III.
SPIRITUAL CULTURE IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.[1]
IT is natural that at the opening of a new Session the minds of both Professors and Students, especially of those Students who are with us for the first time, should be bent somewhat anxiously upon the matter which has brought us together. How are we who teach best to fulfill the trust committed to us, of guiding others in their preparation for the high office of Minister of Grace? How are you who are here to make this preparation, so to employ your time and opportunities as to become in the highest sense true stewards of the mysteries of Christ? Standing as you do at the close of your University work and at the beginning of three years more of mental labor—looking back at the conquests you have already made and forward at unconquered realms still lying before you—it would not be strange if your thoughts as they busy themselves with the preparation you require for your ministerial work should be predominately occupied with intellectual training. It is the more important that we should pause to remind ourselves that intellectual training alone will never make a true minister; that the heart has rights which the head must respect; and that it behooves us above everything to remember that the ministry is a spiritual office.
I should be sorry to leave the impression that it is questionable whether the Church may not have laid too strong an emphasis on the intellectual outfit that is needed for her ministry. I must profess, indeed, that I am incapable of understanding the standpoint of those (for such there seem to be) who talk of the over-intellectualization of the ministry. The late Dr. Joseph T. Duryea spoke rather strongly, but with substantial justice, when he declared it to be “high time that the question whether culture and learning do not unfit preachers for the preaching of the Gospel to ordinary men and women, were referred back without response to the stupidity that inspires it.” It is not to be denied, of course,
- ↑ An address delivered to the incoming Students, Sabbath afternoon, September 20, 1903, in the Oratory of Stuart Hall, Princeton Theological Seminary.
