up; and whether or not we accept it,
the whole outlook over the underlying principle of conversion has been
changed. We must at least recognize that conversion is a scientific
process, as much as digestion is, or respiration; it is not a purely
emotional occurrence.

The minister must learn what society really is, and how the far still
forces of time act and react upon each other, producing group-actions,
institutions, customs, ways. There are social fossils as well as
physical ones. Sociology is not a system of fads and reforms. It is the
scientific study of society, of its constitution, development,
institutions, and growth. He must also breathe largely of the great
governmental life of the race--understand the primary principles of
politics and administration. He should have some knowledge of commercial
interests, of the formulas, incentives, and right principles of trade.

There should also be in the seminary an inspirational atmosphere of
music, literature, and art. Literature is a revelation of the life of
the soul. The man who reads literature and comprehends its message is
receiving a fine training which shall fit him for a thorough
understanding of the heart; of its practical, ethical, and spiritual
problems; of its domestic joys and sorrows; of its human cares and
burdens; of the appeals that will come to him for sympathy; of the
temptations that beset the race; and of the hopes and trials of
the world.

Literature is one of the best tools a minister can have. He should be
read in the great literary and sermonic literature, the work of Bossuet,
Massillon, Chrysostom, Augustine, Fenelon, Marcus Aurelius, mediaeval
homilies, Epictetus, Pascal, Guyon, Amiel, Vinet, La Brunetiere, Phelps,
Jeremy Taylor, Barrows, Fuller, Whitefield, Bushnell, Edwards, Bacon,
Newman, Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson, Davies, Law, Bunyan, Luther, Spalding,
Robertson, Kingsley, Maurice, Chalmers, Guthrie, Stalker, Drummond,
Maclaren, Channing, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks, yes, even John Stuart
Mill. All these men, by whatever name or school they are called, are
writers of essays or sermons which appeal to the most spiritual deeps
of man.

He should read the novels of Richter, Thackeray, Dickens, Scott, Eliot,
and Victor Hugo. He should know intimately the great verse which
involves spiritual problems, and human strife and aspiration,--Milton,
Beowulf, Caedmon, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, ballads, sagas, the
Arthur-Saga, the Nibelung