propose to discuss the proper uses and results of the study of church history. The full attainment of those results require certain previous qualifications, in both teacher and pupils. The student must possess a competent knowledge of the outlines of secular history, geography, chronology, and political institutions, in all past ages; for these furnish the frame which encloses and sustains the picture of ecclesiastical history. It is obvious that the instructor must possess this knowledge in a still higher degree. And it may be safely affirmed that there is no department of human study requiring wider or more profound knowledge, and a rarer union of varied talents, than are requisite for him who would be master of the science of history.
The study of this science is no dull treadmill of names, dates, and events, as some seem still to imagine. It is based, indeed, on a multitude of facts; but it is concerned with all their causes and relations. For the mere verifying of these facts there must be a combination of extensive and accurate knowledge, with patience, impartiality, sound judgment, subtlety, and perpetual watchfulness against the blinding influences of prescription, habits, great names and prejudices.
And when the facts are thus verified and correctly comprehended by laborious research and cautious judgment, the materials are only prepared. While some of the deductions from them lie on the surface, nothing short of the widest knowledge of human nature and the soundest political sagacity will protect from erroneous classifications and unsafe deductions.
History is the record of the doings of the human race. But in human affairs, passions, purposes, impulses are acts, and secret motives are their causes. Many of the data necessary for complete deductions, therefore, are invisible to every eye, except that eye which can search the human heart. The secret operations of men's hearts are among the most important elements of human events, and our synthesis of those events cannot be complete, because our analysis cannot be complete, unless the annalist of the events could exercise the attribute of the Searcher of hearts.
The most instructive and profitable way to study theology is to study the history of theological opinions. It has often been remarked that he who thoroughly knows past errors is best prepared to refute the errors of his own day. There is much less that is new in human speculations than is supposed. The assertion of the royal preacher may be applied to the current of human thought with as much justice as to any other subject: "The thing which hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, see this is new? it hath been already of old time which was before us."
Indeed we are not surprised that this should be so, since God has impressed a general sameness upon the hearts and understandings of all the generations which produce these recurring opinions. The history of theology, therefore, is a complete arsenal, which
furnishes us with all the weapons of discussion. There we shall find in regular array the arguments which were found most efficient to slay the heresiarchs of their day; and when the old enemies revive, it is our wisdom to grasp those same weapons and burnish them again; their temper has been tried.
But this is a familiar remark. It is perhaps more important still to point out the value of the history of opinions, in giving a fulness, maturity and symmetry to our theological knowledge, which he who studies dogmatic systems alone can never attain. The dry system produces only a pedant. The union of historical studies with systems makes the true scholar. The former prepares for the forensic defence of our faith the mere disputant, the chopper of logic; the latter equips the controversialist with practical, flexible, moderate wisdom.
The difference between these two modes of study may be illustrated by the two methods of studying natural history, in cabinets of dried specimens or in the fields and woods. The former method gives a certain sort of knowledge of plants, trees and animals; yea, it is necessary. But how imperfect is that man's knowledge of nature who stops here! He must add to his system an acquaintance with the objects of nature as she presents them in the colors, shapes and attitudes of life.
So, to know any speculative science, we must not only define and classify its dogmas; we must see them as they have shaped themselves in human minds, and examine them in the relations and aspects which they possessed by their origin.
Indeed, I have always found a knowledge of the origin of a dogma, and of the creed and tendencies of the man who originated it, invaluable as a guide to its logical affinities and consequences. Relations and results, which furnish a complete test of the value or hurtfulness of the dogma, are suggested at a glance by the relations which it held in the parent system. But to trace out those affinities so successfully by original and independent speculation would have been a task most difficult, and often wholly baffling, to the clearest minds.
Once more, by learning how other men have thought and reasoned, we obtain, without going from our studies, much of the benefit of foreign travel, and converse with great men of different nations. The mind expands and bursts the unconscious shackles of local prejudice and sectional modes of thought.
I may illustrate the importance of history as a school of experience by its warning and purifying effect upon the moral judgments of men. In the tangled web of life we often see a crooked policy crowned with apparent success, specious but vicious principles of action applauded and leading to the goal of wealth or fame, and sturdy honesty branded with reproach or cold neglect for its opposition.
But here, to the mind of the instructed man, history intervenes and forbids the heart to be depraved by the example of prosperous vice, or misled by the seeming success of dangerous measures. She lifts the veil of the past and unrolls similar scenes, showing not only the gaudy beginnings, but the gloomy end, to which these principles have conducted. It is hers to show us "the end from the beginning." It is hers to correct our judgments and reestablish our tottering rectitude, by setting before us the whole instead of the part.
