their petty cares, and to lead them heavenward!

About the Greek and Latin and the secular part of the college
discipline I will say nothing, except that it was generally
inefficient. The theological and Biblical teaching was a sham. We had
come to the college in the first place to learn the Bible. Our whole
existence was in future to be based upon that book; our lives were to
be passed in preaching it. I will venture to say that there was no
book less understood either by students or professors. The President
had a course of lectures, delivered year after year to successive
generations of his pupils, upon its authenticity and inspiration. They
were altogether remote from the subject; and afterwards, when I came to
know what the difficulties of belief really were, I found that these
essays, which were supposed to be a triumphant confutation of the
sceptic, were a mere sword of lath. They never touched the question,
and if any doubts suggested themselves to the audience, nobody dared to
give them tongue, lest the expression of them should beget a suspicion
of heresy.

I remember also some lectures on the proof of the existence of God and
on the argument from design; all of which, when my mind was once
awakened, were as irrelevant as the chattering of sparrows. When I did
not even know who or what this God was, and could not bring my lips to
use the word with any mental honesty, of what service was the "watch
argument" to me? Very lightly did the President pass over all these
initial difficulties of his religion. I see him now, a gentleman with
lightish hair, with a most mellifluous voice and a most pastoral
manner, reading his prim little tracts to us directed against the
"shallow infidel" who seemed to deny conclusions so obvious that we
were certain he could not be sincere, and those of us who had never