“Many of my readers will have read Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students, recalling with joy such subjects as ‘The Minister’s Self Watch,’ ‘The Call to Ministry,’ ‘Sermons—Their Matter,’ and ‘The Faculty of Impromptu Speech.’ The lectures are evidence of the standards set in the college. At the time he gave them Spurgeon was only thirty-four.
The college now had three instructors beside Mr. Rogers. They were Alexander Ferguson, David Gracey, and J. R. Selway. The school majored on the study of theology, but the whole course was similar to that of many seminaries, and Rogers listed other chief subjects as ‘Mathematics, Logic, Hebrew, the Greek New Testament, Homiletics, Pastoral Theology and English Composition.’ Spurgeon mentions astronomy also as part of the course in physical science, and some of the men became, like himself, particularly interested in the stars and the laws governing the heavenly bodies.”
The college now had three instructors beside Mr. Rogers. They were Alexander Ferguson, David Gracey, and J. R. Selway. The school majored on the study of theology, but the whole course was similar to that of many seminaries, and Rogers listed other chief subjects as ‘Mathematics, Logic, Hebrew, the Greek New Testament, Homiletics, Pastoral Theology and English Composition.’ Spurgeon mentions astronomy also as part of the course in physical science, and some of the men became, like himself, particularly interested in the stars and the laws governing the heavenly bodies.”
Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon (Moody Press, 1984), p 107.
I agree with so many writing and teaching on the reformation of the purpose and philosophy of education happening in Reformed and Evangelical circles nowadays. The seminaries of the Reformed stripe in North America will be richly blessed as the years continue to tick by. The high school students of the late 1990s and moving into these early decades of the 21st Cent will be (are) top-shelf kids. They are top-shelf regarding their training and preparation for college and seminary. Like Spurgeon’s practice regarding education, the classically trained students are orbiting the Sun taking rides on the planets of life, faith, truth, revelation, the sciences, the languages and literature, and the fine arts, and they move in concert, and call up awe. The relationship between the Sun and planets are known, as well as the relationship between the planets themselves. It’s a splendid universe.
Note that all of life was on the menu at the Pastors’ College. It was getting grounded in an array of subjects as mentioned above. For Spurgeon, no question, it was training for bold faithfulness in the pulpit.
The students today anchored in the regiment of English Grammar, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and in the basics of reading widely, and writing and speaking as rhetoricians are the students who will be the community of joy as a sound, robust Christian witness for the whole earth. Take notice—the Lord is doing marvelous things.
G. Mark Sumpter
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