Andrew Cameron as I knew him : three memorial tributes to the Rev. Andrew Cameron, B.A., LL.D

Hewitson, William, Coulls, Somerville Wilkie, Dunedin N.Z., 1925

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Title: Andrew Cameron as I knew him : three memorial tributes to the Rev. Andrew Cameron, B.A., LL.D.

Author: Hewitson, William

Published: Coulls, Somerville Wilkie, Dunedin N.Z., 1925

Some friends of the late Dr. Cameron published three tributes to his memory for private circulation. A gentleman who read them expressed the wish that they should be circulated more widely among Public Men, Teachers, and Ministers and Elders of the Presbyterian Church. He offered to bear the expense. After consultation with persons interested it was decided to accept the generous offer with sincere thanks.

The accompanying copy of the tributes is presented for your acceptance with the compliments of Dr. Cameron’s friends.

Several copies are sent to you as one of Dr. Cameron s brother Ministers, with the request that you will distribute them among those of your Office-bearers who are likely to be interested in them.

Dunedin,

Sth October, 1925.

REV. A. CAMERON, 8.A., LL.D.

ANDREW CAMERON

AS I KNEW HIM

Three Memorial Tributes TO THE REV. ANDREW CAMERON, B.A., LL.D.

By WILLIAM HEWITSON

PUBLISHED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION BY A FEW OF DR. CAMERON’S FRIENDS

INTRODUCTORY WORD.

®N Tuesday, the 19th instant, I received word through the telephone that my old friend, Dr. Cameron, had fallen in Manchester Street, Christchurch, on his way to a meeting of the University Senate, and had died immediately. He had been spending the week-end with his second daughter and her husband in Rangiora. It had been a time of peace and great happiness. His cup ran over. He left by the train on Tuesday morning for Christchurch, and on the way he remarked to an old Anderson’s Bay boy whom he met at one of the wayside stations, that he was feeling quite well. In less than half an hour he had left us. There was no sadness of farewell when he embarked.

The Editor of the Evening Star asked me to write an appreciation of my friend for his columns the next day. The Clerk of the Presbytery of Dunedin, an old friend of Dr. Cameron, who arranged the funeral services, appointed me to give the address at the service in Anderson’s Bay Church; and thereafter it fell to my lot, as the Master of Knox College, to conduct and to speak at the Memorial Service in Ross Chapel. As several persons have asked for copies of these addresses, it occurred to some of Dr. Cameron’s friends that they might combine and publish them for private circulation. To the addresses there have been added some photographs; one of Dr. Cameron as a minister, the other as Chancellor of the University. The remaining photographs group naturally enough around religion and education, the two great interests of his life.

Many people have thought that Dr. Cameron in appearance resembled David Livingstone. In spirit he certainly did. When I went to speak at his farewell meeting at Anderson’s Bay, I thought he was like the Village Preacher in “ The Deserted Village.” When his oldest daughter, Helen, now a missionary in China, cabled home to her mother after hearing of her father’s death, she said: —“ Read ‘ Bonnie Briar Bush,’ first chapter— ‘ A Lad o’ Pairts.’ ” Old readers of lan Maclaren will still remember that the chapter contains the story of one who by gathering money and in other ways was always helping some “ lad o’ pairts ” to get an education otherwise impossible to him. As long as the Dominie lived the grass did not grow on the path that led from the parish to the University. The parallel was a happy inspiration of Mrs. Wilkinson, a true daughter of her father after the spirit.

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Emerson has said:—“ There is no choice of words for him who clearly sees the truth. That provides him with the best word.” In the same way when a portrait painter has once caught his subject, the only thing he can vary is the size of his picture or its setting, the portrait always remains essentially the same.

These tributes, addressed to different persons, inevitably contain a good deal of repetition; but if the character delineation be true the repetition will perhaps be forgiven by those who cared for Dr. Cameron; it may help to impress the characteristic features of the well-loved face. That these pictures by pen and by camera may do something to cheer the hearts of Dr. Cameron’s friends, and to inspire some young men with his spirit of service for God and man, is the earnest hope of those who send them out.

Wm. Hewitson,

The Lodge,

Knox College,

Dunedin.

30th May, 1925.

THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ANDERSON’S BAY DR. CAMERON'S ONLY PARISH

THE OLD MANSE, ANDERSON’S BAY

THE GLENDINING HOME PRESBYTERIAN SOCIAL SERVICE ASSOCIATION

The Tribute of an Old Friend.

The Evening Star, May 20, 1925.

TIPET me call him Andrew Cameron. The newspaper calls him ** the Rev. Dr. Cameron, 8.A., and so he was; but let me call him Andrew Cameron. He was an ex-Moderator of the General Assembly of his Church; from the beginning to the end of his long pastorate he was a member of the Theological Hall Committee, and for most of the time either its secretary or chairman; he was the Chancellor of the University of Otago; a senator of the University of New Zealand; the originator of Knox College; one of the founders of the Presbyterian Social Service Association in the Dominion, with its Glendining Home for the young at one end of the town, and its Ross Home for the old at the other; a member of the John McGlashan Board of Governors. Yes; he was all that, and much else. But to me he was much more than all that; he was my friend Cameron —patient, steadfast, true; one who added sunshine to daylight on life’s bright days, and on its dark and cloudy ones set the rainbow in the cloud by his understanding speech and silence, and by his rooted faith. Andrew Cameron had the gift of sympathy and of silence. A thing committed to him in confidence was like a stone dropped into the irrecoverable depths of the sea. What he was in the shadows only those who knew can say.

It was not his way to use titles nor to magnify his office. In the telephone list he is not Dr. Cameron, nor is he the Chancellor of the University. Except where it would be plainly wrong or an affectation to lay aside his titles, he did not use them. He was too respectful and too sensible to think lightly of his University office, or of the honorary degree Edinburgh conferred upon him. As a matter of fact, his honours and offices gave him very real pleasure, but he was not always looking for an occasion to wear his gown and hood. Some would say he carried that sort of thing too far. Perhaps he did; perhaps in some ways he was not sufficiently attentive to form and style. Sometimes he vexed me, and then he would be penitent and say I was right; but sometimes he laughed, and did not mend. I know it was the other side of his passion for reality, his determination to be rather than to seem.

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In any of his characteristics in which he did not strike the perfect balance, in any case in which he did not comply with the old Greek’s standard: “Nothing too much,” it always seemed to me that it was more true of him than of almost any man I have known—•

“ E’en his failings leaned to virtue’s side.”

We are bidden to love our neighbour as ourselves. Andrew Cameron exceeded; he loved him more. In freedom from the love of self I have not met his rival. Huxley, when a comparatively young man, wrote in his journal: . , to set an example of abstinence from petty personal controversies, and of toleration for everything but lying; to be indifferent as to whether the work is recognized as mine or not, so long as it is done—are these my aims?” Andrew Cameron must have set such aims before him when he was quite young, and his friends would say he fully realized them. In the rough-and-tumble of this world he may have received some wounds, but he never kept them open, never inflamed them; and in the high, pure air where his soul habitually dwelt the wounds always completely healed.

What patience he had, not only with wicked but also with unreasonable men—often a more troublesome class. He sought peace and ensued it. He did it always; he did it sometimes when I thought he ought to have girded on the sword; but that was not his way. War was to him a strange work. He probably knew Milton’s line containing a great truth, though it was Satan who spoke it:

Who overcomes

V V IIU UVCI By force hath overcome but half his foe

He knew there is a beatitude upon meekness, and in the Bible, which he read every day, he had learned “ A soft tongue breaketh the bone.” I have seen him win over an unfriendly person who was a possible foe, because he was not easily provoked. Occasionally he met a “ thrawn ” person with whom he could do nothing.

It must not be thought that his peaceableness was pliability, for he could be unbending. Here and there, as we companied together along life’s way, I have known him resist all my arguments and entreaties and go his own way. He has left me standing and looking after him with a respect untroubled and an affection undimmed. His soft invincibility and his invincible softness gave him great power in some of life’s difficult situations. I have heard it said sometimes that he was unduly under the influence of particular persons, but I know the judgment was quite wrong. Speaking generally he was too shrewd to, be misled, and he was too independent and honest to go where he could

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not see. Although we often took counsel together, on some important occasions we never conferred; we showed confidence in each other by not confiding. At times every man must bear his own burden.

As an administrator of the University I thought him strictly impartial. Some may have thought he inclined unduly in a particular direction, but what he did he did deliberately, in accordance with a policy which surveyed the University as a whole and which took a long view. I think his policy was sound. I know the place on the road where we stood to finish a conversation about the Medical School. After much searching of heart and many waverings he left me with the determination to wait upon a certain gentleman and ask for £2,000. That gift was the foundation stone of the new Medical School. I believe if the late Professor J. H. Scott were still with us he would tell us that Andrew Cameron sowed the seed of the Travelling Medical Scholarship. He had a remarkable faculty for sowing a seed, and, then, like a good husbandman, watching it, watering it, and with patience waiting for it. Perhaps it is the blindness of a friend’s partiality, but I thought he combined academic experience (he was educated in Otago, Scotland, and Germany), vision, practical power, and quiet persistency in a greater degree than any of us who were associated with him. One of his old college friends said to me when I was a stranger here: ‘‘You watch Andrew Cameron; he is a halting speaker, but he always knows where he is going.” I did watch him, and always found him going upwards to Hill Clear, where the views are spacious. For the movements with which he was connected

“He looked into the future far as human eye could see.” Oh, Andrew Cameron, great was thy faith in God and man, and it came to pass.

For many years his mind was exercised by the competing claims of his congregation and of his outside public work. We often discussed the subject. No work ever had a hold on his mind and heart that was in the least comparable with the hold the ministry of the Word and of the Sacraments in Anderson’s Bay had upon him. After he had resigned his pastorate he told me he would like to withdraw from the University, and give the rest of his life to the P.S.S.A., to the care of little children and old people who have outlived their friends. I staved off his threatened resignation more than once, but one night late he rang me up and said: “ I have retired from the University, and posted the letter. I did not consult you because I knew what you would say.” There was some glee in his tone as of one who had at last relieved himself of a great burden and had outmanoeuvred

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me. We circumvented him, however. His old colleague in his church, the late Mr. W. S. Fitzgerald, and his loyal friends the office-bearers, the University Professors, and Councillors, rallied to the situation, and the resignation was withdrawn. Again, when he was leaving on a visit to China and Japan, he tendered his resignation; but that was a course dictated by respect for himself and for the Council, and the resignation was not accepted. When he suddenly died he was still Chancellor of the University of Otago, and I am glad. Church and school, religion, with its fruit in social service, and education were the two great passions of Andrew Cameron’s heart, and his life would have been incomplete without either. lam glad he did not resign from either sphere of service, but waited until God himself relieved him of all his work here, and said to him as He welcomed him: “ Well done, good and faithful servant.”

There was one thing he did do resolutely, and that was to give some time to play and work with his family when they were young. He ceased going out every night to meetings or withdrawing to his study. His reward has been rich, for his home was his kingdom, and the only rule of his kingdom was love. Andrew Cameron had an attractiveness for young people, some of whom were his best friends. There was in him a strong and unquenchable element of the boy, and it was in him to the very end.

I must draw aside the veil reverently just a little to reveal the inner life of Andrew Cameron with his God. Not to know this is not to know Andrew Cameron. I got glimpses of it on our walks and on our holidays in this and other lands. I knew the little pocket Bible he carried at such times. I see him still reading it in private places; I see him with his closed eyes. That secret life was the spring from which flowed all his works, and to that secret life all his acts were brought for judgment. I knew that he once gave up some studies he was pursuing privately lest an unworthy ambition should creep into his heart and corrupt his motives. A few hours after he died I gathered with his family for worship. His Bible opened at a place containing a piece of paper, on which there were these lines, evidently written when he was in the East:—

There is no good of life but love, but love!

What else looks good is some shade flung from love;

» T 1IU1 V1JV lUUftJ 5UUU 10 OUU1V Love gilds it, gives it worth.

Be warned by me, never you cheat yourself one instant.

Love, give love, and leave the rest.

—R. Browning.

Let me be tender when I touch

The meanest name to Jesus dear,

Lest my rude hands inflict a wound

Where Jesus’ mercy dropped a tear.

THE ROSS HOME PRESBYTERIAN SOCIAL SERVICE ASSOCIATION

REV. DR. CAMERON CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OK OTAGO

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Again the Bible opened at another sheet of paper containing a list of passages from the Psalms copied in his handwriting and headed “ Hope in God.” The opening and closing passages on the list are;—

Hope thou in God. I shall yet praise Him.

They that fear thee shall see me and be glad,

Because I have hoped in thy word.

Thou art my hiding place and my shield;

1 hope in Thy Word.

That Bible and those verses from a modern singer and from the hymn book of the ancient church tell all there is to be told of the soul of my friend in this world and the next.

An Address delivered at the Funeral Service in the Church, Anderson's Say—21st May, 1925.

TiTOH ave come together to think for a little while about the 'Hi**' character of our friend, Dr. Andrew Cameron, to thank God for his life and work, and to pray that He may give us strength to walk a little more closely in his steps. Then we shall go and lay reverently away the earthly house of this tabernacle in which he lived for 70 years, and from which he suddenly departed on Tuesday last to enter into occupation of a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

The cemetery on the hilltop is a fitting place for the burial of our friend’s body, for there one can see the sun rise over the city and the sea, the great and wide sea, with its far horizons bounded only by the sky—all an emblem of his life.

Dr. Cameron was connected with us by different ties. With some of us it was the tie of Church fellowship and Church work, with others it was the tie of educational administration; but there was one bond by which he was united to us all and that was friendship. He was the friend of us all. Our lives and activities lie apart, our paths seldom cross, but here at the grave of Dr. Cameron we all meet as one group bound by the same tie of love and gratitude to him. To be able to sav “He was my friend ” has been one of the greatest privileges of our lives.

He had very little of this world to give us, so he gave us himself—his time, his strength, his mind, his heart; he gave us the truth and the power by which he lived and worked. To the full limit of his strength and for as many hours as there is light by which man may see to work, he gave us himself. He was on the way to serve us, carrying in his hand the bag containing his papers, when the strength and the light both failed. He died giving himself for us and the work he loved. That was just like the charity of Christ his Master who, having nothing else to give, gave us His love and His life.

As it is fitting that Dr. Cameron should sleep on the hilltop overlooking the city and the sea, so it is fitting that here we should gather to give thanks for his life and work. Here was his home, where his children were born and grew to manhood and womanhood; here he ministered in the Word and the Sacraments—God’s mysteries. Like the minstrel of the sky he was true to the kindred points of heaven and home. Home and

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heaven were the only places where his spirit dwelt. There he derived his strength to go out and do his work in the world, and thither he returned when wearied in body and soul, for rest and renewal.

Dr. Cameron was a very reticent man, but more than once he drew aside the veil and let me see his life in his home and in the Holy Place. Over his home the spirit of love and peace sat visibly brooding, and nothing ever frighted it away. In the Holy Place the sounds that broke the silence were reverence and trust. To me, his most characteristic address to the Deity was “ O God, Most Holy.” Years ago he read and re-read Dale’s lectures on the Atonement, and later he studied with care Denney’s volume on “ The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation.” The last book he borrowed from me was McLeod Campbell on the Atonement, one of the classics of Scottish theology, and I noticed that he subsequently bought a copy for himself.

The depth and dignity of his character was due to his feeling of awe in the presence of the holiness of God. There seemed no limit to his charity for human weakness and his patience with perversity; but during the years, I can recall several cases where he recoiled strongly from what he thought was unrepented sin. His was a holy charity.

Though a sense of demerit made him stand afar off from God, a deep and undisturbed faith in God’s goodness and love caused him to draw near as His child. He had in the presence of life’s confusions, its obstructing difficulties, and its unending tasks, an unquestioning faith in God, which to me was often at once an inspiration and a rebuke. Recently we talked about some friends whose special work is beset with very great difficulties and discouragements; its future lies in impenetrable darkness. After talking for a while he said, “ There is nothing for them to do but trust in God and go ahead boldly, as if the way were clear.” I know that his many plans and projects were thought out as, like David, he sat before the Lord, There he first discussed his schemes before he took counsel with intimate friends, or spoke in committee rooms. It was from that secret conference that he came out day after day to try humbly to do in the Church and the University what he believed was the will and work of God.

He has gone to his last conference, a long one, and for us there is nothing left to do now but to seek the places where he saw his visions and found his strength, and then go into the city—with its churches, with its homes for the fatherless children and the friendless old, and with its schools and colleges for training the young and strong to work for God and man—and carry on the work he started.

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A snow-storm once drove the boat of Cuthbert on to the coast of Fife. “ The snow closes the road along the shore,” moaned his comrades; “ the storm .bars our way over the sea.” “ There is still the way of heaven that lies open,” said Cuthbert. “Trust in God,” said Dr. Cameron, “and go forward boldly." It will not do to divide his exhortation into two parts.

To this church Mr. Cameron came a young man of nearly 30; he left it a comparatively old man of 65, old by the calendar, old in body, but not in mind and in heart. Those who knew him well knew that he had a boy’s heart, a boy’s playfulness, and he had them to the end. He had a young man’s courage and the venturesomeness of a young man’s faith. He was not like the old, afraid of that which is high. For him was fulfilled the words and prayer of one who said: “ The last) thoughts of a heart that loves Thee are like the last deepest, ruddiest rays of the setting sun. Thou has willed, O my God, that life should be beautiful even to the end. Make me to grow and keep my green, and climb like the plant that lifts its head to Thee for the last time before it drops its seed and dies.”

KNOX COLLEGE.

THE MASTER’S REPORT

To the Chairman, Knox College Council.

Dear Professor Adams, —In presenting to you my seventeenth annual report, I desire to place on record the deep sorrow of the whole college caused by the sudden death of Dr. Cameron on May 19 last. How much. I owed to him as chairman, his wisdom and kindliness, I can never say. A memorial service was held in Ross Chapel on the following Sunday, which was largely attended by members of the College and of the University. Present students have arranged, witft the Council’s approval, to place a memorial brass in the chapel, with the following inscription:

In Memory of the REV. ANDREW CAMERON,

B. A. (N.Z.), LL.D. (EdIN.)

1855-1925.

Who Proposed the Foundation of this College, and as its First Chairman 1902-1922

Secured its Establishment and Fostered its Growth.

A MAN OF VISION, FAITH AND WORKS.

A Tribute of Grateful Remembrance from Men in Residence, 1925.

The College was very fortunate in securing Mr J. D. Salmond as Assistant-Master, in succession to Mr J. W. Hinton. As an old student of Knox, and as the second Ross Fellow, Mr Salmond brings to his work a full knowledge of the life of the college. His high moral and religious ideals, combined with his sympathetic understanding of students, makes his work a most valuable contribution to the college. He ha? given his services ungrudgingly to help students in History and in English.

The Matron had to go into hospital during the session for a time, but lam glad to say that she is making a good recovery. We have been fortunate during her absence in having as a substitute her sister, who has had large experience as a nursing sister both in peace and in the war.

Educational. —Good work, which is very much valued by the men, has been done by the tutors : Mr Salmond (History and English), Mr C. L. Carter (Chemistry), Mr Boraman (Economics), Mr K. C. Roberts (Physics), Mr A. C. Watson (Philosophy), and Dr Burns (Medicine).

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The most important scholastic events in connection with the men during the year are the following' —Ihe admission of Dr. R. S. Aitken, Rhodes Scholar, as a student of Balliol College, Oxford ; the award of a Beit Fellowship to Dr Denny-Brown, and his admission to Magdalen College, Oxford; the award of a grant of £2OO by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to Mr F. H. McDowall, who is enin chemical research in University College, Jxmdon ; the nomiiia tion of Mr J. B. McMiken as candidate for the Rhodes Scholarsmp by the Professorial Board of the Otago University; the award of the Travelling Medical Scholarship to J. Fitzsimmons.: of the bemor Scholarship in History to W. G. McClymont ; the Ross Fellowship to W. J. Boraman ; the Macmillan Brown Prize to 1). F. Aitken; the James Clark Prize in Mental Science to H. A. M. Mitchell and 'l. F. J. Young.

Knox men who are in Britain studying for the h.R.C.S. have now become too numerous to mention, but as it is a new departure, I may report that Messrs J. G. Dunn and G. T. Bellhouse took further study in Edinburgh after finishing their theological course here, and Mr Bellhouse, M.A., has taken the B.D. of Edinburgh. Mr R. G. McDowall, M.A., after finishing his course here, has also gone for further work in Britain, and Mr A. C. McLean, M.A., is to take the last year of his divinity course in Edinburgh. Mr Hubbard, M.A., and Mr I. Paterson, M.A., completed the B.D. of Melbourne, and several men in residence are working for this degree. All these things help to raise the standard of scholarship, but a valuable fellowship in divinity provided by the church, corresponding to scholarships in arts and medicine given by the University, is a great desideratum.

Our Common Room, thanks to help from some friends, is well supplied with papers and magazines. We have the following on our table: the daily papers of Dunedin, The Outlook, The Spectator, the Educational Supplement and the Literary Supplement of the London Times, Punch, the Expositor, The Expository Times, The National Geographic Magazine, Current History, The Christian Century, The Medical Review, and North American Medical Clinics.

Social. —One of the great values of a residential college in fitting a man for life is the opportunity it gives him of living with men of different faculties at different stages of their course, who have different traditions of home, church, and school behind them. In view of this the following analysis of this year’s roll is interesting -

Schools Represented in Knox —Whangarei, 2 ; Auckland Grammar, 8; Auckland King’s College, 3: Hamilton, 5; Gisborne, 2; Napier, 4; New Plymouth, 6; Wanganui Collegiate. 3: Wanganui Technical, 3: Stratford, 1; Feilding, 1: Thames. 1: Palmerston North, 2; Wellington College, 9; Wellington Scots’ College, 5: Nelson, 2; Marlborough, 1; Christchurch High, 1 ; Christchurch, Christ’s College, 1: Ashburton, 3; Timaru, 10: Waitaki, 10: Otago, Dunedin, 7; John McGlashan, Dunedin, 2; Southland, 9; Milton, 1: Alexandra, 1; Gore, 2.

Faculties. —Divinity (Theological Hall), 11 ; Divinity (University), 10 ; Teaching. 14 ; Arts, 5 ; Science, 4 ; Mining, 1 ; Law, 1; Dental, 9 : Medical, 54. The numbers taking up medicine are not so great ~s they were, so the proportion of men in the several faculties tends to he more even.

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Graduates. —Masters of Arts, 7 ; Bachelors of Arts, 9 ; Master of Science, 1.

During the year we have had the pleasure of showing hospitality to Messrs Woodruff. Hollis, and Mac Donald, of Oxford, Mr Dewick, of C ambridge and India, Mr W. H. P. McKenzie, of the Christian Union, and some members of teams from the Northern University Colleges.

The Foundation Day dinner was held in April, in the dining hall, which was crowded, and the Final Year dinner, in October, in the Lodge. At the latter function there were 32 exit men present—an unusually large number —and ten other guests. There were also held during the year the other usual social functions.

We have had during the session addresses, in the library, of a social and educational character. Mr Mac Donald (son of Mr Ramsay Mac Donald) spoke on “Life in Oxford.” Mr W. H. P. McKenzie on "Syria,” Professor Namai on “Japan,” and Mr Hoste, who has been 40 years in China, on his life as a misisonary.

Athletics.— We have two excellent fives courts, the gift of a friend, and four tennis courts. Two of these were the gift of a friend, and the other two, said to be as fine as any in Dunedin, were provided by the college, with the help of a good donation from the students’ club. In our winter climate, when it is not always possible to get outdoor exercise, a gymnasium or sports room would be a great boon. Vigorous exercise is good for the souls as well as the bodies of young men. The college is pretty well represented in the University "clubs. We have four men in the University hockey team; two in the tennis team, and six in the first fifteen, football. A few minutes’ walk from the college there is a public ground, where our men practise football and hockey.

Religious : Chapel Services, Bible Study Circles.—The Foundation Day service was conducted by the Master, and the Rev. George Miller, Moderator of the General Assembly, preached an earnest, appropriate sermon. The Anzac Day service was very impressive. The Master presided, and the following old students, who had all served in the war, took part: W. H. P. McKenzie, 8.A.. M.C., H. E. Barrowclough, LL.B., D.5.0., J. A. D. Iverach, 8.A.. M.8., M.C., J. Johnson. M.A.

The disturbances in China, and the visit of the American Fleet gave occasion for addresses on national relations with China and the States from the Christian point of view. Dr. North gave an address on “Medicine as a Vocation,” and Dr. Lawson on “Teaching as a Vocation.” Both addresses were of a high moral and religious character. An address on “The Ministry as a V-.ition” has been promised bv the Rev. E. J. Tinier.

For some years an annual service has I>c.' held in the College Chapel in connection with tne reunion of the University Women’s Association. These services have been much appreciated by the university women, and they have also been attended by some of oui own students. This year the Master presided, and the Rev. Dr. Dickie delivered a most suitable s?rmon for an audience of academic women.

Bible Study Circles. —Four circles, with a membership of 40 to 45 men, have studied “Jesus in the Records,” by Sharman. lam assured by one of the leaders that the study has aroused remarkable interest.

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Buildings. —During the last long vacation the usual renovations were made, the kitchen was enlarged, a steam plant was installed, and a drying room was erected. These improvements have been long overdue, and they are much appreciated. They have, however, used up all our reserve and maintenance fund.

Some time ago I wrote that we must not forget that our building is not finished, and 1 am very pleased that an anonymous friend has given us £3O(X) to form the nucleus of a building fund for the completion of the South wing. That wing should include some classrooms, a permanent library, an assembly hall, a sports room, and a few more studies and bedrooms.

The Students’ Executive. —I.desire to acknowledge with sincere gratitude the service rendered to the college and tne help given to myself by the Students’ Executive, 1924-25. They give much time to their work, and the smooth and harmonious life of the college is largely due to their loyalty, their good sense and good spirit in administration. One of the most striking evidences that the college is free from cliques is that the man elected year after year as president of the club is a member of one of the smaller faculties. This vear the president is an educational student; for each of the two preceding years he was a divinity student, and for the two years before that a mining student was president. Our men take their full share in the life of the University, presiding over the Christian Union editing the students’ magazines, controlling the Capping, and serving in other student activities. I humbly trust that by the blessing o f God upon the life and work of the college generations of young men with well-desciplined minds, high ideals, and earnest purpose are going out to the service of God and man in the Dominion and in the wider world.

Wm. Hewitson.

An Address delivered in Ross Chapel, Knox College, on Sunday Morning, May 24th, 1925.

TJ DESIRE to speak to you all, but especially to the students, w about the life of Dr. Andrew Cameron, as an example and an inspiration. I do not wish this to be a service of unrelieved gloom, but rather a challenge to duty and a source of strength and comfort. At the end of the service we shall not stand to listen to the Dead March with its searching strains of sorrow, but we shall sit to hear the more soothing music of Mendelssohn to which our memories will fit the familiar words:—

O rest in the Lord,

Wait patiently for Him,

And He shall give thee thy heart’s desires.

Commit thy way unto Him,

And trust in Him;

And fret not thyself because of evil doers.

O rest in the Lord,

Wait patiently for Him.

We have not draped our chapel with black, the symbol of woe, but upon our communion table we have placed a bowl of chrysanthemums, golden flowers, and autumn leaves which, though they suggest that our life is frail and transitory, are yet ruddy and beautiful, even in dying. We know that though they be cut down and wither, next year they will bloom again. I could wish that from our pulpit where Dr. Cameron preached the first sermon in this chapel, we had hung a wreath of laurel leaves: for he has won laurels, even glory and honour. He asked life of Thee and Thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever.

I remember at this time that there is a letter of Dean Church in which he speaks of “ the loose things that are said—often in kindness and love—of those beyond the grave.” God helping me I shall say no loose things to-day, I shall say no word concerning Dr. Cameron that is not for me at least strictly true.

I remember at this time, too, the familiar instruction of Cromwell to the painter, “ Paint me, warts and all.” In trying to sketch Dr. Cameron I shall paint no warts; for, as I knew him, there was none to paint. There may have been some slight want of symmetry, some slight absence of perfect balance in Dr. Cameron’s character, due to excess of some good qualities, but there were no warts.

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Let me illustrate what I mean. Unselfishness is a great and not too common virtue, but it is possible to be merciful to one’s neighbour and unjust to oneself, to the embarrassment of one’s friends.

When Huxley was a young man he proposed certain aims to himself which I quoted the other day: “To set an example of abstinence from petty, personal controversies, and of toleration of everything but lying; to be indifferent as to whether the work is recognized as mine or not so long as it is done.” These aims I believe Dr. Cameron realized fully. I did not quote Huxley’s first aim, namely: "To smite all humbugs however big.” That will seem to most of us the proper and necessary way to deal with humbugs, and other evil things, but it was not Dr. Cameron’s way. He did not smite anybody or anything. He was not given to reproof and rebuke. To adapt some familiar words;—

He never found fault with you, never implied

Your wrong by his righ

In his relations with men in private and in public he was a pacifist, strong and invincible. He had never read in the Scriptures “ I am not come to send peace on the earth but a sword.” You perhaps think he was lacking in courage or compliant with evil. Both suggestions are preposterous. He had another way of dealing with wrongdoing. He overcame evil with good, he heaped coals of fire on one’s head. I know what I say, for he did it to me again and again, and yet again.

It is a divine precept “ Let not thy left hand know what thy right doeth.” Dr. Cameron read that passage ever)' day in his Bible and every day he acted on it, but of the complementary passage, “ Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works,” he had never heard. Publicity he disliked intensely and he was at pains to avoid it.

You may think, as I did sometimes, that there was a want of perfect balance in his goodness, but I am sure there were no warts. Let us carry that with us as the general impression of his life and now turn to examine it in a little more detail.

He was born in Paisley, near Glasgow, and came to Otago when he was a child of eight. His native country and his adopted land contributed largely to his character. He loved them both, and also Dunedin, the only city in New Zealand where he lived, with the deep steady passion of his quiet heart. It would not be easy to say whether he was more of a Scot than a New Zealander, or more of a New Zealander than a Scot.

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Some time after their arrival in New Zealand Dr. Cameron’s parents settled in Sawyers Bay, and his father opened a bakery business there. The boy Andrew, when he was ten, carried bread twice a week into Port Chalmers, and on Saturdays he made four trips. He used to say that he thought nothing in the world was so heavy as a basket of fresh bread. He was engaged for about six years in this occupation, and he thought that the practice of remembering his sales without making a memorandum of them did something to train his memory, which for facts and incidents was unusually good. As boy and youth he learned to ride and drive a horse, row a boat and swim a stream. He had a boy’s love of games, and was always fond of watching sports. At the University he played cricket and played it well. Later he played bowls and golf. As a youth he enjoyed a dance and used to go to one every week. When he was a student in Germany he followed for a time the custom of the country and drank light lager beer, but thinking that it led sometimes to grossness in pleasure, he gave it up and became an abstainer.

After some time he began to study in the afternoons and passed the matriculation examination when he was 20 —rather a late age. He was awarded a church scholarship, and in later life was so convinced of the importance of scholarships that he induced his father to found the Cameron-Muir, named after his father and mother. In discussing that foundation with me recently he strongly maintained that the amount of the scholarships now given is altogether inadequate. One of the things he thought necessary for the proper equipment of Knox College was a number of endowed scholarships open to competition by all faculties. At the University he studied Latin, Chemistry, Physics, and Zoology, he took his B.A. degree and won a senior scholarship in Zoology. Two University professors of whom he spoke frequently were Professors Shand and Sale. I have often said that one could judge the power and industry of a student in Latin by the way in which he spoke of Professor Sale, a strong personality, and a strict teacher and examiner. Of his kindness and his teaching Mr. Cameron always spoke in the warmest terms.

After graduation he entered the Theological Hall and studied under Dr. Salmond, of whose lucid and inspiring teaching he carried grateful memories all his days. He then went to Edinburgh for three years to the Theological Hall of the United Presbyterian Church, and also spent two summers in Germany, one at Jena and the other at Leipsig. We who are so eager to get done with our studies and get at our work should note that Dr. Cameron had a course of some eight or nine years in preparation for his ministry, and that without that experience he could not have done the work that fell to him later as an educa-

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tional administrator. He was one of the very few ministers of my acquaintance who read his Hebrew Bible regularly and with ease. If some of us who are looking forward to teaching and preaching were not so impatient to get through our period of study, and could give a year to post-graduate work, we might make our classics and our Hebrew, as Phillips Brooks did, a ready and valuable instrument, instead of an inconvenient and awkward tool, soon to be laid aside for good. We might begin to learn to speak and write our own English tongue, with clearness, force, and beauty, a lifelong and difficult task, and one as it seems to me far more important than learning to read the classics and Hebrew, important as they are. I have a haunting fear that some of us will close our period of study knowing only that man has a body, and not having heard that he has also a mind and soul, which are sometimes normal and not always pathological. I know how difficult, how practically impossible it is made, mistakenly made, as I think, for even the most eager of us to follow Sir William Osier’s advice: “ The modern scientific man, to keep his mind sweet, should be saturated with the Bible and Plato, with Shakespeare and Milton.” Yes, gentlemen, this medical professor of world-fame says “ saturated with the Bible.” The Bible and Plato and Shakespeare and Milton may not be necessary to the making of a practitioner, but they are essential to the making of a man. And the supreme task of a University should be to make a man.

Dr. Cameron did not allow his education to close with his university course; neither should we. He visited in later years Berlin, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, and several of the great universities of America. After he was 65 he started to learn French, and acquired a fair reading knowledge of the language; and he kept up his German. In the last talk I had with him in the Lodge after our Anzac Day service, he was speaking about two books he was reading and a point in Hebrew scholarship that had interested him for years. He was reading and learning to the end.

Not long after his return to New Zealand he was called to the Church in Anderson’s Bay when he was 30 years of age, and the next year he was married. In the Anderson’s Bay parish he remained for over 35 years until he retired at the age of 65. I shall speak of him as a minister directly: let me now refer to his public work outside his congregation.

Happy in his home and in his Church, Dr. Cameron might have confined his activities to his congregation. In every church, however small, a man can find enough work to keep him busy, and some congregations are very exacting with their minister. Anderson’s Bay people, however, were well led by men like Mr.

THE UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

THE QUADRANGLE. UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

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W. S. Fitzgerald and Mr. W. Somerville, and they gave him the opportunity for outside service. But sometimes where there is the opportunity, public-spiritedness is wanting. It would be hard to find more intense selfishness than that which is occasionally shown by happily married young people. Fortunately, Mrs. Cameron was, and always has been, as unselfish as her husband. She made his work possible, and he soon found his way on to church and educational committees. For years he served as chairman of the local school committee, for a short time on the High Schools Board, for 31 years on the Council of the University of Otago, and for .13 years as its Chancellor, for 23 years on the Senate of the University of New Zealand. The Education Board is the only public educational body, so far as I know, on which he did not serve.

I have spoken to you students on other occasions about public spirit and public service. The best form of public service is the efficient, industrious, and conscientious practice of our profession. I feel, however, that full public-spiritedness demands more than this; it demands activity outside the sphere in which we earn our living, and also service that is without fee or reward. How completely Dr. Cameron answered to my idea of public spirit and service is shown by the recital of his activities, which were all honorary.

He was an originator and an administrator. It is not always possible to say with whom a particular scheme originated; often it has been in the mind of more than one person. There is no doubt, however, that the idea of a Presbyterian tutorial and residential college, open to all faculties and all denominations, originated with Dr. Cameron. He secured the site by putting in an application for it in his own name, and to his persuasiveness and persistency, this College owes its existence more than to the effort of any other man. I think it was he that suggested a third and a fourth professorship for the Theological Hall. The work of caring for orpjhan or neglected children by our Church was actually begun by two deaconesses in their own home, but at the time he was dreaming and talking of social service by the Church. How many of the developments of the Presbyterian Social Service Association are due to him, I cannot say. I think he sowed the seed out of which the Glendining Home for children grew, and the seed out of which the Ross Home for the aged grew. In each case he sowed the seed in good and honest hearts, and it brought forth abundantly. It was, I believe, from his suggestion that the Travelling Medical Scholarship came. In our Theological Hall we have had men without academic status of ability and more real learning than some whjo have degrees. For the men who came late in life to their studies the difficulty of taking

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a degree was the conditions of matriculation. For years Dr. Cameron worked quietly in the Senate to get those conditions changed.

After a long conversation in my study one day about University policy, we stood to finish our talk at the end of Knox Street. When he left me, after much searching of heart and many waverings, he decided to call upon a certain gentleman and ask for a gift of £2,000 for a new medical school building. That gift, the first, was the real foundation stone of the new Medical School. No one recognizes more generously than the Dean and the Medical Faculty all that the late Chancellor did for the Medical School.

To balance the claims of consolidation and of expansion in a University where there are limited resources is a matter of great difficulty. Dr. Cameron carefully thought out and discussed a policy for himself and followed it, though he knew it exposed him to the suspicion of partiality. A clergyman and an arts man, he gave for a considerable time the preponderating weight of his influence and activity to the development of a science school. Would it be easy to find a man in a science school big enough to do a similar thing for a divinity school? One of the dangers of a University Councillor is that he may degenerate into the advocate of a faculty or of a school, and not be an administrator of the University as a whole. In my judgment, that danger the late Chancellor always and completely escaped. If it be difficult for a man to rise above the dominance of a school and look at the interests of the University as a whole, how difficult it is for an ardent educationist to care for the fatherless young and the friendless old with a zeal equal to that he has for education, how difficult it is for a social service enthusiast to work for the University. How few of us have Dr. Cameron’s capacious heart and fruitful mind.

“ Where there is no vision the people perish.” Vision is essential to life. Some are short-sighted and fail to see beyond the present. Others lack breadth of vision; they do not see the implication and relations of a subject. Others lack in penetration; they fail to see into the heart of a man or of a movement; they are detained by externals of manner or speech, and by the incidental; they do not see the spiritual, the invisible. That was the subject on which I spoke to you last Sunday. To-day I present to you Dr. Cameron, who failed in none of these ways. He was a man of great prevision, of wide horizons, and he saw the inwardness of movements. He saw Him Who is invisible, too, and so endured to the end.

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Dr. Cameron’s vision was one of the chief sources of his power as an administrator. A second source was the perfect disinterestedness of his service. Disinterestedness is a virtue that means not only freedom from the love of money, but also freedom from a passion for power and prestige. Some men who care nothing for money are avaricious of place and glory. In every sense of the word, Dr. Cameron was disinterested; he sought not his own. The University Council at one time, knowing that he was a poor man, and feeling that it was not desirable that he should give so much service to the University gratuitously, considered the possibility of providing him with an honorarium. Some day there may be in our University, as there is in English, Canadian, and American Universities, a salaried head. It does not seem right that the headship of a University should be open only to the man of private means. It is a big question, Involving important legal and constitutional points. The one way in which the Council felt it could offer an honorarium Dr. Cameron promptly and finally declined. Only once during all the years he held office did I hear him refer to the financial aspect of the position, and then it was to express regret that he was unable to discharge the social duties and to offer the hospitality to visitors that naturally attaches to the office of Chancellor. Whatever loss or privation the conditions of his office brought him, his complete disinterestedness certainly won for him the unquestioning confidence and deep respect of his fellow-councillors. Without these there can be no great leadership of men.

This is your time, young men, for making friends, and in College you have an unrivalled opportunity of doing it. Two or three days before he died, three Knox men—two doctors and a minister—happened to meet in a small town where Dr. Cameron was staying. “ The friendship of these men,” said he, “is an instance of the great value of the college life.” His experience of lodgings as a student strengthened his purpose to have a College which should not be confined to students of one faculty, or to students of our own Church. For this he toiled for years. Let me urge you again, as I have so often done, to make some friends in your own faculty, and, for the sake of the breadth and richness of your life, some friends in other faculties and belonging to other Churches.

Dr. Cameron was to me a great friend. It was a friendship nourished and strengthened by years of conversation, of common work, of many joys and some sicknesses that came to each of us, and of some sorrows.

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Let me tell you two characteristics of Dr. Cameron that are the essentials of a great friend: confidence and reticence. They are opposite and contradictory qualities, but both are essential to great friendship. Dr. Cameron opened his heart to me about the deepest things of life, his love, his sorrows, his God. Communications that are confined to work and games and to the affairs of other persons are a mere skimming of the surface of life; they are not the confidences of friendship. But there must also be reticence, as well as confidence. Reticence is an essential condition of respect for oneself and for one’s friend. 1 here were personal matters of which both of us knew, but of which neither spoke. There were important matters of public business which we never discussed until they were over. We showed confidence in each other by not confiding. Will you let me say here that Dr. Cameron’s great power of keeping silence is a vital qualification for men who are looking forward to law, to medicine, or to the Church. Things told in confidence should never be communicated to any other even as strictly private, but they sometimes are. Like Charles Kingsley, Dr. Cameron, while his family was young, never allowed parish gossip at his table.

The most fundamental thing in Dr. Cameron’s life and work was that he was a minister of the Word and of the Sacraments of God. He often talked about giving up all his outside activities and confining himself to that work. After a long walk we stood one rainy night years ago under a verandah in Stuart Street, and he poured out his heart on the subject. Several times in recent years he playfully reproached me that I had restrained him from his purpose of giving up University work. When I went out to speak at his farewell meeting at Anderson’s Bay, the subject that was in my mind was Goldsmith’s picture of one he called “ the Village Preacher,” between whom and Dr. Cameron there is an obvious parallel; they made religion lovable. To the preacher Goldsmith gives only four lines of description out of 56. Here they are: —

At church with meek and unaffected grace,

His looks adorned the venerable place;

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,

And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.

Truth as it came from the Village Preacher was doubly re-enforced by his life and personality, and it was thus made effective. This was true of Dr. Cameron. Behind and through the words his people felt the man. He was what would be called an expository and experimental preacher. He constantly and carefully studied the Scripture, and then he spoke the truth he found there as he had tested it in his own life. The physical act of speaking was often difficult for him. He had had

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a good many operations on his throat and nose, and once he was silent for a whole year, during a good part of which he did not speak even in private. It was that, not slowness of perception or want of vocabulary, that helped to make him a hesitating speaker. Further, he was a man of deep but strongly controlled feeling. Occasionally, however, his emotions broke loose, and then he spoke freely and movingly.

All the rest of Goldsmith’s picture is taken up with the village preacher’s life out of the pulpit; his relations with children, with those who were dismayed by sorrow, guilt, and pain, with those who talked and laughed by his hospitable fireside. In his relations with all of them he had one and only one object:—

. . . In his duty prompt at every call,

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;

And, as a bird each fond endearment tries,

To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,

He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,

Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

Such was the ministry of the Rev. Andrew Cameron at Anderson’s Bay. In his playful and in his serious moods he had but one end—to win men for Jesus Christ. He allured men to goodness. I used to think that proportionally to its size Anderson’s Bay sent more young persons into the service of God than any other congregation in our Church.

The inner secret of his life was his life of prayer. He kept a list of names of those for whom he regularly prayed, and he told me he saw them one after another join the Church. I know that like David he sat before the Lord and there matured his schemes for social service and the University. He was a man engrossed in many and important duties, but his real life was hid with Christ in God.

All his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.

These are not the cant phrases of a clergyman. I know what I say, and I say, if we are able to receive it, this was the source of Dr. Cameron’s goodness and of his great and unselfish services—his life was hid with Christ in God.

Such was Dr. Andrew Cameron as I knew him—a man of broad and genial humanity, an earnest student, a man of long and wide vision, of great self-sacrifice in the service of God and man, a friend affectionate, true, and strong, and above all, a humble, devoted follower of Jesus Christ. Ido not believe that either his life and work or our friendship has ended.

The face will shine

Upon me, while I muse alone;

And that dear voice, I once have known

Still speak to me, of me, and mine.

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To those of us who loved him it is not yet given to add, but this, please God, we shall be able to do some day:—

Yet less of sorrow lives in me

For days of happy commune dead;

Less yearning for the friendship fled,

Than some strong bond which is to be.

Prayer.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, from whom all good gifts do come, we give Thee thanks for the life of Thy servant, our friend. We thank Thee for what he said and did, but especially for what he was and now is.

We pray for Thy grace that we may humbly follow him as he followed Thee. By all Thy mercies and especially at this time by this Thy great mercy to us, the gift of Thy servant’s life and friendship, may we be led to present ourselves to Thee as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable in Thy sight, which is our reasonable service.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

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