INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

ON THE

STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES,

AS

A PART OF LIBERAL EDUCATION.

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES are, and of right ought to be considered, the only safe and proper basis of a Christian education-an education in the popular, as well as the true sense, liberal. It is not at all the design of this Essay to depreciate the importance of a critical, thorough, and long-continued study of the Greek and Roman classics, or of the scientific or metaphysical parts of a university education. I have elsewhere observed, and still entertain a profound conviction of the justness of the position, in whatever manner it may be expressed, that the great principles of solid education founded in true philosophy, and corroborated by all experience, ought to be retained. A disposition to disregard the old landmarks, and to set aside the results of the experience of the well-judging and powerful minds that have gone before us in the work of education, is indicative of empiricism, rather than of sound wisdom and discretion. It should not, however, be concealed from us, that we are in some

slight danger of perpetuating errors which have been gradually superinduced upon the system of liberal education at first introduced into this country. In some of our oldest literary institutions, the Bible had, at the first, a commanding place as a sacred classic; and the Hebrew language, nearly the position which ought to be allowed to it, in every college and university.

The modifications which our courses of collegiate study have gradually undergone, manifest but too clearly that men of secular views and irreligious spirit have been "wiser in their generation than the children of light." In the exercise of their influence, it has been but natural that they should push the Bible by degrees from the high place assigned to it by our Christian fathers. Various circumstances have concurred to further this effort, and to produce results which are certainly worthy of attention in a country still so new as ours-a country in which the great work of education is to employ so many of our most highly gifted and richly cultivated minds. These causes it is scarcely necessary to notice here in detail. One, however, which will not for a long period, at least, cease to operate, it may be important to notice in a passing remark, viz. the influence of those students who enter our colleges and universities without a spiritual sense of religion-not to speak of those who entertain a species of unfledged scepticism, referable partly to the unbelief of the natural heart, and partly to the influence of vicious companionship in many of our preparatory schools and academies. This cause,

presenting, as it obviously does, a practical difficulty in sustaining a course of sacred exegesis in our colleges, has no doubt operated powerfully in producing that gradual modification of the course of liberal study, which assigned to the Holy Scriptures so high a place in our earlier institutions.

There are, moreover, several popular objections to the introduction of the Scriptures as a college text-book, which deserve consideration.

It is urged that our youth are not sent to college to be taught theology—that in the present state of education in this country, the course of sacred exegesis, with whatever else is understood to belong to divinity, is assigned to our theological seminaries, and is to be considered as appropriate only to those students who have the Christian ministry in view.

Who has not often listened to the changes rung upon this feeble objection, and who does not see its absurdity?—A youth is designed by his parent for the legal profession-he therefore needs no acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures! which embody the elementary principles of all legal science. An accomplished lawyer should be profoundly acquainted with human nature and with the history of the human mind-but he surely needs no particular acquaintance with the Bible, the only perfect treatise upon human nature, and the only authentic history of the earlier developments of the human mind! A lawyer should be familiar with every system of jurisprudence-but the study of the Hebrew commonwealth belongs appropriately to the

course of the theological seminaries,-the Mosaic institutes are embraced in the divinity course ;— hence the student who is designed for the bar or the forum may remain ignorant of these systems of government and law which were delivered under the sanctions of the almighty Lawgiver! A civilian or lawyer needs to be acquainted with the purest systems of morality,-but while engaged in the fundamental part of his education, when if ever, his views ought to be settled upon a right basis, he may wholly neglect the divine ethics of the moral law, and the perfect commentary of Jesus Christ upon it! In a word, he needs to be a CHRISTIAN,but he may spend the whole period of his undergraduate course, while his character is forming, and his education is ripening both for time and eternity, in fortifying his prejudices against the truth as it is in Jesus, forming his taste upon the model of the heathen classics alone-worshipping in the Parthenon or the Pantheon, listening to the oracle of Delphi or Dodona, while he is allowed to neglect, if not contemn, the Holy Oracles of God, and profane the worship of Jehovah. The undergraduate course is not indeed a course of theology, strictly speaking; but, as constituting the basis of a professional education, whether for the law, or medicine, or divinity, it must be considered as entirely defective if it does not embrace faithful and able instruction in the Holy Scriptures; in other words, if the Bible, as a sacred classic, does not occupy a prominent place from the beginning to the end of it.