Whether his college standing suffered because of these pastimes does not appear; probably not, for he acquired knowledge readily. The examination papers of the next June are preserved, and very stiff examinations they were, held on successive days in algebra, Euclid, Greek (Medea and Hippolytus), the Catechism, Trigonometry, Latin Prose, Roman History, Pass Latin (Terence), Classics (Honours). How he got through the trigonometry, with his dislike for mathematics, is difficult to conceive. And certainly, the Catechism test was searching enough without the enchantment of the polyzoa to have affected his choice of a career. There were eighteen questions, such as these: “Show that the Holy Spirit is both a person and divine.” “Eternal life is distinguished as being initial, partial, and perfectional. Explain and illustrate under each head from Scripture.”
It is difficult for those of a later generation to imagine the struggle and turmoil which, in those days, engaged men’s minds. Following Cuvier and Owen, the doctrines and theories of Lyell, Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley threatened to split the very Church asunder. Some, like Wilberforce in the Church, attacked them; some, like Gosse in science, did likewise, and one may imagine, it being but nine years since The Origin of Species that, in discussion with his favourite pupil, Johnson faced the controversy fearlessly, and that his attitude was not an ambiguous one. In those days, moreover, it was still expected that the Anglican Church would absorb one, at least, of a family of children, but the youth of the day were graduating from Butler’s Analogy, which failed to satisfy them as it had satisfied Newman. Subjects more appetizing than theological revelation they were eagerly lapping up in an anonymous volume, Vestiges of Creation, in Lyell’s Antiquity of Man, in Herbert Spencer’s First Principles, and in Huxley’s Lay Sermons and Addresses, which appeared anti-theological to a degree.
From: The Life of Sir William Osler by Harvey Cushing; 2 volumes (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1925), 1:52-53.
Sir William Osler (1849-1919) was the first Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland (1888-1904) and Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University (1904-1919). Canadian-born and trained, he was the son of an Anglican priest who had left England as a missionary to Canada. Osler originally made his name as the first physician to make a detailed study of blood platelets. Although he worked as a physician throughout his life, the main burden of his career, and the work for which he is still remembered, consisted of the upgrading and modernizing of medical education.
The context of the quotation is Osler’s decision to abandon a plan to study for the Anglican ministry (thus following in his father’s footsteps) for a medical career.
