II. THE VALUE TO THE CLERGYMAN OF TRAINING IN THE CLASSICS

REV. A. J. NOCK

St. Joseph's Church, Detroit

The other night, in company with an eminent expert in social problems, I had the privilege of hearing Mr. Post lecture on the witch's work that the railroads are making with our political institutions. As we left the building, the first unmistakable breath of spring in the air brought with it a sudden, disquieting flood of recollections of my home in the Virginia mountains, and there occurred to me at once the pensive and graceful lines from Virgil's Georgics: "O for the fields, and the streams of Spercheios, and the hills animated by the romping of the Lacaenian girls, the hills of Taygetus!" The social practitioner, who regards my favorite pursuits with an eye of gentle toleration-thinking them a harmless means of keeping inefficient and sentimental persons from meddling underfoot of those like himself who are bearing the burden and heat of the day-took my arm and said, "I suppose now, your way out of all these troubles with the railroads would be to put Mr. Harriman and Mr. Pierpont Morgan to reading Virgil's Georgics." I had considerable satisfaction in telling him that he was not much more than half wrong.

The reply was not dictated solely by my own prepossessions. The function of the Christian minister is to recommend religion as the principal means of making the will of God prevail in all the relations of human society. He promotes the practice of the discipline of Jesus as the highest mode of spiritual exercise looking toward human perfection. But religion is an inward motion, a distinct form of purely spiritual activity; not

an intellectual process, an external behavior, or a series of formal observances. The final truth of religion is poetic truth, not scientific truth; in fact, with sheer scientific truth religion has very little vital concern. The Christian minister, then, has his chief interest in recommending a special mode of spiritual activity, in interpreting a special mode of poetic truth. But his experience bears witness that the general must precede the special. Before one may hope to do much with a special mode of spiritual activity like religion, at least some notion of spiritual activity in general must have made its way. Before one may hope to do much with a special mode of poetic truth like the truth of religion, at least some sense of the validity and worth of poetic truth in general must be set up. Here it may be seen how distinctly progress in religion is related to progress in culture I do not say progress in education, for the recent changes in educational aims and ideals make of education a very different thing from culture; the recent revolution in educational processes compels us to differentiate these very sharply from the works and ways of culture. Education, at present, is chiefly a process of acquiring and using instrumental knowledge. Its highest concern is with scientific truth, and its ends are the ends of scientific truth. Culture, on the other hand, is chiefly a process of acquiring and using formative knowledge: and while culture is, of course, concerned with scientific truth, its highest concern is with poetic truth. Culture prizes scientific truth, it respects instrumental knowledge; it seeks to promote these, where necessary, as indispensable and appointed means to a great end; but culture resolutely puts aside every temptation to rest upon these as ends in themselves. Culture looks steadily onward

from instrumental knowledge to formative knowledge, from scientific truth to poetic truth. The end of culture is the establishment of right views of life and right demands on life or, in a word, civilization, by which we mean the humane life, lived to the highest power by as many persons as possible.

Because material well-being is the indispensable basis of civilization, the more thoughtless among us are apt to use the word civilization only in a very restricted and artificial sense. Our newspapers especially appear to think that the quality of civilization is determined by being very rich, having plenty of physical luxuries, comforts, and conveniences, doing a very great volume of business, maintaining ample facilities for education, and having everyone able to read and write. The civilization of a community, however, is determined by no such things as these, but rather by the power and volume of the humane life existing there-the humane life, having its roots struck deep in material well-being, indeed, but proceeding as largely and as faithfully as possible under the guidance of poetic truth, and increasingly characterized by profound and disinterested spiritual activity. Thus it is possible for a community to enjoy ample wellbeing, and yet precisely the right criticism upon its pretensions to be that it is really not half civilized-that not half its people are leading a kind of life that in any reason or conscience can be called humane. Let us imagine, say, a community whose educational institutions deal in nothing but instrumental knowledge and recognize no truth that is not scientific truth; with all its people able to read and write indeed, yet with a very small proportion of what they read worth reading and of what they write worth writing; with its social life

heavily overspread with the blight of hardness and hideousness; with those who have had most experience of the beneficence of material well-being displaying no mark of quickened spiritual activity, but rather everywhere the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual dulness, enervation, and vulgarity; to apply the term civilization to anything as alien to the humane life, as remote from the ideal of human perfection, as this, seems to us unnatural and shocking. In such a community, no doubt, all manner of philanthropic and humanitarian enterprise may abound; what we nowadays call social Christianity, practical Christianity, may abound there. We do not underestimate these; their value is great, their rewards are great; but the assumption so regularly made, that these in themselves are sufficient indication of a chaste and vigorous spiritual activity on the part of those who originate and promote them is, in the view of culture, manifestly unsound. There is much room just now, we believe, for a searching exposition of Article XIII, "Of Good Works Done before Justification." We of the ministry, therefore, must keep insisting that, as our concern is purely with the processes and activities of the spirit, only so far forth as these things represent the fruit of the spirit can we give them our interest.

The Christian minister, then, is interested in civilization, in the humane life; because the special form of spiritual activity which he recommends is related to the humane life much as the humane life is related to material well-being. He is interested in the humane life for himself, because he must live this life if he hopes to prepossess others in its favor. And here comes in the ground of our plea that Greek and Latin literature may be restored

and popularized. One makes progress in the humane life by the only way that one can make progress in anything-by attending to it, by thinking about it, by having continually before one the most notable models of the humane life. And of these available models we find so large a proportion furnished to us in the literature of Greece and Rome as to force upon us the conviction that in our efforts to exemplify and promote the humane life we simply cannot do without this literature. The friends of education as it now is keep insisting that citizens should be trained to be useful men of their time, men who do things, men who can develop our natural and commercial resources, carry our material well-being on to a yet higher degree of abundance and security, and play a winning game at politics. For these purposes, they tell us, instrumental knowledge and scientific truth are the only things worth knowing. We content ourselves with remarking, simply, It may be so; but with all this we, at any rate, can do nothing. The worst of such justifications is that, like Mr. Roosevelt's specious and fantastic plea for the strenuous life, they are addressed to a public that needs them least. There is small danger that interest in anything making for material well-being, for the development of our commerce and industrial pursuits, will fail for a long time to come. As for politics, statesmen trained on instrumental knowledge may well be instrumental statesmen, such as ours are; and these, too, appear to be for ever and ever. Our interest is in knowing whether education as it now is will give us citizens who can accomplish anything worth talking about in the practice of the humane life. The friends of education tell us that men trained as they would and do train them will turn out shrewd, resourceful business men, competent investi