A Biography of Sidney Lanier by Edwin Mims
page 23 of 60 (38%)
page 23 of 60 (38%)
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Before the public-school system of later days was established,
they did much to educate the masses of the people. Oglethorpe, at the time when Lanier became a student, was presided over by Rev. Samuel K. Talmage, originally of New Jersey, a graduate of Princeton and a tutor there for three years. He was a warm personal friend of Alexander H. Stephens, and was known throughout Georgia as a preacher of much power, "foremost in the councils of his church." Another member of the small faculty was Charles W. Lane, of the department of mathematics, of whom one of his friends wrote that he was "the sunniest, sweetest Calvinist that ever nestled close to the heart of Arminians and all else who loved the Master's image when they saw it. His cottage at Midway was a Bethel; it was God's house and heaven's gate." The piety of such men confirmed in Lanier a natural religious fervor. But the man who was destined to have a really formative influence over him was James Woodrow, of the department of science. A native of England and during his younger days a citizen of Pennsylvania, he had studied at Lawrence Scientific School under Agassiz, and had just returned from two years' study in Germany when Lanier came under his influence. Circumstances were such that he never became an investigator in his special line of work, but he was a thorough scholar who kept abreast with the knowledge of his subject. He afterwards became professor of science in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Columbia, S.C., and later the president of the University of South Carolina. In 1873 and 1874 he was the champion of science against those who called the church "to rise in arms against Physical Science as the mortal enemy of all the Christian holds dear, and to take no rest until this infidel and atheistic foe has been utterly destroyed."* |
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