<£> LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, •-, , i^qt + ...r„. §qttjrin$ T^n. Shelf..:.--. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. » • {From a photograph taken at Providence, R.I., in 1882.] EZEKIEL GlLMAN ROBINSON an autobtogtapl)? WITH A SUPPLEMENT BY H. L. WAYLAND AND CRITICAL ESTIMATES lEtriteti 6g E. H. JOHNSON SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY New York . . . BOSTON . . . Chicago 1896 ^ Copyright, 1896, By Silver, Burdett and Company. /?-3l iKtttbersttg Press John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. PREFACE. TN the spring of 1893 Dr. Robinson was prevailed upon to begin the dictation of an autobiography. At the same time the contributors and the topics for a memorial volume were agreed upon substantially as they now appear. Dr. Robinson was urged to tell his story with entire frankness, and equal frankness was asked from the contributors ; they were also assured that what they might write, until it went to the pub- lisher, would not come under any other eye than that of the editor. A more candid memorial volume than these plans have secured could hardly be found ; yet a less discriminating book would not indicate so fine a reverence for him who is its subject. The Critical Estimates are pervaded by a conviction that the im- press made by Dr. Robinson upon the thinking and the preaching of his denomination is the deepest that it has received in a generation ; the effort of the writers has been to determine and to state the sources and nature of an influence which, at the distance even of many years, is still rated by those who came under it as hardly less than prodigious. In such a case it has seemed best to limit for the most part my service iv PREFACE. as editor to a kind of secretaryship in behalf of the writers. This, I am aware, is to accept rather than to evade a responsibility. The comparative silence of the autobiography and of the contributions with regard to Mrs. Robinson, to whom, as her husband over and over declared in pub- lic, he owed everything, is due to the restrictions which she herself imposed upon him and upon all who have had a part in the book ; yet all feel that the tribute they would like to pay to her is in- dispensable to an understanding of him. The supplement to the autobiography was pre- pared by Dr. Robinson's nearest friend. The list of published writings is due to the painstaking of A. G. Langley, A. M., the scholarly translator of Leibnitz's "New Essays," which are just coming before the public in English dress. The Index is from the skilful hand of Rev. Robert Kerr Eccles, M.D., of Ohio. E. H. JOHNSON. Crozer Theological Seminary. February, 1896. CONTENTS. part i?tr0t, AUTOBIOGRAPHY. CHAPTER I. CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 1815-1842. Page Childhood ; Forgotten ; at School in Pawtucket ; a Sharp Lesson ; in a Country School ; First Taste of Literature ; Fighting Fire ; Day's Academy ; Preparing for College ; New Hampton ; a Friend in Need ; Hale's Academy ; New Hampton again ; Baptized ; En- ters College; Discouragements; the Class of 1838; the "United Brothers ; " College Societies ; Professor Hackett ; President Way- land ; License to Preach ; Graduation ; Agent of Tract Society ; In Newton Theological Institution ; Friendships ; Professor Hackett again; Dr. Barnas Sears; 111 Health; Call to Norfolk, Virginia; hears Henry Clay; a Fateful Detention — Note, Reminiscences by fellow-students 3-27 CHAPTER II. PASTORATES AND THE COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 1842-1853. Settles in Norfolk ; Ordained ; Novel Customs ; Liquor Question ; Cod- dling ; Chaplain at University of Virginia; the Faculty; Marriage; Bridal Trip ; Removes to Cambridge, Massachusetts ; a Troubled Deacon ; Illness of Mrs. Robinson ; Call to Covington ; O. W. Holmes ; an Old- Style Journey ; Canal-Boat; the Ohio at Low Water ; Coving- ton Faculty ; Teaching Hebrew ; Preaching ; Slavery Question ; an Official Interview ; Resignation ; Noted Students ; Lyman Beecher ; vi CONTENTS. Page Dr. Pattison ; Calls to Pastorates in Rochester and Cincinnati ; Dr. Magoon ; Cholera ; Parishioners ; Discourses on Scepticism ; Call to Rochester Theological Seminary ; a Land Speculation — Note, Method of Preparing Sermons 28-47 CHAPTER III. THE ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 1853-1866. A Happy Change ; First Duties ; Inaugural ; Doctorates of Divinity and Laws ; First Year's Trials ; Preaching ; Christian Evidences ; Inspira- tion ; Making a Theology ; Teaching in the University ; the Second Year ; Lighter Burdens ; a Popular Misunderstanding ; Relativity of Knowledge : Sin ; Third Year ; Confidence ; Attributes of God ; New England Theology; Homiletics; Work of following Years; Chris- tology ; Sermon at Brown in 1856-1857 ; Dr. Conant and Bible Union ; Dr. Hotchkiss ; Professor Northrup ; Bad Air and Illness ; Theologi- cal Progress ; Sin and Death ; Rapid Change as to Atonement ; Moral Law ; Beginnings of a System ; Method with Students ; an Episode, and a Mystery Cleared up ; Financial Burdens ; German Depart- ment ; J. B. Hoyt ; Professor Rauschenbusch ; Translates Neander's " Planting and Training ; " Edits " Christian Review ; " Preaches for Presbyterians ; a Novel Interruption ; Preaches in Albany ; Mr. Bridgman ; Kingman Nott ; President of Seminary ; Three Years' Course; Typhoid; Misunderstanding with University; Estimate of President Anderson ; Proposes a Union of Seminaries ; Raising Endowment ; Dr. Hotchkiss Resignsj Dr. Kendrick's Venture . 48-76 CHAPTER IV. IN EUROPE. LAST TEARS IN ROCHESTER. 1866-1872. An Invitation ;" Liverpool ; a Christmas Salute ; London ; Archbishop Manning; James Martineau; Spurgeon ; Dr. Brock; at St. Albans ; "City" Churches; a Dinner in Billingsgate; Snow in London; through France; in Italy; Naples; the Opera; Rome; Sight-See- ing ; Pius IX. ; the Pope's Pinch of Snuff ; through Northern Italy ; Switzerland; D'Auhigne ; Heidelberg; Rothe: Bonn; Lange; Tour in England and Scotland ; Cambridge ; Cathedral Towns ; Incident in Stirling; Dunblane; Edinburgh; Trossachs ; Glasgow's Drunken- ness ; a Scotch Explanation ; Land of Burns ; English Lakes ; a Trait of Wordsworth ; Thomas Arnold ; Oxford ; Trouble among Anglicans ; London again ; a Study of Spurgeon's Congregation ; Visits Parliament; Amusing Discussion in the Lords; Paris; the CONTENTS. vii Page Baptists ; Overtures from Brown ; the Alps ; a Day of Avalanches ; Four Months in Berlin; Hengstenberg ; Dorner; Piper; a Debating Society; Thanksgiving; Halle; Tholuck; Carols in the Rain ; Voy- age Home ; Prefers Theological Work ; Temporary Arrangements in the Faculty; Trevor Hall; President's House; Illness; Mr. Whittemore; Prosperity; Dr. Bucklaud; Dr. Ilackett ; Class of Resident Graduates; the Best Year; Rewriting Lectures- Health Fails 77-105 CHAPTER V. PRESIDENCY OF BROWN. 1872-1889. Reasons for Accepting Third Call ; Finds University Depressed ; Stu- dents Lively ; Narrow Range of Study ; Old Buildings ; Neglected Grounds ; Surplus Income ; Improvement Begun ; a New Physical Laboratory ; Slater Hall ; New Library Building ; Sayles Memorial Hall ; Grading Campus ; Professor Greene and Ball-Ground ; Uni- versity Hall Renovated ; Mr. Wilson's Plans ; Wilson Hall ; Gov- ernor Ladd's Promise of Observatory; Curriculum and Faculty Enlarged ; Trouble in Faculty about Electives and Ph.D. ; Faction in Boards — Note A, Break in Autobiography — Note B, Concern for Religious Life of College — Note C, Self-Restraint and Sensi- sibility— Note D, Dr. Hackett's Tribute 106-126 THE CLOSING YEARS (1889-1894). — A SUPPLEMENT. H. L. Watland, D.D. Presidency of Brown Resigned; Professor Gammell's Remarks; the Grundmann Portrait ; at Memorial Church in Philadelphia ; Lec- tures on Missions at Andover, at Rochester; Bereaved; Crozer Lectureship; Poetical Tribute of Brown Alumnus; Pulpit Service at Immanuel Church in Baltimore and Fifth Church in Philadelphia; at Baptist Congress; Lectures at Brown on Modern Thought and Religion ; Professor at Chicago ; his Vigor and its Causes ; Golden Wedding; the Fatal Disease; Preaches at Vassar; Death and Burial ; Memorial Services ; Love for Truth ; Effect on Bearing, and on Later Rhetorical Style ; Kindness of Heart ; an Illustration; Mental Intensity ; Faith in Christ — Note A, Dr. Wayland's Memorial Addresses — Note B, On the Character of Dr. Robinson . . . 129-144 viii CONTENTS. part £>econD, CEITICAL ESTIMATES. Page I. As a Pastor : A. J. Sage, D. D 147 II. As a Theologian: Pres. A. H. Strong, D.D., LL.D. ... 163 III. As a Seer : Prof. G. W. Northrup, D. D., LL. D 21 1 IV. As a Teacher of Theology : A. J. P. Behrends, D. D. . . 223 V. As a Leader in Post-Graduate Study : Prof. B. O. True, D.D. 243 VI. As a Teacher of Homiletics and as a Preacher : Way- land Hoyt, D. D 257 VII. As President of Brown University : Pres. E. B. Andrews, D.D., LL.D 269 VIII. As a Teacher of Philosophy : A. G. Langley, A. M. . . 281 IX. As Colleague at the University of Chicago : Pres. W. R. Harper, Ph. D., LL. D 319 X. As an Orator and a Man of Letters : Prof. W. C. Wil- kinson, D.D 327 XI. As a Trustee and a Friend : Pres. J. M. Taylor, D. D., LL. D. 339 APPENDIX. I. The Case of Ann T. Peck .349 II. The Western Theological Institute at Covington, Kentucky . . . 351 III. Graduating Address at Newton 357 IV. Lecture-Room Sayings 361 V. List of Published Writings 367 INDEX 369 $art tfir£t AUTOBIOGRAPHY, WITH SUPPLEMENT. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. CHAPTEE I. CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 1815-1842. I WAS born, March 23, 1815, at South Attleboro, Massa- chusetts, about six miles from Providence, on a farm which had been in the family some four or five generations. 1 It was bought originally of the Indians. My father, Ezekiel Robinson, was the second of five brothers. The next younger brother than himself, Samuel Eobinson, was a physician, who, having a pulmonary affection, removed to North Carolina early in the present century, practising medicine until about the year 1823 or 1824. Then he de- voted his attention exclusively to mineralogy, exploring the localities of minerals throughout the then known United States, and collecting a cabinet of minerals 2 which afterwards found place at Harvard College. 1 At a memorial service to Dr. RobiDson held in Boston, the late Eev. Dr. A. J. Gordon stated that, in the course of genealogical investigations about his own family, he found Dr. Robinson to be a descendant of the Rev. John Robinson of Leyden. It is matter of record that his ancestor, George Robinson of the Plymouth colony, held lands by allotment in Rehoboth, after their purchase from the Indians. A part of these lands is still held by the family, and the subject of this memoir was born on the ancestral estate. — Ed. 2 This was really the nucleus of the cabinet of minerals at Harvard University, and was purchased by Professor Webster. My uncle published 4 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. My father, after the death of his father, who had left his estate encumbered, removed from the farm to that part of Pawtucket which was then within the line of Massachusetts, becoming an innkeeper, and one of the sheriffs of Bristol County. He died after a short illness in the autumn of 1819, when I was four and a half years of age. My mother with four children, of whom I was the youngest, returned to the farm, where we continued to live until I was about eight years of age. Desiring better opportunities for the education of her children, she returned to Pawtucket. Of the schools I attended prior to my eighth year not even the faintest remembrance remains. Of struggles with words and of a sense of victory in learning to read long before this, I have a vivid recollection, but of teachers and schools all remem- brance has vanished. The earliest recollection that I have of being in a schoolroom goes back to the time when I must have been nearly four and a half years of age. How I happened to be there I cannot say ; certainly not as a regu- lar scholar, probably as a casual visitor with older sisters. The recollection is not of anything studied or learned, but of a great fright when the school had been dismissed, and one of the earliest catalogues of minerals issued in this country. He died in the winter of 1825-26 at St. Augustine. — E. G. R. A letter from the late Professor J. W. P. Jenks shows the estimate in which this-uncle was held : "When I left for Florida in 1874, he [President Robinson] requested me to look through the cemetery at St. Augustine to see in what condition the headstone of his uncle's grave might be. . . . Instead of a mere headstone I found a neat monument in a lot enclosed by an iron fence, and on the monument an inscription to this import : — " Sacred to the memory of Samuel Robinson, M.D., who attained great distinction in his profession during a long residence in this city, and by his public services and wise counsels greatly endeared himself to all his fellow- citizens, by whom this monument is erected in grateful recognition of his worth. " These are not the exact words, but the meaning of the inscription I am certain to have expressed." CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 5 the scholars had all left. It was in a late summer or early- autumn afternoon, when, wearied from play, or lulled by the hum of the schoolroom, I had lain down on one of the long seats and had fallen asleep. Hidden by the desk from the eye of the teacher, and forgotten by my sisters, I had been left asleep and locked up alone. I awoke when all had left, and the alarm and wailing that followed have never wholly faded from my memory. At eight my school days and education began in earnest. 1 I was sent to a large school kept by a Mr. Hill in Pawtucket. Here most of the scholars of both sexes were older than myself. Chief among many unprofitable tasks imposed upon me was the study of Lindley Murray's English Grammar. I was compelled to learn indefinite quantities of detail about " parts of speech," under the designation of " Etymology," and to commit to memory verbatim the twenty-two rules of "Syntax," and apply these in "parsing." Human ingenuity could hardly have devised anything more dreary and destruc- tive of all childish interest. So desperate was the effort to master some of these rules that they have never ceased to haunt me with unpleasant memories. So far as any useful- ness was concerned, any other English words arbitrarily combined would have served the same end. The weary months spent on that grammar were worse than wasted; they did me a permanent injury. I acquired the parrot-like habit of recitation, and of reading without taking in the sense of what I read. That study of grammar came near making useless the next few years of my school life. But there was one lesson learned by me at Mr. Hill's big school that has been invaluable to me ever since, — a lesson learned 1 This account of Dr. Robinson's student life has been enlarged by incor- porating parts of his article, " How I was Educated," which appeared in the " Forum " for December, 1886. — Ed. 6 EZEKIEL GILMAN KOBINSON. not from books but from a fellow-student, and from Mr. Hill's blind savagery of discipline. A youth named Lord, much older than I, sat directly in front of me, having, as all scholars then had, a " ruler," which he contrived in some way to thrust through the back of his seat for my special annoyance. I seized it, and on his trying to give it a wrench for my greater annoyance, it snapped with a loud report. The ever-watchful master, with rawhide in hand, — he was never without it in school hours, — was at once on the spot, demanding an explanation of the noise. With childish simplicity I told the story just as it was, which Lord vehemently denied, and denounced me as the offender. Older and bolder than I, he browbeat me into the weakened statement that " I thought he did it." The result was that for the first and only time in my life I tasted the qualities of a rawhide. The lesson, not to be frightened out of what I knew to be the truth, was worth to me all it cost, and has been more valuable in life than all I learned from Lindley Murray's grammar. I never shall forget the exciting interest with which, years after I had studied Latin gram- mar, I read an English grammar which seemed like a revela- tion. It happened one evening, and so absorbed me that I threw aside everything else until I had read it through from beginning to end. When I was eleven years of age, my mother returned to the old paternal farm, which, with the help of hired men, was cultivated by my elder brother and myself. The spring- time, the open fields, the birds, the blossoming of orchards, the planting of gardens, banished all thought of school, and made life a genuine pleasure. Three or four years slipped away, my education being conducted chiefly in a country district school. The school was, perhaps, equal to the aver- age Massachusetts schools of that day; but, as I now CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 7 recall it, nothing in the way of teaching, so far as I was concerned, could have been more worthless. One winter afternoon, however, in that country school-house still lingers with me as one of the pleasantest of memories. Among the books used in the school was a reading-book made up mostly of extracts from well-known English authors. Among these was Johnson's " Hermit of Teneriffe." Some- thing induced me to read it. I was absorbed ; consciousness of my surroundings ceased. When the brief story was finished, the slanting rays of the sun seemed to have trans- formed the room. I was with the hermit on the slope of Teneriffe. It was my first conscious taste of literature. I had read " Eobinson Crusoe," " The Pilgrim's Progress," and other books in vogue with boys ; but nothing had ever interested me like this story. Why it so affected me I cannot tell, unless there may have been some mental mood to which it chanced at the instant to be specially fitted. Little as these years of country life did for me in the way of mental training, they nurtured a naturally weak consti- tution into a strength that has since been equal to many a year of mental strain. About the time we returned to the farm an event occurred which had some influence on my after life : the old ancestral house with nearly all its contents was burned to the ground. In it were lost valuable papers and family relics that had been collecting for generations. The reflections caused by that fire enabled me afterwards to put out two fires which, but for immediate action, would have resulted in great loss. 1 1 In my first professorship at Covington the room in which I was teaching was suddenly darkened by a cloud of smoke outside the windows. We rushed to the attic ; a huge hole had already been burned in the roof. I called for a bucket of water, which seemed absurd enough. I dipped in the 8 EZEKIEL GILMAN KOBINSON. My farming experience extended till I was fourteen years of age, when I was sent to Day's Academy, as it was called, a well-known school of that time at Wrentham, Massachu- setts. I then had no thought of going to college. My eager desire was to be a farmer. I was accordingly put to such studies as suited the convenience of the principal, and seemed to him not wholly unfit for a boy of my age and needs. With the exception of a mere smattering of mechanical principles, misnamed Natural Philosophy, and perhaps a perceptible shade of increase in mental discipline, the only real gain made at this school was in some slight knowledge, derived from " The Political Class-Book," of the constitution of our national government as well as of the governments of the several States of the Union. Just how long I remained at Day's Academy I cannot now remember, nor precisely what followed my leaving it. I only remember spending another summer on the ancestral farm, with another trial of the country public school. The year came near proving a total loss educationally, though I made some progress in the knowledge of books. Physical mishaps, 1 disabling and shutting me up in the house, com- pelled me to seek recreation in reading. I was now sixteen years old, and it was necessary for me to decide on my future in life. The question then was, Should I go to col- lege ? I had rather by accident and aimlessly stumbled upon a preparatory course. My mother said, if there was any prospect of my amounting to anything, she would gladly bucket an old pair of trousers lying on the attic floor, and in a very few minutes whipped out every trace of the fire. The class standing by said I acted like a frantic man. The other fire threatened the old presidential mansion at Brown University. — E. G. K. 1 Dr. Kobinson, while a boy, was easily poisoned by wild plants ; and this fact weighed with his mother in deciding that he was not fitted for life on a farm. — Er>. CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 9 have me go to college ; but did not wish me to go there and come out a gambler and horse-racer, as Dr. had done, with whose parents she had been intimately acquainted. It must be admitted that all attempts up to that time to give me an education had been comparatively futile. They could hardly have been more ill-advised. Over-crowded schools, incompetent teachers, and the radical mistake of frequently changing schools, with intervals between the changes of long mental idleness, had borne their natural fruits. I was a boy past sixteen, with no desire for edu- cation, and with about the worst possible habits of study. But it was decided that I might, if I wished, prepare for college, and that for this purpose I should go to a prepara- tory school in New Hampton, New Hampshire, where my sister, six years older than myself, had spent the preceding summer at the woman's academy, under the tuition of Miss Haseltine, a famous teacher of that day. It was past the middle of March, the snow had all disap- peared from Southern Massachusetts, the robins had come, and the spring had fairly begun, when, with a full supply of clothing for a year, I was put on board a stage-coach for Boston, with the understanding that two and a half days' stage travelling would bring me to my destination. With less knowledge of the world than then belonged to the aver- age boy of my age, that stage journey was itself distinc- tively educational. The landing at Wild's Hotel in Elm Street, Boston, the great centre for stage travellers of that day; the start at four in the morning for Concord, New Hampshire ; the loud rattling of the coach-wheels over the cobble-stone pavement of the empty streets, in the cold dark- ness of that dreary March morning ; the frightful state of the roads, prolonging the one day's drive to Concord into two; the exchange of wheels for runners on the fourth day from 10 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. home, with the " seasickness " that followed, — all had. their lessons for me. I reached New Hampton, the most forlorn and disheartened boy that ever dropped among merry school- fellows. The surrounding country at once interested me more than the school. I was made the room-mate of a soulless student, much older than myself, with whom it was impos- sible for me to have a particle of sympathy, and was set to work on Adams' " Latin Grammar," simply committing to memory its larger type, and its declensions of nouns and con- jugations of verbs. My teacher, a middle-aged man, was, to speak truly, the most stupid person I have ever seen fulfilling the office of teacher. Nothing could have been more perfunc- tory than his instruction. If I recited the text verbatim, well and good ; if not, he simply repeated the words for me, and nothing more. When the spring vacation came, I de- termined to quit Latin, abandoning all thought of college, and deciding to devote myself to such English studies as the school might offer. My sister ridiculed me for my lack of perseverance. During the vacation there came to the school, from some- where in Maine, a man who had several years before been prepared for college, but who through some family disaster had failed to enter. Having become a zealous Christian, he had resolved to fit himself for the Christian ministry, and had come to New Hampton to review his studies preparatory to entering "college in the autumn. Becoming interested somehow in my welfare, and winning my confidence, he remonstrated against my purpose to drop the thought of college, and insisted on my resuming the study of Latin with him for instructor. And he knew by instinct how to teach. He was the first man that up to that time had ever enkin- dled in me a spark of enthusiasm in any study. He soon had me all aglow, and inspired me with a zeal that aroused CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 11 me at four o'clock in the morning to continue the study of Latin. Till he left for college I was daily in his room, working with an eagerness to me never known before nor equalled since. Mr. Moses Curtis, the friend who thus saved me from a misstep, was a man of rare parts, of high endowments, and of warm sympathies. He left New Hamp- ton at the end of the summer term to enter college. I saw no more of him for more than two years, when I entered Freshman, and he was a member of the Junior class. He died in his room at college from hemorrhage of the lungs. His death made a profound impression on the whole college, and on me, in particular, to whom he had especially en- deared himself. I remained at New Hampton for one year, when I returned home for some new clothes. On entering the house I was met with shouts of laughter at my appearance. I was a specimen of " the rising son " of the comic almanac. My trousers were too short, my coat too small and short-sleeved, and I was, altogether, a laughable object. But inwardly I had changed more than outwardly, and was now intent on a college education. I had then to decide whether I would return to New Hampton. It was not an attractive school ; at least, it had no attractions for me. A new academy had been opened at Pawtucket, under the principalship of Mr. Joseph Hale, a graduate of Harvard College. It was decided that I should enter it. At first I boarded in the family of a young and newly married physician near the academy ; but as spring drew near to summer, an old yearning for the country revived with force. The distance between the acad- emy and my country home was two miles, and I resolved to try the experiment of walking it daily. The experiment was a success. A fondness for solitary country walks was thus acquired, which has never forsaken me! The delight 12 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSOK of the mornings and evenings in the orchards and woods, and among the birds, was incessant. The year passed swiftly by, and I made fair progress, under Mr. Hale, in the study of Greek, besides doing something in Latin. Some one sug- gested that I could enter college that autumn. I went to Brown University, and consulted with Professor Caswell. He received me kindly ; but I was so self -distrustful and shy that my eyes rilled with tears, and I choked in telling my errand. He advised me to wait another year. But there was for me one serious drawback in the Paw- tucket Academy : I had and could have no classmates. I needed instruction in three, if not four, distinct branches. As a single pupil the requisite time could not be given me. The New Hampton Academy, during my absence from it, had undergone a change ; it now had younger and more compe- tent teachers. There was a class of several young men who were to enter college in the fall, and I joined them. That summer school among the hills of New Hampshire was the happiest of all my school days ; long strolls, pleasant com- panionships, and, withal, teachers superior to those I had previously known there, made me contented and joyous. These new classmates whom I found were all candidates for the ministry. I had myself no definite purpose in fitting for college. Association with these classmates had most likely much to do with turning my own thoughts toward the ministry. During a revival in 1829, when fourteen years of age, I had become a member of the First Baptist Church in Pawtucket. I became a member of the church with the crudest possible ideas of religion, and with a reli- gious experience as unsatisfactory as it could well have been. Dissatisfaction with that experience was, for a series of years afterwards, a source of most painful anxiety. I had blun- dered blindly into the church. This has haunted me all my CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 13 life, but has been of great service to me as a pastor and teacher. 1 stumbled purposelessly into a course of study. Of course the question was started with me, through associa- tion with my classmates, What was I going to college for ? — a then unanswerable question. On entering college I found myself about as poorly pre- pared for the work before me as any member of the class ; and it has been to me a source of ceaseless regret that, instead of having picked up a fragmentary preparation for college at the hands of various and indifferent teachers, I could not have been sent either to Phillips Exeter or Phillips Andover Academy. It was the penalty of a lack of intelli- gent advisers. I entered college when I was nineteen. It was my good fortune to be a member of one of the most remarkable classes which Brown University has graduated. The most brilliant Latinist of the class died soon after gradu- ating, — the brother of Chief Justice Ames of PJiode Island. In this class, numbering only thiity-two, were Chief Justice Bradley of Bhode Island; Chief Justice Morton of Massa- chusetts ; Bishop Burgess of Quincy, Illinois ; George Van Ness Lothrop of Detroit, afterwards minister to St. Peters- burg ; Judge Wilson of the Appellate Court of Chicago ; the distinguished Thomas A. Jenckes, father of civil-service reform ; Albert N. Arnold, missionary to Greece, and after- ward professor of Greek in two institutions, with several others of only lesser note. 1 The majority of them had re- ceived the best possible training. I felt at once the inferi- ority of my preparation in comparison with theirs, and was disheartened. Severe illness almost at the outset drove me home ; hence my first term in college was nearly lost time. The second was a great improvement on the first. Could the improvement have been progressively continued, the result 1 For recollections by college mates, see note at end of chapter. — Ed. 14 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. of my college life would have been different from what it was ; but the memory of the first term haunted me : my courage and ambition sank to the verge of extinction. To add to my misfortune, the most intimate of my friends, though pure in their lives, and morally wholesome as asso- ciates, were low in their aims as scholars, satisfied with very little and very superficial work. They had been sent to college to prepare for the ministry, and were fair specimens of a class of men not yet wholly extinct. Selected, and aided by beneficiary funds, as " candidates for the ministry, " they seemed to absolve themselves from the duty of high aims as scholars, and dropped into the wretched cant of " laying aside worldly ambition as unworthy the servants of the Lord. " But, on the other hand, it was my good fortune to be a member of a debating society composed of a very different sort of men from those who were my most intimate friends. Of the two great debating societies, candidates for the min- istry were generally members of the Philermenian Society. Nobody imagined that the Christian ministry was thought of by me. I was supposed to be preparing for the law. I was a member of the United Brothers, which consisted of the rough-and-tumble element. But in direct education for the real work of life no influences of my college days were equal to those of this Society. It called into use and fastened in my memory what little I learned from text-books and in lecture-rooms ; it prompted to inquiries and investi- gations that otherwise would never have been made ; it stimulated the exercise of all my intellectual faculties, as the set tasks of professors never could. In many particulars the typical college of to-day is manifestly superior to that of fifty years ago ; but in the societies of its students, for the cultivation of literature and skill in debate, its inferiority CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 15 is too marked not to awaken solicitude as well as regret in the minds of all friends of liberal learning. Societies pro- fessedly literary, it is true, abound in the college of to-day, but they are societies in which social elements so predomi- nate over every other that their influence on college life is to enhance its expensiveness, and to split its classes into rival cliques, rather than to quicken their intellects and to rouse them to high endeavor. Nothing yet devised has filled, or can fill, as a means of education, the place of the great debating societies, composed of representatives from every class in college, at once imposing and inspiring from their numbers, which were so marked a feature of the col- lege of forty or fifty years ago. The Greek-letter societies were, about that time, introduced into college. At the end of my Junior year, when election of officers for the Brothers ' Society was to take place for the following year, the bitter opponents of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, without con- ferring with me, made me their candidate for the presidency of the United Brothers. I was elected by a handsome majority. This result brought controversy into the Society. We fought like tigers, — an experience which materially helped to develop my debating powers. Brown University, when I became a student of it, was not strong in its classical and its mathematical departments, which then comprised the larger part of its established cur- riculum. If a student became proficient in either of these studies, it was in spite of professorial influence. Latin and Greek could hardly, on deliberate purpose, have been more inefficiently taught. In my Sophomore year, however, came a great and radical change, comparatively a revolution, in the teaching of Latin. It came with the appointment of a new professor, young and enthusiastic, whose accurate methods and contagious spirit of enthusiasm put new life 16 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. into all his classes, and were felt throughout the college. To this young professor, Horatio B. Hackett, afterwards known as one of the most eminent of American Biblical scholars, I owe a debt of gratitude such as is due to none other of my teachers of language. Rhetoric, when I entered Brown, was cultivated with marked success under the dis- tinguished professor, William E. Goddard ; but the class of which I was a member pursued that study under the tuition of the then youthful but no less skilful and since distin- guished professor, William Gammell. By no means the least valuable part of my college education came from read- ing during my vacations, especially the long winter vaca- tions, though it must be admitted that too much attention was given to the novels of Cooper and Scott. The most profitable portion of my college life was its last year, under the instruction of President Wayland. He was then in the ripe fulness of his powers. His specialty as a teacher was moral science, though he also taught political economy. But the latter interested him only theoretically ; the former, practically and intensely. His strong sense of justice and his profound love of truth made him a most impressive teacher of ethics, — the most impressive I have ever known ; and his keen sense of humor, his quick wit, his appreciation of wit in others, always made his recitation- room a very lively place. He was no metaphysician ; his moral science, even in its distinctively theoretic portions, was more practical than metaphysical, no part of it resting on any metaphysical system, avowed or implied. When I was his pupil, mental philosophy, even on its psychological side, had received from him only casual attention. His treatise on " Intellectual Philosophy " was written after I had passed from under him, and years after his views of moral science had become inflexibly fixed. Nor was he widely CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 17 read in the science of ethics. Allusions in his lecture- room to authors whose views differed from his own were extremely rare. He had thought out his ethical principles for himself, and his conclusions were deep and strong, and rooted in the very depths of his being. Above all men whom I ever knew, he was himself the embodiment of what he taught. Clear and analytic in his own thinking, he insisted on analyzed and logical thought in his pupils. Possessed of a stature and a muscular development and a physiognomy that would have made him an admirable model for a Jupiter Tonans, and animated by a spirit that lifted him above everything selfish and mean, he succeeded beyond every other college president of his time, I suspect, in impressing himself and his sentiments on all who came under his instruction. The class of which I was a member had the good fortune to be under Dr. Wayland in a year specially favorable for the best results of his teaching. It was the year in which he was writing and sending to the press his once famous little book on " The Limitations of Human Responsibility. " His " Moral Science " had pleased neither the slaveholders nor the abolitionists. It had offended the former by going too far in its condemnation of slavery, the latter by not going far enough. He was between two raging fires. To defend himself, chiefly against the abolitionists, he wrote his " Limitations. " Most of the positions taken, and of the principles defended, came up for questioning and discussion by our class. The teacher was full of his sub- ject, encouraging and entering into the discussions with the liveliest zest. As our class contained an unusual number of bright intellects, the mutual stimulus of the class was no unimportant factor in our education. I left college with perhaps an average knowledge of 2 18 EZEKIEL GILMAN EOBINSON. Latin, Greek, and mathematics ; of modern languages, history, and mental science I had learned nothing ; of chemistry, physiology, and geology I had acquired a smattering; of "Butler's Analogy" and of ethics I had obtained a fair degree of knowledge. I had drifted aim- lessly into college and drifted aimlessly through it, waking up only during the last year to see what I might and ought to have done. About the middle of my college course the church at Pawtucket, of which I was a member, assuming that I was preparing for the ministry, invited me to speak before them for a license to preach. Without much reflection I consented to do so. An unused license was given me. In my Senior year a quiet but effective revival of religion occurred in college, which served to bring me to very serious reflection and to an earnest inquiry as to what I should do after graduation. No definite conclusion, however, was reached. As I was about to graduate, there came to me unexpectedly a proposition to accept an agency from the American Tract Society of New York City, then under the direction of the two distinguished secretaries, Eev. Drs. Hallock and Cook. In an interview with Dr. Cook, it was agreed that I should become agent of the Society to represent its work among the churches of Hartford County, Connecticut. My duties were to address the churches in all the towns of the county outside the city, giving an account of the work of the Society, and securing volunteer colporteurs in these churches to circulate and sell the works of the Society. I was to make one address each Sunday, keep an account of the books sold by the colporteurs, and return the proceeds to the Society in New York. The duties of this agency proved to be of great and unexpected value to me. They gave me a much needed self-confidence, relieved me from CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 19 a distressing timidity, besides widening my acquaintance with men and business methods. I made many valuable acquaintances among these churches and their pastors, such as Dr. Porter, of Farmington, father of the late President Porter of Yale, and many others. I had but one address, which I learned by heart, and delivered before every con- gregation. I continued in this service until the beginning of 1839, something more than six months, when I resigned against the remonstrances of the secretaries. I felt that it was time for me to decide as to my future course in life. The Society, to my surprise, made me an honorary life- member. There were a great many amusing scenes. I remember one old Congregational minister who asked, " Where have you studied theology ? " Well, of course I blushed up to my eyes and said, "I haven't studied theology. " Many similar and embarrassing interviews occurred during my continuance in that agency. On resigning this service the question then occurred to me, What shall I do next ? I thought for a moment of going to Newton Theological Institution, but speedily abandoned the plan as impracticable at that season of the year. Eeturning to Brown University, I secured and fur- nished one of the rooms, and became for six months a resi- dent graduate. I began zealously the study of German with my classmate, Bradley, then a tutor in the University, under the tuition of Professor Hackett, then in the chair of Latin at Brown. I have an indefinite recollection of having also done something with Hebrew, but under whose instruction I cannot recall. But my stay at Brown was of little profit. There was no provision for graduate instruction. In the following summer I was induced to write and deliver an address on temperance in Seekonk, Massachusetts, which was received with such favor as to give me considerable 20 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. encouragement. To my surprise the old Congregational church of Attleboro, where my ancestors for generations had worshipped, invited me to preach for them. I occupied their pulpit two Sundays. At this time, and for long after- ward, the excitement of public speaking made me ill. That service seemed to solve the problem whether I was to be a minister of the gospel. At the end of summer the question arose whether I should study theology, and, if so, where. Dr. Hackett had resigned the professorship of Latin at Brown University, and accepted the chair of Biblical Literature at Newton Theological Institution. I decided to go to New- ton, that I might be under his instruction. At Newton I found myself member of a class of eighteen. Two or three only of these had been my classmates in col- lege, all of whom dropped off before the end of our course. Our number was reduced to twelve before the completion of the course. With two of these my relations were very intimate. One of them was a South Carolinian, who had received a military training, and afterwards became a very successful theological teacher in one of the South Carolinian institutions, — James S. Mims. He was a noble fellow. And the other was Jacob E. Scott, a graduate of Brown of two years' earlier date than myself. He was a man of the finest qualities of nature, possessed of an exquisite literary taste, not inferior as an epistolary writer to Cowper himself. In personal appearance he was a reproduction of Henry Kirke White. Scott was the most intimate personal friend that 1 had in all my student life. Professor Hackett's instructions in my first year at Newton were in the highest degree stimu- lating. Under his tuition I did better work than I had done in any previous year of my life. He was, on the whole, the most stimulating teacher under whom I ever studied. When he thought his classes negligent in their work, he CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 21 would drop his books upon the desk, and with flashing eye and both hands gesticulating, would so set forth and ex- patiate upon the value of Hebrew learning or a knowledge of the New Testament as to rouse some of us into a pitch of enthusiasm which would send us to our rooms with a pur- pose of doing the best we were capable of. I was more indebted to him than he became aware of till long years after, and especially when we became colleagues, in the latter part of his life, at Rochester Theological Seminary. At one period when Professor Hackett was despondent over his work, Dr. J. W. Parker of Cambridgeport took in hand to encourage him by telling him that Robinson, among others, had said he was more indebted to him as a teacher than to any man living. He querulously exclaimed, " Why did he never tell me that ? " When Dr. Parker reported this to me, I replied, " Because he never permitted me to come within arm's length of him. " This also was reported to him. Dr. Hackett took it good-naturedly, and I really think it made him more communicative with his students. In the in- tensity of spirit with which he himself worked, he thought very little of trying to stimulate his students by coming into personal relations to them. In my second year at Newton I came under the instruction of Rev. Dr. Barnas Sears. He was then overflowing with German learning. He taught us Systematic Theology. His method of teaching was peculiarly his own. With a total absence of dogmatism he propounded and discussed the- ological questions with indefinitely numerous references to authors, especially the German, leaving each student to catch in his notes what he could. He rarely or never gave us definite and exact statements of his own theological opin- ions. The result was that we often left his lecture-room unsettled, afloat as to what we should definitely believe. 22 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSOX. I concluded my course under him with no definable system of theological belief. There was not a single doctrine of which I could have given a satisfactory account. 1 But his teaching had roused in me a spirit of inquiry which was insatiable. The kindness of Professor Eipley was unparal- leled. It was said of him, Nature had made him so kindly that there was nothing for grace to do. To the other profes- sors of the Institution I was gratefully indebted for the special service they rendered. The library provisions at Newton when I was a student there were of the meagerest, and what the library contained was accessible to students only at inter- vals, — a complete contrast with the present provisions. In the spring of the year that my course at Newton was to close I found myself in an uncertain state of health. The way it came about was that I sat at the head of the table and poured coffee for my two friends, Minis and Scott, breakfast- ing myself on coffee and a Graham cracker. I soon began to collapse. While I was thinking of a sea-voyage for the sake of my health, a proposition was made by a friend in the next class below me, who had been a teacher in Virginia, that, instead of a sea-voyage, I should accept an invitation to supply a pulpit during the spring vacation at Norfolk, Virginia. He insisted that a trip down the Chesapeake Bay and through Hampton Eoads would give me all the benefit of sea-air that I needed. This invitation I accepted, spending the most of April and May in Norfolk. This preaching in Norfolk had no little influence on my subse- quent life. My experience there was novel and of highest interest. It was my first acquaintance with slavery and 1 My experience under the teaching of Dr. Sears would explain some of the peculiarities of my own method of teaching. I was determined that students should not leave my lecture-room without definite conclusions and convictions, and some sufficient reasons for holding them. — E. G. R. CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 23 Southern life. On leaving to return to my studies at Newton, I was surprised by a request of the church that I should accept a call to its pastorate. The request was not only a surprise, but gave me great anxiety. Four of the chief men in the church were extensive liquor-dealers. With the ideas of temperance then prevailing in New England, it seemed impossible that I could accept the invitation. Norfolk in those days seemed so remote from home, so unlike in climate and mode of life, so unlike everything with which I was familiar, as to make me reluctant to think of becoming a resident there. I returned to Newton by way of the historical James Eiver, and it was a matter of intense interest to me, sailing up that river. The ruins at Jamestown, the famous old plantation resi- dences, all excited the interest of a New Englander. I for the first time saw the city of Eichmond ; went to Washing- ton, and had the good fortune to hear Henry Clay make his farewell speech when he resigned his seat in the Senate in 1842. That speech, though brief, made a lasting impression on my mind. The Senate itself was a most interesting study for a young man ; but Clay at that moment was the chief figure in it. His intonation and clean-cut articulation at once arrested my attention, and gave useful hints for public speaking. On returning to Newton, my friend Scott and myself were accustomed to go into the woods, standing within ear-shot of each other, and practising elocution amid the rustling of the leaves. The hint from Clay's speech served as a guide in my part of the practice. The practice itself was of more value to me in public speaking than any amount of training I could have received from professional elocutionists. The last term of my stay at Newton closed in August, 1842. As the time for leaving the Seminary drew near, 24 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. there came the perplexing question, Should I accept the call from Norfolk ? Meanwhile I had been invited to preach to the First Church in Springfield, Massachusetts. They re- quested me to visit them again ; they wished me to become their pastor. I had agreed to come at a definite date to spend another Sunday with them. I decidedly preferred Springfield to Norfolk. On the day I was to go to Spring- field several of my fellow-students gathered in my room ; conversation abounded; I was delayed, to the last moment in starting for the train, and came in sight of it just as it was moving out of the station. There was no way of reach- ing Springfield in time for morning service, and no telegraph to give explanation. Returning to the Seminary, I was shut up to fulfil a promise of reply to the call from Norfolk. Consulting with Dr. Sears, he advised me to accept the Norfolk call. The Norfolk call was accepted with many misgivings. Just the accident of those fellows chaffing changed the whole current of my life. If I hadn't gone to Norfolk, I shouldn't have gone to Covington; if I hadn't gone to Covington, I shouldn't have gone to Eochester. Perhaps I was a little superstitious about it, but I regarded my disappointment in visiting Springfield as an indication of Divine Providence that I should go to Virginia. NOTE. REMINISCENCES BY FELLOW-STUDENTS. (See p. 13.) What manner of man Dr. Robinson was held to be in col- lege days may be learned from fellow-students. His class- mate, the Rt. Rev. Alexander Burgess, S. T. D., L.L.D., Bishop of Quincy, writes : — " I was the youngest of my college class, but eighteen at gradua- tion. My home was in Providence. I studied at home, and went to the college buildings very seldom, except for prayers and recita- CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 25 tion. So I had less opportunity than others of the class to associate with Robinson evenings and at students' meetings. . . . " Robinson and I became close friends by his visits at my father's house and my driving him out to his home on Saturdays, about eight miles distant. lie certainly was indifferently prepared on entrance. He was slow in his perception or thought, apparently. I may men- tion, as a proof of this, he sat in the class three above me. Between us were two of the least exact scholars. When a question was missed by one just above him, he seldom could collect himself sufficiently to answer immediately, and it became a saying, ' If Jenks fails, Burgess will be the first to stop the " Unprepared," ' that is the answer by him and the next two. With time to gather himself up, he commonly recited well, yet ended with a rank, if I recollect right, next to the middle. He did not show plainly the signs of the wonderful abilities which were subsequently developed. I was too young and immature to observe what was not plainly manifest in him. It should be noted that Dr. Wayland, twenty years or less later, said that ' the scholar- ship of the class was higher than any for ten or twelve years.' "Robinson did not excel during college days in that which he afterward termed ' ability to think on your legs.' But he was posi- tive and earnest in the few words he did say in debate. . . . His ' lack of polish and grace ' we students marked without criticism. . . . He was ever good-tempered, fair and just and without jealousy. "Now that fifty years and more have passed and the history of each member of our class of about thirty-three has been put on record, he who showed low rank in scholarship and personality at the start, is acknowledged in advance greatly of most, and perhaps really of all, at the near goal. ... If love and deep admiration and class pride were alone required to refresh memory and to paint the past as it really was, my paper would be all you could ask." Another classmate, the Rev. J. C. Stockbridge, D.D., said in a memorial address : — ' ' I am sure I do my classmate no injustice when I say that he was not ... a brilliant class-room student. . . . There were lines of study outside of the regular college curriculum in which he interested himself. We all recognized him as being a skilful debater on themes of popular interest. . . . Another of our classmates, the now Hon. George Van Ness Lothrop . . . was a member of the same society, fond of debate, and, if I remember aright, generally pitted against Robinson, and both alike the subjects of good-natured college criticism as to which 26 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. was the better and more skilful intellectual athlete in the Society Rooms. . . . "At length the time for graduation came. The part assigned to our friend was a philosophical dissertation, its subject being ' The Value of Metaphysical Speculations.' It was not among the highest of the parts assigned, but it needed not a prophet's ken to forecast what, if life and health were vouchsafed by kind Providence, would be the future career of the speaker. . . . The youthful aspirant for the honors of the University stood on the spacious platform, in front of the pulpit, with his finely developed physique, and in that impas- sioned manner, which seemed so natural to him when he was thor- oughly aroused, repeated those thrilling lines from Campbell's ' Pleasures of Plope ' in which the poet dwells on the dreary fruits of an unhallowed scepticism : — ' Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim, Lights of the world, and demigods of fame ? ' " A third classmate, the late Professor J. W. P. Jenks, wrote : " 1 came to my present position in college in '71, he to the presi- dency in '72, I think. Not long after he came, as we were having a social chat and speaking of our college days, he said, 'My whole ca- reer in college is a myth, as I try to recall it. I was troubled through- out the course with dyspepsia, and I never saw one well day in the four years.' I was much pleased to hear that statement from his own lips, — not that he was an invalid, but that his physical condition ac- counted for his cynical disposition and tendeucy ... to severe criticism of the efforts of others. I never received the impression that he thought himself superior to others, but he gave us reason to think he enjoyed making us feel bad by sharp retort. . . . According to my experience with men, such a disposition is apt to be a characteristic of dyspeptics. " . . . As to his scholarship, he ranked just above the middle of the class, if I remember rightly, and as far as I can recall never impressed any of his classmates as possessing unusual talent. " But what I am now to relate will be of interest to you. He grad- uated from Newton about a month before my closing a four years' course of teaching in Georgia. Calling soon after my return upon Rev. J. W. Parker, D. D., at Cambridgeport, he remarked, ' Do you know that your classmate Robinson has impressed us all as being the most acute metaphysician that ever graduated from Newton, surpass- ing all his college classmates in the development of his intellectual powers ? ' I replied, ' You greatly surprise me, as one of his classmates, CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 27 for I should have named half a dozen or more of the class that gave greater promise than he.' " A contemporary in college recollects Mr. Robinson as "a young man of promising talents, but of much independence, strong, self-reliant, and not disposed to warm attachments with other students. I remember hearing the phrase 'the iron man' applied to him by some of the students. Whether they were his friends or not I cannot say." This impression is interesting as coming from a warm- hearted Southerner who wishes to remain anonymous, and who belonged to a class enough lower to represent the current opinion of the college. As to the general bearing of Mr. Rob- inson in these days, one of the writers above quoted says that the words " awkward and shy " if used without emphasis would be fairly descriptive. Another describes him as in college " an awkward and immature country lad." But the powerful mind, and energetic personality of the student broke away from these limitations so soon at latest as a definite purpose in life had been formed and professional study begun. Perhaps he did not mature early ; but nothing more characteristic or more honorable could be said of any one than what President Wes- ton says of Dr. Robinson, whom he knew from college days onward : — " I met Dr. Robinson at intervals all his life, and always found that he had been growing. In later years he mellowed. It is probably an illustration of his growth that the awkwardness and shyness which his classmates speak of, had disappeared by the time he was a Junior, and I entered college. I remember those men distinctly; and while Robinson lacked the grace and suavity of some, he always seemed to me intellectually the peer of any." Another acquaintance of a somewhat later period in his student-life declares that while he was never awkward, he was always shy. — Ed. 28 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. CHAPTEE II. PASTOEATES AND THE COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 1842-1853. IN the early autumn, packing up my belongings, I started to become pastor of the Cumberland Street Baptist Church at Norfolk. I was ordained in November, 1842, Dr. Jeter of Eichmond preaching the ordination ser- mon. Everything in my new position bore the stamp of novelty. One of my first and somewhat embarrassing experiences there was at a funeral. I found myself, when starting for the grave, decorated with a long, flowing white sash, my hat bound around with a white band streaming far behind me, and with white gloves. I was placed in an open carriage beside the undertaker. It seemed to me that every eye was turned on me as a. ridiculous spectacle. The under- taker assured me that every minister was so arrayed. My second odd experience was the baptism of a very low-born and low-bred white woman who had for a year or more been a standing candidate for baptism. The church had held her case in abeyance until it had a pastor. Baptism could be , administered only at high tide. The tide would be high enough at six o'clock in the morning. With deacons and a few friends we started for the place of baptism. The poor woman was overjoyed at the fulfilment of her long deferred wishes. Emerging from the water at baptism, she bounded from my hands, splashing the water, shouting and screaming hallelujahs. Seizing and trying to calm her, I led her to PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 29 the shore ; but the one of my deacons who was to have received her, when he saw her coming, turned and fled. Settling down to serious pastoral work, more than enough to fill my mind and hands at once presented itself. I was disturbed at the selling of liquor by the leading deacon of the church and by three others of its prominent members. They assured me that I should have perfect liberty of speech on temperance or any other subject that I might wish to speak on, — a liberty which I was not slow to use. I gave lectures to my own people on temperance. After one of these lectures, an impetuous member of the church came to me and said, " Now, pastor, we understand you, and are ready for action. We propose to exclude these liquor- dealers from the church. " My reply was, " My dear sir, you do not quite understand me. I have faith in the power of truth and honest conviction much greater than I have in hasty church action. Let us wait. These brethren are honest and faithful ; we must wait till they see their way to abandon the traffic. " The peace and harmony of the church remained perfectly undisturbed. In the church were several elderly widows who were true " mothers in Israel. " The coddling to which these dear old mothers sub- jected me in the first year of my ministry exposed me to perils of effeminacy from which I barely escaped. The five to eight cups of Old Hyson tea of an evening gave a fillip to my nerves, from which they were long in recovering. Take it all in all, the first year of my pastorate was as happy as it could well have been.* In the spring of the first year of it I was invited to serve a year as chaplain at the University of Virginia, beginning in the following autumn. It was then the custom to invite chaplains alternately from the four principal denominations of the State, — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, and 30 EZEKIEL GILMAN KOBINSON. Methodists. With my very brief experience in the min- istry, it seemed risky to accept the position. On strong encouragement from others, I ventured to accept. It proved to me a very profitable year. With my slender resources I found very little time for attending to any department of study in the University, and was obliged to give most of my time to preparation for my work as chaplain. I was required to preach once on Sunday, and to lecture in the chapel each Wednesday evening. Fortunately for my after work I gave a weekly lecture on the Gospel of John, making the best use I could of such sources as were within my reach. The encouragement received from the professors gave me a self- confidence in which I was still sadly lacking. The University of Virginia was never manned by teachers more distinguished or able than some of those then in its faculty. Among these was the famous law-lecturer, Henry St. George Tucker, half-brother of John Eandolph ; also Professor George Tucker, the intimate friend and biographer of Jefferson ; William B. Eogers, a very bril- liant lecturer, afterwards president of the Boston School of Technology; Dr. William B. Cabell; Gessner Harrison, the distinguished professor of Latin, and father-in-law of Dr. John A. Broadus, with many others. During my stay at the University occurred an event which has more materially than any other event affected my whole subsequent life. I was married to the lady whom I had known from her school -girl days, Miss Harriet Eichards Parker, to whom I have been more indebted than to any one or all other persons whom I have known in life. At the close of the University year my wife and I made a trip to White Sulphur and other springs, to the Natural Bridge and to Weyer's Cave, thence by stage down the Shenandoah valley to Winchester, Harper's Ferry, and so on to New PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 31 England. In the autumn we returned to Norfolk, and I resumed my pastoral duties, the church having been mean- while under the care of a young student of theology, J. W. M. Williams, who has since distinguished himself in a life -long pastorate in the city of Baltimore. I resumed pastoral work with redoubled interest. Duties multiplied, and I began to be called on for outside work. In the month of August I was urgently requested to visit a church in one of the counties of the southeastern part of the State, on the borders of North Carolina. They were kind enough to tell me while there that in no place perhaps this side of New Orleans malaria more prevailed than in their town. I was obliged to take the train at midnight to return home. Not long after, I had a serious attack of bilious fever. It was the beginning of a malarial affection which has followed me all my life since. 1 A call had come to me from a newly formed church in Old Cambridge, Massachusetts, to become their pastor. The church at Norfolk made earnest remonstrances against my leaving there. They offered to make my salary $1400, with a two months' vacation in the summer, which was a very generous offer for that time, and a much better one than came from the Cambridge church. But the climate was evidently undermining my constitution; and, endeared as the church had become to me, and attractive as life in 1 The author meant to give some account of the last meeting of the Baptist Triennial Convention before the Southern Baptists withdrew. It was held in Philadelphia in 1844, and was attended by the youthful pastor from Norfolk. The most notable scene was in a meeting of the Home Mission Society. " I remember," writes Mrs. Robinson, " his graphic descrip- tions of the confusion and turmoil of the meeting, and of the futile efforts, both painful and ludicrous, of the poor, excited old gentleman who presided ... to preserve order." It was then that " Brother Jeter had the floor," and he held it for thirty minutes before he got a chance to make himself heard. See chapter xlvi. in Jeter's " Recollections of a Long Life." — Ed. 32 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. Virginia in many respects was, to a New England man slavery was not one of its attractive features. In the early autumn I became the pastor, the first pastor it had had, of the Baptist church at Cambridge. When I went to them, they were worshipping in a hall. Their house of worship was then in process of building on a site since bought by Harvard University, where now stands its Gymnasium. I seemed to have found an ideal place for a life-work. The surroundings and proximity of Harvard College and the library gave it special attraction. One Sunday there came into the service two men who bore unmistakable marks of being clergymen, one of whom was the Eev. Dr. Putnam, a Unitarian from Salem. They had evidently come to see what these Baptists were ventur- ing to do under the eaves of Harvard College. Dr. Putnam, in a kindly, perhaps half-patronizing way, said to one of the deacons something complimentary concerning their pastor's sermon. Poor man ! he took alarm, suspecting that the sermon which a Unitarian clergyman could approve must have some sad defects. This, added to the fact that I had previously been the pastor of a church many or most of whose members were slaveholders, gave him much uneasiness ; but the great body of the church were as loyal and faithful par- ishioners as any young minister was ever blessed with. I was happy in my pastorate ; but as the summer was approaching, occurred an event that filled me with dismay, coming like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, — my wife was attacked with a violent hemorrhage of the lungs, from which she recovered slowly, having been brought very near to death's door. Our doctor said she must, as soon as possible, get away from the sea-coast, where the air was too stimulating for her lungs. My hopes of a long pas- torate were suddenly dashed. Just then, one day our door- PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 33 bell rang, when in walked Eev. Dr. Hubert E. Pattison, once president of Waterville College, Maine, but then at the head of the theological institution which had been founded by Baptists of the Northwest at Covington, Ken- tucky, on the Ohio Eiver, opposite to Cincinnati. He said he had just come from Providence, where he had been in consultation with Dr. Wayland, with the demand that I should go with him to Covington as professor of Hebrew. I told him of the condition of my wife's health, and that I could give him no answer without consultation with medical advisers. Mrs. Robinson went with me to the office of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, then regarded as a specialist in pulmonary diseases, and also coming into notice as a poet, especially for Commencement occasions. I remember his little dingy office off Tremont Street. He then gave small promise to a casual observer of becoming the famous " Auto- crat of the Breakfast-Table, " or one of the foremost poets of America. He detected no disease of the lungs, but agreed with Dr. Wyman that we ought not to live near the sea. In answer to the inquiry about Covington, he replied that it was in the same latitude with Washington, and would do very well as a place of residence for my wife. It was de- cided that I should accept the professorship at Covington. Our household goods were packed and shipped, by way of New Orleans and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to Cin- cinnati. My good and life-long friend, Henry R Glover of Cambridge, insisted upon paying the expense of packing and freight. After spending nearly a month at my wife's home with Deacon Caleb Parker, secretary of the Board of Trustees of Newton Theological Institution from 1837 to 1854, we started for Covington on the first of October, — a journey of no slight difficulty in Mrs. Piobinson's state of health. We travelled by boat and rail, by way of New York and Phila- 34 EZEKIEL GILMAN KOBINSON. delphia, to Harrisburg. There we took a canal-boat, follow- ing the Juniata to the base of the Alleghanies. In a recent journey on the well -equipped vestibule train of the Penn- sylvania Eailroad, my wife and I traced the remains of the old canal, reviving the vivid memories of nearly half a century ago. One accustomed only to the spacious and elegant accommodations of the modern steamboat can have little conception of the stuffiness and confinement of canal passenger-boats. But it was leisurely journeying, amid magnificent scenery with its autumnal coloring, and afforded abundant opportunity for exercise along the tow-path. On reaching the terminus of the canal, the boat, which consisted of two sections, was drawn by a stationary engine up an inclined plane, and by the same process was let down the western slope into another canal, which took us to Pitts- burg. We reached Pittsburg in the evening, a thousand open mouths of flame seeming to welcome us to the dingy city, — a weird picture, that still lingers in my memory. On the following morning I made diligent inquiries for a steamboat to take us down the Ohio to Cincinnati. Six days had already passed since we left Boston. The Ohio Eiver was at so low a stage of water as to seem almost un- navigable. A solitary stern-wheeled steamer was advertised to leave that day. We engaged passage. We were assured that the boat, drawing only twenty-four inches of water, could easily cross the sand-bars. There was, for the little boat, a large crowd of passengers, among whom were several Southwestern planters, eager to reach their homes. On the afternoon of October seventh we started down the river. While yet in sight of the city, we came to a well-loaded keel-boat, which was fast aground. Our captain, with what seemed to me an astonishing degree of kindness, threw them a hawser to haul them off. It required but a few hours to PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 35 discover that this keel-boat, which had been sent down the river ahead of us, was a part of our boat's belongings, to be towed to Cincinnati. For several ensuing days a large part of our time was consumed in getting aground and pulling off. Eepeatedly our captain or first mate would leap from the bow with a hawser, wade ashore, and hitch to a tree or post, and then, by aid of windlass or engine, strive to haul off. Some six or seven days were thus spent in reaching Wheeling. We there met a steamer coming up the river. Our hot-headed Southerners, who for days had been on the verge of an outbreak, attempted to charter the upward-bound boat to take us to Cincinnati. After long and angry dis- cussion, it was finally decided that we should all remain where we were. Copious rains seemed to promise that we could go on without further delay. We reached Cincinnati on the sixteenth of October, sixteen days from the city of Boston. Words fail to describe the relief and satisfaction with which at last we found ourselves in the hospitable mansion of Dr. Pattison at Covington. This mansion was the home of the owner of the large plantation which the Institution had bought, the rising value of which constituted the Institution's chief endowment. Near by stood the main building of the Seminary, containing recitation-rooms and dormitories. The Faculty with whom I was associated consisted of Dr. Pattison and Professor Asa Drury. The classes I was to instruct had been waiting for my coming, and my work was to begin without the loss of a day. With fear and trem- bling I went to my lecture-room.. I was thirty-two years of age, and with as meagre an outfit for the work I had undertaken as can well be imagined. My regularly appointed work was to teach Hebrew, though I spent all the spare time I could command in brushing up my Greek. I remember 36 EZEKIEL GILMAN EOBINSON. no period of my life in which I worked harder or with more satisfaction. In Hebrew I remember to have made written translations of earlier chapters of Isaiah and of the whole of Micah. On reaching Covington I found that Dr. Pattison and various of his friends from Cincinnati had organized what was called the Walnut Street Baptist Church. It wor- shipped in the main hall of the University of Cincinnati. It was arranged that Dr. Pattison and I should preach for this church alternately, — 'he in the morning of one Sunday, and I in the afternoon ; on the following Sunday I in the morning, and he in the afternoon. With the duties of my professorship I had, of course, no time for sermon-making, and simply fell back on what I had accumulated in my four years as pastor. My second year at Covington, the third in the history of the Institution, opened with bright prospects and an increased number of students. But dark clouds were gathering about the horizon. The one disturbing and threatening element was slavery. The Kentuckians were dissatisfied with some of Dr. Pattison's utterances on this question, and during the year appealed to their legislature to amend the charter of the Institution by adding ten Kentuckians to the number of its Trustees. At the first meeting of this new board Dr. Patti- son was summarily dismissed from office. A committee of six, with Rev. Dr. Dillard as chairman, Dr. Campbell, a Scotchman, president of Georgetown College, and four others, was appointed to wait upon other members of the Faculty. This committee came to my house with the ques- tion whether I recognized the authority of the new board. I replied that this was not one of the questions belonging to my chair as professor of Hebrew ; that I had come from New England with definitely prescribed duties, among which, I PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 37 was sure, was not an answer to that kind of question. A variety of similar questions was gravely propounded by the chairman, to which similarly evasive answers were given. As they grew impatient, I said : " There is a question, gentlemen, to which I can give a definite answer : it is whether I am willing to work in connection with, or under the direction of, men who are capable of what you have done. This, most definitely, in the negative. I have known something of violent abolitionists in the North, and by the grace of God have succeeded in keeping them at arm's length. All you have to do is to change places with that kind of men to change characters with them. I have no disposition to work with either class. " I never saw six men jump more suddenly or more simultaneously to their feet. I was indignant, and they were not less so. That ended my connection with what was known as the Western Theological Institution of Covington, Kentucky. It was virtually the breaking up of the Institution ; for, though the Kentuckians took possession of it with the purpose of carry- ing forward its work, very little, if anything, was accom- plished. 1 What became of the property, which was regarded as a handsome endowment, I never knew. The buildings, I was informed, passed into the hands of the Roman Catholics. Of the students who were at the Institution while I was there, several have achieved honorable distinction. Among these were Eev. Eufus C. Burleson, 1). D. , LL. D. , for the past forty-two years president of Baylor University, Texas ; Bev. William Ashmore, D.D. , our well-known missionary to China ; the Rev. John R. Downer, formerly professor in Denison University ; and others successful as pastors. While I was at Covington I heard, for the first time, the 1 The Institute opened in September, 1845, with Dr. Pattison as president. He and Professor Robinson withdrew in June, 1848. Dr. S. W. Lynd was then made president by the new Board of Trustees. See Appendix II. — Ed. 38 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. celebrated Dr. Lyman Beecher, and recognized the origin of certain peculiarities discernible in those days among the younger Congregational ministers of New England. One of them was a peculiar method of reading a hymn, striking the middle of the line with a peculiar ictus and pause. The glory of his earlier preaching had begun very percep- tibly to fail. My association with Dr. Pattison, whose ministrations I had attended at the First Church in Providence while a student in Brown University, was of the pleasantest. He was genial, warm-hearted, frank, a most agreeable col- league both as professor and as pastor. He never preached more effectively, with more unction and satisfaction, than during the two years that we served the Walnut Street Church. His mind, however, had a singular capacity for forgetfulness. As an amusing instance of this, he had a pet sermon, which he preached on a given Sunday, and re- peated two weeks afterward, wholly forgetting that he had previously delivered it. I would sometimes refer to a book which I knew that he had read, when he would reply that he knew nothing whatever about it. One book, however, probably more influenced him and his thinking than any other : this was Jonathan Edwards on the Christian Affec- tions. He went from Covington to the professorship of Theology at Newton. On the breaking up of the Institution at Covington the question came, What should I do next ? The little Walnut Street Church, to which Dr. Pattison and I had ministered two years gratuitously, gave little or no promise of ultimate success. It lacked homogeneity, having been made up in a considerable degree of malcontents from other churches. In the way of its success stood another formidable obstacle : Dr. E. L. Magoon, then pastor of the Ninth Street Baptist PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 39 Church of Cincinnati, had, with his friends, initiated a movement for a new church to be constituted of members from the Ninth Street Church. Just then I had an invita- tion to become pastor of the First Baptist Church in Roches- ter, New York. I was greatly inclined to go, and had about made up my mind to do so, when a committee from the Ninth Street Church waited upon me, insisting that I should remain in Cincinnati. The project of a new church for Dr. Magoon hung fire. At that juncture he accepted an invita- tion to become pastor of the Oliver Street Church in New York for six months, during which his friends in Cincinnati were to complete their organization of a new church for him. The proposition for me was to become pastor of the Ninth Street Church. The position was anything but an inviting one. While the Walnut Street Church was to disband, the most of them going to Ninth Street, I was invited to become pastor of a church no small portion of which were simply waiting for Dr. Magoon to return from New York. It re- quired no little persuasion to induce me to accept the call. An attempt on my part to follow Dr. Magoon seemed to promise nothing but disappointment and disaster. His brilliancy as a preacher, his great popularity as a man, had given him a thronging congregation. He was then at the height of his popularity. I had known him from the day that I went as a youth to the New Hampton Academy, which he was just then leaving for Waterville College. Dr. Magoon was a man of remarkable natural endowment, possessed of poetic fancy, intense energy, a strong intellect, and, under proper discipline, might and ought to have been one of the most distinguished men of his day. But from the outset of his education he had persisted in devoting his attention to such studies only as best pleased his fancy. He did this throughout his college course, as also at the 40 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. Newton Theological Institution. A voracious and indis- criminate reader, compiling tomes of extracts from all possi- ble sources, lie accumulated an almost measureless mass of chaotic materials, from which he was accustomed to draw freely in preparing his sermons. But to severe mental dis- cipline, whether in mathematical, philosophical, or rhetorical studies, he seemed to owe as little as was possible for a man who could be said to have a liberal education. His power over an audience of untrained minds was at times simply prodigious. His success as a preacher when in Virginia was one of the marvels of the day. While abroad, in the interval between his life in Virginia and his coming to Cin- cinnati, he had made himself familiar with the French lan- guage, and had become a devout admirer of Lacordaire, the great French preacher at Notre Dame, in Paris. He had collected a large library of both French and English works. His preaching bore evident marks of his wide and varied reading ; but I have scarcely known an educated man whose productions gave more striking evidence of an undiscrimi- nating mind, either in thought or expression. In his public ministry he would sometimes soar to heights of almost unsurpassed eloquence ; but the sentences following might be so marred by absurdities as well as grotesqueness of thought and bad taste in expression, as to make his audience blush and wish to hide their faces. 1 But with all these 1 As an instance, I once heard him conclude one of his sermons on Republican Christianity, afterwards published, with a paragraph genuinely eloquent. It was in 1848, during the revolutions in Europe. He described the atmosphere of Europe as filled with the sound of falling thrones and of clanking chains stricken from the limbs of the enslaved. The discourse was followed by an abrupt transition to a prayer in which the shocking motto of French revolutionists, " A funeral pyre of the last throne, on which shall be burnt the last priest," was turned into a solemn petition to God, — the leader of the choir at the end striking up on his violin with one of the liveliest of dancing tunes. It was such a shock to my nerves that I got my head down in the pew and gave vent to hysterical laughter. — E. G. E. PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 41 defects Dr. Magoon was a wonderful master in the pulpit, besides being a man of the largest heart, genial in disposi- tion and lovable to a degree. To attempt following such a man as pastor seemed rashness itself ; and yet there appeared to be no alternative but to accept. Thus, in the autumn of 1848 I became pastor of the Ninth Street Baptist Church. In the following spring we took a house on Mt. Auburn, then one of the rural suburbs of Cin- cinnati. It was embowered with trees in full blossom. It seemed an earthly paradise. We had bought a pet horse from Deacon Bevan, and a new rockaway. Our new home and equipments were all that could be desired. We were fortunate in being out of the city. In early summer the cholera broke out in Cincinnati with an alarming death-rate. By midsummer from a hundred and fifty to a hundred and sixty were dying daily. In driving down to the city in the morning the constantly multiplying crapes upon the door- bells, the burning barrels of tar, and the deserted streets filled one with a sense of desolation and gloom. But very few of my own flock fell victims. Though myself every day in the city and among the sick, I escaped with only a slight attack one Monday morning. A speedy application to a city phy- sician by my neighbor and dear friend, Deacon Bevan, brought speedy relief, and I was well again. The summer wore on, but at the end of the six months no sign appeared of the formation of the new church. With a winter's work before me we returned to a house in the city. I bent myself to the winter's work to the best of my ability. The spring came, and there had ceased to be any further talk about the return of Dr. Magoon to Cincinnati. The church was prosperous, but the situation was unsatisfactory. The church was large enough for its members to be in each other's way ; but it was in vain that anything was said 42 EZEKIEL GILMAN KOBINSON. about colonization. In my congregation were enough men of education to stimulate any man to his best work. Among these, besides several other city lawyers, was Alphonso Taft, afterwards Attorney-General under the administration of President Grant, and later still minister to St. Petersburg. Besides several other ministers of the gospel was John Stevens, who had graduated with distinguished scholarship at Middlebury, Vermont, and had long been, as he was also at that time, one of the most conspicuous leaders among the Baptists of Ohio, — a man of large and strong intellect, who, under other surroundings, might have attained to great distinction. He used to sit in the congregation with his eyes shut, apparently indifferent to all that was being said, and reminding me, as I used to tell him, of an old stone mill with its windows closed, but which kept on grinding its own grist in the dark. His answer was, " Pastor, I always hear what you say. " The number of young men in the congrega- tion who have since made their mark was proportionately large. At the end of the second year of my pastorate I made a list of fifteen young men with their wives, and fifteen unmarried women, mostly of middle age, to whom I sub- mitted the proposition to join with me in forming a new church. Too well satisfied with things as they were, and timid from the failure of previous attempts, they hesitated to join in the undertaking. During the third winter of the pastorate I set to work earnestly in the preparation and delivery of a series of dis- courses on Modern Scepticism. These discourses were re- ceived with unexpected favor, attracting large and intelligent congregations, including not a few avowed unbelievers. A request with many names called for a publication of the lectures, — a request to which, the lectures not having been written, I could not respond. The following summer PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 43 gave me a much needed rest and recreation in New England. The fourth winter of the pastorate opened, and my house- hold was darkened by an alarming illness of my wife. In the midst of this, my old friend, Martin B. Anderson, then editor of the " New York Eecorder, " made his appearance with an invitation to the professorship of Biblical Theology in Rochester University, then recently made vacant by the death of Dr. J. S. Maginnis. The invitation was attractive from the outset ; but there arose at once the question, What would be the influence of the climate of Rochester on the health of my wife ? Our family physician expressed a de- cided opinion that it would be beneficial. This, of course, disposed me to accept the invitation ; but the young friends to whom I had the year before proposed the formation of a new church, then came with alacrity to begin the under- taking at once. I had, however, already become convinced that a pastorate was not the office in which I could do the best work of which I was capable. My distaste for pas- toral duties was unconquerable, while my experience at Covington had given me a preference for a professorship. I accepted the invitation with the condition that its duties should be begun in the following spring. The breaking up of associations and friendships at Cincinnati was one of the painful experiences of life. My life at Cincinnati and in Ohio had brought me many pleasurable experiences. I was not wanting in sympathy with the efforts of the Baptists of Cincinnati and Ohio to re-establish, if possible, a theological institution on the Ohio side of the river. A company had been formed and had purchased a farm of one hundred and fifty or sixty acres just outside the city limits, with the expectation of its rapid rise in value and of throwing it upon the market, thereby 44 EZEKTEL GILMAN KOBINSON. realizing a very handsome profit. Ten acres of the land, which had been designated as Fairmount, had been set apart for the new institution, and on this had been erected a handsome building for the so-called Fairmount Theological Institution. I was asked to become one of its professors, but could not persuade myself to accept the offer. The company purchasing the land had divided it into ten shares. Two of the company, over-anxious for profits, had assumed to carry two shares each. I became the purchaser of a half-share. Parts of the land, platted into house -lots, were distributed to the shareholders as successive payments were made on the mortgage, other lots being offered at auction to the public. The sales did not realize expectations. It speedily became evident that the members of the company who had assumed two shares each could not carry their loads. Payments on the mortgage were defaulted; fore- closure seemed inevitable. Desperately, but in vain, I sought to have my half-share released by paying my share of the original stock ; but both mortgagors and mortgagees objected. The whole property, it was said, must be held responsible for the mortgage. The few thousands I had paid in seemed hopelessly sunk, to my own lasting embar- rassment. The house and lot provided for the Fairmount Theological Institution were purchased by Germans and turned into a beer-garden and shooting-gallery. The closing up "of the affairs of the company has been a com- plicated and almost life-long series of transactions. NOTE. METHOD OF PREPARING SERMONS. If Dr.' Robinson had found opportunity to look over his autobiography, he would have added to it at various points ; and it was hoped that he would tell the curious story of how PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 45 he first came to preach extempore. But he never found the opportunity. A letter from Mrs. Robinson makes good the deficiency at this point in a way that throws more light upon the habits of the Doctor's mind than his reticence would have allowed him to give. At the time referred to he was a stu- dent in Newton. " I think Mr. Robinson was to go some little distance to preach, and looking for the sermon he was intending to take with him, found his whole collection — not a very large one, I fancy — gone. On in- quiry he found that the other students had met with similar losses. The sermons had obviously been stolen, but no one ever knew who the culprit was. It is true that his success in the pulpit at that par- ticular time encouraged other attempts to preach with only brief notes, and that finally even these were not taken into the pulpit, as his confidence in himself grew. But his habit of preaching without notes became fixed, not so much from confidence in himself, for he almost always apprehended failure, as from an inveterate dislike, which never left him, of putting into final shape what he was pre- paring. He liked the active mental exercise, the ' thinking out,' but he disliked the slow labor of setting his thoughts down ; and he would postpone, on the plea that they still needed the inward work until it was too late to write and give them outward shape. Finally he resigned himself to the habit formed, and only wrote down heads for future use, writing these as often after speaking as before." In another letter Mrs. Robinson shows with what care her husband prepared for the pulpit : — " In his earliest days Mr. Robinson, besides the heads of a sermon, would write out the introduction, or perhaps the first head or a part of it, and have the manuscript before him in the pulpit ; but he found the transition from the written page to unsupported direct address difficult and embarrassing, and he soon gave up writing anything except the skeleton, for pulpit use. His mind became ' hidebound,' to use his own frequent expression, when he began a sermon depend- ing on his manuscript. But though he did n't write out, he spoke out his sermons while preparing them; not, of course, declaiming, but talking them over, thought by thought, as these came to him, and then as they arranged themselves or grew clear in the process of think- ing. Almost invariably he went over the whole sermon, the heads and the principal points under them, before leaving the house for the church, where on entering he would often say in real anxiety of mind, 46 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON". ' I am not half prepared.' Of course this was not true of the more recent years, when, as a father with his children, he was intent only on instructing his congregation." Incidents related by Mr. E. R. Andrews, the publisher of Dr. Robinson's " Theology," illustrate his readiness to meet an emergency when there was no time for special preparation. The first occurred at an early period in his Rochester life. " The pastor of the First Baptist Church was to be absent for a Sunday, and had engaged Professor Raymond to supply the pulpit. The ' genial Professor ' not only forgot the engagement, but also for- got to attend the morning service. A Quaker meeting was held until eleven o'clock, when, as the preacher had not arrived, Deacon Orren Sage went to Dr. Robinson, who was sitting in his pew, and asked him to occupy the pulpit. He cheerfully complied, and preached a sermon which was listened to with delight by the congregation. " Another instance of a somewhat similar character occurred in 1865. In that year he preached the Thanksgiving sermon, it being the first after the close of the Civil War, to the united congregations of all the Baptist churches in the city, in the First Baptist Church. It was a broad, statesmanlike address, and was listened to with feel- ings of deepest interest and admiration, from its opening to its close. He was then asked to furnish a copy for publication. His reply was, ' Why, there is not a syllable of it written, and I have not time to write it out. I went home last night and sat down to select the hymns for the service, and went to sleep while doing it. The thoughts are not altogether new, but the only time that- 1 had to arrange the address was while I was shaving myself this morning to come to church.' " Another incident related by Mr. Andrews exhibits the Doc- tor's contempt for laziness and foppery. To help a beneficiary he gave him the job of mailing the "Christian Review." " About an hour afterward the young man left, his work undone. A couple of days later the Doctor appeared and found the work unfinished. Straightening himself up to his full height, and with an expression of indignation, of which he is a master, he exclaimed, ' He does n't amount to anything ; he carries a cane ! ' ' It is a question about which no small difference of opinion is found among Dr. Robinson's friends, at what period he PASTORATES AND COVINGTON PROFESSORSHIP. 47 exhibited his greatest power as a preacher. Professor Wilkin- son regarded the sermons on scepticism, delivered shortly after Dr. Robinson became professor in Rochester, as the highest reach of his success as an orator ; but Dr. Sage, who heard the sermons when delivered to the Ninth Street Church in Cincinnati, thought them incomparably more effective than when repeated in Rochester. Another observer used to insist that the Doctor was never the same man after his typhoid fever in 18G3, when he was at the age of forty -eight ; but some of the nearest friends of his long life declared that he had never before equalled the sermons delivered in Philadelphia when he was past seventy-five. Certainly they had rarely been so touching, and it is likely that never before in all his long experience the young people flocked lovingly around him at the close of the sermon as they did in those months of ser- vice for the Memorial and the Fifth Baptist Churches. It surprised him to be so received, and surprised some who looked on ; but the austere face wore a gentle look for the young folk who trusted him and thanked him. — Ed. 48 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. CHAPTER III. THE ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 1853-1866. IN the spring of 1853 we packed our household goods and started for Eochester, 1 New York. We took a cottage with ample grounds and fruit-trees ; and language fails to ex- press the satisfaction and relief from the sense of care with which I found myself in my new home. My wife speedily regained her health, and I addressed myself with energy to my new duties. The very skies and the atmosphere, so un- like those of Cincinnati, inspired me with an ever-increasing exhilaration of spirit. My real work as a teacher could not then begin, as the academic year was on its last term. The most that I could undertake was a course of homiletic in- struction to the graduating class in Theology. Dr. Conant had read to them during the year the manuscript lectures in Theology left by the deceased Dr. Maginnis ; but they had received no homiletic instruction. I set the whole class at the preparation and delivery of sermons. The literary 1 "He was thirty-eight years of age, in the full vigor and activity of rohust manhood, although many silvery threads were even then gracing his head. He came upon the promise of a salary of $1200 a year, and a small addition for some special instruction ; and such was the financial condition of the Seminary that as late as 1867, notwithstanding the high cost of living during the war, and his intense devotion to the interest of the Seminary, his salary had not heen increased to more than $2000. I have said that $1200 was promised him ; but much of the time it was not paid promptly, except in promissory notes, to be paid at maturity, or renewed, as the exigency of the time compelled." (From an address by E. R. Andrews, Esq.) ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 49 instruction they had received had by no means made them all master -workmen. The exercises, whether profitable to them or not, were specially useful to myself. They gave me opportunity to take a long breath in thinking of the work which I was to assume the coming autumn, and also to prepare what was absurdly called an Inaugural Address, to be delivered at the coining Commencement. It had been instilled into my mind by continuous iteration that what- ever I should say in that address must be distinctively and pre-eminently orthodox. The jealousies created by the abor- tive attempt to transfer the institution bodily from Hamil- ton to Eochester had divided the churches into two opposing camps. Even a suspicion of heterodoxy, it was feared, would be fatal to the Eochester interest. I accordingly prepared an address on the need of Christian experience to a right understanding of theological doctrine. It was printed in the " Christian Eeview" under the title of " Experimental Theology, " rather than " Experiential, " as it should have been. That enabled me to steer clear of both Scylla and Charybdis. President Wayland of Brown University was one of the hearers of the address, which was not in disharmony with his well-known views. Whether from pity or from coincidence of view, the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred by Brown University at the following Commencement. l When I went to Eochester, the Eev. Justin A. Smith, since then the so long and so distinguished editor of the " Standard" at Chicago, was pastor of its First Baptist Church. Unfor- 1 The Doctorate of Laws was afterwards conferred by Brown, and again by Harvard University at the celebration of its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. This was a very special occasion, and those who received the honors of the University were all men of note. All sat upon the platform, and each in turn arose as his degree was conferred. It was altogether an imposiug array of American and European celebrities. — Ed. 4 50 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. tunately, he soon resigned, and the church laid hold of rne to occupy the pulpit. I had left Cincinnati for a smaller salary at Eochester, and a little income from preaching did not come amiss. But, unfortunately, when my real work as teacher of Theology began in the autumn, the demands on me as a preacher to the First Church added materially to the load I was carrying. The church had heard of the lec- tures on Scepticism at Cincinnati, and asked for a repetition of them during the winter. I was thoughtless enough to assent to the proposition, and, but for brief notes, which had been taken by a lady of the congregation at Cincinnati, the task would have been a severe one. I may add here that this foolish neglect of making notes for myself has been one of my grievous and life-long faults. But the delivery of these discourses, conjoined with the preparation of the- ological lectures, made necessarily a laborious winter. I had no theological system whatever. The doctrines to be taught were to my mind shadowy and indefinite. I began my theological lectures with discussions that to me pos- sessed most interest, and about which I was best informed, the Evidences of Christianity. The views of Theodore Parker, published in his "Discourse of Eeligion," and of contemporary and corresponding schools abroad, presented inviting fields of inquiry. I discussed Christian Evidences and Inspiration con amove, wading in my personal reading neck-deep 'through the whole range of their speculation. The letters of Tholuck on Inspiration, growing out of the disagreement with the views of Scherer on the part of Merle D'Aubigne" and others, and the brochure of Coleridge, " Con- fessions of an Inquiring Spirit," were just then attracting public attention. It was the first decisive beginnings of the great subsequent change of view on the doctrine of inspiration. ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 51 As I entered upon the special work of instruction in Systematic Theology, I was filled with constant solicitude as to how I was to teach the great doctrines of Christianity. There was no text-book which I could conscientiously use. My own views were uncertain, and in no sense constituted a system. There was no alternative ; by the help of such books as I could lay hold of, American, English, and German, I set to work to clarify and settle my own views. Reading day and night as rapidly and widely as I could, I wrote only such brief propositions as I could venture to dictate to the class, often rushing from my desk to the class-room before the ink of the last sentence had become fairly dry. Around these propositions we indulged in ample discussion ; but I was as much of an inquirer as any of the students. In all that was given, either in dicta- tion or discussion, I was most distinctively and guardedly orthodox ; but the question continually before us all was, not what is the orthodoxy of the sect, but what is the truth ? The whole course in Theology was to be completed in a single year. Every day I flew to my lecture-room with nerves all in a tremor as to what was to be the result of the clay's instruction. What was accomplished in that year's work in Theology comes back to me only as a very shadowy reminiscence. Some of the students whom I put upon the work of investigating and essay-writing very likely profited by the year's course ; but I more than half suspect that they were not altogether certain as to the views of their teacher. It should here be stated, however, that, in the absence of all provision for homiletical instruction, it became my duty to train the class in sermonizing. To this work one day in each week was given throughout the year. This weekly exercise in sermonizing was an immense relief from the laborious formulating of theological doctrines. This first 52 EZEKIEL GILMAN KOBINSOK year I also taught Butler's Analogy to the Senior class in the University. It was a task that ought not to have been laid upon rne, and which at the end of the year, in language somewhat vehement as well as explicit, I in- formed the trustees of the University that nothing could induce me to undertake again. As may well be imagined, the end of that year's work brought a sense of relief which no words can now express. I entered upon the second year's work with less trepida- tion than upon the first. The burdens to be borne were considerably lessened. I was to give no undergraduate instruction in the University. My professorship in the first year had been nominally, but erroneously, regarded as a University professorship. The founders of the Univer- sity, warned by experience in Madison University, had at the outset determined that, instead of a theological depart- ment, there should be a Theological Seminary, a totally distinct organization, under the direction of its own board of trustees and faculty. of instruction. But the founders of the University, in raising money among the churches, had found it convenient to give great prominence to the value and need of ministerial education. On that plea the first and larger part of their funds were raised. The popular impression therefore was that the theological school was an organic part of the University. The confusion of ideas prevailed not only among the churches at large, but among the friends and faculty of the University. This confusion will explain the erroneous popular conception of the relation of the institutions at the outset. I entered upon my second year's work with renewed zeal, ardent expectations, and buoyant spirits. My theological ideas were beginning to take some defmiteness of form. Just then the whole intellectual atmosphere was vocal ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 53 with discussion about the Hamiltonian doctrine of the relativity of knowledge. The application of this phil- osophical dogma to the doctrine of God was awakening the most animated discussion, which reached its climax only in years later, when Mansel had published his Bamp- ton lectures on the " Limits of Religious Thought. " Dr. Shedd's article in the "Christian Review," entitled "Sin a Nature, and that Nature Guilt," furnished material for liveliest discussions in treating of the doctrine of sin. These two questions among others gave special interest to my second year's instruction. In assigning to my class topics for investigation and criticism, I was myself obliged to read largely and rapidly in order to be fitted for an appre- ciation and discussion of the papers presented by them. It was a year of probably larger growth on my part than on theirs. At the close of a clay's work, the floor of my study was strewn with books, as though a hurricane had been among them. I had also entered with redoubled interest on the work of homiletical instruction, inducing the students, so far as I was able, to turn their theological conclusions into a homiletical use. This practice had the beneficial result of prompting them to look at theological doctrines, not so much as abstract dogmas, as living truths to be brought to bear on the consciences of men. This attempted conjunction of a study of Systematic Theology with a homiletic use of it was, in these early days, one of the distinctive peculiarities of the Rochester Theological Seminary. Notwithstanding the wear and tear of nerves by this homiletic part of my work, necessitating the minute examination of not less than three sermons from each mem- ber of the class, the work, as a whole, was the most attractive of anything I had ever been engaged in. The crowding of all this into a single year did not leave me with a large 54 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. amount of unused time ; yet, as I now look back upon it, I remember that I was unwise enough to be drawn into almost continuous Sunday preaching. In my third year I began work with a conscious increase of self-confidence. Theology did not seem so dark and unexplored a realm. The subjects engaging attention the previous year were increasingly attractive. The relativity of knowledge was re-examined in the attempt to find some determinative principle in classification of the Divine attributes. Among theological treatises there appeared to be no guiding principle, each author beginning with such attribute as apparently struck his fancy, or as seemed the fittest point of departure. In the doctrine of relativity I got the clew to a principle for the classification of attributes. The classification arranged the attributes according to the order of the relations through which a knowledge of the attributes had been obtained. These are the relations of God to space, time, the material universe, and man, accord- ing to which we discussed the attributes of immensity, eternity, power, wisdom, omnipresence, and holiness, whence genetically were derived all the moral attributes. The doctrine of sin was examined more minutely as well as extensively, and special attention was given to the New England doctrine that sin consisted wholly in action. I am afraid, as I recall the work of that year, that we were too extraordinarily orthodox on the doctrine of original sin. We not only made sin to consist in a state, but as at times accompanied with a consciousness on our part of a responsibility for its Adamic origin. The doctrine of atonement, which had been taught in the two previous years in a traditionally orthodox form, with a defence of the Anselmic theory, was brought under careful review in the light of the federal theory of Princeton on ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 55 the one hand, and the governmental theory of Andover on the other. The class warmed to their work with a most gratifying interest, and did not fail to impart stimulus to their teacher by their questions, objections, and careful prep- aration of papers which embodied the results of their own reading and reflection. I had begun to get hold of the Neander Library, and to extract from it a much needed aid. Homiletic instruction became an increasingly absorb- ing part of my work, making a larger draught on nervous energy than lecturing on Theology. My custom was, after having the sermon read before the class for their criticism as well as my own, to require the student to re-write it, then submit it to me for private examination. I scrupulously read each sermon through from beginning to end, then sent for the student, and, in instances not a few, went over it with him, paragraph by paragraph, hatchelling, combing, and sometimes reconstructing the whole. I can recall instances of a two hours' sitting with a single student. Fortunately there were large numbers that required no such criticism. During the immediately following years the work of instruction in the Seminary was largely a resurvey of the topics discussed in preceding years, — a readjustment of conclusions to one another, but still more largely an open- ing of new lines of inquiry. The doctrine of Christology was entered upon with a zeal the vivid recollection of which still survives. The helps and sources of information at that day were meagre indeed in comparison with what is now within the reach of every one. The humiliation of Christ became an inquiry of absorbing interest. Dissatisfied with any conception of it within reach, I set to work at the very careful study of the New Testament itself. It was forced upon my mind that the humiliation consisted in the limitations of the divine by its assumption of the human. 56 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. So thoroughly convinced was I of this explanation, that I made it the subject of a discourse delivered before the Society of Missionary Inquiry at the Commencement of Brown University in 1856. The view presented struck the audience as novel and questionable. President Way- land, who heard the discourse, thought it was " an impor- tant doctrine, if true." The conclusions, however, which I had reached were in my own mind thoroughly settled, and determined to no small extent the whole range of my theological ideas. The Kenotist theory of Gess, Thomasius, and others, with which the theology of our day has made everybody familiar, had not then come to my knowledge. It was not until a later date that I adjusted this conception of the humiliation to what became my clearly defined view of the atonement. At the end of the Seminary year, in 1857, my colleague, Dr. Conant, resigned the chair of Biblical Literature and Criticism to give his whole time to the work of translation for the American Bible Union. He had for some time before this been in their service in addition to his profes- sorial duties. His retirement took from the Theological Seminary its most distinguished professor. His broad and accurate biblical learning, especially in Hebrew literature, was recognized both in this country and abroad. It was feared that his withdrawal might interfere with our pros- perity. His "going was the loss to me of a personal friend. It was also to me a matter of personal regret that he should leave the work of the Seminary for the service on which he entered ; but it had been a life-long desire of his to put the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, into the hands of Eng- lish readers in a much more accurate translation than was furnished in the so-called version of King James. This offer of the Bible Union seemed to him to afford the only ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 57 opportunity for the realization of his long-cherished desire. To many of us it was a matter of serious regret, and, as we thought, financially a mistake, that he did not remain in the Seminary, proceed with his translation, and issue instal- ments at cheap rates to subscribers. We believed that such a translation would have an immense circulation. Against the Bible Union was a wide-spread and deep-seated pre- judice, a dislike on the part of very many of the best minds in the denomination, for both its spirit and its methods. The ignorant and bigoted talk about " the pure word of God," by which large numbers of uninformed people were drawn to the support of the Union, we were confident could awake nothing but aversion in the mind of so clear-headed and enlightened a man as Dr. Conant. He was too well acquainted with the numberless variations in the original texts not to feel humiliated by this clap-trap talk of the managers and abettors of the Bible Union. Of the bitter- ness and bigotry of their spirit I had myself had experience before becoming a professor at Bochester. The scandal brought upon the denomination by the Bible Union among intelligent men, to say nothing of the reckless waste of funds, is one of the painful memories among those of us who have survived those days of noise, pretence, and fanati- cism. It should not be forgotten as one of the warnings against unwise leadership. The retirement of Dr. Conant required some reconstruc- tion of the Faculty of the Seminary. My friend Hotchkiss, to whom I was more sincerely attached than he was ever aware of, was transferred from the chair of Ecclesiastic History to the chair of Biblical Literature, left vacant by Dr. Conant, for the duties of which he had special predilec- tion. In the chair of Ecclesiastical History, thus made vacant, we placed a young man 1 who had just graduated from 1 G. W. Northrup, D.D., LL.D. — Ed. 58 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON". the Seminary, and who has since made for himself a distin- guished name as a teacher of Theology, and as the head of the Baptist Union Theological Seminary at Morgan Park, near Chicago, since become the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. The appointment of so young a man was regarded with distrust by some of the trustees; but his immediate success and his subsequent career fully vindicated the confidence of his instructors, who had recom- mended his appointment. In one of the late autumns about this period I found my health affected by a distressing cough. In those earlier years my lecture-room in the old hotel building on Buffalo Street was but fifteen or sixteen feet square. To spend two hours at a time with fifteen or eighteen men in so small a room required an open window just at my shoulder, to keep us from partial suffocation. A succession of colds had fastened the cough. Our family physician took alarm, said I must quit my work and go South. He went with me to Balti- more. Ten days among my old friends at Norfolk, with abundant oysters and Southern atmosphere, speedily put me on my feet again, and within two weeks I was back and at work as well as ever, but in a more spacious lecture-room. It is needless to say that with myself the horizon of theo- logical thought was constantly widening and the atmosphere clearing. The inexhaustible doctrine of sin was still one of the living topics. It became clear to my mind that sin could be comprehensively discussed and clearly understood only under the triple conception of it as act, principle, and state. Sin, then, as I was accustomed to teach, may be comprehensively defined as follows : As an act it is a trans- gression of God's law ; as a principle that determines the guilt of acts, it is opposition or hostility to God ; as a state or nature, it is moral unlikeness to God. The meaning of ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 59 the word " death " in the Pauline epistles, as well as in the Fourth Gospel, received special attention. The position was maintained that literal death could not be held to be the specific penalty for sin, but that the term " death " was used by both writers in its metaphorical sense. The doctrine of atonement was with all classes a subject of protracted discussion. My own views had now begun to pass through a rapid transition. Up to that time I had been a steadfast defender of the doctrine of substitution ; but the Ansel mic substitution had too much of the commercial tone for me to take it without large cpaalifications. The federal imputation theory of Princeton was too mechanical and arti- ficial to be endured ; I had long before abandoned the whole conception of the decretive will of God on which the theory rested, as arbitrary and contrary to the Christian conception of the Godhead. The governmental theory of Andover, so ably defended by Dr. Park, seemed to me superficial, and incapable of any just defence either on philosophical or scriptural grounds. The Socinian theory of moral influ- ence appeared to fasten its attention on the secondary effect of Christ's life and death, to the exclusion of that efficient principle which a right view of his death alone could sup- ply, and which alone could secure the moral influence claimed ; that is, by excluding a right view of his death it deprived the atonement of that moral influence which the theory ascribed to it. The life theory just then coming into vogue, the first beginnings of what has since blossomed out into the New Theology, fastened its attention on the incar- nation, making the death of Christ a means of communi- cating the life which he had brought into the world, rather than a propitiatory sacrifice, through which alone a partici- pation in that life becomes possible. To reach any clear and definite conceptions of the atonement, it seemed necessary 60 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. to examine analytically and critically the fundamental principles underlying it. The chief of these were to be found in the scriptural ideas of the nature of God, of man, and of moral law, as expressing the nature of the relations between God and man. For a series of years no question in my lecture-room took precedence of an inquiry into the fundamental conception of moral law. The older theories of the atonement all built upon the idea of law as either the decretive will of God, or as a statute made simply to secure some desired end. They conceived law as a statute whose penalty might be enforced or remitted as the wise will of God should decide to be expedient. With such an idea of moral law all modern sci- ence and all sound philosophy were hopelessly at variance. The realism to which all science and philosophy were con- verging made it necessary to conceive of law as constitutive in the nature alike of God and man. At this juncture familiarity with the writings of Neander, particularly with his account of the planting and training of the Apostolic Church, helped very greatly to clarify my own ideas. The more I read of various treatises on the atonement, the less I was satisfied with their ideas of moral law. Turning again to Neander, and from Neander to the conceptions of law presented in the treatises of scientists, I became thoroughly convinced that no idea of law was justifiable which rested in any decretive or legislative will, or was derived from any other source than the eternal nature of God, which had deter- mined forever the moral constitution of the universe. Law is a constituent principle of moral being as such, whether that being be the infinite God or finite man. Thus moral law is as immutable as God himself, and its awards can no more be reversed than the nature of God can change. The doctrines thus far referred to came naturally before ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 61 successive classes, but single doctrines occupied dispropor- tionate attention with different classes, the special topics depending mainly on the philosophical training and abilities of the leading minds of the class. Different classes thus received different impressions as to what I regarded as most fundamental and important in a system of Theology. They did not always apprehend the relations to other essential truths of the doctrines on which they had longest lingered. They did not understand that I was myself steadily growing in apprehension of the logical relations of one doctrine to another, and was gradually forming the whole into a com- plete and harmonious system. It was only in the later years of my professorship of Theology that my mind became thor- oughly settled as to the relations of the parts to one another. I never forgot, from the beginning of my Eochester work to its end, that I was myself a learner, and was ever open to the reception of truth, come whencesoever it might. This alone could explain the freedom which every student was encouraged to exercise in questioning and in discussion. We never were afraid of looking any opinion frankly in the face, and reverently and devoutly inquiring, under the teach- ing of God's Word, whether it was truth or error. It has always seemed to me that no greater wrong could be done to theological students than to require them to accept without scrutiny any principle or sentiment avowed by their teacher. They should, on the contrary, be encouraged, with an humble reliance on the Divine guidance, to inquire, think, and decide for themselves. In one of the years between 1857 and 1859 occurred an episode in the history of the Seminary affecting its then existing status and its future. With this episode I was myself so connected as to make fit that there should here be an allusion to it, and an explanation of its occurrence. For 62 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON, several months the Seminary had failed to pay the salaries of its professors. There was a financial crisis in its affairs. The friends of the institution were invited to a conference on the subject. Our dear good friend, the Eev. Zenas Free- man, corresponding secretary and, in fact, financial agent of the New York Baptist Union for Ministerial Education, which had been organized to " sustain a Theological School, " and which appointed the Seminary's Board of Trustees, made to the conference a report of the Seminary's financial condi- tion. He began his report with a statement of assets. The two items with which he began were $50,000 of scholar- ships, and the money which had been given by Mr. Eoswell Burroughs for the purchase of the ISTeander Library. At the close of his report I ventured to ask how it could be possible that we had an asset of $50,000, and there be no income for the payment of our salary. It then, for the first time, came to be understood that this $50,000 consisted of the first funds that had been collected towards an endowment of the Uni- versity. As scholarships, every dollar of the income accrued to the University for the tuition and support of undergrad- uate candidates for the ministry, thus paying the salaries of University professors, while not a dollar of it was available for salaries of professors in the Seminary. How this $50,000 could be regarded as part of the Seminary's assets, or how money paid for the purchase of the Neander Library could be so designated, was incomprehensible. A mystification was immediately cleared up. Before accepting my profes- sorship I had been assured that the Seminary had an endow- ment of some $60,000, the income from which at then prevailing rates of interest seemed ample provision for the salaries of Dr. Conant and myself, with our expected col- league. It could safely be anticipated that natural increase of the supposed endowment would provide for additional ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDEXCY. 63 members of the Faculty. The result of the conference was a dissipation of our imaginary endowment; the $50,000 never again figured among the assets of the Seminary. Unfortu- nately, this episode gave me the reputation of being the dis- turber of an existing harmony. The truth was it then became clear to the public mind that the only provision for ministerial education thus far made in the way of endow- ment was for support of undergraduates in the University. This episode reached its climax a few years later, when it becanie evident, on the death of Mr. Freeman, that the Sem- inary was absolutely bankrupt. To meet the salaries of the professors, the Eev. Mr. Freeman had borrowed money wher- ever it was obtainable. He had advanced $1200 of his own funds, taking, as security, a note signed by the responsible officers of the Ministerial Union. This note remaining un- paid, his widow had placed it in the hands of the distin- guished jurist, Henry E. Selden, for collection. There was not a dollar in the treasury with which to pay it. It was quietly intimated to us that we should not be crowded for payment, but that the widow was in great need of the money. There was but one thing to do, and that was for me to go to New York and raise the $1200. I left my class in the hands of my colleagues, spent a Sunday with Madi- son Avenue Church, receiving a contribution of several hundred dollars, and the remainder I picked up in various places, hat in hand. I found the lone widow in the upper part of the city, paid her the $1200, and, taking the can- celled note, returned with all haste to my work in the lecture-room. There were no stars in our heavens in those days. The future of the Seminary was problematical. It was a relief, however, to know our real condition, and what alone could save us. The real work of the.Seminary went on with unabated interest, no student, so far as I was aware, 64 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. having the remotest conception of the financial strait through which we were passing. It was at about this time that the German department had become organized, and was in sorest need of some provision for the salary of Professor Eauschenbusch, its head teacher. I recall no service with more satisfaction than that of secur- ing from the devout and large-hearted J. B. Hoyt, of Stam- ford, Connecticut, the sum of $20,000 as the basis of an endowment for Professor Eauschenbusch's chair. This was secured while we were also doing our utmost toward an endowment for ourselves ; but I doubt if any money was ever devoted to a worthier object than that to which Mr. Hoyt gave his $20,000. The thirty years' service of Pro- fessor Eauschenbusch in Eochester furnishes part of one of the most interesting chapters in the history of American Baptists. In the autumn of 1859 came a proposition from Mr. Smith Sheldon, the book publisher of New York, that I should revise Byland's translation of Neander's " Planting and Training of the Christian Church. " A last and revised edi- tion of the original work had appeared in Germany subse- quent to Byland's translation. The proposition was so to revise his translation as to incorporate all the modifications of the last German edition. It was soon discovered that this last German edition had been exhausted, and no copy of it could be -obtained. A copy in two volumes was finally obtained from the library of the Eev. Dr. Hitchcock, of Union Theological Seminary in New York. A cumulative variety of duties, however, intervened to delay the appear- ance of the revision long beyond the time announced. First came from the same publisher in the winter of 1860 the proposition that Dr. Hotchkiss and I should edit the " Chris- tian Eeview, " of which he had become proprietor. This ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 65 proposition we unfortunately accepted. The disordered state of the country, the alienation between the North and the South, made the support of such a review extremely precarious. The outbreak of the civil war cut off, at one stroke, every subscriber from the Southern States, and the overdue payments for past years. The minds of the Northern people were much more interested in the immedi- ate prospects of the country than in theological or philo- sophical discussion. The outlook for a continued pecuniary support of the Review was dismal in the extreme. The Eeview was purchased by Mr. Ezra E. Andrews, of Roches- ter. I continued sole editor until 1863, when longer con- tinuance of its publication seemed impossible, and the proprietors of the " Bibliotheca Sacra " became purchasers of its subscription list. I have called this an unfortunate ser- vice : it was four years of exhausting and unpaid labor. In the meagreness of my salary as professor of Theology, it became a matter of necessity not to decline invitations to pulpit service. In 1860 came an invitation from the First Presbyterian Church in Rochester to supply its pulpit. Its congregation was one of the most intelligent and attrac- tive that a preacher could desire to address. Its large pro- portion of liberally educated men, especially of the legal profession, furnished a stimulus to the fullest exertion of a preacher's powers. I accepted the invitation with the understanding that the service was to continue only until they could secure a pastor. It ran on for a year or more, covering one of the stormiest periods in our national history. The public mind was profoundly moved by the outbreak of the civil war. It was impossible that my preaching should not at times take a tone and coloring from what was in everybody's mind. One incident stands out conspicuously in my recollection : a single sentence in the course of the 66 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. sermon so struck the congregation that, to my surprise and fright, they responded with a sudden outbreak of hand- clapping such as I had never heard at a religious service. For a staid Presbyterian assemblage it was not only a novel exhibition of feeling, but indicative of the feverish excite- ment of the public mind. 1 One of the peculiarities of this service was that a Baptist should preach on Sunday, give a mid-week lecture, preach a sermon preparatory to com- munion, and yet never appear at the communion-table. The incongruity was felt alike by the preacher and the people. With this exception the service was one which the preacher himself thoroughly enjoyed. While this service continued, my work as a theological teacher, instead of being in any degree slighted, was carried forward with ever-increasing interest. The ministrations of the pulpit reacted upon the work of the lecture-room to the stimulus of professor and students alike. The revision of Neander was held in' abeyance, and editorial work on the " Christian Eeview " was disposed of by me more summarily than it ought to have been. The unproductiveness of the Eeview made it 1 The editor, who was present, well remembers the thrill that ran through the congregation when the preacher, yielding for a moment to the terrible strain of feeling which belonged to the early days of the civil war, invoked the judgment of God against the rebellion, and predicted that the besom of destruction would sweep the South. The effect was overpowering, and the spontaneous outbreak of applause a real relief. After Dr. Robinson had preached for -this church a year, Judge Gardiner, a prominent member of the church, remarked to the writer that they must give up the services of Dr. Robinson, or they would never call a pastor. The " war speeches " of Dr. Robinson and Dr. Anderson were a notable feature of the meetings held at that period to encourage enlistments. When the news that Lincoln had been assassinated reached Rochester, " our citizens," wrote Frederick Doug- lass in his autobiography, " not knowing what else to do in the agony of the hour, betook themselves to the City Hall. Though all hearts ached for utterance, few felt like speaking. . . . Dr. Robinson . . . was prevailed upon to take the stand, and made one of the most touching and eloquent speeches I ever heard." — Ed. ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AXD PRESIDENCY. 67 impossible, in its closing years, to offer remuneration to the writers for it, and, accordingly, not many writers of the highest merit could be induced to become contributors. In the summer of 1861 the Pearl Street Baptist Church of Albany was in a perilous condition through disagreement over the resignation of its pastor. They requested me to become stated supply of their pulpit until they could so far harmonize as to agree upon another pastor. Complying with this request, it became necessary for me to make a weekly trip to Albany. Sometimes I could so arrange duties and command my time as to take the Saturday morning train ; not unfrequently it became necessary to take the train Saturday night, reaching Albany at four o'clock in the morning, giving me time for a morning rest before entering the pulpit. The congregation was all that one could desire. They were to the highest degree kindly and appreciative. This service continued for a year or more, but the draught on time and strength was too much to be longer protracted. In the summer of 1862 I recommended the church to send a committee to Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to hear the Eev. C. De W. Bridgman, with a view to calling him to the pastorate. He was immediately called, accepted the call, and after a most successful pastorate of fifteen years resigned, in spite of the earnest protestations of his church and parishioners. In thus referring to Dr. Bridgman, I am reminded of one who graduated with him in the class of 1857, Abner King- man Nott, the successor, immediately after his graduation, of the distinguished Dr. Cone as pastor of the First Baptist Church in New York. His ardent piety, his fine qualities of mind and heart, his winning manners, gave him at once the most extraordinary success. Almost at the beginning of a brilliant career, full of the largest promise, his life was 68 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. suddenly terminated by drowning, in July, 1859, at the age of twenty -five. The vast concourse brought together by his funeral testified to both the depth and the breadth of the impression which he had produced, and to the tender- ness of feeling which he had awakened. I had preached at his ordination, and it was a most melancholy service to officiate at his funeral. In the beginning of the session of 1860 the Seminary may be said, in a sense, to have taken a new start. Up to this time its course of study had been limited to two years. Of necessity this compression resulted in incompleteness in every department. There was a growing feeling that we must have an additional year. How to effect this was a difficult problem. By many it was said, " It is best to let well enough alone. " To enlarge our course had been with me a long-cherished desire. From the time of the retirement of Dr. Conant no little responsibility for the work of the Seminary had devolved on me as senior professor. In 1860 the trustees of their own motion gave me the formal title of President. This act laid on me an increased sense of respon- sibility, as well as a feeling of obligation to the students and the public to extend our course of study. In addition to this was the inexorable necessity of a larger income, of a permanent endowment for professorships, and of a fund for the increase of the library. With the presidency came a multiplicity of duties and cares. Work inside the Semi- nary could not be slighted, and decisive measures for secur- ing an endowment could be no longer delayed. At the beginning of the session of 1861 the class which had entered in 1860 sent to the Faculty and Trustees a formal petition that their course should be extended to a third year. Their petition was granted without hesitation, and, accord- ingly, there was no class to graduate in 1862. All felt ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 69 that a needed advance had been made, and the Seminary moved onward with freer breath and quickened step. The work of my own department was at once widened, as well as made more analytically minute. Classes in Systematic Theology now got clearer conceptions of the professor's vie\tfs, and of the logical relations of part with part. My work was increasingly satisfactory both in process and re- sults. The department of Homiletics, which, from lack of funds to support a professor, I had never been able to trans- fer to the shoulders of another, could now receive attention more nearly commensurate with its need. Beginning with lectures on preaching in the Middle year, attention was continued to it throughout the remainder of the course. In the spring of 1863 it became apparent in an unexpected way that there was a limit to human capacity for work which could not be passed with impunity. I was suddenly thrown upon my back by a violent fever. Our family phy- sician quietly said, " It is the result of overwork ; rest will speedily relieve you. " But rest brought no relief. The fever had so firm a grip that it speedily developed into the typhoid type. Bevision of Neander, editorial work on the Beview, professorial work in the Seminary, and the raising of funds for an endowment were brought to a stand-still. What the result was to be I afterwards learned became to personal friends a matter of anxiety. I was myself unaware of danger, though impatient at the long interruption of what had come to be absorbing pursuits. While the class of 1863, a class in which I took special interest as being the first to whose course a third year had been added, were engaged in graduating exercises, it was a matter of uncertainty whether I should ever leave the sick-bed alive. The summer was far advanced before I could resume any serious task. My first public work, when I was barely able to stand on my feet, 70 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. was to preach the ordination sermon of the Eev. Wayland Hoyt at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The intervening weeks until the opening of the next session of the Seminary were spent in recruiting my strength. It was in this autumn it became evident that, in the distractions of the country, the publication of the " Christian Eeview" could be no lcfnger continued, and its publisher transferred its list of sub- scribers to the " Bibliotheca Sacra. " With recovered strength the long suspended revision of JSTeander was resumed. Up to this time only fragmentary work had been done on it. Then taking it in hand in earnest, " copy " was soon on its way to the printers. Before another summer had come and gone the task was completed, the class of 1864 had been graduated, and hopeful progress had been made in the attempts at endowment. While engaged in prosecuting the work of endowment, serious questions arose between the Seminary and the Uni- versity proper, occasioning grave discussions which resulted in decisions unacceptable to some of the friends of the Uni- versity, and led to misunderstandings that may as well here as anywhere be cleared up. Until now we had been occu- pying rooms in the old hotel building on Buffalo Street, and paying rent for them to the University. Immediate friends of the Seminary, including leading trustees, said, " If we are to have an endowment, why should we not have a local habitation as well as a name ? " It was decided that, instead of paying rent to the University, of which we were popularly understood to be a department, strenuous efforts should at once be made for a building and a home of our own. The grave question was, Where should it be placed ? The Trus- tees of the University, especially Baptist members of the board, said, " Place it on the University campus. " Drs. Anderson and Cutting were especially earnest advocates of ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 71 this location. Their advocacy was seconded by Dr. Dean and others. It was claimed that, in accepting the grounds for the campus, the right had been reserved to place on it the building's of the Theological Seminary ; but when the trustees asked for a deed in fee simple of the lot or lots on which they should build, it was replied that this could not be done, — the conditions on which the land had been given precluding the right to deed it away. But the Sem- inary refused to erect buildings on land which it could not own. In the unknown vicissitudes of the future, embarrass- ments might arise, the risk of which the Seminary had no right to incur. It was decided to seek a site elsewhere. This decision gave much dissatisfaction to the Baptist pro- fessors and trustees of the University. The ruling idea of ministerial education as the ultimate aim of the University had been constantly presented among the Baptist churches as a motive for its endowment. To give to the Seminary a distinct and separate location it was feared would diminish the interest of Baptist churches in the University as such. Up to this time many Baptists, under the illusion that the Theological Seminary was an organic part of the University, and the ultimate end for which it had been endowed, had contributed moneys not a dollar of which, principal or inter- est, had gone to the support of either professor or student in the Seminary. To divert attention from the University to the Seminary as distinctively theological would, it was feared, work disastrously to the University. Inevitably, some coolness arose between the immediate friends of the Seminary and those of the University. As president of the Seminary a little more than due share of odium fell upon my shoulders. As was natural, a shade of coolness arose between Dr. Anderson, as head of the University, and myself, as head of 72 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. the Seminary. Our acquaintance and friendship had dated from 1840, when we were students together at Newton Theological Institution. It was also largely through his agency that I had become Professor of Theology at Eochester. In the earlier years of the work at Eochester our intimacy had been close and uninterrupted. Many a night, until the small hours, was spent by us in most animated and friendly discussion of topics in which we had a common interest. For theology he had no taste, and about its history and most fundamental controversies he had little or no knowledge. In many respects his mental constitution was widely differ- ent from my own. He could hold opinions and be subject to convictions that to my mind were not only inconsistent, but mutually destructive. His mind seemed to be con- structed like a modern sea-going steamer, with separate compartments, one of which might be " stove in, " and yet it sail right onward. Thus he could hold a scientific conclusion or principle that to me seemed destructive of Christian faith. With him, science and faith stood on independent grounds ; with me, faith was crippled if science collided with it at any point, either in its premises or in its conclusions. He was a strict nominalist ; I, in a modern sense of the term, was an equally strict realist. He was not by nature a metaphysician ; but as teacher of philosophy he was extremely fond of philosophical discus- sion. His range of knowledge was very wide for a man of his age. As tutor in Latin, as also in Mathematics, at Waterville College, then Professor of Ehetoric and Lecturer on History, he was possessed of an unusually well-furnished mind. He was extremely fond, in our discussions, of free and wide excursions over the fields of knowledge with which his work at Waterville had made him more or less familiar. To this range of knowledge he had had occasion, as editor ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 73 of the " New York Recorder, " frequently to recur. As a teacher and social disputant, all that he had acquired was at his ready command. His teaching accordingly was racy to a degree. As a companion in social life, he was full of interest, and his visits were always more than welcome. Between such old friends and companions the faintest air of coolness was to me at least extremely painful; but the interests of the University were to him supremely dear, as were those of the Seminary to me. He exercised his free- dom in criticism of myself and the Seminary to others, and to others I did the same respecting him and the University ; but never a word of angry dispute or of unkindness passed between ourselves. Our estimate of each other and of each other's work remained as kindly as ever. My estimation of him as a man and as the executive of a college was of the highest. His habits of mind and ever-increasing range of knowledge gave him a power as head of a college which has rarely been equalled. He would enter upon a new subject of inquiry and push his researches with a fury until he had made himself master of all its main particulars. Continu- ing this for a year or two, he would drop the subject for a new one. Thus at one period he was absorbed in ethno- logical inquiries under the guidance of such writers as Prichard. Discovering that comparative philology was the most decisive of all tests, he dropped ethnology. This discursive habit he continued to the end of his career, con- cluding his life in the study of etching, engraving, and the fine arts with absorbing interest. Dr. Anderson, by his tastes, his range of knowledge, and his fondness for economic, sociological, and political questions, was pre- eminently fitted for public life. Rochester University is, however, an enduring monument of a great life and of a genuine self-sacrifice. Effective as were his public ad- 74 EZEKIEL GILMAN EOBINSON. dresses, Dr. Anderson, in my estimate, will be longest remembered by his students for his chapel -talks, usually on current events, and for his farewell words at the gradua- tion of the several classes. He was a wise man in refusing all invitations to leave his work at Eochester for any other University. While considering with anxiety how to secure an endow- ment for the Seminary, and means for the erection of its needed buildings, as well as where they should be placed, it seemed to me that, before proceeding further, one more honest attempt should be made to terminate the scandal of maintaining two rival theological schools, at Hamilton and at Eochester, within the limits of a single State, both com- peting for support from the same churches and on the same pleas. In common with others who had had no participa- tion in the original struggle which resulted in the founding of Eochester University, I felt that one step toward healing the breach that had been created might be taken in the consolidation of the two theological schools. I accordingly wrote an earnest letter to Dr. Dodge at Hamilton, proposing that we should unite in a concerted effort to transfer the two institutions to some Eastern city, either Albany or New York, and build them up into a single institution of which Baptists should have no occasion to be ashamed. I went so far as to propose to resign my own position at Eochester, without expectation of resuming it, and betake myself to the States of New York, Pennsylvania, ■ — the Crozer The- ological Seminary had not then been founded, — and New Jersey to raise an endowment for the new institution. This seemed to me also to furnish a solution of the complicated problem before us at Eochester. Dr. Dodge replied that the proposed movement could not fail to be abortive, and would, instead of uniting the two institutions, result in the ROCHESTER PROFESSORSHIP AND PRESIDENCY. 75 formation of a third. The only alternative, so far as I could then see, was to take off our coats and go to work in earnest to put the Eochester Seminary into a home of its own, and to place it on a foundation where it could do its work more effectively than had been possible in its preceding years. During the years 1865 and 1866 the work of collecting funds for an endowment was carried forward with encourag- ing success, though not at a very rapid rate. Every day was given to it that could justifiably be spared from professorial duties. All Seminary vacations and recesses were spent in New York and its vicinity, or in the States of Connecticut and New Jersey, soliciting subscriptions. In addition to the endowment was the necessary provision of funds for the current support of beneficiaries. From a variety of causes, needless here to explain, the Union for Ministerial Educa- tion, during these two years, had no corresponding secretary, one of whose chief duties had been to provide for the benefi- ciaries. The care of them fell mainly to my lot. Besides bona fide subscriptions, several very handsome amounts had been conditionally subscribed or verbally promised, and could not be counted upon beyond question for the endow- ment until certain contingencies in the future should be finally determined. At the conclusion of the Seminary year of 1865 a colleague, Professor Velona E. Hotchkiss, with whom I had for eleven years sustained most intimate and most pleasant relations, sent in his resignation of the chair of Biblical Literature. His resignation gave me great pain, because tendered under misapprehensions which I was not then at liberty, though it was in my power, to dissipate. I simply assured him that the time might come when I could explain to him what then seemed suspicious, and could give him conclusive evidence of the truth of my explanation. That time came, 76 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. thank Heaven! years before his departure from this earth. I not only dissipated the misapprehension, but referred him to the best of authority for its groundlessness. Dr. Hotch- kiss was scholarly, genial, in the highest degree companion- able, free from guile and all double-mindedness, a colleague from whom I parted with sincere regret. As an expository preacher he had few, if any, equals. On the resignation of Dr. Hotchkiss, Dr. Kendrick of the University assumed the duties of the chair of Biblical Literature. Though professor of classical Greek, he had for many years been a most diligent and critical student of the New Testament. He was an acknowledged master in its interpretation. With the Hebrew he was not so much at home ; in fact, he had only paid it the courtesy of an occasional and transient visit. He knew but little more of it than its alphabet. By daily acquisitions he kept ahead of his class ; but the breadth of his knowledge and his masterly power of acquisition never permitted a soul among the students to suspect that he was practically a be- ginner in the study of the language which he was teaching. Such was his enthusiasm in the work that his class went forward with all the zeal and success of the pupils of a long- practised master. His duties were discharged alike to the satisfaction of himself, his colleagues, and his pupils. A long-cherished friend, a man of the greatest versatility and most varied "acquirements, of poetic fancy, of rarest geni- ality, urbanity, and wit, he would have been gladly retained as a permanent member of the faculty in the Seminary, and was always a most welcome guest in our household. IN EUROPE. 77 CHAPTER IV. IN EUROPE. — LAST YEARS IN ROCHESTER. 1866-1872. DUPING my visits to New York in 1865, I chanced to make the acquaintance of Mr. Coffin, who for many years had been at the head of the mailing department in the Post-Office of New York City. In conversation one day, hav- ing asked me if I had been abroad, he said, " Why don't you go ? " Replying that the expense of it, my duties as pro- fessor, and reluctance to be away from my family had combined to deter me from the thought of it, he at once said : " I can send you and your family to England without a dollar of expense to you. I have carte blanche from the Inman line of steamers to send abroad as free passengers any friends of mine to whom I may desire to show this cour- tesy. " And he added, " You will receive just as much attention from the officers of the steamer as if you were paying the highest price for your tickets. " His words were literally fulfilled. We all had free passes both in going and in returning. It was accordingly determined during the year 1865 that, as soon as arrangements of Seminary work could be com- pleted, making possible a year and a half's absence, we would sail for Europe. Certain loose strings attached to subscriptions for endowment required to be carefully tied ; one hundred dollars was to be provided for each of the bene- ficiaries during my absence ; and, more than all, the course 78 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. of theological instruction for the class which was to graduate in 1867 was to be completed. A mountain of work lying in the way was to be removed before we could sail. It was accordingly not till near the middle of December, 1866, that we found ourselves on board the " City of Paris " with faces turned toward the Atlantic. Our commander was the accomplished Captain Kennedy, the commodore of the line. He was extremely anxious to eat Christmas dinner in his own home, which was at Chester, near Liverpool. The full power of the steamer was accordingly brought into play, and we were at the dock in Liverpool before the middle of the afternoon of Christmas day. It may not be out of place to tell of the somewhat amus- ing way in which I was welcomed to English soil. Help- lessly ill throughout the voyage, I had rarely appeared among the passengers in the saloon. A canny Scotchman, who had lived long in Texas, was curious as to my identity, and discovered that I was some sort of professor. While at the Queen's Arms in Liverpool Christmas evening, so many of the steamer's passengers as were at the hotel had met in the tap-room for a typical English Christmas evening over a punch-bowl. A polite message was sent to our private parlor inviting me to come down to see some of my fellow- passengers. As I entered the tap-room, two or three of them came forward with great cordiality, gradually lead- ing me uncfer the chandelier, which was decorated with mistletoe; when, quicker than a flash, a buxom bar-maid sprang from behind me, threw her arms about my neck, and planted a kiss upon my cheek. Of course the maid was entitled to the usual forfeit, the price of a pair of gloves, and my fellow-passengers had their hilarious laughter at my expense. On the morning after reaching Liverpool we took the IN EUROPE. 79 express train for London, and went to Faull's Hotel, 1 within a stone 's-throw of Guildhall, and within easy distance of the Bank of England and St. Paul's Cathedral. It was a resort of college professors and other quiet and inquisitive people. Our stay of two or three weeks was improved by visiting old localities made famous in the history, both po- litical and literary, of England. Our first Sunday we went in the morning quite a long distance to attend a service at which Archbishop Manning, afterwards Cardinal, was to preach. His sermon was an able discourse, skilfully con- structed, and by successive steps leading up to and conclud- ing with a justification of transubstantiation and the worship of Mary. It was a packed assemblage of Irish, with a sprinkling of some eight or ten other faces, into which the Archbishop was constantly peering throughout his discourse. He was then of middle age, spare and angular in person, with clean-cut features and restless, eager eyes. In the afternoon we went to hear the famous James Martineau. No two assemblages could form a more com- plete contrast than that which we saw in the morning and that with which we met in the afternoon. The number of substantial-looking men whose countenances bespoke edu- cation and refinement was surprisingly large. Dr. Marti- neau wore a silk gown, and his head was densely covered with raven -black hair. He was then about sixty years of age. Surprised at the color of his hair, I asked one of his regular hearers, with whom I chanced to be sitting, if he dyed it. As though the question were a reflection on Dr. Martineau, he replied with warmth, " No ; he is not that kind of a man. " The sermon was a disappointment; it was in no way equal to the author's published writings. It was on the 1 A pleasant family hotel, then kept at No. 7 King's Street, Cheapside, by a retired Independent minister. — Ed. 80 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. text, " As concerning this sect, we know that it is every- where spoken against. " It was a defence of the Unitarian denomination, and struck me as being strongly tinctured with a kind of sophistry which a very ordinary man might fall into in attempting to justify the existence of his sect. On the following Sunday we went, of course, to hear Spurgeon. I am sorry to say I have utterly forgotten both his text and his discourse. Like everybody else, we were profoundly impressed by the vastness, the reverent attention, and eager interest of the congregation. The preacher im- pressed me, not by anything he said, but by the sustained spirit and tone and easy energy with which every word was uttered, and by his complete control of his audience. The discourse started in my mind a study of the preacher, which was resumed on my return to London the following summer. Shortly after this I made the acquaintance of Mr. Spurgeon at a meeting of the London conference of Baptist ministers, held in one of the larger rooms of the Tabernacle. I was seated next him at the collation which was usually served at those meetings. He was, of course, the central figure of the occasion, and was called on for a speech. What he then said gave me a better idea of his versatility and the source of his power than I received from any other one or all of the sermons I heard from him. I tried in vain during the sup- per to get him to talk about his theological college. His reply to my questions was, " I must refer you to my brother, who knows all about it. " A speech from " our American brother" was, of course, called for. The brief response con- sisted mainly in a defence of the Northern States for the part they had taken in the great civil struggle through which we had lately passed. It was evident that not a few of the company had no special sympathy with Northern sentiment. IN EUROPE. 81 The position of these English Baptists afforded a curious study for an intelligent Yankee. I am just here reminded of a remarkable misrepresentation made by some stupid per- son respecting this collation. I was not long ago accosted in the street by Rev. Justin D. Fulton, and inquired of about a dinner which had been given me in London, and at which there had been a copious supply of wines and liquors. He had, he said, a letter from some one whom he named who affirmed such a dinner to have been given. Dr. Fulton was specially anxious to know if wine was served at the collation above referred to. I could only assure him that I neither saw nor heard of anything stronger than water, tea, and coffee. It was during this stay in London that I presented one of my letters of introduction. It was, so far as I can now recall, the only one of the many I carried which I used while abroad. It was addressed by Rev. Dr. Weston to Rev. Dr. Brock, a somewhat noted Baptist minister of that day in London. Soon after reading the letter, he stepped to his sideboard and asked which I would take, sherry or port. Declining both, we chatted awhile, and he proposed to call for me at my hotel on the following Monday, to take me to a public meeting of dissenting ministers, which had been called for some object, I now forget what. This was the only civility I received from Dr. Brock. Of the London clergymen heard by us may be mentioned Dean Stanley at Westminster Abbey, whom I remember as following the beadle with his heels slipping up and down in over-large shoes, and as preaching in a drowsy and monotonous tone ; and the once famous but then aged Dr. Melville, who preached in one of the chapels of St. Paul's a sermon which I was almost certain I had read among his printed discourses more than twenty years before. I recall 6 82 EZEKIEL GILMAK" ROBINSON. also with great pleasure the delightful service we attended at the chapel of the Eev. Baptist Noel. The whole service, including the sermon, was refined in tone, truly Christian in thought, and winning in spirit. Of all the worshipping assemblies we saw in London, none could compare for appar- ent devoutness and intensity of interest with that of Father Machonochie at St. Alban's, High Holborn. It consisted to a very large degree of young men apparently from quite different classes of society. There was a baptism of in- fants during the service ; I was amused at the skill of the good father in whipping over his stole, which was purple side up when he received the infant, to the white side at the instant of concluding the formula of baptism. To any one accustomed, as we Americans are, to the com- plete effacement of down-town churches in our older cities, an interesting study is found in the parish churches which still survive in parts of old London, now almost exclusively occupied by business houses, — churches with rich endow- ments, well-salaried rectors or curates, but no parishioners. An intelligent and travelled physician of Queen's Street, Cheapside, told me he was the only gentleman resident in his parish. The curate, his personal friend, was required to hold a weekly evening service, provided there were any worshippers. The only person disposed sometimes to come to the service was one poor old woman, and she was hired to stay away. Curiosity prompted me one week-day to go and partake of one of the famous fish-dinners at Billingsgate. I found myself in a spacious dining-hall, with clean sanded floor, a long table with a shorter one at the end, running at right angles. Standing at the angle was a sleek, clerical-looking personage, smooth-shaven, with a white cravat and a swallow-tailed coat, who snapped out a " grace, " which IX EUROPE. 83 served as a signal to the crowded guests to fall to and help themselves. I was seated at the end of the shorter table among older and much more substantial-looking men than were the majority of the diners. Four of my immediate neighbors soon discovered me to be a Yankee not long in England, and were not slow in plying me with questions about America and our terrible civil war. They began their dinner by each one ordering a glass of " 'alf and 'alf," a drink the nature of which they volunteered to explain to me. The dinner, which consisted of ten courses of variously cooked and different kinds of fish, was soon disposed of ; but my four neighbors lingered long after the tables were cleared. Persistent in their inquiries about America, they remonstrated when I attempted two or three times to withdraw. Their potations amazed me, and I ventured to tell them that any one drinking in America as they had done would have been under the table. On leaving the hall, one of the four confided to me who they were ; they were all intelligent and well-to-do men of the upper middle class. It was an odd afternoon's experience, and through it I got an idea of one sort of London life which could have been gained in no other way. A snow-fall of some two inches in depth gave another amusing exhibition of London life. Cabmen demanded a pound for carrying one a distance for which they had pre- viously charged but a shilling. The " Times " thundered away at the vestries for not shovelling up and carting away the snow. Such a snow would have excited no comment from either newspapers or pedestrians in New York or Boston. From London we went to Paris, visiting Eouen, by the way, where we were well repaid by what we saw of pro- vincial French life. Our stay in Paris was not protracted. 84 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. Eeserving this city for a summer month, we hastened to Geneva, where we were to leave two of our children in the family of the distinguished historian, Merle D'Aubignd. From Geneva we proceeded directly to Italy. A single night's ride transferred us from a dismal evening snow- storm at Geneva to the bright and fragrant almond blossoms of Marseilles. The chill February air of Switzerland had been suddenly changed for the soft and soothing air of the Mediterranean. It was at Marseilles that we first saw stray glimpses of Oriental life. It was a queer sight to see cus- tomers served with milk from goats driven to their doors. The ancient city founded by Phoenicians, the earliest navi- gators and merchantmen of whom we have any definite knowledge, still abounded in Oriental scenes, notwith- standing all that France had done to modernize it. Our brief stay at Nice was among the pleasantest of our experiences ; this place was at that time the terminus of the railway. The drive along the Corniche road brought us to Genoa. Here and at Pisa we saw what everybody sees. At Naples we employed for the first time, and also for the last, a guide to take us to such quarters as we described. He took us to one of the Neapolitan hotels, all of which were then recognized as disease-traps on account of bad drainage. He was evidently a hotel-runner. After being duly rated, he landed us at an excellent boarding- house on the second floor of a ducal palace which fronted on the famous Bay. A drive to Lake Avernus and the Sibyl's Cave, and to Baiee, where we lunched on Lucrine oysters and Falernian wine, both execrable ; a day at Pompeii and Herculaneum; drives to Puteoli, St. Paul's landing- place in Italy when on his way to Eome as a prisoner ; to the extinct volcano of Solfatara, which then contented itself with innocent sulphurous smoke from unclosed crevices; IN EUROPE. 85 with frequent visits to various departments of the Museum, filled up our two weeks' stay at Naples. T must not forget to mention our visit to the famous Neapolitan Opera House, and my first experience of an opera. One of the scenes represented an eruption of Vesuvius, and the whole per- formance was to me imposing and impressive. The sudden outburst of a stage-full of ballet-dancers in their gaudy costume almost took my breath away. I had never before seen the like. Our last glimpse of the real Vesuvius was as we gazed back on it from the car-windows, and saw it resting quietly under a mantle of snow. On leaving Naples, we lost the only through train to Borne. It was a Saturday afternoon, and we concluded to go to modern Capua. Early Sunday morning we drove to ancient Capua, two miles away, and there saw the un- covered substructions of the amphitheatre, of which the Colosseum at Rome was a smaller copy. It seated one hundred thousand people. The brick cells for wild animals, surrounding the arena, were as complete and fresh-looking as if less than ten years had passed over them. The vast spaces occupied by the hundred thousand spectators were then utilized as vegetable gardens. The few straggling and forlorn-looking houses on the site of the once great city suggested to the imagination a strange contrast with what must have met the eyes of Hannibal and his victorious soldiers during that winter of debauch which brought them to ruin. Few of the thousands of travellers who rush through Italy take the trouble of looking at old Capua. The day before the carnival we reached Rome, where we put in two months of as hard work as two vigorous people could well endure. In the morning it was some ruin, church, or picture-gallery, and usually in the afternoon St. Peter's or the Vatican. Eome had not then become the 86 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. capital of Italy, and the whole city was filled with traces of mediaeval Eornanism. Priests and monks abounded. For the first time in my life I began to appreciate painting and sculpture. Michael Angelo's " Pieta " at St. Peter's disap- pointed me ; but his " Moses" at " St. Pietro in Vincoli " im- pressed me to a degree of awe while standing in its presence. For the study of the " Last Judgment " and the frescos of the Sistine Chapel, we had a quiet and undisturbed day. It is impossible to recount the vivid scenes recalled by memory of visits to the Mamertine Prison, to the Pantheon, to the Forum and the triumphal arches, to the ruins of the Palace of the Caesars, to the Catacombs, to St. John Lateran, and to the Church of St. Clement. Around this last-named church we lingered with special interest, embodying as it does so much concrete illustration of ecclesiastical history. Itself below the level of the street, there is beneath it a complete church with beautiful marble pillars, erected doubtless in the ninth century ; and still beneath this are the remains of the oratory of St. Clement, without much doubt the Clement of Paul's epistle to the Eomans. We were with others introduced to Pope Pius IX. on one of his appointed days, and heard one of his fatherly ad- dresses. We saw a good deal of his Holiness during Holy Week, which we diligently observed by daily visits to St. Peter's. On one occasion the Holy Father gave an amusing specimen of his unconsciousness of being observed by spectators. He was kneeling and praying near the head of the stairway which leads to the tomb of St. Peter. Kesting in the midst of his devotions, and taking from his snuff-box a big pinch of snuff, he applied a huge red silk handkerchief to his nose with a report that sounded through the arches. He concluded the respite by clearing his throat with a loud " Ahem," and ejecting the contents of his mouth IN EUROPE. 87 in the direction of the stairway with an energy worthy of a much younger man. The last we saw of the Holy Father was when, from an elevated balcony in front of St. Peter's, he sent forth his blessing upon the whole world, — a scene which was impressive or otherwise, according to the faith or imagination of the beholder. One most enjoyable day was spent in witnessing a fox- hunt on the Campagna. Many distinguished persons rode out from Rome to witness the scene, among whom was the famous actress, Charlotte Cushman, mounted on a very English-looking bob-tailed nag. A profitable forenoon was passed in visiting the gorgeously magnificent church of St. Paul's without the walls, then just completed, — a memorial of the Apostle on the supposed site of his martyrdom, but with no surrounding population to worship in it. Another day, now recalled with pleasant memories, was spent in a drive to Ostia, where convicts under guard were uncovering the ruins of an ancient temple, and in a return drive by way of Pliny's Villa, where, in memory of his fondness for rose- mary, which he specially mentions in one of his letters, we obtained several sprigs of the plant and brought them back to America. In the growing warmth of April we bade adieu to Eome, and turned our faces toward Florence, where the haunting memories of Galileo and Savonarola marred the pleasure I might otherwise have felt in its picture-galleries and splen- did works of art. Space would fail me to tell what I saw, thought, and felt on our way to Milan through the various historic cities of Middle and Northern Italy. At Venice, however, I may say we had the unexpected pleasure of occupying one of the three thousand gondolas which were massed together in the Grand Canal to welcome the arrival of Victor Emmanuel on his visit to that city in May, 1867. 88 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. Our position in the immediate vicinity of his gondola gave us a tine view of his imposing and ill-favored Majesty, At Milan it was impossible to forget, whether within the cathedral or on its lofty height, the one great Church father, Ambrose, who, above all others that ever trod its streets, had made the city famous. I could say this, though stand- ing in the presence of the imposing statue of Cavour, to whom is due the glory of having given to the Italians a united country. It was in Milan that an Italian gentleman congratulated me on the freedom of Americans, saying, " Here we are shackled by the domination of the priests over our women ; they extract from our wives and daughters all our secrets, and tie us hand and foot, both politically and religiously. " He had lived a good deal in England, and spoke English perfectly. Our sail over the Italian lakes and our crossing of the Alps by way of the St. Bernard Pass were accomplished in the brightest of sunshine ; but the ride by train down the Ehone from Brieg to Geneva, on the 3d of June, was through a snow-storm that would have graced a December day. .Vine-dressers in the vicinity of Geneva were in a panic on the following night, kindling great blazing fires in the vineyards to keep off the frost. The clergyman of the Anglican Church in Geneva preached a notable sermon the following Sunday, on the text, " Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, " etc. (Habakkuk iii. 11-18). A dismal frost on the 4th of June swept from Geneva to England, killing everything in its way, and in England blasting the apple-blossoms. While we were in Geneva we were invited to take tea at Dr. Merle D'Aubignd's, or at Dr. Merle's, to employ the name by which he was usually called in Geneva. He came down from his library in a high state of mental exhil- IN EUROPE. 89 aration. He had just discovered that when Calvin was the guest of the Duchess of Ferrara, Titian, the great Venetian colorist, was there also, and was so moved by Calvin that he was on the verge of joining his fortunes with those of the reformers. The historian was in a most genial mood, but I learned very little from him of his work as a theologi- cal professor. He was too much engrossed with his his- torical studies to be much interested in anything else. Lingering a week on our way from Geneva to Heidelberg, we remained at the latter place long enough to see and hear most of what was there attractive. I one day heard Eothe, then an old man whose lecture-room had once been thronged with hearers, lecturing to a class of thirteen, as ordinary- looking a set of young theologians as I had ever looked upon. A more complete absence of enthusiasm on the part of both lecturer and hearers could hardly be imagined. The professor rang endless changes on " das Absolut " throughout the lecture. I tried in vain to hear the then arch-heretic Schenkel. There were at that time in Heidel- berg no brilliant stars either in theology or philosophy. From Heidelberg we started for a July excursion through England and Scotland. Our route was by steamer down the Ehine. It was a German holiday ; our steamer was overcrowded ; hundreds stood at every stopping-place to rush on board ; the vigilant officers of the boat would let on board only just so many as disembarked. We endured the crowd as long as we could, gladly quitting the steamer at Bonn. We had a pleasant stay at this old university town. While there we called on the commentator and theologian Lange, a typical German professor, diminutive in size, with an oval, benign face, genial in expression, who gave us a hearty greeting. He introduced his wife, whose very fingers bespoke the hard-working German 90 EZEKIEL GILMAN KOBINSON. housewife. His house showed plainly enough that he was not luxuriating on an over-large salary. From Bonn we made our way through Belgium and Holland, studying as diligently as we could the art of their galleries and churches. Crossing the North Sea to London, our purpose was to go up one side of England and down the other. We accordingly proceeded without delay to Cambridge. I went, of course, on Sunday to worship in the old chapel made memorable by the ministry of Bobert Hall in his palmiest days. It was a barn-like building, plain and unattractive. A very creditable sermon was preached by the Bev. Mr. Bobinson, who was then its pastor, and whom I found to be both communicative and agreeable. It was vacation ; none of the colleges were in session, and the professors whom I cared to see were out of town. The most that I could carry away with me from Cambridge were awakened memories of what I had read of its distinguished men in the past. Days spent in the cathedral towns of Ely and Peterborough aroused vivid thoughts of the differences between the England of to-day and the England of four or five centuries ago, when the cathedrals were erected, — piles of stone which no power short of the miraculous could erect to-day. Two or three days at Haworth, looking at its dirty village, the old historic church, the surrounding moors, gave an impression that no amount of reading could have given of the scenes amid which the brilliant genius of Charlotte Bronte* found birth. We were not a little inter- ested as well as amused at the garrulous communicativeness of the old landlady at the hotel, who was more than ready to tell us all she knew of the Bronte* household. Of an incident at Stirling, slight in itself, but of terrible possibilities, I still retain a vivid recollection. I had just IN EUROPE. 91 been conversing with an American gentleman whom I had not seen since we parted in Italy ; and in a fit of abstraction I was about stepping from the platform to cross the railway track, when a strong hand on my arm gave me a sudden arrest. It was that of a policeman, who saved me from stepping directly in front of an incoming train. A sight of the immediate peril escaped sent every nerve of my body into a quiver. I remained rather a silent man in that day's excursion. On returning the following day to the station and giving a suitable expression of gratitude to the policeman who had saved me, I was curiously questioned as to what I was rewarding him for, and first found courage to speak of my narrow escape. What I saw at Melrose Abbey and felt at Abbotsford was only what everybody else sees and feels in visiting those localities. A visit to Dunblane, the seat and home of Archbishop Leighton, did not bring the satisfaction we expected. We saw his library, with its withered and worm-eaten bindings, carefully guarded in its locked and safely wired bookcase. His memory, so fragrant among the devout and studious, warrants more suggestive memorials of him than are furnished at Dunblane. Two weeks at Edinburgh, in exalted apartments from which we had a fine view of the Firth of Forth, were filled with what are still the pleasantest of memories. At every turn in its streets we were reminded of the distinguished men who in former generations had walked them, and who by profound religious conviction, as well as by their philosophy, history, and fiction, had impressed and moved the whole English-speaking world. The spirit of Knox seemed still to pervade the atmosphere, though faintly ; it was fast fading before the freer and less earnest though more enlightened spirit of our own day. Since the time of 92 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON". Queen Mary and Knox, Hume, Adam Smith, Walter Scott, Sir William Hamilton, and others had contributed each his modicum of thought, out of which had sprung the Edinburgh of to-day, by no means now the epoch-breeding centre which it has so often been in the past. All that I saw of the great University of Edinburgh were its buildings and the interior of one of its chapels, where we attended a Sunday service. Erom Edinburgh we made a memorable tour through the Trossachs, favored with most delightful weather and with full views of scenes made famous by the genius of Scott. Our stay at Glasgow awakened far less interest, and gave us far less satisfaction than our experience at Edinburgh. The first object seen by us from our hotel window was a drunken father led by a delicate little daughter across the public square. In fact, we saw more drunkenness in Glasgow in a single hour than we had seen in all our three months' stay in Italy. The squalor, drunkenness, and manifest signs of poverty and wretchedness, everywhere apparent, were a most intelligible commentary on the life of Chalmers, and his herculean efforts at charity organizations for the relief of misery among the lower classes. It was an amusing answer which I got from an intelligent Scotchman when I asked for an explanation of the abounding drunkenness everywhere visible : " Their unsubstantial diet of oatmeal, " he said, " does not give them sufficient stamina to resist the intoxicating influence of even small drams. " Content with what we had seen of the homes of Scotch metaphysics and Presbyterianism, and of Scottish writers of history and fiction, we betook ourselves to localities made famous by poets, both Scotch and English. With a jaunty dog-cart drive through Ayrshire to Dumfries, past the unpoetic Burns cottage, glancing at the ruins of the old IN EUROPE. 93 kirk, at the " auld brig" over the bonnie Doon, we filled up the day, and freshened our memories of Burns and his poetry. Poor Burns, with his inimitable poetry, his gross life, and his sad ending, became to me a more real, living personality than he had ever been before. Delightful days were spent by us at Windermere. The days of the Lake poets had gone by; only the houses of those who had once made the place notable still remained. Rydal Mount, the home of Wordsworth, was to us the chief attraction. But I was disappointed in the unpoetic aspect of both itself and its surroundings. In contrast with the halo which my mind had thrown around the poet, the place had to me the appearance of being the home of a hard-minded and common- place man. It was amusing to hear the old gardener speak of him as " a very near man," meaning by the Scotch term a man of penurious habits. A drive to Fox How warmed my heart anew toward the great teacher, Thomas Arnold, as I thought of the quiet enthusiasm with which he resorted hither to spend his vacations. A daughter graciously in- vited us in to look at a portrait of her father. Chester, notwithstanding the great antiquity of the place and its Eoman remains, failed to interest me, and we has- tened on to Oxford. But, alas, it was vacation in this Uni- versity town also, and we filled up our week's stay with daily visits to colleges, libraries, and whatever localities invited us and were open to inspection. We were told of an amusing instance of the antagonism then active between what was known as High Church and Broad Church. Mer- ton College held its chapel exercises in what was also a parish church. The head of Merton was an extremist of the Broad ; he would have only the baldest service permis- sible under the canon. The rector in all his services, Sun- days and Saints' days, insisted on the use of all the ritual 94 EZEKIEL OILMAN ROBINSON. the canon allowed. One of the dreariest of services which I attended at Oxford was in a church then and for genera- tions under the control of the Evangelical party of the Anglican Church. The sermon was but little above reli- •gious drivel ; the congregation was small, and showed but little interest. At Stratford-on-Avon, remembering what Hawthorne had written of Miss Bacon and her insanity while at work on her theory of the origin of the Shakespeare tragedies, we were interested in hearing from the person of whom she hired lodgings his account of her and her visits to the old church. At Kenilworth it was impossible for me, while looking at the ruins, to shake off the impressions made on me by Scott's novel, which I had read in the impression- able years of student-life. It was a luxury to sit down in London for a day or two of rest after the hurried month of sight-seeing through Eng- land and Scotland. I spent one most profitable Sunday morn- ing in going to Spurgeon's Tabernacle, not so much to hear him preach as to look at and study his congregation. An account of what I then saw I have furnished for Dr. H. L. Wayland's " Life of Mr. Spurgeon. " : An afternoon in the 1 [From "Wayland's " Spurgeon," pp. 101-102.] Happening to be in London on a summer Sunday evening, I went to the Tabernacle, getting there designedly after the services had begun and with the purpose of looking at the audience from its rear. I looked in for a moment at the main entrance on the first floor, and then at the entrance on the second floor, where, from the junction of the great galleries, there was an imposing view of the vast throng of worshippers below ; and then climbing a much narrower stairway, I went up to see what could be found above. On this third landing were two open doors, disclosing two triangular rooms, the base of the triangle opening wide toward the preacher, so that all in the rooms could have full view of him, and he a full view of them. Remote as these rooms were from the preacher (they covered the broad hallways of the first two floors), every word was distinctly audible. Every seat also was occupied, and apparently by young people employed in some kind of humble service. In a narrow IN EUROPE. 95 House of Commons offered little or nothing worth remem- bering except a study of the faces of Gladstone and Disraeli, as they sat near and opposite each other. An evening in the House of Lords was full of interest. The notables of both parties were present, — the then Earl of Derby, trans- lator of Homer ; the little sandy-haired Duke of Argyle ; Lord John Russell, who had ceased to act with either party; Lord Stanley, the son and successor of the Earl of Derby; and others. There was an amusing discussion over the bequest of a certain Mr. Brown, who had bequeathed to the city of London some nineteen thousand pounds, to be avail- able, after twenty years' accumulation, for establishing a hospital for sick animals. If the city of London declined to comply with the conditions of the bequest, it was to go to the University of Dublin. The twenty years had elapsed, and London was not complying with the condi- tions. The Bishop of Dublin made a very animated speech claiming the bequest for Dublin University. His Lordship was specially satirical in denouncing the scheme of a hos- pital for " sick dogs. " We had arranged to spend the month of August in Paris for the study of the great city, its art, its churches, its historical localities, and its great exposition of 1867, then attracting to itself the attention of the world. We spent some pleasant hours there in re-reading Carlyle's " French Revolution," and in visiting the localities of scenes and occurrences so vividly described by him. We went, one Sunday morning, to a service at the French Baptist Mis- aisle of one of the rooms stood one of the most forlorn and wretched-looking of human beings, a man in soiled and tattered clothes, with uncombed and matted hair, with a battered hat in his hand, unnoticed and un noticing, but listening as if transfixed and nailed to the floor. It was the most touching sight I had ever seen in a house of worship. A more emphatic testimony to the preacher's power could not have been given. — E. G. R. 96 EZEKIEL GILMAN KOBINSON". si on. The meeting was held in a small apartment, and baptism was administered in a decidedly novel manner. The candidate and administrator left the room where we were assembled, and passed through a door into an adjoin- ing apartment. We saw nothing, but heard a voice and the splash of water. I was told, afterwards, that the can- didate was immersed in a tub, the administrator standing outside of it. The impression made on me by all that I saw — the preacher, the assemblage, and the service — was that of a sad lack of good judgment and good taste. It was while in Paris that I first learned that Eev. J. Gr. Warren had been commissioned to see me about my becoming pres- ident of Brown University, and that he wished to know where we could meet for a conference. During our stay in Paris I preached several times in the American Chapel. Leaving Paris, we made a dash into the Alps. Lucerne, Interlachen, Stanbach, all left their impressions; but one red-letter day, hot and sultry in the valley, stands forth most vividly in my mind, — a day when, on the Wengern Alp, we had full view of successive avalanches from the Jungfrau, plunging and thundering into the abyss below. It was a most awe-inspiring spectacle. A cooling walk in the ice-cave at the foot of the Grindelwald glacier was a fitting conclusion to the day. Early in September we were again at Heidelberg, on our way to Berlin, where I hoped to spend some months in study. We stopped at Munich, Leipsic, and Dresden. In the latter place we concentrated our attention on the art- galleries, and especially on the Sistine Madonna. No copyist and no engraver of that picture has ever yet suc- ceeded in catching the Divine that looks out from the eyes of the babe. No photograph even speaks as does the origi- nal. Instead of the eight months' work at Berlin, which IN EUROPE. 97 I had looked forward to, I was limited to four by the neces- sity of answering the perplexing question suggested by the overtures of Brown University, — a question which could not be answered without returning home. Our leisure hours were diligently employed in the study of the lan- guage, guided by one of the best of instructors. Contin- uous study in connection with any one of the University professors did not seem to be the best use I could make of my time. I accordingly attended the lectures of those only who most attracted me, among whom I remember Hengsten- berg, Dorner, and some of the younger and the less-known scholars. Hengstenberg, who drawled and bawled out his dictation from manuscripts conspicuously yellow with age, was one of the least inspiring lecturers I ever listened to, and his auditors gave as little indication of interest as I myself felt. Dorner's lecture-room was packed. He was at the height of his popularity. The students were anx- ious to catch every word. Any one making the least noise, by entrance or otherwise, was hissed. His quiet manner was in sharp contrast with the noisy restlessness of Heng- stenberg. I remember spending one specially pleasant evening at Dr. Dorner's house, attending a meeting of a theological Socidat, a small body of picked men, of whom Professor Briggs l was one. It was he who introduced me to Dr. Dorner. A few days after, Dr. Dorner called on me ; we indulged in rather a wide range of conversation, touching on various theological questions in both their German and their American phases. There was little to choose between his broken English and my broken German. I recall also one delightful evening spent at the tea-table of Professor Piper, who had been an admiring pupil of Keander, and 1 At this writing there is only one " Professor Briggs," — Charles A. Briggs, D. D., of Union Theological Seminary, New York. — Ed. 7 98 EZEKIEL GILMAN EOBINSON. was giving his chief attention to Monumentale TJieologie and to the editing of a highly prized Almanac. Professor Piper was a bachelor, keeping house with an elderly maiden sister. We sat down at the tea-table a little past six in the evening, and left it at eleven. He was a most enter- taining conversationalist, and was quite out of patience with me for not being eagerly desirous of visiting- the Holy Land. He amazed me by his familiarity with the history of our government, repeating, without hesitation, the whole list of our presidents from Washington down to date. I have also a very distinct remembrance of an evening spent at a meeting of a theological debating society, where I was both amused and instructed by the German methods of doing things. The society consisted of the most brilliant and promising young men of the University, among them sons of Dr. Dorner, Professor Eanke, the historian, and other distinguished professors. The meeting was held in one of the rooms of a restaurant, which was a common resort of students. The members were seated alongside of dining-tables, and each one had his huge glass of beer before him. A paper was read, by one who appeared to be the youngest member of the club, on the doctrine of the Trinity, as taught in the Old Testament. The essayist stated and defended, with much skill and scholarship, the old orthodox position, which evidently did not command the assent of a majority of his hearers. A fellow-student, .who was the appointed critic of the essay, had not half fin- ished his first sentence when I was quite startled out of my gravity by a sudden and, to me, unexplained outcry from the whole assemblage. The critic, it seemed, was attempt- ing to read from a manuscript in his possession. The rule was that the criticism should be strictly extemporaneous. We had a novel experience in the celebration of our IN EUROPE. 99 American Thanksgiving, which was presided over by our American minister, Mr. Bancroft, and at which certain government officials assisted. Mr. Bancroft, in his intro- ductory speech at the banquet, indulged indiscriminately in English and German, throwing in paragraphs of either language as the fancy struck him. It had been my fate to preach in the morning, at the American Chapel, a Thanks- giving sermon, after the true American style. We were all loyal to forefathers' custom in observing the annual festival. During our stay in Berlin the American Church dedicated a new house of worship. I was waited upon by Mr. Theo- dore Fay, formerly American minister to the Helvetian Eepublic, as chairman of a committee to invite me to preach the dedication sermon. But having given the invitation, he added, " Knowing you to be a Baptist, it is no more than just to say that at the close of the dedication we pro- pose to celebrate the Lord's Supper, to which we are to invite all Christian people of whatever church, and even members of no church, if devoutly Christian. " To accept the invitation would place me in an awkward predicament, and, of course, I declined it, and did not attend the dedica- tion service. The urgency of friends at Brown University, and the still greater urgency of friends at Eochester that I should not leave the Seminary, made an earlier return home impera- tive. We accordingly turned our faces homeward. In Halle we enjoyed a Sunday evening reception at Dr. Tho- luck's. Both he and Madame Tholuck were in their hap- piest moods. Much had been said in the newspapers about his coming to America to attend the Evangelical Alliance to be held in the following year. At his expression of a wish to come, Madame Tholuck, patting him on the shoul- der, said softly, " Nein, nein ; " whereupon he laughingly 100 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. added, " I am too much afraid of your democracy and your hot cakes. " That Sunday morning had opened with the most dismal of drenching rains ; but before daylight we were awakened by a chorus of sweet male voices under our windows. Boys and young men from the Francke Orphan House, on their way to church, were singing their Advent carols. They were interesting to see as well as to hear, as they stood ranged along the curbstone in their " stove-pipe " hats, unprotected from the pouring rain. In the afternoon, when the sun came out, we went to a service in the old church where Tholuck had once preached famous sermons to thronging congregations. Sitting amid the meagre assem- blage, I tried, in vain to bring back in imagination the great preacher and entranced audience of which I had once read glowing accounts. I heard nothing from German pul- pits corresponding, in any degree, to what I had read of the preaching of Schleiermacher and Tholuck. At Cologne we, of course, filled our minds with all we could drink in of its great cathedral. It was our second visit to it, and the last that we were to see of the great cathedrals of Europe. We hastened to London, picked up the traps we had left there, and on Christmas day, just one year from the day of our landing, we sailed from Liverpool for America. The sixteen horrible stormy days of that passage home will never be forgotten. On reaching Rochester I hastened to Providence in re- sponse to the invitation of friends of Brown University ; and in spite of all that they could say in behalf of my taking the presidency, the conviction became clear and settled that duty required me to continue my connection with the Rochester Seminary. The very considerable amounts promised the Seminary would be likely to be lost by my withdrawal from it. Its friends had also given me a year of rest, and justice LAST YEARS IN ROCHESTER. 101 seemed to me to require that I should continue in its ser- vice. The decision to remain gave me a most welcome quiet of mind. Finding myself back again in Eochester about the middle of January, 1868, with a clear conscience as to duty, I set- tled down to % my work with the zest natural to a man whose appetite had been whetted by long abstinence. With the class graduating in 1867, and up to that time with the class of 1868, my instruction had been fragmentary, and to me, as of course it must have been to them, far from satisfac- tory. Theology as a department of knowledge never seemed to me more attractive than it did then, and I think I never saw more clearly the relation of its great doctrines to one another, or more need of a thorough grounding of religious teaching in a theology which should be both scriptural and philosophical. One abiding impression left on me in my European and particularly in my English observations was the inestimable value to a preacher of the gospel of a com- prehensive theological training such as was furnished in our theological schools, and was not then furnished in any of the ministerial training-schools of England. The superiority of the average well-trained American preacher to the average English preacher was quickly discernible to any impartial observer. I felt a sort of divine call to persist in theological teaching. When I came back, we had a broken faculty. During this year there was almost no working force. Professor Northrup had resigned the chair of Ecclesiastical History during my absence, to accept the chair of Systematic Theology in the Baptist Union Theological Seminary at Chicago. Hebrew was taught by the Eev. J. H. Gilmore, pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Eochester ; New Testament Exe- gesis was in the thoroughly equipped hands of Dr. Kendrick; 102 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. the chair of Ecclesiastical History was vacant. The Sem- inary was, in fact, but little more than half manned in its teaching force. But before we could venture to fill vacan- cies, long strides needed to be taken toward completing an endowment. It seemed insane to invite professors, with no money to pay their salaries. Guardians and friends of the Seminary saw and felt the need of immediate action. John B. Trevor, Esq. , of Yonkers, New York, came to our rescue in furnishing the means for a local habitation. The lot at the corner of East Avenue and Alexander Street was purchased, and steps were taken for the immediate erection of Trevor Hall, — a hall which, when completed in the following autumn, furnished dormitories for students, and rooms in which, though contracted, lectures were given. A fresh start was thus made, and contributions toward an endow- ment were more rapidly secured. This same spring Jacob E. Wycoff, Esq., of New York, came forward, and gener- ously purchased a house to be occupied by the president of the Seminary, whose salary, also, the trustees had spontane- ously raised to $4000. The purchase of this house proved unfortunate. Though sold by its owner at what he claimed to be considerably less than its value, a most desirable house, and on one of the choice streets of the city, it proved, through violation of every principle of sanitary drainage, a perfect malarial trap. A liability to malarial attacks, from which I had suffered before going abroad, now returned with redoubled frequency and force. The recurrence of these attacks seemed inexplicably mysterious until a too late discovery of the defective drainage. This aggravation of a long-settled disorder resulted in finally driving me from Bochester. In the summer of 1868 it became imperatively necessary that steps should be taken toward filling vacant chairs in LAST YEARS IN ROCHESTER. 103 the faculty of the Seminary. Our most urgent need was an occupant for the chair of Hebrew; but where to find him was a question which brought back only an empty echo. I betook myself to Dr. Hackett at Newton Centre for his advice as to the fittest young man for the vacancy. He i recommended as one among the fittest of his former scholars, Mr. George H. Whittemore, a gentleman of fine culture, a critical scholar, and a most painstaking teacher. He was still one of the members of the faculty when my connection with the Seminary ceased. Entering our new home, Trevor Hall, with the opening of the session in the autumn of 1868, every one of us, in- structors and students alike, felt ourselves called to fresh activity. For the first time in my Eochester experience the Seminary seemed to have a future. We got the Neancler Library into a shape in which it would be available for daily use. We began to receive new books, for the importation of which I had made arrangements while abroad in 1867. The session of 1868-69 stands conspicuous, in memory, as one of the pleasantest and most encouraging of all my Eochester experience. It was the faint beginning in the realization of hopes long cherished, toiled for, and patiently awaited. But the time had then come for prompt and vigorous efforts to secure the funds conditionally promised and before alluded to. The efforts were happily successful. We were then in a condition to fill the vacant chair of Church His- tory. We were not long in finding a man for it in the per- son of Eev. Dr. E. J. W. Buckland, then pastor of the church in New York City, since made famous as the Calvary Baptist Church, under the ministrations of the Eev. Dr. MacArthur. In connection, however, with the election of Dr. Buckland, which had been greatly desired by friends who knew his worth, an addition to our endowment of 104 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. ),000, on which I had confidently calculated, was lost to us through the inexperience and maladroitness of one of the Seminary's functionaries. With a growing endowment there was also a growing desire to add to our Faculty men of the highest qualifications and repute. The full time and strength of my dear friend, Dr. Kendrick, whose New Testament expositions had been invaluable to us, were then urgently needed in the duties of his University chair. A renewed application to enter the service of the Seminary was accordingly made to the Eev. Dr. Hackett, who had previously resigned his position at Newton Theological Institution. To this proposition he assented, joining us in the beginning of the session of 1870. His coming gave new impetus to us all. Every student in the Seminary was anxious to be under his instruction. It was accordingly arranged that on certain days the whole Seminary should be brought together in the chapel for the study of the First Epistle of John, — an epistle which, on account of its difficulties, he said that through all his long experience he had hitherto abstained from teaching. The Professor himself, according to his own admission, was never happier in his work, or taught, as we know, with more com- plete satisfaction to his pupils. It was during the session beginning in 1870 that I first felt at liberty to attempt anything in the way of post- graduate instruction. Four of our alumni, three of whom have since made a reputation for themselves as professors, avowed their desire to form a class for graduate study. 1 The only time alike possible for me and acceptable to them was the evening. We accordingly met evenings, in my study, beginning work as early as practicable after seven 1 The names of these students are given in the contribution of Professor True. — Ed. LAST YEARS IN ROCHESTER. 105 o'clock, and separating rarely, if ever, before eleven. Papers were presented by members of the class, on which free, full, and critical discussion followed. No year of my Rochester life had, to myself, been equally satisfactory with this, and I think none had been more profitable to the students. The need for outside work in behalf of the Seminary had been greatly lessened, and there was the long-wished-for opportunity for a more full state- ment and defence of my own theological views. To the work of this statement and defence my last two years at Rochester were earnestly given ; 1 and they were years which, on the whole, I am disposed to regard as the best of my life as an instructor ; but they were years overshadowed by clouds of ever-recurring illness. Attacks came, often most inopportunely, making the fulfilment of engagements impracticable. A malarial affection had become so deep- seated as to resist all medical treatment, and to make unin- terrupted labor impossible. The outlook for continued life in Rochester was of the dismallest. 1 The revised statement was printed as far as half-way through the doc- trine of Regeneration, and the printed sheets stored in the library of the Seminary. Since the death of Dr. Robinson Professor B. 0. True, D. D., has compiled the remaining lectures from the notes of earlier classes, and the whole has been published by Mr. E. R. Andrews, of Rochester. — Ed. 106 EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON. I CHAPTEE V. PRESIDENCY OF BROWN. 1872-1889. N the spring of 1871 there came again a proposal that I should accept the presidency of Brown University. The proposal was not an enticing one. The duties of a college president were far from attractive to me. The change involved what seemed to me a descent to a lower and less useful sphere of labor. But the prospect of relief from malarial affections by a return to the climate in which I had been born and bred, had its weight. An immediate deci- sion was impossible ; my mind hung in suspense over the question of duty. In the summer of 1871 a committee, con- sisting of members of the Corporation of the University, fol- lowed me to the White Mountains, whither I had gone for recreation. They reasoned skilfully. Two of that commit- tee, Dr. S. L. Caldwell and Dr. Heman Lincoln, have passed away. Dr. Hovey, the third member of the committee, still lives [July, 1893]. The summer ended without a decision. In the early winter the late Gardiner Colby, one of the Uni- versity Trustees, desiring to try his hand at argument, in- vited me to meet him at the Delavan House in Albany, New York. I still remained in doubt as to what I ought to do ; but a variety of considerations finally brought me to a deci- sion. Funds long promised for the endowment of the Seminary had been secured. It was on a safe pecuniary foundation, and its future was assured. Nothing would be PRESIDENCY OF BROWN. 107 perilled by my leaving it. On the other hand, regard for health, obligation as an alumnus of the University to go to its aid in the hour of its need, whispered suggestions of un- soundness in my teachings, the moral certainty of a coming revolution in theologic thought, — all combined to bring me to the conclusion that I ought not to refuse acceptance of the unwelcome call. If I had foreseen the pain which my decision would give to the friends of the Seminary, and especially to my old teacher, and at that time my colleague, Eev. Dr. Hackett, 1 it would have been reached, if at all, even more reluctantly than it was. But the die was cast, and in August, 1872, my back was turned on the scene of more than nineteen years earnest and sometimes most ex- hausting labor. A three weeks' drive with a span of spirited horses from Eochester to Providence, across the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Pihode Island, gave a most welcome opportunity for a needed and inspir- ing recreation. It also