The seminary method of original study in the historical sciences, illustrated from church history

Front matter

INARY METHOD

ORIGINAL STllDY E HISTORICAL SCIENCES,

UGH FOSTER, Ph.D,

Preface

THIS little work has grown out of the experiences of a practical teacher. It is intended primarily for students. It seeks to convey to them that information which they are found to need before they can enter upon the work of original study. The " Seminary " is a new institution in this country, and there gather about it no traditions, as about other and established methods. Students in general when beginning original historical work, are not ready for it, as they are for Latin or Chemistry when they begin those studies, and this lays limitations upon the teacher which he must recognize, and which must determine the course of his instruction. The student needs to have an introduction to the Seminary. He needs minute explanations of the method in forms which he can employ as models till he has gained for himself an independent grasp of it. It is the purpose of this book to supply the want of such minute instruction.

More especially for the teacher, but also for the student, there have been added some discussions of the proper range of this form of study, and of the

vii

Vin PREFACE.

limitations under which it should be conducted in our colleges. Lists of topics are also provided. It is not supposed that any teacher will use these exactly as they stand; but they will suggest to him profitable lines of instruction in other subjects to which his peculiar circumstances may direct him. No exhaustive discussion of the " Seminary " as found at present in American universities has been attempted, for this would be outside the proper scope of such a book as this. The examples and suggestions that are given in this direction are intended as hints only.

A subordinate aim with the writer has been to do something to elevate the standard of scholarship in our theological seminaries. It is his conviction that they need to press forward with other university departments in perfecting their methods and in advancing the character of the work they secure from their students. They should be not only abreast of their compeers, they should even lead them.

Contents

PAGE.

Introduction. i

The term " Historical Sciences." Other sciences have a historical side. Range of original study. Its method the object of this book. Necessity to Americans of an independent grasp of History. The book suitable for all Sem-

II

Defined by explaining the Seminary for Church History as an example. General Histories of the Church. Use of them. Do not give an understanding of History. Definition of the term •" Sources. " Benefits of this study. Origin of the " Seminary." Its definition. Its apartments. Its furniture. Library. Methods of instruction.

III. The Necessary Preparation for Seminary 22 Study

Members of the Seminary must be picked. Kind of attainments presupposed. Defects in the classical training of ix x CONTENTS.

American students. How they are to be remedied. Learn languages by using them. How to read a language. Possibility of this. Method of learning the art. Effects of this upon the study. Other deficiencies to be overcome.

IV

"Orientation." Guide-books. How to open sources. How to understand the authors read. Historical imagination. Ramification of topics. Parallel and illustrative passages. Note-taking. How to trace the ramifications of topics. Example. When the student may rely upon other writers. What sub-topics are worth following out. Negative results valuable. The irrelevant is the logically irrelevant. "Judicious skipping." Dangers. Finish in work. Value of sources considered as testimony. Cross-examination of witnesses. Principal frauds already known. Study of the literature of the topic. Use of the completed study. System of the Seminary. The necessity of a Director.

V. Detailed Examples 52

I. The significance of the Colloquy at Marburg. II. Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Great Britain, 1861-65. III. Augustine's Conception of the Constitution of the Human Mind.

VI. The Place of Original Study of History

in a Theological Seminary . . 85

Is this form of study desirable in an American Theological Seminary? The ideal theological education. Men of independent power wanted. Adaptability of such a man. Call for such men growing louder. Study in the pastorate. Room for original study in the theological course. " Seminaries " wanted in all departments. Need of History. Practical methods. Extent of work to be attempted. Johns Hopkins University and American Institutional His-

CONTENTS. x i

tory. Americans should not continue dependent on Germany. Work upon American History. Study of the History of Doctrine. The New England Theology. Different topics for different Seminaries. Co-operation. A National Society for the study of American Church History.

VII

The Uses and Limits of the Method in Colleges . . . . . . .102

Scope of a College. Preparation for Original Work. No sacrifice of ordinary Work for the sake of the new Method. Prof. Monroe's class in Political Economy. Prof. Adams's earliest attempts in the use of the Method. Practice Work. Limits of this kind of work in College. Harvard University. Lists of topics there used.

Appendix m

Lists of Topics and miscellaneous Information and Suggestions as to Methods.

Index 127

THE SEMINARY METHOD.

Introduction

The " historical sciences " may be defined as those sciences into which history enters as an integral part. Psychology is not such a science. It deals with the present, with facts that are before the student at the present time, and which may be considered in themselves. Systematic theology is not such, for it asks the question, What is the truth, not, What have men believed. Political economy is an historical science, since many of its problems cannot be answered until long lines of historical investigation have been pursued, and the experience of men on certain subjects definitely ascertained. Thus the subject of bimetallism will demand many studies as to the historical relations of gold and silver in use together as money, before there will be any great wisdom for the solution of present problems.

With the non-historical sciences there are often connected in the most intimate association, historical sciences. Psychology has a most interesting and important history of its own. It is also associated with the history of philosophy, a discipline still more intimately connected with metaphysics.

Systematic theology will be without one of the important arguments by which it is to determine what that truth which it exclusively seeks is, unless it hear the voice of history. The history of institutions is of the utmost value to present politics. The range of the subjects which involve history and thus require at some point the application of the historical method, is therefore greatly increased, if one takes a broad view of the field of knowledge.

In all these disciplines the method of original study is the same as that practised in historical seminaries. It differs as to details, but it is the same in its principles. It is the application of the laws of inductive logic, and these are the same everywhere. It differs in the contrivances for getting at the facts, as these differ in their nature ; but when the facts are obtained, they are treated in the same way, whatever the science.

But, wide as is the scope of the historical sciences, as thus conceived, the scope of the seminary method is wider. It may be employed wherever inductive logic is applicable. It is therefore applicable wherever reasoning is employed to secure progress in knowledge, for this is always gained by the use of inductive logic. It may be used in Latin ; for here there are important linguistic problems yet to be solved, and also questions properly historical, to be answered only out of the Latin originals. Exegesis has its inductive problems, biblical theology also ; psychology must proceed after the method of observation and induction; and as for the natural sciences, they have now been taught by the labora-

INTRODUCTION. 3

tory, which is the seminary method, for many years.

This breadth of range which has been given to the seminary method in the practice of some of the most progressive teachers, is justified by the nature of the case. No man is truly a student of any branch until he is an original student. He is never fully interested in study till he begins to pursue it for himself by original methods. Hence it is the duty of all institutions which will fit their students for the highest intellectual service in the world, to train them in this method. Whatever their particular line of study may be, the opportunity is open before them. No branch of learning is shut out from the benefit of the enthusiasm which will come from such study. It is not meant that all students should be thus taught from the beginning of their public education, for this is a manifest impossibility and impropriety. There must be an age of dependent study before that of independent. A man must walk before he can run. It would be a great error to introduce independent work at too early a point in a course of study. But everything which is worthy of being studied at all, has some stage at which it can properly be put into the seminary, to the great profit of both teacher and pupil.

It is in this broad sense that the present book would treat the seminary. A method is the object of the chapters that follow. The discussion is limited for convenience' sake to the historical sciences, and thereby the necessity of considering too wide a variety of methods is avoided. Something must be allowed to the necessities of the case in the way of limitations of the illustrations, and in the form of the whole. The writer's relation to a theological seminary, and the present and prospective requirements of his own pupils have naturally led him to select his illustrations principally from church history. But essentially all that is to be said will apply with suitable modifications to any historical science as well as to church history, and to every other positive and advancing science, though less directly. If the student or the teacher has really seized the idea of the method, he will easily make the necessary modifications for the special study he has in mind himself.

Before we plunge into the midst of our theme, however, let us pause a moment to note how peculiarly necessary the original study of the various subjects which may be handled in a historical manner, is to the American student. We are in a new world in many respects. With a different form of government from any known in the Old World, with a population heterogeneous and daily growing more so, with a territory as large as that of all Europe, it is evident to the most superficial thinker that we shall have very different problems to solve from those which history brings before us in the finished records of the civilized peoples. Histories written by men whose minds were under the influence of the monarchical forms of government under which they lived, will have but little real light to shed upon those questions which are now pressing with fresh force upon our attention, as to the limits which

INTRODUCTION. 5

must be set to the power of combination for purposes of monopolizing trade, and how far our system of leaving great undertakings to individual enterprise is to be modified by the interference of the government. What analogies will assist us from the history of a country which never had a competent revenue, to determine what is to be done with our surplus? It is doubtless true that we need to learn from the united experience of the race, if we are to avoid repeating old blunders, and go on to a larger success than has yet been achieved. But we cannot find what we want, written out for our instruction in the histories as they stand. We must be able to make our own history as we need it, must understand how to interrogate history for ourselves, if we are to have the benefit of intelligible replies. Or, in other words, we must have just that training which the historical seminary is devised to give us.

To be sure, we have always done this as well as we could. Our Declaration of Independence, which has an air of so great newness and philosophical empiricism, really rested upon clear and profound knowledge of what the past was, and what it meant. The same class of men, when they came to prepare the Constitution, brought all the light which they could find in the experience of mankind to their help. But the conditions of life are now growing more complex. We need even more skillful workmen in politics and commerce than we needed at the beginning. We cannot safely leave the supply of them in sufficient numbers to the somewhat rare occurrence of superior genius, which shall, uneducated and untrained, be able to devise methods and solve difficulties by native force of intellect. As in all departments training is recognized to be the need of the times, so emphatically is training necessary in original historical study.

Such then is our theme, and such its scope. Let us now address ourselves to the question: How shall the student conceive, and how prosecute the method of original study in the historical sciences ?

I.

WHAT HISTORY IS.

HISTORY is the explanation of events. Annals, which merely record events, can only form the basis upon which history rests. History is a science, which, like every other science, takes the facts peculiar to its sphere, reduces them to order, and gives them their due explanation. The understanding of history is the understanding of this explanation.

What is meant by " explanation " here is just what is meant by the term in any other inductive science, viz., the exhibition of the significance of the event as seen in its causes and its effects. When we read history, therefore, we have not understood the subject, if we have gained merely a knowledge of the facts. We know little of the Reformation if we have learned that it began with a certain Luther, who in 15 17 posted certain theses, in 1 52 1 defied empire and emperor at Worms, was gathered to his fathers after a wonderful extension of his peculiar doctrines in 1546, and thus escaped the horror of beholding his cause prostrated, and his prince a prisoner of the emperor in 1547. We must ask what it was which led him to post his theses, what gave him the more than human courage he exhibited at Worms, how the emperor came

5 THE SEMINAR V ME THOD.

to delay so long before attacking with military force a cause so hated by him as the Lutheran, how the cause prostrated at Muhlberg came to rise again, and what it has since done, before we can claim to understand the Reformation, and thus have an historical knowledge of it. History rests on a knowledge of the facts which holds them in a perfect mastery, but until it has risen to the work of comparing, combining, and interpreting them, it has not completed its task.

It becomes important, then, to understand what historical causes are. The term is used loosely for causes, antecedents, and conditions alike. The causes of the Nicene Creed are the necessary tendency of the human mind towards reflection, producing prolonged attention to the doctrine of God ; the desire of Constantine to unify the empire about a united church as a center ; the teaching of the Scriptures ; the deep convictions and commanding personality of Athanasius ; the council ; etc., etc. A cause of the triumph of Holland over Spain in the Eighty. Years War was the geography of the country ; of the emigration of the pilgrims to Massachusetts, the plantation of Virginia. Thus all that went before a given event, and all that accompanied it, may enter into its cause, however remote apparently. The Thirty Years War in Germany was lighted by sparks from the Eighty Years War in Holland, the French from the American Revolution.

The chief significance of an event, however, is in what it does itself. Its effects are more interesting

WHA T HIS TOR Y IS. g

than its causes, and, indeed, the tracing out of the causes derives its greatest consequence from the light it casts on the effects. Given the English independence of spirit, the composite state of the church in Elizabeth's time, her system of enforced conformity, and the progressive study of divine truth by the clergy, — what will result in the shape of ecclesiastical life ? Given the conjunction of rigid Scotch old-school Presbyterianism and free New England new-school Congregationalism in one ecclesiastical body in the years 1826-37, — what will evoke harmony out of the increasing confusion ? History actually answers such questions for us. If we are wise in tracing the connection of effect and cause backwards from 1837 to 1826, we learn the potent force stored up in the various events which led to the great disruption of the Presbyterian Church in the year 1837, and thus we gain the power of estimating the probable results of similar causes if we meet them in history elsewhere.

And hence arises what may be called the prophetic office of history, by which it throws upon the path before us the light transmitted from the past. As the matured and digested experience of the race, history is the guide of man amid the perplexities that beset everything that he undertakes. As such, it renders its chief practical service. The study of history, the understanding of its explanations, must, therefore, teach us to hear and appreciate its prophecy.

Doubtless the most fascinating topics with which history deals, are those great public events in which

I0 THE SEMINARY METHOD.

the principal lines of human activity meet, and the dearest and most tremendous interests of man are decided. The shock of battle at Leipsic in 1813, when for three days Napoleon withstood the allied armies of Russia, Austria, and Germany, when the French troops did prodigies of valor, charging at one time all day upon lines that filled up as soon as broken, and another day holding at night the little village which they had lost at noon, though feeling that they were already beaten, and when the progress of the allies was like the rising of the tide, may excite the enthusiasm, and call out the highest descriptive powers of the historian, as well as arouse the liveliest interest of his reader. Yet since history is the explanation of events, that scene, however vividly it may be painted, will fail to exercise its full power except he before whom it is unrolled, be prepared by the study of the long line of events culminating in, and resulting from it, to estimate its significance for the peoples of Europe. The lofty aspirations for human rights which sought to obtain their permanent gratification by the French Revolution ; the rise of the Napoleonic empire ; the skillful disintegration of Germany ; the fall of Prussia ; the significance of an imperial French domination in Europe ; the spirit of grand enthusiasm for native land roused in Germany by Stein ; the religious feeling which after the battle wrote the inscription on the battle monument, " The Lord is a man of war, LORD is his name " ; the progress of the German nation to an united empire based upon the government of a parliament ; the hand that even

WHA T HIS TOR Y IS. T j

Napoleon had in this result ; and many other lines of policy, courses of public sentiment, or fates of great efforts, must be understood in their relations to the desperate combat of that bloody field, before it is fully comprehended. And thus, not only in such a case as this, but in all other examples of that more striking line of external events with which history deals, the careful student is called away from the din of war, or whatever attracts his attention most at first, to the course of human thought, or the development of some great moral movement, or to some ancient institution or immortal and dominating idea, as the key of the explanation, and thus the truly interesting thing. So history, in its development as a science, has come to deal more and more with the internal facts of the life of man.

This idea finds a further exemplification in church history. A proper view of this branch will give it a place among the more significant departments of general history. Inasmuch as it is the history of an institution which has embodied the chief intellectual and moral movement of man, it deals with these internal facts, and indeed with the most interesting and valuable among them. In a certain sense it is an epitome of all history. It, too, has its external and internal side, as it deals with the facts of the growth, organization, relations to the state, reformation, etc., of the church, or with the unfolding of the thought of man as to God and duty. There is church law, church finance, a monarchical, an oligarchical, a democratic form of church govern-

THE SEMINARY METHOD.

ment : there are even church wars, as well as secular wars, government, and the like.

To all these departments the work of the church history seminary may be applied, but in each of them the student must be mindful of the nature of the science as a science of causes. There is no place where he can rest quietly with the mere facts without any attempt at explanation. This is not true in even the history of doctrine. The students of church history and of the history of philosophy have here exactly the same problems before them. It is not enough to know that Descartes began with his Cogito, ergo stun, but the cause of his doubt must be sought in the failure of all philosophic speculation resting upon authority in the period of scholasticism. Why also, having escaped dogmatism at one point, he fell so completely into it at another by accepting the principle of causality without an apparent inquiry as to the justification of so doing, is also a question which the student must at least ask himself, whether he is able to answer it successfully or not. And, if he knows enough to know that Augustine had in his Sifallor, sum, the same struggle with scepticism, and came to the same result, an interesting line of inquiry will be opened to him which he will not feel justified in neglecting, till he knows how it came that Scholasticism forgot the Augustinian suggestion of the critical method, and left it to be half re-discovered by Descartes.

So when the topic of Arianism, for example, is given to a student of church history, he has not

WHA T HIS TOR Y IS.

studied this subject properly till he has got a view of the causes of Arianism, and of the Council of Nice, and of the subsequent conflicts which issued in the victory of the Nicene doctrine. Indeed, in the fullest sense, Arianism is not understood till it is traced through Socinianism down to modern Unitarianism. And at every point of this progress, the same questions as to causes and results reappear.

II.

THE HISTORICAL SEMINARY.

THE general idea of the historical seminary is already before us, and we have considered how broad is its scope. But we have not stopped in the haste of preliminary discussion, to gain a detailed view of its more exact problem and of the fruits we are to expect from its successful operation. Let us therefore pause, and partially retrace our steps, till we have set the precise nature of the institution clearly before ourselves. We shall do this by seeking an answer to the question, What is a seminary for church history ?

• The history of the Christian church is but partially written in books accessible to the American student. Indeed, it is but partially written at best, and would require for its adequate presentation a library rather than a manual of a few volumes. For the ancient church Neander's and Schaff's histories are our chief reliance, the former more profound and minute, the latter more intelligible, and by means of its better arrangement, and its carefully selected bibliographies, more available. For the modern church there is no corresponding work. Kurtz, a German work, the latest edition of which is not accessible in English, is the best general guide

THE HISTORICAL SEMINARY.

for the whole field, and comes down to the present decade. Fisher, with its bibliography in the newer issues, makes a much briefer but a most judicious and admirable guide.

The proper use of such histories as these is in acquiring a general and comprehensive knowledge of the field as a whole. They present in a useful form the results of extended explorations in every direction. Here we learn what there is to know, and in general what is known. They are indispensable and invaluable. Their full worth is appreciated by no one better than by the original student who seems to depend on them the least. From them alone a respectable and very useful knowledge of the subject may be obtained, but not such a control or appreciation of it as the writer desires for the readers of this book. This is reserved for him who in some limited field at least has made original studies for himself, and become not a mere reader, but also in some sense a writer of history. As the student who has merely read descriptions of chemical reagents and their effects upon one another, does not understand them as does he who has also seen them, and putting them into new combinations, has watched them developing new properties, so the historical student needs to see the simple, unco-ordinated facts of history, and himself seek in their combination the explanation of some mysterious event, before he can fully understand the labors of other men. Thus he who has learned what history is by practical constructive labors in the field of history, is prepared for the general reading of history as no one else can be. He has himself felt the thrill of discovery, and sympathizes with the enthusiasm of another. He has perceived the limitations under which the historian labors, and knows how to estimate his results. He has learned how to use historical results, and therefore as he reads what others have prepared for him, he assimilates their material, and fits it into the edifice of knowledge as no one else can.

By original sources of history we mean the testimony of the original witnesses to the facts.* For political history they are statutes, treaties, reports of departments of government, correspondence of eminent diplomatic characters, commercial statistics, etc. In church history they are the writings of the Fathers, as contained, for example, in the " Patrologia of Migne " ; the acts and decrees of councils, as contained in " Mansi " ; the original depositories of church doctrine, as the " Loci of Melancthon," or the " System of Hopkins." Decrees, reports, minutes, letters, monuments, works of Christian art, churches, etc., etc., may be added. You wish, for example, to study the doctrinal history of the Synod of Dort. You may read some essay upon it, like that in Herzog's EncyclopcEdie ; but this is not a study from the sources. These are the " Remonstrance " itself ; the works of Arminius ; of his contemporaries and friends, like Episcopius ; his letters ; the " Contra-remonstrance " ;

* See Andrews' " Brief Institutes of General History," Boston, 1887, p. 6f., for valuable suggestions and references. It is an excellent guide-book for the whole field of history.

THE HISTORICAL SEMINARY. \'j

the canons of the Synod, etc. Whatever helps you have, you must look at these original facts with your own eyes and come to an understanding of them for yourself, if you are to do original work.

We may, perhaps, now see more clearly the benefit of original study in history already argued, in the more perfect mastery gained thereby over it for the practical application of its lessons to our present needs. The original student, who has taken the facts in hand and learned to see what is significant in them and what not, has traced the line of their causative operation and weighed their results, can detect historical parallelisms, can predict results, and can make the Muse of History an oracular divinity. Any one can see that the excessive emphasis of the subjective element in the formation of religious opinion is likely to lead to departures from objective truth. But he who has himself compared the fanatical movements of this sort, like those of the Montanists or the Zwickau prophets, with the sober and evangelical forms, like that of the Lutheran theology, or with cold and rationalistic forms like that of Semler and Paulus, will have acquired a certain delicacy of historical touch and power of discrimination which, is one of the highest products of historical training, and which will enable him with a degree of certainty to separate between dangerous and innocuous movements in our own day.

It is for the performance of this work and the securing of these results that the historical seminary has been devised. Originally the contrivance of

X 3 THE SEMINARY METHOD.

Von Ranke for training a school of professional historians, it is now generally recognized as the best device for accomplishing the results already suggested and of perfecting the training of any student who may make history a significant portion of his education. An historical seminary is a laboratory for history. It is a workshop where the student is taught to make history. It is a place where the beginner may acquire methods, and where the advanced student may do work which shall contribute to the sum of human knowledge.