131 
STUDENT LIFE IN GERMANY. 
By Rev. A. J. MORRIS, M.A. 3rd November, 1903. 
The Lecturer, after explaining the circumstances under which 
he went to Germany and the procedure of admission to the 
University of Bonn, gave a very interesting account of student 
life, which was very different from that in England. He went 
there for twelve months to study German theology, of which he 
had, at the beginning, a certain amount of horror. He attended 
the theological school, obtained the list of lectures, and found, to 
his surprise, that they began at six o’clock in the morning. The 
Professor, whom he called upon, entered his name on the list. 
The students signed a small book, and their names were called 
out at the first lecture, and it was assumed that they attended 
all the other lectures, as the names were not called out again, nor 
the book signed, till the last lecture of the course. Every 
German professor he went to see said, ‘* Why come to Germany 
to study theology ?”’ and advised him and the two others who 
were with him, to return to England. The beginning of every 
lecture they went to on theology was, ‘‘ Gentlemen, unless you 
can read English it is no use you attending my lectures.”’ Then 
would follow a list of books they had to read, including 
*“« Westcott,”’ and the modern English theological writers. They 
attended also a superior class for studying a small portion of the 
Greek Testament. ‘They read the first eleven verses of the 
** Sermon on the Mount,” and went through nearly every manu- 
script in existence bearing thereon. An enormous amount of 
time was spent on the words, ‘if the salt have lost his savour,” 
and in dealing with the chemical constituent properties of salt. 
It was a wonderful illustration of the enormous capacity of the 
Germans for taking pains. They had this delightful privilege in 
Germany, that attendance for a term at any University, counted 
for attendance at every University, so that students were allowed 
to go from University to University—Gottingen, Heidelberg, and 
others. When a student passed his examinatton sufficiently well, 
he had a license given him to be a “ privat-docent’’—one who 
coached pupils, and was on his way to be a professor. In their 
own Verein they had a ‘“ privat-docent’’ who had published a 
book that might gain him a professorship. Many of the German 
theologians began with very considerable subversive theories of 
Christianity, but as they grew older, with a more assured posi- 
tion, they relinquished their former position. 
