In his Travels Dr. Olin spoke of " a broken arch, sup- posed to be the remains of an ancient bridge connecting
the Temple with Mount Zion, as having been known to ^Ir. Catherwood and other travellers and residents." For this he was charged (in the North A merican Review for October, 1843) with plagiarism, and with doing great injustice to Dr. Robinson, who in his Biblical Researches, the Bibliotheca Sacra, and elsewhere, claimed to have been the discoverer of this interesting monument, and especially to have been, so far as he knew and believed, the first to recognise in this fragment of an arch the re- mains of the bridge spoken of by Josephus. The con- troversy with Dr. Robinson which ensued, and which ap- peared in the N. Y. Commercial Advertiser and in the Ch-istian Advocate for 1844-1845, contained an unqual- ified denial of the charge of plagiarism, sustained in the most important point by the testimony of two mission- aries of the American Board, whose letters made all further words superfluous. The Rev. Cyrus Hamlin wrote from Bebek. near Constantinople : •' I read Dr. Robinson's note in the North American of .July with profound surprise, being confident that I had heard Mr. Homes affirm that he informed Dr. Robinson of the ex- istence of that arch as a remnant of the bridge spoken of by Josephus. I immediately addressed a note to Mr. Homes, which with the reply I forward to you." Mr. Homes wrote : " In 1837, wiiile residing several months at Jerusalem, I discovered one day with surprise in the obscure part of the city where it is situated the remains of the arch, and fancied that it had never obtained, so far as I knew, the notice of any traveller. ... In the spring of 1838, at the time of a missionary council in .Jerusalem, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Robinson. We were all anxious to show Dr. Robinson all the no- ticeable jilaces in Jerusalem which might possibly sug- gest to him facts regarding its ancient topography. One forenoon I eagerly told Dr. Robinson of the exist- ence of this now famous arch, and from his surprise and a\vakened interest it was evident he had never heard of it before. And before he went to see it, I remarked to him on the probability that it was the bridge men- tioned in history as going from the Temple to Mount Zion." Mr. Hamlin further writes: '"Mr. Homes has shown me the journal of his residence in Syria, and under date of May, 1837, among a number of things noted as worthy of special examination is this brief minute, ' The bridge crossing from Mount Zion to Mount Moriah.'' The entry was made at the time when he first began to regard the arch as a remnant of that bridge, and that was nearly one year previous to Dr. Robinson's visit to Jerusalem. He afterwards visited it repeatedly, sometimes in connection with travellers ; and when Dr. Robinson arrived in Jerusalem, he brought it to his notice as a remnant of the briilge spoken of by Josephus." An incorrect allusion to this controversy ia Allibone's Biographical Dictionary renders a fuU state- ment of the facts important.
In 1842 Dr. Olin was elected president of the Wes- leyan University, which office he continued to till until his death. This high school became under Dr. Olin's administration the best of the Methodist connection, and at once took its place beside the foremost and oldest of the New England colleges. True it lacked the money which the others had to supply all their wants, but so untiring was Dr. Olin in his efforts to make the Wes- i leyan University a power in the land that, notwith- standing all the embarrassments surrounding him and all the opposition facing him, he yet gathered about him a faculty inferior to none other in the country. Indeed, while Dr. Olin was a wonderful preacher, combining af- fiuence of thought, overwhelming earnestness of feel- ing, and physical power of delivery to a degree unri- valled in his time; and while his intellect was of ex- traordinary sweep and power; while morally his life was a perpetual struggle after the highest ordeal — he longed to lie like Christ; and while his printed sermons have the grand reach of Chalmers, with the practical directness of application which has recently been so much admired in Robertson ; it is nevertheless to be
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insisted upon that it was not as a preacher and philos- opher that Dr. Olin should take first rank, but rather as an educator. As the head of a university he was truly in his own |)lace — a veritable king of men ; none who came near liim failed to acknowledge the supremacy of his great nature ; none of his students, whose concep- tions of the powers and duties of liumanity were ele- vated by their personal contact with him, failed to be impressed with their duty towards the world into which they launched out from college. In 1843 Dr. Olin mar- ried Miss Julia M. Lynch, daughter of Judge Lynch, of New York. Dr. Olin was elected delegate to the General Conferences of 1844 and 1852, and delegate from the New York and New England Conferences to the first meeting of the iM'angelical Alliance in London, 1846. He was a contributor to the Weslei/an Journal, the Christian A d- pocate and Journal, and the Methodist (luarterhj Rerieic. He died at Middletown, Conn., Aug. IG, 1851. Two volumes of Sermons, I^eclures, and A ddirsses were pub- lished at New York in 1852. In 1853 these were fol- lowed by his Life and Letters, edited by Mrs. Olin, and enriched by the valuable contributions of his friends.