1.F 08. Theology
Theology. In respect to systematic theology the same is true.
It is very desirable, I think, that every preacher should have not merely gone through a system, but that he should have studied comparative theology.
He ought to study that system on which he expects to base his ministry; and it is also desirable that he should take cross- views of differing systems of theology > for & variety of reasons. You may think you are going to preach some particular system, but most of you will not, even if you try. You may take your teachers views of theology and preach them for a while, but they will not suit you long.
Every man who is fit to preach will, before many years, begin to have an outline of his own theology very distinctively marked out. But it is always necessary to know what other men have thought, to practise close thinking, to be drilled in sharp and nice discrimination, and to have a mind that is not slatternly and loose, but which knows how to work philosophically. You are to meet men who know how to think, if you do not. You may be called to take a parish in which the lawyer, the doctor, and two or three retired gentlemen will know a great deal more than you do, and will turn up their noses whenever you undertake to preach a sermon. You cannot afford to have a man in your parish accuse you of being a boy in the pulpit. Every man who preaches from year to year has a system. He may not have “ the current one. It may not be Calvin after the manner of Edwards, nor Calvin according to Dwight, nor Calvin as it is taught at Princeton, nor yet Arminianism. It may be this, that, or the other, of the various shades, or a new shade of his own. So that you must form the mental habit of looking at all presentations of truth. You will observe that it is not necessary for a minister to give lectures in theology to his people, however much he may know, though there might be worse things than that. You might have an occasional familiar lecture on special points of theology, and indoctrinate your people with them. But your sermons must be philosophical in principle and thoroughly thought out. You must acquire the habit of thinking, of looking at truth, not in isolated and fragmentary forms, but in all its relations; and of using it constantly as an instrument of producing good. You see I do believe in the science of theology, though I may not give my faith to any particular school of it, in all points. But no school can dispense with a habit of thinking according to the laws of cause and effect, for that is absolutely necessary.