Читать книгу A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An Autobiography онлайн

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The meetings of the Presbytery were not then merely formal business meetings. They began on Wednesday and closed on Monday. They were looked forward to by the church in which they were to be held as spiritual and intellectual feasts. To the members themselves they were seasons of reunion, where friendships were cemented, and where wits were sharpened by intellectual conflicts, often before crowded congregations.

Union Seminary, now of Richmond, Virginia, has always been under the direction of the Synods of North Carolina and Virginia; and there were strong reasons why students from those Synods should study there. They were always reminded of that obligation. But the high reputation of Drs. Hodge and Alexander was a strong attraction toward Princeton. My pastor and Professor Phillips, chairman of the committee in charge of me, had both studied there. So I was allowed to have my preference. No doubt this proved another stepping-stone to Siam. Union Seminary was not then enthusiastic in regard to foreign missions, as it has since become. At the last meeting of Presbytery that I was to attend, Dr. Alexander Wilson moved that, inasmuch as Orange Presbytery owned a scholarship in Princeton Seminary, I be assigned to it. To my objection that I had made money to pay my own way, he replied, “You will have plenty of need of your money. You can buy books with it.” I followed the suggestion and laid in a good library.