SHORT PAPERS 295 



was as elaborate and as complex as the " Higher Criticism " of our own day. 

 Mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and physical geography were cultivated and 

 developed to a remarkable degree, and the epicyclical theory of the heavens, after- 

 wards called the Ptolemaic system, was originated by an Alexandrian. Clement, 

 Origen, Athanasius, and hundreds of other great Christian scholars of Alexandria, 

 were the leading representatives of all its ancient learning as well as the per- 

 sonifications of the great philosophical and religious synthesis accomplished by 

 Christianity. Consequently before the Christian church engaged in the enterprise 

 of organizing education she had accumulated and made her own all the intellectual 

 capital of the ancient world. She was heir to the practical genius of Rome, to the 

 revelation and religious enthusiasm of the Jew, and to the sublime speculations 

 and artistic sensibility of the Greek. To inspire and guide her in the administration 

 of this vast inheritance, for the highest and holiest purposes of humanity, there 

 was the example and the teaching of Him who had shed His blood in order that 

 the light-giving and the life-giving truth might reach all who sit in darkness and 

 in the shadow of death. 



The Genetic Method 



In the intellectual movement of our time there is nothing more remarkable 

 than the eminent position assigned to historical studies. This is due to a pro- 

 found conviction that to understand thoroughly what a thing is we must know its 

 growth and development. The category of " becoming " is regarded as the key 

 to the category of " being." In other words, it is held that every important stage 

 of the development of an institution is successively organized into its system, so 

 that its genesis gives the best insight into its genius and constitution. If we 

 apply this genetic or historical method to the educational problem, the conclusion 

 will be forced upon us that the Christian religion is the most efficient educational 

 organization which on historical grounds could have appeared in the world. It 

 combined and systematized every principle of enlightenment, every educational 

 method of preceding ages, so that any careful student of history may trace a 

 continuity between the municipal and other schools of the Greco-Roman world 

 and the parochial, palatine, and cathedral schools of the Middle Ages. 



What is Modern Progress 



What, it may be asked, is meant by modern progress from which the Church's 

 life and methods are said to be alienated? The term progress by itself is an 

 abstraction, a mere formal expression that derives definite content from its aims 

 and methods. Progress towards a certain goal and by certain methods can alone 

 have any real signification. We ah 1 know what is meant by material progress. It 

 consists in obtaining increasing control over the forces of nature that they may 

 be made to minister to man's necessities and conveniences. In reference to this 

 vaunted element of modern progress Dr. Harnack, in his well-known book, The 

 Essence of Christianity, says: " When a man grows older and sees more deeply 

 into life he does not find, if he possesses any inner world at all, that he is advanced 

 by the external march of things." The entire basis of every distinctive element 

 in modern progress is the inductive method, which, as an instrument of observa- 

 tion and experiment, has been most fruitful, but which has never yet been 

 reduced to a satisfactory logical principle. Either every inductive argument of 

 the modern type is admittedly an argument in a circle or the conclusion is wider 

 than the premises. If we pass from the contemplation of one science to the 

 sciences taken collectively, they are only disjecta membra; there is no synthetic or 

 philosophic unity which embraces and coordinates them all. It is easier to read 

 the signs of the times in the practical than in the speculative order. The philo- 



