Chapter XVII: Conclusion: Of Bible Work

To see what I have seen, and to know what I have known, of the good accomplished by my labors, have been abundant compensation for all my travels and for all my toils; and I await, with bright and happy anticipations, the fuller revelations and rewards of a blissful eternity.

LABORS FOR THE COLLEGE.

I entered upon my duties as President of Cumberland College, at Princeton, Kentucky, the second Monday in September, 1858. Of the commencement of my labors there I wrote as follows:

Cumberland College, Princeton, Kentucky, _October 12, 1858_.

Rev. James H. McNeill, _Secretary of the American Bible Society,
New York_.

My dear Brother: I have been very anxious to write you ever since I reached here, but have been so very busy that I could not get the time. I have had a great deal to do here in the commencement of my duties, and then I have been absent every Sabbath, and a portion of each week, attending presbyteries, synods, etc., to promote the interests of the college. Its friends are very sanguine in regard to its prospects. They think they have not been as good for many years. All the religious bodies that I have visited, the newspapers, and the public at large, seem interested in my success, and are doing all that they can for the college. I hope that I may do a great deal of good in this work.

Yours as ever,
H.W. Pierson.

My labors here until 1861 were not less exhausting than they had been since I entered upon my Bible work in 1853. In addition to my duties in the college, I traveled extensively, "electioneering" for students, as was the custom in that region. Their numbers increased to such an extent that we needed an additional building. I appealed to the people of the village and the county, and they responded most nobly by subscribing twenty thousand dollars, and erecting a college edifice, with a large assembly hall, library, recitation and all other needed rooms. I had the pleasure of taking my esteemed friend, the Right Rev. B.B. Smith, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Kentucky, through the building, on one of his annual parochial visits to the village, and he pronounced it the most perfect and beautiful specimen of architecture in the State.

The attack on Fort Sumter, and the events that followed it, compelled the suspension of this, as they did of nearly or quite every other college in the Southwest and South, and terminated my labors there. Wishing to engage in similar educational work elsewhere, I asked for testimonials from a few of my friends, including Bishop Smith. He kindly gave the following, with which, as I at that time terminated my labors in the State, I will close this very personal volume, descriptive of my always pleasantly and gratefully remembered life and labors in the Southwest:

Louisville, Kentucky, _September 19, 1861_.

... I first knew Dr. Pierson (then Mr. Pierson) when acting as Bible agent in the waste places of Kentucky, and our hearts were strongly drawn toward each other in consequence of our having been "companions in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ"--I having labored and suffered in behalf of the same class of persons as Superintendent of Public Instruction, traveling for the greater part of two years over the roughest portions of Kentucky. To elevate our fellow-creatures so that they can read the Bible for themselves, and then to give to all such a Bible in their own tongues, is a noble work, and great suffering may well be cheerfully endured in the prosecution of it.

His exertions in behalf of the college at Princeton have attracted more of my attention, and elicited my most cordial admiration, beyond anything of the kind in this State for thirty years. The difficulties to be overcome were of no common kind, and the means at his disposal very limited; the skill with which he met the one, and the wisdom and energy with which he drew forth the other, have rarely been exceeded. And I have it from the lips of the most intelligent persons in the village, during my periodical visits, that no person they ever knew could have awakened equal enthusiasm in so good a cause. For myself, I should have looked upon the task of raising half the sum of twenty thousand dollars in such a village, for such a purpose, as altogether impracticable; and yet Dr. Pierson seemed to succeed with perfect ease.

The teaching he was, of course, obliged to devolve in great measure upon others. But it has come to my knowledge that he was considered the animating spirit of the whole concern. And it is only necessary to converse with him, from time to time, to become impressed with a sense of his literary attainments, fine taste, genial nature, and earnest, unaffected piety.

His loss to the college, should he leave it, will be irreparable, and long will it be before his place will be made good to the general cause of education in the Commonwealth, and in the esteem and affection of

His and your friend, etc.,
B.B. Smith.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: The great revival that followed the financial revulsion of 1857.]

[Footnote 6: On the slavery question.]

THE END.

RELIGIOUS WORKS.

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HOMILETICAL INDEX:

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The Apologists.--Introductory Sketch--Notice, and Epistle to Diognetus; Justin--Sketch, First Apology, and Synopsis of Dialogue with Trypho; Author of Muratorian Fragment, and the Fragment; Melito--Sketch, and Fragment; Athenagoras--Sketch, Chapters from Mission about Christians, and Final Argument on the Resurrection.

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The Old Testament

IN THE JEWISH CHURCH:

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"Professor Robertson Smith's book is exactly what was wanted at once to inform and to stimulate. Written by one of the first Semitic scholars of our time, it is completely abreast of the most recent investigations, and pervaded by a thoroughly scholar-like spirit. His easy mastery of the subject and his sense of which are the really difficult points and which the settled ones are apparent on every page. What is more surprising is the skill wherewith these resources are used. Although scientific in the sense of being thorough, exact, and business-like, the book is also popular--that is to say, it is perfectly intelligible to every person of fair general education who has read the Bible. For clearness of statement, for cogency of argument, for breadth of view, for impartiality of tone, for the judgment with which details are subordinated to the most interesting and instructive principles and facts, it is a model of how a great and difficult subject should be presented to the world."--_Pall Mall Gazette._

"Speaking after mature deliberation, we pronounce Professor Robertson Smith's book on Biblical Science one of the most important works that has appeared in our time. It justifies, in a convincing and conclusive manner, what we have from first to last maintained regarding him--namely, that he was engaged in an enterprise auspicious to the Christian Church; that he was not assailing the faith, but fortifying it. He has not abandoned one jot or one tittle of his principles, but he now for the first time states them comprehensively, and points out their natural and logical applications."--_The Christian World_ (London).

"In his studies the author has made a careful use of the studies of the great critics of England and Germany. But his work is marked by a spirit of intrepid independence and an individuality which refuses to surrender at discretion to anybody. He refuses to be lifted from his feet on the solid rock of Christian faith, by any passing wave of skepticism. As an introduction to the Old Testament for the use of teachers, and a vigorous, scholarly statement of the principles and results of conservative Biblical criticism, as related to the Old Testament, these lectures will be found specially serviceable and interesting. And they are certainly remarkable as an indication of a liberal movement in the Scottish Church."--_New York Evening Express._

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