3./C./, 
 
 ^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^ 
 
 Presented bv *2)Vk2/ CAua-VVaot'. 
 
 BR 162 .L63 1915 
 Loetscher, Frederick 
 
 William, b. 1874. 
 Church history as a science 
 
CHURCH HISTORY 
 
 AS A SCIENCE AND AS A 
 THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 BY THZy/ 
 
 Rev. Frederick William Loetscher, Ph.D., D.D. 
 
 ON THE 
 
 OCCASION OF HIS INDUCTION INTO 
 
 THE 
 
 ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER PROFESSORSHIP 
 
 OF 
 
 CHURCH HISTORY 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 OCTOBER 13th, 1914 
 
 reprinted from 
 
 The Princeton Theological Review 
 
 January 1915 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE AND AS A 
 THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors: 
 
 It is with mingled feelings that I rise to address you 
 on this occasion. So strong, indeed, are some of the emo- 
 tions which the solemn business of this hour reawakens 
 within me, that it would be a sheer affectation on my part 
 not to allude to them. 
 
 At your earnest solicitation I have exchanged the chair 
 of Homiletics for that of Church History. In this con- 
 nection I can only say — but thus much I must say — that as 
 I was unable to make, so I have remained unable to review 
 this decision, without many a secret pahg alike of regret 
 and of anxious solicitude. I should be untrue to myself, 
 as I certainly should appear wanting in my obligations 
 to your honorable body, if I should fail to take this oppor- 
 tunity of giving you the renewed assurance of my sincere 
 and grateful appreciation of the privilege of working for 
 three years in the Practical Department of the Seminary, — 
 a service which many cherished testimonies have embold- 
 ened me to believe has probably been as useful as any 
 of equal length that I may ever render, and which memory 
 persuades me has been as happy as any that I have ever 
 been permitted to undertake. 
 
 But on the other hand, as I face the new duties to which 
 you have called me and to-day formally introduced me, 
 I find much comfort and inspiration in the conviction that 
 in your action I have heard the voice of the Lord, 
 too clear to be misunderstood and too imperative to 
 be disobeyed. And other satisfactions have abounded. 
 The work itself, as I have renewed my acquaint- 
 
2 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 ance with it these past months, has more and more re- 
 sumed those charming features and that benign expression 
 which years ago, as an Instructor in this department, I 
 had learned to recognize as belonging peculiarly to the 
 muse of sacred history. Nor can I conceal my joy in the 
 reflection that you have asked me to succeed one for whom 
 as teacher my reverence, as superior colleague my esteem, 
 and as companion and friend my affectionate regard have 
 been equalled only by my admiration for the exceptional 
 abilities, the signal devotion, and the distinguished success 
 with which for twenty years he has adorned the chair of 
 Church History in this Seminary, the Reverend John 
 DeWitt, D.D, LL.D. 
 
 But deeply and gratefully sensible as I am of the high 
 honor your call has conferred upon me, I am at the same 
 time conscious, most of all, of my inadequacy to the task 
 I have assumed and of my unworthiness to follow in the 
 steps of my illustrious predecessors during the century of 
 the Seminary's history. I can only give you my pledge 
 that, as divine grace may enable me, I shall be faithful 
 to the sacred trust committed to my care. 
 
 In choosing the theme of the present address, I was 
 led to think that I might perhaps best meet the proprieties 
 of the occasion, if I should strive to realize that double 
 purpose which the late Dr. Shedd declared is the true aim 
 of an inaugural discourse: "to justify the existence of a 
 specific professorship, and to magnify the specific discipline 
 which it imparts".^ I venture, then, to announce as my 
 subject : "Church History as a Science and as a Theo- 
 logical Discipline." 
 
 I. Church History as a Science 
 
 When we try to analyze and define the idea of Church 
 History, the most obvious fact confronting us is that our 
 science is a binomial; it has to do with the Church, and 
 
 * Shedd, The Nature, and Influence, of the Historic Spirit (Theo- 
 logical Essays, 1877, p. 53). 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 3 
 
 it has to do with history. The importance of this con- 
 sideration appears the moment we undertake, in the way 
 of a scientific methodology, to determine the relation of 
 these two elements to one another in the organism of that 
 body of knowledge to which they conjointly give the 
 distinctive designation. The difficulty involved in this 
 attempt is, of course, only increased by the fact that both 
 terms belong to the most comprehensive words of human 
 speech. There can be no doubt that the unphilosophic 
 treatment to which our science has so often been subjected 
 has been due chiefly to the unjust, because one-sided, 
 emphasis given now to the one and now to the other of 
 the two objective principles represented in the compound 
 name "Church History". Taking this tendency in its ex- 
 treme forms, there are those who who have unduly de- 
 pressed, not to say ignored, the idea of history, either by 
 reducing the noun to an adjective, or, worse still, by sub- 
 stituting a quite heterogeneous concept. To such our 
 science becomes merely "Historical Theology" or "Ecclesias- 
 tical Theology." Doubtless, in the light of sound principles 
 of theological encyclopedia, these characterizations, nar- 
 rowly looked at, are not as faulty as at first sight they 
 may appear. For the term "theology," as distinguished 
 from "dogmatics," is quite broad enough to embrace every- 
 thing that may legitimately be taught in a theological 
 seminary, from that department that seeks to make the 
 latest Assyriological researches throw a new radiance upon 
 the page of sacred Scripture, to that which gives the student 
 the best counsels as to how to order his remarks at a 
 funeral, or hold a baby at a baptismal font. The fact 
 remains, however, that the words "church" and "ecclesias- 
 tical" are not quite synonymous, but come from different 
 roots and have different associations; and further that 
 "history" is something other than, if not greater than, 
 "theology". At least equally mischievous, on the other 
 hand, is the slighting of the idea of the "Church", and 
 the consequent identification of our discipline with general 
 
4 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 or universal history. The two sciences, to be sure, are 
 sisters; indeed, they are twin-sisters. But much as they 
 resemble each other in their physical features and their 
 physiological functions, they are quite unlike in what we 
 may call the development of their moral or spiritual 
 character. If they were precisely the same in all respects, 
 we should, to go no further just now, have no adequate 
 explanation of the well known fact that from time im- 
 memorial history has belonged, not to one, but to two 
 faculties of instruction, to two circles of science, the 
 theological and the philosophical. The reason for this, 
 we may be sure, can be found only in some necessity lying 
 close to the very heart of the organism of the sciences. 
 Things of this sort do not come at haphazard. Nor is it 
 strange, therefore, that in days like these, when systematic 
 theology herself, once the proud queen of the sciences, 
 has lost not only her throne, but, as at least some would 
 have us believe, even her right to a seat among the sciences, 
 many should be saying that the university and the college 
 can and should teach the history of the Church. This is 
 inevitable, for if one member of the corpus theologiae 
 sacrae suffers, all the rest must suffer with it. But neither 
 the pain nor the mutilation due to the radical surgery proves 
 that the operation was either skilful or even necessary. 
 It may be a case of vivisection, as useless as it is pitiable, 
 the wanton dismemberment and destruction of a living 
 organism. We must, therefore, give due attention to the 
 Church also, if we would do justice to that complex idea 
 of which it is a part, the idea of Church History. For 
 if the Church be only a common, an ordinary, a natural 
 historical phenomenon, there is no reason why the study 
 of its history should not be confined to the appropriate 
 department of the college or university curriculum. But if 
 the Church has a supernatural life inseparable from that 
 organism of miraculous, redemptive energies and their 
 authoritative interpretations which is given us in holy 
 Scripture, then the history of the Church, whatever its 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 5 
 
 connections with general history may prove to be, not 
 only may, but by a principial necessity must belong to that 
 circle of the sciences, namely the theological, whose task 
 it is to apprehend and reflect the knowledge imbedded in 
 this special self-revelation of God. 
 
 So then, we have to inquire, in turn : What is the idea 
 of history? What is the idea of the Church? And what, 
 by consequence, is the idea of Church History? 
 
 Our word history comes to us through the Latin from 
 the Greek laropia • The primary meaning of this noun, 
 corresponding to that of the verb [a-TopeXv , was learning 
 by investigation, a usage that still reflected the derivation 
 of the term from dSevai to know. A secondary sense 
 naturally arose — the knozvledge thus acquired. Later still 
 the word came to denote a narrative, a setting forth in 
 writing of the results of an investigation. In all three of 
 these senses, therefore, the stress was laid upon the sub- 
 jective process involved in the ascertainment, the knowl- 
 edge, and the exhibition or recital of iacts. But in our 
 language, history, like its equivalent in other modern 
 tongues, has not only a subjective but also an objective 
 sense; it denotes not only a narrative of events but also the 
 events themselves. In German, indeed, the word Geschichte 
 has primarily had the latter signification; it means first 
 of all das Geschehene, that which has happened. Moreover, 
 just in proportion to the development of history as a science 
 we invariably find that the objective meaning becomes the 
 more important. The reason is not far to seek, ^or the 
 very right of a science to exist as a separate branch of 
 knowledge depends not upon the method of investigation 
 or its mode of presenting results, but upon its subject- 
 matter. It must, of course, be conceded that historiography 
 as an art has owed much to those French and English 
 writers who have insisted upon treating history as a species 
 of belles lettres. Certainly we are all familiar with his- 
 torical works that would be more valuable as well as more 
 delightful, if they had greater artistic merits. But could 
 
6 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 we not say the same even of many volumes dealing with 
 the exact sciences? Do we not prize these in spite of 
 their jejune formulas, their crude wood-cuts and their 
 poor bindings? The fact is that in every science knowl- 
 edge is the decisive consideration ; and if history is to make 
 . good its claim as a science, we dare not confound its ob- 
 jective data with any one's description of them. The picture 
 - the historical narrative gives is but the reproduction by 
 the author of an image produced in his mind by the his- 
 torical realities themselves. 
 
 What, then, is the subject-matter of history considered 
 as a science? The answer to that question has varied not 
 a little. In accordance with the unlimited scope of the 
 original sense of the word, history at first included all 
 fields of investigation. It undertook to explore the whole 
 domain of human knowledge, to embrace the total wisdom 
 of mankind. From this point of view whatever was was 
 history. History was the ocean which drew to its broad 
 bosom not only the fountains of all our thinking, but also 
 the springs of all our life. In history, thus understood, all 
 the sciences without exception so commingle that their 
 onward progress is but one element in the vast process 
 of the world's development, that being a science to-day 
 which to-morrow will be history. 
 
 In the course of time, however, the necessities of the 
 case led to divisions and subdivisions of this domain of 
 science. Divide et impera has been the secret of man's 
 conquest of the field of knowledge. The first and most 
 radical distinction was that made between nature and man 
 as objects of investigation. It was found that jointly 
 they represented the phenomenal world in its two chief 
 aspects, but that, though they are not absolutely separable, 
 they nevertheless must be kept apart by the mind that tries 
 to reflect in its consciousness the inherent distinctions ob- 
 servable in the objective data of knowledge. The sphere 
 of nature was seen dominated by a universal law of 
 necessity. The planet kept to its appointed orbit. The 
 
 I 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 7 
 
 tree was seen budding, blossoming and bearing its fruit 
 year after year by a process that was as uniform as it was 
 involuntary. Even in the brute creation, where life becomes 
 conscious and reveals a measure of intelligence, the bee 
 and the beaver were seen performing their humble tasks 
 in precisely the same fashion as they did hundreds of years 
 ago. It is, therefore, only by courtesy that the word history 
 is now applied to anything pertaining to the sphere of 
 nature as such, that is to the domain governed by the law 
 of necessary or involuntary action. 
 
 Now besides nature and man there is only one other 
 object of our possible knowledge, and that is God. Strictly 
 speaking the term history can have no reference to him. 
 For he is lifted above all considerations of time and place. 
 He is without succession or change. He remains eternally 
 the same. Indeed, he can become the object of knowledge, 
 whether scientific or experiential, only as he reveals him- 
 self. On a priori grounds we might infer that this divine 
 self-disclosure, if made for man's benefit, would come to 
 him, as the alleged record of it in the Bible claims it did, 
 through nature and through human personalities. As such 
 it has, to be sure, its own history, a history that becomes, 
 the primary source of theology. 
 
 These last considerations, however, only give point to 
 the statement that ordinarily we confine our use of the 
 word history to human events. It has its home in what 
 the Anglo-Saxon called the "world", that is, "the age 
 of man". It deals, in the first instance and immediately, 
 only with our free, self-determined activities, though in a 
 subordinate manner it must constantly take account of our 
 material environment. In its broadest objective sense, 
 there'fore, history is the sum of all that man has thought 
 and wrought, all that he has dared and suffered and 
 achieved, everything that has befallen him and everything 
 that he has done, from the beginning of his generations 
 until now. It is the total life of the human race, each 
 individual member acting and being acted upon as a 
 rational, voluntary and moral cause of events. 
 
8 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 But as in all other sciences, so in history, the subject- 
 matter may be treated with more and ever more of 
 philosophic insight and thoroughness. Facts themselves, 
 indeed, are the mere dross of science; the ideas which 
 interpret them are the precious gold in the ore. It marked 
 an epoch in the development of our science, therefore, 
 when, toward the middle of the eighteenth century, just a 
 few years before Voltaire coined the phrase "the 
 philosophy of history", — a phrase to which his treatise of 
 that name did but scant justice because of its shallow 
 rationalism,' — Montesquieu emphasized the truth that the 
 most distinctive trait of every social phenomenon lies in 
 its capacity of continuous evolution or development, and 
 that it can be adequately known only by a study of its 
 consecutive states and of each state in comparison with 
 the co-existing general conditions of society. At about 
 the same time, moreover, Turgot, in a singularly profound 
 and forceful manner, made the idea of progress "the or- 
 ganic principle," as it has been called, of history. Since 
 then, the existence of such a principle in the career of 
 mankind has scarcely been questioned, though views have 
 differed as to its precise nature. The influence of Chris- 
 tianity, as will be seen later, has here been decisive. For 
 the present the statement may suffice that now the most 
 obvious fact in history, as in geography, is that the world 
 is round, that the race is not a mere aggregation of units 
 but an organic unity in which every part is reciprocally 
 means and end ; and that the only interpretation which 
 does justice to the phenomena of man-life as known to 
 history is that which presupposes the orderly, causally con- 
 nected or genetic development of the entire process. It 
 is the organic sequence in the relations of the events that 
 has converted the vastness of this chaos into the vastness 
 of a cosmos. The change wrought in our apprehension 
 of the data of history has been like unto that produced 
 in our knowledge of astronomy, when the planets began 
 to be seen in their organic connections as determined by 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 9 
 
 the always existing but only then discovered law of gravita- 
 tion, with the sun instead of the earth as the centre of the 
 system. Henceforth history, like the other worlds open 
 to human investigation, takes its place under the reign of 
 law. The events with which it deals present not only an 
 "orderly succession, but an organic evolution, a genetic devel- 
 opment in which is unfolded the social, political, industrial, 
 intellectual, moral and spiritual progress of mankind. 
 
 Such, then, are the presuppositions of history as a * 
 science. It has a definite and distinct body of facts for 
 its subject-matter — the life of humanity in the unity, con- 
 tinuit}' and multiformity of its genetic development; these 
 facts are capable of a rational interpretation and of a 
 systematic treatment that will give proper generalizations 
 of knowledge; these facts are what they are for scientific 
 purposes because of the organic relations in which they 
 stand to one another. 
 
 Such a definition of history as the science of the develop- 
 ment of humanity is sufficient for practical needs. Its 
 elasticity is its chief merit. Anything more formal would 
 be less useful. Only let it not be supposed that it is the 
 function of a definition to convey any knowledge of the 
 science itself. Rather is the reverse the case; to under- 
 stand the definition of a science is not a condition but a 
 consequence of the study of the science. All that the 
 definition can do is to specify the distinctive subject-matter 
 of the science. 
 
 This having been done in the case before us, we may 
 briefly show, in passing, how and why history is to be 
 differentiated from certain other sciences with which it is 
 often confounded. Nothing need here be said about 
 chronicles or annals. Their subject-matter is not historic 
 at all in the sense that it presents itself to the observer 
 in relations causally determined by man. This is only 
 another way of saying that this species of narrative is 
 not scientific. 
 
lO CHURCH HISTORY As A SCIENCE 
 
 Again, biography is not to be identified with history. 
 In loftiness o'f moral aim and in thoroughness of investi- 
 gation the two may have much in common. It may be 
 conceded, too, that there is an oft-neglected truth in that 
 favorite dictum of Carlyle's that the history of mankind 
 is the history of its great men. But on the other hand, 
 it cannot be doubted that the course of history as a whole 
 has been determined much more by general causes, 
 tendencies and movements than by the words or deeds or 
 influences of individuals. In fact, history as the develop- 
 ment of human society, will always be something larger 
 than the sum total of all great lives or of all lives what- 
 soever taken as units ; just as a polygon, no matter how many 
 sides it may be given, is always smaller than its circum- 
 scribing circle. And not only so, but history as an organic 
 evolution cannot possibly be adequately displayed in the 
 most comprehensive biographical encyclopedia ever pub- 
 lished or even conceived. History deals with individuals 
 only as parts of the social organism. Biography deals with 
 the life of the race only as this exists in its distinct and 
 separate units. 
 
 The attempt has sometimes been made, notably by classi- 
 cal scholars, to identify philology and history, making it 
 the science of all that has been produced or accomplished 
 by the human spirit and preserved in writing for our in- 
 formation. But though this treatment of the facts may be 
 measurably justified so far as the limited and chiefly literary 
 or at least linguistic sources of our knowledge of the 
 ancient world are concerned, the scheme breaks down the 
 moment we apply it to the immensely vaster and quite 
 heterogeneous sources of mediaeval and especially of 
 modern history. Not only does the historian need other 
 aids besides the philological, but^ — and this again becomes de- 
 cisive — the subject-matter of his science is entirely different 
 from that of philology : the latter makes the study of lan- 
 guage an end in itself; the former makes it only one of 
 many means to an end — the knowledge of the developing 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE II 
 
 life of humanity in all its phases, including, of course, 
 that of language and literature. It need only be added 
 that this relation does not deny the mutual helpfulness of 
 both sciences. 
 
 The modern science of statistics is often presented as a 
 virtual substitute for history. But at best its tables are 
 only auxiliaries for the use of the historian. They are 
 necessarily static, never dynamic, and frequently too 
 atomistic, too fragmentary or too arbitrary to be of much 
 service. Certainly the most significant facts of history 
 will always have to be read into such mathematical 
 estimates and mechanical summaries. 
 
 Of a piece with the last error is the attempt to make 
 history fit the last of the natural sciences. But this does 
 violence to the nature of historical facts ; for in this realm, 
 as we have seen, causality is primarily psychical or personal, 
 and only in an incidental way, or at least to a subordinate 
 extent, is it physical or necessary. Historical realities are 
 quite too amorphic to be capable of an adequate treatment 
 by the methods of the exact or even the natural sciences. 
 History must needs acknowledge a heavy debt of gratitude 
 to these sciences, for it was from them that she has learned 
 caution and thoroughness in the use of the inductive 
 method in her own more difficult field. But when in their 
 pride of achievement they strive to reduce her to a species 
 of mechanics, or chemistry, or physiology, or biology, per- 
 chance even geography, it is high time to break the yoke of 
 this modern scholasticism. 
 
 Prof. Freeman defined history as "the science or knowl- 
 edge of man in his political character".^ But among our 
 more celebrated modern historians few could be found 
 who were less philosophical than he. Social or economic 
 conditions, art, religion, morals, the whole world of ideas 
 had little or no interest for him. His own work, so ad- 
 mirable in many respects, is nevertheless the best refuta- 
 tion of his narrow conception of history. Political events 
 
 ' TItc Methods of Historical Study. London, 1886, p. 118. 
 
12 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 have often enough, to be sure, been the most important 
 element in a historical development, but they are always 
 only one of many such factors. Politics, or the science of 
 the state, is only a branch of history. 
 
 Sociology as a science has scarcely as yet become con- 
 scious of herself. All attempted definitions show her to 
 be close of kin to history. Both deal with man in his 
 social relations. But while history traces the continuous 
 organic development of the life of man, sociology investi- 
 gates the general forms and functions of typical social 
 groups or communities, in order by a comparison of the 
 types to learn the conditions of their existence and in the 
 light of such knowledge to consider in turn the peculiai-ities 
 of each type. Obviously, history and sociology are mutual 
 auxiliaries, but their tasks are quite different. 
 
 Much the same is true of the relation of history to 
 anthropology, with the closely allied but often independ- 
 ently treated sciences of ethnography, ethnology and 
 demography. These all investigate and classify facts per- 
 taining to the life of the race, or portions of the race, 
 from the lowest stages of savagery to the highest levels 
 of civilization. Their contributions to history are many 
 and valuable; but history alone can use these resources, 
 as it uses all others, to exhibit the organic development 
 of the life of the race as a whole. 
 
 In this account of the process by which, with ever-in- 
 creasing precision, the subject-matter of history as a 
 science has been determined, we have had occasion to allude 
 to some of the more important steps in the corresponding 
 development of historiography as an art. This movement, 
 if only we could take time to trace it, would throw many 
 an interesting side-light upon the former. For while the 
 two lines have often run parallel to one another for con- 
 siderable intervals, they have time and again interacted. 
 
 Broadly speaking, the writing of history has passed 
 through three stages. 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 1 3 
 
 111 the infancy of the science, as best exempHfied to this 
 day by Herodotus, "the father of history", it was con- 
 sidered sufiticient to give a simple, straightforward, graphic 
 account of things that happened. The good story-teller 
 was the good historian. He must know, above all, how 
 to gratify the national or racial pride, the religious or 
 patriotic aspirations, or perchance even the mere curiosity 
 of his readers. His spirit and aim is much like that of the 
 epic poet. There are those, indeed, who would deny such 
 works a place in the historical section of a modern library. 
 The fact remains, however, that such narratives are truly 
 historical in the sense that they treat of the real matter of 
 history, though from the point of view of the more 
 philosophic handling of the science they rank but little 
 above annals or chronicles, there being no sufficient ground- 
 ing of the events in human causality. 
 
 It w^as Thucydides among the ancient Greeks, and 
 Cornelius Nepos and Tacitus among the ancient Romans, 
 who have left us the chief classic illustrations of the second 
 kind of historical composition, the practically edifying, or, 
 as Polybius called it, "the pragmatic history". Here the 
 attempt is made in more or less thoroughgoing fashion, 
 to find the reason of events, whether in the motives of the 
 actors engaged, or in the influences of quite complex social, 
 generally political, phenomena. At their best, such works, 
 responding to a deep-seated human desire and need, have 
 a permanent value as instruments of instruction for the 
 general reader and as guides for men charged with the 
 direction of affairs. Too often, however, the historical 
 pragmatist makes an undue, not to say a culpably unworthy 
 use of his freedom in attributing motives to those of whom 
 he writes, interprets great issues in the subdued light of 
 backstairs diplomacy, and neglects — as was notably the 
 case with many medieval writers of this school — the 
 general interests of culture and civilization, as well as 
 the influence of the material environment. 
 
 The highest stage in historiography has been attained 
 
14 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 only in modern times. Only in the eighteenth century 
 did men begin to see history, as a body of organically con- 
 nected facts in the life of the race, sweep majestically, like 
 some new-found planet, into their field of vision. And 
 though no science can point for its humble beginnings to 
 a remoter antiquity than can history, its relatively late 
 maturity ought not to occasion any surprise. For on the 
 one hand, history belongs to the mixed sciences, which 
 deal primarily with spiritual aspects of the universe, but 
 must constantly investigate these in their relation to their 
 material surroundings. It thus partakes of the difficulties 
 that beset alike the psychical and the physical sciences. 
 Accordingly, its progress has in large measure been directly 
 dependent upon the cultivation not only of those allied 
 disciplines, with which, as we have seen, it has sometimes 
 been confounded, but also of those that are technically 
 called its auxiliary sciences; palaeography, diplomatics, 
 sphragistics, numismatics, genealogy, and above all — 
 those two "eyes of history" — chronology and geography. 
 As Dr. Shedd, in the discourse from which I quoted at 
 the outset, has well said : "And if we consider the mental 
 qualifications required for its production, the department 
 whose nature and claims we are considering, still upholds 
 its superiority, in regard to universality and comprehensive- 
 ness. The historic talent is inclusive of all other talents. 
 The depth of the philosopher, the truthfulness and 
 solemnity of the theologian, the dramatic and imaginative 
 power of the poet, are all necessary to the perfect historian, 
 and would be found in him, at their height of excellence, 
 did such a being exist. For it has been truly said, that 
 we shall sooner see a perfect philosophy, or a perfect poem, 
 than a perfect history." But on the other hand, the 
 ultimate reason for the late ripening of historic science 
 is to be found, not on its subjective, but on its objective 
 side — in the nature of its facts or data. For, assuming 
 that the historic development of man is an organic process, 
 a considerable period of time must elapse before a sufficient 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 1 5 
 
 number of typical, or at least significant features can 
 be evolved. For instance, there is the idea of unity as an 
 essential characteristic of every living organism. But how 
 could a medieval writer, on historic grounds, posit the 
 unity of the race, when half of the planet, with more than 
 half of the world's population, was to him term incognita f 
 Or where could he, within the narrow limits of his 
 monastery or bishopric, find a suitable yardstick to measure 
 the progress of a civilization which he could understand, 
 if at all, only in the light of a context that embraced many 
 centuries and diverse nations? But no organic evolution 
 is intelligible, if the marks of its progress are not dis- 
 cerned. But above all, such progress itself depends chiefly 
 upon the free and full development of the individual mem- 
 bers of the organism. And where in those feudal days 
 did the masses of the people ever enter into their divine 
 birthright of freedom? History herself teaches us that 
 it is only in the latest, the most fully developed, the most 
 complex civilizations that the common man has attained 
 his highest individuality and the liberty requisite to func- 
 tion at the maximum of his social efficiency. In fine, 
 world-history could not be satisfactorily apprehended as an 
 organism, until its organic nature had sufficient time to 
 disclose itself. 
 
 Long before that modern day dawned, however, the idea 
 of the organic development of humanity had received a 
 classic and forever sacred expression, first in the life and 
 then in the literature, of a peculiar people, a race that was 
 historically constituted in the form of a special divine 
 economy. From the very beginning of the Christian era, 
 therefore, when that holy Scripture was given a universal 
 mode, this idea began to exert its characteristic influence 
 upon the thought and the life of the world, though it has 
 had to wait till our own day for its approximately ecu- 
 menical realization. That is why even that medieval his- 
 torian who was necessarily limited in the understanding 
 of many of his facts, could nevertheless, by his customary 
 
l6 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 grouping of all events after Christ under the one rubric 
 of "the last age", give the humble story of his monastery 
 the splendor of a certain ideal unity that we seek in vain 
 in the most finished productions of pagan antiquity. That 
 is why St. Augustine, in his De Civitate Dei, our 
 first Christian philosophy of history, could write a prophetic 
 sketch of the progress of the race, at the very time that 
 he saw the pillars of the ancient world crashing to their 
 destruction. That is why all through the middle ages 
 there were some quiet evangelical mystics who could shatter 
 the yoke of hierarchical tyranny and enter into the freedom 
 of full-statured manhood. In a word, if an organism is 
 a unitary structure that secures its own vital growth through 
 the ever-developing perfection of its members, then we must 
 conclude, history herself being the witness, that it is to 
 Christianity, more than to all other influences combined, 
 that the human race owes alike the highest realization of 
 itself as an organism and the most adequate knowledge 
 of itself as such. 
 
 This fact obviously calls for further consideration. It 
 must be assessed at its real value. We now turn, therefore, 
 to our second preliminary inquiry: What is the idea of 
 the Church ? 
 
 Like many another word that once came forth clean-cut 
 and shining from some famous royal mint, the term 
 Church has long since, through the attritions of use, become 
 so badly worn down, that few who handle that coin to-day 
 have any clear idea as to what sovereign's image was 
 originally stamped upon it, or how its superscription read, 
 or what value it professed to have. But the knowledge of 
 these details has by no means been altogether lost. It needs 
 only to be more generally distributed for the common 
 good. The most obvious thing, at any rate, that may be 
 said about the Church is that it is a fact given in a definite 
 historical context. It is a phenomenon found only on 
 Jewish and Christian soil. And if the most skilful expert 
 in numismatics cannot tell us all we should like to know 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 1 7 
 
 about the process of coining this word, the humblest 
 philologist can tell us its original value. Etymology here, 
 too, is our sufficient guide. 
 
 Our word Church, hke its equivalent in all modern 
 Teutonic languages, and likewise in most of the dialects 
 of those Slavic nations that were converted by Greek mis- 
 sionaries, comes, not from any Germanic source, but 
 directly from the biblical Greek, KupiaKOb , "pertaining to 
 the Lord", that is the Lord recognized as such by the 
 Christians. Originally, no doubt, it was the feminine form 
 of the adjective that was used, the noun to be supplied 
 being oUia ; so that the Church in the first instance was 
 the house of the Lord. Gradually, however, the name 
 was transferred to those who met in this house for worship. 
 The Church became the congregation. In modern Romance 
 languages, however, as also in our own, we find another 
 set of derivatives from another Greek original, e/f«Xr^ia. 
 This is a word which the New Testament greatly ennobled, 
 so that instead of denoting merely the gathering of an 
 assembly, or its place of meeting, it came to mean a com- 
 pany of Christians, that is, persons who believed themselves 
 called by God out of the world of sin unto eternal life 
 through Jesus Christ. Doubtless, our own "ecclesiastic" 
 and "ecclesiasticism," and the like, have been degraded 
 from this lofty plane far below any level of poverty and 
 shame to which even our word "Church" has sometimes been 
 reduced. But taking them in their original strength and 
 beauty, the two expressions emphasize the double truth that 
 is fundamental in this whole discussion: "Church" points 
 to a Kvpio'i, the Lord, the head of the body; and "ecclesias- 
 tic" points to an iKKXrjaia , the members of the body. It is 
 perhaps not altogether without significance, in the light 
 of the religious dilTerences between northern and southern 
 Europe since the Reformation, that the Teutonic nations 
 adopted for their vernacular the word that magnifies the 
 invisible divine head of the Church, while the Rornance 
 nations gave the preference to that which directs attention 
 
15 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 to the visible human members. But that is by the way. 
 The cardinal fact is that from its earliest history the 
 Church appears as an organism, a body with a head and 
 members, sharing, according to their belief, a common life. 
 
 It will have been noticed that in what has just been said,- 
 we have had occasion more than once to refer to the faith 
 of the Christian considered as a Church member. Such 
 references have been unavoidable, and the fact of their 
 necessity is too significant to be overlooked. For in the 
 last analysis the Church, as an historical phenomenon, in- 
 deed even when viewed as a mere institute exerting a 
 peculiar influence upon the world, must be allowed to 
 possess some sort of transcendent life; in a word, it must 
 somehow be causally related to that special revelation 
 which is the very principle of all theological science. In 
 its inmost essence the idea of the Church is a theological 
 idea. 
 
 This by no means denies to philosophy the right she 
 claims of using her own organon for the investigation 
 and interpretation of the facts in regard to the rise and 
 development of the Christian Church. It may freely be 
 granted that many a philosophy of history has been com- 
 posed upon un-Christian and even anti-Christian principles, 
 which nevertheless has done relative justice to some 
 aspects of the truth so far as the Church is concerned. 
 And certainly whoever has given himself the pleasure and 
 profit of reading the eloquent Phi Beta Kappa Address of 
 the late Prof. Henry Boynton Smith, on "The Problem 
 of the Philosophy of History", will be prepared to admit 
 that such a treatment of the facts will always lead at least 
 some minds to accept as deliverances of philosophy — as 
 conclusions of the unaided reason of man — precisely what 
 the Christian, with the open Bible before him, takes as 
 the presuppositions for all his knowledge alike of the life 
 of the Church and of that new science of theology which 
 that life, as by an inner necessity, was bound to produce. The 
 fact remains, however, that philosophy is prevailingly too 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE IQ 
 
 anthropocentric to be sufficiently sympathetic toward the 
 higher problems involved in the religious life of the race; 
 that her conclusions, resting in this case chiefly upon his- 
 torical data, can never yield more than a certain degree 
 of probability, a defect that needs must grieve the pious 
 heart that craves certitude as to the alleged presence of 
 the Supernatural in human affairs; above all, that her in- 
 strument of investigation, man's reason or understanding, 
 is utterly unable, according to the overwhelming if not 
 unanimous testimony of the visible Church herself, to in- 
 terpret the deeper spiritual realities involved in this historic 
 evolution. 
 
 But what philosophy cannot do in that it is weak through 
 the flesh, theology, as the science of the revealed knowledge 
 of God, can and does accomplish, thanks to the regenerat- 
 ing and illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, the true 
 doctor ecclesiae. We here come to first principles, which 
 to-day, as much as ever, are and must be accepted by 
 some and rejected by others. This lies in the nature of 
 the central fact in the moral experience of the race — the 
 universal presence of sin and the still limited scope of the 
 palingenesis by which alone the noetic effects of sin can 
 be removed. There is here no room for argument except 
 as between those who start from the same premises. Like 
 every other scientist, the theologian must begin with faith; 
 he must have his presuppositions. These he will not try 
 to prove. For as Dr. Kuyper, arguing this very point, 
 pertinently concludes: "Assurance of faith and demonstra- 
 tion are two entirely heterogeneous things. And he who, 
 in whatever department, still seeks to demonstrate his 
 principmm, simply shows that he does not know what is 
 to be understood by a principium."^ Such, too, was the 
 view of our fathers of the Reformed faith. As our own 
 Westminster Confession puts the matter^speaking of 
 holy Scripture: "our full persuasion and assurance of the 
 infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the 
 
 ' Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Th cology, E. T., 1898, p. 563. 
 
20 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and 
 with the word in our hearts." 
 
 Historically, therefore, the decisive fact is that of the 
 divine word itself. Either it is seen shining in its own 
 light or it is not seen at all. This does not imply that 
 if a man is unregenerate and lacks this testimony of the 
 Spirit, he can in no sense contribute to our knowledge 
 of the Church or do other work in the field of theological 
 science; but it is quite clear that his interpretation of the 
 data in their deeper, that is their organic relations, will 
 differ greatly from that of the man who finds in the self- 
 authenticating word of God the seminal principles of the 
 entire development of the Church. In a word, the super- 
 natural revelation, containing as it does among other things, 
 our only information about the origin of the Christian 
 Church, can be made the object of an adequate scientific 
 treatment by the regenerate only. For "except one be 
 born anew" — thus the faith of the Church keeps re- 
 echoing the assurance of her Founder — he not only "can- 
 not enter into" but he even "cannot see" — much less 
 describe — "the kingdom of God." 
 
 According, therefore, to the ecumenical Christian con- 
 sciousness, which alone can be the subject of the science 
 that is competent to deal with the facts here in question, 
 the Church is essentially a supernatural organism implanted 
 within, or grafted upon, the natural life of the race. It 
 is the appropriate self-expression of a new principle of 
 being, a divine germ, lodged in our humanity, namely the 
 special, recreating, enlightening, sustaining, sanctifying, 
 life-transforming grace of God, which makes its partakers 
 "grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even 
 Christ, from whom all the body fitly framed and knit 
 together through that which every joint supplieth, accord- 
 ing to the working in due measure of each several part, 
 maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of 
 itself in love". Not as a mere institute dispensing material 
 or even spiritual benefits, but as a life-system perpetually 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 21 
 
 nourished from its own root; not as a human society but as 
 a divine communion; not as a natural organization but as 
 a supernatural organism, is the Church the house of the 
 living God. Her origin, her nature, her task, her destiny — 
 in short, her history^ — is intelligible only in the light of her 
 relation to Christ, her head; that incarnate Word that 
 appeared in our humanity as a second, but also as the 
 last Adam. 
 
 Not v^^ithout significance, for instance, is the statement 
 that God sent his Son "when the fulness of the time came". 
 For in order that the holy Catholic Church, as dis- 
 tinguished from the national economy of the Old Covenant, 
 might appear, two things were necessary: the incarnate 
 and the written Word. That is to say, Christ had to in- 
 troduce the divine being itself into our race and once for 
 all bring the age-long redemptive work of God to its or- 
 ganic culmination and relative completion, so that the 
 formula, "It is finished", might always legitimately be ap- 
 phed to it; but further, to secure for the benefit of a 
 permanent and universal Church the knowledge of these 
 redemptive deeds and their significance, an authoritative 
 and trustworthy record was necessary, precisely of the kind 
 given by inspiration of God in the holy Scripture. With 
 redemption and special revelation completed, and with a 
 fixed canon of sacred writings in which the revealed 
 knowledge of God could be organically applied to the whole 
 race in the most permanent, the most universal, the most 
 constant and the purest form possible to man, the Church 
 could confidently enter upon her ecumenical mission. 
 
 Again, it is at once obvious that in tracing the history 
 of the Church, we are never at liberty to identify the 
 spiritual principle inherent in Christianity as a comprehen- 
 sive life-system with any of its partial and imperfect em- 
 bodiments in concrete institutions. For practical purposes, 
 to be sure, the whole may most conveniently be studied 
 in its parts. But in every true organism, the whole is 
 always something other than, and greater than, the sum 
 
22 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 of its parts. We need ever to reckon with the possibiHty, 
 therefore, that some who are connected with the visible 
 Church are not in vital union with Christ, and contrariwise 
 that some who do not own any branch of the visible Church 
 as their mother nevertheless share the life of God as their 
 Father. Only those called of God and regenerated by 
 his Spirit, whether with or without means, make up the 
 true ecclesia that reflects a genuinely supernatural life in 
 its several marks of unity, holiness, universality and perma- 
 nence. On the other hand, the Church, too, like the in- 
 dividual Christian, bears her treasures of truth and grace 
 in earthen vessels. Her spiritual life is indeed divine, Hke 
 that of her exalted head from whom it flows into all her 
 members, but, like his, it is a theanthropic life, however 
 much, unlike his, it has ever been and continues to be 
 marred by sin. For regeneration does not destroy the sub- 
 stance of the natural life; it only quickens and energizes 
 it and brings it into new relations, forms and functions, 
 and invests it with higher capacities. Thus at one time 
 the good and at another the evil elements in the complex 
 development of the Church's life must be emphasized, the 
 former being due to the relatively more perfect realization 
 of her divine life, and the latter to the temporary superiority 
 of her incompletely sanctified human life. The wheat and 
 the tares grow side by side in the same field. 
 
 The task of the Church, in the light of what has just 
 been said, can be none other than the progressive realiza- 
 tion of the true idea of Christianity. The germ of the 
 divine life must be given the most favorable conditions pos- 
 sible in which to grow, blossom and bear its fruit, — a fruit 
 that will yield in turn seed after its own kind. The gospel 
 leaven must be made to permeate human life in all its phases, 
 activities, conditions and circumstances, in every range and 
 region of individual experience and throughout the most 
 complex social institutes. The revealed knowledge of God 
 is to be spread over the earth and appHed, not indeed in- 
 dividualistically to every member of the species, but 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 23 
 
 organicall}- to the race as a whole. The regenerate who 
 have drunk of the water of Hfe must in turn become foun- 
 tains of living water to other thirsty souls. The Church 
 is, in a word, to make disciples of all the nations, her 
 chief instrument of instruction being that divinely au- 
 thoritative written word which, by the power of the Holy 
 Spirit, its primary author, makes possible a permanent and 
 universal knowledge of him, the incarnate Word, whom to 
 know is eternal life. The Church as the body of Christ 
 is to promote his dominion over the race, that race which 
 was originally his by the right of creation and was made 
 his anew by the right of redemption, until at the consumma- 
 tion of the age, having received the heathen for his 
 inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for his 
 possession, he will deliver up his mediatorial kingdom to 
 the Father, that God may be all in all. 
 
 We have now analyzed, and with sufficient precision de- 
 fined the idea of history and the idea of the Church. We 
 need only combine the results in OFder to formulate the 
 idea of Church History. Disregarding for the moment 
 the question of separating the biblical from the post- 
 biblical kingdom of God, we may say that in its widest 
 scope the subject-matter of our science, its determining 
 principle, is the organic evolution of regenerated humanity ; 
 or, the genetic development of the supernatural life of 
 the race. 
 
 In this statement, then, the Church is conceived as a 
 single, continuous historical economy ; existing, indeed, in 
 successive forms and stages — the Adamic, the Patriarchal, 
 the Jewish-National, the Apostolic, and the present Chris- 
 tian Church, but with all its diversity having the unity of 
 a true organism. There will always, therefore, be a meas- 
 ure of logical propriety in the arrangement that obtains 
 in many theological seminaries by which biblical and 
 ecclesiastical history are grouped together as one course 
 or at least under one department of instruction. For in 
 its essence the Church has ever been the same. It never 
 
24 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 has been anything but Christian in principle. From of 
 old the name of the Christ has been the only one under 
 heaven given among men for their salvation. It is impor- 
 tant, however, to do full justice to the principles of theo- 
 logical encyclopedia here involved.. For not only will 
 there have to be a special group of studies dealing with 
 the Scripture itself as the principle of all theological science, 
 but in the organic development of the Church herself there 
 is, as we have seen, a difference of fundamental and per- 
 petual significance between the biblical and the post-biblical 
 periods. Throughout the former her life was always 
 supernatural in a double sense, or, better, in a twofold 
 manner; from the first special revelation to the close of 
 the apostolic period, when the organism of special revela- 
 tion was completed, there was a series of miraculous in- 
 terpositions of divine power in the course of human affairs ; 
 and then, besides, there was the work of supernatural re- 
 generation and illumination in the sphere of the Church's 
 subjective life. But after the work of redemption was 
 brought to its culmination and relative completion by 
 Christ, and likewise the process of special revelation by 
 him and his apostles, then the life of the Church became, 
 as it has ever since remained, supernatural in only the 
 latter of the two modes we have specified. The physical 
 miracle falls away. It is no longer needed. The rebirth 
 and the enlightening of the Holy Spirit are sufficient. As 
 for the rest, whether Pentecost or the close of the first 
 century is to be made the terminus a quo for the course 
 in. Church History is a mere matter of detail to be deter- 
 mined by considerations of expediency. 
 
 From this chronological starting-point, then, Church 
 History will trace the development of the kingdom of God 
 through the ever-lengthening Christian era to the appointed 
 consummation of the present age. And since temporal 
 succession is the necessary form of all becoming, much 
 attention must be given in all historical studies to the turn- 
 ing points, the epochal stages in the organic evolution. 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 2$ 
 
 For only when historic movements are properly bounded 
 in time as well as in space can they be visualized with 
 sufficient distinctness to make possible a life-like repro- 
 duction of them in a narrative. On the other hand — and 
 this is the only other remark we shall make on this phase 
 of the subject — no chronological divisions, much less sub- 
 divisions, can have a permanently fixed value. For time is 
 always changing the perspective through the addition of 
 new fields of investigation, and historical science can only 
 do justice to the given state of knowledge. Who, for 
 instance, would have supposed six months ago, that the 
 year 191 4 would witness events that will in all likelihood 
 necessitate a new major division in world-history since the 
 Reformation of the sixteenth century? 
 
 Equally important in practice, though likewise incapable 
 of securing for themselves an absolute value, are the 
 material or topical divisions of Church History. They are 
 necessary for the thorough mastery of the subject-matter 
 as a whole. But just because the historic process is a liv- 
 ing unity, it should never be artificially dismembered. Nor 
 ought all the periods to be treated exactly alike, as was 
 unfortunately too often the case with some of those older 
 manuals, that made their readers regard history as a sort 
 of anatomical museum stocked with cabinets of a uniform 
 size and appearance, each shelf accommodating the regula- 
 tion number of skeletons, the bones being always about 
 as dry as they were numerous. Doubtless there will be 
 some advantage in following in the main the familiar lines 
 of cleavage by which one set of facts is grouped for special 
 consideration as the history of missions, the spread of 
 Christianity amid the favoring influences or the more or 
 less determined hostility of the world ; another, as the his- 
 tory of the development of the polity, the government and 
 the discipline of the Church; another, as the history of 
 ecclesiastical worship, with the too often neglected story of 
 Christian art and architecture ; and still another, as the history 
 of doctrine and dogma, with special reference to the work 
 
26 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 of the constructive theologians, the confessional formulas, 
 and the contemporary philosophies of the various periods. 
 But the final, because the onl}^ adequate category for every 
 historical development is that of the human personality 
 taken as a whole. Every man's life is something more 
 than the sum total of his thoughts, words, and deeds. It 
 cannot be known apart from these manifestations of itself, 
 but their highest scientific value to the historian is that 
 of enlarging his capacity to know that life itself in its 
 inmost nature, in its unuttered residuum, in its hidden 
 potentialities as well as in its partial expressions. And 
 a fortiori the life of the Church, the history of the king- 
 dom of God, must be studied now from one and now from 
 another of literally countless points of view; now in its 
 quiescent states and now in its varied movements; now in 
 its religious, its devotional, its God-ward aspects, now in 
 in its introspective moods, and again in its energizing in- 
 fluence upon every condition, circumstance, relation and 
 activity alike of individuals, families, tribes, nations, states, 
 races, and all social groups whatsoever, — so far as these 
 effects and interactions may be seen to have a bearing upon 
 the organic development of the regenerated life of 
 humanity. 
 
 In the light of the foregoing principles, we may now 
 more accurately set forth the relation between ecclesiastical 
 and general history. The former is, in the first instance, 
 a species of the latter. Generically, there is and can be but 
 one science of history. For the human race is a single 
 organism, and in their essence the facts of man-life in this 
 world are all of a piece. For holiness, communion with 
 God, is the original as well as the ultimate history of hu- 
 manity. When the race fell, it fell as a. whole ; when it will 
 have been redeemed, it will have been redeemed as a whole : 
 not in the sense that every twig and leaf will have been 
 saved, but in the sense that the life of the tree as such will 
 have been saved. The parts cast off perish as disjecta 
 memhra; the parts preserved unto life eternal are kept in 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 2/ 
 
 organic union with the ever-Hving root. But because re- 
 generation is only the beginning of a many-sided process 
 that requires nothing short of a Hfe-time to bring its fruits 
 unto perfection, the spiritual man will necessarily retain 
 to the very end of his days many of the relations, forms, 
 and activities — in a word, the sinful elements — of the 
 natural life. And the same is true of the evolution of the 
 race as a whole. Accordingly, history in the subjective 
 sense must reflect this state of affairs, and hence, as re- 
 gards the entire problem of the methodology of history, 
 there can be only one heuristic, or the science that deals 
 with the nature of the sources of history, including the 
 auxiliaries we have already named, — philology, palaeo- 
 graphy, diplomacy, geography, chronology, etc. ; only one 
 theory of historical criticism, or the science that determines 
 the value of these sources; only one hermeneutics, or the 
 science that unfolds the valid principles of interpretation; 
 and likewise only one art of historical composition, the 
 synthetic presentation in the form of a written narrative 
 of the results secured by the three processes just named. 
 Moreover, because religion, whether as the love of the 
 Father, or as the love of the world, is ever the deepest 
 concern and the regnant power in every life, even general 
 history is absolutely unintelligible apart from the religious 
 experiences of the race. In the nature of the case, there- 
 fore, ecclesiastical and general history will often deal with 
 the very same facts. 
 
 But this is not the whole truth concerning the relation 
 of these two branches of knowledge to each other. For 
 on the one hand, so far as even their present development 
 is concerned, they view the same data from different 
 standpoints. General history regards the historic process 
 as the evolution of humanity; ecclesiastical history re- 
 gards it as the evolution of regenerated humanity. The 
 former contemplates the human agents as men; the latter, 
 as Christian men. The former deals with society as a 
 natural organism; the latter, as a spiritual organism. The 
 
2S CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 
 
 former sees God in human affairs in his providential ac- 
 tivity only, if at all; the latter beholds him also in his 
 work of grace for, and in, and through sinners. This of 
 itself leads to a characteristic difference in the valuation 
 of the self-same elements in the historic development. On 
 the other hand, the relation of the two processes of evolu- 
 tion to each other is constantly changing, and this 
 necessitates a continuous readjustment of the boundary 
 lines between ecclesiastical and general history. For the 
 Church, the kingdom of God, Christianity, is conquering 
 the world. The leaven is leavening the whole lump. Rapid 
 as may be the expansion of the natural life of the race 
 in some periods, yet on the whole the development of its 
 spiritual hfe takes place at a still more rapid and an ever 
 accelerating rate of progress. In nature it is never possible, 
 but in the realm of grace it has often occurred, that a 
 nation is born in a day. And quite apart from the extra- 
 ordinary Pentecostal seasons of spiritual awakening, we 
 need to remember that redemption is destined to be a 
 cosmic process, transcending the boundaries of the human 
 race itself, so that the history of the Church must one day 
 be the truly universal history. We ought not, therefore, 
 to conceive of the natural and the supernatural develop- 
 ment of humanity as two endless parallel lines; nor even 
 as the two foci of an ellipse, from which, so to say, two 
 independent and mutually exclusive evolutionary processes 
 are trying to occupy contiguous or perchance the same 
 territory lying in the one given plane; but rather as two 
 spheres of organic life : one, the Church, the spiritual 
 order, being enclosed within the other, the world-order; 
 each proceeding from the same original centre in the 
 natural and spiritual life of the first head of the race; 
 each expanding and striving, against the opposition of the 
 other, to fill the whole realm of possible human interests; 
 but the final result of the conflict being that "the kingdom 
 of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord and 
 of his Christ." More and more, therefore, the very 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE 29 
 
 ground for the distinction between sacred and secular 
 history is destined to vanish. Meanwhile, let it not be for- 
 gotten that the only reason that we may regard the entire 
 historic process as a holy one is that the thrice holy God 
 has, in his infinite mercy, made it possible for the race 
 as such to be a partaker of his own holiness by means 
 of the double gift of his grace — a special revelation of 
 redemption, preserved in the holy Scripture, and the re- 
 generating, enlightening and sanctifying Holy Spirit, by 
 whose power, in this present dispensation, the holy Cath- 
 olic Church is summing up all things in its head, the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. In him, and in him alone, all contradictions 
 are reconciled. In the light of his cross, and there alone, 
 do we find the true principle of an adequate philosophy 
 of history. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and 
 the last, the beginning and the end, alike of all creation, 
 of all revelation, and of all redemption. "All things have 
 been created through him, and unto him; and he is be- 
 fore all things; and in him all thin^gs consist. And he 
 is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, 
 the first-born from the dead; that in all things he might 
 have the preeminence. For it was the good pleasure of 
 the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell ; and 
 through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having 
 made peace through the blood of his cross; through him 
 I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the 
 heavens." 
 
 Such, then, as we conceive it, is the idea of Church 
 History as a science. The Church being the congregation 
 of .saints, the communion of the faithful, the body of 
 Christ, the history of the Church here on earth is the 
 organic evolution in this present world of the spiritual, 
 the supernatural, or the redeemed life of humanity. It is 
 a process, therefore, whose deepest significance is intelligible 
 only in the light of Christian theology — that knowledge 
 of God which has become possible for us through special 
 revelation. It is not enough for the Church historian to 
 
3© CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 be a theist; for as even the rationalistically inclined 
 Gieseler had to acknowledge : "he cannot penetrate 
 into the internal character of the phenomena of Church 
 history without a Christian religious spirit." ^ In other 
 words, if theology is the science whose special task it is 
 to reflect in our consciousness the revealed knowledge of 
 God, then Church History must needs be a branch of theo- 
 logical science; for outside of the Church, as the society 
 of the regenerate, there is and can be no true theology. 
 In fact, our science is determined in the last analysis by 
 those same three theological factors that determine the 
 entire circle of the theological sciences : the word of God 
 which was in due time recorded in the Scriptures ; the Holy 
 Spirit in his regenerating and illuminating work; and the 
 organically connected members of the body of Christ, or 
 the Church. It is not strange, therefore, that Church 
 History has always, as a matter of fact, flourished best 
 in the congenial soil of the theological sciences, and that, 
 among these, it has necessarily held a place of usefulness 
 and honor second to no other. 
 
 We turn, therefore, to a brief consideration of the 
 remaining division of our subject. 
 
 II. Church History as a Theological Discipline 
 
 In trying to characterize the specific discipline inculcated 
 by our science as prosecuted in this and similar institutions 
 of sacred learning, we may consider, first, its distinctively 
 scientific value, and then its other' — if the term will not 
 be taken in too narrow a sense — more "practical" benefits. 
 
 The strictly scientific uses of Church History can per- 
 haps most advantageously be presented by means of a rapid 
 survey of its relations to the other departments of 
 theological instruction. 
 
 According to the customary division of theological 
 studies, there are, besides Church History, three main 
 
 Gieseler, Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte, I § 5. 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 3 1 
 
 groups : one dealing with the Scripture as the principle 
 of all theological science, that is, then, the word of God 
 as such; another with dogma, or the content of the word 
 as systematically reflected in the understanding of re- 
 generate humanity; and another with the sacred offices 
 instituted for the maintenance and the propagation of the 
 word. To all these, though to each in a different way, 
 Church History sustains the intimate, vital connections 
 that betoken truly organic relations. Indeed, only in the 
 processes of history can we get a satisfactory view of the 
 way in which every part of the tree of theological science 
 becomes reciprocally a means and an end with respect to 
 every other. But let us particularize. 
 
 Logically and chronologically first in the organism of 
 scientific theology is that group of studies which deals with 
 the word of God, more accurately, the Scripture, as such. 
 Of these a considerable number are strictly propaedeutic — ; 
 biblical philology, biblical archaeology (including biblical 
 chronology and geography), biblical hermeneutics, and 
 biblical isagogics (including the lower and the higher 
 criticism of the Bible). These need not now detain 
 us. Their importance is due to that to which they lead, 
 and for which they prepare, the student of theology. In- 
 asmuch, however, as they ordinarily flourish only within 
 the realm of ecclesiastical life, Church History, as the 
 narrative of that life, will have occasion to record their 
 progress, call attention to their deficiencies, inspire the 
 necessary efforts for their improvement, and thus render 
 them many incidental benefits. To Church History 
 as a science belongs, in particular, the honor of having 
 inaugurated, as early as the age of the Renaissance, that 
 really critical study of ancient documents which has de- 
 veloped into the exceedingly important science of modern 
 literary criticism. As for biblical canonics, this is in the 
 main an historical discipline, and its chief materials, so far 
 as the New Testament is concerned, are to be found 
 specifically in the domain of the Church's early history. 
 
2,2 CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 But the queen in this sisterhood of bibhcal studies is that 
 which is often used to give its name to the whole group, 
 exegesis, culminating in biblical theology as the science 
 that exhibits the revelation of God in its organic historical 
 development. In view of what has already been said con- 
 cerning the "truth and divine authority" of Holy Scripture 
 as the very principle of theological science, it is plain, on 
 the one hand, that Church History will be deeply indebted 
 to these exegetical disciplines. For the great central ideas 
 that organize and animate the biblical consciousness are 
 the very ones that are constantly giving fresh impulses 
 to the development of the spiritual life of the race. In 
 fact, there is no movement of prime significance in this 
 whole sphere that cannot be traced back to some germinant 
 scriptural truth. Morever, both according to its own 
 claim and according to the witness of history, the Bible 
 is itself the only sufficient test of human life, especially 
 of its moral values, the supreme arbiter of man's character, 
 conduct and destiny. History needs precisely such a 
 criterion, and only the scientific study of the Bible can 
 put this boon into the historian's hands. And above all, 
 biblical theology, just because it sets forth the organic 
 progress of supernatural revelation in the Scripture, 
 presents an invaluable norm for the interpretation of the 
 kindred development that constitutes the subject-matter of 
 Church History — the supernatural life of man begotten 
 of the word and the Spirit of God. For biblical theology, 
 though it deals with an evolution that is somewhat narrowly 
 limited in time, nevertheless, because of the unique and 
 final character of that process, sounds those full and funda- 
 mental tones that make up the chord of the dominant in 
 the noblest harmonies that human life has been able to 
 produce ever since it came under the power of the law 
 given by Moses and the grace and truth that came by 
 Jesus Christ. But on the other hand, Church History, in 
 turn, furnishes indispensable aid to the exegetical theo- 
 logians. Quite apart from the knowledge which it alone 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 33 
 
 can supply them concerning the history of interpretations, 
 concerning the historic improvements of their scientific 
 methods and tools, and concerning the special needs of 
 their department in their own day. Church History often 
 furnishes the data that make it safe to reject some inter- 
 pretations as no longer worth trying, or wise to adopt 
 others as probable. Especially in the exegesis of predictive 
 prophecies has many an overconfident subject! vist been 
 put to grief by the stern, hard facts of history. And in 
 general, as in other fields of scientific investigation, so 
 here, the limitations, errors, and dangers attending the 
 exercise of the unquestioned right of private judgment, 
 can be best overcome, or avoided, by the more thorough 
 cultivation of the historic, that is the universal, as dis- 
 tinguished from the individualistic spirit. But above all, 
 history is itself the best commentary on the Bible. Chris- 
 tianity is what it is in history. In history, the ideas of 
 the word realize themselves, and this multiform, continuous 
 process is ever shedding new light • upon the meaning 
 of the spiritual energies and potencies stored up in those 
 Scriptures through which we most fully come to 
 know him "in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge hidden". The circle into which our reasoning 
 here falls is a necessary but not a vicious one. For in history 
 the word of God keeps producing its characteristic effects ; 
 and these effects in turn explain their cause. Exegetical and 
 historical theology are mutually helpful. 
 
 The scientific value of Church History will appear greater 
 still, when we examine its relation to systematic theology 
 (including the introductory and supplementary sciences of 
 apologetics and biblical ethics). 
 
 For, in the first place, systematic theology is absolutely 
 dependent upon Church History. This is not to be taken 
 in any anti-Protestant sense, as if the dogmatician makes 
 the historical apprehension of revelation, and not the 
 revelation itself, the subject-matter of his science. The 
 
34 CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 fact remains, however, that suo jure Hie is always first, 
 antedating all scientific reflection. And in particular, with 
 respect to our truly scientific knowledge of God, there was, 
 and there could be, no theology, until after the Church had 
 been in existence long enough to discern at least some of 
 the organic relations of revealed truth. For the subject of 
 theological science is not the Christian individual but the 
 Church, the communion of the faithful, the society of the 
 regenerate. And as no science can prosper save as it is cul- 
 tivated by those who stand in organic relations with its 
 subject-matter and with one another, so the theologian, 
 if his work is to be fruitful, must always connect his 
 personal efforts with the results already achieved by those 
 who, as members of the body of Christ, being regenerated 
 and guided by the Spirit, have helped the Church to appre- 
 hend the revealed knowledge of God in its organic, that 
 is, its truly scientific character. Commonly, as we know, 
 the dogmatician occupies a definite confessional standpoint, 
 and this position of itself will ordinarily guarantee his 
 vital contact with legitimate and suitable lines of theological 
 construction. He never presumes, if he is a really qualified 
 worker, to perform his arduous task as a system-builder, 
 by trying to lay anew, through an independent study of 
 Scripture, the very foundations of his structure, but rather, 
 like those skilled architects succeeding one another age 
 after age in the common effort to finish some stately old 
 cathedral, he will strive to complete, perchance to restore 
 or to correct, the work of his predecessors. In short, the 
 history of Christian dogma and doctrine will furnish him 
 with his choicest materials, critically sifted and properly 
 estimated as to their scientific value. With these in his 
 possession, he needs must re-examine all his data in the 
 light of the basal principles of his science, the teachings 
 of holy Scripture. He will thus not repeat the error of 
 Scholasticism, which conceived it as its chief business to 
 defend and confirm its historic confession. Nor will he 
 hesitate, in his own use of the Bible, to trust the guidance 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 35 
 
 of the Holy Spirit as the true doctor ecclcsiae for the 
 Church of his own, as of every other age. But he will 
 always find the secret both of his genuine scripturality 
 and of his most fruitful theological productivity by enter- 
 ing, with due reverence and humility, but likewise with 
 genial independence, into the labors of the ecumenical 
 Christian spirit as the best aid to his understanding of the 
 inspired mind. 
 
 Again, Church History is a necessary supplement to 
 dogmatic theology. For by its very definition, this latter 
 s cienc e seeks to know, not what has been or is now held 
 to be true, but only what is ideally true, concerning God 
 and his relations to the world ; not what men have believed, 
 but what they ought to believe. Accordingly, dogmatics 
 is essentially a static presentation of the content of Chris- 
 tianity. It is a group of facts, doctrines, principles, con- 
 cepts, theories, speculations, all reduced, as the phrase is, to 
 a system. For that very reason, however, it can never 
 embrace and reproduce all our knowledge of God, but only 
 our scientific knowledge of God. But this is, always 
 has been and must ever continue to be, but a 
 small part of the great boon which has come to our race 
 through the revelation recorded in the Bible. The fact is 
 that Christianity itself entered the world not as a dogma, 
 but as a historic process, and that from the very beginning, 
 when as yet there was, and could be no theological science, 
 the Church nevertheless had a knowledge of God that 
 was sufficient for all except her purely scientific needs. 
 Moreover, to this day, theological, like all other science, 
 can be the concern of only a relatively small part of man- 
 kind. But this other, this more general but likewise more 
 vital, experiential knowledge of God, can and does flow 
 directly from the Bible to all who enter the kingdom of 
 heaven. No doubt the Spirit of God has special blessings 
 to bestow upon the Church through her scientific expo- 
 sitions of the Scripture, but to the praise of the glory of 
 divine grace be it said, he likewise makes not only the 
 
36 CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 preaching, but even the reading of the word "an effectual 
 means of convincing and converting sinners and of build- 
 ing them up in holiness and comfort through faith unto 
 salvation". That is to say, even the non-scientific knowl- 
 edge of God constantly operates to produce the character- 
 istic effects of the divine word. But to trace these in all 
 their organic relations throughout the whole development 
 of the spiritual life of the race is the very task of Church 
 History, a task which dogmatics cannot perform just be- 
 cause it is not an historical but only a normative science. 
 It can, indeed, rationalize the entire historic evolution and 
 abstract therefrom and embody in its system an important 
 series of ideal coefficients. But the real efficiencies of the 
 movement it has no means of presenting. It cannot re- 
 produce in their concrete reahty the manifold and multi- 
 form workings of the divine word upon the whole world 
 of human life. The basal importance of all this appears 
 only when we apprehend the deeper significance of the 
 Scripture as the principle of our theological science. Then 
 we can never rest satisfied with the metaphors that make 
 the Bible a mere quarry of limestone or marble, or per- 
 chance a mine of gold or precious stones. It is this; but 
 it is much more. It is a dynamic. It is a hammer; it is a 
 sword; it is a fructifying shower; nay, it is a seed; it 
 is living and active; it is spirit and it is life. And, there- 
 fore, to obtain the fullest possible knowledge of God, we 
 must study the word not only in its states of equilibrium 
 and quiescence, as reflected in a body of divinity; but 
 also in its movements, its salient energies, its germinant 
 accomplishments, its total impact upon the life of man, 
 as these are reflected in ecclesiastical history, the narrative 
 of the age-long evolution of regenerate humanity under 
 the power of the divine word and Spirit. What the 
 dogmatician calls an idea the historian sees at work as 
 a living force. And how much richer and fuller, for ex- 
 ample, does my knowledge concerning the doctrine of justi- 
 fication by faith become, when, with all the aid the 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE ^^J 
 
 systematic theologian can give me by way of defining this 
 truth in a formula, and relating it to the other truths of 
 his system, I see the principle itself take shape in the 
 heroic soul of a Martin Luther, become th'e inspiration 
 of a great evangelical Church, and bring a whole continent 
 to a new birth first of spiritual and then of civil and 
 political freedom. Only in its action can the divine idea 
 exhibit to the full its "power of an endless life". The 
 glory of the fountain is the volume and might of the 
 majestic river. Not in the least do we detract from the 
 impressive grandeur and magnificence of any of the famous 
 sanctuaries reared by the architectonic genius of the 
 theological system-builder; but to Church History belongs 
 the honor, the unique distinction, of exhibiting the total 
 knowledge of God in the noblest and most comprehensive 
 synthesis possible — a synthesis quite too vast to be embodied 
 in any set of logical formulas, the synthesis of the life 
 which alone is capacious enough to hold all the elements of 
 the Church of God in its world-embracing historical de- 
 velopment. In short, it is only through the Church, in 
 the sum of its varied activities, that what Paul calls the 
 manifold, the much-variegated wisdom of God can be made 
 known alike unto us here on earth and "unto the prin- 
 cipalities and powers in the heavenly places". Only in a 
 historic narrative, only by means of a dramatic representa- 
 tion, such as the inspired Scripture itself had to make 
 use of, can the knowledge of God in its fulness be repro- 
 duced for our contemplation and appropriation. Church 
 History is a necessary supplement to dogmatic theology. 
 And in the third place, Church History is of inestimable 
 benefit to the systematic theologian because it inculcates in 
 him the right temper for his scientific labors. It delivers 
 him from the temptation which alas ! too often has become 
 his besetting sin, the harsh and repellent dogmatism that 
 so readily degenerates into rancor and makes it next to 
 impossible for him to grasp the truth in its ripeness and 
 rotundity. No doubt, Church historians as a class have 
 
38 CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 been quite too often the victims of the opposite vice, the 
 theological indifferentism and latitudinarianism that makes 
 them color-blind with respect to important phases of doc- 
 trinal controversies. In this respect, Eusebius, "the father 
 of Church History", has had altogether too many admirers 
 and imitators. Nevertheless, the historic spirit is the gen- 
 eral, the universal, the racial spirit, and as such the truly 
 human and humane spirit. We hear little to-day, and we 
 ought to be duly grateful for the fact, of that dreadful 
 malady with which, for instance, many of the great and 
 good men of the Reformation were so grievously afflicted, 
 the rabies theologorum, a disease for which no preventive 
 or antidote was found, until the nineteenth century, with 
 its unprecedented interest in historical science, discovered 
 an efficacious one and gave it a fitting name — historical- 
 mindedness. In the clear dry light of history, men began 
 to see that heresy, if a real error, is only an excrescence, hav- 
 ing no abiding place in the organism of theological science ; 
 that orthodoxy cannot perish from the earth while a single 
 hidden root retains its hold upon the truth as it is in 
 Jesus Christ; and that so far as the human personalities 
 are concerned, no one on either side lives consistently 
 by the logic of his scientific propositions, but is now 
 better, and now worse, than his creed. History gives 
 theological opinion its proper life-context, and thus 
 enables even the polemic writer to differ in generous and 
 genial fashion from his foe, and to realize the noble apostolic 
 precept of "professing the truth in love." 
 
 But if Church History confers such great benefits upon 
 the sciences in the exegetical and dogmatic departments, 
 its service in behalf of the so-called practical theological 
 disciplines is still more important. For it is the peculiarity 
 of all these studies that they have a technical purpose in 
 view. Their problem is that of the effective propagation 
 of the word of God for the maintenance and promotion 
 of the life of the Church in all its phases. The scientific 
 principles which underlie the technique all pertain to the 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 39 
 
 methods by which these several tasks, in the pastoral office, 
 the work of the pulpit, the instruction of the young, the 
 administration of ecclesiastical affairs, are to be accom- 
 plished. But he who asks how a thing can best be done 
 will invariably ask how others have tried to do it. His- 
 tory alone can give the complete answer, with the data 
 for an adequate critique of the various solutions of these 
 practical problems. Commonly enough, to be sure, pro- 
 fessors in these departments content themselves with recent 
 history; their own experience is likely to be the chief source 
 from which they draw their counsels and precepts. But 
 the accumulated wisdom of the centuries ought not to be 
 ignored. In fine, an historical knowledge of Christianity 
 is an indispensable prerequisite for the most successful 
 cultivation of the practical theological disciplines. It alone 
 can interpret for them the living present to whose needs 
 they are to minister. It alone can help them to a discovery 
 of their special and peculiar tasks. Above all, the com- 
 prehensive empiricism of history will g4ve them their most 
 valuable materials — those that will best illustrate the 
 theoretical principles necessary for the practical guidance 
 of the student. 
 
 Even if, therefore, we had nothing more to say con- 
 cerning the disciplinary value of Church History, these 
 varied, strictly scientific benefits would alone warrant 
 Melanchthon's judgment: Praecipue historia opus est 
 in ecclesia. History, we may say, gives theological science 
 as a whole its best insight into its own nature — its tasks, 
 its methods, its problems, its prospects. Theology has no 
 greater need to-day than just that of applying in all its 
 branches the sharpened instruments and perfected methods 
 of that historical science which, even in speculative Ger- 
 many, has acquired the ascendency over all other sciences, 
 and which, throughout at least the western world, has be- 
 come in things intellectual the proudest boast of this last 
 century. And especially, therefore, in this new country 
 and this youthful nation of ours, where, just because of 
 
40 CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 our comparative lack of historic sense, we have too often 
 sHghted the sohd, well-tested historic realities of other 
 lands, and in consequence have had so much to suffer from 
 all sorts of theological Philistinism, morbid religiosity, 
 pseudo-faiths, and ecclesiastical humbuggery, students for 
 the ministry will do well to remember that history is that 
 science whose special business it is to emphasize the or- 
 ganic character of the truly progressive life of humanity, 
 that among the historical sciences Church History must 
 ever be entitled to the highest place, and that as such it 
 can be second to none among the theological sciences. 
 
 But the scientific uses of Church History are not the 
 only, or even the most important benefits of this discipline. 
 We need to remember that the primary function of a 
 theological seminary is the making of "good ministers of 
 Christ Jesus", men who will be ''furnished completely unto 
 every good work" in the service of the Church. Important 
 as are the claims of theological learning, they ought never 
 to be magnified in such a way as to relegate to a subor- 
 dinate position the practical aims for which institutions 
 like this were called into being. We shall not retract or 
 qualify a single statement we have made concerning the 
 need for every theological student in these days of a 
 thoroughly scientific training. But we cannot forget that 
 life is many-sided; that it has other and higher concerns 
 than those of the intellect; that truth is in order to holiness, 
 and that knowledge must lead to service. To know is 
 good; to do well is better; but to be what one ought to 
 be — this is the whole of life. Every student for the min- 
 istry should strive to make himself as much of an expert 
 in theological science as possible; but he can do this only 
 by becoming something greater and nobler, like that beloved 
 disciple who leaned on Jesus' bosom and most fully caught 
 the mind of the Savior,. — a divine in the highest and holiest 
 sense of the word. And certainly no member of a theo- 
 logical faculty, whatever be his attainments in science, will 
 be satisfied with his service as a teacher, unless he enters 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 4I 
 
 into the blessed work of moral creation and becomes a 
 co-laborer with God in the execution of that glorious 
 primeval purpose: "Let us make man." 
 
 Only from this point of view can we discern the highest 
 uses of Church History as a theological discipline — what 
 we may call its more practical benefits. With the bare 
 enumeration of these I shall conclude. 
 
 First of all, there is the unique cultural value of this 
 study. For one thing, as history in general has ever been 
 the most comprehensive of the sciences, so among the 
 theological branches, Church History traverses a wider field 
 than any other. Its literature is quite as extensive as that 
 of all the other departments combined. Its subject -matter 
 is as varied as human life itself. It is the least special, 
 and, by that very token, the most liberal of the theological 
 studies. It stands nearest of all to the so-called "humani- 
 ties," those courses in the college and university which 
 the wisdom of a millennium has preserved as those best 
 adapted to the making of a truly educated man. It breathes 
 the atmosphere of that generous culture which is no less 
 useful to the minister than it is to the lawyer, the juris- 
 consult, the man of affairs, the philosopher, the friend of 
 arts and letters. Moreover, just because the historic spirit 
 is the spirit of humanity as a whole, the influence of 
 our discipline is a valuable corrective of those in- 
 tellectual vices to which the extreme specialization in 
 scientific labor exposes alike the graduate and the under- 
 graduate student of our day, — the exaggeration, the dis- 
 tortion, and the lopsidedness that spring from the failure 
 to "see life steadily and see it whole". But no one can 
 read history even in a cursory fashion without catching 
 something of the meaning of that underlying unity which 
 here, as in the case of every organic evolution, is as obvious 
 as is the diversity. In this respect the study of history 
 affects the mind in much the same way as does travel in 
 a foreign land; the impressionistic vividness of sight, grasp- 
 ing a multitude of details in a single comprehensive view, 
 
42 CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 not only promptly dispels many false preconceptions and 
 prejudices, but furnishes the due perspective for an ac- 
 curate understanding and judicial estimate of the whole. 
 Surely in an age like ours, distraught as it is by its special- 
 ism and confused by the disintegrations of its knowledge. 
 Church History, as the narrative of the kingdom of God, 
 can render a unique service by restoring to us the clear 
 perception of the true realm of ends in human character 
 and conduct ; by coordinating and harmonizing the diver- 
 gent and often discordant elements of our culture; in a 
 word, by showing us anew the unity of our thought and 
 life, the beauty of the ordered whole of man's endeavors 
 and experiences. 
 
 In the second place, Church History has a high moral 
 value. Its facts have an inalienable ethical significance. 
 If the history of the world is the judgment of the world, 
 much more is the history of the Church the judgment of 
 the Church. One cannot trace the career of man, especially 
 of man as a subject of redemption, without acquiring a 
 new sense of the transcendent moral values of life and 
 without constantly exercising the highest function of the 
 human spirit — that of forming and estimating standards 
 of duty, ideals of character, principles of conduct. His- 
 tory becomes a mighty means of grace. Its endlessly varied 
 message takes quick and strong hold upon life, entering 
 not only by the door of the intellect but, like all the deeper 
 and more vital influences, through the countless avenues 
 that lead into the secret places of the subconscious self. 
 I read the pathetic story of the Church's failure to seize 
 some God-given opportunity, I see her momentary defeat, 
 her shame and misery, and I needs must become more 
 vigilant and zealous in my own Christian stewardship. I 
 get a glimpse of something true or good or beautiful in 
 the most unexpected nooks and corners of history — spring- 
 tide flowers at the doorstep of some squalid hovel — and an 
 ampler charity fills my heart. I hear the oft-repeated cry 
 of a noble army of reformers born out of their due time, 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 43 
 
 "How long, O Lord, how long?" and as I see the slow de- 
 livery of the divine answer, "A thousand years are as one 
 day", the virtue of patience wears a new lustre in my 
 daily routine. I behold empires fall, nations perish, civili- 
 zations crumble into nothingness, art and song and the 
 gentler ministries of life being hushed one by one in the 
 silence of the vast desolation, but lo! the Prince of Peace 
 is in the van, leading the age by some strange anabasis 
 into a more spacious and better time; and never again 
 can I be the pessimist I was. After all, Christianity is 
 its own best defence. Its victories are the supreme, the 
 irrefutable analogy of its faith. In a word, if history 
 teaches reverence for the past and moderation and caution 
 with respect to the present, it likewise fires the heart even 
 of the solitary disciple with genial optimism, with in- 
 domitable courage, with undying hope, for as nothing else 
 can or does, it reveals God 
 
 out of evil, still educing good. 
 And better, thence again, and better still 
 In infinite progression. 
 
 Sixty-five years ago, on the occasion of his induction into 
 the chair of Church History in this Seminary, Dr. James 
 Waddell Alexander said : "To detect the products of this 
 secret life, which has been visibly the same in every age, to 
 recognize it, to love it, and to emulate it, is the delightful 
 work of Church History. Here are the genuine memorials 
 of the fathers ; here are the true relics of the saints ; not to be 
 registered in calendars and graven on stone, and worshipped 
 as idols, but to be followed, and by grace surpassed. If 
 experience is valuable in our own hearts, then in the 
 hearts of others; if in what is contemporary, then in what 
 is past; if of one age, then of all ages. . . . Next to the 
 study of God's work in Scripture, is the study of God's 
 work in the later Church." 
 
 In the third place, Church History can confer inestimable 
 benefits upon the minister of the Gospel in his official work. 
 This is by 'way of eminence the practical value of this 
 
44 CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 Study — its strictly professional or vocational uses. We 
 have already seen how the history of the Church illumines 
 and illustrates all . the scientific principles, that is, the 
 theories, which must underlie the practical theological dis- 
 ciplines. But the pastor's use of this information is quite 
 different from that of the professor who is called upon to 
 teach these subjects. The former deals with the problem 
 in the concrete. It it not a theory but a condition that 
 confronts him. His work in the parish, as a shepherd of 
 souls, as a preacher, an ecclesiastic, an administrator of 
 affairs, an official leader of the Church, constantly requires 
 him to determine practical issues. Now, of course, if he 
 lacks common sense — the sense to see the common things 
 of life in their true relations — not even the most thorough 
 knowledge of history can give him that nice discrimination 
 as to the best course of action under given circumstances, 
 which is the peculiar grace and genius of the man of tact. 
 But granted even a modicum of this native wit, the knowl- 
 edge of history will be the best means for its cultivation. 
 "The fearless and reverent questionings of the sages of 
 other times" will be for the minister, as for all others deal- 
 ing with practical measures, "the permitted necromancy", 
 as it has been called, "of the wise". He, too, will find 
 it true : "There is somebody that knows more than any- 
 body and that is everybody." For a broad, strong, efficient 
 and judicious churchmanship, no study is more helpful than 
 that which enables a man not only to avoid methods and 
 expedients that have time and again proved their worth- 
 lessness or insufficiency, but also to commend the promises 
 and prophecies of his own program by some sure word of 
 history. 
 
 But above all, the minister of the Gospel can and should 
 exploit Church History for his work as a preacher. By 
 this we mean something more than that he ought to be 
 familiar with typical products of the pulpit in the various 
 stages of its development; though it goes without saying 
 that in mastering any art, nothing whatever can take the 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 45 
 
 place of the study of its acknowledged masters, alike the 
 dead and the living. But here, too, we are concerned not 
 with theory, but with practice; not with homiletics as a 
 discipline, but with preaching as a pastoral service. And 
 therefore, if we have correctly apprehended Church His- 
 tory as the organic evolution of the regenerate life of 
 humanity, we must insist that the history of Christianity 
 is nothing less than the Gospel itself in the richest, the 
 most complete, the most effective mode in which it can 
 be presented. It gives the truth its most vital ex- 
 pression, resembling in this respect the inspired Scripture 
 itself, which always places the revealed knowledge of 
 God in an impressive life-context. Hence the unique 
 value of that homiletic mode which makes a free' 
 use of history. Doubtless, there are special difficulties at- 
 tending the composition and delivery of historical sermons. 
 They demand ample knowledge, the fruit of w'ide and 
 varied reading; a nimble, penetrating and cultured historical 
 imagination that can readily seize th& suggestive details 
 of an incident, a biography, an epoch, and group them in 
 a life-like and moving picture; and an unusual skill in the 
 disposition of the illustrative material and in its adjustment 
 to the practical, the religious, aim of the message. Or- 
 dinarily, too, such discourses, because of their abundant 
 narrative and descriptive elements, will require more time 
 than others for their delivery. But even so, the sermon 
 of history has its own incomparable charm and power; 
 while most of its advantages, without any of its draw- 
 backs, may be secured in that type of preaching which, 
 whatever the subject, makes generous use of history for 
 all four of the rhetorical modes by which a theme may be 
 developed and applied — explanation, argument, illustration 
 and persuasion. Not seldom will well selected historical 
 materials perform all these homiletic functions at one and 
 the same time. Precisely here we find the secret of the 
 acknowledged failure of many so-called doctrinal sermons. 
 Theoretically, this is the highest species of the sermonic 
 
46 CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 art. It certainly ought to form the staple of pulpit work. 
 But as a matter of fact, preachers themselves being the 
 witnesses and the judges, this type of discourse is often the 
 least satisfactory to themselves and the least interesting 
 and edifying to the hearers. The trouble ordinarily is 
 that the message is kept too far aloof from life — the life 
 out of which the sacred text itself grew, and the life in 
 the pew to which that text is supposed to minister. But 
 a new day dawns over many a pulpit — a day of vastly 
 increased power — when the preacher realizes that every 
 truly vital sermon has not only heaven for its father, 
 but also earth for its mother : that the biblical doctrines 
 are all facts imbedded in a historic development : and that 
 it is his duty not merely to conceive the truth as thought 
 but to perceive it as life; not so much to forge long-linked 
 abstractions, addressed to but one faculty of the mind, and 
 that commonly the least trained and the feeblest, the ratio- 
 cinative — but rather to use the broader strokes, the pictorial 
 suggestiveness, the impressionistic concreteness by which 
 history, no less than poetry, succeeds in making a truly 
 universal appeal in behalf, largely, of the very same moral 
 and spiritual realities with which the pulpit must deal. 
 To stir the imagination of the speaker and hearers so that 
 it will quickly seize not only the surface value, but the 
 cubical contents, the hidden power of a fact; to awaken 
 memories in his heart and theirs that will smite conscience 
 as with a sabre-stroke, or fill the soul as with the 
 blessed light of childhood's golden morning; to enable 
 him to emotionalize his ideas, that being self-moved, he 
 may move all who see the glow and feel the throb of his 
 own passion for the truth ; to help him clothe the dry bones 
 of his homiletic skeletons with the flesh and blood of life 
 that is all the more real because it is historic, so that his 
 incarnated message, like the gospel itself, nay, like that 
 divine Logos who became man in order to be our gospel, 
 may be an ever-living word, instinct with personal power 
 and magnetism, — these are some of the possible ministries 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 47 
 
 of history to him whose task it is, by the noble art of true 
 preaching, to promote the noblest art of true living. 
 
 And now, finally, as the supreme excellence of our dis- 
 cipline, we mention its religious value. Not for its scien- 
 tific purposes chiefly, nor yet mainly for its varied cultural, 
 ethical and professional benefits ought we to cultivate the 
 knowledge of the history of the Church. For as in all 
 other theological disciplines, so in this, the highest 
 aim is not to be found in ourselves but only in him who 
 has established and promoted the kingdom of heaven in 
 this world for his own holy name's sake. Doctor Freeman 
 closed his celebrated Inaugural Lecture at Oxford, on "The 
 Office of the Historical Professor", by saying: "We shall 
 surely not be less at home in our own generation, if we 
 bear in mind that we are the heirs and scholars of the 
 generations that went before us, if we now and then stop 
 in our own course to thank the memory of those without 
 whom our own course could not have been run, if we 
 are ready, at every fitting moment, to 'praise famous men 
 and our fathers who begat us' ". It is a worthy sentiment, 
 ever true and timely. But surely we have a higher duty 
 and a more blessed privilege; it is that of rising, as from 
 every contemplation of the work and word of God in 
 Scripture, so from all our study of his deeds of grace 
 and messages of mercy in the later history of the Church, 
 with eyes and hearts uplifted in adoring thanksgiving and 
 praise to him, the eternal and all-glorious King of the 
 ages, the Triune God of our creation and redemption, of 
 whom, through whom, and unto whom are all things. That 
 deep word of truth which Hase made the motto of his 
 Church History must be our guide in the reaHzation of 
 the final end of this discipline: "The Lord of the times is 
 God, the turning-point of the times is Christ, the true 
 Spirit of the times is the Holy Spirit." Thus shall we 
 more fully know him who is best known in the congre- 
 gation of his saints, and more worthily serve him whom 
 to glorify is man's chief end. In fine, Church History 
 
48 CHURCH HISTORY AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 reveals its crowning excellence only when viewed in its 
 organic relations with that branch of human knowledge 
 concerning which the Angelic Doctor of the schools said : 
 "Theologia a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum ducit." 
 
 Fathers and Brethren, I thank you for your kind 
 attention and patient forbearance. I have detained you too 
 long ; but I cherish the hope that you will be gracious enough 
 to look upon the undue length of my remarks as but the 
 defect of a real virtue in your new professor of Church 
 History, his sincere conviction concerning the importance 
 of the work to which you have called him and his earnest 
 desire to magnify the service which he feels you may justly 
 expect him to try to render to this institution of sacred 
 learning and to the Church at large. Never has the task 
 seemed greater, or its responsibilities more onerous, than 
 at this moment. But in humble reliance upon the all- 
 sufficient grace of God, I shall continue, as I trust I have 
 begun, to take heed to this ministry which I have received 
 in the Lord, that I may fulfill it. May his strength be 
 perfected in my weakness, to the end that in him no labor 
 of mine may be in vain, and that the service to-day in- 
 augurated may increasingly redound to the praise and glory 
 of his name. 
 
 
Date Due 
 
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