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To write of Dr. Swete's contribution to theological learning is indeed for me a labour of love.
I suppose no one who has occupied the Chair of the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge has done so much for the advancement in his own generation of the scientific study of Theology in all its branches among all kinds of students. He was appointed when fifty-five in the fulness of his powers, though he told me once that a man was only beginning life at fifty, and he held the chair for five and twenty years, insisting on resigning 'according to plan' when he was eighty, although it seemed to most of us that his work was never more valuable than then. My own special debt when I began the study of Theology was to his predecessor, Dr. Westcott, who remains to me incomparably the most revered, and inspiring teacher I have ever known; one to whom I thankfully /92/ trace back many a principle of study and thought which has had developments and growths that it would not have had perhaps with him, yet which I am fain to believe he would not have deemed illegitimate divergences from the main lines of his own convictions. |
