33 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



stimulate it, being ignorant of its nature ? A man may know the 

 Bible, from Genesis to Revelation ; he may know every theological 

 treatise from the day of Augustine to the day of Dr. Taylor ; and, if 

 he does not understand human nature, he is not fit to preach. 



Suppose a man should undertake to cut off your leg because he had 

 been a tool-maker ? He had made lancets, probes, saws, and that sort 

 of thing all his life ; but he had never seen a man's leg amputated, 

 and did not know exactly where the arteries or veins lie. Suppose he 

 should think that making surgeons' tools fitted him to be a surgeon 

 would it ? The surgeon must know his tools and how to handle them, 

 but he must know, too, the system on which he is going to use them. 

 And shall a man, charged with the care of the soul, sharpen up his 

 understanding with moral distinctions and learned arguments, and 

 know all about the theories of theology, from Adam down to our day, 

 and yet know nothing of the organism upon which all these instru- 

 mentalities are to be used ? Shall he know nothing about man him- 

 self? The student who goes out to his work with a wide knowledge 

 of theology, and no knowledge of human nature, is not half fitted for 

 his duty. One reason why so many succeed is, that, although they 

 have no formal instruction in human nature, they have learned much 

 in the family and in the school and by other indirect methods, and so 

 have a certain stock I might say an illegitimate stock of knowl- 

 edge, but which was not provided in the system of their studies. 



If I might be allowed to criticise the general theological course, or 

 to recommend any thing in relation to it, I should say that one of the 

 prime constituents of the training should be a study of the human 

 soul and body from beginning to end. We must arouse and stimulate 

 men, and seek to bring them into new relations with truth, with our- 

 selves, and with the community. 



There is another consideration that we cannot blink, and that is, 

 that we are in danger of having the intelligent part of society go past 

 us. The study of human nature is not going to be left in the hands 

 of the church or the ministry. It is going to be a part of every sys- 

 tem of liberal education, and. will be pursued on a scientific basis. 

 There is being now applied among scientists a greater amount of real, 

 searching, discriminating thought, tentative and experimental, to the 

 whole structure and functions of man and the method of the develop- 

 ment of mental force, than ever has been expended upon it in the 

 whole history of the world put together. More men are studying it, 

 and they are coming to results, and these results are starting, directly 

 or indirectly, a certain kind of public thought and feeling. In reli- 

 gion, the psychological school of mental philosophers are not going to 

 run in the old grooves of Christian doctrine. They are not going to 

 hold the same generic ideas respecting men; and if ministers do not 

 make their theological systems conform to facts as they are if they 

 do not recognize what men are studying, the time will not be far dis- 



