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tend to bring forth the Congregational to greater prominence. I hope that all who approve of your zealous yet temperate efforts, will exert themselves to the utmost to extend the sale of the work. I am resolved to do so, and I sincerely trust our young brethren will, after a time, perceive that they have been under the influence of a misguided judgment, leading to a zeal at once misplaced and intemperate."

"A Deacon' has favoured us with a letter, full of useful remarks upon the present system of introducing candidates to our collegiate institutions, some of which we hope to use at a future opportunity. The following passages, however, we now publish, as they justify the introduction of the subject into our pages :—

"I deem it my duty, in consequence of the article in this month's number of your valuable periodical, relating to the conduct of certain students for the Christian ministry, to declare my continued attachment to your Magazine, and my intention to continue taking it in; as well as to sympathise with you, in your determination to present to our churches from month to month the very instructive and edifying effusions of your own pen, and the pens of our best men. So valuable a treasure to our churches as your Magazine is, must not be put down, and any attempt to do so must be resisted.

"I beg, also, to express my humble conviction, that such papers as those which have appeared in your Magazine, but which have given so much offence to our college youths, are most important, and ought to be continued; and I trust the consequence will be the introduction into the Christian ministry of men thoroughly imbued with the spirit of our Lord and his apostles; we need such in our day, when error of every class, and of the most ominous character, is spreading on the right hand, and on the left.

"A ministry of the right stamp is much needed. The extracts of letters you give in your own vindication, quite express my mind. Infinite harm has been done, and is still being done to our churches, by the introduction of improper persons into the ministry. The churches in this neighbourhood* never were in such a declining state as at this time. The introduction of persons into the pastorate, who never should have been there; men of unworthy character, inferior talent, and incapacity for ruling the church, are the principal evils that have wrought this. When I have looked at things as a man of business would do, I have been constrained to cry out, Can we not have a Professor of Common Sense at our colleges, as so many of our students seem so destitute of all observation and experience?"

An able and learned minister has addressed a letter "To the Students who were parties to certain Resolutions respecting the Congregational Magazine," which he wished should reach them through the pages of this work. We exceedingly regret that we cannot, on account of its length, publish the whole of it. The extracts that follow are too important to be omitted.

"My own first impressions were these.-I was sitting alone in my study, when I read the resolutions. For a moment I supposed I had mis-read, and proceeded to re-peruse them. I then questioned their genuineness; and imagined that a hoax must have been practised on the Editor; but conceiving that to be impossible, a feeling of grief and vexation succeeded, and I could not help audibly exclaiming, Well, I have

* Referring to two counties.

hitherto been the students' apologist, and have found some extenuation of their conduct, when others would show no mercy; but this is an act of such insolence and audacity, as can neither be palliated or pardoned. We did many foolish things at college in my time, but assuredly, anything half so outrageous as this would have been scouted from amongst us as men.' And as these and other thoughts passed through my mind, I felt crest-fallen. I saw you stripped of all that modesty and docility which beget respect; you had not been led into a mistake, but by a deliberate overt act, not only weakened the confidence of the public, in your own characters, as students for the Christian ministry, but injured your brethren also. "But what have you done? You are Protestant Dissenters; you stand in the place of those who planted in Britain the tree of civil and of religious liberty; and you have done an act that strikes at the root of that principle, and utterly subverts that liberty; and you have persisted in doing it, though warned of its character. You have proscribed an editor for expressing, and suffering others to express their honest opinions in a public journal. Now let all editors combine, and in their turn proscribe you; where will you be? Verily this is the liberty of American Lynch law. I envy not our brother's doom, if you had only had in your hands the powers of the Inquisition at the time you passed those resolutions. I really cannot tell where you would have stopped. I don't suppose we should have had an auto-da-fé. No, my young friends, this, this emphatically, did not become you. But I say it did not become you. At present you are learners, not teachers, many of you, indeed, (unless you are a unique race of students, each, and all of you, far in advance of what your predecessors were) having much to unlearn; you are destitute of the experience necessary to a censorship of the press. Why some of you are scarcely come 'ex ephebis;' and the rest have but just acquired the liberty virilem togam sumere;' and yet you undertake to be the expurgators of our periodical literature, and conspire to damage our magazine for expressing opinions, which such men as Jay and Hamilton, Redford and Raffles, James and Wells, and others, whose praise is in all the churches, have expressed more or less strongly, either there or elsewhere; and for giving admonitions and utterance to fears, which, whether well founded or not, is immaterial, since their sincerity is attested by their anxieties, and prayers, and lives.

"But be assured, my dear brethren, I make these remarks not to excuse any false accusations made against you, or any impropriety in the spirit and manner in which they are made. I suffered too much in my pupilage, from the unkindness, or the contempt of caprice, to sympathise with the despisers of students, and I will not abet anything but the most generous treatment of my younger brethren. My esteemed friend, who pleaded your cause in the June number of the Magazine, has expressed his opinion, that young ministers are treated with undeserved neglect, for the most part, simply because they are young. I am constrained to admit that, in the case of a certain class of hearers, and in the churches, I have been forced to the same conclusion; but I am sure such a feeling is not general; and still more confident am I, that the men already advanced in the ministry, with the exception of less than one in twenty, feel in every respect as they ought to feel, both for their younger brethren and for you. Nor shall I attempt the defence of all that has been written about you. I frankly acknowledge, that some charges have been made which I thought unfounded; fears expressed, which seemed to me exaggerated; and passages occasionally penned, having the appearance of censoriousness and asperity, by which I have been pained. But what of that?

"I knew the point on which you are sore; and have long seen that there was a delusion under which you laboured, which was the cause of your sensitiveness. A change has taken place in the character of the studies pursued by candidates for the

Christian ministry. You have the opportunity of acquiring more knowledge of philology and exegesis, in a single session, than most of your predecessors could obtain during the entire term of their studies. This is a great improvement. It was a change absolutely necessary; and I congratulate you upon it. You are yourselves aware of this advantage, and you estimate it highly; but you have inferred, I know you have, that some apprehensions recently expressed respecting you, have arisen from jealousy of your position, or have proceeded from men incapable of judging of the importance of linguistic attainments. But your inference is incorrect. Men who were neither preachers nor scholars, were to be expected to grumble; nor were their fears worth heeding. But I can assure you, that several, not only of the most useful preachers, but of the most learned men of the denomination, who have been foremost in providing for you your privileges, have had their anxieties and apprehensions. The humble individual that addresses you has done all he could to give their present advanced character to two of our principal colleges; but he saw from the first, that new dangers would arise with a new order of things; that very solemn responsibilities would be made to devolve on the existing ministry for some years to come; and that it would be needful to watch, lest those evils commonly attendant on good, should appear and prevail. The dangers are twofold. Learning is necessary to sound doctrine; yet it has its own perils, it may lead astray, and every step in the way that conducts to it, requires to be trodden with care. Again,-Learning generally, is necessary to the efficient teacher and pastor as such; and yet it may be the occasion, if not the cause, of his not becoming efficient in either capacity; and few things are more difficult, as hitherto few things have been more rare, than the union of high scholarship with a corresponding eminence for piety and power in the preacher. And then the times! is there nothing in the spirit of the times, in the theology of the times, to multiply even these liabilities, in vigorous and youthful minds, to go astray? I say you are exposed to dangers, which should induce watchfulness and trembling, and lead you to repress, and not encourage an undue seusitiveness to counsel and reproof. I venture to say more, and hesitate not to add, that even the tutors of our colleges, though I verily believe they are, on the whole, the most able men for their office we could find, require upon themselves, on account of their ordinary habits and occupations, the constant action of that part of the ministry which is necessarily in closer, and more frequent contact with the church and the world. I therefore repeat my admonition and say, Take heed, and hold your peace.

I will only add, that the object sought by those of whose animadversions you complain, is of such importance that you ought to hail rather than depreciate their admonitions. They have spoken and written not to pain or vex you. They are supremely anxious that the race of preachers, whom they are honoured to introduce into the ministry, may be men of God, duly qualified for every department of their work. You are their children, and shall they not be pardoned even an excess of paternal solicitude? Suppose they are somewhat mistaken in their estimate of you-suppose their fears are exaggerated, suppose they have spoken strongly and sharply, is it generous in you-is it decorous—to see no motives in them but bad ones? Does love make no mistakes? Is real for God and his Christ never the occasion of exciting an anger, which, though it may require to be repented of in the closet, may well be endured by us? But let me remind you, that, setting aside the few hard speeches and asperities which I have already deplored, nothing has yet at peared which, in the judgment of wise and reflecting men, would warrant you to speak, much less to pass such resolutions as you thought proper to pass; and, whilst I congratulate the students of other colleges on the prudence and firmness with which they refused to adopt the course pursued by you, let me affectionately advise you, that those

resolutions, if suffered to remain, will assuredly produce the impression that your spirit is not the spirit suitable to candidates for the Christian ministry; and awaken the suspicion in the churches that there is ground for fear, respecting your future character, as ministers of Jesus Christ, greater than has yet been expressed. You have weakened our confidence; let us forgive and restore it."

Besides these, we have been gratified to receive several communications from "Young Ministers" on the subject.

One, a Master of Arts, writing to the Editor, says, "Permit me to express my unqualified gratification at the tone of the Congregational Magazine, in regard to pulpit theology. I gratefully acknowledge myself, as a young minister, much indebted to you in that particular. I hope your pages will continue to be well furnished on that head. God's blessing, I feel assured, will crown such labours of love and faithfulness."

We must insert the following letter from a young minister, for its frank avowal of a consciousness that animadversion is in some degree required. His closing remarks on the collegiate systems at present pursued are too important to be suppressed, though, of course, we cannot enter upon their merits at present:

"Though our brethren, in two of the colleges, have expressed their displeasure at your admission of papers on the rising ministry into your Magazine, I hope you will neither desist nor be discouraged. It is much to be desired, that they had not taken such a step as their resolutions in your miscellany of last month indicate. The subject is one of extreme importance; it deserves free discussion; and whenever we arrive at the truth, it must yield extensive good, especially to the brethren that have thus prematurely chosen to express their displeasure.

“That there are some most excellent preachers among our young ministers and students is acknowledged on every hand, and that with genuine pleasure. But the general character of the sermons of our younger brethren does not stand high. Such at least is my own impression. When I tell you that I am by no means an old minister myself, and that I believe I may fairly be included in the general condemnation, my impression will appear the less interested.

"It is not my object to lower either myself or my brethren; but assuming the existence of the evil of very defective preaching among us, I ask you, or any of your able correspondents, how the evil is to be remedied? A young minister is sensible of his defects; how may he attain the beautiful idea of good preaching and realise it? And how may we, as a body, secure a rising ministry in the possession of this two-fold good? How may we, who are now in the ministry, attain to excellence as preachers? And how may we secure that excellence to the candidates for the sacred office?

"I was once led to ask a very pious and sensible woman, a Wesleyan, but who had formerly been a member of one of our churches, what was her reason for her change. Her reply, which I do not wish to forget, was, 'The Independent ministers aim to preach doctrines, the Wesleyans to save souls.'

"It would be endless to point out all the defects that hearers of various classes can discover in us. I speak entirely from general impressions, when I say that much fault is found with us, as critical, cold, shallow. I do not attempt to enter into an inquiry, whether such censures are well founded or not. Let any brother suppose that the fault is entirely in our hearers who censure us, this alters the case but very little. Cannot we learn to preach Christ so fully and affectionately as to set all

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censures at rest for ever? Are there no means of improvement, by which, under God, we may learn so thoroughly to set forth Jesus, that we ourselves may be forgotten?

"It may seem strange that the question should be put, How may we rectify the faults we see in ourselves? But old and bad habits are sad obstacles to the improvement we fain would make in the work of the Lord.

"For some time, the conviction has been growing upon me, that our colleges do not give us exactly the kind of training best fitted to prepare us for the settled ministry. In this great work, we have a great variety of characters to instruct, and are placed repeatedly in circumstances, where the wisdom of Solomon would hardly be sufficient. In what course of college study were we ever drilled for this? We read many a heathen author; were carefully trained in the original Scriptures,—the words of them I mean; and in the wilderness of human systems of theology, we had some exercises prescribed; but to take a comprehensive view of a subject, and then to level the truth directly at the hearts of men-to probe their consciences, thoughts, feelings-to oppose without contradicting, and to conquer without offending; in short, to wield truth with all the earnestness of fidelity and love, we were not taught. "Let me not be misunderstood. I do not say, that we had not many excellent advices from our honoured tutors. But their friendly advice was one thing, and their course of training was another. Would that the word training, of which our colleges have no lack, might soon be superseded by the study of those realities of life, which would prepare us for immediate and lasting usefulness in labouring for souls!

"So far as my observation has extended, especially among my own fellowstudents, the best preachers owed a very small amount of their preaching excellence to the college; while such as gave themselves up most earnestly to their prescribed studies, both at college and afterwards, made the driest and least efficient ministers. Should the observations of others have been different from mine, they will not affect what I have seen and now state.

"Do I condemn our colleges altogether, then? Far from it. But I contend, the course of instruction given in them wants a great alteration. Much of the deficiency of the rising ministry might be prevented there, and the general complaints against us would then soon be turned into a general satisfaction with the prudence, affection, Bible learning, and holy eloquence of the young ministry."

The Editor flatters himself that already the good fruit of these discussions begins to appear. The methods of preaching, and of training too, will be examined, and "the more excellent way" sought out and secured. Only let a spirit of forbearance be maintained, and without imputing unworthy motives, or indulging in personal resentments, let us endure an inquiry, which, if it be not always pleasant, will not fail eventually to be highly profitable.

In conclusion, the Editor must sincerely thank his friends for the cordial support they have given him on this trying occasion; and, while he assures the churches that nothing shall be wanting, on his part, to maintain evangelical doctrine in all its integrity and power, he is prepared, with equal sincerity, to assure his younger brethren, even those who are in statu pupillari, that he will not give publicity to any statements respecting them, of the truth of which he has not a strong conviction, and of the temper of which he cannot, in the main, approve.

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