I 



THE PLACE OF THEOLOGY IN THE WORK 

 AND GROWTH OF THE CHURCH 



THE study of theology may be looked at from several 

 distinct points of view. It is manifest, in the first 

 place, that a study which enters so deeply into the region 

 of personal life is capable not only of being loved and 

 cultivated, but of being hated and proscribed. This is a 

 character which in great measure distinguishes all the 

 sciences that deal with man from those that are con 

 cerned with nature. But the prerogative of appealing 

 to the heart as well as to the intellect belongs in peculiar 

 measure to the topics with which theology concerns 

 itself. No problems are so radical in their influence on 

 the whole scheme of human life as those that handle 

 the existence, the nature, the revelation of God ; and so 

 the very right of theology to exist and to discuss these 

 things becomes, in a pre-eminent degree, subject of fierce 

 controversy. But even the enemies of theology are 

 divided into several distinct camps. There are those 

 who regard all theology as jugglery, because they hold 

 all religion to be superstition. Religion is conceived 

 as a morbid condition, affecting certain stages of human 

 development ; and the study of its phenomena forms part 

 of the science of social pathology. A more modern school 

 of thinkers detects the unhistorical complexion of this 

 view, observing that religion has exerted an unquestion 

 able influence in carrying forward the moral and social 



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