sweetly upon it now, but they will not long continue to do so, unless its interests be em→ balmed in the affections and nurtured by the prayers of the church. Whatever talent, or learning, or piety, or zeal, may fill its chairs of instruction and of internal police, it will certainly never prosper independently of God's blessing and the patronage of the church. The relations therefore which we hold to it are solemn and responsible. Shall it languish on our hands? When a cry for the labors of the heralds of the cross is borne to our ears on every breeze, and whole nations are dying in utter ignorance of the way of salvation, shall this institution be suffered to wane and falter for want of our patronage and our prayers? God forbid. Let us not cease then to bear its interests to the throne of grace; and let us by every means labor to enlarge the sphere of its usefulness, and may God grant that its influence may be felt through all time, to the joy of millions of immortal minds, redeemed and saved through its instrumentality.

INAUGURAL CHARGE.

BY ELIAKIM PHELPS, A. M.

Of Geneva, N. York.

MY DEAR BROTHER,

THE station which in the providence of God you are now called to occupy, is one of high and peculiar responsibility. You are to take your stand here at this fountain of christian and ministerial influence, and in connection with your associates in office to give direction to the streams which it is to send forth either to fertilize or to curse the heritage of God. You are called to this post at an era of peculiar interest in the history of redemption. The church believes, and is beginning to act on the belief, that she is even now ascending those heights of Zion from whose summit she is to overlook the broad fields of the millennium. Still between the

point at which she now stands, and that on which the eye of her faith is fixed, she sees that a most eventful period is to intervene. Achievements great and grand and glorious beyond any thing that her past history has recorded, any thing of which her present aspects afford a reasonable promise, are yet to be accomplished, and to be accomplished soon. It is morally certain that on the movements of the church during the present century, one third of which is already gone, on the character that shall be given to her ministry and the tone of piety that shall obtain among her members, hangs suspended the history of the millennium; and on no human instrumentality more than the character of the ministry.

The Board of Commissioners of the Auburn Theological Seminary, by whose appointment and in whose behalf I speak, feel a strong desire to render this Institution eminently subservient to the church of Christ by the character which it imparts to her ministry. They wish to make it all that the most

ardent friends of truth, of benevolence and of revivals can require. They wish to give it a character which shall in all respects correspond to the high and broad demand of the age. They have invited you, Sir, to one of its chairs of instruction, in the expectation that your influence will be exerted to give it the character which its friends desire; and that it may bear a full and honorable part with its sister institutions in giving to the church such a ministry as her present emergencies, her anticipations and her prospects demand. Some of the leading traits, which are demanded in the ministry of the present day, I will briefly enumerate.

The church needs a pious ministry. By this I mean not merely that the minister should be a converted man- -a christian in the common acceptation of the term; but piety should be a prominent, an all-pervading feature of his character; it should be so high and deep and controlling in its influence, as to impart its character to the whole man; to his heart