Princeton Theological Seminary

“ Although this body shall have no incorporated theological seminary under their care, nor any particular treasury for its support, nevertheless they consider it highly beneficial to the Church for every minister to understand the original tongues of the Scriptures, and to be well skilled in theology. But such qualifications may be acquired without an incorporated theological seminary. There are already a goodly number of academies dispersed throughout our country which are not under the care of any particular denomination, in which the student may acquire a classical education. ”

“ And, while the discipline of the authorities and the exhortations and example of professors may do something, the tone of the college is determined by the students themselves. The state of feeling in a theological seminary ought to be such, that any man living a life inconsistent with his future profession should feel thoroughly uncomfortable, and have the conviction driven in upon his conscience every day, that the ministry is no place for him. ”

“ What is the effect of this method upon our theological seminaries? It is to deprive the gospel message of all definiteness, and to make professors and students disseminators of doubts. Many a professor has found teaching preferable to preaching, because he lacked the initial Christian experience which gives to preaching its certainty and power. He chooses the line of least resistance, and becomes in the theological [190] seminary a blind leader of the blind. Having no system of truth to teach, he becomes a mere lecturer on the history of doctrine. ”

“ It must make itself useful to the man who has practical need of its results and wishes to apply them—the missionary. He it is who, for the practical purposes of the work to which he is called, requires an applied science of religion; and Hartford {2} Theological Seminary may, I believe, justly claim to be the first institution in the world which has deliberately and consciously set to work to create by the courses of lectures, of which this series is the very humble beginning, an applied science of religion. ”

“ That is not the way these teachers have come down to us. They have assumed that we are as capable as other people, that we have the same needs; and because they have come to us with this assumption to begin with, because they have received us in this way, we have made the progress that we have.
Now, of all things that are most needed to be done for us, we need a good theological seminary in the South, where the ministry can be educated among us. It is only an elevated Christian citizenship that will save us, and make us what other people are ”

“ The theological seminary lays the yoke of service upon the neck of prayer. This alone justifies its existence as a servant of the church in the community. However, the instruction in the seminary is rigidly grouped around courses in dead languages; which are jealous of instruction in a living tongue. The history of discarded doctrines and of discredited teachers is minutely taught through months, to the exclusion of courses upon modern, living people, whose religious experience [Pg 121] is rich and striking. The purpose of seminary instruction is personal culture instead of efficiency. ”

“ Must the gospel of Christ remain unpreached because there are no theologically educated ministers to expound it? Do you propose to create a sort of purgatory in which these immature preachers may have an opportunity to ripen until you say they are fit harvesters for the grain, over-ripe and wasting?
“A seminary education is a good, but not the great thing. Shall you or the Master say who is fit to serve as his messenger? ”

“ A few seminaries—notably the Hartford Theological Seminary and the Boston University Department of Religious Education—are doing pioneer work along this line, but they are the exception rather than the rule, and the thing must be done by all if the desired result is to obtain in the future. ”

“ In this most critical moment, when our Church, which is distinguished for the simplicity of its service, the purity of its doctrines, and the excellency of its church-discipline, was about to sink into oblivion, just at this important moment the General Synod was brought into existence, and through this body the Theological Seminary and College grew up which now are in efficient operation and in a flourishing condition. Now our children may be instructed in all the different branches of the sciences by pious and well-trained teachers of our faith. ”

“ The result of such teaching in our seminaries is that the student, unless he has had a Pauline experience before he came, has all his early conceptions of Scripture and of Christian doctrine weakened, has no longer any positive message to deliver, loses the ardor of his love for Christ, and at his graduation leaves the seminary, not to become preacher or pastor as he had once hoped, but to sow his doubts broadcast, as teacher in some college, as editor of some religious journal, as secretary of some Young Men's Christian Association, or as agent of some mutual life insurance company. ”

“ I felt that I could go into the pulpit and preach on themes, which instead of arousing the hostility of men, as the doctrine of Evangelical University seemed destined to do, would by their breadth, optimism, and freedom from Phariseeism win the repentant consent of men. I had gone into the Seminary tutored by Evangelical University to be afraid to let the sun shine on religion’s chief doctrines, I had come from the Seminary believing that the flood of light intensified the beauty of religion. ”

“ Aramon, the first teacher in the seminary, met with no opposition in a regular preaching service.
The number of pupils in the Seminary, at the close of the year, was twenty-five, and some of them were of unusual promise. A theological class, of four middle-aged, married men, was kept up during the summer, and then they went forth preaching the gospel, or laboring as teachers and colporters. Thoroughly-educated young men, otherwise qualified to preach the gospel, could only be obtained to a limited extent. ”

“ The sense of its importance is increasing instead of diminishing. Everywhere longer time and greater pains are bestowed upon it, and we have been told that it is the desire of the Sovereign Pontiff that the theological course should rather be shortened if necessary, than that philosophy should fail to receive its adequate proportion of the time allotted to the curriculum of the ecclesiastical seminary. All this implies that philosophy, like theology, is a true science, having its certain principles, methods, and doctrines. ”

“ The great argument for secluding young ecclesiastics in seminaries entirely separate from secular colleges is, that their morals, their piety, their vocation, are otherwise endangered. We reply to this by a suggestion intended to do away with the objection to a university life, and at the same time to show how its advantages may be secured. Let both systems be combined. Let there be a college exclusively intended for young ecclesiastics, in which they shall be kept under the discipline of the Little Seminary, at the university. ”

“ Boys are obliged to attend church twice on Sunday, but few of them object to this compulsory attendance, for the services are conducted in turn by the professors of the Theological Seminary, all of whom are very distinguished and interesting men, who never fail to interest their hearers. ”

“ Nothing that I may ever say or do can repay even a mite of the obligation that is upon me. As for you, and the other Catholics of this Diocese, you owe the Seminary for nine-tenths of the priests who have been successfully carrying on God's work in your midst. The collection to-day is for that Seminary. In other words, it is for the purpose of helping to train priests who shall take our places when we are gone. On the Seminary depends the future of the Church amongst you: therefore, the future of religion in your families. ”

“ He was the author of the formula for the government and discipline of the Evangelical Lutheran church, which, adopted by the general synod in 1827, has become the ground-plan of the organization of that body. From its establishment in 1826 till his resignation in 1864 he was chairman of the faculty of the theological seminary at Gettysburg, Pa., and for four years he was the only instructor. ”

“ At rare intervals nowadays a clergyman may be found to maintain that because a man has been to college and to the theological seminary, and has made the study of the Scriptures his life-work (moved to that decision after careful self-examination) that therefore he is better fitted to that ministry than Miss Susie Goldrick, who teaches a class in Sabbath-school very acceptably. ”

“ IT would seem at first sight an anomaly that if the obedience practised by a secular priest is so different from that of a religious, in the time of preparation at the Seminary the life is modelled on that of a religious congregation; for, although it is no doubt easy compared with that of any religious Order, it is, nevertheless, of much the same character, and the occasions of practising obedience in a Seminary are very similar to those in a monastery. ”

“ Many of those who have hitherto been in employ ment had few or no educational advantages in early youth ; for it is only of late years that our Training Seminary was established. They could read and write when they were first employed, but that was all ; but every Missionary devotes an entire day every week to the instruction and training of his Catechists in their vernacular tongue, and some of them have now made considerable progress in every department of theological knowledge ; so that if their piety, zeal, and energy were equal to their intelligence, they might be ordained at once. ”

“ The second great want, in our opinion, is the provision for ecclesiastical students of the advantages for education which can only be completely furnished by a university, and which cannot, therefore, be fully enjoyed at separate ecclesiastical seminaries. The Little Seminary is only a superior kind of grammar-school, even though it gives instruction in the ancient languages and some other branches to the same extent with a college. ”

“ In regard to the students, it seems plain enough that all that part of their course which precedes theology can be much more thoroughly carried on at a university of the highest class than at a Little Seminary, especially if these seminaries are numerous and therefore necessarily limited in numbers and all kinds of means for improvement. A concentration of the endowments, the instructors, and the pupils in one grand institution, makes it possible to give a much better and higher kind of education, and saves a great deal of labor besides. ”

“ Hazelius wrote: "Our [Hartwick] Seminary has been established since the year 1815; during which time 11 young men have received their theological education here, 10 of whom are now actively engaged as laborers in the vineyard of our Lord; but one is prevented by disease from participating in the labors of his brethren." (20.) All told, 10 preachers produced by Lutheran seminaries in the United States till 1827! Besides, in reality these seminaries were not Lutheran, but unionistic and, in a degree, Reformed schools. ”

“ All the theological tutors were at the Sorbonne, and the young men from St. Sulpice and St. Nicholas, who were studying theology, went there for their lectures. Thus the system of teaching remained national and common to all. The seclusion of the seminary only applied to the moral discipline and religious duties. This was the equivalent of the practice now prevalent among the boarding-schools which send their pupils to the Lycée. There was only one course of theology in Paris, and that was the official one at the Faculty. ”

“ Union Seminary was not then enthusiastic in regard to foreign missions, as it has since become. At the last meeting of Presbytery 34that I was to attend, Dr. Alexander Wilson moved that, inasmuch as Orange Presbytery owned a scholarship in Princeton Seminary, I be assigned to it. To my objection that I had made money to pay my own way, he replied, “You will have plenty of need of your money. You can buy books with it.” I followed the suggestion and laid in a good library.
35 II
MINISTERIAL TRAINING I entered Princeton Seminary in the fall of 1853. ”

“ If the first bishop of New France had confined himself to creating one large seminary, it is certain that his chosen work, which was the preparation for the Church of a nursery of scholars and priests, the apostles of the future, would not have been complete.
98For many young people, indeed, who lead a worldly existence, and find themselves all at once transferred to the serious, religious life of the seminary, the surprise, and sometimes the discomfort, may be great. One must adapt oneself to this atmosphere of prayer, meditation and study. ”

“ A Seminarist is called upon to exercise the easier forms of obedience, to train him for the harder. He leads a regular daily life, in obedience to authority made known to us by definite commands and by fixed rules, in order that he may acquire a habit of submission which may give him his tone when he shall have gone forth from the Seminary and have no such definite rules or commands to guide him. ”

“ Ford for his room for you in the Princeton Seminary." My three years in the Seminary were full of joy and profit. I made it a rule to go out as often as possible and address little meetings in the neighboring school-houses, and found this a very beneficial method of gaining practice. A young preacher must get accustomed to the sound of his own voice; if naturally timid, he must learn to face an audience and must first learn to speak; afterwards he may learn to speak well. It is a wise thing for a young man to begin his labors in a small congregation ”