history of the Church after his decease acquaints us more fully with the grounds of that solicitude. He must die, and his faithful pupils must die-the work must pass into other hands. What, then, could he do to secure a succession of competent and faithful pastors to the Church? He could write, and leave on record to the end of time his views and his exhortations. He has done this; and in proportion as the Church shall feel an interest in the subject, in proportion as she shall give heed to his instructions and warnings, and do what is assigned her for securing a competent ministry; and in proportion as the existing race of ministers shall feel their responsibility, and rightly comprehend their duty in perpetuating their office; in that proportion will the Gospel be faithfully and successfully administered in the world; and we may say, it will produce its happy fruits.

But it is time we leave the threshold of our subject. "The things that thou hast heard of me, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." I seize here the two characteristics, of fidelity and competency, which the apostle especially designates to his son Timothy in directing his choice of successors. And from it I conduct your meditations under the two topics of piety and ability to teach, as constituting the qualifications which the Church must both demand in the candidates for her sacred office, and seek instrumentally to impart and augment in the sons of the prophets. "The same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." We shall direct our attention, first, to the intellectual department of ministerial qualifications, the ability to teach.

FIRST PART,

And here our proposition is, that the Church must secure a learned ministry. We do not mean to say that

all her ministers must necessarily be men of such attainments, as to merit the title of learned. Piety, an intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures, good sense, and an acceptable manner of instructing, may qualify her sons to do much good, to move in spheres less conspicuous, and consequently, in some respects less exposed to the temptations of ambition. Such men may edify the Church, may lead many to a knowledge of the Saviour; their prayers may bring blessings to thousands of their fellow men. All this we believe, and rejoice to believe; yet it remains true, that the Church is called upon, by the providence of her Lord, to secure a ministry profoundly learned, and disciplined in all the higher range of intellectual exertion. By the learning of the ministry, we mean to describe both knowledge and cultivation; a knowledge of the Bible, and of all that can throw light upon its meaning; a knowledge of the various shades of error which have misled men in past ages, and to which they are still exposed; a knowledge of the human heart, as gained from the study of the Bible, of history, of our contemporaries, and of ourselves; a knowledge of the dealings of God with his Church in each period of her history; a knowledge of whatever bears upon the interests of man as a subject of God's moral government; and a thorough discipline of mind, or the power of using the mental faculties in the highest exercise of which they are capable. We are aware of the evil of an undue dependence on learning. We are aware of the evils which it may do when separate from piety; but for that we are not pleading. We know that all the great heresies which have misled mankind, have been originated by men of great philosophical acuteness, and generally by men of great learning; that the nation, perhaps, the most profoundly learned, is now the great nursery of infidelity ; and that the schools they founded for the promotion of

piety and for the propagation of the gospel, are now turned to the subversion of the gospel, and to the establishment of philosophy on its ruins.

1. The mere knowledge of what he is to teach, is so varied and so extensive, that a minister must really be learned, to merit the title of a scribe well instructed, and able to bring forth from his storehouse things new and old. If this be doubted by any, let it be asked, what are ministers to teach, and where and how are they to find their message? They are to teach the substance of what God has revealed in a written volume. But that revelation was made in languages now not spoken. It was committed to writing in those languages. Other writings were surreptitiously brought in to share its authority. Now, without entering upon this field of research, to some extent, how is a man of candid and inquiring mind to find assurance that he is proclaiming God's revelation? It may be said, many excellent ministers have never attended to this subject. We admit it, and admit that the most of us now in the ministry feel the defects of our early education in this and other departments. And we so feel them, as to make us desire strongly that those to whom we commit the office, should enter more solidly and thoroughly into the study of all that is fundamental to the Christian system. We desire to see a stronger and a better race of men succeed us. Sensible of intellectual and spiritual defects, we seek not to shield our pride by limiting our successors to the standard of our attainments. We do not say that other Christians may not content themselves with the received canon of Sacred Scripture, and with the received translation; but we do maintain, that he who proposes himself as a public champion for the truth of revealed religion, as a public teacher of the revealed will of God, ought to go nearer to the fountain. He ought not to content himself with receiving it at

second hand. He is bound for his own sake, for the Church's sake, and from honesty to those whom he opposes, and whose rejection of the Bible he so severely condemns, to prove to his own mind by candid and prayerful research, that he has the very word of God; and to be able to say, not from translation, but from the words of inspiration, what are the doctrines of godliness and of eternal life. If any have not time for this, let them be considered the exceptions, not the models. Let them not decry learning; and let not the Church itself act so inconsistent a part as to take advantage of the erudition and research of the men of other days, and then denounce this very erudition and research as contrary to the nature and design of the evangelical ministry. Let her not forget her indebtedness to her Kennicotts, her Mills, and her Griesbachs; no, not even to the German neologists, who have so solidly proved the accuracy of the manuscripts from which our own translation is taken. Let us acknowledge the satisfaction we experience and the indebtedness we feel to the men who, by great learning and great labour, have proved that the providence of God has so preserved the Scriptures in many languages and among many nations, before the invention of printing, that not a single important doctrine or sentiment is lost if we expunge from our translation all the passages in which the manuscripts of highest authority differ from one another. No; I repeat it, Providence lays this necessity upon us. It has been by severe study and painstaking research that ancient manuscripts of the different versions of the Old Testament have been found and compared with the copies in the hands of the Jews. It is by much research and careful comparison that the various manuscripts of the New Testament have been examined. This fundamental branch of biblical literature, a teacher of the Bible is bound to know, if he can. He ought not to be igno

rant of the learned and subtle objections which have been made to the reception of the Bible as a divine revelation. He ought not to be ignorant of the strong and cumulative mass of evidence of its divine origin which places Christianity on an unassailable rock. And receiving this revelation, he should be able to read it in its native tongue; for no person who has read a book of great merit in one language, and then read its translation into another, can fail to have felt that much of its meaning and beauty, of its spirit and power have evaporated in the process of translating. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures ought to become the familiar companions of a gospel minister. There is a sweetness, unction, and power in them, which can be felt, but not translated. The meaning may be expressed by circumlocution; and the translation will thus be equally instructive as the original; but it cannot be equally impressive either on the imagination or on the heart.

2. The minister must be learned, for the defence of the truths of revelation against the learned.-We suppose him now prepared to instruct the sincere followers of Christ from his stores of biblical science-his rich, and varied, and well-arranged knowledge of the contents of the Bible. But Providence throws another class of objectors in his path. These appeal to history and science to prove the falsity of Christianity as a pretended gift of God. They frame imposing propositions and arguments in philosophical form. These again are seducing the minds of the learned and reflecting among his hearers, by subtle errors apparently founded on the very word of God. And they come forward with their improved versions, and new translations, and shrewd expositions, assailing the very foundations of the Christian's hope. And what shall this captain in the Lord's army do? Shall he turn pale, and say, I know I am right, but I do not fight