man comes back to us from the east who does not give us some new illustration of the truth or the beauty of the Bible. He who wanders among the ruins of Babylon; he who visits the mount of Olives or Lebanon; he who gazes upon the remains of temples, and palaces, and upon the dwelling-places of the dead; he who tells us of desolate Petra or the barren rock of Tyre; he who describes to us the Bedouin, or tells us how they build a house or pitch a tent in the east, is doing something to make us better acquainted with the Bible. A few years past have opened here a vast field of interesting research, and that research has turned the attention of the world to the full confirmation of the Scripture prophecies; and for a theologian there is now no field of investigation more rich and promising than this; and how can a man, whose business it is to explain the oracles of God, be ignorant of it? But where should I stop in the illustration of this point? The minister should be familiar with that wonderful book which he professes to explain and to defend. His life is none too long to make it the object of his study; nor will the field be all explored when we die. It will be as fresh, and beautiful, and new, too, to the next generation as it is to us; and when we die, so far from having reached the ultima Thule of discovery in the word of God, we shall feel that we have but just entered on the boundless ocean. I confess that long since I have abandoned all idea of fully understanding the Bible in all its parts in this world; and I am amazed when men gravely suppose there cannot be truths there, like diamonds in the earth, on which the eye has never yet gazed.-The amount of what I have said on this point is this, that the preacher who would make full proof of the ministry, should derive all his doctrines from the word of God; he should be familiar with all that can illustrate the Bible; with its language, its scope, its design; with all in criticism, archæology, history, travels, manners, customs, laws, that shall go to vindicate its divine origin, and explain its meaning. From this pure fountain of life he should constantly drink. Let him climb the hill of Calvary rather than the heights of Parnassus, and love less to linger at the Castalian Fount than at

"Siloah's brook that flowed

Fast by the oracle of God."

II. The times in which we live demand a ministry that shall be distinguished for sound and solid learning. Never, indeed, can this qualification be safely dispensed with; but there is not a little in our age and country that peculiarly demands it. In no nation on the face of the earth has there been a more prevailing and permanent conviction that this was an important, if not an essential qualification for the ministry, than in our own; and to this conviction, and the natural result of that conviction in preparing the ministry for its work, is to be traced no small measure of the respect shown to the sacred office in our land. Our countrymen in general are qualified to appreciate good sense, solid learning, and high attainments, and they are prepared to do honor to such attainments wherever they may be found. It is a bright fact in our history that the first college in our land was founded for the purpose of training up men for the Christian ministry; and it is a fact, that is at the same time honorable to the solid learning of the ministry, and that bespeaks the confidence which the community reposes in the ministry, that nearly all the Presidents, and a very large portion of the professors in our colleges, are, to this day, ministers of the gospel. The people of this nation are willing that this state of things should continue. They evince no impatience under the working of the system. They desire no change. The experience of two hundred years has satisfied them that the system works well; and the men of the world, and even the majority of infidels in the land, who have sons to educate, are so satisfied with the propriety of the arrangement that all they demand is the evidence of solid learning united with piety, to place all these institutions in the hands of the ministers of the gospel.

But it is not with this reference now that I advocate the necessity of solid learning. It is with reference to the immediate duties of the pastoral office. I do not believe that a minister of the gospel should enter on his work with a view to become ultimately a President of a literary institution. If he becomes such, it should be because there are intimations of the divine will that do not leave the question of duty in doubt. It is with reference to the office of Pastor; to the work of the ministry; to the business of saving souls, that I now urge the argument that the times demand a ministry that shall be distinguished for solid learning.

It should be for the following among many other reasons. (1.) There is great danger of neglecting and undervaluing such attainments. There is great danger that, with whatever views the ministry may be entered, the attention may be soon turned from the pursuit of whatever can be appropriately classed under the head of classical attainments, or whatever bears on the sciences, or whatever marks progress in the severe discipline of the mind. This is an age of action—in the ministry and in the world. It is a time when ministers are called to a great amount of labor; when they are expected to perform a much larger amount of pastoral duties than was required in the days of our fathers; when the numerous benevolent institutions of the age make a constant draft on the time, and strength, and toil of pastors; when the cause of temperance, of morals, and of missions-with numerous kindred causes, depend on the ministers of the gospel; and when, therefore, they are in great danger of satisfying their consciences for a neglect of classic learning, by the fact that they are called to a great amount of collateral duties. It is not to be wondered at that in these circumstances a warm-hearted pastor in the midst of the thrilling scenes of a work of grace, or in the pleasantness of the pastoral intercourse, or in the wearisomeness caused by the demands on his time, should excuse himself from the diligent pursuit of the somewhat foreign or collateral subjects that do not bear directly on his work. (2.) Again. This is an age when the mass of men are driven forward by headlong propensities, and when there is danger of trampling down, in the pursuit of honor and of gold, all that has been hitherto regarded as valuable and settled in solid learning, as well as in staid and virtuous habits. To careful observers of the propensities of this age it has not been regarded as a matter of wonder that the attempt should have been made to displace classic learning from the schools, and to introduce men into the ministry by a shorter course than our fathers thought necessary, and in such a way as to unfit them, when in the ministry, for any eminent attainments in solid learning. It is one of the regular results of the course of events in this age. It is an age, say those who plead for this, of enterprise and action. A large part of life, they go on to remark, is wasted before men begin to act. Months and years are consumed in the attainment of profitless learning; in the mere drilling of the

On the basis Christian soldier, while he ought to be in the field. of such reasoning as this, the plan is formed for preparing men for action, and for action only. The classics are laid aside. The time of preparation is shortened. The field is to be entered at an earlier age, and the 'study' is to be a place quite secondary and unimportant in the arrangements of the ministerial life. Have such men forgotten that a long and tedious training, involving, apparently, a great waste of time, is the allotment of man? What would seem to be a greater waste of time than that one third of the ordinary life of man in the period of infancy, childhood, and youth, is passed in the slow and cumbersome process of learning to talk, to move, to read, to think, and to become acquainted with the elements of the mechanic arts? Is it then a departure from the established laws of the world, when men are called, by long and weary toils, to prepare for the momentous work of leading sinners to the altar and the cross? Who knows not how much more was gained on the field of Waterloo, or in the strife at Trafalgar, by regular and disciplined troops, than could have been done by raw and undisciplined men? And who, when the banners of victory float over the fields of the slain, or the acclamations of emancipated freemen greet the returning conqueror, regret the days of discipline, or the time spent in preparing for conflict? And who is to stand up against the headlong propensities of this age, if it be not the minister of the gospel? And who are to teach our deluded countrymen that there is something better than gold; that the landmarks of opinion and learning, of morals and sound sense, are not to be trodden down, if it be not the ministers of religion? And where shall we look for that which will command the respect of thinking men, if it be not to those who have been trained with care in our schools, and who are, by their office, to be the guides and instructors of mankind? Again; (3.) The age in which we live, is, perhaps, more than most former ages, a period when the attacks on Christianity have been drawn from learning and science. Each of the sciences, as it has developed itself, has been arrayed in some form against the authority of the Bible, and often by the skill of the adversaries of the Christian religion in such a form as to alarm its friends. At one time the argument was derived from the disclosures of modern astronomy; at another from the ancient records of Hin

dostan and China, and the dynasties of kings who are recorded to have reigned cycles of ages before the account, in Moses, of the creation; at another time the infidel has gone and interrogated the crater of the volcano and searched its hardened scoriæ, and made it tell of ages long before the Scripture account of the crea tion of man; and at another the argument has been drawn from the researches of the geologist. All sciences have been taxed to find objections to the Bible; and there are few infidels who have not derived their objections from some form of pretended learning. In such an age, what shall the ministers of religion do who are unable to defend the book, to vindicate and explain which is the business of their lives? In this, strife and declamation will not do for argument; nor will assertion, however confident or fierce, satisfy thinking men. The minister of the gospel should, as he easily may, command the respect of his fellow-men, and should show them-as he easily may, without ostentation-that he is not unworthy the confidence due to one in the office which he sustains.

I am not ignorant of the objections which may be felt and urged to these remarks. I know it may be asked how is time to be found for these attainments? How shall health be secured for these objects? And another question, not less important, how shall the heart be kept, and the fire of devotion be maintained, brightly burning on the altar of the heart, while making these preparations? I should transcend all reasonable bounds in my remarks, if I were to attempt to go fully into an answer to these inquiries. I would only observe that it may be at least questionable whether all the ministers of the gospel have just that sense of the value of time which they ought to have, and whether all make full proof of their ministry in the utmost cultivation of their powers. The question whether the diligence of the student and the faithfulness of the pastor can be united; whether the intellect may be intensely cultivated so as not to interfere with the growth of grace in the heart; and whether time can be secured for the pursuit of these objects, and yet not interfere with the public duties of the ministry; whether a man may so study as to contribute something to carry forward the intellect of his age, and yet not interfere with his duty in the pulpit, in the prayer-meeting, in the Bible-class, and in family visitation, and so as to secure