what they face. Perhaps because they are young and have a certain amount of bel esprit, in any case, they sit ready; each one ready to take up arms in defense of the orthodoxy of the seminary of that present year against the orthodoxy of the seminary forty, fifty, or fifty-eight years ago; a clash which may have in it every element of theological tragedy. That there may be need of it is clear, for in the second settee of visitors sits a white-haired, stern-faced minister, who had stopped progress before Darwin wakened the world, or ever First Isaiah was said to have a double, or before such startling queries as “What Sage Influenced the Psalter?” and “Did the Code of Hammurabi Help Moses?” began to be made. He antedates those novelties: is strongly entrenched, unwilling to lend his ear to them lest Zion’s song be not heard. Traditions of this man have been handed down to the seniors, who now sit ready for his ringing challenge. They know he is waiting eagerly for them, to follow every word, every answer that has in it any deviation from the straight doctrine of his senior year!

The examination begins. First the professor asks some questions that will indicate the range and character of his instruction. The old man jots down something in a note-book, which he holds in his hand, for he is experienced in these matters. Then the cross-examination ensues. The old minister asks, first of all, in a bewildered voice,

“Do you mean to say, young gentleman, that the first sin was not done in the Garden of Eden, as exactly recorded? Does the Seminary teach that?”

The student replies, at length, showing, in terms of modern research and science, exactly what he means: that he has not denied the terrible fact of sin nor of its penalties, etc.

But, in the audience sit some younger men, recently graduated, who, by skilfully injected questions, deflect examination into constructive and spiritual channels, bringing out from the students the rich faith that they have to preach and the helpful doctrine that they mean to proclaim to men, and the examination closes with only one man imagining that faith is on its last legs through too much wisdom.

These parlous times of test, of trial were approaching for me, and I had my class note-books in order on my desk, for a review, when one morning I awoke suffering agony from the then fashionable ailment—appendicitis; just at a time when the papers were reporting that some Philadelphia society women were compelling doctors to operate on them as a new fad! The student across the hall opened his medicine-closet and made me a very stout and vigorous mustard plaster; but that did not avail. Then the doctors were asked in and gave out the news that I should have to be operated upon immediately. Visions of graduation melted in thin air. While a carriage was secured, I dictated two short letters, not knowing whether they would be my last. Then I had my friend read me a letter which the missionary had sent. It was a letter to the effect that she felt that our personal feelings should be put aside in order that she might devote herself to God’s work. It pleaded that we should bring our correspondence to an end, in order not to heighten the tragedy to which the matter had reached. The words were like knife blades driven deep, and causing a pain more acute than that physical pain which had brought me next door to death.

As the students carried me downstairs and put me in the carriage, they saw my face contorted and purple with physical agony.