those advantages of study which, as we have so often said, are the chief reasons for the students remaining at college at all, but for his own spiritual improvement also. This is a point which we are persuaded is too frequently overlooked, and yet it is one of very great importance. When we consider that after the term of study is over, the student must look for no more quiet Sabbaths, no more such seasons of tranquil retirement, no more such opportunities of prolonged meditation and devotion as he has heretofore enjoyed, who, that properly considers how valuable such privileges are, and that they can never return, would wish a young man to be prematurely deprived of them? To him they are absolutely essential if he would maintain the life of religion in his own spirit, and counteract by reading, reflection, and devotion, the influence of absorbing studies and of public engagements. We must recollect, moreover, that to the student some such seasons are the more necessary, inasmuch as his public duties, from their being at first of a more formidable character, and from their engrossing influence on his time and attention, leave him less able to make use of those scraps of time which men who have been long engaged in the work know how to turn to a good account. The self-possession and the facility in public speaking, which long practice secures, will enable an aged and experienced minister to regard his great task without that overwhelming anxiety which the young man must necessarily feel. It no longer disturbs his slumbers, haunts his privacy, or intrudes upon the hour which in the very prospect of it he can calmly dedicate to God and his own soul.

As we would permit students originally destined for the more limited course to enter on the more extended one, upon giving indications of unusual talents, so upon the like appearances we would give to some of the students now under consideration, an additional year or two (before entering on their theological curriculum) at some university, for the purpose of taking their degree as Master of Arts. We ought to have among us a larger number of men who have successfully contended for academical honors with the mass of other students. A certain proportion of such men would tend to give respectability to the body to which they belong, and serve as tangible evidence that the colleges at which they must have received the greater part of their education, were conducted on sound principles. The additional expense of enabling a few thus to carry their education to the highest point, would be amply covered by relinquishing the attempt to drag all students, whatever their age or advantages, through the self-same course.

Before we conclude this part of the subject, it may not be irrelevant to advert to some of those objections which are urged against the system of prolonged education, on the score that it is apt to exert a prejudicial influence on the character of the preaching of

every one who has been subjected to it. It is apt, so some say, to produce a style of preaching destitute of earnestness and feeling, inanimate, or coldly correct, or critical, or metaphysical, but at all events without passion or pathos. Now, we admit that it is eminently desirable to guard against such results, and that this can be done only by gradually and insensibly bringing a youth into contact with what is to be the business of his life, during a considerable portion of his academical career; sacredly observing, however, the restrictions and limitations already laid down. Unless a student be thus practically initiated into his duties before he leaves college, we can easily conceive that an unbroken pursuit of science and literature, even though they may be theological, will, to a certain extent, produce the effects complained of, and unfavorably affect his style of public address, at least for some years, after he has entered the ministry.

It is also freely admitted, that, to a certain extent, a young man's first sermons will be undesirably tinctured with the studies in which he has been recently much engaged; this is naturally and necessarily the case, whether his training has been long or short. Hence there will sometimes be a little bit of metaphysics, or a little scrap of criticism, which is totally unfit for a public audience, which had a thousand times better be dispensed with, and which, after a little experience, he would never think of introducing. This flows from two causes, the second of which is by far the more powerful of the two. First, his own mind has been recently much occupied with these things, and he mistakenly thinks that matters which are so interesting to him, must needs be interesting to every body else. Secondly, he stands a little in need of time and experience, the want of which is not the fault of college-training, any more than it is possible that a college-training should ever supply it. To this sort of learning, as to the mathematics, there is no royal road,' and patience is the only remedy. God himself has ordained that it should be so, and it never can be otherwise while the human mind takes its present course of development, or until youth and gray locks go together. The student has not yet learned that certain acquisitions are valuable only as they are instrumental in forming his own mind, and teaching him to use its faculties with facility and address on those subjects which are likely to interest and benefit a common audience; that, if for instance, he has studied metaphysics, or mathematics, he is never, as a public speaker, to let it appear that he has done either, except indirectly, in the greater soundness of his reasoning and perspicuity of his statements. Now, though this lesson ought to be incessantly inculcated upon him while he is a student, though he may admit its truth and importance, and even strive conscientiously to reduce it to practice, yet a little experience is absolutely necessary to enable him fully to appreciate its value. He is igno

rant as yet in a great measure, of the topics and of the style which tell most upon human nature, and which most readily reach the understanding and the heart. In his first attempts at preaching he is unconsciously endeavouring to reduce to practice what he has as yet only learnt in theory, and we know that all such attempts whatsoever, even in things very much less difficult than preaching, are extremely awkward. It is evident, therefore, that a prolonged education is not to blame for all this-it is youth and inexperience which are the sole causes of it. The deficiencies arising from these are to be corrected only by time-by the methods which divine wisdom has appointed; and they who think it can be otherwise, are absurdly expecting to see old men's heads on young men's shoulders. We are far from denying that in many cases, notwithstanding the most judicious training, a lurking feeling of almost unconscious vanity, even in a youth who conscientiously strives to do his best, will lead to an occasional display of knowledge or of learning. But a little knowledge of human nature-a little practical acquaintance with what most interests it, with the sort of subjects and the sort of style to which the heart of man most readily responds, soon corrects all this; and thus while the benefits of protracted discipline and comprehensive knowledge are permanent, the ill effects are transitory, and soon disappear.

The same causes will account, not only for the ill-judged topics on which a youth will often descant, but for the insufficient manner in which he treats those subjects which can alone stir any deep emotion in the minds of his audience. Such defects are most preposterously charged upon his education; they are defects inseparable from youth, and necessarily spring from a partial sympathy with all the deeper feelings of humanity, with its sorrows, trials, and temptations; they are defects which no learning ever occasioned, and which no teaching can ever supply. A little time and a little experience are the only effectual tutors. And the proof is found in this: that if we take a youth, whose slender attainments and deficient training proclaim that he has been effectually exempted from the dangers which too prolonged an education is supposed to involve, we shall still see in his first addresses (though they may, perhaps, be more florid and declaatory), the same want of practical acquaintance with human nature, depth of feeling, earnest simplicity, and directness and pungency of style; in a word, of the qualities which will ever characterize the discourses of a man, whether in public or private, who vividly sympathizes in all the emotions of those whom he addresses, and is wholly absorbed in the importance of what he is delivering. It is simply another variety of the very same thing.

Nothing can in our judgment be more preposterous, or even more uncharitable or inhuman, than the criticisms which Chris

tians, whose age, whose knowledge of human nature in general, and whose recollections of their own youthful history in particular, ought to have taught them better, often take upon them to pass upon the first efforts of a youthful preacher. The young man of four and twenty, who has never known what sorrow meant, who has never lost a friend, who has never been in adversity, who has seldom had his sympathies exercised by frequently coming into contact with those who have, who has never been subjected to severe temptations and to the discipline of sickness, and who is an absolute stranger to many of those emotions which can only be awakened in after years, gets up to preach; and an aged hearer perchance gravely tells us afterwards, 'that there was 'no deep experience in it; that there were too many hard words; "references to and speculations about subjects in which the heart ' of man and the heart of a Christian can take little or no interest; ' and that this comes of studying at college.' We ask, How can the same or similar faults be avoided, whether the youth ever went to college or not? How much better would it become such a critic, instead of sourly dwelling on whatever has displeased him, and aggravating and multiplying the inevitable deficiencies of youth, to throw over them the mantle of charity, to rejoice in every indication which promised future excellence and usefulness, to be contented to bear with those faults which he himself would have exemplified at the same age, and to wait with patience for that ripe autumnal fruit which it is absurd to expect with the first blossoms of the spring.

Similar observations apply to those vices of style and diction which a protracted training, so far from occasioning, has a direct tendency to correct, but which yet, in spite of it, very generally characterizes the compositions of the young speaker and the young writer. Sometimes he is affectedly elegant, or ornately polished; sometimes he is all glitter and ornament, which he mistakes for the beautiful; sometimes sinks into downright fustian and bombast, which he mistakes for the sublime; one youth is proud of hard words, and another is taken with fine ones. But in all, there is more or less the want of that simple, direct, hard-hitting style, which will ever distinguish the productions of a mature intellect, animated by deep emotion. Such defects, in one form or other, and, to a greater or less extent, unavoidably attend a certain period of life

a period of unripe judgment, of immature taste, of undeveloped feeling. That period may be longer or shorter in different minds; abridged or protracted according to its constitutional peculiarities, or the kind and degree of culture which has been bestowed upon it; but it will exist in all; nor is there one of us, who has arrived at riper years, who cannot very well recollect that he was once well-pleased, perhaps in raptures, with what now inspires only disgust; that he once thought things very fine

which he would now throw aside as tawdry frippery. Now we contend, and indeed it is pretty generally admitted, that these defects, the result primarily of the constitution of human nature, so far from being cherished by a protracted education, are in every point of view likely to be diminished by it. It cannot be that the continued inculcation of simplicity, severe criticisms on the faults now animadverted upon, and familiarity with the best models, can increase the very faults which it is the perpetual effort of the teacher to detect and expose. Moreover, the mere time thus allowed for growth of intellect and expansion of feeling, has an obvious tendency to correct such faults. In fact, so far from its being true that these faults are to be attributed to an enlarged education, it is obvious that they exist in spite of it, and would exist to a greater extent, and for a longer period without it. But because, for the reasons already specified, it cannot wholly correct these faults, it is falsely charged with producing them. It is not very easy to show the absurdity of this reasoning by adducing instances of youths attempting to declaim in public without any discipline at all, because few ever attempt it; but we can truly say, that the faults now in question have always been greater in proportion to the want of it; and that the most perfect specimens of fustian and bombast to which we ever listened, were from men who had never passed through any such discipline.

We must not dismiss this important subject of our colleges, without offering two or three observations on the claims they have upon the support of our denominations, and the methods by which their revenues may be increased. Though we believe much more may be done than has yet been done, we rejoice to say that the state of our colleges is in this respect matter of congratulation. It were invidious to mention names, or dwell upon individual acts of munificence; suffice it to say, that both in the metropolis and in the country, there has been felt within the last twenty years a decidedly greater interest in these institutions, and a more generous liberality exercised in their support. We shall content ourselves with stating two or three simple facts. Upon examining the last reports of two of our largest and most respectable metropolitan colleges, we observe that the donations and bequests, within the last fifteen years, have been to those within the previous fifteen years, nearly as three to one; within the last twenty years, new and extensive buildings have been erected,* in not less than four instances, for the purpose of securing increased accommodation for students, or greater appliances of learning; while it is well known, that by an act of almost princely munificence, an entirely new college has been established in the midland counties, and that at

Highbury, Homerton, Coward College, Airedale.