The article which follows offers a brief summary of the story told in Princeton Seminary: 1812-1868 by David B. Calhoun published by the Trust. This is the charmingly-told narrative of how one tiny theological college in a small town in nineteenth-century America became a mighty force for good in many countries of the world. Princeton men were, typically, exemplary Christians and their books, many of which have been republished in recent years, are having a significant part to play in the recovery of the doctrines of grace today.

The writer prays that Professor Calhoun's book may be a means under God for promoting the recovery of the things which old Princeton Seminary stood for in its best days. To that end he warmly commends this delightful volume to readers.

As Christians we all have dreams and our ideals of what real Christianity is, drawn from what we know of the past ages of the Christian church and its eminent leaders. For the present writer no spot on earth seems more delightful, more full of every kind of Christian charm and excellence than Princeton Theological Seminary in the nineteenth century. And no situation we know of has produced a more winsome or attractive style of the Christian faith and life than old Princeton did. It must be as near perfect a haven of gospel light and love as can be found anywhere in the annals of our evangelical religion.

Princeton Theological Seminary, situated in New Jersey, USA, exerted an influence for good in this world which must rival any theological institution which has ever existed. Reflecting, as it did, the orthodoxy of Calvin and the fervour of Whitefield, Princeton Seminary, in the period of its power, stands before our minds today as a bastion of excellence.

The above reference to Calvin and Whitefield is not unintentional. The Seminary was 'derived' from the Log College built at the time of the first Great Awakening in America in the 1730s in which George Whitefield's preaching had been the greatest single human factor. Although this Log College of William Tennent, Sr., had long ceased to exist by 1812, when Princeton Seminary was founded it was in many ways the fountain of inspiration for the first Princeton men, Archibald Alexander and Samuel Miller. Their vision was to found a college where men would be trained in Calvinistic theology and in the ardent, experimental religion that had been seen in the Calvinistic Methodists of eighteenth-century revival days. Princeton was to be the reincarnation of the geniuses of Calvin and Whitefield. 'Truth on fire', in the classroom, in the home, in the heart, in the pulpit and on the mission-field, was its aim and its hallmark.

The town of Princeton, New Jersey in the 'Middle Colonies', received its name in 1724 in memory of William III, Prince of Orange-Nassau and King of England (from 1689 to 1702). The Log College closed in 1742 and the New Jersey College (not the Seminary which opened in 1812 but an academic institution modelled on the pattern of the English Dissenting academies) received its first charter in 1746. It was called Nassau Hall after the Prince of Orange. The names of many of its early presidents are well-known by those who love the Reformed faith: Jonathan Dickinson, Aaron Burr, Jonathan Edwards (only for two months as he died of smallpox in March 1758), Samuel Davies (perhaps America's greatest preacher), Samuel Finlay and John Witherspoon, who came from Scotland and who intro­duced the lecture-method to the college. During Witherspoon's presidency the American War of Independence occurred (1775-83).

Two factors especially led the spiritual leaders of the period to see the need for a theological Seminary separate from the College. One was the somewhat over-tolerant attitude of the College president of the period, Samuel Stanhope Smith, who succeeded Witherspoon in 1795. The other was the noticeable fact that in post-Revolutionary War times far more men than before were interested in preparing for professional careers other than the Christian ministry.

A 'Plan of the Seminary' was drawn up under the leadership of Ashbel Green, Samuel Miller and Archibald Alexander. The purpose of the Seminary was to train men who 'truly believe, and cordially love, the Confession of Faith, catechisms, and polity of the Presbyterian church'. This last item should not be read as a narrow or sectarian aim. The fact is that Princeton Seminary brought benefits to Baptists as well as others and was looked on with deep respect by men like C. H. Spurgeon in the succeeding generations. (It was through a Baptist that Archibald Alexander was first led to think seriously about the gospel).

The infant Seminary had at first just two professors, Archibald Alexander and, a year later, Samuel Miller, the former of Ulster descent, the latter of Scottish. The first class had only three students. But the sense of vision felt by the two professors was articulated by Miller, older by three years than his colleague, in these remarkable words: 'The eyes of the Church are upon us. The eyes of angels and, above all, the eyes of the King of Zion, are upon us'. He dared to hope that the Seminary would one day influence 'millions'. This proved to be no exaggeration. Both Alexander and Miller saw their first great duty to be to live out the Word of God in their own lives before their students' eyes and then to fill their minds with truth.

Until the first Seminary building was ready (a four-storey with room for a hundred students and a dining-hall), the Seminary students shared the classrooms of Nassau Hall. The relation between College and Seminary was from the first cordial and affectionate. It was made more so by the gracious influence of spiritual revival in the year 1815. A wonderful change for the better came over many of the College students. Ashbel Green, College President, wrote: 'For a time it appeared as if the whole of our charge (i.e., all the College students) was pressing into the kingdom of God'. Students converted at the time had varying degrees of conviction of sin. The 'old College is literally a Bethel', wrote a visitor. Religious impressions were deep­ened in students by the books they were encouraged to read. These included the works of Owen, Baxter, Doddridge, Watts, Witherspoon, Newton, Scott and Venn.

The syllabus of the Seminary in its early days was: in the first year of study, the Bible; in the second year, biblical languages, systematic theology and church history; in the third year, systematic theology, church history, church government, pastoral care and sermon preparation. The shortage of suitable text-books was in a measure offset by Dr Alexander's practice of collecting and abridging suitable passages from learned volumes of past centuries (often in other languages). This need for effective theological text­books was to give impetus in the coming years to younger Princeton men, like the Hodges, J. A. Alexander and B. B. Warfield, all of whom were to make a massive contribution in this area of work. Many of their books have been reprinted recently and are in use today in theological institutions all over the world.

As professor of theology Archibald Alexander gave lectures on the 'Common Sense' Philosophy, Ethics, Apologetics and Systematics. The text-book in systematic theology was the Institutio of Francis Turretin. This work was then, and till very recently, only available in the original Latin. It was ponderous but, in Charles Hodge's phrase, 'effective'. Students learned their theology for a life-time. All the academic labour of the classroom, it must be remembered, had in view the preparation of young men to live a life close to Christ and with the pulpit in view. Preaching the Word of God with clarity and power was the great aim and end of a Princeton Seminary education. Both Alexander and Miller were excellent preachers themselves and they kept weekly classes to supervise and train the students in their delivery of a sermon.

By 1822, when the Seminary had been in existence for ten years, the number of students had risen to eighty. Over one hundred men had by this date gone out to serve the cause of Christ at home or abroad. Their number included pioneer missionaries: Henry Woodward to Ceylon and Baptist Jonathan Rice to Burma. W. B. Sprague, author of a famous treatise on revival, and Albert Barnes, who later wavered in his orthodoxy, were also among the men who graduated in this first decade. Special mention should be made here of Betsy Stockton, a converted black woman, who accompanied two of the Princeton missionaries to the Sandwich Islands as a very efficient and much-respected missionary teacher.

The progress of Princeton Seminary is the story of how faithful men kept to the simple gospel and refused to introduce anything that was 'new'. One of its greatest blessings in years to come was the uniformity of outlook and belief of its professors. There was a 'Princeton outlook': love of the Bible, devotion to the old Calvinism of the Westminster standards, experimental religion, evangelistic and missionary passion. Almost to the year 1929, when the Seminary was reorganised, there was a marvellous identity of outlook among its men. Of the thirty-one professors from 1812-1929, twenty-three were Seminary graduates. Two families were to become renowned for their seminal influence. The families of Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge (the third professor, who joined the staff in 1820) produced between them no fewer than seven of the instructors at the Seminary. Archibald's two sons, Joseph Addison (a child prodigy and man of exceptional genius) and James Waddel both followed their eminent father as teachers on the campus.

For sheer intellectual talent the third son of the Alexanders, Joseph Addison, stands unrivalled among those who were early on the faculty. By the age of ten he had grasped the elements of Latin, Greek and Hebrew and later acquired a knowledge of many other languages, not to speak of other fields of learning. He became the Seminary's fourth teacher, joining the staff in 1834. His biblical commentaries on the Psalms, Isaiah, Mark and Acts are on many ministers' bookshelves today.

Any mention of Princeton Seminary at once brings to mind the name of Charles Hodge. Having lost his father at an early age Charles came to look upon Archibald Alexander very much as his own 'father'. They first met in 1812 and formed an attachment that endured to the end of life. Hodge's grandfather had come, like the forebears of Alexander, from Northern Ireland. Trained up by a mother dedicated to her children's spiritual good, Charles early came to personal faith in Christ. The family home was in the town of Princeton and in due course he entered the College and, during the revival of 1814-15, professed faith in Christ publicly. He was at once zealous for God. In 1816 he entered the Seminary, and after graduating in 1819 became in the next year the third professor there by invitation from Alexander. He married Sarah Bache in 1822, niece of a noted professor of medicine named Dr Caspar Wistar. Hodge's life and labour was a deeply happy, busy, fulfilled one, full of preaching and full of the study of the Bible and of theology. He agreed with Archibald Alexander in believing Turretin's Institutio to be 'incomparably the best book as a whole on systematic theology'. He was loved by the students.

From the family of Charles Hodge came his sons Archibald Alexander Hodge, Caspar Wistar Hodge, and grandson Caspar Wistar Hodge, Jr. This remarkable fact gave rise in after years to the quip: 'What is Princeton?' 'An everlasting succession of Alexanders and Hodges'! Their influence for good is still being felt wherever their writings go. They comprise theologies, commentaries, books on experimental divinity, etc. The names of Alexander and Hodge are as closely bound to old Princeton as the ivy that grows on its walls.

It is not of course to be supposed that an institution so committed to Calvinism would remain unaffected by the church troubles of the time. The meteoric rise to fame of C. G. Finney in the 1820s and '30s with 'new measures' in evangelism and a Pelagian theology compelled the Princeton men to think long and hard. They avoided the extremes into which some of Finney's critics fell, in that, while they disapproved of the innovations which he introduced into evangelism (techniques which are now commonly referred to as the Invitation System), they did not become opposers of genuine revival. The difference is best expressed as that between revival and revivalism. The latter term is applied to man-made efforts to 'get up' a 'revival'. This balanced Princeton view did not please some of the Calvinists of the time. But their judgment reflects great credit on their fairness and their desire to see genuine revivals of religion.

One of the fruits of this controversy was that William B. Sprague, him­self a Seminary graduate, issued in 1832 his Lectures on Revivals of Religion, a book which was to prove of great importance in distinguishing between true awakenings of God's Spirit and mere religious excitement. Concern to promote real revival was always close to the heart of the Princeton men. When in 1857 a great revival broke out in New York City, following the now famous midday prayer meetings of Jeremiah Lanphier, Princeton men were to the fore in promoting it. J. W. Alexander did so by writing tracts, for instance, and Samuel Prime with his book about the revival itself, The Power of Prayer: Illustrated in the Revival of 1857-58. This lively narrative of God's work reached a circulation of 175,000 copies. In 1858, following the revival, no fewer than ninety-five students matriculated at Princeton Seminary. It was the largest number to enroll there in a single year in the whole nineteenth century.

The Seminary's fiftieth anniversary was celebrated (1862) during the sad days of the Civil War. The record of service of its past students is a fine testimony to the spirituality of those who had taught them. One in three men in those years had gone into a missionary situation: thirty-seven to American Indians, seventeen to preach among the black slaves, one hundred and twenty-seven to foreign fields, including Turkey, Brazil, Afghanistan, West Africa (still at that date 'the white man's grave') and Northern China. The list goes on. Not a few of this loyal band whose hearts God had touched were by one means or another martyred and put to death

The history of Princeton Seminary in the years 1812-68 is of a sacred spot which the Lord was pleased to bless. It was during these happy years, and for many years to come, a true 'school of the prophets'. Princeton men were men of one Book — however much else they learned — and they strove to have with them in life and at death a 'felt Christ', to use a phrase so loved by Whitefield, whose spiritual children they all were.

We cannot but believe that the land of America was exceptionally favoured to have had its Princeton Seminary. But favoured too are all who in every part of the earth love still that pure biblical religion which made Princeton the haven of truth that it was! We cannot think of any better way to bless our countries than by promoting everywhere that gospel of Christ which they so much studied, preached and lived out in their lives.