By Rev J. P. MacQueen
While the Church of Christ is deeply indebted, under God, to sanctified scholarship in the training of divinity students, already regenerated and called by the Holy Ghost into the sacred office of the Gospel ministry, there is widespread evidence to-day that the emphasis on the intellectual equipment and academic attainments of candidates for the ministry is entirely misplaced. It is a case of putting the cart before the horse. Our own church takes up the right and proper attitude in this connection, in agreement with the well-known views of the late renowned Rev Dr Kennedy, Dingwall, when he said: “While I yield to none in my insistence upon the high standard of literary attainments hitherto required by the church in Scotland, of candidates for the sacred office of the ministry, there is one qualification for the Christian ministry without which all other attainments are worse than useless, namely, supernatural regeneration.”
In a book just republished by the “Banner of Truth Trust,” and entitled: “An All Round Ministry,” by Rev Charles Haddon Spurgeon, price 10/6, postage 1/- extra, Mr Iain Murray, B.A., has an Introduction in which he quotes extensively from Mr Spurgeon, and the present writer, in turn, desires to reproduce
some of these quotations in this article. The book consists of addresses to ministers and students, 12 of them, which Mr Spurgeon delivered over a period of 27 years, at an annual conference of ministers and we now highly commend the serious and prayerful perusal of these addresses, especially to ministers and students, though not necessarily agreeing with every statement in the excellent book. Regarding the eternal duration of the Bible, “the Word of God settled fast in Heaven,” and so infallible, immutable and eternal, Mr Spurgeon made the following significant prediction on Page 360 of this book: “I believe that, if we walk uprightly and decidedly before God at this time, we shall make the future of England (and the same applies to Scotland), bright with the Gospel; but trimming now, and debasing doctrine now, will affect children yet unborn, generation after generation. Posterity must be considered. I do not look so much at what is to happen to-day, for these things relate to Eternity. For my own part, I am quite willing to be eaten of dogs (the Higher Critics) for the next 50 years or so, but the more distant future shall vindicate me. I have dealt honestly before the living God. My brother, do the same. Who knows but what thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
The present and rising generation cannot be too emphatically warned against the widespread, popular, and idolatrous adulation of mere unsanctified genius and intellectualism, which is having disastrous effects on communities, the nation, and generation, while sanctified genius and intellectualism are a blessing to contemporaries and posterity. There are found of the former unsanctified class, university professors and lecturers, and men and women distinguished for their literary attainments, who will give evidence in our law courts in favour of novels and other books, saturated with the laudation of sexual perversion, touching the revolting nadir of moral degradation, because the authors of these disgraceful books express themselves in a charming, fascinating and distinguished literary style. Unconverted ministers join in this laudation, to the extent of advocating that girls of 10 years of age could safely read them, whereas the defiling and polluting moral effect on the imagination of teenagers, by the perusal of these books, has, too often, a debasing, disastrous influence on their moral character for the rest of their days, and for Eternity. Perverted genius and intellectualism, whether in the literary and philosophical world of letters, or in university, college, or pulpit, cannot, therefore, be too emphatically and frequently exposed and condemned. Unconverted intellectualist ministers are often
leaders in this indiscriminating idolizing of genius, with its unspeakably sad consequences, but true and faithful ministers should be equally emphatic in their condemnation of such false and degraded conceptions of moral right and wrong. This is, generally speaking, the fruit of the lack of true Gospel preaching in our pulpits.
Since Mr Spurgeon’s day, there has not been a theological college in England which has upheld the views which he advanced on theological training. He was grieved with a sense of the need of more preachers of strong Calvinistic evangelical views. He also realised that theological colleges had always played a vital part in the provision of such men. “Honorat,” he says, “in the opening years of the fifth century, retired to the little island near Cannes which still bears his name, and attracted around him a number of students, the best known to us of them being the Scottish Patrick, the evangelizer of Ireland. Thus did Honorat and Columba, in the olden days, train the armies of the Lord for their mission. Schools of the prophets are a prime necessity if the power of true religion is to be kept alive and propagated in the land. We talk of Luther and Calvin in the days of the Reformation, but we must remember that these men became what they were largely through their power to stamp their image and superscriptions upon other men with whom they came in contact. If you went to Würtemberg, it was not Luther only that you saw, but Luther’s college, the men around him—the students all being formed into young Luthers under his direction. It was the same at Geneva. How much Scotland owes to the fact that Calvin could instruct John Knox! How much other nations derived from the little Republic of Switzerland on account of Calvin’s having the clear common-sense to perceive that one man could not hope to affect a whole nation except by multiplying himself, and spreading his views by writing them upon the fleshy tablets of the hearts of young and earnest men! The churches seem to have forgotten this. It is nothing but sanctified common-sense that leads the church to the formation of a college. The church ought to make the theological college the first object of its care.”
First, with regard to the entrance of students into theological colleges, Mr Spurgeon was convinced that no young man should be accepted for training for the ministry unless he was naturally fitted to preach, and, as far as the human eye can judge, divinely called to the office. No amount of mental ability or scholastic achievement could make up for the absence of this. “A low state of piety, a want of holy enthusiasm, a failure in private devotion,
and a lack of consecration,” were “things not to be tolerated in would-be servants of Christ.” “Our Pastors’ College,” he continued, “aims to keep out of the sacred office those who are not called to it. We are continually declining candidates because we question their spiritual fitness. Some of these have education and money, and are supported by earnest requests from parents and friends, but all this avails them nothing.”
He further contended that the place of prime importance should be given to Biblical Theology. “We have become daily more and more impressed with the conviction that theology should be the principal subject for instruction in a theological college. We endeavour to teach the Scriptures, but, as everybody else claims to do the same, and we wish to be known and read of all men, we say distinctly that the theology of the Pastors’ College is Puritanical. We are old-fashioned enough to prefer Manton to Maurice, Charnoch to Robertson, and Owen to Voysey. Both our experience and our reading of the Scriptures confirm us in the belief of the unfashionable doctrines of grace, and among us, upon those fundamentals, there is no uncertain sound.” “It seems to me,” Mr Spurgeon continues, “that preachers of the grand old truth of the ever-new Gospel, ministers suited for the masses, were more likely to be found in an institution where preaching and divinity would be the main objects, and not degrees and other insignia of mere human learning.”
“To be effective preachers,” he says, “you must be sound theologians. The buildings in which you will preach were erected as monuments to the power of the doctrines of free and sovereign grace. Mind, you students, you preach these doctrines in them. The doctrines some now preach could not build a mouse-trap.”
The Principal of the Pastors’ College spoke for Mr Spurgeon when he declared: “Calvinistic theology is dogmatically taught. We mean not dogmatic in the offensive sense of that term, but as the undoubted teaching of the Word of God. We have no sympathy with any modern concealment or perversion of great Gospel truths. We prefer Puritan to modern divinity. We think it right to be informed of the ground and tactics of the adversaries of these main truths, in order to defend them when it is absolutely required, but not to be diverted from.”
Mr Spurgeon was as insistent on fervency in preaching the Gospel as he was on dogmatic assertiveness, when one had Scriptural warrant for one’s deep convictions and principles. “Tutors,” he insisted, “should be what they wish their students to be; and what manner of men ministers should be? They should
thunder in preaching, and lighten in conversation; they should be flaming in prayer, shining in life, and burning in spirit. If they be not so, what can they effect? If they be not spiritual Samsons how can the roaring lion be overcome? How can the gates of Hell be lifted up from their hinges?”
“Provided that we savingly know the truth, and are confirmed in it by divine grace, it is yet no trifling work to pass on the heavenly treasure to those who are to become its guardians in the future. David had the ark of God in the land, but the Lord was not pleased with the manner of his moving it to its resting-place, and, therefore, he made a breach upon him. The like may happen to us in handing over the truth of God to others; it is a delicate and difficult service. A man must first know the truth in his own soul before he can effectually transmit it to those who sit at his feet. Knowing it, he must live in the daily enjoyment of it. Only as the Holy Spirit overshadows a man’s mind can he influence other minds in a right manner. The spirit of the Gospel must be in him as well as its doctrine.”
Mr Spurgeon spoke of “the curse of idolatry of intellect” in his day, and of “the desire for academic prestige and the fear of losing intellectual respectability.” Not that “learning is a hindrance to preaching, far from it; learning is essential to preaching, but not the kind of learning required by university degrees. There is a learning that is essential to a successful ministry, namely the learning of the whole Bible, to know God, by prayer, and experience of His dealings.”
Mr Spurgeon, though very much alone in that view in his day, held strongly the conviction, and was ready to declare it in no uncertain terms: “Our men seek no collegiate degrees, or classical honours,—though many of them could readily attain them, but to preach efficiently, to get at the heart of the masses, to evangelise the poor. The design of the Pastors’ College has, from the beginning, been to help preachers, and not to produce scholars. Let the world educate men for its own purposes, and let the church instruct men for its special service. We aim at helping men to set forth the truth of God, expound the Scriptures, win sinners, and edify saints.”
He asked if those who put the intellectual and academic equipment of students and ministers above everything else have been better preachers, more earnest, more eloquent? Have they taken more commanding positions, and been more effective in their ministrations? Have they more clearly and consistently interpreted and enforced the truths of God’s Word? We unhesitatingly
answer, No! This effect, we grant, is not to be attributed to literature itself, but to the undue influence assigned it as a needful, indispensable, and primary element in the Christian teacher. Such a state of things might well lead us to pause, and to begin to think of retracing our steps, or at least to adopt some new method of collegiate training, better adapted to the real wants of the age.” Mr Spurgeon also emphatically declared his judgment and conviction that there was no divine exhortation more neglected by Christians generally than: “Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the Harvest, that He would send forth labourers into His Harvest.”
Whether or not we agree with Mr Spurgeon in every detail of the foregoing quotations, their perusal, and prayerful consideration of them, would lead us to think of the spiritual needs of our own sad day. We, as a Church, the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, have privileges unsurpassed, and even unrivalled, in our day and generation, and our responsibilities are proportionately great. We should not turn our back on these precious Scriptural privileges for anything that this world has to offer, whether in the form of a life-partner, or any other worldly, if lawful, advantage whatsoever. The true intelligent God-fearing Free Presbyterian is one who prays earnestly for the coming of the glorious day when God will arise to build again Zion, while equally concerned about not compromising one iota of our God-honouring Scriptural testimony, for any external denominational ecclesiastical union with any church, which is not similar to our own in consistent practice, as well as doctrine. Otherwise, to compromise is to be guilty of gross ingratitude to the honoured memory of the fathers of our church, and of a great sin against God. There must first be a sincere penitent return to the truth by the churches.