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

repeat that we speak from experience, that we paint from life. Again, it seems desirable, for another obvious reason, that during a considerable portion of the whole term of study, students should not be permitted to preach at all. In sending them to a college to prepare them for the ministry, it is surely supposed that they have something to learn before they preach, or why send them there?-it is surely supposed that they are not yet in any way fit to undertake the important office to which they have dedicated themselves? Now, by suffering them to preach too soon, we not only set at naught this maxim, and lose or at least diminish the opportunities professedly given for supplying these deficiencies, but in some cases render it impossible that they should ever be supplied for in these very early efforts are too often acquired or confirmed that false taste and that vicious style, which it is a thousand times more difficult to unlearn than simply to avoid; and which, in fact, would in most cases have been avoided, if a little wholesome instruction had been timely administered. As it is, a great part of the instructions of subsequent years is consumed in counteracting and correcting the faults of premature practice; what might have been effectual as a preventive, is too often only partially efficacious as a remedy.

For these reasons we must insist on the necessity of sacredly reserving a considerable portion of the whole term of study to the purposes of study; nor do we think it difficult to show, that even during the remainder of it, preaching engagements should not be very frequent. We have already spoken of the absolute necessity that students should not come unpractised to the regular discharge of their ministerial functions, and so far therefore as it is necessary to secure this object, some public exercises become both requisite and beneficial; but as this is the object, so would we strictly confine ourselves to it not a step further would we go.

None, we apprehend, will deny the desirableness of uniformly endeavouring to bring about these results as gradually and silently as possible; that there may be no sensible violence done to a youth's habits, no sudden stepping from secluded study into the front of a large congregation. For a considerable time he should be habituated only to address very humble audiences, in rooms or very small chapels, and that of the poorer and more ignorant classes; and this, not only that the great ends of study (still diligently prosecuted) may be answered (and such duties would require no very formidable preparation), but for other and still weightier reasons connected with his moral and spiritual improvement. In the first place, such duties can hardly inflate his vanity; they present little scope for ambition; the youthful laborer must be urged on, and sus

tained in their performance solely by his desire of doing good. His best feelings are therefore at once called forth, and his soul is in harmony with his work. Not only so. Actuated by such feelings, without any reflex reference to himself or his own doings, he is likely both to acquire a simple and natural style of address, and to attain that self-possession which will be necessary in more important and arduous engagements. To these he will thus at length be brought, through many different stages, by a long process, and without any violence to his habits. Secondly, such engagements can hardly depress him by fear of failure; which, perhaps next to self-complacency is least in harmony with the state of mind in which we should enter upon such engagementsengagements which should always be contemplated with serene delight and holy satisfaction.

It is not uncommon (we again speak of what we know), to see these evils combined where a youth has been too rapidly brought forward, and without due attention to that very gradual process which shall make the transformation of the student into the preacher almost as imperceptible as that by which the boy ripens into the man. A distressing timidity, which has been attended before a formidable service with a total oblivion of all but the duties in prospect, has been followed, after a tolerably successful performance of them, by feelings of complacency still more injurious to character; while the absorbing fear of failure and the selfcomplacent gratulations upon success, are equally ruinous, for a time, to mental equanimity, and the quiet pursuit of study.

Say what we will, it is, and cannot but be a fearful trial, in the first place, of a youth's courage and fortitude; and, in the second, of his humility, modesty, and spirituality, to place him without long training, and except by a very slow process, before the eyes of a considerable audience, who are to sit in silence and listen to what he says.

Happily for our times, there are ample opportunities of thus gradually familiarizing a student with the more important duties. which await him; and it gives us sincere pleasure to add, that those who are entrusted with the care of our colleges are by no means slack to avail themselves of them. The stations of the Christian Instruction Society and other similar societies, now established in many of our cities and large towns, (would to God they were established in all of them !) and the little chapels which are raised in secluded hamlets and villages, afford abundant facilities for this important initiation. Our only complaint is, that even these duties are in many cases entered upon by the student too soon, and that in others, still more numerous, they are not persisted in long enough. A student is introduced too early to more important and arduous fields of labor. It will be seen from these remarks, that it is only by a very gradual process

that we would permit students to appear before regular congregations at all, and would reserve their opportunities of doing this until quite a late period in their academical career. This we would do both for the reasons just assigned, and because we would secure as large a portion of their time as possible for the continued pursuit of those studies which after all are the main reason for their coming to college, and which, while they remain there, ought to be regarded as of paramount importance. Now, to preach frequently before congregations which demand considerable preparation, must be attended with an almost entire neglect of study.

When we consider what is the great object of sending a youth to a theological college,-that it is to fit him for a whole life of labor -to fit him for engaging with efficiency for a period somewhere be-tween twenty and thirty years (for such is the average of the life of our ministers after they have assumed the pastoral office) in a work the most arduous and responsible that can demand the energies of man, it seems to us little less than infatuation to endanger the probability of success, by either stinting the period of study, or rendering it less effective than it might be. Yet this latter is done if we impose upon the student public engagements which demand much of his time, and tend to distract his attention. In relation to the whole period of labor in which, after his college life, he is to be engaged, what are a few months, or even a year or two? What good can be effected by his casual labors on a few sabbaths, that can counterbalance the probability of his entering with diminished powers of usefulness on a career of five and twenty years' labor? Surely if ever there was an illustration of the old proverb about being 'penny wise and pound foolish,' this is it.

It is often said, that if young men are zealous in the great cause to which they have devoted themselves, it is a pity that that zeal should be repressed, and that they should not at once commence their public duties. We answer, that it is admitted on all hands that zeal alone is not sufficient-it must be tempered with wisdom, and conjoined with knowledge. The great object is, so to form the character,-the character both of mind and heart, that zeal in the great work may burn with a steady as well as with a brilliant light for the course of a whole life; and we again say, that it is the grossest folly, to endanger so great an object by anticipating the period at which the student can with efficiency enter upon his public labors, or by rendering his preparation less thorough and complete than it might be, for the sake of a few sabbaths' occasional labors. We are convinced such saving will in general be dearly paid for, and such economy, prove the most lavish expense.

Upon the whole, then, if we suppose six years devoted to the

higher kind of education,-and we would by no means have it less, we would not suffer any young man (unless he has enjoyed elsewhere such peculiar advantages and such efficient training, as to justify his instant admission to the theological classes) to preach in any way for the space of at least two years. If there were no reason for this connected with his studies, his mere youth, his insufficient knowledge, and his utter want of preparation, ought to be sufficient ones. For the next two years he should be permitted occasionally to exercise his talents in the humble and unobtrusive ways already pointed out, among the poorer and more ignorant classes, in rooms, and at village stations; the frequency of these efforts, and the magnitude of his audience gradually increasing in proportion as he became accustomed to the work. But at no period of these two years should he be permitted to engage in such duties oftener, upon an average, than every third sabbath. During the last two years he might be permitted to supply regular congregations: the frequency of his labors here also, and the importance of the stations to which he is sent, gradually increasing as the term of his study drew near to its conclusion. Thus slowly and by a long process familiarized with his work, he is preserved from all those dangers, whether intellectual or moral, which attend too sudden a change; no such formidable demands are made upon his time as to require him to infringe upon his studies; those studies may be pursued with nearly as much efficiency as ever up to the very close of his academical career-perhaps we might say with even more efficiency, for if he have not quite as much time for them, the previous discipline which uninterrupted study has conferred has given him such control of his faculties, and such habits of attention, as to enable him to do more in one day than he had formerly been able to do in two; no demands are made upon his knowledge until he has obtained some knowledge to meet them, and as those demands gradually increase, his knowledge increases too. Above all, we should have the best security that could be offered against those moral dangers, those temptations to vanity, affectation, and ambition, to which the sudden transmutation of the raw student into the preacher is so apt to give rise. Each step is so slow, that he himself is hardly sensible of the change through which he has passed, except by looking back upon long intervals of time-not upon days or months, but years.

On no account, however, would we permit students, even of the last two years, to engage in public more frequently than upon every alternate sabbath. To this general rule, as to every other, we are well aware that there must be some exceptions, but they should be the exceptions. And we would adhere to this general rule, not only for the sake of securing, in a considerable degree,