Western Maryland College - Aloha Yearbook (Westminster, MD)

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fy 1 REV. T. H. LEWIS, D. D. v

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to the Rev. C. B. Lewis, Il. D., President of western maryland Qollege this volume is affectionately dedicated,

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ev. Cbomas Bamilton Lewis, D. D. F, when the Freshman Class appeared for its first recitation, in September, ,7I, there had been pointed out to the professors a lad among them who was destined to be, some day, the president of the College, they would doubtless have watched his student life with a very peculiar interest. But the teachers saw, at first, in the boy who was registered as 'lfhonias H. Lewis, of Easton, Md., only a Freslnnan neither more nor less fresh than his twenty-seven classmates. ln the school world, however. a redistribution of atoms soon takes place, it is never long before some member of a class is its acknowledged head, and by a happy provision it is not the scum that, under academic conditions, rises to the top, but always the cream. .Xt the end of the year it was found that young Lewis had led in all the studies of his class and aroused the expectation that he would be its valedictorian. Diligent student as he was. Lewis was not a recluse. .He took an active part in pretty rnnch all that was going on in the College, and especially was he faith- ful to his obligations as a member of the XYebster Society, which chose him one of its orators for the contest of '7.t. Ks had been anticipated, he carried off the highest honors oi the Class of '75, and graduated with the valedictory. The writer well ren.embers the impression made on the large commencement audience by this, the lastspeech he delivered as a .vfmivzzl ofXl'estern Maryland College. For a Collegian it was, in fact, a remarkable piece of eloquence, and the deep emotion which stirred him as he uttered his farewell words to Alina Mater elicited, tinmistakably, a sympathetic response in the hearts of all his hearers. At the time of his graduation, Thomas Hamilton Lewis was twenty-two years and a-half old, having been born near Dover, Del.. on the iith of December, 1852. As his studies had been all along pursued with a view to the ministry of the Methodist Protestant Church, he entered, very soon after leaving College, upon what, at that time, he looked forward to as the work of his life-the work of the preacher and the pastor. The First two years of his ministry were spent in Cum- berland, Md., but in 377 he was called to a more conspicuous position as assistant to Dr. Augustus Xlfebster in St. johns Independent Church, Baltimore-. The resignation, by reason of advancing years, of his chief, soon left the young preacher alone in this arduous and exacting charge, but he proved hiimself equal to its demands, and when, in 1882, he withdrew from St. Iohn's, it was only because he saw a new and, as he believed, a more useful outlet for his activities. Mr. Lewis had for some time been impressed with the disadvantage his denomination labored under from lack of special training for its ministers, and a plan for meeting this need began to take shape in his mind. Now to a meta- physician of the type of Lewis the dividing line between the Sizibjectiw and 9