agement of the spiritual interests of a multitude of human beings, a single hour under five or six-and-twenty years. Of all incongruities in the world, the most incongruous, in our opinion, is that presented in a boy-pastor.

If only on these grounds then we would advocate a prolonged education for the class of students now under consideration. But there are other advantages, connected with their intellectual fitness for the ministry, which scarcely less loudly proclaim the propriety of this course.

It is often triumphantly asked by those who have only superficially considered the matter, and who entirely overlook some of the chief purposes of education, of what use is it to stuff the head of a youth who is designed for the ministry, 'with Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Logic, Mental Philosophy, and so forth? What are all these things in relation to the gos'pel of Christ? The man is not to teach the classics, or science, 'but to explain and enforce religious truth.' All this is nothing to the purpose; these things are not taught him because he is to teach them to others; but first, for the sake of that discipline of mind which they impart; to develop his faculties, and to enable him to exert those faculties with facility on whatsoever subjects demand their exercise; to strengthen the memory, to exercise the judgment, to refine the taste, to form habits of close attention, patient investigation, and continuous thought, in relation to any subject which may come before him. The proper object of a thorough general education, as Dr. Johnson well observes, is not so much to fit the mind for any particular department of exertion (for this is the object of a strictly professional education), but to prepare it to engage with the greatest probability of success in that department of exertion, whatever it be, to which circumstances may determine it. Now the above classes of study, pursued under different modifications and to a different extent in various schools, have been thought in all ages better adapted to this great end of general discipline than any others, and all experience confirms the judgment. If there were any others that would answer the purpose equally well, they would have equal claims to be chosen, but then the objection if it were valid at all, would equally apply to these also, for they must be equally alien from pursuits strictly professional, and would be selected not with a view to them, but to the great object of mental training. It little matters whether this mental discipline be imparted, as is generally the case with students for the ministry, in the very same institution, in which the strictly professional education is also given, or whether in a separate school or college. It must be imparted some where and in some way. Thus it is we act with boys and with young men who are designed for any department of professional life, and

even with those who are designed for any common business. A boy is sent to school to learn grammar, arithmetic, perhaps to acquire some knowledge of Latin and Greek, and the elements of the mathematics, the greatest part of all which in nine cases out of ten, has little or no relation to the business to which he is to be apprenticed, and in which he is to spend the strength of his days. Nay, almost all that he learnt at school he may perchance forget, and in the greater number of instances it is actually forgotten within a couple of years of his leaving it. Why then do we act thus? Why is a boy sent to school to learn much that shall have little or no relation to the occupation for which he is designed, and nine-tenths of which he will shortly cease to remember? To exercise and develop the powers of his mind, to be sure; to impart that facility of using his faculties, and that general knowledge, which could not so well be acquired any where else or by any other means. This is the reason; and we should assuredly laugh at any man who acted in defiance of it. We should condemn even a butcher, who instead of sending his son to school at seven years of age, set him to learn his business, in preference to the spelling-book and the multiplication-table. Still more should we condemn a medical man, who because he designed his boy some day to be a practitioner, should put him at ten years of age behind a counter, to weigh out powders, and mix up draughts.

In the case of those who are destined for the higher professions with which handicraft skill has nothing at all to do; in which the mind is the sole instrument with which the mind itself operates; in which to investigate, to reason, to persuade, and such like things form in fact the great business of life, a more prolonged and thorough discipline is usually thought, and justly thought, to be necessary. In no profession is this severe training generally supposed to be more requisite than in those which involve public speaking. Is the ministry to be the only exception?

This then is the sufficient justification of putting youths to study things which are not immediately connected with the duties of their after-life, and which, as we have already said, would not be a whit less worth their study, even if every syllable connected with them passed away from the memory in a few short years after they were acquired. There are comparatively few members of any of the learned professions, however sound their early education, who retain in advanced life many vestiges of their early scholarship. Crabbed constructions in Latin and Greek, difficult equations in algebra, abstruse theorems in geometry, once perhaps easy enough, would puzzle them. now effectually. But the benefit derived from these studies at the time they were pursued, is permanent, and continues

to operate through life. They tended to secure habits of patient thought and of minute accuracy, to strengthen the memory and to sharpen the reason. It is with such knowledge, as with the food taken into our bodies; as food it is changed and lost, but a great part has passed into bone, cartilage, and sinew, and this is sufficient. For this reason alone, if there were no other, there would be good ground for including in the thorough training which we contend for, a knowledge of Latin and Greek; and on similar grounds, if there were no such languages in existence as Latin and Greek, we should still plead for the acquisition of some languages beside our own. The study of a foreign language forms a distinct species of mental exertion, and involves many processes of intellect peculiar to itself, and characteristic of no other species of discipline. Some such knowledge, moreover, is essentially necessary to let us into the nature and powers of language in general; and how important it is that a public speaker, whose very instruments are words, should be fully possessed of this knowledge, it is almost superfluous to say. Accustomed from infancy to our native language, familiar with all its idioms and constructions, it is not until we see how the general purposes of speech are answered in other languages, nor until attention is arrested by peculiarities in construction and idiom with which we may compare those of our mother-tongue, that we become fully acquainted with the nature and powers of this wonderful instrument, with the relation of words to mind. If then there were

not a syllable of the classics extant, we should still plead for the desirableness of learning some language, beside our own. The reasons, indeed, which upon this supposition, determine a preference of Greek and Latin are so obvious as to require no mention. Not only do they contain such vast treasures of literature, not only are they necessary to the prosecution of all those portions of history which are essential to the theologian, but the first is that in which the New Testament is written, and in which the best of the Fathers wrote, while the second was for centuries the current language, the mother tongue, of theology. Wherever it is possible, therefore, it is obviously desirable that theologians should have something like access to them.

But though mental discipline is the chief benefit to be derived from the protracted education for which we plead, it is far from being the only one. Another and scarcely less important end, is that of furnishing the mind with those kinds of knowledge which must be attained if a man would be extensively useful. Now it is only in perfect seclusion for a considerable period, that a young man has leisure to acquire the knowledge of those arts and sciences which, as the Directory of the Westminster Assembly well expressed it, are handmaids to Divinity,' as well as those stores of general information which will furnish the

materials of ready and ever-varied illustration. Without some such mental furniture, it is as vain to hope to meet the ever-recurring demands of the pulpit with tolerable facility, or to secure to public ministrations the requisite degree of variety, as it would be to make bricks without straw, or to transact an extensive business without a competent capital. Every hearer can at once detect, in any man's preaching, the difference between a full mind and an empty one.

Now unless this intellectual capital be acquired during a period of comparative seclusion and leisure, one of two things invariably happens, both of which show how desirable it is that a certain portion of time should be sacredly appropriated to this object; either we subject a man to the cruel necessity of acquiring this requisite knowledge for himself in the midst of the absorbing cares and onerous duties of the ministry, to the infinite hazard of his health, and perhaps the detriment of his flock, or he never acquires it at all. If a man possess great physical vigor and great mental energy, he will probably take the former course, and we know of several men who, to their unspeakable honor, have done so. They have themselves told us that becoming aware of the slenderness of their acquirements, when they had already entered upon their public duties, they have been compelled to endeavor to combine severe private study with the discharge of their public functions, to the prejudice however of their health, and in some measure to the temporary injury of their congregations. Now though they ultimately assumed the standing to which such industry entitled them, and became more useful than they could otherwise have been, yet the full measure of their popularity and of their success was necessarily postponed for some years beyond what it might have been if they had acquired the requisite knowledge before they found themselves actually immersed in the anxieties and labors of their high office. It is a piece of cruelty to necessitate such men to make so hazardous an experiment at all. But the worst still remains to be told. The greater number will not even make the experiment. Those who possess no more than average abilities and no great physical strength, finding it impossible to combine much study with the numerous and heavy duties of their public ministry, content themselves with working up again and again their little stock of materials. As a consequence, they inevitably fall into a trite and barren style of preaching in which there is nothing to arrest attention, and become at the best far less useful than they might have been. Nay, owing to these causes, it is not an unprecedented thing-and we know of no fact more lamentable in the whole history of our ministry-to see ministers far more acceptable and popular at the commencement of their career than at the termination of it. This should be a warning, preg

nant with instruction to all students. Totally incapable, from want of experience, of estimating that degree of mental furniture which will enable them readily to meet the requirements of their office, and finding that they can get on pretty well in their occasional efforts on a small stock of sermons, (upon which it may be a great deal of labour and the whole of their little knowledge has been expended), they are often ready, and even anxious, to plunge prematurely into public life, to take upon them the discharge of their professional duties, without any thought of the Horatian maxim

Versate diu, quid ferre recusant,

Quid valeant humeri.'

But this very incapability of right judgment on the part of the student (necessarily resulting from want of experience), ought to be an additional reason for securing to him those advantages of quiet study from which urgent and multifarious duties will ever afterwards debar him. In confirmation of these remarks, we may observe, that we have heard many ministers say, as soon as a little experience had entitled them to form an opinion, that they heartily wished the term of preliminary training had been longer or more wisely spent, but we never heard one say that it would have been better if he had earlier committed himself to the duties of his station.

On the other hand, if a solid and extensive foundation of knowledge has been laid during a period of studious leisure, and those invaluable habits of mind formed which are involved in the very acquisition of such knowledge, it becomes comparatively easy for the minister in after life, to keep up all that he has acquired, and even to make fresh accumulations. With welltrained faculties, facility of application, and tolerably extensive attainments, he can make more out of his scraps of leisure than other men, less favorably circumstanced, could make out of their whole time. Precisely similar observations apply, and if possible with increased force, to the necessity of a thorough theological training. Those species of critical and historical knowledge, which lie at the basis of sound theology, are never likely to be acquired except by continuous study, pursued at leisure, under the eye of an instructor; never by desultory effort at broken intervals, and amidst the ten thousand cares of the public ministry.

Another purpose, not quite so obvious, but scarcely less important, to be subserved by this thorough education, is this; that it gives a man that position and influence in general society, which, if it were possible, no minister should ever be without. It is true that in this point of view, his knowledge is not immediately

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