Institute Essays (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from Institute Essays

The Object of the Ministers' Institute, as may be inferred from the account already given, 'is not to proclaim fixed results, but to exhibit the best methods of study in theology and religion; to stimulate inquiry into matters still unsettled or unknown to the bottom, and to encourage and aim at a scientific mode in treating them. It is already plain that the Institute has not mistaken its way, and that its original aim and Object is one deemed practicable and useful. When the Institute was first projected, it was supposed that the study Of theological problems and the critical pursuit of truth in matters of religion was a work so nearly akin to that of theological schools, that only ministers anxious to continue the studies commenced there would be interested in its meetings. It was even seriously proposed to exclude the laity, lest any temptation to adapt the papers to their sup posed tastes might lessen their frankness and rob them of the scientific severity which was so much desired by professional students. The experience of two sessions has proved that this notion did injustice to the laity; that they are quite as eager for thorough, scholarly, logical, and scien tific treatment of theological questions as the ministers themselves, and no more alarmed at the light which learned criticism is throwing upon the history of the religious senti ment, the relations of the great religions to each other, the origin of our own sacred writings, nor at the changes which modern science, and especially anthropology, is making nec essary in our views of inspiration and revelation, than those who have been professionally trained to the investigation of these theories.

Thoughtful people are discovering that the scientific method properly understood is just as applicable to one form of truth as to another; that religion can no more escape it, nor profit by neglecting it, than political economy or agriculture; in short, that it is simply treason to truth to doubt or deny that the same logic, the same caution, the same thoroughness, the same reliance on critical rules, should be applied to the investigation of religious truth as to all other. When it is understood that the scientific method is only another name for the employment of all the best means for discovering or testing truth, and involves in the treatment of every department of knowledge the use of the means that are appropriate to that department, the remain ing prejudice against its employment will disappear. Some have carelessly imagined that the affections of the heart, the light Of the conscience, the native sensibilities, were to be ignored by science; but when we are studying what concerns the heart, science will compel us to take the heart itself into counsel as the chief witness. To study theology without faith is a vain effort. To pursue religion in an irreligious spirit is futile. No doubt the study of meta physics by physical methods and of theology by unspiritual methods will prove barren, and will be soon discovered to be as unscientific as it is destructive.

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