SECTION B 

 PROFESSIONAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 



(Hall 1, September 22, 3 p. m.) 



_ SPEAKERS : PRESIDENT CHARLES CUTHBERT HAi,L,Union Theological Seminary. 



PROFESSOR FRANK K. SANDERS, Yale University. 



SECRETARY: PROFESSOR HERBERT L. WILLETT, Disciples Divinity House, 

 Chicago, Illinois. 



THE TEACHING OF THEOLOGY 



BY CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL 



[Charles Cuthbert Hall, President of the Union Theological Seminary, New York 

 City. b. New York City, New York, September 3, 1852; A.B. Williams Col- 

 lege, 1872; Union Theological Seminary, 1875; D.D. University of New York; 

 Harvard and Yale Universities. Minister of Union Presbyterian Church, New- 

 burgh, N. Y., 1875-77; First Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., 1877-91. 

 Fellow of the State Geographical Society. Member of the National Geo- 

 graphic Society. Author of Into His Marvelous Light; Evangelical Hymnal; 

 Does God Send Trouble ? Barrows Lectures to India and the Far East.] 



ONE of the purposes of the International Congress of Arts and 

 Science is understood to be the promotion of closer relations between 

 the several branches of human knowledge. Truth being the com- 

 mon possession of all men, homogeneous, without the possibility 

 of self-contradiction, the sympathetic coordination of all lines of 

 approach to truth is in conformity with reason and morality. The 

 conflict of one science with others, the segregation of one science 

 from others on grounds of prudence, reverence, prejudice, or pride, 

 is contrary to intellectual and moral right. The elements of know- 

 ledge are every one members one of another. There can be no schism 

 in the body of the truth without violation of its first law. 



Touching many departments of knowledge there is no need to 

 argue this thesis. Its reasonableness is self-evident. None would 

 dream of placing the student of chemistry under restrictions not 

 exacted from the student of astronomy; nor of protecting either 

 discipline from the vicissitudes of opinion produced by a changing 

 state of knowledge. On the open field of the university there must 

 be no cloistered retreats of authority, where fallacy and error may 

 take shelter from the searching judgments of reality. On that 

 threshing-floor of intellectual honesty there must be no corners 

 fenced from the winnowing fan. Only thus can the prestige of 

 universities henceforth survive. It is not their antiquity nor their 

 wealth that ennobles them; it is their love of truth and their fidelity 

 to the facts of ascertained knowledge. 



