It was not alone the poverty of the university equipment and the inadequate compensation they received which intensified the nobleness of our teachers’ characters, but also their endurance of some of the petty, trivial annoyances they suffered from the dogmatic Jason and his few followers. For even into the classrooms religious, doctrinal quibbles were carried by those stern and unyielding students. The little coterie went on strike in the English department when the Professor refused to debar Shakespere and Burns from the reading courses, in response to the charges drawn up and presented by Jason’s clique that those writers had unreadable passages in their works. Some one replied, that on this basis, Jason had better stop reading the Bible for the same reasons. To this Jason replied that “The Bible is the Bible, but Shakespere is only Shakespere!” But the more acute issues between Jason and his followers and the curriculum were to be found in the scientific and theological classrooms. Here the conflict between “science and religion” as the Church History termed it, became pointed, tragical. I can still see them, the two followers of Jason, standing before the scientific professor after class had been dismissed. They are on scent of a terrible heresy! Aggressively they quiz the able exponent of science, as follows:
“You said in this recitation, professor, that the world was created in millions of years?”
“I did!”
“But the Bible says plainly, that God created it in six days and that He rested from his labors on the seventh day!”
“Oh, the Bible, in that part is not to be taken literally—it—”
But he could get no further. Two shocked faces were before him, and one of the students interjected,
“Why, we have to believe the Bible!”
“We shall stick to the Bible!” added the other in support.
“But let me explain,” began the professor, patiently, “you see the early Hebrews possessed no real science—”
“But, professor,” interrupted one of the students, “God revealed it to them and—”