" STEWART OF LOVEDALE."
[TO THE EDITOR Or THE "BrEOTATOR..1 SIR,—It is somewhat difficult for a Scottish reader to under- stand the comments of your reviewer in his notice of "Stewart of Lovedale " in last week's Spectator. Dr. Wells says, and says truly, that the Scottish Presbyterian Churches demand from their candidates for the ministry a longer course.of study than any other Church in the world. Your reviewer's comment on this statement is that it would be more true to say that they make their candidates specialise earlier. He Would rather see the candidate take some such University course as the Oxford one, followed by a year's specialisation in theology, than that be should begin the study of theology at nineteen. He does not seem to be aware that the unusual length of the course in Scotland is due to the requirement in the case of every entrant to the Theological Hall that he shall have first taken the full M.A. curriculum at the University, which generally extends to four years. Every entrant is thus a University man, and his average age is not nineteen, but somewhere between twenty- one and twenty-three. At that age, and at the conclusion of a purely literary and scientific education, he first begins to study theology at the particular College of his Church, and his period of specialisation is not one year but four. In the case of the Established Church the theological course is only three years, but in the Free Church, to which Dr. Stewart belonged, it was four years, as it is now in the United Free Church. Dr. Wells's contention, more particularly as it applies to the United Free Church, is thus fully justified, though it does seem rather late in the day to put the Spectator right on a point like this.— I am, Sir, ac., A SCOTTISII READER,
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