We have, then, the battle to fight over
again for the utility of thorough education, and a knowledge of the
“dead languages,” to the pastor. Let us again define the
ground we assume. It is not that the Christian ignorant of the
classics may not get the rudiments of redemption out of English
books, or may not so teach them to another as to save his soul. It is
not that this plain man's ministry is invalid, because he is no
classic. It is not that such a man, if greatly gifted by nature and
grace, may not do more good than many weaker good men with their
classical training. But we 'assert that this training will be, to any
man, gifted above his fellows or not, an important means of still
greater efficiency, correctness, authority, and wisdom, in saving
souls, and that the lack of it will entail on any pastor a
considerable (comparative) liability to partial error, mistakes, and
injury of the church and of souls. Now it is each minister's duty to
love God, not with a part, but with all of his heart; and to serve
him, not only as well as some weaker brother is doing, but with the
fullest effectiveness possible for him, he being such a man and in
such circumstance as he is. It should be with each minister as with
the faithful and devoted bondsman. He may be gifted by nature with a
giant frame, so that with a dull and inferior axe he cuts more wood
for the master in the day than another with his natural feebleness
who has the keenest axe. By “putting to more strength,” he
may even cut the average day's task. But if, by grinding his axe
thoroughly, he is enabled to cut even two days' task in one, if he
loves the master he will grind it. And even if his day is advanced
towards the middle of the forenoon, if he finds that an hour devoted
even then to a thorough grinding, will result in a larger heap of
wood well cut by nightfall, he will stop at that late hour to grind.
Now, as to the high utility of classic
culture to the educated man, the arguments which have convinced the
majority of well-informed men for three centuries, have by no means
been refuted by the multiplication of books in English. Latin and
Greek are large sources of our mother tongue. No man has full mastery
of it until he knows the sources. Translation from language to
language is the prime means for training men to discrimination in
using words, and thus, in thought. There is no discipline in
practical logic so suitable for a pupil as those reasonings from
principles of syntax, by processes of logical exclusion and
synthesis, to the correct way of construing sentences. As a mental
discipline, this construing of a language, other than our vernacular,
has no rival and no substitute in any other study. And if the
language to be construed is idiomatically different from the
vernacular, with its own genius, collocating thoughts and words in
its own peculiar order, as is the case with the “dead
languages,” this fits them best of all to be implements of this
discipline. It is the best way for teaching the young mind to think.
We do not dwell on the culture of true taste, and the value of the
fine models presented in the classics. It may be retorted that there
is fine writing in English too; why may not this cultivate the taste?
We reply; these English models are moulded after the classic, if they
are really fine. Is it not better to take our inspiration from the
prime source than the secondary? Moreover, they are usually so imbued
with classic allusion and imagery that only a classic scholar can
understand them. True, Milton wrote in English; but the reader needs
to be as much a Latin and Greek scholar fully to comprehend him as to
read Virgil and Sophocles.
But the prime fact which determines the
question is, that the Bible was given by God in Greek and Hebrew. The
Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament alone are God's word. No
translation or commentary is infallible. No man who must needs “pin
his faith” as to the interpretation of a given phrase upon the
“say so” of an expositor that “this is just what the
Greek means,” can be always certain that he is not deceived.
Does one say, this is all the laity have? Just so; and therefore no
such layman is entitled to become the authorised teacher of others.
“The analogy of the faith” may give the intelligent
English reader practically a certainty that his translators and
expositors do give him the more fundamental and obvious truths of
redemption without any substantial error, and that he may be sure of
his own salvation. But it ought to be the aim of the religious
teacher, who undertakes to lead others, to attain accuracy also on
the lesser points. No atom of revealed truth is useless to souls. The
lesser error may perchance be the means of leading some soul to the
greater, even to the destructive, mistake. The duty of the pastor to
go himself to the fountain head of the exposition may be illustrated
thus:—an author offers to him his English commentary on Scripture
designed for the English reader. The pastor receives it and says,
“That is well. But, Mr Expositor, you yourself tested your own
expositions by the light of the original Greek?” “No,” he
answers, “writing only for English readers, I myself stopped at
the English version!” That pastor would throw the commentary
from him with indignation. But the pastor is the commentary, of his
charge; they have the same right to require of him that he shall not
stop short of testing his expositions to them until he gets to the
infallible standard.
Again, it is often the pastor's duty to
defend the correct exposition of the truth against impugners. How can
he do this successfully unless he is able to argue for the
translation he assumes, when he is always liable to be assailed with
the assertion:—“I deny that the original means what you say.”
Shall he meet assertion only with bald assertion, while confessing
that he himself is not qualified to judge whereof he affirms? This
would be a sorry polemic indeed. For instance, the pastor ignorant of
Greek has declared that the word rendered in the Scripture “justify,”
does not signify an inward and spiritual change, but only a forensic
and declarative act of God in favour of the believing sinner. The
Roman priest rises and says:—“Holy Mother Church teaches the
opposite; how do you know what the word signifies?” “I read what
I asserted in Dr Hodge's English Commentary on Romans. He says so.”
“But Holy Mother Church is inspired. Is your Dr Hodge inspired?”
“No.” “Do you know Greek, so as to assure us, yourself, that he
may not be mistaken?” “No.” “But” the priest adds, “the
church is not only infallible, but knows Greek perfectly; and she
asserts, of her knowledge, that you and your Dr Hodge are mistaken.”
In what a pitiful attitude is this “defender of the faith”
left, although he is, in fact, on the right side, with nothing but an
assertion and a confession of ignorance to offset a more confident
assertion.
It is worth remarking also, that
an incomplete knowledge of the original languages is not to be
despised in the pastor. A tolerable knowledge of the rudiments, which
would not suffice him to originate independent criticism, may enable
him to judge intelligently of another's criticism of the original. Or
it may furnish him with the weapons to overthrow completely the
arrogant assailant who knows no more than he does and yet boasts
much. A young pastor in Virginia was once debating, during a series
of days, the “Thomasite”
creed with its founder a man of boundless dogmatism and pretension.
He, like the Anabaptists of Luther's age, denied the conscious
existence of the soul apart from the body after death. He boldly
asserted that he knew Hebrew; that the Hebrew Scripture gave no
countenance to the idea of separate spirit in man; for that the word
currently translated soul in the English version meant only a
smelling bottle! The young pastor related that when Dr Thomas began
to parade his Hebrew he began to tremble, for he had the guilty
consciousness that the dust had been gathering on his own Hebrew
books ever since he left the Seminary. But the intervening might gave
him an opportunity to examine them, and his Lexicon at once cleared
up the source of the impudent assertion by giving him under Heb.
הַנֶּ֖פֶשׁ ,
(“breath,” “soul”) the
phrase from Isaiah 3:20:—Heb. בָתֵּ֥י
הַנֶּ֖פֶשׁ ; “smelling
bottle” (bottles of odours). All,
therefore, that was necessary was to take this Lexicon to the church
next morning, read the extract, challenge all competent persons—of
whom there happened to be none present—to inspect his citation, and
show the absurdity of reading “smelling
bottle” wherever Heb. הַנֶּ֖פֶשׁ
, occurred. Thus, as he humorously stated,
he hewed Dr Thomas to pieces with his own smelling bottle. Here a
small tincture of Hebrew answered a valuable purpose:—without it,
our advocate would have had nothing bat assertion to oppose to
assertion. It should also be admitted that a critical knowledge of
the Hebrew tongue is less essential to the pastor than of the Greek,
and its lack less blameable. For the New Testament résumés and
restates all the doctrines of redemption contained in the Old
Testament. Hence, he who can be sure that he construes all the
declarations of the New Testament aright, cannot go amiss as to any
of the doctrinal statements of the Old Testament, though he has only
the English version. But even this admission cannot be extended to
the historical statements of the Old Testament; and as they have an
interesting, though subordinate, value for illustrating the plan of
redemption, the minister who knows Greek but not Hebrew cannot be
fully on the level of him who knows both. For, in general, there is a
sense in which the best translation cannot fully represent its
original. Pope's Homer shows us Pope rather than Homer; Dryden's
Virgil, Dryden fully as much as Virgil. There are shades of thought,
connections of words and ideas, idiomatic beauties and aptitudes of
expression, which a mere translation does not reproduce. These
points, lost in any modern version, are not essential to the getting
of the fundamentals of redemption; but they clothe the teachings of
revelation in a light and consistency which he that undertakes to
teach others ought not to slight.
There is a practical testimony to this
argument. It is found in the example of some of the best of those
excellent and useful men who have found themselves in the Baptist or
Methodist ministry without classical knowledge. They, seeing its
vital necessity to the guide of souls, have given themselves no rest
until they have acquired, often by unassisted study, a competent
knowledge of the New Testament Greek at least; many also of the
Hebrew. Their consciences would not suffer them to remain without it.
This position is also sustained by this
very simple and natural view. 1 Timothy 3:2, requires of the
presbyter-bishop “aptness to teach.” This cannot mean less
than didactic ability to explain the gospel correctly; and we may
grant that this would be sufficiently conferred by fair general
intelligence, perspicuous good sense, the gift of utterance,
familiarity with the Scriptures of the New Testament, and a personal
experience of gospel grace. The intelligent tradesman or mechanic in
Ephesus might possess these. But ought not the modern pastor to
possess this minimum, qualification? Should he not be abreast, at
least, of the Ephesian mechanic? Let it be remembered that this
Greek, now the classic “dead” language, was then the
vernacular. The educated Englishman must be no mean Greek scholar to
have that practical mastery of the idiom which this mechanic had,
granting that the mechanic had not the knowledge of the elegancies of
Greek which the modern student may have sought out. But more than
this:—the events, the history, the geography, the usages, the modes
of thought, the opinions, which constituted the human environment of
the New Testament writers, the accurate understanding of which is so
necessary to grasp the real scope of what they wrote, all these were
the familiar, popular, contemporaneous knowledge of that intelligent
mechanic in Ephesus. He had imbibed it in his daily observation,
reading, and talk, as easily and naturally as the mechanic in
Charleston has imbibed the daily facts about current politics, cotton
shipments, familiar modern machinery, or domestic usages. But to us
now all this expository knowledge is archæologic! It is gained
accurately only by learned researches into antiquity. This imaginary
picture may help to put us in the point of view for understanding our
argument. We may suppose that the chasm of eighteen centuries is
crossed, so that an Ephesian scholar—not mere mechanic—appears in
Charleston now, audit is made his duty to instruct his Greek
fellow-colonists in the municipal and state laws. But they are
printed in English, a tongue strange to him, antipodal to Greek in
idiom. Well, this difficulty may be surmounted by learning English,
or, as our opponents think, simply by purchasing a translation of
South Carolina laws into Greek; though how this translation is to
enable him to guarantee his clients against error in their legal
steps passes our wit to see. But this obstruction out of the way, he
begins to read. He finds enactments about property in “cotton!”
What is cotton? The wool which old Herodotus reported grew on trees
in Nubia? And property in steam engines! And in steamships! And in
steam cotton-compress engines; and in stocks of railroads, and in
banks, and in government securities! And of buying and selling cotton
futures! And of valuable phosphate works, etc., etc. What a crowd of
surprises, of mysteries, of astonishments! How much to be learned,
after the knotty, sibilant, guttural English is learned, before the
book has any light to his mind!
We thus see that the plain Ephesian
mechanic elder had immense advantages over us, inuring directly from
his epoch, contemporary with the events of redemption, from his
vernacular, from his providential position for understanding the
sacred books. But we again urge the question. Are we “apt to
teach,” unless we make up our deficiencies to a level somewhere
near his? The modern who has become a learned Greek scholar and
archaeologist has not done more than reach the level of this Ephesian
elder. It were well for us if we had reached it.
Only one other point in this wide
field of argument can be touched. The great apostasy of prelacy and
popery was wrought precisely on that plan of a partially educated
ministry which is now urged on us. As time rolled on, antiquating the
language and the facts and opinions of the apostolic age, the church
forgot the argument illustrated above, and vainly fancied that she
would find the requisite “aptness to
teach,” as Timothy found it, in pious
men taken from the mass of society. Men read church history now under
an illusion. When they hear of the pastors and fathers of the early
church, as writing and preaching in Latin or Greek, because these are
the learned languages now, these must have been learned men! But it
was not so; these languages were their vernaculars. True learning was
not the requisite for the ministerial office in the patristic ages. A
few, like Jerome, had biblical learning; the most were chosen without
it, precisely on the plan now recommended to us. The Latin pastor
knew no Greek nor Hebrew, but read his Bible from a translation,
precisely as our author wishes his new evangelist to do now. The
Greek pastor knew no Latin nor Hebrew. The result of that experiment
is indelibly written in church history the result was the gradual
development of popery; the “dark
ages;” the reintroduction of
idolatry; the mass, bloody persecutions, and the corruption of
Christianity. This lesson is enough for us; we do not desire to
witness the repetition of the experiment. It was by just such
expositions, founded on a translation, for instance, that the great
Augustine, ignorant of Hebrew, and nearly ignorant of Greek, but
energetic, eloquent and confident, introduced into the theology of
the Latin church those definitions which it took all the throes and
labours of the Reformation to expunge; which made μετανοια
mean penance (pœnitentia); δικαιωσιν
mean conversion, and faith (fides) a derivative of the verb fit, “it
is done,” thus representing faith as
work. Shall we be told that Protestants have now learned that lesson
so well that there will be no danger of their being again misled on
those points, even by uneducated guides? Perhaps not on those points.
But who can foresee on what other unexpected points? The ingenuity of
error is abounding.
Reference is made to a literary
revolution which is to extrude the study of the classics from their
place, and substitute other (modern) languages for them, or modern
sciences; and it is claimed that this revolution has gone so far, and
is so irrevocable, that in making the classics a requisite for
preaching we narrow our field of choice to one-fifth of the fully
educate young men of the country. We see no evidences of such
revolution as permanent. We see, indeed, a plenty of rash innovation;
but there is no sign that the educated mind of Christendom will
submit to such a change in the methods of liberal culture. The
business school is relied on, indeed, to make architects, engineers,
and clerks; but real education, in it:—higher sense, still resorts
to the classics as the foundation Germany, for instance, “the
school-mistress of the nations,” has her “real-schulen”
for the training of the men who are expected to devote themselves to
the “bread and butter sciences;” but her gymnasia, where
her youth are prepared for the professions. hold fast to the most
thorough teaching of the dead languages. The plea that we limit
ourselves away from four-fifths of our young men by requiring
classical training, is refuted by this simple view. The educated, in
any mode or form, are a small fraction of any population. Suppose,
now, we retort, that by requiring that sound English education in
divinity, which is described to us as so desirable and sufficient, we
preclude ourselves from the whole field of choice except that small
fraction; wherefore we should require no education, classical nor
English, but ordain the common mass-ignorance. The reply to this our
sophism would be patent:—that while the church will not ordain
ignorance, she does not preclude even the most ignorant, because she
proposes to educate (in English) and then ordain all worthy
applicants. But if classical training is essential to the minister's
best usefulness, as we have shown, the very same reply avails for us.
The church does not exclude the four-fifths of the cultivated English
scholars, by requiring of all classical knowledge; because her call
is to come forward and accept a classical education, and then be
ordained. The man who is fit for a minister will not refuse the
additional labour for Christ, when he learns that it is requisite for
his more efficient service of Christ. But it is said, the man whose
heart God hath touched, may have no Latin, and may be middle-aged,
and may have, moreover, a family on his hands. The classical process
is too long for him to attempt. To this the answers are two. Very few
men at middle age ought to be encouraged to take up the clerical
profession. They must be men of peculiarly good endowments of nature
and grace, or both they and the church will have to repent the
unseasonable change of profession. And second, for those peculiar
cases our system already makes full provision. To any fit man's plea,
that the preparation required of him by the church is hopelessly
long, she has this answer:—no such man, however behindhand in his
training, ever fails to receive, among us, the aid and encouragement
to carry him through the desirable training, Her answer is, to point
to that noble and honoured class of her ministers represented by the
explanter, James Turner of Bedford; the ex-carpenter, Dr J. D.
Matthews; the ex-ship captain, Dr Harding; and to say to all
like-minded men, if Christ gives you the will, we pledge ourselves to
give the way.
It is urged that, by our requirements,
we actually limit God's sovereignty. He may have elected the devout
man without Latin, while we practically refuse to have him. That this
is a “begging of the question,” appears from one
remark:—suppose it should be that God's election and call are to a
thorough education, and then to preaching. But whether this is God's
purpose is the very question in debate. To assume the negative is to
beg that question. Should the affirmative be true, then our
requirements are not across, but in the very line of God's purpose.
We are pointed to the inconsistent
execution of our system to the perfunctory examinations of
Presbyteries, the shameful ignorance of some candidates, the
practical setting at naught of our own constitution; and we are told
that we have just enough of the old system, in name, to drive off
from us the good men who make no pretence of classical knowledge, and
yet not enough to keep out other men as ignorant, and less honest.
Now, on this we remark, first, that this charge is not brought by us,
but by others; and it is not our mission at this time to affirm it.
But, secondly, if it be true, the inference drawn from it, that our
slow growth and small success mainly are caused by a lack of this
class of less educated ministers, will find its complete refutation
in the facts charged. For surely no other solution of our scanty
success need be sought, if those discreditable facts are true. If
courts of Christ's church thus trample or their own profession and
their own rules; if they thus dishonestly certificate ignorance as
scholarship, assisting such impositions on society; if the young men
who become our pastors have no more conscience than to contemn and
waste the precious opportunities for learning provided them by the
church, so as to come forth from them pretentious dunces; if such
grovelling laziness in the season of preparation is the measure of
these young men's energy and devotion in their ministry, there is a
mass of sin at once abundantly sufficient to insult our God, grieve
his Spirit, and effectually alienate his help. Our quest is ended.
There is no need for our looking one step farther to find out what is
the matter. Such a ministry cannot be blessed of a truthful God, and
cannot succeed. The one work which remains for us is, not to change
our constitution, but, with deep repentance and loathing
delinquencies so shameful, to return to it, and live up to it. Let us
try that first. If these charges are true—which it is no task of
ours to affirm—let us execute our righteous rules in examining and
licensing in such a way that God's truth shall be honoured, real
merit recognised, and dishonest indolence shamed and banished from
among us. Then perhaps, we shall find that our ministry will be
efficient, without innovating on the wisdom of our laws, approved by
the experience of centuries.
It is argued that since society
includes various grades of taste, culture, and possessions, our
church is suffering for the lack of different grades of ministers.
But we thought that the parity of the ministry was one of the
corner-stones of our constitution. Methodists, or prelatists, can
consistently have different grades: for they retain some features of
hierarchy. Our church, in its very essence, is not a hierarchy, but a
republic, Now, there is one sense in which, with an equally thorough
education, we shall have, not grades, but sorts of ministers
endlessly various, and adapted to all the various parts of our work.
No two minds are exactly alike; no two temperaments. God, who bestows
the different shades of nature, provides for this variety; that is
enough. All we need is to do as our author so well inculcates in his
January number—allot the right man to the right work by our
Presbyterial supervision. This is entirely compatible with parity.
“There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.” But
when we begin to make a substantive difference in the educational
privileges of ministers, to train them for different grades, these
will soon be virtually marked as higher and lower grades.
“Ultimately, the forms will be moulded to the virtual facts, and
we shall have, like the Methodists, the beginnings of a hierarchy.”
And whereas it is supposed that the more cheaply trained preachers
will be specially adapted to the plainer and poorer congregations,
our knowledge of Presbyterian human nature makes us surmise that
these will be the very charges to insist most upon having the fully
trained minister, and to resent the allotment of the less learned to
them as a stigma and a disparagement. It is much to be feared that
the new grade will be obstinately rejected by the very grade of
hearers for whom they will have been devised.
The desideratum claimed is, that there
shall be a way, like the Methodist mode, for giving many ministers
their adequate training without the expense and delay of segregating
them for years in scholastic institutions, along with a useful
occupation in parochial labours. Now, we are struck with the thought
that our constitution provides expressly for just this way. It
nowhere makes a college or a seminary an essential. All that it
stipulates for, in the way of means, is a two years' training under
“some approved divine.” This, of course, throws the door
wide open to the incoming of the very ideal painted. The young man
may join any experienced, pastor, assist him within or without his
field of labour, pursue his studies under his guidance, in connection
with these evangelistic labours, present himself before Presbytery,
and, if his “parts of trial” are adequate, demand his
licensure with the full sanction of the present' constitution. Now,
if such a mode of training is so desirable, is so strongly a “felt
want,” how comes it that none enter into this open door? Why
has there been such a rarity of such cases in our church since 1825?
Why are not many learned and wise pastors—of whom we have so
many—thus bringing on many godly candidates? The obvious reply is,
that the good sense of the church tacitly perceives this training
unsuited to the times. Pastors practically feel this, churches feel
it, and the young men feel it. It is the same feeling which is to-day
operating in the Methodist Church to make them substitute this method
of training, long so peculiarly their own, by one more nearly like
ours. In a word, the door is already open. If the Christian community
felt its need of this way, it would use it. It does not use it; and
the inference is that really it does not want it.
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