PROFESSOR DICKIE'S ARRIVAL

Otago Witness, Issue 2924, 30 March 1910, Page 15

PROFESSOR DICKIE'S ARRIVAL

THE FORMAL INDUCTION. CEREMONY IN FIRST CHURCH. There, was a large gathering of people in First Church on March 23, when the induction of the Rev. John Dickie, the newlyappointed orofessor of theology at Knox College, took place. The ceremony formed a portion of the orders of the day for the. Presbyterian Synod, which was sitting in Dunedin on the 23rd, and the members of that body occupied the front pews and seats under the pulpit. The Moderator (the Rev. W. Wright) oreached and conducted the induction, and the -Rev. T. Tait, M.A., 8.D., addressed the professor. Tiv* Moderator then put to the Rev. Mr Dickie the questions prescribed for Presbyterian ministers and professors of theology about to be inducted, and. these beinganswered, the Moderator, having engaged in prayer, gave to Professor Dickie the right hand of fellowship. A SCHOLARLY ADDRESS.

It became the duty of the Rev. Mr Tait to address the new professor. He did so in the fallowing words:—

I heartily congratulate you, my brother, on the peculiarly happy auspices attending your election to the most important chair in our Theological College. You have been called to succeed a professor of whom our Church was justly proud—one whose memory abides as a savour of grace and culture—a man of rich learning, profound knowledge and a judgment disciplined and matured in the things of God. Were he liere to address you this evening, we should expect to hear words of weight and wisdom such a-3 I cannot presume to affect. You will not, however, take it amiss if I still further construe the committee's selection as meaning that you should hear something of the hope and expectation cherished by the rank and file of our colonial ministry regarding your future work as professor of theology. ■. . Coming, as you do, from a land rich in the traditions and habitudes of scholarship, you may find it irksome to adapt yourself readily to the altered conditions of colonial life and thought. Not that our Church is by any means _ destitute of scholarly men, or that the ideals of our Btudents and ministers are lower than obtain in the old lands. We have amongst us men of considerable distinction: we have that admirably type of minister who regularly reads his Old Testament in the original, and _ occasionally discovers a sermon lurking in the Hithpa'el of a Hebrew verb; we own the minister who? 3 mastery of theological lore has enabled him recently to present the Church with a chaste and telling digest of the creed of Christendom; and we even lay claim to the possession of a minister who, not content with honourably plucking a doctorate of philosophy from a German university, is quietly pursuing the path which is destined to end in the chair of a professor. Moreover, the colonial student, as you know, can hold his own in the universities of Scotland, England, Germany, and America.

Still, when all is said, you will find a difference and feel it. The large and judiciously stocked libraries, the various wellequipped universities and colleges, the convenience that brings to your study table the latest work wet from the press, the exhilaration of proximity to the great army of experts and specialists—all this, audi more, you have ungrudgingly left behind in order to serve the Church of our Dominion. We gr-itefully recognise the sacrifice you have made as a scholar in responding to our call. If we cannot offer you the inspiring conditions 'which obtain at Home, we can at .least promise you the stimulus of our deepest interest and our heartiest encouragement in the responsible. work you are about to undertake. We are too loyally tenacious of Presbyterian tradition to be wanting in zeal for t sacred learning. The very fact of our calling you across the seas is significant of our thirst for the best we can obtain.

No doubt the best we can promise you would be greatly enhanced by some pros'pect «of growing • experts in- theolgoical science. But I fear the most we can hope for is work up to the standard set for a student's degree . in divinity; and, in this connection, we have still to regret the absence of facilities for taking the degree, and the incentive to study which such facilities would supply. As things are, you will no doubt find your students eager to make the most of the opportunities your classes will afford. ... One note more than another claims predominance in our New Zealand ministry:. | it is the note of practicality. I do not J think you will find amongst us that rata I avis who can aspire to become invisible on six days of the week and incomprehensible on the seventh day. We can afford neither to rear nor to welcome +he hermit student who is professional, perfunctory, remote. | The. colonial field demands men of God, eager to obey an irresistible call_ to energetic and effective service—brainy and I strenuous men —men of courteous and tact- \ ful adaptability—live men with a living I message to a restless, tortured, hungering I &pe. ... ■ I In this connection, it may interest you to j know that we have begun to pay more ! serious attention to what is specificallv named " practical training " ; and you will , be disposed, I am sure, to aid and encoui* age us in future development along this ! line. For while we yield to no other branch of the Christian Church in the . maintenance of a hiah ideal of intellectual i equipment and discipline, there is always the risk of neglecting the cultivation of I those gifts which briner the minster into i moi*© "intimad© and! effective touch with 1 iho people. ... You will nofc take this reference to the ■ acknowledged need for more attention being given to the practical side of a preacher's training- as either gratuitous or irrelevant, nor will you construe it as in

any v.ise derogatory to the specific work of your own chair. We certainly do not deem the chair of theology to be something apart from the practical training we so highly desiderate. An attitude of antagonism to dogmatic theology is unfortunately not confined to the non-theological type of mind—to the litterateur, the materialist,. and the undisciplined restiveness of popular imagination. It has been, and still is, persistently maintained by schools of theology, and includes among its leaders and exponents, men of i remarkable brilliance and undoubted talent, men whose wide and penetrating influence radiates from the distinctive office to which you yourself are called. No doubt they have given us much to admire. They have in many ways clarified our vision and enriched our knowledge, and have supplied us with conspicuous examples of patient toil and thoroughgoing research. We would not be ignorant of such results of their labours as are of enduring value and stimulus. We heartily acknowledge our indebtedness for the pure gold that has issued from the sifting fires of their scholarly and capable criticism. But, when they so accentuate the value of religious experience as to depreciate dogma, or'so exalt the boasted "scientific method" as to preclude the supernatural, we must, with polite Amines?, refuse to ba caught in their toils. A professorship of theologv in the University of Berlin may permit of conducting theological study by an application of the scientific method sc violently rigorous as to " exclude miracle in. every sense of the word." Has not Pfleiderer declared that '"the faith of the Church in a supernatural Christ is only the reflex of the supernaturalistic Messianism in general which dominated Jewish thought from the time of the Book of Daniel?" And do not the compromising presuppositions of his school deny not only the right to preach Christ crucified in anything approaching to the faith of Christendom, but even the right to regard our Lord as the ideal of humanity and the perfect revelation of God? Surely, when the innermost shrine of Christian piety suffers desecration in the name of theological science, you will not suspect us of entertaining ; any other thought regarding your chair than that it stands for the most practical department of the practical training -we seek to afforc 1 for the making of workmen who need not to be ashamed, rightly divining the Word of God.

Not that we would suggest timorous dealing with the thought of the age. I am sure no minister in our Church would seek to take out the eyes of reason and immure a professor in what some woulfi call the prison-house of a creed. Net for a moment do we contemplate our teachers of theology as wearing the shackles that fetter thought and cripple research. We believe that you, my brother, have accepted the present professorship largely because your faith is no mere tradition, but bears the marks of intellectual conflict. You have, doubtless, wrestled with the champions of a whittled-down faith; you have tasted as much'as they the liberty of thinking and judging for yourself; and the fact that you have once more assented to the questions of an induction service ; that vou value too highly the rights of intellect to belong- to a creedless Church, and that you defer 100 loyally to the claims of conscience to avow ausrht that conflicts with convictions you have tested and won. And now, my brother, as you contemplate the programme of your professorship, you are doubtless dreaming dreams of effective service for our Church—revolving questions of method—picking up threads to weave into the warp and woof of your dosigns. As you ponder the possibilities of your new office, the methods of other guides will leap to recollection: and I can well imagine how many a thread from foreign looms has already been refused a place in the web of your ideal. The stiff thread of ex cathedra declarations, the crinkled thread of casuistry, 'the twisted thread of compromise, the 'chameleoncoloured thread of ambiguity, the gossamer thread of flimsy pedantrv and attenuated faith—none of these will appear in the fabric of your dreams. You know full well the perils that beset the theologian—the temerity that courts disaster, as well as the desperate expedients of hard-pressed theological bias, the ingenious shifts of illusive exegesis, and the multiform artifice of argument so commonly employed to conceal the crack or prop the tottering wall. You have recognised on alien stems twigs stolen from the tree of life: and your eye readily detects the graft-bearing culture-tree incapable of yielding fruit' for the healing of the nations. You have watched the clearing of accumulated rubbish from the salvation, and chafed to see the water of life poisoned by the clumsy use of critical tools. You have seen administered many a rude and irremediable scratch in the_ delicate process of parting the gem from its jacket. Your wide and iudicious readiner has made you familiar alike with the blizzard and the blaze of reckless scholarship. You have seen the mountain peaks of Revelation provokingly obscured by learned fog. and the obliteration of Christian sainthood's common highway. Nor need you monitors to warn you of that dazing type of academic brilliance which blinds by excess of light, scorches the wings of aspiration, exhausts as by sunstroke, and leaves us baffled and befooled, ill at ease and sad of heart. No, my brother, we are confident that your method will prove to be no mere anatomical manipulation of dry bones, for we are assured that your system of theologv is ,no mere skeleton, but an organism that omits no necessary organ nor neglects one vital function of the truth —a living thine: of strength and beauty, drawing its vitality from the once broken but still beating heart of our crucified and risen Lord. To the students we are about to pass under your charge, you will be careful to present this body of divinity, .not as some "deformed torso of the schools, but as symmetrically and completely as the revelation of God. the testimony of experience, and the inevitable limitations of the human mind nermit. The same diversity of need may not meet you in the class-room as in the pulpit ministry of the Word: and yet there is bound to appear diversity of mind amid the unity of purpose that shall send our sons to your feet for guidance and instruction.

Let nne content myself with remarking in that amid the visions that gather around your new office there will not be found absent tvoes of common people hungering- for the_ Word of God. Having spent some years in parish work at Home, you will not be unmindful of the fact that the efficacy of your work among the students will find its test and justification in their efficient ministry of the Word among the people. We welcome you as a competent

trainer of men who are to become physicians of sick souls, bearers of Christ's glorious gospel to the anguish and extremity of human need. You enter upon your labours with the esteem and confidence of your brethren. We promise you our encouragement and our prayers; and we cherish the hope that, with the guidance and blessing of Almighty God, the. mantle may not fall from your shoulders until great things have been attempted for Christ's Kingdom, and great things have been done. —(Applause.)