religious genius or sincere and intelligent faith speaks briefly with his fellow-men on these high topics. And a mind already trained will, of course, seek instruction from the entire breadth of literature, science, and philosophy. But we have invented no other way, as yet, to effect that training; no other way by which those topics, and the contemplation of them, can be made the business of life, for select groups of minds, at the period most active and receptive of higher thought, and by which they are so directly connected with the wide and real interests of humanity. It is not the numbers that are so trained, but the genuineness and thoroughness of their training, that make the true success of such a school. It is that feature, without which our philosophical instructions would be incomplete, and our University system lame. If it should receive only here and there one to educate in that order of thought, still its very existence, and the quality of its instruction, would be a protest against any narrow and low interpretation of our theories of culture. It would still remain, an established and recognized mediator between those philosophies on one side which only a few minds of the highest order can comprehend, and our everyday, human life on the other, with its hopes and beliefs and fears, its sin and penitence, its mortal toil and struggle, its dim anticipations of eternal peace.

We well know, even without the censures and insinuations which have been thrown out of late, how far the School is from always fulfilling just this ideal aim. But we also know, even without Professor Noyes's earnest and characteristic vindication, how much there is of conscientious and earnest study, of faithful reaching after truth, of intimate conference and dear companionship, of sincere religious life. In particular, there is perhaps no other way in which the highest topics of human thought are so likely to become matters of personal emotion and the substance of living experience, when they are thus made the everyday reality, the motive and the pursuit, of a company of young men, who find in them the staple of what is to be the business of their life. Truth purely for its own sake, and in its highest ranges, not truth

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in any of its practical applications, is the direct object of search. For, in the present condition of theology, there are no established methods and traditions that can be laid down, as in the study of medicine or law, sure of commanding the deference at least, if not assent, of every one who elects that particular way of life, with any hope of succeeding in it. Success in the ministry comes by conditions of which few can be defined or prescribed in professional instructions; and, often, in seeming disregard of all conditions-a a personal, inexplicable, incommunicable thing. Meanwhile, as philosopher or as theologian, every man must be, to some extent, an original thinker, and invent for himself the methods he seeks to teach. For this reason, positive instruction is of less account than guidance, inspiration, living intercourse of mind with mind. The last thing which a faithful instructor in theology seeks to teach, is his own opinion; and the mental habit or instinct of his class is apt to be such, that they would refuse at any rate to take that opinion for any thing more than one of the sources, a single element in the material, from which their independent judgment is to be derived. The immedi ate results of the best instruction will often show themselves not in shapeliness and fixedness of view, but rather in a ferment of the spirit, the sign that something is at work there, from which a product will come whose qualities cannot be anticipated or prescribed. It is not to men of twenty-five, but to men of forty, that we should look, if we would know what are the real results of the training we have provided for them.

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If we sought, first and chiefly, that education alone which should best fit men for ministerial work, we are not sure that we should not side with Mr. Hale, in thinking that it had better be given without the apparatus of any school at all, few months' course of reading or practice, followed for a year or two, under the direction of some experienced man, in the active ministry, and varied by a few months' course of independent study or travel, or experience in real work. At least, we should not share the strong desire that has been felt, to very greatly enlarge the present working force of the

School. We should value too highly the leisure of personal fellowship and private study, with the opportunity of somewhat wider intercourse and experience in the community at large, to desire stricter routine of discipline, or a more incessant round of class studies. Nor do we see that the profes sors are necessarily overworked, except as all faithful workers will persist in overworking themselves. Private study in the family, and modest work in the parish, of some faithful, hardworking, well-read country minister, has been held one of the very best preparations for the active duties of the profession. Now, the entire time and devotion, the wealth of experience, the keen and shrewd intelligence, the conscientious and ample erudition, of a man like Professor Noyes, ranking confessedly among the very foremost critical scholars of the day; the admirable personal qualities, the moral genius and force, the genial understanding and ready sympathy with young men, the unsparing and heroic consecration to duty, which characterize his associate; with the historical insight, the breadth of philosophic culture, the rich resources, and quickening in tellectual inspiration, that we associate with the name of the lecturer in Church history, these, surely, are no scanty opportunities for that small community of students gathered in Divinity Hall. Taken together with the University privileges they share, and the frequent occasions, always welcome, of free professional intercourse, and useful service in the neighborhood, there is quite enough to feed and stimulate the mental life of a young man, in training for his definite duties to society. It is not with such a view as that, that we desire to see the School more amply endowed and more fully manned.

But that work of Christian culture which is attempted here includes the interpretation, in its divine sense, of all that the ripest thought of the age has brought forth. It seeks to give the last results of the world's scholarship, as it has been bestowed upon the Scripture records, or used to illustrate the religious life and development of mankind. It aims to make the mind familiar with the processes and the attainments of modern science, so far as they are needed to explain the con

ditions of the Divine economy of life, or enable one to keep pace with the intellectual movements of our generation. That complete view of religion and life, of history and science, of Scripture interpretation and Christian ethics, which is in harmony with our first principles of belief, cannot be got at by random and desultory thinking; nor should it be left to the chances of extravagant speculation. It can only be slowly matured, as the ripe fruit of our very highest and most enlightened culture. It can only be taught by the deliberation, method, and patient fidelity which belong to a true school of divinity, such as we wish to see fostered here.*

In particular, there is something meant by the demand, so urgently enforced two or three generations ago, for "a learned ministry." Not that secular scholarship or critical erudition are the most essential outfit for undertaking "the cure of souls." But it has been dimly felt, -just as the most deliberate analysis will always show, that our religious faith is an element in the life of humanity at large, and is part of our great inheritance from the past. The higher, interior, hidden life of man, is not, like the discoveries of science or the theories of philosophy, to be won by the effort of solitary thinkers, or wrought into shape by each generation for itself. It is what, with peculiar suggestiveness of phrase, we call the Christian "tradition," that we have received. It is what identifies us most nearly with the generations of the remoter past; and so the right exposition of it includes a wise interpretation of that past. It requires that the channel of that

* In a letter addressed to Dr. Bellows and Rev. E. E. Hale, a copy of which is in the hands of the Trustees of the University, Professor Noyes has forcibly urged his view of what a sufficient outfit of the School would require, - viz., 1. A department of the Literature and Interpretation of the Old Testament; 2. of the Literature and Interpretation of the New Testament; 3. of Homiletics and Pastoral Care; 4. of Philosophical and Systematic Theology; 5. of Church History. The first two and the last two being respectively merged in one, there would still remain three full professorships, essential to a tolerable completeness of endowment. As at present organized, the department of Church History is simply a lectureship, on an insufficient foundation, requiring but two hours' instruction, twice a week, the existing appointment having only four years more to

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tradition should be kept clear and deep. It needs the apparatus of scholars and universities and books. Even if (which is alike impossible and undesirable) the Bible were utterly set aside, as having any peculiar sanction or authority; even if the early Christian records could be reduced to the same rank, and judged by the same canons, as all secular writings, even then the offices of erudition would be hardly less important in the interpretation of religious truth. For still there would remain the great "Bible of Humanity." Still history and literature and philosophy would have their religious lessons to teach, and would require their divine interpretation. Still, as long as the religious spirit survives in any form, it must remain a matter of supreme interest, to enter into and comprehend the deeper life of the past, the energy of its conviction, the glory of its aspiration, the heroism of its faith. The consecrated learning of devout and faithful men must still be, for us, the interpreter and the key to all that is noblest in our Christian inheritance.

Whatever motive, then, we have for giving classical scholarship an equal place in all our colleges, side by side with scientific studies and training for the practical arts of life, avails to maintain theology in its place, in that circle of maturer studies which completes our scheme of university education. It is naturally the culmination of a course of study in the "humanities," that is, in the world's best literature and finest forms of thought, just as the "Celestial Mechanics" are the culmination of a course of scientific study. Our theory of education would be as imperfect without the one as without the other. It will be a day of evil omen for the Church, when it ceases to demand, somewhere in the body of its instructors, the very largest and completest education that the university can give; and for the University, when it seeks no longer to supply, in equal and generous proportion, what is needful to ripen and train the intellect on the side of aspiration and faith, while equipping it with all the enginery of modern sciences, to do the tasks of the "life that perisheth." It will be a day of evil omen for America, if that calamity should ever befall us here, which has so often been said to