We learn, from the prospectus of the Yale Theological School, that "the chief aim of the seminary is to train men to be preachers of the Gospel, and especially such teachers as the present state of the world requires." Its course of study is as follows:
Junior year, encyclopædia and literature of theology, and instruction in Hebrew grammar and philology; exegetical study of the Greek New Testament; mental philosophy, with special reference to the study of theology—also natural theology; the evidences of Christianity, and the inspiration of the Scriptures—also, as incidental to these topics, the various forms of skepticism; middle year, systematic theology; general church history; Biblical theology; critical study of the New Testament; American church history; senior year, sacred rhetoric and homiletics; pastoral theology; Christian doctrine and on symbolical theology; church polity; lectures in natural theology and moral philosophy; natural philosophy; history; political economy; anatomy and physiology. The undergraduate departments are open to the divinity students, as also are the courses in the Sheffield Scientific School.
The course at Princeton differs in having a department entitled "The Harmony of Science and Revealed Religion," extending through the junior and senior years of the undergraduate department as a required course. "The first year of the course includes the study of natural theology, as connected with the physical sciences which illustrate the being and attributes of the Creator; and of natural religion, as connected with the mental and moral sciences which illustrate the Divine government, future state, and probation." The second part of the course includes a similar defense of revealed religion by the inductive logic, with the study of the miraculous, prophetic, historical, and scientific evidences of Christianity. The third part includes the study of inductive science as connected with revealed religion; the history of their seeming conflicts and alliances; the logic applicable to their relations, and the growing evidences of their harmony as alike involving the promotion of perfect science and the vindication of the Christian religion. The text-books used, in the elementary part of the course, are Paley's "Natural Theology," Butler's "Analogy of Religion and Nature," and Bacon's "Novum Organum;" with frequent lectures upon the topics of which they treat, as well as upon other more recent questions emerging in the different sciences which are in relation with revealed religion.
It will be seen that scarcely any attention is paid to a scientific training, or to methods of scientific thought. The young divinity student who enters any theological school—without a preliminary college education—can know nothing of the great questions upon which he is destined to preach with more or less confidence. The time of study, indeed, may be too short for a scientific course in any divinity school. And it is to be doubted whether general lectures on science, or on
