rational ground principles (Grundlage) of the whole of positive theology, together with the study of the Old Testament; history of revelation, and introductory lessons on the general study of the Bible; exegetical lectures; and Hebrew language. The number of lectures, weekly,

during this year is sixteen.

Second year. Special dogmatics, and study of the New Testament, with appropriate philosophical criticism; the number of obligatory discourses and lessons being eighteen, weekly.

Third year. Moral theology; dogmatics; history of the church, with a historical study of the dogmatical unfolding of ecclesiastical systems. Number of weekly lectures, eighteen.

Fourth year. Canonical law; practical principles, or pastoral theology; conclusion of theological encyclopedia.

The number of weekly exercises, it will be observed, is not so great but that a majority of students, pretty well disciplined as they must be before entering the theological school, may find time to attend to branches of study not included in the obligatory course. Accordingly very many of them devote several hours weekly to the study of foreign languages, for which they are likely to have special use, to the brilliant and profound lectures given by the Privat-docenten and extraordinary professors on biblical exegesis, speculative theology, church history, canonical law, &c. Some idea of the range taken by these non-obligatory exercises may be gained by a reference to the subjects announced by the professores extraordinarii and Privat-docenten of the University of Berlin for the winter semester of 1867; a translation of which programme will be found in the succeeding chapter on universities.

In the Scandinavian countries, in Finland, Russia proper, Great Britain, and the United States, the average number of professors, scope of studies, and duration of courses are very nearly the same, and hence do not require separate consideration. The course of study is three and four years, the longer being common in Scandinavia and the shorter in Great Britain and the United States, and the number of professors averages about four. The course of study, with so small a corps of professors, can hardly do more than begin the essential groundwork of a theological education, which, among the leading schools of this country, is understood to embrace the Hebrew language; the principles of criticism and interpretation as applied to the Bible; natural religion, and the evidences of revealed religion; systematic theology, Christian ethics, and practical theology; church history, church polity, and pulpit eloquence. The cost of a theological education is least in Italy and greatest in England and the United States.

The degrees conferred in European countries are those of bachelor in theology, licentiate in theology, and doctor in theology. In Great Britain theological degrees are sometimes honorarily conferred, and often, when not thus conferred, are given with but little regard to the real claim the applicant may have by reason of a mastery of the

studies a knowledge of which the titles are supposed to imply. On the continent honorary titles are very rarely if ever conferred, and never after a course of study unless a pretty severe test has been made of the attainments of the candidate by both written and oral examinations. Consequently, in France, Germany, and other European countries, the title of doctor implies with much certainty that the bearer is at the same time a general scholar and a learned theologian. In the United States it means but little more than that he who wears it, though often sadly wanting in any sort of culture, in the best sense, is popular with his denomination or has a partial friend in some college board.

All in all, the schools of divinity throughout the world are, theologically speaking, in as good a condition as any other class of professional schools. And yet, even in this regard, everywhere outside of Italy too little time is given to the systematic study of divinity; everywhere outside of Germany they are so numerous and hence so weak in their instructional force as of necessity to do their work inadequately; and everywhere, excepting no country, too little scope is given to the courses of study. Religiously considered, the schools are almost universally too narrow and cramped in their ideas of the office of the church in the world, and hence themselves fall far short of fulfilling their true mission. There is much freedom of thought in some of them-in those of Germany more than in any of the rest-but it is too exclusively the freedom of speculative and rationalistic philosophy, a philosophy that takes loose rein, but runs mainly in one single direction, a sort of tangential freedom that is even in danger of passing beyond its true orbit; whereas the freedom of the theological schools should follow the order of the celestial systems, sweeping in vast orbits through the universe of truth, but, in their sublime courses, unceasingly held obedient to their eternal source and center.

Originally, the priest was, to the people of his ministration, at once the embodiment of the wisdom of the world and the gracious representative of the law of God. Such should he be to-day. The offices of religion are not the most sacred simply because they are so directly from God, who is equal authority for every good work; they are so directly from God, who is equal authority for every good work; they are, also, sacred because their fulfillment involves the most precious and most enduring, nay, all the interests of man. There is no knowledge, therefore, whether of things material or spiritual, temporal or eternal, that bears in any degree, as all knowledge must, upon the spiritual welfare of man, which the profession of the Christian ministry should not, as far as possible, attain. As the subject with which the schools of theology deal is infinite, so is the field of study they assume to open without other real boundary than the limit of human capacities and powers.

It is not assumed that the vast amount of knowledge and that high culture of all the powers herein implied are attainable by even the most

gifted within any reasonable period of pupilage in the schools, for these are the task of life; but the groundwork of such attainments should there be deeply and broadly laid by that profound, devout, and comprehensive study of the attributes of God and of the nature and relationship of man which alone are able to develop the spirit of a true and acceptable worship, or lead to a just appreciation of the priestly office and of priestly duty. If the schools could comprehend this and would hold themselves, with singleness of purpose, to such an ideal, our ecclesiastic teachers would soon be found approaching more nearly in their spirit and influence to the Great Teacher himself; the lines of religious sectarianism would be less and less narrowly and intensely drawn; and the church, at last brought into complete harmony with its Divine Head, would then have more fully begun the fulfillment of its mission among

men.

CHAPTER XI.

NORMAL SCHOOLS.

GENERAL RETROSPECT—ENUMERATION OF NORMAL SCHOOLS IN ALL COUNTRIES, SCHOOLS OF PRUSSIA AND OTHER GERMAN STATES AND OF SWITZERLAND-SCHOOLS IN SAXONY-FRENCH SCHOOLS, PRIMARY, SECONDARY, SPECIAL, AND SUPERIOR-THE MINISTER OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION ON ITALIAN NORMAL SCHOOLS-OTHER CONTINENTAL SCHOOLS-ENGLISH NORMAL SCHOOLS-NORMAL SCHOOL INSTRUCTION IN AMERICA-NORMAL UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

With the progress that is now making in the establishment and perfection of schools for the professional training of teachers, the generations next succeeding this present will hardly realize that, although medicine and law and theology had for centuries been recognized professions, and were hence provided with schools for the training of those who were to engage in them, it was not until after the further lapse of full thirteen hundred years that the thought occurred to any one, or at least found practical application or even public expression, that the business of teaching was of so delicate, difficult, and responsible a nature as, above all other professions, to require special institutions for the preparation of those who were to assume its duties. Even now it is difficult to realize that up to the beginning of the present century the importance of such institutions had found prominent and practical recognition nowhere among the most advanced nations outside of the Germanic states. The art of escape from bodily disease, from the entanglements of legal subtleties and complications, and from the torment reserved for the impenitent in the world to come, was of such palpable importance as to demand the establishment of schools for systematic instruction therein; but the idea that there were any particular ways better than others to educate all the faculties of the child, bodily, intellectual, moral, and religious, so as to insure to each human being the earliest and most complete use of all his powers, this advanced idea seems not yet to have had place in any country of the world. And so, for generations, the work of popular instruction was left to the management of such persons as could find no other more honorable and remunerative employment.

At last, however, in 1681, the thought happily came to the Abbé de La Salle, canon of the cathedral of Rheims-a place distinguished for its learning as long ago as when, under Roman rule, it was the capital of Belgica Secunda-that being exceedingly difficult, and requiring not only much learning, but likewise a very thorough knowledge of human nature, as well as of the laws of individual development, the responsible work of training youth should not always be left to the incompetent bunglers who, as a rule, were then assigned to its performance. And being a practical philanthropist, he at once instituted a school for the

training of teachers in the principles of their profession; placing it afterward, in 1684, under the charge of that benevolent organization, the Brothers of the Christian Schools. This was the first normal school.

Again, in 1697, Augustus Herman Franke, a German philanthropist, formed, in connection with an orphan school he was conducting at Halle, in Prussia, a teachers' class, composed of pupils who assisted him at stated times, and twelve of whom, in 1704, he constituted what he called his Seminarium Preceptorium, or teachers' seminary. The twelve apt pupils thus selected, with their zealous teacher, constituted the first German normal school. After being trained for two years in the principles and practice of teaching, these pupils, together with numerous successors in the school, went forth as missionaries of the new gospel of education, until the leading minds of all the German states were at length aroused to the great importance of the work thus feebly begun.

In 1735 a seminary for teachers was established on a more liberal scale at Stettin, in the Prussian province of Pomerania; and in 1748 still another at Berlin, by Frederick the Great, who, by 1752, had become so deeply impressed with the importance of such institutions that, by a royal decree of that date, he provided that thenceforth all vacancies occurring in the schools established on the Crown lands should be filled by teachers selected from the pupils of this seminary. He also provided an annual stipend for twelve of the most worthy graduates to aid in their support until employed as teachers of the school. This institution, ably managed by Hecker, a former pupil of Franke, did a noble work in those early times of the normal-school movement, and by its success, as did also its predecessors, contributed to the successive establishment of others of the same class not only in Germany, but also, though later, in other countries, Austria following in 1767; Switzerland, in 1805; France, in 1808; Holland, in 1816; the United States, in 1839; England, in 1840; Belgium, in 1843; and subsequently all other enlightened nations, as will appear by the following statement of the countries, principalities, and subordinate states that have adopted them, together with the number of schools in each:

Prussia, including states recently absorbed, 62; Austria, 11; Baden, 4; Bavaria, 11; Wurtemberg, 7; Saxony, 10; Hesse-Cassel, 3; HesseDarmstadt, 2; Anhalt, 3; Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 2; Saxe-Meiningen, 1; Saxe-Weimar, 2; Oldenburg, 2; Brunswick, 1; Luxembourg, 1; Lippe, 1; Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 1; Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 1; Lubec, 1; Frankfort, 1; Switzerland, 31; France, 141; Holland, 2; Denmark, 8; Sweden, 5; Russia, several, definite number not known; Italy, 53; Spain, several, exact number not known; Greece, 1; England and Wales, 23; Scotland, 2; Ireland, 1; Nova Scotia, 1; New Brunswick, 1; Canada East, 3; Canada West, 1; Maine, 2; Massachusetts, 4; Rhode Island, 1; Connecticut, 1; New York, with provision already made for four, 2; New Jersey, 1; Maryland, 1; Pennsylvania, with plans for twelve, 4; Michigan, 1; Indiana, nearly ready to open, 1; Illinois, 1; Wisconsin, with provision