ARTICLE II.-THE THEOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT ESSENTIAL IN A UNIVERSITY.

THE occasion determines my subject.* I have only to utter the thought which this transaction expresses: The Theological Department is essential in a University.

Various lines of thought here solicit attention.

Since religion is vital to the welfare of society, and is the most important agency in human culture, it is essential that the best practical training be provided for its teachers, that they may be wise, earnest, and efficient in their Christian work; and that, enriched with piety and culture, they may quicken in our hard-working, care-worn people the aspirations and endeavors of the higher and immortal part, and elicit from the prosaic affairs of ordinary existence the light and beauty of spiritual life; like the bee, which, in the words of Swift, "visits all the flowers of the field and the garden. . . . and by an universal search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax, ..... thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest things, sweetness and light."

It is important also to consider the reciprocal influence of the theological department and the university. This department is not, indeed, intended to provide direct religious influence for the other schools. Every school is responsible to provide an education healthy in its religious influence and reverential in its spirit. The theological department does not obtrude its teaching or its exhortation on the others. But as a center of religious thought and Christian faith within the university, as the recognition by the university of religion as fundamental in human character and of theology as indispensable in human thought, as the voice of the university declaring Christian faith to be in harmony with all science, and the knowledge of God

*This Article is the Inaugural Address, delivered by Prof. SAMUEL HARRIS, at his induction to the Dwight Professorship of Theology in the Theological Department of Yale College, Oct. 10, 1871.

to be essential to the completeness of the circle of knowledge, the religious influence of the department on the university itself, though silent and unobtrusive, is constant and powerful.

On the other hand, the influence of the university on the theological department is important and beneficent. The opportunities here generously afforded to the theological students to attend the lectures of the university and otherwise to be recipients of its instructions are gratefully appreciated. And the atmosphere of scientific and literary culture, in which the student lives, is constantly refining, enlarging, and liberalizing him. Besides these, and not the least of the considerations inviting attention, is the reciprocal influence of these departments in making men engaged in various lines of investigation acquainted and capable of understanding and appreciating each other, and thus contributing to bring to an end the jealousy between the students of science and of religion which arises largely from mutual ignorance.

But time will not permit me to follow out these lines of thought. I confine myself to a single proposition: The department of theology is essential in a university, because theology is a legitimate sphere of knowledge and essential to complete the circle of intelligence.

Uneasy relations have always existed between theology and natural science. Theologians have been wont to exhibit fearful apprehensions lest discoveries in natural science should undermine religious belief; as if there were danger that the credit of the Author of Nature would not endure a close scrutiny of His works. In an ancient writing, by some attributed to Origen, such a jealousy was expressed as to the scientific researches of the astronomer Ptolemy: "Who will not be amazed at the thought and care spent on these calculations? This Ptolemy, who has so closely studied these things, is not altogether a useless person. I am only grieved that, being of recent times, he could be of no service to the giants, who, knowing nothing of these measurements, thought that the heavens were near us, and endeavored to build a tower to reach them. If Ptolemy had been there to instruct them, they would not have labored in vain. Oh, idle knowledge, that puffs up

the soul! Oh, faithless faith, that is no faith! That Ptolemy should be thought 'the wisest of men' by those who cultivate this kind of knowledge!" In the eighth century, Virgilius, Bishop of Salzburg in Bavaria, was threatened with excommunication for teaching the existence of antipodes. Zachary the Pope wrote to Bishop Boniface respecting him: "As to the perverse and wicked doctrine which against God and his own soul he has advanced, if it shall be ascertained that he declares that there is another world and other inhabitants beneath the earth, then call a council, deprive him of his sacerdotal honor, and excommunicate him from the church."

On the other hand, the students of science sometimes put themselves in sharp antagonism to theology. Comte teaches that knowledge is limited to phenomena. He further denied that man can have any scientific knowledge of his own mental operations through his own consciousness, and taught that human knowledge is limited to phenomena observed by the senses, with their classification by resemblances and coördination by their uniform sequences. The most distinguished teachers of the so-called positive science in this country and in England repudiate Comte as its exponent. But if science, misled, declares itself incompatible with theology, this sweeping conclusion of Comte is the conclusion which it must accept and defend. There can be no middle ground. It must deny that both theology and philosophy are legitimate subjects of investigation. Although the most profound thought of the ages has been expended on these subjects, it must insist these were but transitory phases of human thought, through which the mind. of the race must necessarily pass in its progress to positive science; that therefore educated minds and institutions of education have no concern whatever with these subjects, not even to oppose them, since, with the inevitable progress of the human mind, they must be left behind and sink forever below the horizon of thought.

History thus far has proved that there is no good reason for the jealousy of theology and science. Science has in repeated instances seemed opposed to Christian truth; but further discovery or more correct reasoning has removed the antagonism, and gained from science in that very particular a confirmation of

religious truth. It is time this jealousy should cease, and that all believers in Christianity and all students of science unite with the father of modern philosophy in the reverential medi tation: "Thy creatures have been my books, but Thy Scriptures much more. I have sought Thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found Thee in Thy temples." "Let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word or the book of God's works, divinity or philosophy, but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or proficiency in both;-only let men beware that they apply both to charity and not to swelling; and, again, that they do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings together."

I. In support of my proposition I say, first, that the seeming antagonism of natural science and theology disappears, if we observe Lord Bacon's caution, just cited, that we "do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings together." This would appear if we distinguish three spheres of knowledge by its objects, nature, man, and God. But we do not go to the heart of the subject in this comparatively crude classification. What I affirm is that the knowledge of God is essential to complete our intelligence respecting any one object. We cannot complete our intelligence respecting nature without the knowledge of God; and we cannot complete the circle of intelligence respecting man without the knowledge of God. Whatever is the particular object of study, the knowledge of God is necessary to complete our intelligence respecting it.

This explanation being kept in mind, we may distinguish three "learnings," science, philosophy, and theology. We cannot complete the circle of intelligence respecting any object till we know it in the light of science, philosophy, and theology. A clear apprehension of the distinctness of these three is necessary to show their harmony. This distinct apprehension let us try to attain.

We first observe facts presented to us by the senses and our own consciousness, or learned from the well attested observations of others. These observed facts we classify according to

their resemblance and coördinate according to their uniform sequences. When a uniform sequence is established by unvarying observation, we call it a law of nature and rest on it the prevision and prediction of phenomena. This we call science, or, for the sake of precision, positive science.

But the sphere of human intelligence outreaches the sphere of science and encompasses it. Science acknowledges, in the words of Herbert Spencer, that "there must exist some principle which, as being the basis of science, cannot be explained by science." The roots of intelligence strike deep and wide into the unseen; far as the tree of knowledge spreads its branches, leafy and fruitful, in the light of day, so far must it spread its roots in the unseen. Or, to use a different illustration, that which is held in the cup cannot at the same time contain the cup. In the observations and coördinations of science itself, the observer necessarily comes in sight of a reality transcending and encompassing the phenomena of science, the existence of which science must acknowledge, but which science by its processes cannot fathom and comprehend-a sphere of intelligence encompassing science as the sea encompasses the land. Travel within the sphere of science in whatever direction you will, sooner or later you come in sight of that all-comprehending ocean.

"So in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Our souls catch sight of the immortal sea
Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."

It is inherent in rationality that the mind must push its inquiries into the sphere of intelligence beyond the observation of phenomena. The child asks: "What did that?" and when answered, asks again: "What for?"--the two great questions. pertaining to the efficient and final cause. God has made the human mind thus, that by the necessity of its rationality, as the needle to the pole, it may turn to Him, the first cause and final end, of Whom and for Whom are all things. The mind finds in its own rationality principles regulating all its think