Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III. In what Manner the Branches of Theology above mentioned ought to be treated. In the two preceding lectures, I showed at some length what an extensive field of study the theological student has to cultivate. I distributed the whole into two principal parts, the theoretical and the practical. The first I subdivided into three, biblical criticism, sacred history, and polemic divinity ; the second also into three, pulpit-eloquence, propriety of conduct in private life, propriety also in the public character, or the judicial capacity, which a minister in this country, and church, is called to act in. It was reserved as the subject of this discourse, to consider in what manner it will be most conducive to the edification of the students to treat from this place the several topics above mentioned. I acknowledge that, for my own part, I have found this a very puzzling question. A regular attendance for four winters is the utmost that we are entitled to expect from the same set of students. How few are there, comparatively, from whom we can obtain so much ? Part, you know, are coming, and part are going, I say not, every year, but every month, and every week, and every day. I might justly be charged with a faulty insensi- bility, if I did not acknowledge, that for some years past, there has been a considerable change to the better in this respect, and that the endeavors, which have been used for effecting this end, have not been entirely lost labour. But after all, it must be allowed, there is still room for further improvements. Besides, our sessions are short, and though I have endeavoured to make the most of them, and have doubled the number of meetings for my own lectures, the time is, after all, but little, compared with the work. The prelections I am to gi...