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of a college was in entire harmony with the principle. In his letter to Bishop Otter, in regard to the new University of London, he says: "It is expressly declared in our charter that we are founded for the advancement of religion and morality." "A liberal education without the Scriptures must be, in any Christian country, a contradiction in terms." He urges examinations, even in the Scriptures, and declares that Christian knowledge is a necessary part of the formation and cultivation of the mind of every one.

If the relations of the college to the Church at large and to the propagation of Christianity are so important, it would seem that its claims upon public support and sympathy are very strong. We speak not now of the financial phase of the claim, though much might be said of the obligation of the Church to support the schools that are at once her children and her benefactors; and not merely to support them in struggling existence, but to render them as efficient as possible. But in the direction in which we are urging the sphere of the college, is there that active sympathy in the Church which the case demands? The college expects, and, no doubt, receives, the prayers of those Christian fathers and mothers whose sons are enjoying its privileges. Other ties than those that link the Church and the college secure them. But is the mind of the Church at all awake to the importance of the relationship? Does it half realize the power of the college for good or evil, its conservation and aggressive influence for Christ, its grasp on the Christian pulpit, its plastic power on educated mind, and through this on the less thinking masses? Is not the almost exclusive idea about them in the popular mind that they are simply intellectual gymnasia! That if they have a good moral tone it is well, if not, it is a necessary evil? Do they know that their highest need is a stream of prayer from the whole Church, whose constant, mighty flow shall flood them with a divine light and life? That such a need is partially felt is seen in the establishment and observance of the day of prayer for colleges. That such a day should have been thought desirable is high proof of their importance in many minds. But how many of the Churches observe this day by any suitable exercise of worship? How many family altars and secret closets burn with sacrifice on that day? Possibly it

is more widely observed than we know, but it is to be feared there is a sad neglect and a general indifference to the whole subject. If so, nothing can be more fatal to the highest interests of the Christian religion. The Church should have a jealous care for the sources of its power.

The Christian mission of the college in this age is not chiefly conservative. It is not merely general, and so mingled with other streams of the intellectual current as to be unobtrusive though healthful. It is in its very genius aggressive, and should assert its place in three particulars. First, in an open warfare against the open or secret attacks of modern science and philosophy. Second, in the outspoken advocacy of a pure Christianity through the press. Third, in an internal condition of such practical piety and spiritual power as shall prove that learning is conducive to religion, and that the trainingschools of the Church cultivate the head through the heart.

First. It will be generally conceded that much of science and philosophy is openly or covertly hostile to Christianity. The theory of modern culture cannot exclude the subjects from courses of study, and must include all phases of their discussion and all shades of opinion. It is neither desirable nor possible to ignore the subtlest strategy or the heaviest cannon of these enemies of religion. The student of history will come in contact with the pagan fatalism of Buckle and the godless development ideas of Draper. The student of philosophy will feel the boreal breath of his arctic voyage as he sails away with Spencer into the sunless regions of no God. The vulture talons of Mill's sharp logic will tear away at his heart in the endeavor to substitute metaphysics for Christianity. The subtle opiates of materialism will lull his conscience to sleep if he follows Huxley or Tyndall into the chambers of nature. Literary and linguistic criticism, governmental science, social theories, and specialists of every name will thrust their keen tests into every crevice of the Christian system. Under these batteries, masked or open, it is suicide and sin for a Christian college to attempt neutrality, to parley, to slumber. It is false and fatal to argue that indecision is allowable for the sake of further light, and that the demands of liberal culture require us to suspend judgment on Christian truth and action. If instructors waver pupils waver. If they lead their pupils

to the shades of the debatable ground for any other purpose than to show them that the enemies of Christianity are but the ghosts of the pit, they are doing them an irreparable wrong. If the college is silent, or on the wrong side of the struggle, the people, the Churches, are swept into its opinions or demoralized for lack of defense. The mission of the college is to step fearlessly to the front. with a ready answer to every voice that defies the living God. This is the least it can do if it would be loyal to its own students and the great public, who feel its far-reaching power.

Second. It seems to us that the college has a legitimate field and an important duty to do through the press. This is the great channel through which the enemies of religion will exert their power. This is the arena on which infidelity and irreligion will marshal their forces. They should be met on their own ground. When men of learning and mature thought, at home in the realms of science, philosophy, and criticism, speak from their years of study and reflection, their words are invested with a wonderful authority. They reach the ear of the thousands who have left college walls and are absorbed in the cares of professional or business life. They are caught up by just that class of minds that most need trustworthy help on questions they have not time to consider thoroughly for themselves. They have a vast influence on the pulpit, and through this on the minds of the intelligent hearer whose faith needs to be established against rumors and puzzling questions. The writings of Dwight, Edwards, Woolsey, Fisk, M'Cosh, and Thomson, are specimens of what college presidents can do to mold religious thought and doctrine. And if more of such writing from similar sources could be brought to bear on current and cardinal errors it would do incalculable good. And if our colleges were a unit in their advocacy of a pure Christianity, and in promptly meeting the attacks of its numerous foes, the power of their combined influence would be overwhelming.

Third. We have already said much as to the standard of practical piety that should be set and realized, so far as possible, within the college itself. We believe there is no difficulty in finding men to fill the chairs of college instruction who unite the largest caliber and culture with the most devout piety and the highest sense of Christian responsibility. Arnold, Thom

son, Finney, are the types of the men who should fill these posts of honor and power. Some of these might have to leave the ranks of the ministry, as did Bishop Thomson. If so, they will say as he did :

The post of instructor in college is by no means an enviable one. The compensation, small; the honors, after death; the labors, arduous and incessant. I know no employment more heart-trying, spirit-wasting, health-destroying. Were all students amiable, talented, and pious, they would reconcile professors to their lot; but, alas! in this land children are rarely trained by parents in the way they should go. Still, we welcome them with hope; we spurn not without trial, the surly, proud, self-willed youth; we throw around him arms of love, pour into his ears the voice of entreaty; and bedew his cheeks with the tears of fraternal sympathy; we read to him the commandments of God, preach to him Jesus and the resurrection, bear his name to the throne of grace, and often, in the watches of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon man, we see the terrible vision of his danger, and our pillows cannot bear up our aching heads. Why, then, do men leave the word of God to serve college tables? Men called to preach have qualifications to influence mind that others have not, and surely the highest abilities for operating upon the human soul are needed in the college.

No wonder that a man animated by such a spirit should have made a deep and lasting impression on the college, the Church, and the world. But it is neither necessary nor desirable that college faculties should consist exclusively of ministers. Pious men are not all clergymen. Neither is there any incompatibility between the highest professional ability in any department of the college curriculum and the highest practical sense of the religious meaning of education. Men of this class are just what are wanted to give a many-sidedness to the religious power of an institution, and to rebuke the notion that specific Christian teaching belongs to clergymen alone.

True Liberalism is that which includes Christianity in all the length and breadth of Bible doctrine, and of a supernatural religious experience. The creed of modern Liberalism either excludes Christianity altogether or strips it of all supernatural authority. That creed adopted leaves the body of human learning a corpse, and nothing more. The heart and lungs of the world's thought and knowledge are revelation and the faith it has inspired in humanity. The human mind is caged in every department of science and learning until the religion of

Jesus lift the bars. Breadth of vision comes only from the heights of God. The horizon of law is infinitely broader from the summit of Sinai than from the forum of the seven-hilled city. Political science runs mad and leads the nations into anarchy as soon as it leaves the council chamber of God. Philosophy rings its dull changes through all the centuries in the narrow circles of Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Fate until it hears the voice of the great Teacher. Science digs in the earth like the mole or hoots from its perch like an owl in the sunlight until the Master opens its blind eyes. History is a labyrinth inextricable without the golden clue of the divine word. And every branch of human knowledge has its only key, its richest sanction, and its proper culmination in the religion of Christ. There is no breadth nor profundity of culture without it. College education must be inspired by it, or else be soulless and dead. The college life, like the individual human life, should be hid with Christ in God.

ART. III.—THE DEITY AND THE PHYSICAL FORCES. SHALL we say that Mind and Matter are the only existing things in the universe? Or shall we not rather say there are three, Mind, Physical Force, and Matter? The former, held as doctrine, tends to unsettle the foundations of physical science, and to give a fatal tendency toward pantheism. The latter gives a clear, well-understood formula under which science and art have been doing their work, and on which they can build safely and wisely, and under which the religious life can have the safest practice and find the soundest religious philosophy. But much of the aggressive science and theology of Germany and New England affirms the former, and speaks of it as affording the only ground for a philosophy that is both religiously and scientifically tenable. Mind is first, last, and intermediate; is the spiritual force omnipresently and continuously active in giving change and form and motion to matter otherwise inert and dead; and thereby nature becomes, and is, God immanent and active in impassive matter. The physical forces of heat, light, electricity, gravity and chemical affinity are but the disguising names which human ignorance or a

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