Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 22:86 (Apr 1865)
Article: Historical Studies In College, Their Degree Of Importance, And The Best Way Of Conducting Them
Author: Barnas Sears

BSac 22:86 (April 1865) p. 251

Historical Studies In College,
Their Degree Of Importance, And The Best Way Of Conducting Them1

Rev. B. Sears

By history we understand a faithful record of the progress of society, or of the course of events affecting society, viewed in their relation to each other as causes and effects. Facts taken out of their relation to each other, and represented as so many units, are untrue to nature, and consequently are untrue to history. Chronicles merely furnish the materials of history. Descriptive history, though destitute of the philosophical element pertaining to this study, if it be a faithful narrative of events in their natural order, may give lessons of political wisdom, and be justly entitled to the dignity it claims; but it is not the most instructive form of history. Its object is entertainment rather than instruction; and it may be very useful to the young, by attracting them to the study, and preparing them for more solid productions when their minds shall become mature, or to the uneducated in general, by giving for their leisure hours a healthier recreation than is furnished by popular writers of fiction.

As has been already intimated, a nation that makes no progress has no history. When a barbarous people, like the ancient Germans, emerge from obscurity, and step into the rank of civilized nations, there is a history that can be recorded. They have permanent abodes. They begin the arts of life. Society is organized. There is a division of labor. The different orders of society enter into complex relations with each other, in which their interests are har-

BSac 22:86 (April 1865) p. 252

monized. In short, there is a state, and a national career of progress is begun. The ethnographer and the antiquary would fain pry into their primeval history, and learn their origin, their migrations, their customs, and their religion. But the statesman, the man of progress, would be little the wiser, if he had before him a complete account of their previous savage mode of life.

History is to society what experience is to the individual. The more advanced a nation is in civilization, the more valuable is the instruction to be derived from its history. Grecian history teaches us more than oriental history; English, more than Grecian; the history of the period of George III., more than that of the period of Richard III. Political science is the offspring of history. Without such a parentage it becomes an “Utopia,” “a republic,” like Plato’s, or “a commuity,” like Fourier’s. Speculative philosophy alone cannot be trusted to form a social organization. Government is too practical a thing to be founded upon anything short of practice. Reflection may sugg...