The Fitting Education for the Christian Ministry

We have, in the preceding chapter, presupposed, that the duty of the Church in regard to the classical and scientific education of her sons for the Christian ministry, is in a good measure performed. In all ordinary cases, we insist on such an education. The necessities of the Church may justify the setting apart of men to the sacred office who have not enjoyed the advantages of an extended education. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantz, the French Protestants called to the pastoral office some of their most zealous and enlightened members, and are indebted to them for their continued existence. But the instances in which this is called for are rare; necessity knows no law.

We proceed, in the present chapter, to a topic of some delicacy, and implore direction to treat it in the meekness of wisdom. A classical and literary education is not all that ministers need; nor is it all for which the

Church ought to hokl herself responsible. There is a solid, theological, spiritual, and practical training of her sons which must be cared for; nor can she throw this responsibility from her own conscience; nor may she stand by an indifferent and silent spectator, if she sees, or even fears, that her beloved and consecrated youth are exposed to a training which will diminish their usefulness in the service in which she desires and prays that they may be eminently useful.

We have intimated that the pulpit is less powerful than it was in the days of our fathers; and this acknowledgment comes to us from quarters from which it might be least expected. The existing ministry are not backward in announcing the mournful fact. One of the most venerable and experienced teachers in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, makes the following faithful statement on this subject, in an address to the students in that institution, which has been read with great interest, and has given great satisfaction both to the churches and their pastors. I shall offer no apology for introducing these thoughts, expressed as they are with the clearness, purity, and meekness so characteristic of their accomplished author.” The means of more mature study, and the excitements to more mature study, have been constantly increasing; but both the means and

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excitements have been lost upon a large number of our candidates. And Avlien a rapid improvement might have been expected, a real decline, if I mistake not, has been silently and insensibly going on. A little more than three quarters of a century ago, there was a considerable number of ministers in the Presbyterian Church in this country, who deserved to be called illustrious. As to the reality of this fact, you will not hesitate, when I mention, as a specimen, the names of President Dickinson, the elder President Edwards, President Burr, the Tennents, Mr. Blair, President Davies, President Finley, and a number more scarcely inferior; men, most of them,” at once eminent for the fervor of their piety, the activity of their zeal, the vigor of their talents, the extent of their erudition, and their commanding influence. The distinguished usefulness of these holy, apostolical men, in giving a tone to the preaching, the discipline, and the character of the Church to which they belonged, it would not be easy to estimate. They were felt to be ‘workmen that needed not to be ashamed,’ qualified ’ rightly to divide the word of truth;’ and the churches, and their younger brethren confided in them, and looked up to them, and, under the divine blessing, were guided aright. They were men fitted to have influence, and they had it, and employed it for the glory of God, and the hest interests of mankind. The generation of ministers next to them, were, as a body, little, if any less distinguished. Then we had Strain, and Duffield, and Witherspoon, and M’Whorter, and Waddell, and Wilson, and Rodgers, and Hoge, not to mention others of equal claims; men of wisdom, piety, prudence, dignity, and peace; — men who commanded the veneration and confidence of the churches; men, who, whenever they appeared in ecclesiastical judicatories, especially in the higher ones, seemed as if they were sent to enlighten, and guide, and bless the family of Christ. Of the present state of our Church in reference to this point, it is both difficult and delicate to speak. But I ask — Have we an equally illustrious list to show at this hour, in proportion to our greatly augmented numbers and advantages? The ministers of our Church are nearly ten times as numerous as they were sixty years ago; and the facilities for obtaining books, and pursuing study, are also greatly multiplied. Upon every principle of proportion, we ought to be able now to bring forward a catalogue of Presbyterian apostles at least ten times as large as could have been produced in the days of Edwards, Davies, and Finley. But can we produce such a catalogue? It would rejoice my heart if I could think it possible. We cannot, however, I think, so far impose uj)on ourselves as to deem it possible. The most mortifying facts of a contradictory character stare us in the face. How difficult is it, even in this day of theological seminaries, to supply an important vacant congregation ^vitli a pastor, in whom the union of eminent learning, talents and piety is considered as indispensable?”*

We have the same complaint from the learned Professor who now occupies the theological chair at Andover. “The effectiveness of the pulpit,” says he, “in comparison with other efficiencies, has declined among us to an alarming extent, within the last fifty years.”!

We cannot but regard sentiments like these, coming, as they do, from the fountain-heads of theological learning, and the highest eminence of observation, as worthy of grave consideration; and the question forces itself upon us. May there not be some latent defect in the modern system of educating young men for the Gospel ministry?

In former days, the training of youth for the pulpit was conducted by the payors of the churches; they were scattered over the land,

* Address of Rev. Samuel Miller, D. D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government in the Theological Seminary at Princeton.

f Professor Park.

and amid all the vscenes and responsibilities of the pastoral office. Nor may it be denied that there were important advantages in this arrangement. Pastors themselves would feel the responsibility of becoming qualified for the office of theological teachers; and the most eminent learning and ability of the Church, instead of being concentrated in a few select localities, would be more widely diffused. Young men were indeed taught less than they are now- taught in theological seminaries; they heard and transcribed fewer lectures; — they were not listeners merely, but were allowed to be inquirers, and even encouraged to be disputants. The consequence was, that while they were taught less, they studied more, thought more, wrote more; and their minds were better disciplined, if not so richly furnished. With less learning and fewer attainments, they were abler men; abler casuists, abler polemics; abler, more instructive, and more practical and acceptable preachers of the Gospel.

One of the great advantages of this system of tuition was found in the pastoral supervision exercised over the young men by their teacher. They were members of his family; they took their turns in conducting its daily devotions; their character and conduct, and qualifications for the sacred office were inspected;

374 THE POWER or THR PULPIT.

and while there was great familiarity of intercourse between the teacher and the taught, tluMT were not wanting those rebukes, admonitions, and pjiternal counsels and encouragements that are so much needed even by young men of high Christian character.

Nor was it one of the least of the advantages attendant on this system of education, that the students became acquainted with men and things; with good men and bad; with sceptics and unbelievers; with scenes of affliction and scenes of joy; with sickness and with death; with weekly meetings for prayer and instruction among the people, and with the various dealings of God’s Spirit with the souls of men.

Students of theology under such a course of education, have also often been made eminently useful; and not a few of those revivals of religion with which the churches in the days of old were so frequently visited, were promoted by their influence, even while pursuing their preparatory studies.

Nor is the suggestion an unimportant one, that it was by such a domestic training as this, that the young men imbibed some just impressions of the proprieties and courtesy of social intercourse. Instead of entering the ministry crude and green, as the mass of young men usually do, who for some eight years have enjoyed little intercourse save that which is found within the walls of a college, and a theological seminary, they entered it w-itli a more subdued and chastened mind, enjoying all the sympathies of a Christian people, and not unfrequently from the fragrant atmosphere “of churches on which the rains of heaven had fallen, and the Sun of Righteousness risen with healing in his beams.

It was not unnatural, that in contemplating the change from this system of education to that which is now pursued by theological seminaries, a doubt should have suggested itself to the minds of our fathers, whether, on the wdiole, it would be a change for the better. I know there were such doubts, for I was personally familiar with the inquiries and discussions on this subject, on the part of the friends of the theological seminaries, both in the Congregational and Presbyterian churches. The experiment has been made, and its results are before the w orld. The churches must judge whether it has, or has not furnished them with a more able and efficient ministry, and w hether it has proved itself more effective, either in the pulpit, or from the press. It is quite obvious that something has been lost by the change, and it is equally obvious that something has been gained. If I were called upon to strike the balance, I frankly confess I should be not a little ciii])iiiTassecl. My own train of tlioiiglit, and my own convictions of duty, would lead mc (o something’ like the following conclusions.

The change is made; it was made by men in u hose piety, judgment, and experience we have great confidence, and who often and earnestly sought counsel of God. A large amount of funds has been invested in the existing theological institutions; the age in which we live demands a learned ministry; and the current of ])ublic opinion is strongly in favor of the present system of education. To distrust it now, and more especially to propose any radical alteration in the system, would be attended with results that would be mournful. These and other considerations would lead to the conclusion that our theological seminaries must be sustained.

But we may not rest simply in this conclusion. If there are evils incidental to this system of instruction, may they not be remedied; and is it not a possible thing to give our theological institutions such a direction, that they shall be better than they are, and more certainly accomplish the benevolent designs of those who founded them? The inquiry is one of great and common interest; the time has arrived when it may receive impartial consideration without injury; and it is pressed upon

US by facts wliicli render the consideration of it not unseasonable.

The great solicitude, the agitating apprehension of the pious and venerable founders of our theological seminaries, was, lest the opportunities they should furnish of high intellectual culture, should not have the best tendency to raise up a spiritual ministry. It were proof of criminal thoughtlessness to be ignorant of his devices who plots the ruin of the Church by infusing into her the spirit of the world; and itvho, the more effectually to accomplish his purpose, would enervate the vigor, by impairing the spirituality of her ministers. She has survived the shock of persecution; she has proved herself superior to the assaults of infidelity and “science, falsely so called;” but she has another conflict to engage in, another victory to attain. With her members, it is the all-absorbing spirit of worldliness; with her ministers, it is the same worldliness, only in another and more subtle form. She has yet to survive the conflict vAth. that pride of sacred learning, which is now putting to the test the spirit of her ministers, and by which they themselves are so greatly ensnared, and the truth of God so diluted that it flows too often only from human fountains. Men of letters, men of research, men of taste, and accomplished scholars, who, like the rest of mniikiiul, have the remnants of all that is imliiillowcd ill the pride and ambition of tlic human heart, may look upon it as a miracle of mercy, if they make not shipwreck of a good conscience in the great work of the Gospel ministry. The age is one in which the love of learning rather than the love of Christ, is easily substituted as the great stimulus to ministerial effort; and in which it were not surprising if men are found occupying the sacred office, whose greenest laurels are gathered from the tree of knowledge, rather than from the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.

If what we have suggested in preceding observations, do not produce the conviction that we are no enemies to a learned ministry, that conviction will be produced by nothing which it is in our power to utter. Much as we may, in every view, fall short of our own standard, “we are advocates for a learned ministry, and for a spiritual one. The .dangers to which we have referred must be obviated at the threshold, and in our theological seminaries. Hoiu must they he obviated?

In replying to this question, I answer, in the first place. It must be by a watchful eye over the young men who are there pursuing their theological education. The rivalship of numbers is unworthy of these seats of sacred science.

Numbers may ruin us. It is impossible that a very larfe number of students should enjoy that pastoral supervision which they need. Many a young man has finished his course in our theological seminaries, who never ought to have thought of the ministry, and whom a faithful pastoral supervision would have so instructed; while more have suffered in their usefulness as ministers, for the want of that personal inspection which, from the multitude of students, it has been impossible to exercise. Give us abler, better, and more spiritual preachers, even if they must be fewer. The three hundred that lapped under GidCTni, were more potent than the mighty host of Midian.

Our second reply to the question is. Let the teachers of those icho are being educated for the ministry, he men of no inconsiderable experience in the pastoral office. In the early organization of theological seminaries, the professors were of this character; they came with the experience of settled pastors; not with clear heads only, but with warm hearts, and from the warm bosom of the churches which they loved. Their more early pupils were the flower of the churches; they preached as though they understood and felt the Gospel; and though not a few of them have been called to their rest, their names will be long embalmed in the memory of good men. It is a wise arrangement of (lie Tlicoloiical Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, that the professors shall be ordained ministers of the Gospel. I need not say, that this designation is ordinarily applied to the stated pastors of the churches. There are exceptions to this rule; but the reasons must be urgent to induce a presbytery to ordain any man, sine titulo, or save in connection with a pastoral charge. We say this is a Avise arrangement; for there is no such jjrima facie testimony to the personal qualifications of a teacher of young men who are pursuing their studies with a view to the Christian ministry, as 4hat which is furnished, by having usefully and acceptably sustained the responsibilities of the pastoral office. There is no such test of his intellectual and spiritual qualifications; of his tact as a teacher; of his habits of industry; and of his capacity and willingness to “endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ.” If the deacons must “first be proved,” much more the ministers; and if ministers, much more the instructors of ministers. The more deliberately and impartially the subject is considered, the more it will be found to be one of the absurdest things in the world, to invest a man w itli the office of a teacher of the sons of the prophets, who is himself no prophet. It requires but an ingenuous and impartial view of this question, in order to produce the strong conviction, that the rule ought rarely, if ever, to be dispensed with; not even in favor of those departments which, from their own nature, are most purely scholastic, and for the competent occupancy of which young men must be specially trained; for there is no part of that training more important than the labors of the pastoral office. We cannot say too much in favor of these more scholastic departments; they are worthy of the best and holiest talents and acquirements of the choicest sons of the Church, They are departments in which the best informed mind may task its greatest resources; the most acute mind exhaust all its powers of discrimination; the most safe and well-balanced mind prove its caution, by its well-judged conclusions; and where the mind that is most equable and trustworthy in seasons of excitement, of invading errors and stormy conflict, is most needed. And for these reasons, they are departments which call for unsleeping vigilance and supervision. They are the very departments which are exposed to exert a wrong influence; wdiere the wisest men are in danger of imbibing loose and unevangelical views, and proving eventually unsafe guides of the aspiring and unstable minds of the young. It is true, they are departments for which it can hardly be expected that a man should be fully prepared in the ordinary course of pastoral labor; but they are departments for Avliich any scholar-like pastor can easily prepare Iiimself, with much less labor than he devotes to the incessant toil of the pulpit, and for the premature and hasty occupancy of which there is no good and sufficient reason.

There can be little doubt that the founders of our theological schools, by requiring that the professors should be ordained ministers of the Gospel, designed to protect these seminaries from the evils of a mere scholastic influence. The Church may be induced to disregard this law; influences may be brought to act upon her from the theological seminaries themselves, of which she herself is not aware, to induce her to disregard it; but in yielding to them she knows not what she does.

We are well aware that we shall be complained of when we say these things. Yet we say them freely, fearlessly and humbly; — we say them because life is short, and we may not be able to say them at another day; and we say them, because vast prospective interests are at stake in the practical decision of this great question. Mere scholars, those vrho know more of books than of men, and more of theological halls than the pulpit, ought not to be invested with the trust of educating a vjliole generation of young men for the Christian ministry. The fact may no longer be dissembled, that the tendency, if not the design of our theological seminaries themselves, is to fill the most important chairs with purely literary men; men who neither have, nor expect to have, any relation to the pastoral office ‘, men ordained, not to the work of the ministry, but to their professorship. It is easy to see that such arrangements once entered upon, are apt to liQ progressive and to perpetuate themselves. Age and experience sleep in the tomb; and those only become the teachers of ministers, who have themselves never been the teachers of the people, and never served the Church of God in the ministry of his Son. There are many things that favor such an arrangement, unwise as it is. It is one that is easily made; and the individuals whom it specially regards are men of great attainments, and great excellence of character. There is not a little about it, too, that is captivating to congregated youthful minds, who may, without any imputation of wrong doing, be supposed to exert sufficient influence in effecting it. The men are on the spot; they are acquainted with one another, and draw well together. The glare of human learning, and the pride of man, are gratified and exalted by concentrating in the schools of the prophets youthful teachers of the highest promise. Cut the effects of the delusion will, sooner or later, be bitterly ])ewailctl. It will be a sorry day when the churches are led away by considerations like these.

The history of the past and the example of other churches, may not, on so important a subject as this, be regarded with indifference. In reply to some inquiries on this subject, a very sensible clergyman of the Scottish Church, remarks: “Among the voluntary dissenters in all the three kingdoms, the union of ecclesiastical charges with professorships, is, so far as I remember, universal.” There is no portion of the earth to which the evangelical churches in this land have been in the habit of looking with greater reverence and confidence, than the churches of Scotland and Geneva. Most justly have they done so; there are no nobler examples for our imitation than these churches, from the days of Calvin and Knox, down to those of Merle D’Aubigne, and Chalmers. So far as my information extends, not an instance can be found in these churches, — churches where the pulpit has exerted more influence than in any other part of Christendom, in which the training of ministers has been committed to those w ho were strangers to the responsibilities of the pastoral office. So far from this, the ablest and best professors in the theological schools of Geneva, Edinburgh and Glasgow, have been, and still are, men who, like the great Calvin, have been the most approved pastors of the churches, and not a few of these have not even demitted their pastoral charge. If we look to Germany, we do indeed see a different usage; their professors are for the most part purely scholars, and rarely pastors. Nor is it to the rationalism, the mysticism, the idealism of Germany, nor to its crippled orthodoxy, that the American churches have any desire to look for examples of theological nurture.

Theological science, as a science, has no peculiarity; it is in this respect just like every other science; no man understands it until he has practised it. The statesman does not; the jurist does not; the physician does not; nor the navigator, nor the surveyor. Lawyers and physicians do not commit the training of their young men to those who have never been practised in their profession; they would deem it a great blunder. The laws of the land require that some portion of the time of their students should be employed in the offices of practised teachers. A man must have been in the midst of his work, and observed and marked with studious care and anxious solicitude, the practical operation of his principles, in order to present those principles in their truest and best light to the youthful mind. No matter what the talents of a theological instructor may be, it is not possible for him rightly to exhibit the truth of God, and teach others to exhibit it, if he himself have not been in the habit of exhibiting it to the jjopular mbid. Books and treatises, reviews and single discourses written by these distinguished authors, speak for themselves; they have great excellencies, but they have this one deficiency, that they have no savor of the pastoral office. They are not like the works of Leighton and Erskine, Romaine, Witherspoon, and Edwards; nor are they, with all their acuteness and research, what they would have been had their authors seen more hard service. They evince talent and piety, but they are wanting in the knowledge of the human heart; they are wanting in that which nien want to know and feel; they are wanting in that impressive, impulsive, practical exhibition of truth which the popular mind demands. They savor of the cloister, but not of the pulpit; they savor of scholarship and intellect, while they ought to be imbued with a richer fragrance. Even as mere biblical commentators, preachers have the pre-eminence; nor do I know that there are to be found any writings of this description superior to the beautiful commentaries of Calvin and Doddridge.

We have sought to ascertain, if the Scriptures anywhere contemplate a class of theological teachers, who have not themselves been the acknowledged and honored teachers of the people. Unless we have overlooked some important fact, the history of the Jewish and Christian Church speaks the same language, from the days of Samuel to the days of Paul; and it is uniformly in favor of the views here expressed.

What is the voice of common sense, and of all the better feelings of our hearts on this very plain question, if it be not that the men whose professed employment is to teach others to preach the Gospel, should themselves be preachers of the Gospel? Is it said, they are preachers of the Gosple? They are so, but not to the people. And how often do they preach it to their own eclectic charge? Once in four, or six weeks; and then they come before their pupils with a highly elaborate and finished discourse, — a banquet for the king, and not for the peopel. It is just the preaching to discourage an humble, and spoil an ambitious aspirant for the ministry. This will do occasionally; but it will never do as the habitual example for the imitation of the young. They will never be broken into the harness after this sort. Far better were it to fall back upon the old method of instruction by the pastors of the churches, than to have our young men subjected to the evils of such a purely scholastic training. Our theological teachers oujrlit to be men who have known something of “the burden and heat of the day,” — men who have been in the field in sunshine and amid storms, in seed-time and in harvest; not literary men merely, not preachers to a selected few, with “itching ears,” but men who have come in contact with the common mind, and preached the Gospel to the mon people.

There is another thought also which is worthy of some consideration. It has been before Intimated, that when a student at law, or at medicine, has finished his course at the law or medical school, so far as my knowledge extends, he is put under the tuition of a practising lawyer or practising physician. Let the same thing be done with our students in theology. On completing their theological course, let their respective presbyteries require them to spend three, or six months, with some settled pastor. They will find still, that they have something to learn; they will receive important instruction, and at the same time will do good. We know little of them under the present arrangement; and I believe I speak the unanimous voice of the presbytery with which I am connected, that, but for the fact that they have employed three years in pursuing their theological course, and but for the recommendation of their professors, not a few of them would have been refused their license to preach the Gospel.

It is one thing to impart theological knowledge, and another to form ministers of Christ. The human heart is a most wicked and deceitful thing. It cannot he trusted with a purelyscholastic training. Rigid orthodoxy, and well-defined symbols of faith, will not always bind men whose idol is a learned, rather than a spiritual and useful ministry; and whose love and pride of learning so ensnare them, that when hardly pressed, they will be too strongly tempted to seek the honor that cometh from men, rather than abide the consequences, in a literary age of which they themselves may be the brightest constellations, if witnessing a good confession. It is “While men sleep, that the enemy sows tares.” American pastors and churches must be blind indeed, if they have not seen enough to convince them that the gradual incursions of error haA e crept upon them unawares, from the institutions of theological science. It is true they have crept in from the influence of men, who, in some instances, have been settled pastors before they became professors. But they were men who were once “good men, and true,” and who became corrupted after they left the pastoral office. “If these things be done in the green tree.

what shall be done in tlic dry?” Let us take heed lest ‘we fall from our steadfastness. — “Hold flist that thou hast; let no man take thy crown!”

While, therefore, we would hesitate to go back to the old method of educating the Christian ministry, and would sustain and honor our theological seminaries, we would say, for Christ’s and the Church’s sake, .spare no effort to give them the best direction, and to throw into them the most sacred influence. Let the Church perpetuate the work, which in former years she so nobly began, and in the behalf of her sons, call for teachers of sound and thorough literary attainments, disciplined by the toil and experience of the pastoral office. The safety and excellence of the seminaries in the Presbyterian Church, is found thus far in this combined influence. Like the original apostolical college, so wisely established by the Saviour, age with youth, pastoral experience with scholastic learning, the ardor of literary enterprise with matured and chastened piety, bound together as in a “covenant of salt,” have, under God, made our seminaries what they are. Let us do our best endeavors, under the favor of a kind Providence, not simply to keep them what they are, but to make them better. The venerable men who, in the vigor of their manhood, and at no small personal sacrifice, left the most important congregations in the land for the purpose of conducting these infant institutions, will soon sleep with their fathers. Thankful are we that they have lived so long, and have performed such essential service. Their hoary head is still a crown of glory to the institutions, so long moulded by their unwearied effort, faith, and prayer. There let them remain, and like the distinguished statesman who breathed his last in the American Capitol, breathe forth their last influence with their latest breath, in the halls of which they have so long been the adornment! Nor is there any one truth of its kind, that ought to be more deeply felt, than that if the time should ever arrive, when the places they have so long occupied shall be occupied by men of no pastoral experience, the glory of these institutions will have departed. Let not these remarks be either misunderstood, or wilfully perverted. The writer would be among the last to aid in introducing teachers to our theological seminaries, the vigor of whose days, like his own, has already been exhausted in the pastoral office. Those for such a service should be men, not in the decline, but in the strength of human effort; men whose meridian rays now cheer us, and whose light, when it begins to grow dim, shall be the tranquil, and clear, and prolonged twilight of tlic iiortlicrii sky. Loii<^ may the light of these sacred institutions shine! The God of Zion grant that it may be the light of a high-born and heaven-sustained piety, and an accomplished erudition! We would look to them, not as the proud Greek looked toward the grove of Academus, or the mount where Apollo struck his lyre; but rather as the devout Hebrew was wont to look to the halls where Samuel taught, and David sang, and to the hallowed mountain where the Great Teacher spake, and employed whole nights in prayer. Let them be baptized with this Spirit! let the dews of Heaven fall upon them! let them ever be imbued with the atmosphere of Zion!