ONE of the greatest educational institutions in the world, Princeton is an Ivy League university situated in New Jersey. The fourth oldest seat of higher education in the USA, it was originally the College of New Jersey and it owes its pre-eminence in no small part to two Scottish Presbyterian ministers, John Witherspoon and James McCosh.

Witherspoon (1723-1794) is famed as a Founding Father of the USA, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence who turned Princeton from a small college training clergymen into an intellectual powerhouse which it remains to this day. He came from Scotland to become Princeton’s sixth president in 1768 and imported not only the philosophy of the Scottish School of Common Sense but based Princeton’s methods largely on those of Edinburgh University.

In many ways James McCosh is just as interesting as Witherspoon. It was in this week 210 years ago that he was born near Kirkmichael in Ayrshire – his birthdate is recorded as April 1, 1811. His parents were strict Presbyterians who adhered to the beliefs of the Covenanters, and their influence stayed with him all his life.

He studied at both Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, obtaining his MA degree at the latter after impressing the eminent philosopher Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856) with his essay on stoicism.

In 1834, he became a minister of the Church of Scotland, serving first at Arbroath and then at Brechin. McCosh became increasingly involved in the theological debates of the time, with the Kirk split in two between the moderates and evangelicals, the latter supporting the rights of congregations to select their ministers while the moderates acknowledged that patrons of the church had rights of appointment.

From that good Covenanting background, McCosh chose the evangelical wing and in 1843 he joined them in the Great Disruption, the schism that led to the formation of the Free Church of Scotland which he promptly entered, becoming the first minister of the Brechin East Free Church.

Very much continuing his studies and refining his philosophy within the Scottish School of Common Sense Realism, McCosh published his first book The Method of Divine Government in 1850. That same year he was offered the post of Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Queen’s College, Belfast, now Queen’s University. He would end up spending 16 years in Belfast.

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In 1868, at the age of 57, McCosh accepted the presidency of Princeton, and immediately set about revolutionising the curriculum and raising money to extend the College as it then was. He brought in new teachers and new areas of scientific study and encouraged research – Princeton remains one of the greatest research universities to this day.

McCosh identified a major problem with teaching at Princeton – students could choose to specialise and avoid broader subjects. As a Scottish “lad o’ pairts” that went against his nature.

In his very first lecture at Princeton he warned of the dangers of excessive specialisation: “Let the student first be taken, as it were, to an eminence, whence he may behold the whole country... and then be encouraged to dive down into some special place, seen and selected from the height, that he may linger in it, and explore it minutely and thoroughly.”

McCosh was instantly successful and the prestige of the establishment soared in just a few years. Still lecturing and teaching, McCosh himself was becoming famous for his intervention in the great debate over Darwinism. He managed to reconcile within himself the dilemma faced by all Christians studying the theory of evolution – how did evolution sit with the concept of divine creation?

“When Christianity is received,” he wrote, “it stimulates the faculties, and calls forth new ideas, new motives and new sentiments. It has been the mother of all modern education.”

He became an early proponent of intelligent design and had his own neat definition of the concept: “I hold that we have a very imperfect knowledge of the works of nature till we view them as works of God – not only as works of mechanism, but works of intelligence, not only as under laws, but under a Lawgiver, wise and good.”

The historian and Ulster Unionist politician Gordon Lucy wrote about McCosh in 2019: “He did not equate Darwinism with atheism but argued that evolution, far from being inconsistent with belief in divine design, glorifies the divine designer. This aspect of his work found popularity among Presbyterian and evangelical clergy, who found his arguments useful in their attempts to cope with scientific philosophy.”

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Throughout his life and despite his many years in Belfast, McCosh kept a strong Scottish accent that only endeared him to his mainly American students – they called him ‘old Jimmy”. Resigning the presidency in 1888 at the age of 77, he was accorded a singular honour by the graduates of 1889 who asked that their diplomas be signed by McCosh as well as the new president, Francis L Patton. His wife Isabella, née Guthrie, is said to have remarked: “James, your lads are nae for forgettin’ you”.

James McCosh died on November 16, 1894 , and he is never forgotten at Princeton, where three Presidents of the USA, James Madison, Woodrow Wilson and John F Kennedy, studied. The University can also boast attachment to around 70 Nobel Laureates, just part of the legacy of James McCosh after whom Princeton’s famous McCosh Hall is named.