The Warriors

by Anna Robertson Brown Lindsay

Life is not monastic. It is very lively. We scarcely get, in all our post-collegiate life, a chance to sit and muse. We go through sensations, experiences, and incongruities, which stir a sense of fun. A man reads (I notice) in his seminary, St. Leo, Ad Flaeirmum, and makes his first pastoral call on a woman who proudly brings out her first baby for him to see. Ad Flaeirmum indeed! What does St. Leo tell the youth to say?

What should be breathed into a man in the seminary, is not the mere facts of ecclesiastical history, but the warm pulsating currents of human life; the profound significance of the founding and the progress of the Church; a deep psychological understanding of human desires, motives, joys, ambitions, griefs; the relentlessness of sin; the help and glory of Redemption; the quickening of the Christ; the vigor and the tenderness of faith. Coincident with these must be a growth in depth and dignity of life. No one likes to take spiritual instruction from men who are themselves crude, foolish, sentimental, or conceited. Many social snags on which young ministers are sure to run, are simply the rudiments of social conduct, as practised by the world. Noble manners are one's personal actions as influenced and guided by the great behavior of the race. Under the impulse of ideals, much that is untoward or superficial in one's bearing will disappear. It is impossible to think as noble men and women have thought—to dream, love, and work as they have dreamed, loved, and wrought—and not have pass into one's mien the high excellence of such lives.

The first education is spiritual. Until mind and heart are swept by the spirit of God, chastened, purified, ennobled, and inspired, vain is all the learning of the schools! To this end, there should be a more deeply spiritual atmosphere in our seminaries, less of the mere academic impulse. In every age, there are men just to come in contact with whom is a benediction and a help for years. Such a man was Mark Hopkins, Noah Porter, James McCosh. Such the leading men in every seminary should be.

The plan of education must be of principles, not of facts. The university research-men gather facts, and scientific men everywhere collect, analyze, and classify them. But each small department of human learning—each minute branch in that department—needs a lifetime for the mastery of that one theme. Hence the work of the college is quite apart from that of the school of theology. It is the place of the school of theology, not to ignore the New Learning, but to group, upon the basis of a thorough college training, certain great interests and pursuits of mankind, in such a way as to afford, by means of them, a leverage for spiritual work.

After all is said and done, it is not the grammar-detail of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic dialects that makes a minister's power. It is the strange language-culture of the race which should enter in; the inner vitality of words, the beauty of poetic cadences, the strong flow of rhythm, noble themes, great thoughts, impressive imagery and appeal. We should know the Bible as literature, not as one knows a story-book, or a dialect-exercise, but as one knows the melodies and memories of childhood.

The vital thing is not a knowledge of the historical schisms and decrees of Christendom—not the external Evidences of Religion, Ecclesiastical History, Ecclesiastical Polity, monuments, texts, memorabilia—the vital thing is the power to think about God, and the problems of mankind. It is a heart-knowledge of the difficulties and questionings of a race that yearns for virtue.

Man thirsts for God. No one is wholly indifferent to the Spirit. I fear that some ministers do not know—and never will know—the heart-hunger of the world. When they rise to speak, there is always some one present whose breath is hushed with longing to hear spoken some real word of truth, or strength, or comfort. If he receive but chaff!—

Theology is not a dry thing, and ought not be made so. It is quick with the life of the race. Each dogma is a mile-stone of human progress. It is the sifted and garnered wisdom of the centuries, concerning God, and His ways with men. Each student should feel, not that a system is being driven into him, as piles are driven into the stream, but that he is being put in philosophic contact with the thought of the race on the great topic of Religion, with liberty himself to experiment, think, and add to the store.

Homiletics is not a series of nursery-rules for man—formal, didactic droppings of a pedant's tongue. Homiletics is the appeal of man to man, for the welfare of his soul, and the true progress of mankind. Exegesis is not a matter of Hebrew or Greek alone. It includes the spiritual interpretation of the great problems of the race. Homer, Tennyson, Browning, and Dante are exegetes, no less than Lightfoot, Lange, and Schaff.

Pastoral Divinity is not the etiquette of a polite way of making calls: it is an entering into the social spirit of the time; the learning of friendliness, unreserve, sympathy, persuasion, and a way of approach. It is the mastery of spiritual savoir-faire.