, noble themes, great thoughts, impressive imagery and appeal.
We should know the Bible as literature, not as one knows a story-book,
or a dialect-exercise, but as one knows the melodies and memories of
childhood.

The vital thing is not a knowledge of the historical schisms and decrees
of Christendom--not the external Evidences of Religion, Ecclesiastical
History, Ecclesiastical Polity, monuments, texts, memorabilia--the vital
thing is the power to think about God, and the problems of mankind. It
is a heart-knowledge of the difficulties and questionings of a race that
yearns for virtue.

Man thirsts for God. No one is wholly indifferent to the Spirit. I fear
that some ministers do not know--and never will know--the heart-hunger
of the world. When they rise to speak, there is always some one present
whose breath is hushed with longing to hear spoken some real word of
truth, or strength, or comfort. If he receive but chaff!--

Theology is not a dry thing, and ought not be made so. It is quick with
the life of the race. Each dogma is a mile-stone of human progress. It
is the sifted and garnered wisdom of the centuries, concerning God, and
His ways with men. Each student should feel, not that a system is being
driven into him, as piles are driven into the stream, but that he is
being put in philosophic contact with the thought of the race on the
great topic of Religion, with liberty himself to experiment, think, and
add to the store.

Homiletics is not a series of nursery-rules for man--formal, didactic
droppings of a pedant's tongue. Homiletics is the appeal of man to man,
for the welfare of his soul, and the true progress of mankind. Exegesis
is not a matter of Hebrew or Greek alone. It includes the spiritual
interpretation of the great problems of the race. Homer, Tennyson,
Browning, and Dante are exegetes, no less than Lightfoot, Lange,
and Schaff.

Pastoral Divinity is not the etiquette of a polite way of making calls:
it is an entering into the social spirit of the time; the learning of
friendliness, unreserve, sympathy, persuasion, and a way of approach. It
is the mastery of spiritual _savoir-faire_.

Outside of this group of technical subjects there are yet others of
vital importance from a scientific understanding of the world, and of
one's work. They are Psychology, Ethics, Sociology, and Politics.

Since we have known more of the psychological meaning of adolescence, a
new theory of Conversion has sprung