theology. New Testament studies include the three courses of introduction, exegesis. and the life of Christ. Courses are offered also in social economics, Christian ethics, and the philosophy of religion.

A feature of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary requires notice. The plan of instruction is quite similar to that of the University of Virginia. Every department of study is elective, and a separate degree is given upon graduating in cach department; and the degree of "full graduate" when all have been completed or " English graduate" when all, except Hebrew and Greek. Many students remain only one year, others two, electing certain departments at pleasure, with advice of the professors. "We are satisfied from thirty years of experience," says Dr. Broadus, "that the elective works best when complete and consistent."

OPTIONAL STUDIES.

The optional studies of the theological seminaries are languages and those special courses of individual or collective inquiry and mutual criticism that are ca led seminariums, or, to use the Latin form, seminaria. An illustration of this seminarium may be found in the case of the Lane Theological Seminary, which has as an optional course a "special class for the study and criticism of the literary sources of ancient church history," once a week throughout the year, the chief subject of investigation during 1889-90 being the formation of the New Testament canon.

But the great optionals are the Semitic languages, the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and perhaps the German language, which shows some indications of becoming as much the language of Protestant theology as Latin is of the Roman Catholic. At Yale it is noted that Sanscrit may be studied under Prof. Whitney, of the college proper. Of the twelve or thirteen schools reporting optional courses in the languages with which Hebrew is cognate but two mention in addition the study of the hieroglyphics. One of these, the Theological Seminary of the Dutch Reform Church, offers in each of its three years a course in Contic or Hieroglyphic, while the other, the theological seminary at Andover, Mass., offers instruction to the middle and senior classes in Egyptology, including the elements of the hieroglyphs, or in Assyriology. The course of the schools then, taking them altogether, is well confined to the languages of the Semitic group, with a preference for the northern branch, as might be expected from the religious literature its languages contain, though the study of the ancient or Biblical Hebrew should not be classed among the optional studies of our seminaries.

The following statements will illustrate various phases of the course of instruction in the optional languages:

1.-As to organization of the classes.

THE COGNATE ORIENTAL LANGUAGES AT UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

(See page 933 for time table.)

All the studies in this department are optional. The class in Biblical Aramaic will study the grammar of that language with selections from the Aramaic of the Bible, in the second term, with Prof. Brown. Those who have already studied Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic may unite with the Syriac and Arabic classes, which are organized in alternate years (1889–90, Syriac; 1890-91, Arabic), so that in regular order the three classes may pursue Biblical Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic. The Syriac class will study Syriac grammar, and read selections from the Peshitto version in the first term, and read selections from Bar-Hebraeus and Ephraem Syrus in the second term with Prof. Briggs. The Arabic class will study the Arabic grammar, and read selections from the version of Saadia in the first term, and read selections from the Koran, in connection with a more particular study of Arabic syntax, in the second term with Prof. Briggs.

There will be two Assyrian classes, composed of those who have already studied Hebrew, and two of the Cognates. The one will study the Assyrian characters and grammar, and read selections from the historical inscriptions during the second term with Prof. Brown. The second class will consist of those who have already passed through the first class. They will read selections from the historical and mythological inscriptions and the syllabaries. Lectures will also be given on Babylonian and Assyrian literature, and on the history of the Assyrian language and the cuneiform signs. This course will be extended through both terms with Prof. Brown.

2. As to character of course offered.

DEPARTMENT OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES AND OLD TESTAMENT EXEGESIS OF HAMILTON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,

1. Hebrew:

SEMITIC LANGUAGES.

(1) Grammar, with practical exercises.

First year.

(2) The prose accents and accentuation.

(3) Translation and study of selections from the historical books.

2. Elements of comparative Semitic philology.

1. Hebrew:

(1) Prosody, with practical exercises.

(2) Poetic accentuation.

Second year.

(3) Translation and study of selections from the poetical books.

2. Syriac (elective):

(1) Grammar, with practical exercises.

(2) Translation and study of selections from the Peshitto Old Testament. (3) Translation and study of selections from historians and commentators. 3. Assyrian (optional):

(1) Translation and study of selections from the Peschitto New Testament. (2) Translation and study of selections in verse.

4. Assyrian (optional):

Translation and study of cuneiform texts.

5. Arabic (optional):

(1) Grammar, with practical exercises.

(2) Translation and study of selections from the Koran and the Arabic Bible. (3) Translation and study of selections from the poets.

6. Comparative Semitic philology and grammar (optional).

To illustrate the intermitting system of the elective course the work at Oberlin Theological Seminary is given:

Comparative Semitic and Septuagint Greek.-In 1890, and every second year, a class will be formed in the Greek of the Septuagint with special reference to the influence of the vocabulary and grammar of that important version upon the New Testament Greek. In 1891, and every second year, a class will make a beginning in comparative Semitic grammar by reading comparatively the first four chapters of Genesis in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic; 40 hours.

At the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, whose peculiarity of independence of schools has been noted, twelve collateral studies, previously irregularly pursued in private classes, have been organized into definite specialties for resident or under-graduates. The first four of these schools deal with Ara

bic, Aramaic, Assyrian, and the Coptic languages, but it is of the sixth, the eighth, and the twelfth that mention is made here. The sixth course is in Patristic Greek, and during the year "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" and portions of Justin Martyr, etc., were read. The eighth course is in Patristic and scholastic Latin, with readings in Tertullian, Augustine, Bede's History, and the Imitation of Christ. The twelfth course deals with German, as is shown by the following:

Theological German.-The importance of the German language is appreciated by numbers of students in theology. A special class has been regularly organized for beginners; advanced students who shall prosecute with the professor a course of reading in German works of exegesis, church history, systematic or practical theology, will in the future be entitled to a diploma for attainments in this course. The junior class for the present year has mastered the forms and read considerably in the New Testament. The senior class has read largely in the Old Testament.

At the School of Theology of Boston University Spanish is an optional study for those intending to labor among Spanish-American populations. The instruction is given in this as in a number of other studies in the College of Lib. eral Arts of the University. The same advantages are offered at Yale and other seminaries which are university departments.

POST GRADUATE COURSES.

Postgraduate work is individual, and when such students are congregated into classes their work is but the work of the seminarium. A fourth year of work was established at the Andover Seminary as early as 1858, but only survived for a short period. In 1881 it was again established and on a firm basis.

FOREIGN DEPARTMENTS.

When George Primrose, the son of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, went to Holland to teach the natives English he found his purpose frustrated by his inability to speak Dutch. It has long been found necessary to teach the missionary to the Indian the language of those among whom he is to labor and even to send out native preachers, and quite an effort has been made by several schools during the last decade to educate a ministry that is to deal with our foreign populations. This effort is not only Christian and denominational but patriotic. At the Old German Theological School of Newark (Presbyterian) it is held as a fundamental principle that "to reach any powerful body of foreign people in a large way there must be a native ministry springing from among the people themselves. In view of the great power of the German people in this land it is wise to concede the German language during the period of transition. Success in German churches among adult Germans by ministers preaching exclusively in the English tongue is exceptional, depends on special individual genius, and can not be depended upon for a general system of evangelization. *** In order to bring the German mind-educated through a long history so entirely different from our own into sympathy with our doctrine and practice, a rightly devised and wisely conducted indoctrination of the German mind is necessary. * **The instruction should be in both languages. * * * The graduate as an individual should gravitate towards the German flock, the pastor and flock as a mass should gravitate towards the American life. * * The practical effect of the education of German ministers by our established American theological seminaries has been to educate the student away from the German people, thus gaining the individual pastor but losing the flock."

*

The German Baptist churches in America, according to the Rochester Theological Seminary, were, in 1850, only 10 in number1 and, as their number increased many young men of mature years felt themselves called upon to preach the gospel to their countrymen, and the course of the German department, established many years ago, was arranged to suit their scholastic attainments. The course of instruction is subject to modification, according to the needs of the students. The study of the English language does not cease with the second year, but is continued by attendance at many of the lectures and other exercises of the English department. The course of instruction, now extended to six years, is divided into two parts; first, a preparatory or academic course, embracing the three lower classes; and, secondly, the theological course proper, embracing the three higher classes. Students in these higher classes not infrequently continue at the same time their academic studies.

To meet "manifest and growing needs" the German department of the Chicago Theological Seminary was opened in 1882, the Dano-Norwegian in 1884, and the Swedish in 1885. 66 The German department is in close connection with the German Seminary at Crete, Nebr., and has already received students from it. The Swedish department has the approval of many of the Swedish churches in this country, both among those which are independent and those which belong to the 'forbundet.' The Dano-Norwegian department has no ecclesiastical connections. It originated in the suggestion of a banker in Chicago, a Norwegian by birth, who has rendered it pecuniary aid." These foreign sections of the school are thus described:

The departments are under the charge of able and judicious teachers of high Christian character, graduates of foreign universities. The instruction given to the students in these departments is similar to that of the special [English] course, and it is expected that they will, as far as possible, attend lectures in the middle and senior years with the regular classes. It is required, also, that all foreign students shall take at least two exercises a week each year in their own languages. They are allowed to omit in the English course, in the first year, homiletics and natural theology; in the second year, Old Testament intro iuction; and in the third year, pastoral theology. They have an equivalent for these studies in their own languages. Instruction in English is given

I Now 150.

to those who are not familiar with that language by Rev. Reinert August Jernberg, a native of Norway, a graduate of Yale College and of Chicago Theological Seminary.

The Slavic department of the Oberlin Seminary was opened at the instance of the officers of the American Home Missionary Society, and has for its object the training of young men of Slavic descent for missionary work among their countrymen in the United S ates. The course of study now occupies three years, and is pursued in English and Bohemian. In Bohemian, the students are taught by a native teacher the correct use of the language, and are drilled in the preparation and delivery of such addresses as are likely to be required of them. The students for this department are obtained through the instrumentality of the superintendent of missionary work among the Slavic people.

Quite as near to national sympathy, and, in a certain sense, still more deserving of it, are the descendants of those who occupied the territory now covered by a European civilization and also of those who were brought here for the purpose of being sold into perpetual slavery. An interpretation of the Constitution' has made the Indian a peculiar kind of foreigner in our imperium, and an amendment to the Constitution has made the negro a member of our body politic. The General Government cares for and educates the first, while the other has been launched into the struggle for existence without further provision than the constitutional provision referred to, and an education in the public schools of his native State. The improvement effected in the social condition and enlightenment of these two races is largely, if not entirely, due to religious enthusiasm. There is not an American denomination of wealth or power that has not distinguished itself in this work, and it would be invidious to make distinction further than to say that the Protestant churches have operated largely in the South as well as in the West, and that the Roman Catholic Church has also been eminently successful in missionary work among the Indians.

If we bear in mind the injunction of the German Theological School and the practice of the foreign departments of certain seminaries, one Indian school especially calls for our attention. The Santee Normal Training School was established in 1870 for the purpose of educating native teachers, preachers, interpreters, and business men for the Dakota or Sioux Nation. The great object of the work is to prepare a native agency which shall work the regeneration of a race "which is so thoroughly controlled in all their ideas and customs by their own religion that no change of life is possible except through the substitution of another." Hence, while the students are fitted for citizenship, care is taken to maintain their common interest in, and sympathy with, their own race. This gives law to the methods and makes it needful to use two languag s in order to make the student a competent instructor among his own people.. The very idea of education had to be planted in the Indian mind, says Dr. Riggs, the principal. The following are the studies pursued:

1 Worcester vs. State of Georgia, 6 Peters. The Rev. Samuel A. Worcester, having been seized while performing, under the sanction of the chief magistrate, the duties of a minister of the gospel among the Cherokees, and having been condemned for thereby violating as an intruder a law of Georgia, to four years' hard labor, appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which declared the Cherokees a nation, over which Georgia had no control, Chief Justice Marshall delivering the opinion.

The language of the American negro being English and as he is no longer a heathen, the scope of instruction of the colored theological school is to educate the colored pastor as well as train him as a minister. Thus it follows that the course in a majority of the theological institutions or departments is very simple, being confined in its religious branches to the study of the Bible and of church history. Of the seminary type, however, is the course the Gammon Theological Seminary and that of the theological department of Howard University. In both, however, Hebrew and Greek are optional. In regard to the course in these languages the dean of the latter institution informs the Bureau that they are "for those who have had the advantages of a college education. Most of the students take the English course of study."

In closing this subject, which might as well have been headed "missionary" as "foreign departments," a project of the Boston University to enlarge the usual missionary department into a distinct course, is to be mentioned. In its scientific aspect the course might be called a department of the philosophy and comparison of religions with special reference to missionary labor. As sketched the course is of three years.

CHAIRS ON THE RELATION OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION.

One of the results of the conflict between science and those who believe in revealed religion appears to be the foundation and endowment of new chairs in our theological seminaries, with the view of studying the matter, which may be considered, in military parlance, as carrying the war into Africa. The theological seminary at Columbia, S. C., has a Perkins, professor of natural science in connection with revelation and Christian apologetics; the seminary at Princeton, N. J., has a Stuart, professor of the relations of philosophy and science to the Christian religion; the San Francisco Seminary has a Montgomery professor of apologetics and missions, while the seminary at Oberlin has a Douglass lectureship on the relations of science and religion, and on comparative religion. The scope of this instruction, as might be expected, is very intimately connected with apologetics. At least this is the case at the Columbia (S. C.) Seminary, whose course in the department of natural science, in connection with revelation and Christian apologetics, is concerned in its first year, with the philosophy or basis of religion, in its second with comparative religion, or the study of the forms in which theism has manifested itself, and in its third year with the connection of science with revelation. Of a less apologetic nature from the standpoint of Christianity as a revealed religion and more related to the science of religions, if such a term be allowed, is the comparative study of the religions of the world. The great enterprise of Oxford in publishing the sacred books of Oriental peoples, the remarkable interpretations of Greek, Roman, and Teutonic mythology and folklore, a revival, it would seem, of the exegesis of later Hellenic writers,' the work of Sanskrit scholars, Egyptologists, and Assyriologists in France, Germany, and England, have created an enthusiasm in the direction of inquiry into the scientific basis of theism that has forced its way into the professional schools of Christian theology, though the study is apologetic only so far as it brings out in strong relief the religion of the peoples of Europe against the background furnished by the religions of the conservative peoples of the Orient. The work of the Divinity School of Boston University will illustrate a course in

Comparative theology.-Introduction to the history of religion, comparative theology, and the philosophy of religion; special examination of the ChaldæoAssyrian, the Egyptian, Persian, Indo-Aryan, Chinese, Greek, and Teutonic religions; comparative cosmology and mythical geography of the most ancient nations; essays and discussions.

The courses of the Presbyterian seminaries at Princeton and San Francisco are more particularly concerned as yet with theism and anti-theistic theories. The Princeton course does not seem to be definitely fixed. The dean of the Ryder Divinity School of Lombard University informs the Bureau that the course of that school gives prominence to the relations subsisting between science and religion. The course of the department of the seminary at Columbia, S. C., is given in full.

1 Hibbert Lectures for 1888, Lecture III.