tion to the committees who have given us the new revision. We repeat our hope that it will meet a cordial welcome to the hearts and homes and churches of English and American Christians. The very changes which now offend the taste, and sensibilities of some will, doubtless, in the course of time, disturb them less, and will actually increase its power over others. They have rendered an invaluable service towards the right understanding and the clear expression of the New Testament. But their work is not perfect. We dare say that, knowing as they do by experience the difficulties of the work, they are themselves the most conscious of its imperfections. We are not likely soon to have another committee of revision whose work will be so well done, still less be invested with so much authority. But for that very reason it is a pity it should not be made as perfect as possible. Of course they cannot be expected to heed or care for every censure or criticism that is passed upon it. But it is a great pity that they should not come together at some future time, and either in committee of the whole, or by a sub-committee, review their own work, and remove such errors and imperfections as the best scholars always discover in their published works, and are eager to correct in subsequent editions. Then they might also take note of the general drift of the public taste and sentiment in regard to the revision, and make such alterations and improvements as seem to be generally demanded and are, at the same time, approved by their own more deliberate judgment. Thus might we have a version, not that will please everybody, but one that will deserve to live for a hundred years to come alongside of the old version, if not come gradually to supersede it in the public estimation and service. And such an exhibition of Christian magnanimity, deference to the common sentiment and consent of Christian people, and self-forgetful devotedness to the finishing and perfecting of a sacred work-such a victory over themselves and triumph of the principle and spirit of Christianity in the revisers would be of scarcely less value to the church, and not less acceptable to the Master,

than the wisdom and learning which are generally so conspicuous in the revision.

At some time after the Old Testament company shall have completed their revision a joint committee of both and, if possible, of the American companies also, should be appointed to review the work and give harmony and consistency to the whole. Let this committee, composed, of course, of the most honored and trusted men of all the companies, be authorized to make a final revision of the entire Bible. Such a committee would be a better working body than the companies, and, at the same time, as their representative would carry with it the weight, in some respects more than the weight, of the companies themselves. The Authorized Version was thus revised by a committee; why not the revision?

ARTICLE VIII.

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION.

No. IX. - PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

SOME One has defined a cultivated man to be "a person who knows a little of a good many things and a good deal of one thing." The couplet of Pope warning us that a little knowledge is dangerous, and exhorting us to drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring is a half truth, and adapted to give much needless alarm. A little knowledge, provided it be real knowledge, and provided its relative amount be not over-estimated, is by no means an evil thing.

Modern science has indeed wrought great changes in the general methods of both work and study. Society is far more complex in its organization than it was before the invention of the steam-engine and the telegraph. The facilities for manufacture and commerce are now such that minute division of labor is necessary for success in business of almost every kind. A single city, or indeed a single firm, may now supply the demands of the world for some of the products of skilled labor. More frequently than in former times the merchant is compelled to limit himself to the purchase and sale of some one commodity, and the workman to the construction of a very small portion of the manufactured article upon which he labors. The narrowing tendency of modern industries was long ago made familiar by Sydney Smith's reference to the lot of those who spend their lives in

making the fifteenth part of a pin. The same tendency appears, also, to some extent, in the professions of law and medicine, and in all departments of physical science, where the work of investigation is falling more and more into the hands of men who have great special acquirements rather than wide, general information.

It is natural that the demands for special technical education should be felt in all training-schools: still, as has often been pointed out, there is great danger, even in the ordinary callings, of under-estimating the advantages of general culture to the technical student. But whatever may be best in preparation for other callings, it would certainly be a sad misfortune to narrow the range of preliminary study demanded of the Protestant ministry; for the permanent success of Protestantism depends in no small degree upon resisting the tendencies which would degrade the position of its clergy to that of mere specialists. There are, indeed, to be specialists in theological study, but their work is very different from that of the ordinary clergyman. Men who have a vocation for such study may shut themselves up in garrets for the purpose of carrying on extended historical or philological or philosophical investigations connected with theological truth. Such specialists supply with weapons of offence and defence the arsenals to which all theologians must resort for arms. But it is the business of clergymen as a class to mingle with men, and to be the mediators between the truth and the living spirits under their pastoral care. For full success in such work breadth of culture is always an imperative necessity. The clergyman should have points of contact with a great variety of minds. The influence of the Protestant minister is largely personal, and he must know how to enter into the thoughts of other men. From this it is readily seen that some considerable knowledge of the physical sciences is demanded at the present time, if our clergymen are to be thoroughly furnished for their work. The pastor is sure to find within the bounds of his parish persons of intelligence and influence who from one cause and another have become estranged from the church, and who have been taught to depreciate the attainments of the ministry. To gain influence over such it is of the greatest importance for the clergyman to have some neutral ground upon which he may meet them, and labor with them intelligently for the promotion of some common philanthropic object. The church has heretofore gained no small part of its influence through the zeal of its clergy in promoting a love for music and art. In like manner science may now become the handmaid of religion; more, however, by indirect connection than by direct methods. The human mind is a vacuum that must be filled. In so far as the pastor can arouse his parishioners to an interest in scientific pursuits, he will crowd out the lower train of amusements, and leave more room for whatever is higher and more elevating. Far be it from the evangelical clergy to neglect this class of philanthropic endeavor.

Furthermore, no congregation is wholly free from the disturbing influence of "science falsely so called." The indiscriminate pronunciamentos of sciolists, and the fragmentary, and hence distorted, utterances of the scientific masters, float on every breeze, and are disseminated by all the mighty power of the platform and of the printing-press. The larger part of the conflict between science and religion arises either from a temporary misunderstanding of the facts of science or from a false interpretation of our real religious necessities and of the positive revelation made to satisfy them. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that inductive science has profoundly modified the popular modes of thought upon some of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.

Modern science has greatly limited the range of the phenomena looked upon as supernatural and restricted the things regarded as legitimate objects of prayer, and both enlarged and modified our conceptions of design in nature. In the end it has always appeared that there was no essential antagonism between progress in inductive discovery and the desired stability of the religious convictions of the Christian public. But while new theories have been unfolding themselves before the world there has usually been much needless disquietude and alarm. It was more than a century before devout believers could adjust their religious reflections to the idea of the earth's instability suggested by the Copernican hypothesis, and we are even yet scarcely reconciled to the long vistas of God's creative and previsional activity opened to our eyes in geology and physical astronomy. It will require more than one generation to settle the questions now at issue concerning the antiquity of man, and concerning his early condition and origin. The attempts of such writers as E. B. Tylor and Sir Henry Maine to throw light upon man's prehistoric condition by a comparative study of the language and customs of barbarous tribes cannot be safely ignored by the teacher of biblical theology; nor is it possible long to refute the arguments of Darwin by misstating his propositions. So difficult is it for men even of great attainments to master the theories and arguments of a collateral branch of inquiry, that the professors of theology themselves now need a well-versed scientific associate to mediate between them and the ever-increasing accumulations of well-established or probable inductive conclusions in physical science. No theological faculty is perfect in itself without a scientific member.

If this be so with the leaders in theological thought, how capital must be the mistake of sending out the young men who are about to undertake single-handed and in the remote portions of our land and the world the task of defending the Christian faith, without having had the advantages of such aid as the professorship of which we are speaking might give them during their preparatory training! How supreme the mistake of sending the young men of our theological seminaries to their work with an inadequate knowledge of the trains of thought uppermost in the minds of a

large number of their most intelligent hearers! A pretty extended knowledge both of scientific facts and of scientific modes of thought our pastors must have, or Protestantism, like Catholicism, breaks with the progress of the age.

It is not to be expected, however, that all the responsibility for this training is to be thrown upon the theological seminary. A part of it rests with the primary and intermediate schools, whose business it is to teach by object lessons the elementary facts of botany, mineralogy, geology, and chemistry. A part of this responsibility rests with the college, which should allow no candidate for the ministry to leave its halls till he has been instructed in the broader principles of classification in all the sciences. It is necessary to say this much concerning the preparatory schools, in order to prevent a calamity which might befall us if the appointment in our theological seminaries of professors upon the relations of science to religion were understood to be for the purpose of giving elementary instruction in science. The design of such a professorship is not to relieve the preparatory schools, but to supplement their work, and to keep both the associated theological professors and their students in living sympathy with the progressive scientific thought of the age.

It is possible that those theological seminaries which are connected with a college or university do not have the same need of a special professorship of the relations of science and religion as those have which are isolated; since the ordinary professors in the scientific departments of a university may have such relations to both the theological faculty and the theological students that nothing more is needed. There are, however, many practical difficulties in the way of a theological school's depending upon a co-ordinate department for its scientific stimulus and instruction. The application of science to a theological seminary is not the work of a general practitioner, but of one who makes the theological bearing of discoveries his special study. This neither the investigator in a university nor the ordinary professor in a college can often be expected to do.

One of the important results to be secured by a professor of science in a theological seminary is negative in its character. The wisdom of a preacher may be shown by his well-considered silence. It may not be necessary to speak much or often from the pulpit upon science, but it is important that when one does speak his words be sound and judicious. There is a constant tendency to over-estimate the importance of newly discovered facts and of freshly propounded and plausible theories. The haste with which some clergymen attack scientific theories which seem antagonistic to faith, or adopt them when they appear to corroborate the Bible, often brings great discredit upon the truth. It is important to base our proof of the Christian faith upon those arguments that are most cogent. The perspective which the preacher gives to the truths upon which our belief in Christianity rests is all-important. The Christian minister is to VOL. XXXIX. No. 153.

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