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النشر الإلكتروني

REPORT

BY THE

COLLEGE COMMITTEE'S SUB-COMMITTEE ON

SCHOLARSHIPS.

THE Sub-Committee on Scholarships have to Report, that towards the end of October last, the adjudication of Scholarships, in connection with the Free Church of Scotland, by the process of public competition, took place for the second time. The attendance of candidates was large, more especially in the earlier years of the literary course, and the results of the examination were in many respects highly gratifying. It was especially satisfactory to learn from the Examiners that a very marked and even striking improvement had, in so short a time as a single year, presented itself in the ordinary attainments of candidates, in respect of knowledge of Geography-ancient and modern, of History at large, and of general information. The Bursary Committee had introduced the requirement of these branches as preliminaries to a right and respectable entrance upon a College course, from a conviction of their high advantage, if not indispensableness, notwithstanding the extent to which they have been very generally neglected; and experience begins already to shew the practicability of their attainment in perfect consistency with an unlowered standard of classical scholarship. Upon similar grounds, and from a similar conviction of its necessity, the Sub-Committee have this year been encouraged to enlarge, and at length to complete, the number of their preliminary educational requirements, by the exaction, in future, from junior candidates, of a knowledge of the theory and practice of Arithmetic. Insignificant as these points are apt to appear, they are not without the most substantial value, if they at all tend to insure the best and completest basis— considering the existing state of knowledge and of society, on which afterwards to build the superstructure of a truly sound and comprehensive academical education.

The competition in the end of October last occupied two entire

-days, as on a former occasion. It was conducted also, as then, by printed examination papers, to which written answers were required. In short, the Sub-Committee in the management of it, followed, as closely as possible, the scheme previously drawn out and actually pursued by the Bursary Committee at the commencement of the preceding session 1845-46. Increased experience has enabled the Sub-Committee still further to improve, as they trust, this plan in some of its details. Its distinctive features have been already described in a former Report and need not now be recapitulated. They may also be gathered at a glance, from an inspection of the table of contents prefixed to the printed examination papers of this last session, several sets of which are laid with this Report upon the table of the Assembly, and a copy of which has been lately transmitted by the Sub-Committee to each of the Presbyteries of the Church.

At the beginning of session 1845-6, the competition for scholarships took place among students in each of all the eight years of the joint literary and theological course, and scholarships were actually awarded to students at all those stages. The funds of the Sub-Committee, even if they had been very greatly larger, could not have admitted of the same thing being repeated in succeeding years. Accordingly the Sub-Committee at the beginning of last session (1846–7), were obliged to confine the offer of new scholarships, and the competition for them, in the main to students of every alternate year-in other words, to students of the 1st, 3d, 5th, and 7th years respectively; leaving those of the 2d, 4th, 6th and 8th to enjoy their scholarships for another year in virtue of the claim they had already established to them at the beginning of the preceding session. According to this scheme, if it were to be regularly followed out, the tenure of the scholarships would be biennial; and in point of fact, the only departure of any consequence from the arrangement hitherto, has been confined to the two earliest years, in each of which the tenure has been only annual or for a single year, in consequence of the anomalous recognition in our ordinary college system, (and for a time by this SubCommittee likewise, in compliance with the common usage), of two entirely separate grades of scholarship during the first or earliest session. The continued recognition of this distinction the Sub-Committee have found to be attended with insurmountable practical difficulties, of various other sorts, and they must therefore in future altogether discard it. There will then be no obstacle to the establishment of uniformity throughout, if it should prove to be in other respects desirable. Meanwhile the Committee, on the occasion to which this report more immediately refers, have had to award twenty-five new

scholarships (amounting to the value in all of L.327, 10s.) to students in the 2d, as well as in the 1st, 3d, and other alternate years; to which if there be added fourteen scholarships of last session (value) L.200), held, without new competition, by students entering on the remaining years of the course, we shall have in all 39 scholarships, held during the past session, after having been honourably gained by public competition, and amounting together in value to L.527, 108.

Of the salutary operation of this system of scholarships, awarded like University distinctions, by open and honourable competition, the Sub-Committee cannot but entertain the very strongest persuasion,a persuasion not only grounded upon the nature and tendency of the plan itself, but largely warranted also by the results of their experience. They cannot help referring, in proof of this, and of the powerful in fluence which such a system, if properly countenanced and steadily persisted in, must, at no distant period, exert upon the education of the ministry of the Free Church, to the distinguished figure made by a very large proportion of the holders of these scholarships, both at the classes of the New College, where they have continued fully to justify the expectations formed of them, and at the classes of the Established Universities. The importance of every such aid towards keeping up, in the present day, the standard of attainment and of intellectual culture among candidates for the ministry, to the full pitch of acquirement and energy characteristic of the most highly educated professions and classes in the community, can then only be over-rated and exaggerated, when the other, and still more indispensable, element of personal religion is either lost sight of or comparatively depreciated. But such are the present state and prospects of Society around us, that the firm union of both, and of both in no ordinary measure, would seem to be already in the highest degree desirable, in order to the adequate discharge of a large amount of the service demanded by Christianity at the hands of her enlightened friends, but especially of her ministers; and both may be even still more urgently required by the exigencies of those times on which the Church is now only about to enter. Is it not allowable then for the Sub-Committee to look with earnest desire and expectation to the zeal and exertions of the Presbyteries of the Church, for the continued support and greater extension, of a system of means, directly calculated to subserve an end so valuable? By the close of the ensuing session, the period will in several cases have expired, for which the present Scholarships had been contributed; and one session more will exhaust our present tenure of all of them. The Sub-Committee would very earnestly press upon the attention of the Church the high expediency of taking seasonable

and sure precaution against the expiry of any one of them, without at the very least equal resources being provided, to carry forward uninterruptedly the same valuable object. Nay more, although the present funds of this scheme were not only to be continued but enlarged, it must be kept in mind, that its immediate and proper aim is to elevate the attainments, rather than directly to augment the numbers, of candidates for the ministry; so that, although the former of these objects were sufficiently secured, the necessity would not thereby be in any degree superseded, but might even be somewhat increased, of separate means being adopted by the various Presbyteries, to keep up the numbers of our theological students. These should not of course be allowed at any time to fall below the full measure of the Church's demands for ministerial labourers, to supply all her present congregations and still farther to extend her boundaries. The special and appropriate method of ensuring such a full supply, would seem to be by the influence of individuals, and the efforts of Congregations, Presbyteries, and Synods, selecting for their special encouragement and support, and sending forward to our colleges for ministerial training, those individuals of whose personal piety they are respectively well assured, and in whose personal progress and speedy employment in the sacred cause, they severally feel a more peculiar interest. The particular object of upholding a high standard of intellectual qualification and scholarship might thus be left-and with all the greater security the greater the number of our students looking forward to the ministry becomes to the sure though indirect operation of the scholarship scheme acting silently upon the entire mass of candidates. The Sub-Committee therefore cannot refrain from expressing their most anxious wish and ardent hope, that both the objects which they have just adverted to may be promptly taken up and prosecuted by the Church at large, as well as by many individual lovers of her cause and welfare, with an energy and a determination proportioned to the manifest importance of their bearing upon some of her highest and most precious interests. The Sub-Committee need not here repeat anew the statement of former reports, that scholarships gained by competition, unless by Students entering or already entered upon their Divinity course, may be enjoyed alike at any one of the Universities. And such being the case in reference even to these, it is scarcely necessary to observe, that much less would any limitation, in respect of place or any other condition except such as might be imposed by the donors themselves, attach to the enjoyment of more strictly private bursaries, whether held of Synods, Presbyteries, or individuals.

J. M. HOG, Convener.

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