to operate through life. They tended to secure habits of patient thought and of minute accuracy, to strengthen the memory and to sharpen the reason, It is with such knowledge, as with the food taken into our bodies; as food it is changed and lost, but a great part has passed into bone, cartilage, and sinew, and this is sufficient. For this reason alone, if there were no other, there would be good ground for including in the thorough training which we contend for, a knowledge of Latin and Greek; and on similar grounds, if there were no such languages in existence as Latin and Greek, we should still plead for the acquisition of some languages beside our own. The study of a foreign language forms a distinct species of mental exertion, and involves many processes of intellect peculiar to itself, and characteristic of no other species of discipline. Some such knowledge, moreover, is essentially necessary to let us into the nature and powers of language in general; and how important it is that a public speaker, whose very instruments are words, should be fully possessed of this knowledge, it is almost superfluous to say. Accustomed from infancy to our native language, familiar with all its idioms and constructions, it is not until we see how the general purposes of speech are answered in other languages, nor until attention is arrested by peculiarities in construction and idiom with which we may compare those of our mother-tongue, that we become fully acquainted with the nature and powers of this wonderful instrument, with the relation of words to mind. If then there were not a syllable of the classics extant, we should still plead for the desirableness of learning some language, beside our own. The reasons, indeed, which upon this supposition, determine a preference of Greek and Latin are so obvious as to require no mention. Not only do they contain such vast treasures of literature, not only are they necessary to the prosecution of all those portions of history which are essential to the theologian, but the first is that in which the New Testament is written, and in which the best of the Fathers wrote, while the second was for centuries the current language, the mother tongue, of theology. Wherever it is possible, therefore, it is obviously desirable that theologians should have something like access to them.

But though mental discipline is the chief benefit to be derived from the protracted education for which we plead, it is far from being the only one. Another and scarcely less important end, is that of furnishing the mind with those kinds of knowledge which must be attained if a man would be extensively useful. Now it is only in perfect seclusion for a considerable period, that a young man has leisure to acquire the knowledge of those arts and sciences which, as the Directory of the Westminster Assembly well expressed it, are handmaids to Divinity,' as well as those stores of general information which will furnish the

materials of ready and ever-varied illustration. Without some such mental furniture, it is as vain to hope to meet the ever-recurring demands of the pulpit with tolerable facility, or to secure to public ministrations the requisite degree of variety, as it would be to make bricks without straw, or to transact an extensive business without a competent capital. Every hearer can at once detect, in any man's preaching, the difference between a full mind and an empty one.

Now unless this intellectual capital be acquired during a period of comparative seclusion and leisure, one of two things invariably happens, both of which show how desirable it is that a certain portion of time should be sacredly appropriated to this object; either we subject a man to the cruel necessity of acquiring this requisite knowledge for himself in the midst of the absorbing cares and onerous duties of the ministry, to the infinite hazard of his health, and perhaps the detriment of his flock, or he never acquires it at all. If a man possess great physical vigor and great mental energy, he will probably take the former course, and we know of several men who, to their unspeakable honor, have done so. They have themselves told us that becoming aware of the slenderness of their acquirements, when they had already entered upon their public duties, they have been compelled to endeavor to combine severe private study with the discharge of their public functions, to the prejudice however of their health, and in some measure to the temporary injury of their congregations. Now though they ultimately assumed the standing to which such industry entitled them, and became more useful than they could otherwise have been, yet the full measure of their popularity and of their success was necessarily postponed for some years beyond what it might have been if they had acquired the requisite knowledge before they found themselves actually immersed in the anxieties and labors of their high office. It is a piece of cruelty to necessitate such men to make so hazardous an experiment at all. But the worst still remains to be told. The greater number will not even make the experiment. Those who possess no more than average abilities and no great physical strength, finding it impossible to combine much study with the numerous and heavy duties of their public ministry, content themselves with working up again and again their little stock of materials. As a consequence, they inevitably fall into a trite and barren style of preaching in which there is nothing to arrest attention, and become at the best far less useful than they might have been. Nay, owing to these causes, it is not an unprecedented thing-and we know of no fact more lamentable in the whole history of our ministry-to see ministers far more acceptable and popular at the commencement of their career than at the termination of it. This should be a warning, preg

nant with instruction to all students. Totally incapable, from want of experience, of estimating that degree of mental furniture which will enable them readily to meet the requirements of their office, and finding that they can get on pretty well in their occasional efforts on a small stock of sermons, (upon which it may be a great deal of labour and the whole of their little knowledge has been expended), they are often ready, and even anxious, to plunge prematurely into public life, to take upon them the discharge of their professional duties, without any thought of the Horatian maxim

Versate diu, quid ferre recusant,

Quid valeant humeri.'

But this very incapability of right judgment on the part of the student (necessarily resulting from want of experience), ought to be an additional reason for securing to him those advantages of quiet study from which urgent and multifarious duties will ever afterwards debar him. In confirmation of these remarks, we may observe, that we have heard many ministers say, as soon as a little experience had entitled them to form an opinion, that they heartily wished the term of preliminary training had been longer or more wisely spent, but we never heard one say that it would have been better if he had earlier committed himself to the duties of his station.

On the other hand, if a solid and extensive foundation of knowledge has been laid during a period of studious leisure, and those invaluable habits of mind formed which are involved in the very acquisition of such knowledge, it becomes comparatively easy for the minister in after life, to keep up all that he has acquired, and even to make fresh accumulations. With welltrained faculties, facility of application, and tolerably extensive attainments, he can make more out of his scraps of leisure than other men, less favorably circumstanced, could make out of their whole time. Precisely similar observations apply, and if possible with increased force, to the necessity of a thorough theological training. Those species of critical and historical knowledge, which lie at the basis of sound theology, are never likely to be acquired except by continuous study, pursued at leisure, under the eye of an instructor; never by desultory effort at broken intervals, and amidst the ten thousand cares of the public ministry.

Another purpose, not quite so obvious, but scarcely less important, to be subserved by this thorough education, is this; that it gives a man that position and influence in general society, which, if it were possible, no minister should ever be without. It is true that in this point of view, his knowledge is not immediately

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applied to the discharge of his official duties, but it indirectly aids them; it gives him admission to those who otherwise would be inaccessible; conciliates the respect of those who would otherwise despise him; and above all, renders him an object of vastly increased reverence to the mass of his common hearers. It imparts weight and importance also to his judgment on matters which, though not immediately connected with the pulpit, are by no means unconnected with human happiness, or with the progress of religion; and in these days, when, as already said, so much of the good that is to be done must be done out of the pulpit, no one of common sense will think this a slight advantage. It is of no use for us to chafe at what are the fundamental laws of all human society; God has so constituted it, that the influence of men over the higher ranks, and still more over the lower, will ever be in proportion, not to their moral excellence alone, but to the degree in which that excellence is associated with a reputation for solid judgment and a mature knowledge.

In order to secure to the full the benefits of such a system of training, it is absolutely necessary that the student should not be permitted to preach too soon or too often during his academical career. This we consider a vital point, and shall therefore dwell upon it at some length. Far be it from us to deny that it is absolutely necessary that in some shape or other he should be familiarized with what are afterwards to be his great duties, long before he leaves college. It is most desirable that he should be accustomed to exercise his talents for public speaking, both that he may gradually attain self-possession, command of language, and facility of utterance; and, what is still more important, that he may be continually impressed with a salutary remembrance of what is after all the great, the avowed end of all his studies and all his pursuits. But then, as this is the object of these engagements, so they should not be more numerous than is necessary to secure it. If there be institutions which have erred in not letting students preach enough, there have been others which have erred to an equal extent in suffering them to preach too much.

In the first place, if the term of study be six years, and the student enter young, as in that case he would, it appears absolutely necessary that he should confine himself exclusively to study during at least the first two years. It is only in this way that he can be subjected to that continuous application, the object of which is to form those habits of mind which we have already described as so valuable, and in fact as the great end of academical discipline. If his pursuits be at this period often intruded upon, if he be called off from them to prepare prematurely for public engagements, his attention is dissipated by variety of objects; he gets

into a slovenly way of doing things, of doing them not as well as he could, but as well as time permits, while from being obliged frequently to intermit his proper studies, there are breaks and chasms in them, which he has no time to supply. In such a case, both sound discipline and accurate knowledge are out of the question, since both depend upon concentration and continuity of effort exerted upon some few pursuits for a certain period of time. We speak that we 'do know, and we testify that we have seen.' A student, at an early period of his career, is informed that he is to preach three times on the following sabbath, some thirty miles from the scene of his studies. He has but two sermons in the world—perhaps but one; and, now trembling with fear, now elated with hope, he hastens to make some preparation for the work, certainly to the partial, perhaps total neglect of his present studies for a day or two. Or, it may be, he has preached at the same place before, and having become, therefore, a bankrupt in sermons, is necessitated to give a still larger portion of time to some sort of preparation. He spends a part of the Saturday in preparing for his journey, and in travelling to his destination. As yet unaccustomed to the labors of the pulpit, a sabbath is to him a day of intense excitement, and severe effort of mind, terminating in deep exhaustion. He spends a portion of the Monday in travelling back to his college, and arrives there so jaded and wearied in body and in mind, as to be little fit for any thing that day, and not fit for very much the next; perhaps also with some little disrelish for those silent and recluse studies which have only prospective utility to recommend them, utility which from his very inexperience he is unable fully to appreciate, and is therefore too apt to underrate; studies, too, which are attended with no present excitement, and with no flattering though dangerous gratulations. If the courses of study which he has been thus compelled to intermit or partially to neglect be closely connected in their several parts-as for instance, the Mathematics, Logic, or Mental Philosophy, or certain departments of Theology, he has not vigor, or even time enough satisfactorily to make good by his own unaided efforts the gap which his engagements have occasioned, and at the same time to keep pace with the progress of the class. The conse quence is that those portions of the courses in question are never satisfactorily mastered; while, from the manner in which they are interwoven with all the rest, the remainder is also necessarily acquired in a perfunctory and slovenly manner; and thus the student arrives at its termination not only with that mere smattering of the subject, which is worse than no knowledge at all, but without that benefit of mental discipline which would have resulted from thoroughly mastering it, and which is in some cases the only sufficient reason for paying any attention to it at all. We