their sphere in these matters. They have facilities for a wide spread influence upon other minds. By correspondence, and personal interviews, and occasional meetings, rumors may be spread and prejudices excited and combinations formed against an obnoxious man or measure or party, which may as effectually shape results and secure a desired issue as if they were upon the judgment seat. Yea, when regular ecclesiastical trials have issued contrary to their wishes, they may put all these means in requisition to gain their sinister purposes in spite of constitutional rules and christian order.

This is a direct usurpation of the authority of God's house, and involves the very essence of spiritual tyranny. No member of a theological seminary can use in this way the facilities of his station for purposes of ecclesiastical discipline, with righteousness or decency. He was not put in that station for that purpose. He is meddling with what belongs to others. He is perverting that which was given to him for another object, and committing an offence against the order and peace of the church, for which there can be no other justification, than that "the end sanctifies the means."

4. They must stand responsible to the enlightened sentiment of the christian church.

There are various sources of supervision to which theological seminaries may be made responsible. It may be directly to the civil power to a church judicatory-to a self-constituted association or to enlightened christian sentiment. Instances, in this country and in Europe, may be found in all these varieties; and it is an open question-which is the best adapted to their great design?

Few probably in this country will be found in favor of direct responsibility to the State. This may be tolerated in Germany and the different monarchical governments of Europe, but can hardly consist with the genius of a free republic. Changing politics and shifting majorities must cause such a perpetual interference in its plans and operations, as effectually to break down its stability and power of doing good to the world.

Where the responsibility is to ecclesiastical authority, the danger is much the same both in kind and degree. If sectarianism did not control, and there were few liabilities to the fluctuations of party majorities, the evils would in proportion be few and small. But when contentions and divisions occur, scarcely less violent than in political parties, the institution itself must be

agitated by the storms and tempests which are about it. Every movement of the elements on which it rests is felt, and the unity of its design, and the efficiency of its efforts must be disturbed. This cannot be the best position for any institution, which is to regard the general good and labor for the whole world.

To be amenable to a self-constituted body, itself a sect-selecting its members on avowedly sectarian principles, and fencing itself round with sectarian regulations, can eventuate in nothing else but a sectarian theological seminary.

But where as ministers, all are responsible to their own ecclesiastical organizations, and as professors, are held amenable to a board of trust, which has its civil charter, giving plenary powers of administration and perpetuation of their own body, and then both its boards of trust and instruction amenable to the enlightened public sentiment of the christian community, we have all the security and effectual guardianship that can be attained, without the dangers of sectarian influences and party collisions. But it is the intelligent christian public to which it must be held responsible. The christian public are alone interested, and the enlightened portion of it alone competent, to decide in regard to its merits. In this way we have the same security that we have for any free institution in the land. It can prosper no further than they approve, nor become heretical, any further than they shall become the abettors of heresy. If the wise and the good are satisfied with it, they give it their patronage and their prayers; if they are dissatisfied, they withdraw their influence and their support, and the institution dies.

That institution has the surest guarantee for its permanent usefulness, which is entrenched in the judgment and affections of the most intelligent, stable, and pious in the land.

5. Ecclesiastical bodies must not grant licenses but at the completion of a full course of study.

The proper judicatories of the church are alone competent to regulate this matter. Theological seminaries can do no more than give their opinion and counsel. This however is plain, that, without a mutual understanding and coöperatian on this subject, it were far better to dispense with theological seminaries altogether. They must be comparatively useless, and the expense of their endowments thrown away, if the youth under their training be hurried into the ministry after a few months' attention to the preparatory studies. If this is all that is requisite to fit a young man for the most responsible of all stations, then let not the

church be burdened with the unnecessary charge, nor mocked with the expectation, that better education will make any better ministry.

This is not the place to dwell upon the fallacy of such opinions, nor to show that piety, though essential to the ministry, must nevertheless be accompanied with an enlightened and enlarged understanding to fit them for their great design in converting the world. Nothing can more effectually cut every sinew of her strength, and leave the church weak and defenceless to every assailant, than the hasty admission of her sons to the sacred ministrations at the altar. They must be able to teach, and apt to teach, or they can only be "the blind leaders of the blind." And there is no patent process by which you can work this aptitude into mind, without its own exertion. There is no charm about any institution, or any boasted method of quicker and better preparation, that is about to make men "wise to win souls," without taxing their own energies, and obliging them to think deep and study long and intensely. There have been many such experiments, but they all fail, just as common sense would have predicted, because they go against nature. It is time the church had learned enough from her own sad experience, to be never deluded again by such miserable pretensions. Until the young man is well prepared for the sacred office it is no help to the church to induct him into it. By no means is it so much the number, notwithstanding all her waste places, as the qualifications of her ministers, about which the church ought to be deeply solicitous. Much is gained, in the case of every hasty young man, who is kept for a year out of the pulpit and at his proper studies. He is thus prepared to do something henceforth to the purpose, and the church is saved from the withering influence of a whole year's crude ministrations and rash measures. A full course should be insisted on, and no exceptions should ever be tolerated which would weaken the general rule. Intended kindness to the individual is treachery to the cause of religion.

6. The number of theological seminaries may safely be left to the results of fair competition.

The present tendencies doubtless are to an inordinate multiplication of them. The claims of the world and the efforts of the church to meet them would of themselves augment the number, and then there comes in all the additional incentives from local interests, sectarian zeal, and party prejudices. Dread

responsibilities rest upon those who engage in the establishment of new institutions. Much time and labor, money and talent must be expended upon every such object, and if it was not needed the whole has been perverted, and the prime movers stand responsible to heaven for it.

But to God alone must this responsibility be left. It is not for man to arraign and try their motives and estimate their guilt. The church has only to determine her own wants in this particular, and this it will do. Those institutions which are needed will be sustained, and all which are found useless will of course fall. No local interests or factitious excitements can long avail to keep in existence that which is not needed. A discerning public will eventually determine which ought to live and which ought to die. And while the individual responsibility is to God, the decision of life or death to the institution is in the intelligence of the church to determine which and what are fulfilling the great designs of God. The end in view is an efficient ministry for the world-not for a sect-not for a local object-not as the fruits of a transient excitement-but for a world, and until a world is brought back to God's allegiance. The seminary must therefore lay its foundations broad and deep, and its plans wide and extensive, looking not at the interests of a year or an age, but onwards till the millennium. Results permanent as truth, broad as Adam's dying race are to be gained, and that institution, which looks with a steady eye and holy aim to these enduring interests, will find its sure support in the permanency of the principles which it has consulted. The timid and the time-serving may come and go, applaud and revile, but the enlightened and the wise will give to it their confidence, their patronage and their prayers. Tremendous as the responsibility is, upon those who engage in the new enterprise, if their honest aim is the good of the world and the glory of God, and their measures are wise to win the end, the issue has nothing for them to fear. Their work will stand and prosper, while a thousand splendid projects and gilded bubbles burst around them. The event may be safely left to the decision of the Lord and his people.

7. They must be the subjects of the unceasing prayers of the church.

God, and not man, will have the glory of the world's subjection to Jesus Christ. It is to be effected "not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." Nothing can be VOL. XI. No. 29.

26

more certain, than that God will blast all the undevout projects and expectations of his professing children. Especially upon theological seminaries must there be a constant descent of the dew of heaven. The board of supervision-of instruction — the youth who are instructed—all must feel the moving influence of the Holy Spirit, or no good will result to Zion. And this influence is given "to those who ask him." And while those connected with the seminary should "pray without ceasing," it is the special duty of the church to remember these "schools of the prophets" daily. They are not to be expected to prosper, unless your prayers abound. They are your instruments for the world's conversion -your instruments to teach and to train up a pious and efficient ministry for the world, not to do your work of prayer and supplication. God's blessing will not then be added without your prayers. Better forget almost any other instrumentality in your visits to the throne of grace, than your sources of theological instruction. Here are some of your most precious jewels; the hope of the world; the whole dependence under God for filling up your foreign and domestic fields of labor. A desertion here, a withdrawment of divine influence from these points, sends the surest, deadliest blight over all the prospects of Zion. Who can doubt that the numbers, and piety, and success of the ministry, must be proportioned to the prayers which God hears for this end? If you would have the world converted to God, brethren, you must pray much and fervently for the ministry, by whose labors and self-denial the work is chiefly to be accomplished. You must pray much and fervently also for those institutions, whose great design is to furnish this efficient ministry for the world's redemption.

I close, by giving the assurance that this theological seminary shall be faithfully devoted to the great design, which we have been considering a faithful ministry for the world. The course of instruction will be liberal, full and thorough. The system of theology as here explained and defended will be the Calvinistic, in the general form in which it appears in the works of Edwards, Bellamy, Dwight, etc. New England theology will be the standard of our orthodoxy-the system of faith which we cordially believe has the Bible for its basis. But we do not feel at liberty to call any man, master, in the sense of authority over our faith. We shall examine the opinions of the men we most favor, with as much freedom as those who