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himself up to the service of iniquity, which is the essential disorder though he should be one of the "fairest spirits," that ever "lost heaven" and should be plausible and seducing as Belial himself, deserves no other appellation than that of a monster.

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I have said that education includes the cultivation of manners. mean by manners all those lighter things in conduct, which though they do not occupy the rank of morals, do yet belong to the embellishments and ornaments of life.

I hardly know how it has happened, that a "scholar," is become a common term for every thing unpolished and uncouth. Some men, indeed, by the greatness of their genius, and the immensity of their erudition, have attained a sort of privileged exemption from the common courtesies of society. But the misery is that the same exemption is claimed by those who have only rudeness, which they mistake for genius; and disregard of civility, which passes with them for erudition. Thus, if scholars are sometimes awkward and absent, every awkward, inattentive creature calls himself a scholar. Just as, to use a comparison of the late Mr. Gouverneur Morris, "because statesmen have been called knaves, every knave should, of course, suppose himself a statesman." Certain however, it is, that no young men have enjoyed the reputation of being ill-bred, unmannerly, and vulgar, more than Students of Colleges. How is this? Is there any thing in the retreats of the muses to cherish ferocity? Do men necessarily become brutes, when the world gives them credit for becoming philosophers? Does the acquisition of science, especially moral science, involve the destruction of decency? So that after a young man has left college laden with all its honours, he has again to be put to school, in practical life, before he can be fit for the company of gentlemen and ladies? 1 blush to think that the place, which of all others, is supposed to teach a young man manners, is the army: That the kindness, the courtesy, the chivalry of life, should be associated with the trade of blood! That the pistol and the dagger, should be the measure of morals and of politeness, with gentlemen: and that when they have trampled under their feet every law of God and man; and all that is dear to human happiness, and ought to be of high account in human society, is made the sport of momentary passion, they should still be allowed to pass for men of breeding, and honour! "There is something rotten in the state of Denmark !"

What then is the government which ought to be pursued, and will perform such miracles among young men? One which is very plain, very simple, though unhappily not very common; and one which will carry the process through from a family up to a nation. The whole secret consists in being reasonable, being firm, and being uniform.

1. In being reasonable. Whatever you require, must be such as cannot fairly be objected to: such as belong to the situation, of your pupil, his duties, and his time of life. It is a very strong point gained to have his conscience on your side. You are not to demand what he is unable to perform. And if such happen to be his situation, it must be altered accordingly. Great care must then be taken to see that your commands are reasonable; this matter being settled, I say :

2. That a good government ought to be firm. Intreaty and supplication ought to have no more influence upon its proceedings, than upon the bench of the Supreme court; and a youth should count no more upon its pliancy. I do not mean to assert, that a teacher or governour of youth should never acknowledge an errour; or that he should obstinately adhere to a thing because he has said or ordered it. He is a miserable pauper whom the loss of a six pence will bankrupt; and in intellectual matters he is no richer, who cannot afford to confess a mistake. He must not, indeed, do this often. But occasionally, as humanum est errare, he may by owning

that he has been mistaken, doing it freely, doing it magnanimously, attach the affections of the youth very strongly to his person, and affirm his authority by those very means which would weaken it in an undecided and incapable man.

3. I add, once more, that a government, to be good for any thing, must be uniform. By uniform, I mean that it shall be habitually the same thing; that when you have its decisions at one time, you know where to find them at another: that it shall not be marked by whim: shall not be moved out of its course by gusts of passion: shall not, in a fit of great good humour, allow to-day what in a fit of ill-humour it will forbid to-morrow. Shall not, therefore, tease and vex the subjects of it by its fickleness, and variableness. These should always know what they have to depend upon; and not see the elements of order disturbed and broken up, by the prevalence of official disorder.

Against a government administered upon such principles, and marked in its several acts by courtesy, by kindness, by the frankness and dignity of gentlemen, I am persuaded that depravity herself could not muster up any thing like a formidable conspiracy.

Such, gentlemen, we profess to be our aim; and in the prosecution of such an aim we feel confident of your support. Although we do not expect to have much, if any, reason to apply for it. We do hope, that an appeal to the understanding, the magnanimity, the conscience, of the students, will effectually preclude those scenes of misrule which have occasionally tarnished the history of other Colleges; and that affection will do for us, what the exercise of mere authority has not been able to do for others, attach the students more and more to the interests of their Alma Mater.

On the necessity of Learning in the Ministers of the Gospel.-BY THE REV. P. LINDSLEY.

But, brethern, allow me to appeal to facts. What says the history of the christian church? Go to its commencement. Examine the qualifications of its original founders. We have already hinted at their peculiar and distinguishing advantages and prerogatives: such as have never since been enjoyed or possessed. Who succeeded them? Men of the greatest learning then in the world. Men of whom the world was unworthy. Mẹn who could put all Grecian and all Roman science to the blush:-who could meet the aged philosopher and the wily sophist on their own ground:Clemens, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Irenæus, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, Lactantius, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and a host of martyrs and fathers too numerous to mention.

When learning declined, religion degenerated. When learning had vanished, religion was nearly extinct. When letters revived, religion again flourished and assumed a purer form.

Who were the first to discover, expose, refute, condemn, and demolish the papal errors and the papal tyranny? Who, but the men of the largest minds and the greatest learning? Need I name Wickliff, Huss, Jerome of Prague, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, Knox, and a hundred others, as eminent for literature as religion; for integrity and courage as for zeal and ardour in the cause of truth; who nobly dared to stem the torrent which had nearly deluged the christian world, and nearly buried in ruins the whole christian fabrick?

Shall I trace the progress of religion from that bright epoch when the Sun of the Reformation first rose above the horizon and began to dispel the

darkness of a long dismal night which seemed to threaten an endless dura, tion, down to the present time? What is the character of the men who have laboured in the field and on the battle-ground with most efficiency and success? Who have written books, and thundered in the pulpit, with argument and eloquence irresistible and overwhelming? Were they not the most acute, best disciplined, most profoundly erudite of the ages in which they flourished? Shall I come nearer to your own times and to your own doors? Shall I invoke the spirits of a Hammond, an Owen, a Baxter, a Flavel, a Stillingfleet, a Tillotson, an Eliot, a Swartz, a John, an Edwards, a Davies, a Whitefield, a Horsley, a Porteus, a Buchannan, a Witherspoon ?-but the catalogue would be endless.

The history of christianity is a triumphant refutation of the heresy and the slander that learning is unnecessary, or that it is unfriendly to genuine religion. It exhibits proof most positive that without learning nothing has been or could have been effected. That zeal without knowledge leads to fanaticism, to error, to superstition, to enthusiasm ;-to abuses and heresies the most absurd and abominable.

On this topic I might indulge in a variety of illustration from facts. I could summon your attention to a thousand mournful evidences of the danger of suffering self-sufficient aspiring ignorance to obtrude itself into the direction and government of the church.

Commissioned by his divine Master to proclaim glad tidings of peace to the perishing: he labours to fulfil the object of his embassy with a zeal, a patience, a perseverance, which no earthly considerations could inspire and which no earthly discouragements or difficulties can damp or destroy.

Is he an enthusiast; is he an impostor? There may be enthusiasts; there may be hypocrites; there may be wolves in sheep's clothing invested with this sacred character. But what then? Does this fact afford any sound argument against the sincerity and good faith of the whole body of christian ministers? What good thing is there in the universe which has not been abused and counterfeited? What wise and benevolent institution has ever existed free from contamination and perversion' Strange, indeed, would it be, if religion: if the christian religion: and the ministers of this religion, did not occasionally share the corruption, degeneracy, and abuse which are inseparable from all things here below. There is no form of virtue, no disguise of religion which has not been assumed as a conve nient mask for the worst of crimes. And this fact operates with no less force to the disadvantage of natural religion; of natural or political virtue; of human learning and wisdom; and of every thing which the world calls great and good; than it does to the disparagement of christianity and its advocates. This species of argument therefore has no application to the case. Or, if it have, it would equally demolish the systems of the sage and the moralist: of the believer and the infidel. It would leave us nothing but one vast wild of hideous ruin and deformity: of hopeless misery and wickedness. Beware then of this subtile, insinuating exterminating logick. It is unsound and illiberal. And none but the enemies of truth and piety can employ it

Christianity is the only system of religion at present known in the world which can lay just claims to a heavenly origin. If it be true, its own infallible oracles declare the appointment, and the necessity of continuing forever a ministry in the church. And how can this ministry be perpetuated except by the regular education of a competent number of young men to supply the places of those vacated by age, infirmity, and death: and to meet the growing demands of an enlarged and daily increasing church? What mode of education can be devised better adapted to meet these wants, than publick seminaries exclusively devoted to this object under the spe

cial superintendance and control of the church itself? I propose this question with perfect confidence that a negative reply cannot be made to it; and will not be made to it, by the wise, the judicious, and the pious.

The exigency of the case suggests this as the only natural and efficient method of furnishing an adequate supply of faithful and enlightened pastors `and missionaries for the vast evangelized and unevangelized regions of this almost boundless continent: whose population is annually augmenting in a ratio which confounds all computation: whose spiritual wants of course are multiplying with equal rapidity: and to a degree, which almost overwhelms with discouragement the pious philanthropist while contemplating this great moral wilderness which is scarcely illumined by a ray of gospel light. Surely it is time for the friends of religion and humanity to awake from their slumbers, and to put forth all their strength in one grand effort to meliorate the condition of the countless thousands of our own countrymen who are literally perishing for lack of knowledge: yes, at this moment des titute of the ordinary means of grace;-without bibles and without minis

ters.

There is now a grand movement in the camp of Israel. Arise and come forth to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

Behold the progress of heresy and infidelity under the disguise of rational christianity. See the artifice of the great destroyer in these latter days. He has commissioned his emissaries to assume the garb and the functions of the ministers of the gospel, that they may the more effectually sap the foundation of the whole christian edifice. He has enlisted talents, and learning, and indefatigable enterprise in this work of desolation. He has taught the deistical scoffer at revelation to step a little aside from his accustomed track; and to come forward in a new shape, but with the same malignant hostility against the truth. He is now willing to be esteemed a catholick liberal christian. But he rejects the essential divinity of the Saviour; the depravity of human nature; the doctrine of the atonement, and of justification by faith.-Or, he is a christian without holding one principle of the christian religion which can distinguish it from the religion of nature. Modern unitarianism, which is every where insinuating itself into the hearts of men naturally predisposed to its reception, because it is exactly suited to the natural character of men, is more to be dreaded than any species of infidelity ever yet avowed. It is a deadly enemy, wear. ing the mask and the name of a friend.

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The following SERMON, was delivered on a missionary occa sion, in Tottenham-Court-Chapel, LONDON, by the Rev'd. J. M. Mason, D. D. late provost of Columbia College, but now President of Dickinson-College, Carlisle, (Penn.) It is with no ordinary emotions of pleasure that it is presented to the public in this compilation.-As all intelligent and correct reasoners will acknowledge, that it exhibits the "truth of God, and the way to eternal life;" and persons of refined taste will find it to be one of the most interesting, splendid, and highly finished productions of the present age. The Compiler will only add—let students in divinity eclipse it if in their power.

MESSIAH'S THRONE.

HEB. i.-8.—But unto the Son, he saith, Thy Throne, O God, is for ever and ever.

IN the all-important argument which occupies this epistle, Paul assumes, what the believing Hebrews had already professed, that Jesus of Nazareth is the true Messiah. To prepare them for the consequences of their own principle; a principle involving nothing less than the abolition of their law, the subversion of their state, the ruin of their city, the final extinction of their carnal hopes, he leads them to the doctrine of their Redeemer's person in order to explain the nature of his offices, to evince the value of his spiritual salvation, and to show, in both, the accomplishment of their œconomy which was 'now ready to vanish away' Under no apprehension of betraying the unwary into idolatrous homage, by giving to the Lord Jesus greater glory than is 'due unto his name;' the apostle sets out with ascribing to him excellence and attributes which belong to no creature. Creatures of most elevated rank are introduced; but it is to display, by contrast,

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thence of Him who is the brightness of the Father's glory, and

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image of his person.'

Angels are great in might, and in dignity; but unto them hath he not put in subjection the world to come.Unto which of them said he at any time, Thou art my son? To which of them, Sit thou at my right hand?' He saith, they are spirits, ministering spirits, sent forth to minister unto them who are the Heirs of salvation." But unto the SON, in a style which annihilates competition and comparison unto the SON he saith, thy throne, O GOD, is for ever and ever.

Brethren, If the majesty of Jesus is the subject which the Holy Ghost selected for the encouragement and consolation of his people, when he was shaking the earth and the heavens, and diffusing his gospel among the nations; can it be otherwise than suitable and precious to us on this occasion? Shall it not expand our views, and warm our hearts, and nerve our arm, in

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