Christian professor

“ "In forming a judgment of ourselves now," Edwards writes, "we should certainly adopt that evidence which our supreme Judge will chiefly make use of when we come to stand before him at the last day. ... There is not one grace of the Spirit of God, of the existence of which, in any professor of religion, Christian practice is not the most decisive evidence. ... The degree in which our experience is productive of practice shows the degree in which our experience is spiritual and divine." ”

“ Mere youths were sometimes seen promoted to the professor’s chair, and seeking to win a passing popularity by the promulgation of some new extravagance, an abuse which led to the passing of an ordinance forbidding any one to teach Theology before he had attained the age of twenty-five. But the teaching of the professors was influenced by other peculiarities in their position. “The university doctors,” says Fleury, “were doctors, and they were nothing more. Exclusively engaged with theoretic views, they had [370] leisure to write at great length on the most frivolous questions ”

“ But very little can be learned among Christian professors; they are ignorant about God and His kingdom, and the design He had in view in the formation of the earth and peopling it with His creatures. The Christian world are deficient in these matters ”

“ At last, after much ill-feeling all round, our professors were appointed. Four of them were esteemed clergymen of our denomination, who, having failed at preaching, were glad to find some occupation. Thus, in divers ways, does a great university benefit the human race. Another member of the Faculty was a recent graduate of our leading theological seminary, who accepted a chair until he could find a pulpit; two others were lay brethren. We had our greatest difficulty in selecting a professor of chemistry. ”

“ They are not so much fountains of pure scholarship, but are rather to be classed with schools of medicine and institutes of technical education. Their function is not to produce great theologians, but to train efficient ministers—though they will hardly do that without possessing all that is essential to do the other. The ideal Professor is not your dungeon of learning, in whose depths he and his pupils are buried away from all practical life and usefulness. ”

“ Each has its own faculties and functions; and in our present investigation, religion has nothing more to do than to shed the influence of reverence, humility, and teachableness over the scientific student as he ponders his problem and works out the truth. In this, and in kindred studies, we may yield without reluctance what a certain professor of religion concedes, and grant without grudging what a certain professor of science demands. ”

“ The civilized world is dotted over with theological seminaries, the teachers in which are considered to be men well educated in the learning of ancient and modern times. The avowed purpose of these institutions is to teach the facts, philosophy and history of the so-called Christian religion, yet not a teacher in these institutions can be found who dares to assert the stupendous fact that from the time of the apostles to the ninth century science, literature and philosophy were well nigh extinct. ”

“ Ingleby.—"Such professors do essential injury, not only to the honour of the church and denomination to which they belong, but to the cause of religion in general. The evil which results from the anti-Christian temper and spirit of these arrogant and censorious professors, who usually contrive to attract more notice than the rest of their fellow-members, is incalculable. ”

“ The work of this college was to be the preparation of young men for the Christian ministry, that they might go into all the world and preach the Gospel. One truth he bade them bear in mind: that this training was to be given without sectarian theology; that his brethren themselves represented a revolution among believers, having cast aside the dogmas of modern teachers, and taken, as the one infallible guide of their faith and practice, the Bible simply; so making it their sole work to bring all modern believers together into one church, and that one church the church of the apostles. ”

“ It is most obvious to the careful observer that they are withdrawing more and more from those ministrations, where they can learn the true character of Christianity; and insist with increasing pertinacity, on holding meetings in their own way, and having preachers of their own colour. The profession of religion among them is becoming perceptibly less beneficial: so that in some neighborhoods, this very thing generates suspicion of the professor, rather than confidence in his integrity. ”

“ Teachers of Christian Science must have the necessary moral and spiritual qualifications to elucidate the Principle and rule of Christian Science, through the higher meaning of the Scriptures. "The less the teacher personally controls other minds, and the more he trusts them to the divine Truth and Love, the better it will be for both teacher and student." ”

“ The presidents and professors of leading universities are usually prominent in some evangelical sect, and this is probably owing to the fact that every seminary of higher knowledge is under the control of a branch of the Christian Church, whose influence is predominant in the faculty, and which regards the college as a filial institution, with traditions intertwined with its own. ”

“ Human teachers are not figure-heads of different schools, but the instruments and the stewards through whom God dispenses His gifts. It is not the duty of Christian teachers to put forward original ideas on religion. ”

“ I enjoyed most the lectures of our professor in materia medica. A charming man, enthusiastic, fluent, apt at illustration—a more ready and engaging speaker I have never heard. Taking all he said as gospel-truth, I was not a little disturbed toward the close of that year to hear the seniors insinuate that he never spoiled a story for the truth’s sake; that he would tell of some wonderful case one year, ascribing the favourable termination to a certain remedy, and the next year would forget and tell of it under quite another remedy! Each disclosure of this kind came as a shock ”

“ As a scholar his published works place him in the foremost rank. His practical achievement in stimulating theological study not only among professed scholars, but also among the clergy and educated Christian laity, marks his professorship as one of the most fruitful in the history of the chair. ”

“ It should be regarded as of great importance, that Christianity appears as the friend of all knowledge, and of human culture, from the very start. To our author’s versatile genius, much credit is due for the elements out of which Christian universities took their rise. ”

“ Romanists, on the other hand,” he continues, “mean the company of those who profess the true faith, and who are subject to the Pope of Rome. There is the greatest difference between the authority due to the common faith of truly regenerate, holy men, the temples of the Holy Ghost, and that due to what a society of nominal Christians profess to believe, the great majority of whom may be worldly, immoral, and irreligious.” But where did the professor learn that the authority of the teaching depends on the personal [Pg 492] virtue of the teacher? ”

“ It was our good fortune to learn the classics in a Jesuit college. We were in rhetoric. Our professor gave Monday and Wednesday afternoons to Virgil, Tuesday to Homer, and Friday to Horace. Of Virgil we read book vi., and of Horace the third book of Odes—that is, what we did read of them. The professor was a perfect scholar, an orator, a poet, as inflammable as petroleum, and as sensitive as the “touch-me-not” plant, with a mind the quickest we ever knew, and a heart most affectionate, besides being truly a man of God. ”

“ A lot of them thought, and think still, that you're a Christian. But if it's brought up again and made clear to them—Won't you understand? If it's made quite clear that Jesus to you was only a man, and not superior even to all other men, and that you believe Christianity has served its purpose, and is now doing harm rather than good in the world, why, they'd not want to have you in the University. ”

“ Ex-President Seelye, ofPage 125 Amherst, once said: "We should no more think of appointing to a post of instruction here an irreligious man than we should an immoral man, or one ignorant of the topics he would have to teach." It is certainly no narrow bigotry that leads the Christian public to demand that the colleges select professors loyal to the truth and the Christian Church. United with their scientific culture and professional ability as teachers they should embody Christian earnestness and purity of life, and aim to send out students with a positive and rational faith. ”

“ The position and work of a professor is by no means easy to define. It is his first duty to represent his subject, to urge its claims on attention, to do what he can to promote its study. But the method by which this result is best to be attained must depend on the relations of that subject to the examinations of the university, and on the relation of the professor to other teachers in the same subject. Ecclesiastical history is recognised in the examinations for the theological and the historical triposes. ”

“ Many people suppose that the scholar's life is in antagonism to the interests of religion, as though a university were somehow a bad place for a man's soul. But religion comes not to destroy the intellectual life. It wants not an empty mind but a full one. The perils of this age come not from scholars, but from smatterers; not from those who know much, but from those who think they "know it all." When our forefathers desired to do something for the service of their God, one of the first things they regarded as their religious duty was, as you may read yonder on our gate, to found this college. ”

“ It may be justly replied, that according to what we have proposed, they can be nominally neither, and of course not both, for we call no man master on earth, for one is our Master, even Christ, and all we are brethren, are Christians by profession; and as such abstract speculation and argumentative theory make no part either of our profession or practice. Such professors, then, as we intend and have described, are just what their profession and practice make them to be ”

“ I. The work of the teacher is for the gospel of Christ, hence, first of all, the teacher should be a Christian.—No person can properly instruct others in the Gospel unless he be devoted to the service of Christ.
1. He should be a Christian in belief.—No one can speak confidently and earnestly in behalf of a cause unless he believes in it. One can teach mythology, but not Christianity, without a firm conviction that the Bible is God’s book, and the Gospel the declaration of the divine plan for saving men. ”

“ The lecturers must be persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship, who firmly adhere to the evangelical system of Christian faith. The selection of lecturers may be made from the world of Christian scholarship without regard to denominational divisions. Each course of lectures is to be published in book form by an eminent publishing house and sold at cost to the Faculty and students of the University. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. BECOMES A PROFESSOR OF RELIGION.
At the age of nineteen, there being what was termed a reformation in the town of Richmond, Mr. Ballou was induced, believing it to be his duty, to become a professor of religion, and accordingly at that time he joined the Baptist church, of which his father was pastor, in the month of January, 1789. ”

“ If there was a book revealing a plain and easy way for all men to become rich and enjoy health and pleasure and this world's happiness, would it not be studied by all men? And why is it that the Bible is not studied by the masses and regarded more? Why are so many professors of religion negligent in this matter? May it not be because they prefer all other business and pleasures before this? If professors of religion throughout christendom heartily believed the Scriptures even as they profess, they would be more diligently studied, and in many instances treated with greater respect. ”

“ Whilst freely acknowledging the services rendered to the faith by the scholastic theologians, they may be disposed to fear lest something of the elder tone of spirituality was lost when the lecture halls of university professors were substituted for the claustral schools of the Benedictines. ”

“ The courses of study in college should be arranged so as to favor the study of the essential facts and truths of the Christian religion, and through them promote practical piety. There is no valid reason why the Christian religion, which is the chief energy and force in all intellectual culture, should not be distinctly and permanently recognized in the college curriculum. ”

“ In addition, therefore, to the elements of education which have been named before, we see that, at the beginning of the third century, Christians were expected to teach and study the liberal arts, profane literature, philosophy, and the Biblical languages. Their teachers commented on the Scriptures, and devoted themselves to a critical study of its text; positive theology, as it is called, had established itself in the schools, together with a certain systematic science of Christian ethics, and, we may add, many branches of physical science also. ”