SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6003, 12 February 1881, Page 3

SUNDAY READING.

i . : ... i METHODS OF MEETING MODERN" tTJTBEHEF. A LECTrirtE' BY THE REV. .iJOSEPH COOK, OF BOSTON, U.S.A. [BeliveMil ia t!is Memorial i_la.ll, Farrinsdon-strs*tf. on Tmstiar, tho November, in connection -vitli the Ll.alf.veaxlr iiiietin.; ot the London tiunal L'nion.] [.Continued.] V. It is high time that we should turn from the general to some of the special methoils of meeting modem unbelief, and I hope you will bear with me if I suggest arrangements already well known on this side of the Atlantic. A MODERN NECESSITY. The first of these is th<i foundation of p o~ fttso ~&7i 'q)s tit, our coding''* on tlm re'ntion of Christianity to science. I believe this suggestion will not be a novel nor an unwelcome one to the scholars in this audience, and certainly not to theological teachers. I hope they will find it in the line of modern development to found such professorships, some of which exist in England already, in the shape of lectureships, renowned throughout the world for the products which they have given from time to time to the nations for the strengthening of Christian faith. But we are resolved in the United States to meet the demands of our young men in theological schools for equipment in scientific armour. It is no purpose of a theological professor, who teaches the relations of Christianity to science, to know the materia mvdiot. He does not expect to be a practical chemist, biologist, astronomer, or geologist. His business is to study each vessel, so to speak, every ship in the tieet of sciences, along the line between wind ami water. Where science and Christianity meet, he must understand them both, and so i his task is not one out of all proportion to human powers. We have appointed in the 1 oldest theological seminary of the United States, a professor to discuss the relations of [ Christianity to science, aud have put 00,000 dollars behind him. That has been done in Massachusetts, at Andover Theological Seminary, the most mossy and medieval of all our theological institutions, as its enemies would say : but mediaeval and mossy as it is, Andover dares to expend £10,000 to teach the relations of Christianity to science. Where is the rationalistic, professorial chair, that in any way compares for intellectual dignity in the United States with the chair thus founded at Andover ? Princeton has a theological professorship of this kind ; the Union Seminary iu Xew York has a lectureship of similar character. It has been my fortune for five years to stand in Boston, or to move to and fro through the northern cities of the Union and to discuss the relations of Christianity to science; and the demaud for ev-jn poor discussion like mine shows what the demand would be for good discussion, if you had. it. Ido not magnify myself, but I do magnify this glorious office of discussing the relations of Christianity to science, anil I affirm that if you had a dozen men in England, and if we had a dozen men in the United States, adapted to the work which I have been endeavouring to do and have done so poorly, we could shake the foundations of rationalism on both sides the sea, within one generation. You cannot expect your pastors to make a speciality of this theme. You cannot expect the professors of dogmatic theology or ecclesiastical nistory to do this in your theological colleges. It is altogether too much to put upon one man, to make him a pastor, a preacher, and a lecturer on Christianity and science besides. We must subdivide our work and diversify it, and so meet the exig?ueies of the times. As there is now such a demand for knowledge concerning the relation of Christianity to science, why not develop the church iu response to a providential call as she has been developed again and again in her equipment in times past? Why not meet the demand of tlie hour by a measure for the hour ? TUKOUXiiCAL sm-KNTs NZKOMOIIE THOP.Oro'tl

E'ifEFUENT. What would I have besides? Let me say that some of us who have had in our American theological colleges three years of instruction f'.rn; fijlt tb if >.'•<! )h:r.(h:d a JQlU'ih year. I would not have a, fourth year tor all theological students, but only for some. The fourth year I would ask should be not for all theological students, but for those who elect it. Preaching by students should be allowed in the fourth year, but uot in the first three years to students who enter for the fourth. The larger portion of the fourth vear should be devoted to perfecting work on the most important topics of the doctrinal department. It should include space for larger attention to metaphysics, history, and physical science, and the current forms of infidelity. It should give enlarged instruction in respect to all practical religious effort. It is uot too much to say one re son why the Church is weak is. that it is often fed on guesses. Still v/ors:-. in certain departments where it needs mo c t strength the Church is not fed at all. or. if t, is u->: a: all. The o" the laud ratt-.-u- on the crudity of the ritlpir. a:id the inactivity of Church luenihcr-s. The chief topics of theology arc inherently so important that n » mistake concerning theui can be so small as not to he colossal. And yet. on ,sueh topics, the fact of a revelation, the '"Deity of Him from whom all ! the years of time are numbered, the mysteries of election, fate, and free-will, we. to to whom a college course gives hardly a trace of theological instruction, and who now know that our knowledge of theology derived from other sources previous to our studies here was superficial and fragmentary to a sometime ludicrous extreme, are asked to form opinions iu the course of three years' investigation, one year of which is devoted ,to evangelical, and one to historical ami rhetorical branches : the third year broken by permitted absences for preaching, not absolutely excessive, indeed, since they are an important method of training adopted by ' one of the most important departments of the course : but which are relatively excessive, because, in a course of but three years, j they are necessarily premature, since they are such as to reduce the whole term of study, in respect to the matter to be preached, practically to two years and a half: and, on the basis of this amount of attention to what are assuredly the most ditlieulfc and awful of the problems the human mind is permitted to reach, we are asked to commit ourselves, in effect for life, : to certain opinions, and to go out and stand | beside the pillows of the dying, and put j beueath them those opinions not as guesses | but as proofs. An honest man recoils when so much is asked of him. It is by no means j expected that in three years we cau master the whole range of theology. But we are | expected to have mastered its strategic j points. On these we are officially asked, in wholly informal yet definite terms, to ex- ' press before examining councils what we 1 | hold for ourselves, not what we have been ' taught. L'pon these greatest points at least, j which, however, cannot be explored to the bottom without an examination of very nearly all the rest, we, as educated men and future public teachers, arc called to express ! independent opinions. We are expected to ; become so clear as to be iu no sense uucan- ? did. It is expected that we will do this in j" the training of nine months' special doc* ; trinal study, and in the collateral reading of perhaps four months more. We do not do it. We cannot do it. And yet is the most accredited entrance to the ministry. The greatness of the topics of theology ought to secure their thorough treatment. The greatness and difficulty of the topics of theologv demand an extension of the term or professional theological study. I claim a fourth year of study in the courses of the theological seminaries, in order that we may have time to be honest. The Christian evidences and ethics are, indeed, now taught iu college, but so hurriedly as to make little impression upon any except those who have a peculiar taste for them, or anticipate study in a professional theological course. Once out of college, those students who pursue law, medicine, art, science, or literature, become absorbed in their special fields of investigation. Once in their professions they are still more absorbed. It is sometimes loosely said that no lawyer in full practice ever reads a book. Onlv those few who have a taste for theological study ever take it up. More than half the ordinary college classes understand metaphysics too poorly ever to be able to take up the severer tonus of theological reading. The result is, that, while in the davs of Edwards all liberally educated men, a3 such, had some knowlege of theology, now no liberally educated men. as such, has necessarily any knowledge of it. The knowledge of theology, as a system, is confined to those who study theology professionally. Some of the classes in society, best educated in every other respect, are the least well educated in regard to theological truth. I mean no disrespect to members of the honourable professions of law and medicine, when I sty* that these classes constitute the best materials society contains for the formation of crude parties in theology.

The miormation of the people in regard, to theological and* religious -questions has not kept pace with its advance as to secular truths. Without this distinction of its two parts, the growth of knowledge among the people migiit seem to have utterly inexplicable relations to the religions phenomena of the time. The world is, indeed, becomin more enlightened, but not with equal rapidity in all respects. The disparity between the degress of advance of secular and religious intelligence is a fearful gap in the joints of the harness of truth at which scepticism strikes. The most disastrous criticism of the pulpit is that it skips difficulties. The skipping of difficulties brings swiftly the charge of disingenousness; and that charge hangs invisible in the secret thought of men, over more pulpits to-day than we are aware—a Damocles* sword. Princeton Theological Seminary in the United States has already added a fourth year to its course of study ; Andover is calliiiir tor one and probably within a few years will have organised one. It is now regarded as the proper Tilling to do when a man would be fully equipped, to remain a fourth year in a theological college. There are no sceptics trained as thoroughly as our best ministerial candidates will be trained under these new arrangements. I hold that no oue of the learned professions lias as much training in philosophy as the ministerial profession now has in the best theological schools. If you add a-fourth year for sorue, if you put these theological professorships on the relations of Christianity to science into all your theolo.ieal colleges of the first rank, you will very soon be sending out men equipped, not with bows and arrows, but with modern armour, equal to that possessed by the enemy. UTtLL.it: THE i:HEAT .SPECIALIST*. What further extension of ministerial culture would I have ? Here is a theological school with a professorship in it on the relations of Christianity to science. I iconh! outshh- tlb'olihj/rjt', Wrr'.-.v. In this renowned eeuire of the world, two great physicists, who are theists, Dr. Carpenter and Professor Lionel Beale, have as much autho ity on the other side the sea as Huxley or TyudaLl. I assure you, ranch as we revere the physiological knowledge of the last two of these men, we revere yet more the physiological knov, ledge of the first two. Dr. Carpenter ouly the other evening said in public. li There are four things no machine can utter—l am, I ought, 1 can, I will,' but man utters them, and therefoi'e he is more than an automaton." Professor Lionel Beale has published the opinion that no science now in existence can bridge by merely mechanical causes the chasm between lifeless and living matter. When, not long ago, Professor Huxley was asked in private by one of his friends to whom lie had: declared his disbelief in spon- , taneous generation, whether he had not the right to say that into that chasm between lifeless and living matter God comes to create the forms of organisms, Huxley himself was candid enough to reply, 41 You have a right to say it, and I do not know that I can disprove it." If Dr. Carpenter, if Lionel Beale were to come to the professorships lately organised in the United States for discussing the relations between Christianity and science, they would have the heartiest of welcomes. It will, of course, take time to train men to discuss theology on one side and physical science ou the other in their double relations, but little by little we shall create a new set of professors, and little by little we shall equip young men with such clear ideas and spiritual purposes that they will become deadly m the onslaught upon rationalism based upon the scientific arguments of our time. There is uo way to meet rationalism of the scientific species except by rendered reasons.

CltniSTr.Uv EVIDENCE SOCIETIES. I would have societies organised for promoting the study of the Christian evidences. You have, in London, the Victoria Institute and the Christian Evidence Society ; and I noticc with great interest that the latter is recommending the formation in our Churches of classes in the Christian evidences. The issuing of text-boohs oil the Christian evidences is to he undertaken by this society, and the writing of such books is a task worthy of the best genius in the Church. We have not outgrown. Paley or Butler, but we need to readjust their arguments ; and if any man wishes to benefit the future, let him prepare text-books on the Christian evidences that will be read, ant I that when read cannot be answered by the ordinary carping of even our brilliant periodical literature—some of it given to Agnosticism, some of is dipping into the edges of Atheism. Of course, the utnost caution is needed to spiritualise all these intellectual efforts, and prevent classes in the Christian evidences from becoming places of mere debate. Whenever the Church has tried to move by her intellectual wing or by her spiritual wing alone, her flight has been a sorry spiral. I would have prayers joined to the lectures. I would ha've every youth taught to study on his knees—whether he studies four years, or three, or only an hour. I would have him taught everywhere that the earnest Christian 011 his knees sees further than, tho haughtiest atheistic philosopher on tiptoe. VI. TILK POWER OF CHRISTIAN WORK. 11l this crowded assembly, and standing as I do here and now in the presence of some of the most agressive Christians in Englaud, and of many of the men who know best what it is to carry Christianity into the slums of a great municipality, k-t m-t t : >ank (',<■' l for tie phthuith rop'C of Urn I,titj/ -m the ho.Hofv7 t t».<w* * . to wnl'nt<nt. Do not let secularists outwork Vull in their approaches to the poor. Lazarus, in our time, lies in the slums of great cities, and there will be the spot where, for inauy ages to come, he will be found stripped and naked and half-dead. It was the glorious example of the Prince Consort, assisted by the patriotic efforts and the genial Christian persistence of scores of unknown men and women, that opened here in Great Britain the fashion of studying ! models for lodging-houses, attending to the unsavoury topics of hygiene as to drains, and looking iuto all the wants of the work-ing-man's cottage. Your Tennyson praises the Prince Consort for that lite of his in which he hovered over the cottages of the poor, and did what he could for the perishing aud dangerous in your great municipal populations. God knows that I have reverence enough for philanthropy even when I fiud it conjoined with secularism. When nfidelity goes down iuto the slums and endeavours to lift the degraded, I would not rail too much at its efforts. But I would counteract the poison it distributes under this sugar coat of philanthropy. I would outwork it in the philanthropic way. I would not let it hold the ears of the uneducated masses on Sundays without sometimes myseif going out to address audiences in the open air. I would not let the secularist address vast populaJ tions from week to week in his newspapers, J without myself shedding printers ink mercilessly for the benefit ot those who will uot attend church. The spoken word and the printed v. ord outside the church must be brought into the service of the Gospel if we are to counteract the secularist propagandism of our day. History never saw infidelity organised for popular effect as it is at i the present moment. I believe that there is J no more infidelity now on the globe than in ! past ages, but it can speak out now as it J couhi not iu the days of the Star Chamber. ; It has the ear of the masses through the I great and wise and costly liberty of un« i licensed printing. But this libertv was : largely bought with Christian blood. On this : spot I cannot but pause, as an American, to i thank God for the work of some martyrs of j the Fleet Prison incarcerated here* for what I they did for the liberty of the press. That ; was work for America, that was work for I Germanv, that was work for ail the lauds of ! all the zones as well as for the British Isles. ! Let us be gratetul to Almighty Providence ! that we arc reaping in joy what other men have sown in tears." but let us reap as Christians. Let u» take the vast liberty of the | press, and overcome the mischief of its i license by the omnipresent use of it in de- | fence of healthful opinions. } [To b>.» continued. J J ============

A number of important facts in regard to the durability of railway sleepers have been ascertained by experiments in Germany on that subject. Oak, without any treatment whatever," is a more durable material than pine or beech, but both the?e woods can be rendered more durable than unprepared oak, bv introducing certain chemical substances under strong pressure : while. on the otner hand, the oak still maintains its superiority if treated. Creosote, sulphate of copper, and chloride of zinc have chiefly been used in the process of saturation the labtuameii witli "the best results.

- The Memorial Hall, erecietl to commemorate the fiilelitv to conscience of tlie Two Thousand Clergymen expelled from the Church of Knjland in_ie6i stands on the site of the old Fleet Prison, in which so many of the Protestant sntl Puritan martyrs were imprisoned and mutilated.