the atonement they had attained no small satisfaction. But in this new atmosphere, would their definitions hold?

The actual result has not been more disastrous than was apprehended. Evolution has been in due time hospitably received and worked by those who would make it utter itself with a Christian accent. Even the Ritschlian distinction has often proved itself grateful to the Christian experience. If those who were most partial to the distinction made concessions here and there perilous to the structures of evangelical faith, yet it was wonderful how much of them was left standing, and that the dwellers therein lived in so much peace and power. The members of the last International Council, for example, were surprised to hear an English minister, generally supposed to be well versed in the Ritschlian modes of statement, speak to them of the work of the Redeemer in terms which since 1884 had become almost archaic. The seat of authority for mankind was placed by this speaker on the very cross on which the lowly Master had bowed himself to die. It is "only a deep expiatory view that invests Christ with this final moral claim." In the recently published volume by one of the chief contributors to this Review, who has himself often and lucidly discussed this topic, he has quoted the no less positive tone in which Kaftan, another thinker of this school, has expressed himself. Referring to some modern theologians who had returned to the old doctrine, but who had said, not the juridical idea of punishment, but the ethical idea of propitiation, is to be made the basis, Kaftan affirms, "On the contrary, the highest ethical idea of propitiation is just that of punishment. . . . Precisely the idea of the vicarious suffering of punishment is the idea which must in some way be brought to a full expression for the sake of the ethical consciousness."1 Even Professor Harnack, although he might be cited as in the main inclining 1 F. H. Foster, Christian Life and Theology, p. 234.

away strongly from dogmatic formula, and preferring to think of what our Lord did as the loving service which constrains, yet allows himself the following language: "There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful judge. This conception is false, and yet it is not false. For it is a necessary consequence of his godlessness. The Holy One descends and serves and dies, and then they believe that God is Love." False, and yet not false! It often seems as if theory here, as elsewhere, is a perpetually recurrent adjustment of partial truth or a perpetually recurrent elimination of partial error. It is true that God is not a wrathful judge, that is, an unjust judge. But he is judge in the highest and broadest conception. The analogies of the ordinary court-room or of the ordinary throne may come far short of fully representing him with whom we have to do. That is no less. true of other analogies, that of fatherhood and sonship, for example. They are all only approximate helpers to our better apprehension. None of them are to be set aside as of no value. At some stages of our personal or of our general human progress, they may seem outworn. But then again they may get a new depth of meaning. "The commonplace truth" in them may be "restored to its first, uncommon luster."

ARTICLE V.

THE PRESIDENCY OF THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARIES.

SHOULD THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY HAVE A PERMANENT PRESIDENT; AND IF SO, WHAT SHOULD

BE THE POWERS AND DUTIES OF

THE OFFICE?

BY PRESIDENT JOHN KNOX MCLEAN, D.D.

[The Conference of Congregational Seminaries (United States and Canada) is an organization in the interest of unifying and bettering, within Congregational lines, the work of ministerial training. The conference includes our seven American institutions-Andover, Bangor, Chicago, Hartford, Oakland, Oberlin, Yale-and the Congregational Divinity College at Montreal. As part of the program for its last meeting, held in St. Louis, October, 1900, the writer, by appointment, presented a paper on the topic named above. So great interest was developed in the discussion which followed and so vital did the subject appear to the minds of those present in its bearing upon Seminary administration and on the general work of ministerial training, that it has been thought wise to give it wider currency. This statement will explain the appearance and form of this article.-J. K. M.]

THE question of a permanent presidency for theological seminaries is of recent origin. Whatever has been attempted in that direction among our Congregational churches has been, with little exception, more in name than in reality. Thirteen years ago Dr. Hartranft was made, in the proper sense of the term,—and greatly to the advantage of the institution he has represented,-president of Hartford; six years ago Pacific, at Oakland, assumed a supervising head. The title has been used in case of others of our schools, but only by accommodation. The actual position of the person bearing it has usually been, by selection of his faculty,

chairman of that body; but with no substantial increase of powers or duties toward the institution as such. The same thing is true in the Presbyterian denomination. Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall was three years since made full and permanent president of Union Seminary, and he had predecessors who more or less fully discharged the proper functions of that office; Dr. George B. Stewart has been in like manner more recently installed with full powers as president of Auburn; the late lamented Dr. Henry M. Booth had been elected to the same standing, but died before the larger adjustments of the office were completed. With these exceptions, only remote approaches to an actual presidency, or deanship, have been made in either of these two denominations. A like condition exists, so far as information can be obtained, in case of the other relig. ious bodies. The undertaking therefore of anything more than a theoretical presentation of the subject is attended by considerable difficulty. What precedents we have are of recent date, and of traditions there are none at all. Under such circumstances, two main sources of enlightenment have been resorted to, together with a supplementary third, with results now to be indicated.

I. The first of these is the Bulletin of Professional Education in the United States, issued by the University of the State of New York; College department, including Universities, Professional and Technical Schools, Subdivision Theology. The issue quoted from is Number Six, of date November, 1899. This publication furnishes much valuable information concerning the rise and progress of theological education in this country.

Down to the close of the eighteenth century the theological seminary as a separate institution did not exist. The nearest approach thereto was under the form of private enterprise. Dr. Bellamy of Connecticut conducted such a private school; with so much distinction that some

of his students followed his example and opened others like it. But the theological seminary proper did not appear in this country until near the very end of the century named. In England the closing of the universities against those outside of the established churches had occasioned the rise of institutions for ministerial training; but these were obliged to cover the double field of academic and theological instruction; the same method of training, together with the use of the name College, is continued, the term Seminary being, in our application of it, there unknown; the English theological school is "a substitute for the college, not a supplement," as here. Previous to the date named, the American churches, so far as they had done anything in this line, followed the example of their nonconformist brethren in the mother country by providing theological courses in the college. Indeed, the chief object had in view in founding our earliest colleges was to furnish an educated ministry. The college faculty included a professor of Hebrew and a professor of theology; whose work was supplemented by the study of theological books, either in private or under the oversight of some experienced minister. It was only among the new departures of the nineteenth century that the establishment of theological schools as separate foundations began to be undertaken. The existing colleges had by that time so far departed from the special purpose of their creation, and there were so many religious bodies which had no college of their own, that the feeling of necessity for the definite and systematic training of the theological school appears to have become universal.

The three pioneer institutions were established just before the advent of 1800: (1) that of the Reformed Dutch Church, in 1784, its work being first done in New York City, then at Flatbush, Long Island, and of later years at New Brunswick, New Jersey; (2) St. Mary's Roman Cath