largely is—a period of three years’ duration during which the prospective minister withdraws from the world and gives his time exclusively to study and meditation on God’s Word, in company with a select body of godly companions.
- Here man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,
More promptly rises, walks with stricter heed.
Possibly with our natural Protestant objection to all that in the remotest way savors of the monastery, we may be prone to take little account of this feature of Seminary life—much to our hurt. Much to our hurt, I say; for a “retreat” is what a Seminary life is, and it will have its effect on us as such—one way or another, according as we do or do not prepare for it, and are or are not receptive of it.
Our brethren of the Church of England, who have only comparatively lately taken to multiplying distinctively theological colleges, because they look to the universities as the places where their candidates are to be educated for the holy office, consider this element in the life at a theological college one of its most characteristic and helpful features. It was because he viewed it thus that Bishop Wilberforce declared the three objects of residence at Cuddesden to be; 1. Devotion; 2. Parochial Work; and 3. Theological Reading. It is as a matter of fact inevitable that the practical withdrawal from the world and the congregation together of a hundred or two young men, all consecrated to the work of the Lord, and living in that closeness of intimacy which only community-life can induce, should have a very powerful effect on their religious development. What, brethren, can you draw coals together without creating a blaze? I beseech you, esteem very highly and cultivate with jealous eagerness this unique privilege of long and intimate association with so many of God’s children. No such opportunities of interaction of devout lives upon one another can ever come to you again in all your life. If no fire of Christian love breaks out among you, look well to yourselves: you may justly suspect there is something wrong with your souls. In the daily intercourse of scores of Christian men there must arise innumerable opportunities of giving and receiving spiritual impressions. See to it that all you give shall conduce to the quickening of the religious life, and that all you receive shall be food on which your own hearts feed and grow strong in the Lord. When you leave the Seminary you will miss this intercourse sorely: but by God’s help you may so use it while here that in the strength derived from it you may go many days.
