“She is a minister and you are to be a minister, I think you ought to sit at the same table!”
She left the young woman sitting opposite me at the table, not being aware that we were strangers to each other. But there we were, and it seemed as if the phrenologist’s ghost must have been wandering near, though by that time I had put his report out of mind entirely.
Suddenly it was rumored about the Seminary that I had in charge the entertainment of our guest, the missionary, and students stumbled over us in the most unexpected places, as we took our walks over the city. Curious persons began to speak about the usefulness of a wife who could herself take to the pulpit! It was even reported about the Seminary that some day she would be writing my sermons!
When the missionary had returned to her parish a sharp watch was kept over the mail box at the foot of Therenton Hall stairway, for it was expected that probably some correspondence would take place between the missionary and myself. Some letters did pass between us, though those from the missionary conveyed to me the fact, expressed in clear, unequivocal language, that she was wedded to her mission and felt that her whole life and sympathy belonged to her people, despite any personal wishes of her own. The matter had reached that stage when examination and graduation week drew near, a time which brought suffering with it.
Chapter XXX. A Heretic Hunter.
The Orthodoxy of the Seminary
Admirably Defended. I Contract
a Fashionable Disease, and also
Receive a Very Unsettling Letter
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?