A Reminiscence
The sight of the last catalogue of our time-lionored Seminary at Princeton — eldest of the Presbyterian sisterhood — has drawn us back to the happy days passed within those walls, albeit we need not travel through many years to reach them. A thick octavo could not have afforded more delight, or awakened a greater multitude of lively recollections. As we look at the modest wood-cut with which they have garnished the slender annual, we are once more there. The old familiar bell is sounding in our ears. We see tjie troops of students streaming across the narrow
Campus, white-cravated, and “sombreclad,” with lecture-books and Turretines in hand. We follow them in — inhaling, as Charles Lamb hath it, the “odor of learning” in the very atmosphere. There are all the well-remembered spots — the “Oratory” so plain and Presbyterian in its aspect, with great John Calvin looking down serenely from the walls — the old dining-hall, now converted into a place for banqueting on reviews and journal literature — the front lecture-room, in which were dispensed prelections worthy of the prayer-consecrated study of Brown at Haddington, or Edwards at Northampton — and the little Museum with its dumb idols “ranged for show,” and reminding us of far distant brethren, toiling under burning skies for dying souls.
Who does not remember well that Oratory where, — if we may give loose for a
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moment to a mirtliful thought that intrudes upon us — we might tell how often we sat tremblingly waiting for the summons to “call the next;” and how much more freely we breathed when the sentence had been pronounced upon our unfledged ten-minute discourses. But other thoughts crowd upon us as we recall that hallowed spot, and blessed memories that will perish only with our lives. Dear to us is the recollection of that venerated form that appeared, morning after morning, on the platform before us, reminding us by his stooping head and placid face of one with whom he has much in common, William Wilherforce. And who shall say that when Western Africa is lined with shining villages, Liberia will not place his name beside those of Ashmun, Finley, and Wilberforce himself? Dear to us too, is the remembrance of his colleagues, who led us on through the instructions of the day, now narrating the history of God’s dealings with His church, now feeding us with “high discourse” about theologic subtleties, and now unfolding the scrolls of Oriental literature, and learning. Perhaps we are somewha,t warped by pardonable partialities, but as we look at the short but illustrious roll of those who fill the chairs of that institution, we cannot but ask where can we find greater, truer, or more faithful men? Where shall a more complete training be given to those who are to train their fellow-men for eternity? Where can more be done to hinder the much-feared degeneracy of the ministry than in our best Theological Seminaries?
As we look at the venerable home of our theological boyhood — set upon a hill and seen from afar — we love to go around its towers, and to mark well its glorious bulwarks. As we wander, again, in fancy, through its halls, the forms of those who have long been uniting in the melodies of another world, throng about us. We seem to meet there the sainted Nevins, treading again that spot in which he once delighted. We pass by the very door through which Wisner and Breckenridge passed in, side by side, to social prayer. We stand on the spot where Winchester once knelt, and enter the room from which Lamed looked forth with eager eye, to the whitening harvest. On the record of one room we read the name of Lowrie, and our thoughts wander off to that distant sea, where “full many a fathom deep,” he slumbers till the resurrection morn.
Time- honored edifice! peace be within thee! Long may that goodly array of venerated names be unbroken 1 Long may their pathway to the silent tomb remain untrod! Long may the smile of God fall, like the light of the morning, on thy sacred walls. For my brethren and companions’ sake, we would again say — Peace be within thee!