through that here is a man of God studying the Word of God. O si sic omnes! Let us make such commentators our models in our study of the Word, and learn like them to keep in mind Whose word it is we are dealing with, even when we are merely analyzing its grammatical expression. And when, done with grammar, we begin to weigh the meaning, O let us remember what meaning it has to us! Apply every word to your own souls as you go on, and never rest satisfied until you feel as well as understand. Every item of God’s dealing with His Church to which your attention is directed, contemplate reverently as an act of God and search out the revelation it carries of God and His ways with man. And the doctrines—need I beg you to consider these doctrines not as so many propositions to be analyzed by your logical understanding, but as rather so many precious truths revealing to you God and God’s modes of dealing with sinful man? John Owen, in his great work on Justification, insists and insists again that no man can ever penetrate the significance of this great doctrine unless he persistently studies it, not in the abstract light of the question, How can man be just with God? but in the searching light of the great personal question, How can I, sinner as I am, be accepted of God? It is wonderful how inadequacies in conceiving what is involved in Justification fall away under the illumination of this personal attitude toward it. And is it conceivable that it can be so studied and the heart remain cold and unmoved? Treat, I beg you, the whole work of the Seminary as a unique opportunity offered you to learn about God, or rather, to put it at the height of its significance, to learn God—to come to know Him whom to know is life everlasting. If the work of the Seminary shall be so prosecuted, it will prove itself to be the chief means of grace in all your lives. I have heard it said that some men love theology more than they love God. Do not let it be possible to say that of you. Love theology, of course: but love theology for no other reason than that it is Theology—the knowledge of God, and because it is your meat and drink to know God, to know Him truly, and as far as it is given to mortals, to know Him whole.
There is yet another aspect of the Seminary life the value of which as a means of spiritual development cannot easily be overestimated. I do not know how better to express what I mean than by calling the Seminary a three years’ retreat. The word “retreat” may strike somewhat strangely upon our Protestant ears: though even our Presbyterian ministry has been learning of late what a “retreat” is. Well, that is what a Seminary life very
