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The Religion of the Future1
- Charles W. Eliot
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 389-407
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As students in this summer's School of Theology you have attended a series of lectures on fluctuations in religious interest, on the frequent occurrence of religious declines followed soon by recoveries or regenerations both within and without the churches, on the frequent attempts to bring the prevalent religious doctrines into harmony with new tendencies in the intellectual world, on the constant struggle between conservatism and liberalism in existing churches and between idealism and materialism in society at large, on the effects of popular education and the modern spirit of inquiry on religious doctrines and organizations, on the changed views of thinking people concerning the nature of the world and of man, on the increase of knowledge as affecting religion, and on the new ideas of God. You have also listened to lectures on psychotherapy, a new development of an ancient tendency to mix religion with medicine, and on the theory of evolution, a modern scientific doctrine which within fifty years has profoundly modified the religious conceptions and expectations of many thinking people. You have heard, too, how the new ideas of democracy and social progress have modified and ought to modify not only the actual work done by the churches, but the whole conception of the function of churches.
The Bearing of Historical Studies on the Religious Use of the Bible
- Frank C. Porter
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 253-276
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The Bible is better understood by scholars today than ever before, but it seems to be at the same time less generally used and less enjoyed, and it is natural to ask whether there is a connection between the increasing knowledge of the book by specialists and the lessening familiarity with it and regard for it among the people. The problem thus suggested is not an isolated one. In regard to other books it may be asked whether the advance of learning is accompanied by a gain or a loss in the capacity to read with enjoyment and uplift; and in regard to other facts than those recorded in the Bible the question is in place whether scientific study stimulates or dulls the sense of their poetic beauty or spiritual value. Yet the problem is peculiarly pressing in regard to the Bible and the facts it records, because of the unique significance of these books and of this history for our higher life.
The Recent Literature upon the Resurrection of Christ
- William H. Ryder
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 1-27
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No other doctrine of Christian theology has been regarded as more important than the doctrine that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. It has often been affirmed that upon this doctrine the church was founded; that it is the one great fact which binds together the life of Jesus in the flesh and his eternal life at the right hand of God; which confirms his teaching and his high claims; which gives to men the right to love and worship him with a supreme devotion, to believe in his continued ministration to his people, to anticipate his return to perfect and govern his kingdom in the earth, and to rest in the assurance of their own immortal life with him. It is not strange, therefore, that in the flux of modern thought many should turn their attention to this significant doctrine. It is, moreover, not only an important article of the Christian faith, but it is also one in the support and interpretation of which various lines of investigation are involved. It is, first of all, a historical question, which demands a careful examination of witnesses and testing of evidence; it has come to be, of late at least, a psychological question, demanding careful analysis of the state of mind of the early witnesses, the accumulation and comparison of other cases in which men and women have believed that they saw the forms and heard the voices of the departed. The hypotheses suggested by the experiments of psychical research have been thought by some to throw at least a dim and uncertain light upon this doctrine; and, further, the question whether there is a vital and necessary connection between a firm conviction of the bodily resurrection of Jesus and a confident and aggressive Christian faith has come to seem to some an open question, demanding careful and discriminating examination. It is not surprising, therefore, that the literature upon this subject should have much increased during the last fifteen or twenty years, nor that the methods of discussion and the conclusions reached by able and sincere men should differ widely. It is the purpose of this article to give some account of these recent discussions, without attempting to review or criticise in detail the individual books and monographs and the articles in various English and German periodicals which have been published in such large numbers.
Edward Caird
- Robert Mark Wenley
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 115-138
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The career of a man who devotes his life to reflection upon philosophy and religion, whose active work consists in teaching these subjects and in writing about them, is little likely to furnish incidents meet for flamboyant biography. But it may well be a source of profound influence, destined to affect the culture of a people or an age long after events that splash noisily upon the momentary surface have sunk into oblivion. Now Caird constituted an exceptional force, particularly in that native home of English-speaking philosophy and religion, Scotland; as such he merits memorial in these pages. Moreover, we must remember that, although, to his great regret, expressed to me often, he never visited the United States, his spirit has wrought strongly on this continent. Years ago, when I was a young Fellow at Glasgow, I received a letter from an American philosopher which concluded with words that have always stuck in my memory, “We look to Glasgow for light and leading.” Here Glasgow happened to be a synonym for the brothers Caird.
What is Vital in Christianity?1
- Josiah Royce
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 408-445
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I do not venture to meet this company as one qualified to preach, nor yet as an authority in matters which are technically theological. My contribution is intended to present some thoughts that have interested me as a student of philosophy. I hope that one or another of these thoughts may aid others in formulating their own opinions, and in defining their own religious interests, whether these interests and opinions are or are not in agreement with mine.
Jesus the Son of God
- Benjamin Wisner Bacon
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 277-309
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No passage of the Synoptic Gospels throws so much light upon Jesus’ sense of his own mission as that which deals with Knowing the Father and Being Known of Him in Mt. 11 25-27, Lk. 10 21-22. It belongs to the common element of Matthew and Luke unknown in Mark, and in the judgment of the great majority of critics must therefore be referred to a common source of high antiquity. In short, as respects attestation, its claims to authenticity are unexcelled. As respects content, it deals with the all-important matter of Jesus’ doctrine of divine sonship, and yet it seems to stand alone among Synoptic sayings, and to be paralleled only by utterances ascribed to Jesus by the fourth evangelist. But the Johannine discourses give every indication of having been composed by the evangelist himself in order to expound in dialogue form his own deutero-pauline Christology. The only instance in all Synoptic tradition of anything comparable to this apposition of “the Son…the Father,” is Mk. 13 32, Mt. 24 36.
Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Calvin and Servetus1
- Ephraim Emerton
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 139-160
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In the Genevan suburb of Champel, in an angle formed by the crossing of two unfrequented roads, stands a monument erected in the year 1903 by citizens of Geneva to commemorate an incident in the history of their community which for three centuries and a half has justly been regarded by critics as a blot upon its good name. The monument consists of a rough, irregular granite block about a man's height and resting upon a base of natural rock. On one side is the name of Michael Servetus, and on the other the following touching inscription:
FILS
RESPECTUEUX ET RECONNAISSANTS
DE CALVIN
NOTRE GRAND REFORMATEUR
MAIS CONDAMNANT UNE ERREUR
QUI FUT CELLE DE SON SIECLE
ET FERMEMENT ATTACHES
A LA LIBERTE DE CONSCIENCE
SELON LES VRAIS PRINCIPES
DE LA REFORMATION ET DE L'EVANGILE
NOUS AVONS ELEVE
CE MONUMENT EXPIATOIRE
LE XXVII OCTOBRE MCMIII
That such an inscription could be accepted as an expression of the best judgment of the modern Genevese in regard to this action of their fathers is evidence of a change of sentiment that has required all these three and a half centuries to come to its rights. During my travels two years ago I met a Genevan scholar of world-wide reputation in a field of knowledge that has kept him for the greater part of his active life far removed from the provincial feeling that might well cling to one who had never left the familiar scenes of early life. He was a member of an ancient Genevan aristocratic family, still in possession of a landed estate that for six generations at least had been in the hands of his fathers. In the course of conversation I remarked upon the admirable action of his fellow-citizens in showing, though tardily, their sense of the historic significance of Calvin's terrible act of justice. In so doing I meant to pay to Geneva the respectful tribute of my humble admiration. But the response was not such as I had anticipated. Not even yet was this Genevan aristocrat quite ready to admit that his fellow-citizens had done well to recognize thus publicly their regret that the man to whom they as well as he looked back as the creator of their redoubtable commonwealth had allowed himself this one human slip. Even modified as their expression of regret was, even though they had guarded the reputation of Calvin by ascribing his fault to the Spirit of the Age, still it seemed to this sturdy conservative that any such confession of error could be only another outburst of that radical temper which was slowly transforming the Geneva of Calvin into a community more in sympathy with the liberalism of the modern world.
The Influence of Christianity upon the Roman Empire
- Arthur Cushman McGiffert
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 28-49
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It has commonly been taken for granted that Christianity must have had a great and beneficent influence upon the Roman Empire, within which it had its origin and whose official religion it finally became. This not unnatural assumption is, however, very difficult to substantiate. One may recognize that the religion of Christ was a great advance upon the paganism of antiquity, and that its final victory was a blessing to the world, and yet find it far from easy to show how and to what extent the Roman world was benefited by it. It is simple enough to point to individual lives within the Christian church that were purified and helped. But to prove that the common level of life within the Empire was raised, that society at large was bettered, that the general moral standard was elevated, that political principles and civil institutions and economic ideals were improved by its influence, is altogether another matter. It is not enough to content ourselves with the assumption that Christianity being in itself a good thing must have been good for the Roman world; it is incumbent upon us to show that it actually proved so.
A Basic Principle for Theology
- Edward S. Drown
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 310-322
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There have been times in the history of architecture when style was inevitable. In the classic period of Greece or in the Gothic period of northern Europe no architect raised the question as to the style in which he should construct a building. That was decreed for him. And we shall perhaps not go astray if we suggest that the inevitableness of that decree was determined by two factors. One was the purpose to be served by the building, the other was the control over the materials. The one factor determined the contents, the other the form in which those contents were to be expressed. The contents depended on the social and spiritual ideals of the time. The form depended on the nature of the building material and on the mechanical ability to use it.
New Testament Eschatology and New Testament Ethics
- Francis Greenwood Peabody
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 50-57
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The most important contribution of this generation to Biblical interpretation has been made, beyond question, through the appreciation and analysis of New Testament eschatology. Round the teaching of the Gospels, like an atmosphere which even though unconscious of it they breathe, lies, according to this view, a circle of apocalyptic expectation, with its literature, its vocabulary, and its inextinguishable hopes. Though Rabbinical orthodoxy might regard this literature as heretical, it may well have had a peculiar fascination for contemplative or poetic minds. When, therefore, after solitary reflection on his mission, Jesus came into Galilee ‘preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,’ it might be anticipated that he, like John the Baptist, would apply to that kingdom the language of apocalyptic hope, and would announce its approach as heralded by a catastrophic end of the world-age. This key of interpretation, once in the hands of German learning, has been applied with extraordinary ingenuity to many obscurities and perplexities of the Gospels, and has unlocked some of them with dramatic success. The strange phenomenon, for example, of reserve and privacy in the teaching of Jesus, becomes, in this view, an evidence of his esoteric consciousness of Messiahship, which none but a chosen few were permitted to know. ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.’ The cardinal phrases of the teaching, ‘Kingdom of Heaven,’ ‘Son of God,’ and ‘Son of Man,’ all point, it is urged, not to a normal, human or social regeneration, but to a supernatural, revolutionary, and catastrophic change.
The Moral Justification of Religion
- Ralph Barton Perry
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 161-185
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It is generally agreed that religion is either the paramount issue or the most serious obstacle to progress. To its devotees religion is of overwhelming importance; to unbelievers it is, in the phrasing of Burke, “superstitious folly, enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny.” The difference between the friends and the enemies of religion may, I think, be resolved as follows. Religion recognizes some final arbitration of human destiny; it is a lively awareness of the fact that, while man proposes, it is only within certain narrow limits that he can dispose his own plans. His nicest adjustments and most ardent longings are overruled; he knows that until he can discount or conciliate that which commands his fortunes his condition is precarious and miserable. And through his eagerness to save himself he leaps to conclusions that are uncritical and premature. Irreligion, on the other hand, flourishes among those who are more snugly intrenched within the cities of man. It is a product of civilization. Comfortably housed as he is, and enjoying an artificial illumination behind drawn blinds, the irreligious man has the heart to criticize the hasty speculations and abject fear of those who stand without in the presence of the surrounding darkness. In other words, religion is perpetually on the exposed side of civilization, sensitive to the blasts that blow from the surrounding universe; while irreligion is in the lee of civilization, with enough remove from danger to foster a refined concern for logic and personal liberty. There is a sense, then, in which both religion and irreligion are to be justified. If religion is guilty of unreason, irreligion is guilty of apathy. For without doubt the situation of the individual man is broadly such as religion conceives it to be. There is nothing that he can build, nor any precaution that he can take, that weighs appreciably in the balance against the powers which decree good and ill fortune, catastrophe and triumph, life and death. Hence to be without fear is the part of folly. Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom.
Modern Methods in New Testament Philology
- Samuel Angus
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 446-464
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The language of the Greek New Testament has been under the continual search-light of criticism since the early part of the seventeenth century, when the keen debate between the Purist and the Hebraist produced a copious literature. The former laid a very heavy burden on his own shoulders. Although he could easily argue for his thesis of the “purity” of the New Testament language by citing numberless parallels between it and the best Greek writers, it was hard to account for the many points of divergence, and consequently the Hebraist steadily gained ground. Antecedent probability, as well as common sense, seemed to be on the side of the latter. For the New Testament was akin to the Septuagint, and that was regarded as a treasure-house of Semitisms. Moreover most of the writers of the New Testament were Jews, and nothing seemed more natural than that their Greek should be deeply tinged with the idioms of their native tongue. Accordingly Hebraism was granted large concessions, and under it were included not only the Greek expressions which happened to have sister-constructions in Hebrew or Aramaic, but also many usages peculiar to Greek but unusual in the days of the best Attic. These Semitisms were supposed so to affect syntax, vocabulary, and style as to make the result un-greek.
The Marrow of Calvin's Theology1
- William W. Fenn
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 323-339
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As every man has both generic and specific characteristics which are common to him with his kind and group, and also certain traits which constitute his individuality, so likewise every thoughtful man has ideas which are the intellectual staple of his age and race and also others which are in a peculiar sense his own. It does not therefore follow that these common ideas are untrue: on the contrary, they may be nearer the truth than those which are relatively unshared; or that they are unimportant, for, even if erroneous, they may furnish points of contact through which his more distinctive opinion finds its way into the popular mind; nevertheless, they may be disregarded in estimating his contribution to the history of thought. Accordingly, nothing will be said here of doctrines, those pertaining to Christ and the Trinity for instance, which Calvin held in substantial agreement with contemporary and traditional Christianity; nor shall we refer to theories concerning the Church, its officers and sacraments, which, although highly significant both at the time and as shaping subsequent ecclesiastical history, have but slight connection with the ideas which make up the distinctively Calvinistic system of theology. We shall restrict ourselves therefore to Calvin's system within his system, to a definite, consistent nexus of ideas, relating principally to sin and salvation, which are, so to speak, the marrow of his body of divinity. And with reference to these, we shall undertake to present them as they appear in the definitive edition of the Institutes, without attempting to trace their relations, of dependence, resemblance, or difference, to ideas of his theological predecessors, like Augustine and Gottschalk, or contemporaries like Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, or Bucer; still less shall we essay to follow a possible process of his own thought through the successive editions and enlargements of the Institutes.
The Evangelization of Japan Viewed in its Intellectual Aspect
- Danjo Ebina
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 186-201
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When Protestant missionaries arrived in Japan with the religion of one God and the brotherhood of mankind, the native religions of Japan were in a deplorable condition. Buddhism had received such a fatal blow that there could be no hope of its revival. It was almost destroyed by the revolution of 1868. Many priests and monks had left their professions. Some became Shintoists; others became officers, soldiers, teachers, merchants, or artisans. Temples were deserted, and used for schools, offices, or barracks. Bells were converted into cannon. Sacred books were burned or sold as waste paper. Idols were standing neglected, partly stripped or broken—despised, mocked, and shunned. Compared with Buddhism, Confucianism was in a somewhat better state; but some of its progressive adherents, filled with admiration for western science, lost faith in the sacred books, and turned from the study of them to that of science. Those who still adhered to Confucianism were despised as conservative, bigoted, ignorant, and narrow-minded, unable to go forward in the advancing steps of the nation. At the time of the revolution Shintoism gained the ascendency, and for a time was considered a state religion. The decree of the emperor was given in the name of the heavenly gods. “Return to your origin and be grateful to the beginning” was the motto of the loyal and patriotic. But among the preachers and adherents of this movement there were many who went to extremes, insisting that along with the power of the emperor everything else that was ancient should be restored. Some of these nationalists were narrow-minded, especially in their attitude toward foreigners. They insisted that the holy land of Japan should not be trodden down and defiled by unclean strangers. Meanwhile the tide of the revolution changed its course from restoration to progress, from exclusiveness to open-mindedness. It began to flow directly against the principles of Shintoism then held by many. This decided its destiny. Shintoism met the same fate as Jewish Christianity in the first century of the Christian era. Thus Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism had been, one after another, submerged in the overwhelming tides of the revolution when Christianity appeared in the extra-territorial establishments of foreign residents.
Some Aspects of the Religious Philosophy of Rudolph Eucken
- Howard N. Brown
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 465-480
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The debt of religion to philosophy is thus far a somewhat questionable obligation. The influence of philosophy upon religion has been, of course, profound; but this influence has been by no means always helpful or beneficent. Indeed there is some reason to say that, take the world together, philosophy has quite as often hindered the development of the religious consciousness as it has set forward the course of religious progress.
The Reality of Religious Ideals
- John E. Boodin
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 58-72
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Not the least significant fact of this great scientific age is its deep interest in religion. On the one hand, in spite of serious protests from the conservatives, science has established its right to apply the same method to the study of religion which has been of such great service in reducing the facts of other fields from chaos to order; and thus we have Comparative Religion, Higher Criticism, and the Psychology of Religion. On the other hand, attempts have been made from the philosophical side to furnish the same rationale for the ultimate religious concepts as for the scientific. The import of this has been, not to show that both sorts of ideas are ultimately equally invalid, equally lose themselves in the unknowable, as in the dark all cows are gray; but to show the legitimacy and importance of both in steering us in the direction of the real. What I am concerned with in this paper is to inquire into the validity of our religious ideals; but to do this I shall have to inquire first how any ideals become valid. If this seems a roundabout way, I still feel that it is the shortest way to reach the end in view.
Truth and Immortality
- Charles F. Dole
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 202-220
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One everywhere finds people who have given up the hope of immortality or else regard it with extreme doubt. Forms of belief with which it has been associated have proved unthinkable to them. Worse yet, to hope for immortality seems not to be loyal to truth. “We want reality,” they say. “We propose to face the facts; we demand honest thinking. We have no use for dreams, however pleasant; we wish only truth.” Mr. Huxley's famous letter to his friend Charles Kingsley expresses this attitude. Here is a man who, in the greatest of sorrows, feels obliged to put away comfort and hope in obedience to the demand of truth. It is not possible to divide his mind into exclusive compartments, and to indulge an ancient religious emotion on one side of himself, while on the other side he remains the conscientious student of science. He must keep his integrity at any cost to his feelings. No one can help admiring this type of mind. A multitude of people who have nothing like Mr. Huxley's rigor of conscience are immensely moved by the attitude of such men as he. If he could see no truth in immortality and had to remain an agnostic about it, why should we not be agnostics also?
The Alevis, or Deifiers of Ali
- Stephen Van Rensselaer Trowbridge
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 340-353
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A religion different from Islam, centring about the person and teaching of Ali, the adopted son of Muhammed, is steadily gaining ground in certain sections of the Turkish Empire. The believers are called Alevis both by themselves and by the Muslims. The name Kuzul Bash (u as in “cut”), which means “Red Head” and is often used as a term of reproach, is said to have originated at the battle of Siffin. Ali said, “Tie red upon your heads, so that ye slay not your own comrades in the thick of the battle.” In Persia the community is known by the name of Ali Ilāhi, and has commonly been regarded as a sect of Muhammedanism.
The object of this study is to investigate the true nature of this faith with as much accuracy as an oriental religion permits, and to consider the relations of the Alevi brotherhood with Islam and Christianity.
Froude; or the Historian as Preacher
- Paul Revere Frothingham
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 481-499
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We have had abundant evidence of late, if evidence were needed i n the matter, that preaching is not of necessity confined to pulpits, nor a matter solely of the churches of the world. There are sermons which come from men of letters, as well as ministers, and from politicians who are genuine prophets. Whatever may be thought about the character of the sermons he delivers, and the nature of the texts from which he draws his inspiration, there can be no question of the fact that Theodore Roosevelt is essentially a preacher. His messages to Congress, which came with more than ministerial regularity and frequency, were essentially homiletical in form as well as hortatory in purpose, and his public addresses might well be collected under the Newmanesque title of Political and Plain Sermons.
The Use of Hebrew to a Minister
- H. G. Richardson
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 73-84
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In its bearings on the preparation for the work of the ministry the question, Is Hebrew worth while? is a live one. Like most questions, it has more than one side. I may declare at the outset my own conviction. In the practical work of the ministry Hebrew is not only worth while, but in these times comes near being essential if the work is to be done in a thorough way. Hebrew should, therefore, not only be a part of every seminary curriculum, but should be required for graduation.