The Foreign Mission Seminary as a Center of Learning by M. E. Olsen

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 4, 1913

The Foreign Mission Seminary as a Center of Learning

By M. E. Olsen

IN the course of my visits to various churches in different parts of the Middle West and East in the last few weeks in the interests of the denominational history, I have been asked many questions in regard to the Foreign Mission Seminary, and it is to answer some of these questions that I take the liberty to write these lines for the REVIEW.

Some seem to labor under the impression that because the Seminary makes a specialty of training young men and women for the foreign fields, it does not carry the higher collegiate studies. This is essentially untrue. While the Seminary does not at present conduct a regular course leading up to the degree of A. B., it does carry a large list of collegiate studies, including all those which are most helpful in training young

men for the ministry, and for Bible teaching in our schools.

Moreover, and this is a matter of great moment, in carrying on these studies the Seminary has the advantage of using the Library of Congress, one of the great world libraries, with a collection of books and pamphlets, some of them very rare ones, numbering two million. The fact that a five-cent ride on the trolley-car will land a student of the Seminary right in front of this library, where he will have free access to this magnificent collection of books, as well as the cordial assistance of the men in charge, who are specialists in various lines of research, is something that every student hungry for knowledge will take into account; for it is not simply text-book study of a subject that counts most in these days, but it is being able to go into it thoroughly, to consult not one but many authorities, and arrive at conclusions which will take in all that has been said of importance on the subject.

Not only does the Seminary student have this unique opportunity for research, but he is assisted in it by his teachers, and the work of the school is planned with this in view. As teachers we set it before us not so much to develop the memory, but to train the judgment, to stimulate original inquiry, to give the mind breadth of view, insight, power of discrimination. And we can do this the better because the general class of students who come here are not young people sent here by their parents, but young men and women who come of their own accord because they are hungry for knowledge.

If it is thought that thoroughness and depth are not needed for the foreign field, that is a great mistake. Our most experienced leaders in the great mission field are insistently calling for young men with the highest intellectual fitness, and we feel as teachers that if a good training is required for the home field, how much more is it necessary that the workers who are sent thousands of miles away at heavy expense should be men and women who have made the very most of their talents by very thorough intellectual training.

As a matter of fact, we have in addition to the young people who are preparing for the foreign field, a goodly number who are getting ready to give the message in the large cities of the United States, and these find that their needs intellectually as well as spiritually are very much the same as those of the men and women in training for the foreign field. M. E. OLSEN.