CHAPTER VIII.

EXPANSION.

Robert MacVicar of

The Old Building.

CARCELY two men could have been found more unlike in their temperaments, habits, tastes and convictions than Principal MacVicar and Professor John Campbell. Yet the correspondence of those earlier days reveals how absolutely they enjoyed each other's friendship,

entered into

mutual confidence, and loyally paid deference to each other's judgment.

The Principal used to speak with lively satisfaction of the charm of Professor Campbell's personality, his singular passion for ethnological research, his devout, glowing fervor in expounding the Fatherhood of God, his pungent sincerity of utterance, his chivalrous sense of honor, all of which, combined with rare scholarship, created among the students, too, an enthusiasm which the gentle ripple of necessary names and dates in his lectures could not dampen.

In their dormitories men spoke with awe of the strange tongues in which he could "readily converse" and the unreckoned number of stranger tongues of which he had “a working knowledge.' In the class room they loved nothing better than the flashes of genius that were periodically called forth by invited or uninvited digressions from the note-books; digressions which showed that he had a far higher conception of the functions of his office than that satirized by Dickens in his caricature of educationists who suppose that the one end of life is to fill empty pitchers with imperial gallons of facts.

The Professor's own easy control of a large mass of information accentuated the ideal, which he was fond of exalting, that Christian manhood ranks higher than Christian scholarship. The sparkle of his zest for a wide full view of life, in contrast to a cramped mentality that can be content with mere post-mortem investigations of ancient heresy, often reached incandescence in these asides," which never really were aside.

Many a student, listening to him, might have said:

"Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sailyards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship runs on her sides so low

That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air."

If, at one crisis, the keel seemed to have ploughed the air too alarmingly, his friends, however they

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may have emulated his own bold publicity in expressing their sincere convictions, felt not less the old-time affection for the man. Principal MacVicar, on the eve of the ecclesiastical Trial," in which he found it impossible to be silent, invited Professor Campbell to be his guest; and only the acceptance of a previous invitation stood in the way of this hospitality extending to more than a meal or two. They who were able to detect in the Principal's features nothing but unrelenting marks of austerity, and, in his temperament, chronic lack of consideration for the views of others, must often have been perplexed to account for the harmonious relations which, throughout a long career, he was yet able to sustain with those from whom he radically and openly differed.

At the period now under consideration, however, divergence of views was not conspicuous. The two men had much in common, especially in their practical estimate of the definite work which they had in hand.

Professor Campbell, with a happy coincidence of sympathy in regard to the peculiar mission of the institution, as a citadel of Protestantism in the midst of a Roman Catholic population, early identified himself with a French congregation in the city, where he and his wife practised zealously the principles for which the college so strongly stood. Though in this, and other ways, thrown, with the Principal, into what some mistook for a mere con

troversial and proselytizing movement, in the prosecution of which they faced together more than one violent French mob, it should not be forgotten that they both had not a few friends amongst the Roman Catholics; and whatever differences may have arisen between themselves later on, the combined attractiveness of their work in the class room during the period under review was such as to induce not only some stray student on his way to Princeton to reconsider his course and remain in Montreal, but to draw thither men of promise from the extremes of the country, as well as from the other side of the Atlantic.

The prestige of the teaching staff was greatly increased through the services of Rev. John Scrimger, M.A. (afterwards D.D.), then minister of St. Joseph Street Church, who ungrudgingly took up the work laid down by Dr. Gibson on his removal from the city, and for eight years acted in the capacity of lecturer in Exegesis till he was unanimously appointed by the General Assembly to that chair, which he has made a tower of strength.

A Galt boy, trained under Dr. Tassie, and taking a high stand, both in his university course in Toronto and in his theological course in Knox College, Dr. Scrimger early displayed studious habits, executive ability and pronounced initiative. Few men have been able to bring to bear upon critical questions sounder scholarship, more impartial judgment or riper appreciation of the need of adapta

tion to modern thought in order to solve modern problems; and fewer men have more thoroughly mastered the art of teaching.

He, too, has been keenly alive to the call for an aggressive work of French evangelization. The citizens of Montreal will not soon forget the vigor, resourcefulness and fairness with which he carried on, from night to night, in the Daily Star, a controversy with a Jesuit priest who had challenged some of his statements. He has always taken a large share in the work of the church courts.

Rev. James Ross, M.A., B.D. (afterwards D.D.), an Aberdeen man, the youngest member of the staff, came to Canada about the date of the origin of the college, and received his training in Queen's University, Kingston, from which he graduated with distinction. He was appointed to the chair of Practical Theology in 1893, after valuable experience in the pastorate and the performance of the duties of a lectureship in Queen's University. Not the least of his qualifications for the position which he fills is his high standing as a preacher.

From time to time, the work of the regular staff has been supplemented by the services of special lecturers. Invaluable service was rendered in the early days by Rev. Dr. William MacLaren, afterwards Professor in Knox College, Toronto. The Gaelic language and literature were treated by Rev. Dr. MacNish, of Cornwall; French Theology, by Rev. C. Doudiet, Rev. Dr. C. E. Amaron, and