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.
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