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for Theology what it does for all knowledge and all students. It increases knowledge. It increases discipline. It makes theologians. It makes Theology intelligible, consistent, scientific. It makes the difference between crudeness and clearness, between undeveloped and developed thought, between the ore and the metal, bullion and coin. It is a necessity of Theology; a necessity of the Church and its ministry. It is a necessity of an age when education is common and diffused; when it leaves nothing out of its reach, not even Theology; when nothing passes unquestioned; when faith must give its reasons for faith, as much as knowledge for knowledge. Without it Theology is a pond, not a running stream. It keeps thought alive, and inquiry moving, and Theology improving and influential. It enables Theology to profit by all new knowledge, to meet new exigencies, and time as it comes. Theology cannot do without Education, and an Education of its own.

And then, finally, there is the influence of Education in general on the course of theological as well as other thought. For Education sets in motion all human activities, and does not allow the mind of the time to sink into uninquisitive torpor. Unless it is mechanical and pedantic, exercising only the memory, it awakens the spirit of inquiry; it pushes men on to know more, and especially to think about whatever is disputed; it puts them in a questioning attitude, even towards what is ancient and established. It may beget conceit, and the feeling that, because they know a little about a good many things, they know all about the deep things of God. In such an altered condition as Education produces, Theology has to live, and do its work. Such an atmosphere, quick and electric, is better than one dark and lifeless. An age of freedom, of inquiry, of general intelligence, is more favorable to truth, and to a living faith, than one when men do not think and do not care. Theology is the last science

to ask for silence and unquestioning submission. Blind faith is no virtue, and has no spiritual power. The strength of Christianity is in the joyful enthusiasm with which believers accept it, as answering their questions, and satisfying their wants, and not as imposed upon them without reason, and against their will. I know that intellectual activity alone will not unlock the kingdom of heaven. I know it is the pure in heart who are to see God. I know that spiritual things are spiritually discerned. I know that faith enters where knowledge halts, and finds the secret of God which is hid from the prudent and the ingenious. But so, also, it is intelligence and not ignorance, it is inquiry and not credulity, it is education stimulating the mind to progress, which creates one of the conditions favorable to the knowledge of God and his holy revelation; favorable to theological inquiry, and so to theological truth.

And what Education does for inquiry, it does still more for the intelligent reception of truth. There must be moral and spiritual receptiveness, or there is no faith, and Christ remains unknown. But there is much in Theology which requires the exertion of the intellect, as well as the meekness of the heart. Its questions require knowledge and vigor to wrestle with them. Its doctrines are not so simple or superficial that they can be understood without clearness of head, or be bound together into harmony without reach of thought. It may be that Education in some communities, that culture in some persons, runs into sentimentalism and a thin theology. It may lead them to think they know more than Christ and his Apostles, and to invent an improved theology of their own, whose virtue is in its negations, and which exhausts its requirements in good behavior. Even more, Education may set some minds flying in the vagrant winds of free thought, or inflate them with notions which leave no room for the great doctrines of the Christian faith. And yet, with all perils

to spiritual sanity, there must be intelligence, and consequently there must be Education, for the growth and power of a religion which has doctrine in it as well as feeling, and which is an exercise of thought as well as of emotion. Christian Theology is not an esoteric doctrine for its students and experts. It is to go out from the schools into the thought and life of the people. And unless it is reduced to thinness and pap, it must find there some intelligence corresponding to its high argument. To keep up its own tone and vigor, to perform its grand work in the souls of men, it must be met, not by dullness and mental indolence, but by thoughtfulness, by clear understanding, by the grip of an interested and intelligent mind. And Education prepares that.

And then, while theological science is cultivated by its schools, by its elect and consecrated students, we cannot in this place forget how much it is indebted to intelligent and educated laymen, who, unable to prosecute it themselves, appreciate its relation to religious life and work, and to the brighter and mightier coming of the kingdom of God. They participate in the enlightened spirit which in our day and neighborhood devotes so much wealth to the cultivation of all other sciences, and to liberal education; and they will not allow this to be neglected. The munificent foundations at Andover and Princeton, at Upland and Hamilton, at New Haven and New York, at Rochester and Newton, the libraries, the professorships, the lectureships, show that Theology does not depend upon theologians or the clergy only. With intelligence and education for the management of productive business, they have sympathy with an occupation so remote from their own, with studies they cannot pursue. If unlearned in Theology, they have learned its value and its use. They have learned that the aqueduct depends on the reservoir, and that the city's water comes from the springs in the hills far back. They have learned that their

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money can be transmuted into what is better, if not into Theology, into the libraries and schools and apparatus by which it is investigated and taught. This lectureship long may it continue! — speaks to us to-night of this most intelligent kind of beneficence. And it is a sign that Theology and Education alike find appreciation and friendship in our churches; that the men who laid foundations on this beautiful hill so many years ago have and will have their successors; that, while on this sacred height professors and students keep burning the lamp whose beams shine far away, there are laymen who will see that its oil never fails, that its light shall never go out.

II. THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE.

I AM to speak to you on The Relations of Theology and Literature.

It is part of that inter-relation of all truth, all knowledge, all thought, which the student discovers before he has gone far afield. His special province he soon finds touches other provinces, contiguous and cognate. The sciences overlap and interlace each other. The spiritual borders on the physical, and similar laws, if not the same, run through both of them. The philosophy of ideas goes with the philosophy of facts. The universe cannot be severed from its Eternal Cause, and no part of it is entirely independent of any other part. The same human mind works in every department of thought and knowledge, in the nearest and the remotest, in all science, in all literature, in the realm of principles and in the realm of events, among effects or among causes. And it is the Unity of God, and the unity of thought, and the unity of law, which bring together into some sort of relation, more or less apparent, things which lie far apart. Knowledge, which begins with single facts, goes on to group and classify, to colligate and organize, till in its consummation it not only brings together all knowable facts, but brings them into order, relation, and whatever community they have. Towards this the advancing knowledge of the race tends. Remote and near are brought into union. Hidden connections, correspondences, analogies, become clear. And though man in the present state may never hold in his little hand truth in its entirety, he grasps more and more of it, and discovers relations once unsuspected. Knowledge, inquiry, advances to the comparative stage.

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