great truth is impressing itself more strongly on this generation, that sublime truth which achieved, under God, the glories of the reformation, that the bible is the foundation of theological knowledge. And it has not failed to attract attention, that, in propor tion as the scriptures have been brought into view, systems of technical divinity have retired into the back ground; the mind has been unloosed from trammels; and new views of truth have presented themselves to the understanding and the heart. Indeed, from age to age, the propensity to bury the bible under a cumbrous load of standards and systems of divinity has been so great; so much care has been taken to shape and direct every great mass of truth; so solicitous have men been first to form the mold of the system, and then to run the system into it, that it has ceased to be matter of marvel, that christianity has been so little free and unfettered in its movements, and that the growth of knowledge in this grandest of all departments of science, has been so slow and stinted. One great truth is standing before this age. It will be in vain for us to refuse distinctly to contemplate it. It will work its way into all our schools; it will occupy all our seats of learning; it will seize upon all our seminaries. It is not that the sentiments of the past are to be treated with contempt and disregard. It is not that men are indignantly to trample on all the monuments of wisdom and all the standards of christian doctrine. It is that the bible is the great original source of truth in this world; that it is to be investigated by all the aid which learning and piety and toil, can bring to bear on it; that its great and unchanging decisions are to be listened to with profound deference, and without theological gainsaying; and that its unbending sentiments are to give shape to every system of truth; to remold, if necessary, every form of doctrine; to repress every vagary of ancient imagination; and to chain down. every fancy of daring metaphysics, of theological poetry, romance, and knight-errantry; and to demolish every Gothic pile that stands to awe the human mind, or that stretches its lengthened shadows over any of the paths of human thought. Let the ministry, as they will, and must, and should do, in this and every coming age, approach the book of God, as Bacon, and Boyle, and Newton approached the world of matter and of mind before them, as simple interpreters, and the outer limit of theological attainment will have been gained. The human mind will be emancipated, and the strength of the human faculties in theology will be demonstrated by sitting at the feet of christianity, evincing the higher laws of the universe, just as men who sat down before the works of God, evincing its lower laws, with childlike simplicity, learned what was the order of His material creation.

Now we know not a stronger argument for education than this. The mind will be free. It is the charter of this age. Shall it be a wild and erratic freedom? Shall it be suffered to rove undisciplined over all the works and word of God? Or shall it be disciplined and subjected to sober laws, and bound by the restraints of a thorough education, the only proper restraints of thought? Shall men be taught to approach the bible, subjected to just rules of exegesis, fitted to defend the truth, and commend it to every man's conscience, or shall men start forth by hundreds, as they will into the ministry, exalting every vagary of the fancy into a scripture truth; deeming every crudity of the mind, a revelation from heaven, and subjecting the scriptures to every vain, foolish interpretation, that a heated fancy and fanaticism may engender? The truth is, men must be educated, or the very principles on which the world is acting, will work its ruin. Fix a vast wheel in complicated machinery, for a check and balance, and it produces equality and order. Loosen that same wheel from its axis, and send it with the same momentum at random, and it will carry desolation to the entire fabric.

We shall close this discussion with a reference to the singular aspect of our land, in other respects bearing on this subject. The star of our freedom moves westward. It has gone from the graves of our fathers, and now stands over the valley of the Mississippi. The hand that is to guide us, is henceforward to be stretched out far beyond the mountains; or the chains that are to bind us, will be forged in the regions of the setting sun.

We remark then, that the ministry is called to act on the destinies of an age, a predominant characteristic of which, we fear, is likely to be, that it will be infidel. Every man who can cast an eye over this land, knows that infidelity here will not be of a character that can be encountered by those who are not trained for the conflict. It is not merely that ancient infidelity, which loved to sit among ruins, like the Satyr and the owl, and the bittern and the cormorant, in the lonely palaces of Babylon. It is not simply that of France, whose fabric was reared and cemented by the blood of millions, and which traced its eulogium in a nation's tears and pollution. It is not merely the sentiment of Hobbes, that all property is the right of every man, and may be taken if it can; nor the dying maxim of Hume, that precious legacy which the historian of England left, that suicide is lawful, that adultery must be practiced, if a man would secure all the benefits of life. It is not merely the unbelief which visits the palace in the writings of Voltaire and Gibbon, or which travels down into the brothel and the stye in the works of Paine. It is all combined; the precious of fering of entire ages of infidelity, poured in the fullness of its meas

ure on our shores, and rearing its temples of pollution and crime in our villages, our cities, our theaters our palaces, our schools, and our prisons. It comes to us with the learning of the past, and the scoffing of the present; arrayed in wealth and in rags; now seating itself in the place of power, and now uttering its oracles from the dunghill; now flowing in rills of oily eloquence; now putting on the aspect of reason and learning; now seen in the pleadings for licentious indulgence; now lurking in the smile of polished contempt; and now pouring forth its piteous wailings in the name of liberty, and rallying our countrymen to the standards of freedom, when it has known no freedom, and attempting to sit down in the abodes of learning, when its reign there has been always that of ignorance and death.

The inquiry is, whether we shall send forth young men untrained and unfitted to grapple with this hydra, or whether we shall act on what has hitherto been deemed the dictate of common sense, to train them for their work, and fit them for the portentous aspect of the times? It is too late to dream that ignorance can cope with learning, or unskilfulness with cunning; or that darkness can supply the place of light; or dogmatism can settle questions in religion; or men be overawed by the terrors of anathemas and chains. Men will be free. And unless you can train your ministers to meet them in the field where the freedom of mind is contemplated, and let argument meet argument, and thought conflict with thought, and sober sense and learning overcome the day-dreams and dotage of infidelity, as it has done the strength of its manhood, you may abandon the hope that religion will set up its empire over the thinking men of this age.

Again Ministers act in an age remarkable for the subtilty and cunning of error. It weaves itself into our learning. It is entrenched in the ramparts reared to confine thought, and to fetter the human faculties, in a darker age. Ancient systems raise their affrighting forms over the men who dare to break away from the consecrated modes of thought and expression. Error hides itself in specious pretenses. It comes in the glow of pious feeling. It awes us by telling of the venerated names of men that the world loves and delights to honor. It summons to its aid, authority, law, ecclesiastical censures; profound regard for order; veneration for the past, and great apprehensions of the future. On the other hand, it calls to its defense, new modes of reasoning; the latest forms of mental science; the philosophy of the schools, and the profound learning of an age, unequaled in power of thought, rapidity of conception, grandeur of enterprise, and deep researches into the laws of matter and of mind. If there ever was an age, when a man to be any thing, must think for himself, VOL. IV.

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this is that age. Yet who is he that thinks for himself? Only he whose mind you discipline; whose fancy you chain down to sober investigation; whose veneration for names and systems, you merge in the grand enterprise of looking at things as they are. This object is contemplated in every design of education; and our only security against error, under God, is to train men to habits of sober and patient thought; to teach them that argument is not in names; nor religion in dictation; nor piety in cant phrases and stereotyped expressions of regard for what the world has admired, "time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," but in a conscience made quick to love the truth, and habits of industry and patience and prayer that shrink from no obstacles, and that persevere until the mind is fixed in the truth, and the message is borne to the soul, fresh from God.

Again: No eye can be closed to the fact, that the emissaries of a church, which in much darker times than ours, called for all the skill of Luther, the learning of Calvin, and the eloquence of MeJanethon, are coming in upon this land. Nor do we send forth many men into the field, who will not encounter others trained for the conflict; plausible in argument; smooth and winning in eloquence; mild in manners; rich in learning; subtle in sophistry, and commanding in talent; schooled in the nurseries of delusive arts, and in colleges formed to teach the real cunning of the serpent, and the apparent harmlessness of the dove. Who knows not that the Jesuit is at our doors; and is hastening to embrace the pillars of the state, and enter into the temple of our liberty? Who knows not, that with skill adapted to our times, he comes with art, with eloquence, and with power; that he selects the richest vales for his abode, and draws to the places of fascination and ruin, our sons and daughters? And shall protestant man go forth to meet him unapprised of his arts, unskilled for conflict, unguarded with the panoply with which teaching and prayer can furnish the champion of truth in this holy war? Our countrymen may slumber over this. Our churches may repose in security. But if there is an eye to catch the prospect of danger, or an ear open to alarm, the christian will feel, that they who are defenders of the truth, cannot be fitted for this conflict by ignorance, or marshaled for the battle by piety alone, however ardent.

We before remarked on the prodigious expanse of the active powers in this land. We might dwell on this, and show that this untiring activity demands correspondent learning and discipline, in our ministry. Our countrymen stretch their way to the west, and found cities, and towns, and colleges there. Who is to attend them? Who to counsel, who to sit in the seats of learning? Shall ignorance; shall error; shall infidelity? Counselors they will have, and men of

learning they will have to teach their youth, and lay the foundation of their own society. Can any American, any man who has ever cast a glance at Plymouth, doubt whether they should be men of learning and talent, who are to direct the destinies of the west, and form that expanding population? Be ignorance and fanaticism any where else rather than in the ministry of the rising empire of the west. He that by a touch, may control the destiny of millions, should not be a pedant, a conceited fanatic, or a stranger to the power of molding the elements of political and religious society, with reference to the destinies of the rising empire. Our country is connected with the world. We owe a debt to all nations. Our name is every where known. Our influence stretches across the waters. Every nation looks to us; and it must be ours to furnish men, who shall bear the gospel from pole to pole. The name of an American preacher should be in religion, what the name of an American citizen is, a passport to all climes, and an honor in all the kingdoms of the earth. Let men be trained as they should be, and it will. Even now it is an honored name, and is beginning to be known in all the empires of men. Missionaries, nurtured by our Education Societies, are encountering the dangers of every ocean; treading every region of sand, or snows; ascending every hill, and going down into every valley; exploring every island, and in almost every language, proclaiming the wonderful works of

God.

Whose heart does not beat with holier and happier emotion, when he remembers that America is rearing men to carry the gospel through every zone? And who would limit the efforts of any association that sought to fit heralds of salvation to go forth to benighted nations, and to tell of a dying Savior in the snows of Siberia, and on the banks of the Senegal and the Ganges? Every American christian must love his religion and his country more when he remembers, that even now the voice of the Ame rican is heard in the islands of the ocean, and that our country's blood, consecrated by piety and learning, flows amid all the people of the earth. We live with reference to future times, and distant men. We know how the voice of the American is heard abroad. We love our country more when we remember that the example and the eloquence, the learning and piety of the Mathers, and of Eliot, and Hooker, and Edwards, and Davies, and Brainerd, and Dwight, and Payson, strike across the waters, and shall be borne on to other ages and other men. It shows that we are not unmindful of our birthright, and that we remember that we are the descendants of the people, honored by the names of Baxter, and Owen, and Barrow, and Taylor. We love our coun try more, when we remember too, that Fisk, and Parsons, and