good the position of belief as against that of unbelief, and to show how his verities differ from the denials of scepticism. One-sided, partial, and obstinate science will have it that materialism is the only truth, and that all these theories of the soul, the spiritual life, a conscious existence beyond time and sense, all this pretence of morality, conscience, right and wrong; all this separation of man from other races; all this talk of God as a personal being, and of men, in any peculiar sense, as children of God, is weak and delusive, to be pitied and spurned by the intelligent mind. That assertion must be met, and met not alone by bare denials, but by a better science, which is able to show wherein the other is hasty and partial. Pious simplicity, which only repeats the phrases of the conference room, deprecates dogma, and bids Christians to love, is not sufficient as an answer to the materialism which summons men in the lecture-room and the review and the newspaper. The essence of religion may be all in the new commandment, which a child can understand; but will you urge this against a denial of religion altogether, or of the need of any religion? You have to deal with a previous question, and to deal with it all the more that your own course is in the same broad field and on the same track as this materialism. You have to know enough of the world in nature and in life, to show that it does not justify these confident denials. One who is to answer these arguments of sceptics and infidels must have learned to appreciate the arguments, and to understand what they mean. The pleas of Büchner and Moleschott, of Darwin and Huxley, cannot be set aside merely by reading an excellent short sermon in the Monthly Religious Magazine," or an article in the "New Englander." The gospel of mammon-taught so speciously in the financial summaries of the leading journals, and the popular works on banking and tariff- cannot be disproved even to one's own mind, much less to those who are striving and busy in the world, by devout reference to the words of Jesus and Paul, who spoke to another class, with another civilization, to men who did not handle much money, and had no railways to build, and no continent to subdue. You

do not meet the materialists and the mammonists on their own ground, when you quote to them texts of which they dispute the wisdom and deny the authority. They ask you for reasons, and not for texts.

Those who are half inclined to this materialism, whose daily reading and hearing has shaken their former traditional faith, who feel themselves to be on the road to denial of God and virtue and the spiritual life, -denial of all but physical facts and instincts, naturally turn for guidance to the teachers of liberal religion. These teachers, going in the same way, professing earnestly to have learned from a broad and secular philosophy, have yet found a faith, are happy in a religion. They will give comfort where the evangelic ban has driven out the honest inquirer. Into the liberal churches mostly come these troubled souls, who are compelled to deny, but would fain believe. They come to hear the higher reason, which may correct their doubt, to learn what the best science has to say. And it will be bitter disappointment if they hear in these churches no science at all, no strong reasons; if they find no sign of any study in these difficult questions, and must take for food only a diet for babes, even if it be the "sincere milk of the word." Can we imagine any thing more disheartening than this poor answer to troubled seekers, -this discovery that there is no real knowledge in the very place where knowledge is exalted, and reason stands equal with revelation? A liberal church that can give no answer to the questions of the age, which attract men to it, and stir in the minds of the men who come to it, will be an empty church; and it ought to be. It holds out a lying promise, and its large pretension is the more ridiculous. I read once of a baker who, in the last French Revolution, hung over the doorway of his shop a placard inscribed, with huge letters, "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité." A customer came in, and invited him to discuss these great ideas; but the baker had not a word to say. "Why did you put that motto there, if you cannot defend it?"-"Oh! I only did as my neighbors did, and hung out the sign of the party."—"Well, if that is all you have to say," returned the other, "I shall not buy

any more bread at your shop. I don't want the bread of one who has no reason to give for his professions." It will be so with the preachers of the liberal gospel. They must justify what they profess, else the inquirers will not come to them for the bread of wisdom and life.

There are these reasons, to mention no more, why, in spite of the fact that the liberal scheme of faith is in its essence very simple, and that the liberal gospel is adapted to the unlearned, a special training is needed for its ministry, — that its position in the Christian world is heretical; that it has to interpret the Bible, the traditional authority, intelligently; that it has to show the large range and application of religious ideas; and that it has by eminence to deal with the questions of the world outside of the Church. The practical question then is, In what way shall this education be given, and how far shall it go on in time and in amount? Shall we keep the expedient of schools for the ministry, which has been tried in these last forty or fifty years? or shall we return to the old way, when candidates were apprenticed to a regular clergyman, and learned their trade as a carpenter or blacksmith learns it? or shall we devise some new plan, shorter and more effectual? Shall we go on with the old routine method, treating theology in its four departments of dogma, criticism, history, and pastoral duty? or shall we invent a new programme of study, suited to the wants of the age and the changed ideas of the pastoral relation? These are perplexing questions. We find ourselves in a troublesome dilemma. On one side is this demand for men, to fill the places made vacant, to open new places, to go on missionary service, to write and speak for the liberal faith, — this call for men, of which we hear so much; which, however much we may doubt, and smile at its pretended urgency, is a real call, a wide call, a pressing call, not to be silenced by doubt or ridicule. On the other side is the demand for wise men, trained men, competent men; who know enough to defend the faith, to illustrate it, to meet orthodoxy on the one hand, and materialism on the other; a better class of men than the old way gave, or than any routine way can

give; men who shall be well furnished as well as bright, and have good thoughts and good sense along with a good voice. Shall we lower the standard of the ministry to increase its numbers, and, like the debtors in the parable, for fivescore write fourscore, and for a hundred write fifty? or shall we narrow the circle, already so small, by raising the standard of qualification, and asking more instead of less? This is a very annoying dilemma, and no one seems shrewd enough to show the satisfactory way of getting out of it.

It might help us in the difficulty, if those who set out to prepare themselves for the ministry could know or could tell beforehand exactly what kind or province of ministerial work they would take for themselves; whether they come to fit themselves for a quiet country parish in New England, where the type of faith has been long fixed, and there is no prospect of growth or change or the coming in of new ideas, or whether they are expecting to plant this faith in some new region, where there is a wholly different class of influences; if they could decide at the start between the itinerant and the settled ministry: the education then could be adjusted to the intention, and the men be prepared for the particular work they are expecting to do. But, unfortunately, very few can or are willing to give such decision beforehand; very few know for what they are fitted. Some, with good physical advantages, observing that these go so far in commending a religious teacher, are unwilling to let their spiritual lack consign them to the humble work of the country pastor. Others take the large plan of service, because their zeal is so strong, and their sense of the worth of the liberal faith so quick. They cannot be content to nurse old altar-fires, while there are so many new altars to be builded. It is not easy to classify candidates in this service, or to tell beforehand where any belong. Just as, in the school training of most of our cities, the same qualifications are required of all the teachers, and one who is to deal with infant classes and drill in the primer and the alphabet must pass the same examination as one who is to teach algebra and philosophy, so in the training of our preachers it seems necessary to have a uniform rule,

and to ask that the candidate for the smallest lace shall be } fit, so far as education can make him, for the largest place; that, however moderate his native ability may be, however indifferent his physical gifts, he shall, at any rate, have education enough for any call. It seems more necessary that those of moderate ability should have more knowledge, education enough to make up for their natural deficiency. In ordinary cases, certainly, the prescribed three years' course, which is the usual time of study in our theological schools, does not seem to be over long, either for those who come to it from a previous college course, or those who come to it from trades and labors. Have you ever seen a man who would say, that, in this time, he had learned as much as he cared to in any department of religious study? Take the critical study of the Bible. Probably not one student in five, in the three years, has been able to go over, with minute investigation, the books of the Scripture in familiar use; the books which he will constantly read from in his pulpit ministration; which he will be expected to know and give opinions about, Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, the Books of Kings, the Psalms and Proverbs, the Ecclesiast's wisdom, the poem of Job, the major and minor Prophets, the Gospels, the Epistles, the Apocalypse. All these will come into question in the discussions of the pulpit and the Bible-class; yet he is extraordinarily busy and swift who can examine them thoroughly in his three years of preparation. Then, in questions of dogma and philosophy, if the opinions which have been held in the Church are to be examined and weighed, three years seem to be a short time for the process. The regret of every graduate of our theological schools is, that so much of the original programme of study has been left unfinished, that so much has been superficially pursued. Will it make the matter any better to shorten the time to two years or one year, to six months or to three months? Have we any time-saving process by which the human brain, in this study, can be made to do in months what was once the work of years? Do not our needs suggest a longer, rather than a shorter, period of preparatory study? This idea of