FROM the time of its foundation it has been the habit of the professors of Princeton Theological Seminary to meet the students every Sabbath afternoon, for prayer and conference on themes relating to the life of God in the soul, and to the practical duties having their root therein. The members of all the successive classes will bear testimony to the unique character and singular preciousness of these Sabbath afternoon Conferences in that sacred old Oratory, whose walls are still eloquent to them with imperishable associations. Here the venerable professors appeared rather as friends and pastors than as instructors. The dry and cold attributes of scientific theology, moving in the sphere of the intellect gave place to the warmth of personal religious experience, and to the spiritual light of divinely illuminated intuition. Here in the most effective manner did these teachers of teachers set the crown upon their work, and herein they exerted by far, their most widely extended and permanent influence. Here they sought rather to build up Christian men, than to form accomplished scholars, and to infuse into their pupils the highest motives, and to instruct them in the wisest methods for their future work of saving souls and of edifying the Church of Christ.
The text or topic for consideration was announced at the preceding meeting. The professors presided in turn, and were called upon to speak in the inverse order of seniority, the professor presiding for the day coming last. For many years, the discussion was opened by remarks volunteered by the students, but in later times, the entire hour has been occupied by the professors.
The historical character of this remarkable service is of course derived from the peerless endowments, intellectual and spiritual, of the first three professors in the institution. Men so different, yet together constituting such a singular completeness of excellence by the combination of their complementary graces.
Dr. Miller, the model Christian gentleman and typical divine, whose original, generous and genial nature had been transfigured by the long indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and whose outward manner had evidently been conformed by long self-training to the highest models, would have been the first to attract the eye and to impress the ear of the stranger. His long and active life had furnished him with rich stores of experience of men as well as a vast volume of learning derived from books. All this he poured forth with a deliberate and stately copiousness, in a manner serene and dignified, yet full of impressive force and tender unction. His adoring sense of the majesty of God, and of the seriousness of human life, of the reality and solemnity of divine things, and of the obligations attending the Christian profession, and above all attending the office of the Christian ministry gave form and color to all he said. His instructions were always wise and practical, and were characteristically illustrated from an inexhaustible fund of apt and often witty, but always dignified anecdote, drawn from all literature, sacred and profane, and from his own extensive intercourse with men as a pastor and as a citizen.
Dr. Archibald Alexander, incomparably the greatest, as he was the first of that illustrious family, though neither more learned, nor more holy than his older colleague, was far more original. He was modeled upon nothing, but every thing in him and about him to the last detail of thought or glance, or inflexion, or gesture was immediately determined by spontaneous forces working straight outward from within. It was this entire absence of self-consciousness, this absolute simplicity of thought, emotion and expression, and its spontaneous directness to its point, which, added to his other natural and gracious endowments, gave this great teacher his singular pre-eminence. His intellect was intuitive rather than logical. Although he exhibited flashes of acute analysis, as sharp and rapid as a Damascus blade, yet he did not characteristically excel in broad views of truths in their relations, nor in lengthened processes of consecutive thought. He was eminently quick in his observation, and penetrating in his insight, accurately noting facts and reading character in rapid glances. He held in his retentive mind the spoils of a vast and widely selected reading. All the treasures of divine wisdom and grace, which the Holy Ghost communicates to life-long students of the word, when to high intellect is added all the simplicity and docility of a little child, irradiated his soul, and made it luminous to others. All the secrets of the human heart and its various experiences under the discipline of the natural conscience and of the word and Spirit of God were known to him, and he possessed the finest skill in interpreting and in treating with acute precision, the states and frames of all who sought his counsel or listened to his instructions.1
This utter simplicity, this all-penetrating insight, accompanied with a wonderful spontaneousness of thought, imagination and speech were personal attributes, inseparable from his presence and manner, and incapable of being transmitted to the printed page. During his later years, when urged to put the results of his studies and reflections in the permanent form of writing, he often said, “No, if I have any talent, it is to talk sitting in my chair.” And however much he may have been mistaken in failing to recognize the value of his writings to the Church, there is no doubt that his gifts as a talker on the themes of Christian experience were without parallel among his contemporaries. He more than any man of his generation, appeared to those who heard him to be endued with the knowledge, and clothed with the authority of a prophet sent immediately from God. He was to us as the highest peak of the mountains, on whose pure head the heavens, beyond the common horizon, pour the wealth of their iridescent radiance.
In his early and middle life he had been an orator endowed with singular powers of dramatic representation. In his old age he was always calm and quiet, but such was his intense sense of the reality of the subjects on which he discoursed, that often, as he spoke of angels, of heaven, of the beatific vision of saints, of Christ, and of his second coming and judgment, his hearers felt that their eyes also were opened to discern the presence of things invisible and eternal.
Every Wednesday evening Dr. Alexander presided at the public prayers in the Oratory. The instant the students were in their seats he came in rapidly, his cloak hanging, often diagonally, from his bent shoulders, his head inclined as in revery, yet flashing sudden glances on either side with his piercing eyes, which seemed to penetrate all the secrets of those upon whom they fell. He sat down with his back to the windows and his right side to the students; sitting low, almost hidden by the desk. Drawing the large Bible down before him he seemed to lose at once all sense of human audience, and to pass alone into the presence of God. As he read, and mused, and ejaculated the utterances of all the holy exercises of his soul upon the Divine Word, a solemn hush fell upon us, and we felt, not as those who listen to a teacher, but as those who are admitted to approach with the shoes from off their feet, to gaze in and listen through an opened window to the mysterious workings of a sanctified soul under the immediate revelations of the Holy Ghost.
Dr. Hodge was by a whole generation younger than these venerable fathers. Hence during the first years of his professorship his part in these Sabbath afternoon Conferences, although regularly discharged, was less prominent than theirs. During the long period, however, from about 1848 to his death in 1878, he was recognized by all as the central sun which gave light and heat to the entire service.
As all acquainted with his life-work know, Dr. Hodge’s distinguishing attributes were, great tenderness and strength of emotion, and the power of exciting it in others—an habitual adoring love for Christ, and absolute submission of mind and will to His word—a chivalrous disposition to maintain against all odds, and with unvarying selfconsistency through all the years of a long life, the truth as he saw it —crystalline clearness of thought and expression—and an unsurpassed logical power of analysis, and of grasping and exhibiting all truths in their relations. Dr. Alexander once said to a friend that the mental constitution of Dr. Hodge was more than that of any man he knew—like that of John Calvin, without his severity. As he sat in the Conference he spoke freely, without paper, in language and with illustration spontaneously suggested at the moment. To the hearer the entire exercise appeared extemporaneous. The matter presented was a clear analysis of the scriptural passage, or theme, doctrinal or practical, chosen for the occasion. An exhaustive statement and clear illustration of the question. An exhibition of the evidence of the doctrine, and of the grounds and reasons and of the methods, conditions and limits of the experience or duty. A development of each doctrine on the side of experience and duty, and a demonstration of the practical character of all doctrine, and of the doctrinal basis of all genuine religious experience and practice.
As to the manner the entire discourse was in the highest degree earnest, fervent and tender to tears; full of conviction and full of love. While the temporary impression made upon most hearers was less remarkable than that produced by Dr. Alexander, in his happiest moods, all the students, and especially those who were diligent in taking notes, felt that they took away with them from Dr. Hodge a far larger mass of coherent thought for permanent use, than from any of the rest. The reason for this is abundantly evident when the drawers of his study are opened, and the large accumulation of careful preparations for this exercise are examined. He prepared and wrote out a careful analysis or skeleton of every Conference discourse. Although designed to meet no eye but his own, these analyses are fully written out, and are verbally complete in all their articulations. And although his audience was completely changed every three years, it appears that he never used the same preparation twice, but prepared, even after he had passed his 80th year a new paper for each Conference, often constructing analyses of the same theme several times.
This was his method of mental preparation. He habitually thought with his pen in his hand. He prepared an analysis of his subject before he wrote his sermons. He did the same before writing his theological lectures, or the several divisions of his Systematic Theology. He also made a written analysis of every important book he read, especially if it presented views of truth antagonistic to his own.
A volume of these papers is now published, not only because they will afford a reminiscence of past sacred scenes, grateful to his surviving pupils, but chiefly because it is believed that in their present form they will be widely useful. Although the brain and heart, which through the beaming countenance and tremulous voice, infused these skeletons with life, are absent, they yet remain in themselves very remarkable examples of that analysis, that logical grouping and perspicuous exhibition of truth which is an essential faculty of the effective preacher. They present in this analytic form an amount and quality of homiletical example and suggestion probably not surpassed in the same number of pages in the English language. As an effective exhibition of the great principle that all genuine religious experience is only the realization in experience of Christian doctrine, and that all true doctrine does immediately go out into the practical issues of the inward and outward life, this volume is eminently fitted to vindicate and supplement the three volumes of Systematic Theology, which were the last work of the author’s life.
The classification of these papers is entirely the work of the editor. The reader will find instances of repetition, some of which, under the circumstances are neither avoidable nor objectionable; some of which may be attributed to the incompetence of the editor, but none of which, if the several dates and original purpose of these papers be considered, can be regarded as the fault of the beloved and venerated author. As there is no Index of Subjects, the Table of Contents is made unusually, and it is hoped, sufficiently full and explicit.
A. A. Hodge.
Princeton, March 30, 1879.
Contents · 1. Omnipresence of God →
Footnotes
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“For Dr. Alexander I have the most profound reverence and respect, and particularly for this thing, which impressed me more than anything else, his wonderful knowledge of the human heart, and of the Christian heart, in all its morbid and its healthful exercises, so that you may call him the Shakspeare of the Christian heart. I have never seen a man, nor do I ever expect to see the man, who has impressed me more in this particular.” Dr. Theodore D. Woolsey, ex-President of Yale College, at Dr. Hodge’s Semi-Centennial Commemoration, April 24th, 1872. ↩