His cottage at Midway was a Bethel;
it was God's house and heaven's gate."
The piety of such men confirmed in Lanier a natural religious fervor.
But the man who was destined to have a really formative influence over him
was James Woodrow, of the department of science. A native of England
and during his younger days a citizen of Pennsylvania, he had studied
at Lawrence Scientific School under Agassiz, and had just returned
from two years' study in Germany when Lanier came under his influence.
Circumstances were such that he never became an investigator
in his special line of work, but he was a thorough scholar
who kept abreast with the knowledge of his subject. He afterwards became
professor of science in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at
Columbia, S.C., and later the president of the University of South Carolina.
In 1873 and 1874 he was the champion of science against those
who called the church "to rise in arms against Physical Science
as the mortal enemy of all the Christian holds dear, and to take no rest
until this infidel and atheistic foe has been utterly destroyed."*
Dr. Woodrow maintained that the science of theology, as a science,
is equally human and uninspired with the science of geology.
He cited illustrations from the long warfare of science and theology
to show that the church would make a great mistake if it attempted
to shut off the human intellect from the search of truth
as reverent investigators in the realms of geology and biology might find it.
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