The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-05-26
TO TRY THEOLOGY
Washburn College Plans to Add
Course.
Congregational Ministers VIII
Be Here to Talk 1t Over.
YEAR PREPARATORY.
Purpose Is to Benefit Young
Giergymen.
Also Talk of Summer School
EAR PREPARATORY.
Also Talk of Summer School
for Teachers.

President Plass of Wasnburn college
has sent out invitations to a large
number of the Congregational minis
ters of the state to come to Topeka on
Wednesday June Is, and attend at D.
m. conference which has been called
on the subject of establishing a partial
course in theology at Washburn col
lege.
DR.. Joseph Henry George, president
of the Chicago Theological Seminary,
will be here to attend this conference,
and will use his influence to induce the
Congrega tional clergymen of the state
to take up the theological school idea.
The Chicago Theological Seminary
wants to work up a deal with Wash
burn, Doane, Drury, GrinnelI, and 9TH
er Congregational schools for a com
bination of courses so that a young
man desiring to study for the ministry
can take the four year. college course
and the three year theological course
in six years. 1t is possible for a stu
dent to complete the college course and
the theological course at Yale in six
years, and it is to fix things so that the
west can compete with Yale that the
Chicago Theological Seminary is try
ing to arrange connections with west
ern Congregational colleges.
What the Chicago Seminary wants
Washburn to do is to put in a sort of
One-year course especially for prOSpec-
tive clergymen, which will count as
one year in the regular college course,
and at the same time count as the first
year in the theological seminary. The
preliminary work in the seminary is
largely Greek and Hebrew, and both
of these languages are provided for in
the regular college course. By plan
ming the course so that the young min
lister can do all this preliminary lang
uage work while in college, he will
save just years time in preparation
for the ministry.
Congregational ministers of the state
are also said to be very much in favor
of having Wash burn give one years
work in theology to young men prepar-
ing to preach. There is a demand in
the state for missionary preachers
to take unimportant churches in small
towns. The graduates of the full the
illogical course do not like to be showed
out into these minor posts, and the
ministers of the state want it fixed SO
that a young man can take a years
work in theology while in school, and
then go out to the small towns of the
state as a missionary preacher, before
completing his theological education at
Chicago.
BY such an arrangement, Chicago
Theological seminary will be able to
compete successfully for patronage
with the Yale Divinity school, and
Washburn will at the same time be
able to offer some extra inducements
to students who are planning to study
for the ministry.
One of the trustees of the college
said this r. orning: 1T is not our inten-
ton to found theological school here
at Washburn. But this conference is
to be held for the purpose of discussing
the proposition of the Chicago Theolog-
ical seminary for cooperation in the
establishment of a six years course in
college and seminary combined, which
will be the same as offered by Yale
university. At present it takes a theo-
logical student seven years to go
through college here and then through
the seminary at Chicago. The minis
tiers of the state seem to be in favor
of the plan"
There is some prospect, also, of the
establishment of a summer course in
theology at the college, similar to the