ABSTRACT
Higher theological education in this country assumed a more or less common pattern among all the non-Roman denominations from the time of its inception. The nineteenth century was a period of strong denominational allegiances and of deeply felt theological differences between the denominations. In the eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries Christianity had of course been under fairly constant attack from a number of sides. Whatever the ultimate origin and motivation of these attacks, most of them implied doubts about the Bible and so threatened the basis of all Christianity and the positions of all the denominations. Theologians are almost all people of religious convictions, and the faith and experience which underlie those convictions leave them in no doubt that certain things must be said paradoxically, they are not absolutely clear what those things are or how to say them.
