To the Editor of the 3 "Norta-Cuina Dairy News."
Sin,—In the recent theological discussion in your columns mention has been made of the name of Robertson Smith and it might interest some of your readers to know that although he was among: the pioneers of the anti-traditional school he suffered for his views.
There can be no question of Smith's intellectual honesty. Indeed it was his staunch adherence to his convictions that precipitated the great controversy which ended in the General Assembly dispensing With his services as a Professor of Divinity in the United Fred Church. The Evangelicals sneered at Smith's theology as "made in Germany."
It is most likely Smith sat at the feet of mon like Wellhausen and Germans of kindred views, bud' what then? Did the Evangelicals in dismissing Smith root out the so-called "canker" of higher! criticism? They did not.
George Adam- Smith, worthy successor of his name sake, had the Evangelicals sized up. With! the fearlessness born of conviction' he too proclaimed the truth as he saw it, until even the Evangelicals came to wonder. if there really were two Isaiabs after all.
Robertson Smith felt sore at hid treatment. He was inclined to blame Principal Rainy for thd whole business and told Carnegie Simpson (Smith's biographer) that) Rainy was an old Jesuit, And yet! Rainy was by no means a narrow-minded man. Many people considered him the greatest religious statesman since the days of Chalmers. But of course it would be unfair to pretend that Robertson' Smith suffered solely for his views. He did not. He suffered for his temper as well. The late Sir W. Robertson-Nicol in the "British Weekly" said Smith was an impossible man, andi that probably) more than anything else influenced Rainy.
At any rate Smith, it seems, was too cavalier with his colleagues, and of course when the vote was taken the small men had their revenge. But a man like Robertson Smith cannot be "downed."
Like John Brown, "his soul goes marching on."
True he might have gone on for years moulding a liberal theology on both sides of the Atlantic a9 men like Ramsay and G. A. Smith have done and James Moffat and his school continue to do, but; tragic though his end was, he saved the students of his own and future generations from being spoon-fed on a namby-pamby milk-and-water theology, and helped to inculcate in the colleges of his own and other. Churches a cutPteulum that necessitated sound scholarship from the Professors and hard work from the students, It was the emancipation of the ministry. am, ete., 8. T.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.