sel in their duties, according to his best ability. With those that are older his influence should be more direct and positive. Feed my sheep, feed my lambs, says the Master. A study of Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus indicate the great work of the pastor, who endures all things for the elect's sake that they may obtain eternal salvation. These epistles are the thesaurus of subjects for charges to ministers, and we think abundantly vindicate the justice of our statements. Unquestionably, we have relations and duties to those outside of the pale of the church; but we are of the opinion, that whatever shortcomings our ministry may be guilty of in respect to the church, they are eminently faithful in their preaching to the unconverted members of their congregations. A large proportion of their sermons is directed to them. And there is no doubt that a church, rightly trained and educated by the pastor, will become efficient agents in bringing souls to Christ out of the world. A wide field here opens before us, but these hints must suffice on this topic.

We pass now to consider briefly some of the great underlying principles of the minister's work, especially in relation to unregenerate persons coming under his preaching and influence.

There is, then, (1) God's unchangeable complete plan, covering all time and embracing the end from the beginning, infallibly sure and unfailing. Every sheep and lamb belonging to the Great Shepherd, every individual soul constituting the Bride of the eternal Son of God, every living stone selected for the Temple of glory, every person given to Christ in the covenant of redemption, every mortal chosen in him before the foundation of the world, will be saved. Not one grain of this precious wheat shall fall to the ground when God sifts the world in his judgment sieve. No fidelity can by any means save the chaff, can save any but the wheat. And the ministry are God's appointed agency by which the wheat is formed and ripened; they are his instruments for taking out of the world a people for his name. As many as are ordained to eternal life will believe in Christ mainly through their preaching. It has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

And then (2) there is the condition of those to whom we preach. They are spiritually dead; dead in trespasses and sin; dead in law, condemned to eternal death, dead to God and goodness. We are not Pelagians, we are not semi-pelagians or

Synergists; we are no Arminians. We believe, in accordance with our Confession of Faith, that every man is by nature indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil. That he hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation . . . and is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto; that in his effectual calling or renewal, he is altogether passive therein, until being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it. As Christ in His body was dead and buried, was raised from the sepulchre by the exceeding greatness of God's power, so the sinner is dead and buried in the grave of sin, and his resurrection therefrom is by that very same power exerted in him.

And then (3) there is the secret, by us uncontrollable, and invincible agency and operation of the Holy Ghost. In nothing is Divine Sovereignty more manifest than in this. The Holy Spirit acts his free pleasure according to the counsels of eternal wisdom, and not according to our wishes; dispensing or withholding his grace as to the subject, the time, the manner, and the measure in his own most blessed goodness. None can say unto him, what doest thou? "It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God who sheweth mercy." "Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the man, but of God." King Manassah, the dying thief, Saul of Tarsus, for whom few prayed, with whom few labored, none so far as we know, were the ready subjects of his call; while Judas and Simon Magus, Alexander the coppersmith and Hermogenes, embosomed in church influences, perished.

We talk much of conversion, if we talked more of Regeneration, would we not do better? Regeneration is first and in order to conversion. A man may be converted many times, he can never be born again twice. If our minds were more distinctly fixed upon the regeneration of our hearers who are born in sin and depravity, not to speak of the spirit and character of prayer · under this condition, would not our preaching be more with a view to supply the Holy Spirit with suitable channels of grace? Regeneration is the work of the Spirit through the word. Conversion is the act of the sinner's own mind. With the former vividly in our thoughts, our preaching would have a certain

cast and tendency Godwards. With the latter vividly before us, our preaching would aim more specially at moving, persuading, convincing the sinner. The idea of regeneration directs us to God. The idea of conversion turns us to men. Both styles of preaching are scriptural; but do we not often use them out of their due proportion.

God's plan respecting communities and individuals are unknown. Revivals are not constant, but occasional things. We think that President Edwards has demonstrated that the world is to be largely brought to Christ by means of them; and many things are necessary to prepare the way for them. We might name numerous illustrations of this; let us refer to one or two. The preparations for the advent of Christ and the work of Pentecost were manifold, and protracted through ages, and involved the captivity of the Jews, the overthrow of three imperial nations, and the establishment of the Roman Empire. Preaching during these movements of Providence, and preaching after them, were very different things; and this not in respect to the fidelity of the ministry, but in respect to the immediate results of their preaching. The reaping time came and the harvest was gathered. The preparations for the Reformation in Europe were signal and peculiar and protracted. The Reformation was a second Pentecost, sermons and preachers 'seemed magnetic with the Holy Spirit. This principle of the divine administration applies, with more or less force of application, to towns and churches and individuals in our day; just as it did to the apostle Paul, who, though he was separated from his mother's womb for his renewal and mission, was not brought to Christ until the prime of life, when in that "nick of time," it pleased God to call him by His grace and furnish and ordain him for his great work. He that believeth maketh not haste. Time with God is not as it is with us. A human life of three-score years and ten is as the passage of a weaver's shuttle. A thousand years are as one day. According to this standard, not quite two days have elapsed since the dispensation of the spirit began.

God, for reasons more or less concealed from us-and no minister, in fancied or real humility, should imagine them to relate mainly to himself-withdraws His spirit from communities, as he did from Capernaum, and Bethsaida, and Jerusalem, and also from nations whom he gives up to blindness of mind and a

reprobate heart. His Holy Spirit is not at human command or bidding. His love for the souls of men, surpasses that of all churches, of all ministers; but he has seasons of judicial visitation, temporal and spiritual; and He shakes nations that the church, which cannot be shaken, may be settled more firmly and permanently. He is King in Zion, and it does not become us to sit in judgment upon the Almighty, because of his delay in his merciful visitations. Careful, constant fidelity is our great duty. We are often tempted to say, "I have labored in vain, and I have spent my strength for nought and in vain; yet surely my judgment is with the Lord and my work is with my God, and now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength."

This is a great subject, and we have presented what some may call, the Divine side of it. There are other aspects in which it may be viewed, but this one we deem of great importance at the present time. The intelligent adoption of the principles we have presented, would impart boldness, courage, and fidelity to the ministry; would give dignity and strength to our office as ambassadors of Christ; would make us and make others think more of God and God's glory; would solve many problems, illustrate many historic providences, interpret many parts of Scripture, and give consistency and completeness to the ideal of the Christian church and ministry.

ART. VII.-BENEFICIARY EDUCATION FOR THE MINISTRY.*

By LYMAN H. ATWATER, D. D., Princeton.

THE Board of Education finds itself seriously crippled, and without funds to meet the appropriations voted by the Assembly, as they became due. From recent circulars addressed by the Corresponding Secretary to the several Presbyteries and Synods of the church, we learn that the special contribution ordered by the last Assembly to pay previous indebtedness, and the appropriation due May 1st, has, as we now write, been but partially successful. The debt has been paid, but means as yet have not been obtained from it sufficient to pay more than a portion of the May appropriation. The November appropriation of the present year is delayed, and has to be largely met by loans.

We must look for the causes of this appalling deficiency, before we can discover the remedy. It is clearly due to three

causes:

1. To the unprecedented increase in the number of candidates for the ministry, who are dependent on the Board for means to prosecute their education. The number is now over seven hundred, and, as the Secretary of the Board, Dr. Speer, informs us, more than double the aggregate number in the late Old and New School churches a few years since. This increase again comes from three, if not more, sources. First is the general and rapid expansion of the church itself, both in the field previously occupied by it, and the unprecedented enlargement of self-denying pioneer evangelistic work on our ever-advancing frontier, in our vast interior, and on the Pacific slope. Next are the German schools theologic, if not the academic, especially the German theological seminaries at Newark and Dubuque, whose students, almost without exception, are unable to pursue their studies without this aid. No church-work in this country is now more

*Fifty-third Annual Report of the Board of Education of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Presented to the General Assembly at Detroit, May, 1872.

Fifty-sixth Annual Report of the Directors of the American Education Society. Presented May 29, 1872.