readiness, both in written composition and extemporaneous

address.

I have so far spoken only of the bricks that compose the building the language that forms the literature; and I have said, that the study of words-their exact meaning, their derivation, and their present use is necessary to enable a man to utter forth his thoughts and convictions to others with much chance. of deeply influencing and affecting them. I have next to try and give you some idea of the importance which I attach to English literature as an element in this course of training. Language and literature have a reflex influence the one on the other; and in order to use a language perfectly, we must be well acquainted with its literature. But besides this, a knowledge of even the lighter kinds of it is most desirable to one who intends to work in Christ's ministry. When I speak of the lighter kinds, I especially and expressly mean the best of those kinds; the highest and noblest works of belles lettres; the grandest poems and the finest dramas. These benefit a man, as I conceive, in this way. Every teacher, and every minister, has to do with others whose education and character are different from his own, and whose processes of mind are not seldom difficult of comprehension to him. The farther they are removed into the darkness of ignorance and sin, the more unintelligible do they frequently become, and the more apt is he to look upon them as a sort of monsters. A good deal of this has arisen from the way in which some sects and some ministers have considered it a duty to keep pulpit teachers from all free contact with the natural sun and air of human life. They were not to do this, or were to be on their guard against that, as something unclerical; conversation was checked, and a different character assumed, so long as the minister was by; and as he often entered upon his work and this hothouse mode of existence while yet very young, he literally did not know the force of the temptations to which other men were exposed in the daily course of their lives, and in consequence his exhortations and admonitions too commonly flew altogether wide of their wants. But public opinion is righting itself in this matter. It is getting to understand, that a knowledge of what is in man, even to the lowest depths of his capability for crime, is quite compatible with the utmost purity, with strivings after the most severe and lofty standard, with a pity for the slaves of sin so self-sacrificing as to be truly Christ-like. This holy use of the knowledge which is pain, is far above any poor, petty, monkish ignorance of the real state of the world, and communicates far higher power, when rightly improved, for healing its sore places and remedying its sicknesses and woes. And, side by side with great crimes, are great virtues; closely neighbouring vice, are many touches of angelic quality. As the first of all poets has told us, "there is a soul of goodness in

things evil." Yes! the poet it is who has had the deep prophetic insight into human nature, that may teach the wisest student of mere matter-of-fact a deeper wisdom still. And therefore is it that the great dramas (which can only be great by being true to the core of humanity); and the noble poems, which penetrate to the very heart of God's creation and discover its wondrous secrets; and the grandest fictions, which grow out of the form of fiction into true revelations of human nature-its shortcomings, its weaknesses, its errors, its crimes-its struggles, its endurance, its self-sacrifice, its faith, its bravery, its heroismwhich make us enter into phases of life and action, and into a common feeling with men, such as we shall perhaps never be likely to encounter;-I say, such dramas, poems, fictions, calling out great flashes of feeling, as we read, which reveal the secret beauty of many dark, hidden places, are well worthy of careful study, because well worthy of true appreciation. We can none of us have the perfect knowledge of what is in man, which made our blessed Master so pitiful and kind; but we can enlarge our views of what men are, and have been, and shall be, by submitting to be taught, in this spirit, by the great works of former days. Independently of effects of this kind which the study of them is fitted to produce in yourselves, they will richly supply you with illustrations, and images, and forms of expression, which may prove of essential service in helping you to awaken the minds and impress the hearts of others. Poetry has been justly called by Richter "the friend and helpmate of religion ;" and through its means you may, in some cases, gain access, that would otherwise have been denied, to those secret feelings of wonder and awe, without which there can be no such thing as faith. One of my pleasantest, and I am persuaded not the least profitable of my duties will be, in accordance with these views, to lead you through the rich and varied fields of our country's literature, and give you what aid I can towards enabling you to contemplate it with a discriminating eye and appreciating spirit, and to induce you to store your memories with its grander strains, and nobler passages of sacred song.

By such a magnificent seer have historic dramas been written, that his marvellous insight has almost presented a truer truth, in imaginative guise, than all the chronicles from which he drew the basis of his story. Yet the chronicles of those days-simple, credulous, prejudiced, party-sided-were a better history to study than that of more recent times-the times of Hume, Gibbon and Voltaire. In some of those older records there was a constant, though it might be a superstitious, reference to the hand of God; in the later ones there was a subtle atheism of spirit, none the less mischievous because unavowed. It needed, not a mere scholar, or a patient and learned critic, to restore History to its proper position among the branches of learning to be taught to Chris

tians; it needed a godly, righteous'man. Such a one was granted; and since the time of Dr. Arnold, the great story of the past dwellers on earth, their slow and gradual advancement in real civilization, has taken its place as a record of the truth, that there is a God who judgeth among the nations, and that, however kings and despots may strive, or the heathen rage and imagine vain things, He alone is King of kings and Lord of lords. It is a solemn light in which we sit, while unfolding the rolls of history! Slow it may be, but sure and inexorable it must be, that following of a nation's punishment upon a nation's crime-that doom upon actions considered wise and prudent in their day because expedient and profitable, found out in the course of time to be a mere sowing of the wind to reap the whirlwind-and the nation, which sought by such means to deliver itself, thrown back into a worse perplexity still. Yet, marking by centuries rather than by generations, we at the same time catch cheering hope and encouragement, seeing how, amidst all lost arts, all dark ages, all wild irruptions of savage barbarians, sweeping out civilization as with a besom of destruction, the sound of God's mighty trumpet is never lost, as it calls to the vanguard of the people of the earth, and bids them strive upward and onward into the glory of His kingdom. In going over with you the history of the world, and tracing civilization from its first faint beginnings to its present condition, my object will be, not to encumber your memories with a multitude of dates, needful only to the scholar, nor rest satisfied with viewing great events in their mere outward aspects, but to lead you, as far as I am able, to look for their hidden connections and dependences, and trace out their true spirit, and see how, under God's providence, those circumstances which seemed at the time most unpromising and disastrous have been made to conduce to good, and how, amidst all the manifold vicissitudes, fluctuations and delays to which our species has been subject, the hand of a beneficent Ruler is still bearing it onward to a higher and nobler position, and affording greater reason for one generation to praise His works to another."

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Some have questioned the desirableness of occupying your time, as is proposed, with the study of the Greek Testament; and if the intention were to aim at imparting to you anything like a thoroughly critical knowledge of it, I should more than share their doubts. But I am convinced it will require only a moderate degree of attention, through the three years over which the course extends, to give you such an acquaintance with it as will not only enable you to understand and weigh the force of such references as are made to it for the purposes of controversy, but, still more, to read it with that ease and fluency which will bring you to feel and enjoy the charm which an original always possesses over a translation; and thus perhaps be the means, in some cases, of giving a freshness to passages which have lost

something of their power and beauty through early and longfamiliar use. I might speak of the advantages to be derived from such a study in regard to the knowledge of our own tongue, and the exercise which is afforded to the mind in the process of acquiring a grammar so different in many points from our own; but I am content to rest on the last consideration I have mentioned, and to support it by the opinion of one whose judgment carries the greatest weight with me, and, I have no doubt, will with you. "A very slight comparison," says Mr. Kenrick, "of our common version of the New Testament with the original, will suffice to shew how often our translators have rendered by the same term words which in the original have a discriminative meaning. This has been in part owing to the comparative poverty of our language, but in greater degree to the want of careful discrimination by the translators themselves. The more minute accuracy of modern philology will enable the reader of the original to appreciate differences which they passed unnoticed; but it will ever be impossible to a translator to express many of the distinctions which exist in the original, as between iɛpór and vaós, ἀληθής and ἀληθινός, ἀγαπάω and φιλέω, ζωή and βίος. There will always remain, therefore, a vast advantage on the side of those who, by reading the New Testament in the original, are able to perceive the full import of the language of the sacred writers." And that advantage I see no reason whatever why you should not enjoy.

Many of the class to which it is designed that you should more specially direct your ministrations, are now beginning to think, and think earnestly, not only on the great social problems which relate to their own condition, and on those points of theology which have hitherto mainly engaged the attention of sects, but upon the grounds of all religious faith whatever. And, as you can hardly fail to be aware, in the course of their thinking many questions arise that will require you to have your intellects sharpened, and trained to the use of those processes of right reasoning, which will enable you to go straight to the heart of those specious sophistries by which they are frequently led astray, and meet their doubts, and solve their difficulties, and command their respect. With this view, therefore, my friend and colleague will, when the proper time comes, engage you in the study of the qualities, laws and relations of the human mind with special reference to the Secularistic doctrines and tendencies. Of the importance of such study to fit you for becoming effective missionaries to a considerable portion (and in many cases by no means the worst) of the labouring classes, none who are acquainted with the present state and direction of thought amongst them can, I imagine, entertain a moment's doubt; and it is unnecessary for me, therefore, to enlarge upon it.

Our object in this, and every other branch of instruction, will

be, to give them as directly practical a bearing as we can on the great purpose which we have in view; and to make the knowledge which we communicate, though it may not be very wide in its range, at least not indistinct and superficial, but as far as it goes, thorough, complete and accurate. How far we shall succeed in this object, depends very much, of course, on the readiness with which you meet our efforts, and the temper in which you work together with us. From the motives which lead you to seek our aid, if sincere, as we believe them to be, we can feel little misgiving on this point.

Whatever the study that engages us, let it, above everything, be entered upon with a reverent spirit. In none will it be out of place; in none without its service. As holy George Herbert

says,

"Who sweeps a room, as in His sight,*

Makes that and th' action fine."

If you do aught "as in His sight," you do it thoroughly. No half-performance but becomes a mockery of God. You may have only one talent, but you dare not bury it. You must make the most of every grain and tittle. Half-work may pass in the eyes of men; superficial study may impose upon men; but if you take up your task as appointed by Him, you cannot imagine so vain a thing as deceiving the Searcher of hearts! For myself, if I had to choose between two pupils, I should have more hope of a conscientious dunce than of an irreligious wit. The one would know his little thoroughly; the other might have a considerable amount of shallow knowledge or purposeless learning, but the breath of life-the soul which would give vitality in giving usefulness-would be wanting; the acquirements gained to dazzle men, would have no foundation wherewith to serve God. The full meaning would not have been sounded. The work would be but half-done.

I would only further say, Strive to realize continually more and more what a noble mission it is for which you are to prepare yourselves. Earth has, can have, none that is nobler. To preach the gospel to the poor-to be the means of lifting their life out of the low, deep gulf of sensualism in which its finer qualities are all frequently sunk and lost-to set freshly flowing in their hearts those fountains of pure and holy feeling, which have been well nigh choked and dried up through long neglect to call forth and minister to those higher hopes and aspirations of their souls, which have been wholly absorbed in thoughts and cares for the material and perishing-to fill them with the happy strength which trust in the great Father's love inspires-to pour the cheering light of an immortal world over their oftentimes clouded path

Quoting from memory, "as in His sight" was substituted in place of "as for Thy laws."