Manner of Preaching

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 11, 1873

Manner of Preaching.

DR. WAYLAND, in his work on “the Ministry of the Gospel,” makes the following remarks on the defects of the common system of theological education. All may be profited by the suggestions he makes.

OUR system of theological education is unlike that of any other intended to prepare men for the active duties of life. In a law school, every opportunity is given by practice in moot-courts, for acquiring facility in the management of cases; and, besides this, every young lawyer enters an office, and is employed in making out legal papers, attending courts, looking up decisions, and doing everything that the law will allow, for the purpose of acquiring practical skill in his profession. The medical student, for a few months in the year, attends lectures; but he at the same time visits the hospitals to observe the modes of treatment, and spends the remainder of the year in the office of a regular physician, observing his practice, visiting patients with him, and, whenever it can be done, taking charge of patients himself, that he may become acquainted with the every-day duties of his calling. In normal schools, the pupil attends lectures on the subjects of instruction; but he is called upon daily to put these lectures into practice, and he is required to teach continually, and thus become prepared to teach for himself. On the contrary, our theological students are collected together in large dormitories, where they associate with no others than themselves, and, for three years, read books and attend lectures and recitations, being, in many cases, even discouraged from preaching, unless at the close of their course. Their views of the ministry are formed, not from the observation and experience of actual life, but from the conversations of young men with each other. They of necessity enter the ministry with no practical knowledge of its duties; and that they should be ignorant of the best methods of presenting the truth to living men, is only a thing to be expected. Were men in other departments of life to pursue a similar course, must it not lead to inevitable failure?