Oberlin College - Hi-O-Hi Yearbook (Oberlin, OH)

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President Barrows N the twenty-sixth of May, 1595, St. Philip Neri, founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, died at Rome. His long life of eighty years had covered one of the great periods in the history of Italian civilization-what may be called the high noon ofthe Renaissance-the age of the Medici in Florence, of Leo X. and Gregory XIII. in Rome, the age of Galileo, of Michelangelo, Titian, and Patil Veronese, of Ariosto, Tasso, and Machiavelli. The fascinations of art and learning and luxury had so wrought upon men that their eyes were sealed to the beauty of holiness. To St. Philip. though he was pl1ilo.mplzia af sncris litlcris cruditus, virtual Paganism was far too heavy a price to pay for the intellectual and artistic achievements of the age, great as these were: yet, in Cardinal Newman's words, he perceived that the mischief was to be met, not with argument, not with science, not with protests and warnings, not by the recluse or the preacher, but by means of the great counter- fascination of purity and truth. While it cannot be said of President Barrows, as of St. Philip, that he despaired of the efficacy of argument and science, of protest and warning and preaching, against the unrighteousness of his time, yet it can be said that as we knew him, his chief weapon was the great counter-fascination of purity and truth , tl1at, like St. Philip, he preferred to yield to the stream and direct the current of science, literature, and art, and to swceten and to sanctify what God had made very good and man had spoilt. Of him, as of St. Philip, it is true that what he did was to be done by the light and fervor and convincing eloquence of his personal character and his easy conversation. In the same Discourse of the Idea of a University from which I have been quoting, Cardinal Newman makes an eloquent distinction between the methods of science and the methods of literature, in the course of which occurs a description of literature that applies almost equally well to the type of character that I have in mind: Literature does not argue, but declaims and insinuatesg it is multiform and versatile, it persuades instead of convincing: it seduces, it carries captive, it appeals to the sense of honor or to the imagination or to the stimulus of curiosityg it makes its way by means of gayety, satire, romance, the beautiful, the pleasurable. What more telling description of the true humanist, the cultivated spirit that directs the highest human attainments to ends higher than their own? The light and fervor and con- vincing eloquence of his personal character! What more precise account of the method of President Barrows during the last four years of his life? Yes, he was like St. Philip in this, that he was willing to use the world's best achievements for his own high ends-the artistic genius of Milton and Rembrandt, the attractions of high place gained by patriotic statesmanship, the compelling charm of human wit and sym- pathy and eloquence. He gave us a spectacle of an abounding interest in life, in all its manifold expressions of grace and power, an interest that was only a handmaid to his devotion to that favor which is life, and that loving- kindness which is better than life. This is not the whole story. Others think of President Barrows as the great 13