Ramsay Armitage

Called in 1940 to be principal of Wycliffe, Ramsay Armitage’s coming was of a twofold nature: the return of an old friend, who had already contributed much to the college; the arrival of a new friend, who as a result of widened experience and broadened sympathies had now more to offer than ever. He was also fully aware that the college of which he was now principal, though not opposed to clerical gentility, stood for something incomparably deeper. His address to the graduate body underlined the rule which governs men from the day they enter Wycliffe College to the end of their lives: “Our ministry, related to reality, calls for all that we can give, - it means constant, planned, continuous study, all the way.” Dr. Armitage, more than anyone else, had helped those nineteen years of Wycliffe College history unfold, and again and again in the course of his principalship had defined that unfolding, perhaps nowhere more clearly and succinctly than when he said “there is a wholeness in Christian experience which may not be defined in terms of any one period of the Church’s history. So we are not content nor able to rest alone in the Evangelical Revival of  the eighteenth century, nor even in the Great Reformation of the sixteenth century, But, ”, he added, “there are yet great values in these two points of Anglican History … we can never be unaware of our great heritgage and of our inheritance yet to win.