034. FIFTY YEARS OF THEOLOGY

FIFTY YEARS OF THEOLOGY This occasion is a memorable one. We celebrate the completion of a half-century of service. To be a teacher for fifty years; to be a teacher of Christian doctrine; to be a teacher of the teachers of Christian doctrine; and so to teach as to form and guide the public opinion of thousands of churches, to dissuade them from unscriptural extremes, to preserve their denominational unity, to keep them true to their ancient faith and true to Christ, their Lawgiver and Lord—this is a great gift of God to any man, and it is this great gift of God which we recognize to-night.

It is impossible to sever official from personal influence. President Hovey’s public work is inseparable from his mental traits and his private character. It is his accuracy and insight, his calmness and candor, his just judgment and Christian spirit, that have made him revered as an instructor, trusted as a counselor, and beloved as a friend. The institution of which he has been so many years the head has had many illustrious names on its roll of professors, but it is he, more than any other, that has given it its fame. In popular esteem Newton and he are identified, and in this case we are confident that the voice of the people is the voice of God.

Doctor Hovey is identified not only with Newton,, but with his time. The period during which he has lived and done his work has influenced him as he has influenced it. His spirit and the spirit of the age have been alike eirenical. While he has contended earnestly for essential truth, his methods have not been polemic. He has spoken the truth in love; he has followed after things that make for peace. I read that Fifty years after the death of Melancthon, Leonhard Hutter, his successor in the chair of Theology at Wittenberg, on an occasion when the authority of Melancthon was appealed to, tore down from the wall the portrait of the great Reformer, and in the presence of the assemblage trampled it under foot. This fury of controversy now seems barbaric and ludicrous. We have learned that he who is not against us is for us. We emphasize the things we hold in common more than the things in which we differ. The theological war drums throb no longer, and he whom we honor to-night has done his full share in quieting them. If any of our modern saints are to inherit the title of Thomas Aquinas let it be he, and let us call him our " Doctor Angelicus." With this change in spirit there has come also a change in the apprehension of Christian truth. We recognize elements of good in systems with which on the whole we differ. We absorb the new instead of throwing it out. We hold fast all that which is good, while we are ready to grant that there are more things in heaven and earth than have yet been dreamed of in our philosophy. One of the best qualities of our respected leader is his open-mindedness, his hospitality to new ideas, his willingness to modify his views with the new light which conies to him from science and exegesis. While he holds stoutly to the faith once for all delivered to the saints, he believes that our statements of doctrine not only may improve, but ought to improve, with the process of the suns.

Here too, he represents his age. It is an age that holds to the possibility and the duty of progress in religious thought. When Wordsworth, in his sublime "Ode to Duty," wrote Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens through thee are firm and strong he did not doubt that astronomy was capable of improvement. The laws of nature do not change, but man’s knowledge of them certainly advances. The nature of God and the nature of man are the same that they were when Paul wrote his Epistles, but our understanding of Paul, and so our understanding of God and of man, is more complete than that of our fathers was. Theology is a science, and like all other sciences it reflects the present attainment of the human mind. It is never complete or finished; it is not to-day precisely what it was yesterday, nor can we prevent its progress in the future any more than we can sweep back the tides with a broom. Our honored father and friend will not then regard it as incongruous with this semi-centennial occasion if I take for my subject: Fifty Years Of Theology. As I attempt to describe the changes and improvements which these last fifty years have wrought, he will be able to say at every step: Quorum magnaque pars fui. I shall have occasion to note in this last half-century some lapses from the truth as well as some enlarged apprehensions of it. But for these lapses it will be very plain that Doctor Hovey is not responsible. Let me first, however, try to indicate where theology was when he began to teach. A rapid survey of the preceding doctrinal development will prepare us better to appreciate what has been done in our own time. The history of theology, like all other history, is the progressive summing up of all things in Christ. For he is the center of all, and without him no philosophy of history is possible. Schopenhauer had no Christ, and so admitted no philosophy of history,—to him history was the mere fortuitous play of individual caprice. A critic stood before one of Turner’s pictures. It seemed all mist and cloud—hazy, formless, and incomprehensible. As the critic was about to turn away perplexed and discomfited, Turner himself stepped forward, and with his brush added a single dot of scarlet to the picture. That brought all the other parts into proper relation to one another, suggested the proper point of view, made the whole work intelligible. So Christ’s coming and Christ’s blood make history intelligible. He through whom and unto whom all things were created carries in his girdle the key to all the mysteries of the world. Only the Lamb that was slain can execute and so make known the decrees of God, because only he can prevail to open the book of God’s decrees and to loose the seals thereof.