gators, analysts, and reporters in the professions, clever, practical men in public life. Again we reply, It may be so; but will they turn out business men of the type, say, of Mr. Stedman, professional men of the type of Dr. Weir Mitchell (if we may venture to bring forward these gentlemen by name), public men and politicians of the type of Mr. Hay or Governor Long? When these questions are satisfactorily answered, we will cheerfully reconsider what we say in behalf of Greek and Latin literature; but unless and until they are so answered, we must continue to point out as in our view the cardinal defect in education, that it does next to nothing for the humane life, next to nothing for poetic truth, next to nothing for spiritual activity; and that its failure in these directions being what it is, our civilization is retarded and vulgarized to correspond.

For the sake of civilization, therefore, we of the ministry venture our plea in behalf of culture. We beg that some of the stress now laid upon purely instrumental knowledge be relieved. How can we even be understood when, for the sake of the great end of our calling, we praise and recommend culture and all the elements and processes that enter into culture, if the whole bent of secular training is against these, and serves but to confirm the current belief that the only real knowledge is instrumental knowledge, the only real truth is scientific truth, the only real life is a life far short of what life might be and what it ought to be? We ask that Greek and Latin literature be restored. We do not pretend to argue for the disciplinary worth of Greek and Latin studies, their value as a memory-exercise, as furnishing a corpus vile for our practice in analysis, or as a basis for the acquisition of modern languages. We argue solely for

their moral value; we ask that they be restored, understood, and taught as an indispensable and powerful factor in the work of humanizing society. As these subjects are now taught (if an unprofessional opinion may be offered without offense) their grammatical, philological, and textual interests predominate. Mr. Weir Smyth's excellent anthology, for instance, is probably an example of the very best textbook writing of its kind, and a glance at this—comparing it, if one likes, with the editorial work of Professor Tyrrell, in the same series-shows at once that Mr. Weir Smyth's purposes, admirable as they are, are not our purposes. We would be the very last to disparage Mr. Weir Smyth's labors or to fail in unfeigned praise of the brilliant, accurate, and painstaking scholarship which he brings to bear on all matters that he sees fit to include within the scope of his work. But sat patriae Priamoque datum; again we say it is not likely that instrumental knowledge, even in our dealings with the classics, will ever be neglected. Let us now have these subjects presented to us in such a way as to keep their literary and historical interests consistently foremost. Let the study of Greek and Latin literature be recommended to us as Mr. Arnold, for example, recommends it; let the Greek and Latin authors be introduced to us as Mr. Mackail introduces them; let them be edited for us as Professor Tyrrell edits them; let them be interpreted to us as Professor Jebb or Professor Jowett interprets them. Or, if the current superstition demands that we continue to receive the Greek and Latin authors at the hands of the Germans, or at second-hand from the Germans, we make no objection; we stipulate only that our editorial work be done for us not by the German philologists, textual critics, grammarians, or by Ameri

can students trained in their schools, but by Germans of the type of Lessing, Herder, and Goethe-men who are themselves docile under the guidance of poetic truth, who are themselves eminent in the understanding and practice of the humane life; men, therefore, who can happily interpret this truth and freely communicate this life to us.

The consideration of Greek and Latin studies in view of the active pastorate usually, we believe, takes shape in the question whether or not it is worth while for a minister to be able to read the New Testament and the Fathers in the original. Into this controversy we have never seen our way to enter; nor have we been able to attach to it the importance that it probably deserves. What interests us in Greek and Latin studies is the unique and profitable part these play in the promotion of the humane life. Nor do we argue with the friends of education as to the possibility of generating and serving the humane life by means of the discipline of science; we affirm simply that the humane life is most largely generated and most efficiently served by keeping before one the models of those in whom the humane life most abounds; and that of these models, the best and largest part is presented to us in the literature of Greece and Rome. The men in undergraduate work with us, back in the times of ignorance before natural science had come fully into its own, knew little of the wonders of the new chemistry. Little enough did they know of such principles of botany, physics, geology, astronomy, zoölogy, and so on, as one of our children in the high school will now pretend to rattle you off without notice. But they knew their Homer, their Plato, their Sophocles, by heart; they knew what these great spirits asked of life, they knew

their views of life. And with that knowledge there also insensibly grew the conviction that their own views and askings had best conform, as Aristotle finely says, "to the determination of the judicious." This was the best, perhaps the only fruit, of their training; they became steadied, less superficial, capricious, and fantastic. Living more and more under the empire of reality, they saw things as they are, and experienced a profound and enthusiastic inward motion toward the humane life, the life for which the idea is once and forever the fact. This life is the material upon which religion may have its finished work. Chateaubriand gives Joubert the highest praise that can be bestowed upon a human character when, speaking of Joubert's death as defeating his purpose of making a visit to Rome, he says, "It pleased God, however, to open to M. Joubert a heavenly Rome, better fitted still to his Platonist and Christian soul." It is in behalf of the humane life, therefore, that we of the active pastorate place our present valuation upon the literature of Greece and Rome: for the first step in Christianity is the humanization of life, and the finished product of Christianity is but the humane life irradiated and transfigured by the practice of the discipline of Jesus.

III. SHORT CUTS TO THE MINISTRY, WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ELIMINATION OF LATIN AND GREEK FROM THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

HUGH BLACK

Union Theological Seminary, New York

I am not responsible for the title given me, and I suppose we are all agreed that there is no royal road to learning, no short cuts to anything worth having. I

imagine that the title was chosen in condemnation of any attempts to lower the standard for entrance into any profession. All responsible for education have at least ideals which would impose an irreducible minimum, and would seek to stiffen requirements as soon as it became practicable to do so. The denial of short cuts is, perhaps, not a very palatable doctrine to a generation that wants quick results; and, in any case, it is natural to assume that something less than the long and stately preparation demanded for the old-time ministry could be made to do for the practical needs of our day. In some quarters, also, the shortage in the candidates is met by cutting down the ancient scholastic standards and by shortening the time required for study. It is the object of this convention to protest against this and to show cause why such a policy must fail of its purpose.

It ought to be said that it is not by the will of the churches that short cuts should have become necessary or possible. A completely educated ministry has always been the ideal of the churches of Protestantism. One only needs to know something of the history of education in America to know that this is so. All the older schools of learning had their origin in this ideal. Every college was started for the express purpose of supplying educated men for the ministry. So, when we make a definite pronouncement against the short cuts which would eliminate subjects we think indispensable, we ought in justice to remember that often the church is compelled to do what it can and not what it would. Circumstances are often too strong for us, and sometimes a situation arises in the church when it must use what material it has. In a country like this, where a great tract gets filled up in a few years, the church seeks to follow the movement