In later years Smuts summed up this period:  In the examinations of 1891, Smuts took a double-First in Literature and Science. He applied for, and won, the Ebden scholarship for overseas study offered by the University of the Cape of Good Hope. On 23 September 1891 he departed the Cape, on board the ship Roslyn Castle, bound for the United Kingdom and a place at Cambridge University. Smuts was admitted to Christ's College, where he elected to study Law. The choice of Law marked the start of a new chapter for Smuts. The preceding years at Stellenbosch had been ones of tremendous intellectual development. From the narrow focus of his upbringing, his outlook had now expanded, awakening within him a consciousness of the breadth of knowledge now open before him. Smuts, though remaining an adherent of the Church, and respectful of the Bible and its teachings, had developed a more questioning and critical outlook during the course of his studies. Whereas at the outset of his university career he was content to follow his parents' wishes and be ordained into the Church, as his time at Victoria College came to an end he found himself more and more unwilling to commit to this path. Though he had not as yet wholly rejected the idea of ordination, he wished for a period of more diversified study before making that decision. So it was that Smuts came to select Law, rather than Divinity or Philosophy - the logical choices for a future Minister of Religion. During his time at Cambridge Smuts maintained a regular correspondence with his old friend and tutor Professor Marais. Smuts's choice of Law gave rise to a lively discussion between the two, with Marais regretting Smuts's choice, declaring Law to be 'simply classified humbug' and accusing 'those who pore over legal tomes' of having a 'contracted view of life'. In response Smuts published an essay in Christ's College Magazine in defence of Law. Entitled 'Law - A Liberal Study', it attempted to rebut these criticisms, declaring that from Moses onwards lawyers had been the 'great lights and ornaments of the Church' and identifying within Law '...as it develops through the ages of human history, ...the deepest, truest, most permanent thought and social achievement of progressive humanity.' Aside from friendship on this intellectual level, Marais was also able to come to Smuts's rescue at a time of awkward crisis. Smuts came to Cambridge at the age of twenty-one, three or more years older than the typical university undergraduate.