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alone which makes learning valuable, and that in past ages Satan has perpetually gained an advantage by making her go into one extreme or the other: that of having learning without piety, or piety without learning. And let her chiefly see what part she has to act in securing the piety of her ministers. We may specify several distinct duties-prayer for unconverted youth.

In America, we are made to feel the necessity of that, and are taught by Providence to pray the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth labourers into the harvest. We have not ministers enough to meet our spiritual wants, and the wants of the Missionary societies. Driven, therefore, to look to God in behalf of our unconverted and educated youth, we have set apart days of prayer for this object. And the Lord has signally answered our requests. Let British Churches remember that there are not ministers enough to supply the tenth part of the world with pastoral instructions. But let them chiefly remember that we are deficient not in numbers only, but also in ministerial graces. We must give the Lord no rest until his ministers love one another more, are less given to sects and more to souls; until they come to greater simplicity and activity, and power and efficiency. We suggest also special prayers for theological colleges. We urge the importance of exalting the standard of piety before young Christians by the example of the Church, showing those who are to preach the gospel how to live for Christ. Every day that the candidate for the ministry passes under your roof, every time he sits at your board, he is receiving impressions which may affect his ministry. He learns from your remarks on ministers and sermons, what the Church expects of both.

Christian friends, who revere the memory of her whom

the Head of the Church raised up in a time of spiritual death and darkness, to encourage and even guide his faithful ministers; remember this college, her Benjamin, the child of her right hand. It needs your pecuniary aid; with that aid it may take its proper position amid the kindred institutions that are doing so much to raise the qualifications of the sacred ministry. It was liberally, nobly endowed. Every thing that heart devised was planned on a broad scale. And yet a college is not the result of the labours of one hand. It is enough for one to found it; posterity, who are to reap its rich advantages, must mature and perfect it. To accomplish all that she de-. signed, to finish what she began, requires a spirit of equal liberality with her own. Who has her spirit? who counts the cause of Christ all his care, as she did? who is prepared to tread in her path of self-denial and faith? Who sympathizes with her zeal for God and the Church? Come, brethren, come to our help; come, I would say, to her help, and enable the Directors of the College to execute their admirable plans.

But important as these plans are, they respect chiefly the elevation of the standard of learning and intellectual discipline; for the other and higher benefits, they look beyond their plans to the sovereign grace of God, to Jesus, the Head of his Church, with whom is the residue of the Spirit. And to-day they commission me to appeal to your hearts in behalf of the college, the directors, the pupils, the teachers. Their desire is, that the Holy Spirit may be the great teacher here; that Jesus would abide with them by that Spirit, that he would teach them the preciousness of his gospel, and how to preach it.

Christians, pray much for this school, that here may be trained the sons of thunder and the sons of consolation. The Church should look with deep solicitude to these schools of the prophets; for a perishing world seems to

cast towards them an imploring look; the perishing heathen are crying as of old-"Come over and help us." And they ask for spiritual men, men of prayer, of faith, of zeal; men, in a word, whom God shall call, commission, and bless.

BRETHREN, PRAY FOR THE COLLEGE.

SERMON V.

THE NATURE AND INFLUENCE OF MATERNAL ASSOCIATIONS.

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"And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them. But when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not ; for of such is the kingdom of God."-Luke xviii. 15, 16.

THE prince of darkness has fearfully extended his empire over the whole human family; and the Son of God, the Prince of peace, has come to destroy the works of the devil," to open the prison-door to the captive, and let the prisoner go free. He has come, with the voice of authority, to command the prisoner to escape from bondage, and with the voice of tender invitation to entreat him to leave his vassalage and disown his allegiance to Satan. And there are two remarkable features in all his commands and invitations; the one is, that they regard all classes of men, without respect to any of the distinctions that pertain to the present and temporary forms of society; and the other feature is, that they extend to human nature in every age of its existence, from its earliest stages and its first developments. This feature, the disciples of Christ did not at first understand; they supposed, that the kingdom which our Lord had come to establish was of such a nature, that it required the full maturity of the understanding to appreciate its advantages, and to enter upon the discharge of its duties. Hence, (as you may suppose his group principally to have

consisted of mothers,) when mothers, obeying that maternal instinct, which often is more wise than the sound deductions of philosophy, (sound in the eyes of those who make them,) that maternal instinct which felt for the little ones, felt their helplessness and their want, and had learned the power and goodness of the great Redeemer-when they drew nigh and presented their infants to him, to come within the blessed sphere of his benignity and mercy, the disciples interposed, and rejected the infants and rebuked the mothers. But Jesus said, Suffer these little ones to come to me; let no man forbid them; the kingdom that I am establishing, reaches even to the infantile state of human existence; little children, too, are to be the objects of my grace and of my redeeming power: "Suffer little children to come unto me."

The first duty that devolves upon those who have the care of human beings, is of course physical; it pertains to the animal, the material part of human nature, because that is first developed. The next development is unquestionably moral; the child begins to feel, before he manifests much understanding. It is unquestionable, that the conscience is developed much earlier, than those whose observation has not been specifically directed to this point are prepared to believe; it is certain that the heart is very early developed, and God seems, in the very manner of the development of the faculties of human nature at successive periods, to indicate the kind of care, the kind of instruction, and the kind of influence, which should be brought to bear upon human nature. Last of all seems to come the higher range of the intellectual powers.

The first duty, touching the character and interest of man as a moral being, is to bring him under the moral government of Jesus Christ. The first duty with the mind of man is to make him understand and feel his want

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