ONE HUNDRED CHAPEL-TALKS TO THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS TOGETHER WITH TWO AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ADDRESSES BY AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STRONG PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF THE ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 66 AUTHOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY," "PHILOSOPHY AND 66 е THE GRIFFITH & ROWLAND PRESS PHILADELPHIA BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUIS TORONTO, CAN. 1913 PREFACE THE Rochester Theological Seminary has for more than thirty years held a daily noon prayer meeting of from fifteen to twenty minutes in length. Both professors and students have attended it, and have taken part in it. It has become an important influence in seminary life, and all the more, because of its brevity and informality. To my great surprise, at the close of my fortieth and final year of service as President of the Institution, I was presented with a stenographic and typewritten copy of the talks I had made in this meeting during the preceding twelvemonth, and it was suggested that I should put them into print. These reports had been taken entirely without my knowledge, and I discovered colloquialisms which needed correction. I concluded, however, to make the needed corrections, and to add a few talks of former years. I now present these printed addresses to a wider public, with the hope that they may suggest useful lines of thought, both to my recent pupils and to others. The two longer addresses which I have prefixed to the hundred chapel-talks may serve as an autobiographical introduction. The first of them was delivered upon the occasion of the unveiling of a bronze bust of the author, which the Alumni of the Seminary had procured and had set up in its library. The second of these addresses was given at a banquet of seminary students and professors, which was tendered to the author near the close of his work as President and Professor of Theology. The nature of these occasions may explain some of my allusions; and the facts of my autobiography may in turn explain some of the chapeltalks which follow. I present this volume to my former students, with the confidence that they, at any rate, will not think less of the book because it is so personal. AUGUSTUS H. STRONG. ROCHESTER, January 1, 1913. |