always, so long as true religion exists, furnish the church with at least some pastors who sink all selfish ends in their desire to please God and benefit the world. Perhaps it is presumption, but we confidently believe that rarely since the days of the apostles, has any Christian people enjoyed in her ministry a larger proportion of selfdenying godly men, than may be found in these States. But, with the exception of these highest motives, there are with us but few inducements to enter the ministry. Our clergy can expect no aid from government, be sure of no life livings, look for no power or influence beyond what personal character may give them, and anticipate no important immunities or privileges, except it be the privilege of hard and scantily remunerated labor, with the prospect of rejection by a capricious people, or of breaking down, as respects health, by middle life, or of penury in old age. Of this state of society we do not greatly complain. It may help to secure a spiritual ministry and religion in the churches much deeper than forms. But it can hardly be expected that the profession will be filled- that good men will press into it in sufficient numbers to supply the demand, unless at least there are such facilities for education, that a young man may qualify himself for the ministry, without severe pecuniary embarrassments all the way through his preparatory course, and involving himself in a debt which for many years, if ever, after entering upon active duty, he cannot pay off. This remark derives emphasis from the fact, that if we would raise up a ministry, when there are few motives to attract young men to the sacred office, we must look for them, to a great extent, from those classes in society which have been inured to hardships by their circumstances, and not chiefly from those who, born in affluence, and brought up in indulgence, and without habits of self-reliance, are yet best able to bear the expense of an education. The remark derives further importance from the facts, that new professions are inviting the educated to their ranks, and can offer our youthful graduates such attractions, and hold out such promises of usefulness, that even some of the high motives which impel one to the ministry might easily be made to turn him aside. Second. Present and prospective call for ministers. At a time of great pecuniary embarrassments, when all our benevolent associations were crippled, and retrenchment and contraction became necessary in both domestic and foreign missions, and many feeble societies especially at the West, found themselves unable to sustain their pastors this happening immediately after peculiar exertions had urged 1851.] Preparatory Education. 265 unprecedented numbers into the ministry, there may have been for a time an apparent surplus of candidates for the sacred office. But foreseeing minds then perceived, what has already begun to be realized, that the time could not be distant when an alarming deficiency must take the place of unusual abundance; and while our churches at home would suffer from want of a sufficient supply of suitable men to preach the gospel, all our operations abroad for the salvation of the world would be limited and checked. Already we hear the call from all quarters, for educated, enterprising, pious men to fill the stations of clerical usefulness at home, and carry the good tidings of the gospel abroad. In the prodigious yearly increase of population in the United States, and in the aggressive benevolence of the American church, especially in her attempt to carry forward a work which however Utopian some may deem it, she has seriously taken in hand, viz. THE CONVERSION OF THE WORLD, a greatly enlarged ministry is imperiously demanded. Third. Facilities for acquiring the preparatory education. We have more than a hundred colleges, great and small, belonging to different denominations, scattered over the land, with almost half that number of theological seminaries. But these institutions, except a few in the older States, are excessively poor, many of them maintaining a precarious existence, upon the charities of the public. There is not a single college or theological school adequately endowed in the whole country not one so furnished with scholarships, stipends, bursaries, etc., that young men, however great their abilities or decided their piety, can depend upon them mainly to meet the expenses of a public education. Individuals here and there have done much in aid of students needing assistance, and churches have sometimes sustained a promising member in fitting himself for the pastoral work. Local societies also have accomplished something in selecting and partly supporting young men through a collegiate and theological But the main dependence of the Congregational and a part of the Presbyterian churches, for forty years past, has been upon a central organization, which has furnished pecuniary aid to more than three thousand young men. Without the American Education Society, there would long before now have been "a famine of the bread of life." course. Fourth. Means necessary to secure the requisite supply. To endow a hundred colleges thoroughly, must be the work of half as many generations. In the universities of England, France and Germany, foundations for professors, fellowships, stipends, bursaries, etc., have been accumulating for hundreds and in some of them for almost a thousand years. They are identified moreover with the interests of the State, and government is pledged to sustain them. In our own country, from the multitude of sects, from the very freedom of our civil institutions, no great reliance can be placed, for sustaining collegiate or university education, upon the public chest. The ministry must be educated by the churches, or the churches must do without a ministry, or be cursed with an incompetent one. When every reasonable effort has been made to endow, by private benefaction, the higher educational seminaries, as the work of ages cannot be accomplished in a single generation, we can hardly expect that much more will be done than to furnish a very limited number of professors, with partial support. But ample endowments for students, especially that class of students which evangelical churches are most concerned to educate, cannot be expected. This country, compared with England, has few literary men of piety and wealth who can appreciate the importance of such endowments sufficiently to furnish them. Besides, foundations thus established, in a large number of widely separated colleges, and in a country where there is such freedom in religion, would be greatly exposed to perversion. The best supervisors of funds are the contributors, near the time of contribution. We cannot but feel that no arrangement is better adapted to the genius of our country and the exigencies of the American church, for the education of its ministry, than large central organizations like that to which we have already alluded. The advantages of such an institution as the American Education Society are numerous. It ensures certainty and regularity of disbursements, a result of more consequence to that quiet of mind which is essential to successful study, than the inexperienced may imagine. It promotes unity of plan, and of measures, with the requisite efficiency. It secures or may secure wise and economical supervision, and saves the expense which must otherwise be wasted on a large number of functionaries, acting without concert if not sometimes in collision, employing their time in the service of local societies whose affairs might all be managed by a single qualified mind, acting under wise and safe supervision. It furnishes a common centre from which information can be diffused and energetic impulses given. It saves young men from that annoyance to which they must often be subjected, when individual churches, holding different shades of theological opinion, and having different views of public measures, undertake the education of its 1851.] Advantages of the Education Society. 267 own members. It may be expected to treat with delicacy those feelings of honor and independence which every true man would wish to cherish, and which may be subject to revulsions, if they are not destroyed, when one individual this month and another the next, bestows a reluctant charity upon some indigent student whom he consents to shelter as a sort of PAUPER Scholar, for a season. Nor are these the only advantages of such an organization. In a country where there are such almost irresistible tendencies to cut short the time of education, and rush half prepared into the field of public action, and when some important seminaries of learning have begun to waver in their high course and succumb to the times, a society under wise supervision, by requiring thoroughness in its beneficed scholars, with a complete course of education, may oppose an effectual barrier to the increasing of a superficial and deteriorated scholarship. Another incidental advantage of such a society is that it will naturally help to regulate the supply. When there is a scarcity of ministers appeals to the churches will enlarge the contributions, and at the same time encourage young men of piety to seek an education. Should the profession ever be more than full, the fact once known, contributions will be diminished, and a much smaller number of candidates sustained; and in this way by the natural course of things, the evils resulting from the too numerous small bursaries in the universities of Scotland will be avoided. It is good, moreover, for the piety of the churches, always to be raising up its own ministry, always to have a pecuniary interest in selecting, sustaining and watching over the candidates for that office on which her highest welfare and that of society so much depends. Intelligent men must perceive that the objections to such a system are chiefly not in the system itself, except wherein it might be modified and improved, but, if anywhere, in its occasional administration, the mistakes of which experience will be able to correct. Should the managers of such an institution at any time lack wisdom or efficiency, should they sustain men of inferior qualifications, or by excess of supervision cramp the generous feelings of youth, dislike to the system would be an inevitable consequence, and its own beneficiaries, as soon as they come into the ministry, would be the foremost in manifesting alienation towards it. But when Directors are chosen annually, and the election is made by the contributors themselves or their representatives consisting of the leading minds in the churches-nothing would seem safer from the dangers of any permanent mismanage ment. The review we have taken of ministerial education and supply shows, beyond a doubt, that as it always has been, it always must be, maintained by Christian beneficence—and that in our country the demand for ministers can never be met, without generous contributions by the church to aid its rising clergy through that expansive course of education which is so essential to success. Nor can this be esteemed a hardship, by any pious and intelligent layman. On him as well as on others rests the command, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Should he bear the full pecuniary burden of a young man's education, the young man himself who gives years of preparatory study and then a life to the work, sacrificing his chances to accumulate property or secure worldly honor, makes by far the greatest sacrifices of the two. When this matter is fully understood, the church instead of talking of her charity students will realize that the true beneficiary is not the hard toiling scholar scantily sustained while he struggles forward to the ministry, but HERSELF. ARTICLE II. SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. By Rev. Robert Turnbull, Hartford, Conn. [Concluded from p. 135.] BUT what is the relation of the external or created universe to God? This is a great question which Descartes attempts to answer. It is produced, he says, by God at first, and not only so, but constantly reproduced. The whole dependent world both of matter and of mind is a vast mechanism carried on by external laws, demanding the constant interposition of the Divine hand. Matter has no direct action upon matter, neither has matter any direct action upon mind, nor mind upon matter. Their action and interaction depend upon the all-creating, all-renewing force. Therefore, concludes Descartes, there are no secondary or occasional causes, and the whole universe, material and spiritual lies, like a passive machine, in the hands of God, moved, modified and controlled by his resistless might.1 1 It is on this ground that M. Jules Simon, in his Introduction to his edition of the works of Descartes, speaks (p. 57) of Cartesianism as "Une systeme Mécanique." See Descartes, Sixth Meditation. — Oeuvres, p. 109. |