Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/813

Rh E X A E X A 777 where he remained till April 1841. As early as 1836, how ever, he had begun to look to the church as a profession; and in October 1838 he was admitted to deacon s orders with the object of pledging himself to his future profession before leaving Scotland, the Episcopalian Church being preferred by him to the Presbyterian, chiefly on account of its comprehensive statements regarding the subject of human redemption. Soon after his return from Italy he was requested to take the charge of the Episcopal congrega tion at Forres, and on accepting it he was ordained a pres byter in the autumn of 1841. He remained at Forres till 1846, when he was elected first bishop of the newly restored diocese of Argyll and the Isles, the duties of which position he discharged till his death, 22d May 1873. In 1851 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford. Though the work accomplished by Ewing was necessarily modified and circumscribed by the fact that throughout his whole life he was fettered by a delicate bodily con stitution, he yet battled with the vices and religious per plexities and difficulties of his time in a spirit of buoyant cheerfulness. Perhaps his strength lay chiefly in the charm of his personal manner, in his fine tact, and his catho lic sympathies; and these gradually secured him, not only the admiration and love of the people and clergy of his diocese, but a prominent position among the ecclesiastics of his own time, both in Scotland and England. In all theological discussions he contended for the exercise of a wide tolerance and charity, shrinking from condemning with ecclesiastical censure even opinions which he feared might be fraught with evil and danger to the church. He did not, indeed, attach much importance to mere ecclesiastical authority and organization, and was more solicitous about the inward than the outward unity of Christianity. His own theological position resembled very closely that of Thomas Krskine of Linlathcn, and Frederick Denison Maurice; but his relation to these theologians was rather that of a friendly sympathiser than a disciple, for his opinions were the fruit of his own meditation, and were coloured by his own idiosyncracy, and their perspective was determined by his individual stand-point. Unlike theirs, his teaching was never presented in the form of a complete and elaborate theological treatise, and its purport is only to be gathered from fragmentary publications, letters to the newspapers, pamphlets, special sermons, essays contributed to the series of Present Day Papers, of which he was the editor, and a volume of sermons entitled Revelation considered as. Light, which he only lived to see through the press. The title of this volume may be taken as indicating the characteristic feature of his theology. He dwelt specially upon the illuminating power of Christianity as revealing the father hood of God, and thus &quot; rolling back the clouds of human sin and sorrow,&quot; so as even ultimately to &quot;exhaust hell of its darkness.&quot; To him each attribute of God was equally light, and therefore he did not believe that any compromise had ever been effected between them. Christ was the supreme manifestation of that light, and the Bible was but the medium of its revelation, the means for enabling it to stream in upon the soul from sources beyond the mere letter of the truths which the written word contained. One of the chief of these external sources of light, specially wel comed by Ewing, was science, to the discoveries of which he looked forward as destined to lead to the manifestation of other and higher aspects of Christianity than were yet fully realized. Besides his strictly theological writings, Ewing is the author of the Cathedral or Abbey Church of lona, 1865, the first part of which contains drawings and descriptive letterpress of the ruins by Messrs Bucklers, architects, Oxford, and the second a history of the eariy Celtic church and of the mission of St Coluraba. See Memoir tf Alexander Emng,D.C.L.,y A. J. Ross, B.D., 1877. EXAMINATIONS. Examinations -have lately come very widely into use, and call for consideration at once as educational appliances and as tests of proficiency. Some thing answering to examinations must enter into all effec tual instruction; for in order that the pupil may gain solid advantage it is not enough that what he ought to know should be put before him as by giving him a book, or by making him listen to lectures but we must also see that he gets hold of it and understands it aright ; this is the func tion of examinations as appliances for education. They have, however, another use, that of tests or instruments for selection, and this purpose may clash with the educa tional purpose. But though the examiners may have one purpose primarily in view, and may lay down the?r scheme with especial reference to it, we must bear in mind that the examination must act in both ways at once. Some sort of advantage must attend on success, or else candidates wHl not work for it ; and, on the other hand, though an ex amination may only be intended to sift out the ablest, and pains may be taken to avoid giving any advantage to a particular sort of instruction, still it will be found that some particular course is most productive of marks, and this will come into favour. The few notices which we find of examinations in old times relate to tests of qualification for professions or crafts. We gather from notices of contests between the universities and the medical corporations in London that students had to pass an examination, after going through their ap prenticeship, before being allowed to practise. But we never find that an examination was the sole test ; it was always attached to a prescribed course of study and service. The foundation deeds of old endowed schools sometimes contain a provision for an examination ; the object of this seems to have been rather to ascertain that the teaching was satisfactory than to classify the boys, though sometimes prizes and emoluments were awarded by the examiners. University examinations are found to take their origin from the &quot;disputations&quot; which appear very early in the history of universities. Dialectical discussion had entered largely into the higher education in classical times, and when the university of Bologna was incorporated as a school of law by the emperor Frederick I. in 1158, disputations soon came into use as exercises for degrees. The university of Paris, which was founded soon after, and which was a school of theology and of arts, adopted the same course ; and the forms of these exercises for degrees have survived to the present time in Germany, and did not disappear in England until 1860. A student who aimed at a degree, which formerly only the more distinguished did, acted three times as opponent to other candidates, and was in time admitted to keep his &quot; Act.&quot; This performance began by his reading a Latin thesis, in which he maintained some position in disputa tion against a doctor in the faculty, as well as the above- named opponents, and, in fact, against all comers. The debate was carried on in syllogistic form ; the presiding doctor eventually summed up the controversy, and usually passed a compliment on the disputant, which was the earliest form of university honours. Academical degrees, in their origin, implied a title to teach, as is seen in the names of Doctor and Master. The notion of a university degree as a criterion of general cultivation is comparatively recent : the B.A. or first degree, which is now so important, was not known in the earliest times, and is not even now granted in the German universities. The disputations took wonderful hold of the popular mind in the Middle Ages. It may be supposed that students looked more to points that gave an opening for attack, or that might be ingeniously defended, than to the truth of the matter ; and as the question would VTTT. g8