EZEKIEL OILMAN ROBINSON. 577 



His careful efiuition was of great benefit in giving to the jDupil 

 solid ground on which to stand. The ethical universe remained no 

 longer chaotic, inchoate, an earth without form and void, illumined by 

 light transfused through an omnipresent mist ; but, under his teaching, 

 dry land began to appear in the midst of the waters, and sun, moon, 

 and stars shone out as distinct luminaries in the ethical firmament. 

 Students who have continued to prosecute their studies, for instance on 

 the subject of conscience, after being surprised to see how vaguely and 

 without precise definition that term is used even by writers of emi- 

 nence, have come to feel a deeper gratitude to their college instructor 

 for his sharp definition. They may perhaps think that the definition 

 given was not sufficiently comprehensive ; but that definition has 

 risen, amid the haze which seems to enwrap many ethical writers, 

 like the island which Kant saw outlined amid the restless waters, the 

 obscuring mists, and the dissolving phantoms of a wide and stormy 

 ocean. 



But no estimate of the teaching would be adequate which failed to 

 take account of the teacher. The man was in his teaching, the living 

 truth was in the man ; therefore his teaching did not simply add to 

 the intellectual capital of the pupil, it became an element in that 

 pupil's moral life. In his best moods his class-room was a forge, 

 where, in the fires of his own intense thinking, heated seven times hot- 

 ter under the blast of free discussion, the cold iron of traditional notion 

 was fused and then taken out, hot and fluent, to be fashioned anew 

 under the hammers of master-workman and apprentice alike ; or, to 

 change the figure, that class-room was a palajstra where he who wres- 

 tled the best enjoyed the fullest discipline and received the richest 

 reward, as he carried away his " apples of gold in pictures of sUver." 



The preacher, the administrator, the teacher, demands our admira- 

 tion ; but still more admirable is the man himself. Towering above 

 many in physical stature, he towered also in intellectual power and 

 moral character. On the physical side of his nature he was endowed 

 with a striking personal presence, and a wiry well knit bodily frame ; 

 but these were only the physical setting of pre-eminent intellectual 

 power. 



His paramount mental characteristic was his power of analysis. His 

 mind was a crucible, in which, when heated by the intense fires of his 

 intellectual nature, thoughts were readily resolved into their constitu- 

 ent elements. But he was by no means lacking in synthetic power. 

 This was seen in his well constructed sermons and in the broad gener- 

 alizations and brilliant inductions of his theology ; but the analytic 



VOL. XXX. (n. S. XXII.) 37 



