JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN EDUCATION SOCIETY. NOVEMBER, 1835. AN APPEAL TO THE PIOUS YOUNG MEN OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ON THE SUBJECT OF DEVOTING THEMSELVES TO THE WORK OF THE MINISTRY. I am quite aware that to a certain extent, every private Christian can in his measure promote these same objects; but what is this, compared with living for nothing else? How glorious and how delightful the reflection to live exclusively for God, for Christ, for religion, and for immortal souls; this is indeed to live for immortality. MY DEAR AND ESTEEMED YOUNG | an object at once so stupendous and so gloFRIENDS,-If it be necessary as an act of rious? Pious young men, pause and ponwriting to apologize for this address from a der upon this magnificent reality. Before stranger and a foreigner, I offer, as my de- you take your seat, and grasp the oar of fence, both the request of one of your own secular labors; before you hire yourselves ministers, and the impulse of my own heart, as the slaves of mammon for the precarious which has long beat strongly with affection wages of silver and gold; before you fix for your country. Believing, as I do, that and settle your destiny for earth, for time, the transition of America from the state of and perhaps, in some measure, for eternity, a colony, into that of a free independent pause and consider whether you will relinnation, is the greatest event in the history quish this high distinction, for aught that of the world during the last century; and earth, or all the brightest visions of earththat this event is destined to bear a most born hopes, have to present. important part in the future moral welfare of all the nations upon earth, I feel an anxiety for the religious interests of your land, which I cannot adequately express. I read your religious publications, I watch the movements of your religious institutions, and observe the state of religion itself among you, with the deepest interest; and I add to all this my fervent prayers for your churches, that God would be merciful unto them and bless them, that his way may be known upon earth, his saving health among all nations. With these feelings, and under the consideration that I can say some things that will come with greater effect from a foreigner than from one of your own ministers, I take the liberty of addressing you on the subject, confessedly an important one, of devoting yourselves to the work of the Christian ministry, instead of worldly and gainful occupations. This is my design. God give it success in stirring up the hearts of many of you to devote yourselves to the work of the Lord in spreading divine truth, saving souls, building up the church of Christ, accomplishing the eternal purpose of infinite benevolence, fulfilling the design for which the Son of God died upon the cross, blessing your country, evangelizing the world, peopling the regions of heaven, and diffusing happiness through eternity. What a design! How glorious, how sublime, how godlike! Is such a work in reality put within the reach of man? Is it in truth offered to us? It is. And is there a mind so grovelling, a heart so earthly and sensual, as not to feel its ambition fired by VOL. VIII. I assume it as a postulate which no one will be disposed to deny me, that there is an intimate connection between the existence of an evangelical ministry, and the support and diffusion of religion in the world. Religion will ever be found to prosper and extend itself, in proportion to the number and activity of the faithful preachers of righteousness. These are the chosen and appointed instruments of Christ, for carrying on his work in the earth; not indeed to the exclusion of others, but as the principal, and, to a considerable extent, the centre of all. I do not disparage other means, such as the distribution of tracts, and especially of the Holy Scriptures, the visits of pious persons to the habitations of the irreligious, and Christian education. All these are important, immensely important to the world's moral welfare, and have been blessed by the Spirit of God for the salvation of myriads. But the preaching of the gospel by properly qualified and appointed ministers, is the great instrument for the conversion of sinners and the edification of believers. The preaching of the cross is the power of God unto salvation. Faith cometh by hearing. The truth of God enters the soul of man through the senses 22 of seeing and hearing; but for one that is tional prosperity. A preacher is a patriot saved through the medium of the eye, there of the highest order, for wisdom and knoware ten that are saved through that of the ledge are the stability of the times. Your ear. Every thing connected with the min- free institutions can flourish, you live only isterial office, shows its wise adaptation as a in a soil and atmosphere of piety. Repubmoral means for the conversion and sanctifi- licanisin is that very form of government cation of the human mind, and the spread which depends most for its stability, and of religion in the world. It depends, of quiet, and orderly working, upon the virtue course, for its success, upon the grace of of the people. It cannot long exist in a God; but it is in beautiful harmony with all vicious nation; it requires the restraint of the laws of our mental constitution. If we religious principle to repress the turbulence trace the history of Christianity from its of passion, and control the disturbing action first promulgation to the present moment, of selfishness and egotism. There is a we shall observe how closely connected has strong centrifugal force in all democratic been its success with the ministry of the states, which even on ordinary occasions, word. Where this cannot be enjoyed, as and especially during the discussions of in many situations of your great central great questions, and the adjustment of convalley, and in many of your new settle-flicting interests, requires the centripetal ments, it is well to send an immediate and power of religious sentiment. Should the large supply of tracts, Bibles, and school-day come, when the great mass of your masters; but the minister must follow-the people would be found destitute both of the moral machinery is incomplete without him. His living voice, and "human face divine," and pastoral superintendence, are the appropriate and appointed institute of God, for carrying on the cultivation of the moral wilderness. He is the husbandman, and all the rest but the implements of his husbandry. influence of religion or respect for it, rest assured that all you now admire and value, and boast of in the institutions of your country, will be as much in danger, as a garland would be in the hands of an infuriated populace. Your preachers are the best guardians of your constitution, and the pulpit the strongest defence of your capitol. Consider this, young men, and meditate Look at the present circumstances of deeply on the subject: it is the ministry of your country-they are unparalleled in the the word that must evangelize your coun-history of mankind. You are in every retry; your religion, as a people, must stand spect the new world: there is nothing or fall with this; your Bible societies, and analogous in modern or in ancient history. tract societies, will not, cannot do it alone; You are drawing upon all Europe for a and indeed, it is the pulpit that is the great population to occupy your immense territopower, the fly-wheel that keeps all these ry; and bringing together materials to form parts of the machinery in motion. Conse- your nation from every source west of the quently, there should be in every Christian's Atlantic, and now, then, you want the fires heart throughout your land, a deep and of religion to fuse these heterogeneous parts anxious concern for an adequate supply of into one homogeneous and harmonious pious and devout preachers of the word of whole. And what else is strong enough life; but in whose hearts should this con- to do this but religion ? Diversities, prejucern be so deep, my young friends, as in dices, and antipathies, will remain and feryours? The present youth are to be the ment, to your annoyance, till neutralized people of America in the next generation: by the sanctifying and amalgamating power you are soon to be the nation, and from you of true godliness. Look at the tide of emiare to come the whole next generation of gration flowing into your central valley, a preachers. Before then you determine to tide of which the great river Mississippi is give yourselves to trade, to agriculture, or but an emblem. Now unless that tide be to the professions of law or medicine; be-impregnated with the principles of piety, it fore you determine to refuse the ministry, may I, as a stranger and a friend too, beg, entreat, implore you, in your most solemn and serious moments, when in your closets, and as in the sight of God, to give the following considerations your devout and conscientious attention. 1. I appeal to you on the ground of PATRIOTISM. You love your country: you ought to love it, for it is worthy of your affection consider, then, I entreat you, whether you can serve its interests, social, moral, intellectual, or even political, so effectually as by becoming ministers of the gospel. It is under the influence of the pulpit that all these flourish; the pulpit is a spring of fertility to all that constitutes na will be a continued stream of mischief and misery. Leave all these augmenting millions without religion, and you are accumulating at the very heart of your country, a mass of disease which will extend itself through ten thousand arteries to the extremities of the land. If your Tract Society report is to be depended on, there are already five millions of your population without the stated means of grace, by which I understand, the advantages of a stated ministry. What a startling consideration! what a melancholy reflection! What must this come to? What will be the end of such a state of things? What mischiefs will result even for the present world, and oh, the consequences for eternity! Young men, can you go, will you go, dare you go, one | to his merchandize, another to his farm, and a third to his domestic enjoyment, and care not for these things? Look at these millions, and will you, for the sake of gain, abandon their souls to sin here, and damnation hereafter? Survey, in imagination, the vast and fertile valley of their location, and will you give it up to be a valley of dry bones? Will you abandon it without reluctance, regret, or remorse, to become the domain of death, the territory of Satan, the suburb of hell? Will you, when future travellers shall tell of the moral desolation that reigns there, bring upon yourselves the wonder and reproach of your successors, that you refused to sacrifice your prospects of gain to stop this mischief in the beginning? Young men, on you will rest the blessings or the curses of future generations, for advancing or neglecting the interests of your land, just as you now determine to give yourselves to the things of charity or to your own. There are in your country resources to meet all its own demands. Read the following statement which I give from the pen of one of your own ministers, and of the accuracy of which you are judges. "There are in the United States 1,200,000 young men, between the ages of 14 and 25; if but one in 15 of these are pious, and this is a fair estimate, it will give us 80,000 pious young men; if but 1 in 10 should study for the ministry, it would give us 8,000 ministers. Again, there are 1,000,000 of members connected with the evangelical churches; if but one young man is found to every 100 church members, suitable to be educated, it will give 10,000. Again, there are 12,000 evangelical churches; if but one suitable young man is found in each church, it will give 12,000. Again, during the revivals which have for five years blessed so extensively our churches, it is a moderate estimate that 200,000 souls have been added to our evangelical churches; a striking fact is the large number of young persons gathered in during these revivals; at least 60,000 between the ages of 14 and 25. Allowing one third of these are young men, this will give 20,000. If but one third of these are proper to be educated, it will give 6,666 as the result but of five years' revivals. From these calculations, it is obvious that there is no lack of young men in our churches, proper to be educated."-Are these calculations correct? If so, be astonished at your own resources, and tremble for your own responsibility. What is the secret of God in reference to your revivals? Why these extraordinary visitations of mercy, but to furnish you with the means in greater abundance, and with greater rapidity for evangelizing your country? You inistake the purpose of God if you do not consider; you neglect to co-operate with him in his great designs, if you do not keep pace in the supply of ministers, with these gracious outpourings of the Spirit. You are a youthful giant land, and with a giant's strength may help yourselves with one arm, and the world with the other. Shall it be, then, that with such claims upon you, and such resources within you, and such motives urging you, a deaf ear will be turned to the appeal which I now make? Is there no need for an increase of ministers? Answer that question to God and to your conscience. Is there not a demand for double, yea treble the number that are already engaged, or are preparing to engage in this work? And where are they to be found? Among you. I beseech you, listen to the call of your country, and respond to the cry that reaches you from the falls of Niagara to the mouths of the Mississippi; a cry louder than the thunder of that awful cataract, and deeper than the stream of that mighty river, saying, "come and help us." 2. I plead with you on the ground of PROTESTANTISM. You know what Popery is, and what it has done in Europe. You are acquainted with its horrific portraiture, as delineated on the page of the apocalypse by an inspired pen, and as realized in the annals of ecclesiastical history. You know how it has corrupted the faith once delivered to the saints, rioted and revelled in the blood of believers, and how it has forged chains for the conscience, in which it has led countless millions to the bottomless pit. This horrid monster has long had its eye and heart, and now has its grasp, on your country. It is already in your great central valley in alarming strength, exulting in the consciousness of present power, and in the hope of future triumphs. A large proportion of the emigrants which settle there are Roman Catholics, and of the other myriads that are flowing into that territory, those who are not Catholics, are likely to become so if they are abandoned by the Protestant part of your population. It is known that the Catholics increase at a rapid ratio. If this does not alarm you and awaken you to feel the necessity of an increase of faithful and devoted ministers, nothing will. I ask you, young men, if the history of Popery in Europe is to be repeated in America? Are you willing that the inquisition demolished in one quarter of the world should be re-edified in yours? or that the fires of the stake extinguished among us, should be rekindled among you? Or, putting this aside as all but impossible, and even admitting that Popery has grown too wise to burn men for heresy, and that yours is the last country on earth where it could ever be expected to gain the power to persecute, still think of its creed, and its ritual, and its priestly domination over the conscience, and its soul-destroying doctrines; think upon its influence upon the eternal destinies of man; think of its anathema upon the doctrine of justification by faith; meditate upon what Popery is in its mildest form, when it has abjured its right or its wish to kill the body, and put on the garb of an angel of light; and is this the system which you can permit to spread, unopposed by the faithful preaching of the gospel, through the length and breadth of the valley of the Mississippi? What, allow this enemy of the truth as it is in Jesus, this enormous perversion of Christianity, to settle down like an incubus on the intellectual and moral energies of that which will probably become in the lapse of a few more years, the centre of your country? Shall the heart of America be allowed thus to become diseased, and the fountain of your life's blood be corrupted? Where is your veneration for the great names of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, and Latimer? Where your sense of the value of their mighty deeds? Where your gratitude for the emancipation they wrought for your forefathers in this quarter of the earth, if you do not feel willing to consecrate your lives to the cause in which they sacrificed theirs? Even here in England, hemmed in and surrounded as Popery is, by Protestant in stitutions, and ministers, and churches, and chapels, of all sects, and where it might be expected there would be scarcely room for it to expand, it is making new, and vigorous, and successful efforts to enlarge its boundaries, and multiply its subjects; what then may it not be imagined will be its progress in the newly peopled territories of your land, if the population be surrendered to its influence? Are you prepared then, young men, to give up a large portion of your country to this dreadful system, which, wherever it goes, brings on an eclipse of Christianity, and throws a baleful shadow on the moral interests of the human race. Ministers, holy ministers, well educated ministers, ministers instructed in the Popish controversy are wanted, immediately, and urgently wanted to prevent this system from withering the religious hopes of your vast and increasing nation; and will not you say, "Here am I, send me?" 3. I ask you to consider next THE CAUSE OF CHRISTENDOM AT LARGE, and that not only for the present, but for all coming ages. You are not ignorant, that in all the kingdoms of Europe, Christianity is secular in its character, shorn of its spiritual beauty and strength, and therefore impeded in its progress, by its connection with the civil power, and its employment as an engine of state policy. It is treated with suspicion and reproach, as the tool of princes, and the trade of priests. To the arguments by which dissenters assail this unseemly alliance, it is said in reply, that if governments did not provide religious instruction for the people, the people would not provide it for themselves, and thus the alternative is brutish ignorance, and practical atheism, or religious establishments. It is in vain that we appeal for a refutation of this assumption to the want of any such provision for the spread of Christianity in the institutes of Christ, or to the success of the gospel in the first ages of Christianity, before scarcely a king had thrown his sceptre into the scale, for we are immediately and with seeming triumph on the part of churchmen, referred to the present deplorable spiritual condition of America, as a proof of the utter destitution of religious ordinances which must prevail in the absence of a state religion. You are not probably aware that the advocates of establishments, of every grade in this country, from the prelate, down to the humble curate, and in every way, from the pulpit and the press, in Episcopal charges, in pamphlets and in sermons, are continually throwing the destitute condition of the United States, in the face of those who contend for the support of religion by the voluntary principle. That in fact, it was all possible arguments condensed in one, in favor of a state religion, to mention the moral condition of your country? And even the more moderate and modest champions of an established religion, who do not think you are quite so bad as their more calumnious brethren represent, are still looking across the Atlantic with the most resolute assurance, that from thence will certainly come in time such abundant evidence of the necessity of a government interference to provide for religion, as will satisfy the most sturdy defender of the voluntary principle. While on the other hand, the great body of dissenters are looking to your country for a proof of the greater efficiency of that very principle to meet the religious wants of a nation. It seems then as if both parties were willing that facts, rather than arguments, should now decide this great question; for great indeed it is, amounting to nothing less than, "what is the best means of supporting and spreading religion in the world? And what is the fact that is thus to arbitrate between us? Mark it, young men, dwell upon it with all possible attention and seriousness, the fact which is to prove before the world, and for all future ages, whether compulsion or free will offerings are the best means of spreading Christianity, is the spiritual condition of the United States of America. Observe then, the tremendously important and critical position in which you are placed. All eyes are upon your country; a deep and anxious interest pervades all classes here respecting your moral state. tracts of your country remain without the stated means of grace; should the great mass of the people be without the minister of the word; should the population be left to found villages, and these rise into the magnitude of towns whose inhabitants are altogether Should large depraved and alienated from God, you well know, for it has been told you a thousand times over. The world is not yet converted to Christ. We are approaching the con neglected, or given up into the hands of dition is, how grossly dark, how awfully Catholic priests, for want of Protestant ministers to teach them; should ignorance, irreligion, infidelity or Popery prevail in a much greater degree than they do in this and other countries where Protestant estab-clusion of the second millenary of the lishments exist, we shall be told that the question is decided that no nation can be religious in an extensive degree, unless there be a state-provision for this purpose. On the other hand, should the supply of ministers and the means of grace, even moderately keep pace with the demands of your rapidly increasing population; should you in the exercise of the voluntary principle, and by the liberality and energies of the friends of religion, outstrip the government in this country in providing religious instruction for the great bulk of the people, what an argument will this furnish to prove that establishments are unnecessary and injurious. Now, although dissenters have full confidence in the ultimate result, it must be admitted that the demonstration is not yet so complete as to satisfy or silence gainsayers. Thousands of ministers are yet wanted to meet the necessities of your population; it is true this will apply as strictly to our country, where there has been a government provision for three centuries, as it does to yours, but in the success of the experiment, it is not enough that the voluntary principle has overtaken the establishment in less than half a century, but it must leave it as far behind as to satisfy the most skeptical mind. Come forward then, young men; flock to the sacred office, ye American youth, and under the influence of holy jealousy for the honor of the Christian religion; a holy patriotic zeal for the best interests of your own country; a regard to the interests of Christendom; a desire for the spiritual welfare of the whole world, devote your selves to the work of the ministry. Let it be seen that zeal for God, the constraining love of Christ, and compassion for immortal souls, are motives as powerful in calling forth ministers of religion, as the rank, the wealth, the learning, with all the other lures which establishments have to offer. If ministers are lacking with you to any considerable extent, we shall be told, again and again, that it is because the pious youth in America, do not choose to cast themselves for support on the precarious bounty of the people. Is this the case? Is this the religion of the United States? Is the influence of church preferment, the love of lucre, as predominant with you, as motives for going into the ministry, as they are with us? O let us see that you can be moved to enter the sacred office, without the hope of bishoprics, deaneries, golden stalls, fellowships, and pluralities, which are the boasted lures of establishments. 4. I next advocate the MORAL CONDITION OF THE WORLD. What that con Christian era, and nearly 800,000,000 of Will 5. Permit me now to touch the chord |