BY AN OBSERVER.
As I have for several years observed the work of your College, it has occurred to me that it might not be displeasing to you to hear what can be said of the Institution by an observer. I confess that my observations may be to you of little value, seeing the College is your own child, and has grown up under your own hand and eye. But if the observations I make be without interest to you, they may not be valueless to your many generous friends and faithful helpers. And for this reason: Yourself, the Vice- President, and Tutors are pleased in your Annual Report to favor us with views of the College work drawn from the inside; what I have to say shall be taken from the outside. If I shall speak with all frankness, you may be assured it is the frankness of friendliness, and that there is naught “set down in malice.”
The first thing which, as a “candid friend,” I will acknowledge is that, while I have heard many things that indicate a hearty appreciation, I have also
now and then heard strictures which make me desirous of defining the niche your College occupies among the ministerial training institutions of the country. The Pastors’ College appears to me to have sprung into life amid the throes of the greatest religious and educational revolution this century has witnessed. both elements of this revolution — the religious and the educational — have, I believe as they deserve, the entire sympathy of every right-thinking individual in the country, because when properly treated they are helpful to each other. For our present purpose it is not needful to inquire whether the religious movement first excited the
educational, or the educational first quickened the religious; nor will I stop to ask whether, in this result, so far as it is seen, religion has gained more from education than education has reaped from religion. The one only outcome I have in view, and that bears a relation to the work of the Pastors’ College, is this — and I think it will not be disputed — that there is now more education on the side of religious people, however gravely it may be questioned whether there is more religion on the side of the educated.
In early days, then, the problem was, How shall the Pastors’ College minister to the peculiar need of the times and circumstances that gave it birth? The solution of this problem I have watched, it must be confessed, at times with considerable anxiety. Will the young school minister
satisfactorily and efficiently to the double-mouthed need? Owing its origin directly to a revival of religion, it did not take much discernment to see that it would doubtless suitably provide for the demands of a revived religion.
But can it make adequate provision for a revived religion stimulated and accompanied by a higher education? Thus the question stood.
In deciding whether the Pastors’ College has risen to “the height of this great argument,” it is not a necessary condition to require that all the alumni should be “wranglers” or “double firsts.” It meets every equity of the case if there should be a number sufficient to occupy a due proportion of pulpits where scholarship as well as piety is deemed essential in the ministrations. On looking around, what do I behold? Some of the pulpits of the denomination most valuable and illustrious in past generations — the two, Cambridge and Broadmead, most famous of all — I find are occupied by men from the Pastors’ College. Nor do I observe that the laurels gained by their predecessors wither in the wearing of these younger men trained in the younger, though not the youngest, school of Baptist pastors.
Such achievements are, to my mind, full of meaning. When, too, I put these results side by side with the vast and truly sympathetic efforts made to reach the masses which have their typical representatives in the East London Tabernacle and in the Shoreditch Tabernacle, in the former case backed up by much practical philanthropy extended to the miserable, I cannot but admit that the Pastors’ College is effecting a solution of the problem above stated that might give content to the most exact and to the most exacting. To the double-mouthed need it is ministering with a double- handed plenitude. The comprehensiveness which enlists both a spirit and capacity, not only fully abreast of religious life and action, but which has in many places within my knowledge inspired and directed them to higher efforts, I submit fully entitles the Pastors’ College to take rank with the most vigorous and apt institutions of our times for ministerial training. I take it that its history hitherto has shown that all doubt as to its thorough fitness to fulfill the mission embodied in its name is now laid at rest. In all fairness to others as well as to myself, however, I must confess there was a period when fears would come and doubts also, though I was very averse to give them any entertainment. Would the College be a mere transient growth? Would it subside into the narrow groove of training temporary preachers and itinerant evangelists? Would it give only a rough-and-ready preparation for the lower grades of work, and send no representatives into the higher and more permanent ranks? These were questions with me in common with many friends who wished well to the undertaking. Some early indications gave me hope that in due time a full proportion of the higher forms would fall to your share. But this was not everywhere recognized, and in some quarters where it was seen to be inevitable it was not much appreciated. I trust a more generous feeling has now set in. I recall the time when you were emerging from the dreary quarters in the basement of the Tabernacle to the light and airy and commodious rooms in the substantial new College buildings, and I wondered whether that change of scene would be marked by a corresponding emergence into a freer and cheerier recognition of the College and its work.
That such a recognition had long been deserved I was convinced in my own mind. Now, I am bound to testify that I meet with few who are not of that opinion. I am inclined to look upon your new buildings as an outward and visible sign of the esteem, won by dint of merit, from the public at large. I must say, from what I have seen and heard, this esteem had to be
won; nay, in some circles compelled. But being gained thus, it is the more valuable, and is likely to be the more durable.
May I now, without pretending to do anything more than is well within the range of an outside observer, glance at those qualities which have led on to success? I will not venture on the dogmatic, and you may take my opinion for what it is worth.
I have had many opportunities of observing, both the “brighter stars” and the “lesser lights” among the preachers that hail from the Pastors’ College.
I have found much variety, much dissimilarity in gifts, in capacities, in styles of preaching. But in the midst of this copious variety, I think I have been able to detect a very close family likeness. The point of resemblance, and what has most impressed my mind, is that the Pastors’ College men have invariably something definite to say on the great themes of the
Gospel. I find they have some crisp and pointed teaching that bears directly on the conscience, concerning the nature of sin, and the one Divine way of escape therefrom. I find that they do not aim to set these things forth on a basis of speculation, but on the authority of God’s Word. And I cannot but say that even where the: finer graces of style may be wanting — where there may be very little of eloquence, or ornament, or illustration — yet the wholesome plainness of sound doctrine, delivered with the accent of a heartfelt conviction, which I generally find among your students, has a grace and an eloquence all its own, and storms the human heart. I feel assured, too, that such ministrations are on the line of the great Evangelical testimony and message of God to perishing men in all ages. These are the chief qualities which I believe have conciliated the affections and won the support of so many of the best friends of the Gospel in “all the churches.”
Alongside with these leading characteristics I note others. I regard it as a most hopeful feature that your men seem to be alive and awake to the requirements of their office. In the absence of University examinations, which I understand are not comprised in your methods, you have
succeeded somehow in thoroughly arousing the energies of your men, and drawing out their capacities. I notice they come forth from College, not as if their energies had been spent there, but invigorated. An impulse rests on them; there is movement in them, and they, as a rule, rise to the demands of their work. This is a great point. For whatever be the educational standard; whether it be so low as in Queen Elizabeth’s days, when some parish clergymen were ordered by the Queen in Council to peruse the lessons in private, because they were “but meane readers;” or so high as
Edward Irving set it, when he :;aid “that no man is furnished for the ministry till he can unclasp his pocket Bible, and wherever it opens, discourse from it largely and spiritually to the people”; or so much beside the mark as to consist chiefly in “Pagan literature,” as Mr. Mozley
confesses was the case with himself and others at Oxford fifty years ago;
no ministerial training (:an be effective which does not stimulate and strengthen in the minister of the Gospel, both his capacities as a man and his graces and energies as a Christian.
Your specialty — pastoral work — implies a great deal. It may, and ought to be, the focus of many converging beams of knowledge and experience.
The excellency and efficiency of your work lie, not so much in cultivating separate branches of knowledge, but in combining kindred subjects, and concentrating various lights upon your one exclusive object.
As you advance, I, in company with every well-wisher, earnestly trust you will still keep the one aim steadily in view. The proper prominence given to this will keep all parts in their rightful place. It will subordinate the literary to the devotional, the critical to the believing, the intellectual to the
spiritual, the merely denominational to the broadly Catholic and Christian purposes of the ministry of the Gospel. And if you will allow me to make a suggestion, I would add that the way to secure these results increasingly, is, in addition to all your other educational machinery, to let the Word of God be increasingly an open book — open in its original languages, open in all the variety and inspired authority of its teachings — before the eyes of your students, for their humble, prayerful, and believing study. The method of Haldane, with his student-friends at Geneva, I hold to be very near the normal Christian method of preparation for the ministry. The Pastor “mighty in the Scriptures” will be “thoroughly furnished for every good work.”