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It was a denominational college established by the Presbyterian Church,
and belonged to the synods of South Carolina and Georgia.
Like many other denominational colleges throughout the South,
it arose in response to a demand that attention should be given in education
to the cultivation of a strong religious faith in the minds of students.
The older State universities were supposed to be dominated
by the aristocratic class and by political parties, and there was
a tendency in them towards a more liberal view of religion than comported with
an orthodox faith. The origin of the denominational colleges
was similar to that of Princeton and the smaller colleges of New England.
Many of them, with small endowments and a small number of men in the faculty,
did much to foster intellectual as well as spiritual growth;
their place in the history of Southern life has not been fully appreciated.
Before the public-school system of later days was established,
they did much to educate the masses of the people.
Oglethorpe, at the time when Lanier became a student,
was presided over by Rev. Samuel K. Talmage, originally of New Jersey,
a graduate of Princeton and a tutor there for three years.
He was a warm personal friend of Alexander H. Stephens,
and was known throughout Georgia as a preacher of much power,
"foremost in the councils of his church." Another member of the small faculty
was Charles W. Lane, of the department of mathematics,
of whom one of his friends wrote that he was "the sunniest, sweetest Calvinist
that ever nestled close to the heart of Arminians and all else who loved
the Master's image when they saw it.
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