With trembling arms, Messias to his breast. Christ smil'd benign upon him and replied: Follow not now my steps, but linger oft

On Golgath's mount, and thou shalt view thyself

Honey and milk and fruits, that loveliest

yield

Our trees, shall be for thee; our lambs shall drop

For thee, their tenderest load; and I, myself,

hope for.

As thus he spoke, Ioel turn'd to John,
And said, in timid innocence, these words:
O chosen of God's prophets, lead me forth
To where he stands; thou know'st him.
Smiling heard

The lov'd disciple, that untutor'd speech;
And brought him to Messias; and he spake :
Prophet of God, true thou wilt not permit
My sire to follow thee; but dare inquire,
My youth emboldened by thy miracles,
Why thou remain'st amid these gloomy
shades

That fright me so? O! rather deign to

come

To my sire's dwelling place, and there accept

What my glad mother shall before thee set,

Extracts from the Address of the Board of Directors of the Domestick and Foreign Missionary Society, of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, to the Members of the said Church.

Philadelphia, Feb. 16, 1822. We refer, for a development of the views of the convention, to the constitution of the society, to be appended to this report; from which it will appear, that these are the two objects of domestick and foreign missions.

I Had no other than the former been attempted, there would have been a wide range for the display of zeal and of endeavour. It is probably known to those who will be the readers of this address, that there was a time within the memory of many living, when, in consequence of the troubles of the revolutionary war, concurring with the want of the means of continuing the ministry among ourselves, the far greater number of our congregations were destitute of pastors; and indeed, in a state approaching to annihilation. Although, under the blessing of God, there has been a gradual revival of the administration of the ordinances; yet, to this day, in the Atlantick states there are numerous districts, in which a considerable portion of the people is Episcopal, while yet an Episcopal ministry is unknown among them:

owing partly to the circumstance, that the number of the ordained is unequal to the demand; but principally to their being a scattered people, not likely to be benefited by any other than a missionary ministry; until, by excitement thus made, and by consequent increase, the inhabitants shall be competent to the supporting of a ministry of their own. This has been found, in many instances, to be the effect of the occasional visits of a zealous missionary.

It adds immensely to the necessity of the present call on your beneficence, that while the active members of our church have been occupied in repairing the decayed ways and renewing the dilapidated buildings of our Zion, new prospects have been opening on them westward, in immense territories, in which the church is to be reared, if at all, from its foundations. It has been distressing to the hearts of those prominent in our ecclesiastical concerns, that for some years past they have received continual and earnest requests for ministerial supplies, which there were no means of meeting. Some aid has been afforded. It has been very small; but the thankfulness with which it was received, the excitement consequent on it among those destitute members of our communion, and its efficiency beyond proportion to what was bestowed, present pleasing presages of what may be expected from the combined

energies of our church throughout the union, prudently directed, and sustained by the liberality of its members generally.

We stand in a relation to our brethren in the new states, not unlike to that in which, before the revolution, the Episcopal popula. tion in the Atlantick provinces stood to their parent church in England. What was then the conduct of that church, towards the forefathers of those who are now invited to imitate them in their beneficence? It was, that she extended her fostering care to her sons, in their migration to the then uncultivated wilderness of the new world; and that she organized a society, in which the prelates took the lead, being sustained by the most distinguished of the clergy and of the laity over the whole realm. Although their aids were discontinued with the acknowledgment of the independence of this country-a limitation to which they were restricted by the conditions of their charter-yet the good achieved by them is felt in its consequences to the present day. To provinces planted by members of the established church, they extended no aid; nor was there occasion for any, there being provision made in them by legislative assessments. But in the provinces in which the Episcopal portion of the population was thin, and other forms of profession prevalent; we should at this time be destitute of the means of worshipping God agreeably to the dictates of our consciences, or rather, there would have been long since lost all the traces of the peculiar institutions of our apostolick church, had it not been for the fostering care of the said venerable body, and for the expense to which the members of our communion in the parent land voluntarily subjected themselves. The time is come, when gratitude and honour, in concurrence with zeal for what we conceive to be the truths of scripture, urge us to repay the benefit; not to the bestowers of it, who neither claim nor stand in need of a return; but by the supply of the spiritual wants of those who have migrated from our soil, as our forefathers migrated from the land of their nativity; and who would doubtless have been objects of the beneficence of the church which is our common parent, but for the severance which has taken place in the course of divine Providence.

While we represent, in this important point of view, the wants of the members of our own church, we do not overlook the other branch of our trust; from which it may be gathered, that the convention contemplated the giving of a beginning to efforts simultane ous with those of other denominations of Christians, for the extending of the light of the gospel to the benighted heathen. There

is no fact more remarkable on the face of the bible, than that the gospel is to be preached to all nations: this having been announced by the Saviour in person, and by his apostles after his crucifixion. Judging from what we know of the course of Providence, operating through the intervention of second causes, we are led to conclude, that these predictions will be fulfilled by human endeavours, under the government of divine grace.

Here opens on us a subject which cannot be contemplated without grief, on account of the inefficiency of measures formerly pursued for the extending of the kingdom of the Redeemer; and especially their contrariety to the beneficent spirit which it breathes. The sword and the cross have been displayed in unnatural alliance, in wars professedly made for the subjecting of nations to the sceptre of the Prince of peace. The effect has been, either the generating of enmity against a religion attempted to be obtruded by violence; or, the establishing of the same religion in name, but disfigured by corruptions subversive of the spirit of its institutions. It was not thus that the faith in Christ had been propagated, when, within a few years after the apostles, its apologists appealed to the known fact, that independently on human policy or force, it had reached the utmost limits of the then known world.

Of late years, under very different circumstances, and generally in a very different spirit from the above, there have been put forth endeavours for the conveying of the gospel to heathen nations. It has been by presenting the books of scripture in their different languages; and by sending to them missionaries, whose views are detached from all the concerns, alike of temporal sovereignties, and of spiritual domination interfering with civil duties; and who cannot have any other object, than that of making their converts the subjects of " a kingdom not of this world." Who can calculate the effects of this new plan for the evangelizing of the world? And who can tell, whether it may not be the expedient in the counsels of divine Wisdom, for the fulfilment of the promise to the Messiah, of "giving him the heathen for his inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession?" or of hastening the time, when, in the language of the new testament, "the fulness of the gentiles shall have come in."

But why should this be reckoned altogether a problem, when there has already begun and progressed a series of events, pointing to the consummation so desirable? Already, the peaceful preaching of the gos

pel has made inroads on the superstitions of Bramah and of Budda in Asia. Already, in Africa, many of her sable children are assembled under pastors, who break to them the bread of life. And already the uniting of religion and civilization has made the beginning of a rescue of the inhabitants of our western wilderness, from the atrocities of their savage state; and of opening their eyes to a due esteem of the arts and the enjoyments of civilized life; under no circumstance, however, without a proportionate esteem for those truths, those precepts, and those promises, which can be learned only from the bible.

It is a remarkable fact, tending to sustain the sentiments which have been delivered, that there has lately appeared, in various countries, a zeal for missionary labours, beyond any thing of the same spirit since the age of the first preaching of the gospel. Many and great are the dangers to be encountered, and many and great are the privations to be submitted to, in the prosecution of such designs; and yet the ardour, far from being damped by discouragement of this sort, is on the increase. In the beginning, there may bave been no unreasonable apprehensions, that the fire would expire after a transient blaze; but many years have attested not only the sincerity, but the perseverance of the men, who had thus devoted themselves to the going out into the high-ways and hedges of pagan idolatry, at the cost of encountering any hardships, and of being for ever separate in this world from the endearing intercourses of kindred and early attachments. Is there not in this what may not improbably be an indication of the ap. proach of the time, when there shall be a verifying of the promise-" from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the gentiles?"

For these reasons, we assign its due importance to the secondary branch of the constitution of the society, while we consider the other as its more immediate object. For in comparing the claims of the great fields of labour within the bounds of our federal compact, and of those exterior to it, there was felt the conviction of the preponderance of the former, because of the more immediate relation in which they stand to us, and be cause of the greater efficiency which is likely to be the result of community of language and manners; the greater ease of perpetuating the knowledge of revealed truth, where, although on the decline, it is not absolutely lost, than where it is to be begun; and the less expense in the sending and the maintainng of missionaries in the former case, than

in the latter. Nevertheless, as it appears that the good providence of God is opening new prospects of the bringing of heathen people within the pale of the church of Christ; and as pious persons, among ourselves, have declared their ardent wishes in favour of an opening of this channel for their liberality, the convention have complied with so pious a motion; at the same time, judging it a dictate of religious prudence, to leave to every subscriber to choose, if he should entertain a choice, between the two purposes defined. Accordingly, this is provided for by the second article of the constitution.

We conclude, in the spirit of the conclusion of the constitution, by inviting all the members of our church to put up the prayer there suggested, for the blessing of God on the concern committed to our trust; not doubting that the effect of such a prayer, habitually put up to the throne of grace, will so interest the affections of the supplicants, as to ensure their contributing of reasonable portions of their substance, for the accomplishing of so estimable an object of their desire. Especially, if such persons should have felt the check of the admonitions of the gospel on their consciences, of its consolations under the various vicissitudes of life, and of the bright prospects which it opens beyond the darkness of the grave; they will cheerfully bestow their proportionate aids, for the extending of those benefits to regions where they are now unknown; to the retaining of them in districts, in which they are in danger of being lost in an increasing dissoluteness of manners; in short, in contributing to the reign of truth and righteousness, and thus leading on to the accomplishment of the object of the petition enjoined on us for daily use-"the doing of the will of God on earth, as it is done in heaven."

mittee of the church in South Carolina, affording strong evidence of the lively and zea ous interests of the bishop and clergy and laity of that state, in the success of the seminary, to which they have liberally contributed. The trustees adopted statutes for the government of the institution, and attend ed an examination of the students, who afforded evidence of very satisfactory proficiency in the different branches of study which they had pursued. An interesting address was delivered in the presence of the trustees the professors, and the students, by the presiding bishop. A dissertation was read by one of the students, and sermons publickly delivered by two of their number. The following is the report of the professors.

New York, July 22, 1822.

The professors of the general theological seminary beg leave respectfully to report to the trustees as follows:

At the commencement of the session, on the 13th of February, 1822, the following students were admitted as members of the institution :-Seth W. Beardsley, New York; Augustus Convers, New York; Robert B. Croes, New Jersey; John Dick, New York; Edward K. Fowler, New York; Thomas T. Groshon, New York; Lemuel B. Hull, Connecticut; William L. Irving, New York; Levi S. Ives, New York; William Jarvis, Connecticut; Samuel R. Johnson, New York; William L. Johnson, New York; Samuel Marks, Pennsylvania; Henry M. Mason, Pennsylvania; Matthew Matthews, Pennsylvania; Sylvester Nash, Virginia; Thomas V. Peck, NewYork; William T. Potter, Massachusetts; George M. Robinson, New York; William Shelton, Connecticut; Edward Thomas, South Carolina; Henry J. Whitehouse, New

York; and Joseph L. Yvonnet, New York. On the 22d of March, Samuel G. Raymond, New York, was admitted; on the 22d of April, Joseph P. Verdries, Pennsylvania; Philip Gadsden, South Carolina; and William P. Coffin, South Carolina; and, on the 17th of June, Paul T. Keith, South Caroli

na.

The students attended the professor of pastoral theology and pulpit eloquence one day every week, from the commencement of the session until the month of June. The service of the church was on these occasions performed as a devotional exercise by the students in rotation, and two sermons, and frequently more, were delivered by them, which, as well as the performance of the service, were the subjects of the criti

*Right Rev. John Henry Hobart, D. D.

One of

cisms of the professor. They also went through a short course of instruction on the qualifications and duties of the clerical office. The professor of biblical learning and of the interpretation of scripture reports, that he has attended two classes. them, having studied with him, during the last term of the seminary, while in New Haven, the epistles from Romans to Colossians, inclusive, has, during the present session, As this class gone through the remainder. attended him but once a week, it has been found impracticable to review any but the epistle to the Hebrews. The other class attended twice a week, and, after carefully reading the gospel of St. Matthew, examined the evangelists as a harmony, the Greek of archbishop Newcome being used as a text book, and the general principles of other harmonists being occasionally pointed out. Since the beginning of May, they have pursued the study of the historical books of the old testament from Joshua to Esther, inclusive; but as the variety of duties which engaged their attention made it impracticable for them to devote more than one day in the week to this pursuit, it was impossible to attend to it with any minuteness. Lectures on subjects connected with these studies were occasionally read by the professor, and he believes that the most important questions of a critical nature arising out of them, were topicks of discussion.

The class

The class attending the professor of systematick theologyt began, shortly after the opening of the seminary, to study bishop Pearson's exposition of the creed, and have proceeded as far as that part of the work inclusively, which treats of the personality and divinity of the Holy Ghost: comprising nearly five sixths of the whole. was attended three times a week generally, but considerable interruptions in their exer cises has been occasioned by the state of the professor's health. The course pursued by him has been to connect with the study of the exposition of the creed, that of other works on some subjects which appeared to require a more full examination than the bishop's exposition contains. The class, accordingly, have studied nearly the whole of the following works: Jones's Catholick Doctrine of the Trinity; Bishop Horsley's Tracts on Unitarianism; Dr. Magee on the Atonement; Bishop Hobart's Tract on the Descent into Hell, with Bishop Horsley's Sermon on the same subject; and West on the Resurrection, with several of Bishop Horsley's Sermons on that subject. Occa

* Rev. Samuel H. Turner, D. D. + Rev, Bird Wilson, D. D.

sional references have likewise been made to passages in other authors.

With the professor of the nature, ministry, and polity of the Christian church, and ecclesiastical history,* the students attended during the present session in two classes. The first class, having prosecuted in the seminary, while at New Haven, the study of the history of the church before the coming of Christ, and for the three following centuries, have attended to the ecclesiastical history of the fourth century, with Mosheim for the text book. It was then thought advisable to direct their notice to the writings of the earlier fathers, with the view of passing from them to the study of the nature and ministry of the church, under the advantage of the important light thrown on these subjects by that sound and best rule for the interpretation of scripture, the generally prevailing principles and practice of the first Christians.

The various other claims upon the time of the students rendered impossible a critical study of the fathers in the original languages. All, therefore, that could be done on this head, was, to recommend that exercise to them when opportunity shall be afforded. The generally accurate translations of archbishop Wake, and of the Rev. William Reeves, were made subjects of particular examination, and those parts of them which had the most important bearing on the principles and practice of the primitive church, having been compared with the originals, such inaccuracies as occasionally appeared were pointed out. The notes and other observations of these translators, particularly applying the study of the fathers to the important topicks connected with the first department of this professorship, were made the subject of particular notice and exami

nation.

The second class have been engaged in the history of the church before the coming of Christ, and have recited that portion of the third part of Stackhouse's body of divinity which relates to this subject, and the first six books of Prideaux's connexions.

Each of the above classes has attended the professor once in every week, and, for a short time, the second class has attended twice.

The professor has devoted as much of his time as his other avocations would admit, to the recitations of the students from the above text books. Where additional facts or illustrations have presented themselves to his mind, in the course of this exercise, he has endeavoured to improve the circumstance, by a familiar and informal notice of them.

* Rev. Benjamin T. Onderdonk.

Upon the union of the general seminary with that of New York, those students who had made some progress in the Hebrew language, formed themselves into two classes, who have attended the professor of Hebrew and Greek literature,* since the commencement of the session until the present time. During the above period, the classes have severally read the first 17 psalms, and the first 17 chapters of Isaiah; and beside continual repetitions of distinct parts of the same in the course of the recitations, they have nearly completed a general revision of the whole. The class that read Isaiah have attended the professor once a week from the commencement of the session. The other class, for some time, attended two recitations in each week; but, in consequence of the numerous studies to be pursued, the faculty thought it expedient to diminish the number of recitations one half. Several students who were not able to join either of the above classes, have separately attended the professor during the latter part of the session. In addition to the above course of study, a part of each week has been devoted to such of the students as were desirous of having assistance in reading the notes to bishop Pearson's exposition of the creed.

The professor of the evidences of revealed religion and of the application of moral science to theologyt reports, that since the last week of April, nearly all the students, except those of them who had already gone over the same course during the last year in the New York seminary, have attended his instructions.

The text book used in this part of the course, was Paley's evidences, in which the class was regularly examined. In going over this work, it was endeavoured to give such an enlargement of Paley's argument by extemporary intruction, reference to other authors, and, where the subject appeared to demand it, by written lectures or dissertations, as to present a general view of the historical and internal evidences of Christianity, of the popular objections of infidelity and their refutation, and of the history of controversies on that subject, especially so far as they seemed to have an influence upon the opinions of our own country; excepting only those objections and controversies of a purely abstract and metaphysical character, the consideration of which has been reserved for another part of the course.

The faculty beg leave further to report, that, of the students abovementioned, Messrs. Dick, Fowler, Groshon, Peck, Robinson, and Raymond, have left the semi

Mr. Clement C. Moore, + Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck.