Jón Bjarnason Academy - 01.05.1931, Side 21

The Church College and Education
By REV. PRINCIPAL JOHN MACKAY, D.D., Manitoba College
The early Church was a fellowship of men and women
who lived in Christ. Every member was a herald of the Gospel
and the Church swept round the Roman world, largely
through the activities of ordinary men and women. But very
soon ministerial functions began to be specialized and a regular
ministry is singled out, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
to lead the Church. These early leaders had been educated
under Greek or Jewish auspices and had been remade in thought
and life by the Gospel of Christ. But the second generation
ministry needed regular training under Christian auspices and
that this might be given, monastic schools sprang up through-
out the Roman world. These were especially designed for the
training of the ministry and they were the foundation of our
modern Colleges and Universities. Slowly other departments in
addition to the regular work of preaching and teaching were
added and at first these were retained as ministries of the
Church.
Gradually all but the regular ministerial functions were
transferred to laymen, but training for these was still given
under the auspices of the Church. Training for medicine, the
law, etc., were given in separate departments within the Church
school.
With the discovery of the modern scientific method and
the vast developments of industry and commerce, other human
interests and activities became the subject of specialized study.
To such an extent have these interests and activities impressed
themselves upon the thought of men that the purely religious
interests have been pushed into the background, until today
many of our Universities are divorced from all religious in-
fluence and training and some are positively hostile to re-
ligion in their emphasis. This is more especially true in
Protestant countries and is giving serious concern to the
leaders of the Church in these lands.
If it were possible to have as high a religious life and
training in our homes, as we once had, this might not be such
a serious matter, but the pressure of modern life makes it
difficult to keep up family religion and the old careful train-
ing, so that children pass into the public school where religion
is only referred to incidentally, if at all, through the high
school and into the university where one can take his whole
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