but the meretricious forms and ceremonies of churchmanship were precisely what they had fled from the old world to avoid.
For all that, the spiritual life of the undergraduates—the only thing that really mattered in this vale of tears—was pried into, dissected, and stimulated with relentless vigor. The scholars read the Scriptures twice a day, says Quincy; they had to repeat or epitomize the sermons preached on Sunday, and were frequently examined as to their own religious state. In every week of the college course, every class was practised in the Bible and in catechetical divinity.[1] (At first, the sole requirement for the degree of A.B. was the ability “to read the original of the Old and New Testament into the Latin tongue, and to resolve them logically.”[2]) Morning prayers were held at an hour that would have made an anchorite blush. Evening prayers again collected the College as the sun sank over the Watertown hills. The Sabbath was a sort of theological nightmare of services, sermons, expositions, and catechisms. Originally each class met for its daily devotions in the chamber of its special tutor. Later, all the “scholars” assembled in the commons-hall, or the library of the first Harvard, whose quaint Dutch gables suggested the architecture of Delft
