sublime mission-To hold up the heart of God before the eye of man!

II. As to his materials.

awaits him when once he is fairly launched forth on ministerial work. Added to which, there is the work more strictly pastoral, in which he must seek 1. He finds the materials on which he to act as a power for God in every has to work defined thus-commending family in the congregation. He must ourselves to every man's conscience. He have an ear for every tale of sorrow, has to deal with every variety of the and a heart to enter into every joy. human conscience, for while he presents That he be respected, even admired for truth in the pulpit, there will be con- his talents is not enough. He must science in the pew; a conscience which be beloved for what he is, for his trieudin the majority of cases more or less as-ship, true and unchanging, and must sents and responds to the trath respect- so demean himself as to be welcome ing God and duty, however the will everywhere.

may refuse to bow. Some consciences Aud how must he preach? With a he will and cultivated, refined, and sus-heart as fresh in its love for the truth ceptible of impression to a very high as if it were for the first moment andegree, in which cases the presentation nounced to him; with a soul in most of the truth will be an almost unmingled iuteuse sympathy for man, while as joy; with others the conscience will be the ambassador of the cross, his highest perverted, distorted, and debased, to sympathies are with his God. Now such the gospel will be hidden-the sad, he must tenderly beseech, and then sad sign of perishing men! And he will have to commend himself to every conscience, and consequently to qualify himself as an instrument for doing that. His bow must not in every case, or in any more cases than such as are unavoidable, be drawn at a venture. He must find a way, a direct way of get-heavenly sympathies, with the cross ting at men's inner selves when he teaches and preaches Jesus Christ.

earnestly warn. Now, unbare the intricacies of the human heart, and then shew forth the transparent purity of the heart of God. How must he preach? With his eye on the unseen, his heart bathed in love, his views being all fresh from communion with God, alive with

before him and the judgment beyond him, and the Saviour standing by his side; without a thought of man's approval, weighing the worth of souls in the balances of heaven, and looking only for the smile of his God!

Then there are the surroundings of every man. Every man lives in a world of his own, which he helps to nake, and which does much to inake him. There are the incessant ebbings 2. The materials with which he is and flowings of human thought ou to work may naturally be supposed social, moral, and religious questions, next to be reviewed in the preacher's. all which influences are more or less mind. Every form of thought which telling on the meu whom he addresses. will better enable him to bring out Here, then, are the materials on which" God," should be familiar to him. In he is to work-consciences of every the principles of ethics he would be shape and size, men living and mov- thoroughly at home, that in the name ing each in a separate world, favoura- of his God he may plead for the deep bly disposed to, or prejudiced against, and everlasting meaning of "right" and the truth of God by a thousand influ-"wrong." In the analysis and workences, seen or unseen, which he can ing of the human mind he wishes to neither curb nor control, which in- be an adept that he may be the better fluences are at work six days and three-quarters out of the seven, while for the sole and single quarter of a day he is expected to say that which shall, by the divine blessing, turn the current of the soul, and prove mighty through God to pulling down the strongholds which Satan and the world are busily building up from the beginniog of the week to its close!

This is at least one aspect of what

prepared to track in their intricate windings the mazes of the human heart. But most of all does he wish to study God's thoughts, for the great purpose of being to man the interpreter of God. And these he finds everywhere. The expressions of divine thought lie in abundance around him. God's thoughts will be seen in external nature. The vastness and velocity of the heavenly orbs will reveal divine gran

Necessity of Piety in the Preacher.

11

deur, while the million forms of insect | Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Augustine, life will be constantly speaking to him to Luther and Calvin, to Goodwin and of the beauty of the Lord. The sudden Owen, Charnock and Howe; they give and rapid entombment of towus pre- us immense materials of thought. pace him to expect that "a short work A preacher exhaust himself! If so, it will the Lord make on the earth" must be because there is an incapacity while the slow and prolonged accre- for the reception of thought, or a slug tions on the surface of the earth shew gishness that will not make the effort that one day with the Lord is as a to receive it. The geology of religious thousand years, and a thousand years thought is of itself a subject that may as one day. Thus, the vast and minute, task a man for life. Our imaginary the sudden and the slow, will all be student is sometimes oppressed with "voices of God." God speaks in man. the vastness of the resources on which The preacher would hear Him there, he has to draw for the furniture of his and shew how, in the complicated mind. Instead of asking "Where mechanism of the human soul, there shall I fiod materials for a work so are already at work the materials for great?" he asks-" How shall I make future retribution or award. Society use of all that lies before me?" and is the voice of God. The infant's prat- this will lead him to see→ tle or the old man's moan, the blessing 3. Of what material he himself is on the house of the good and the curse made. He sees now, even more than in the dwellings of the bad, the con- he did at first, the absolute necessity tinual action and reaction of the moral of Piety for such a task as his. He world on the physical aud of the phy- never doubted that. But he is more sical on the moral, will be fraught with and more strong in his feelings on that lessons for him. The changes in hu- point. He sees now so very much in man governments, political revolutions-these will be the voice of God, while it is for him to convey the lessons High Heaven is addressing to man! In the word of life, that "grand old book," with its historic detail, its holy inspiration, its precepts and its promises, he will find, in a still higher sense, the voice of God. In the atoning sacrifice of which it treats, and the invitations to a lost world with which it is filled, there are "voices of God" which it may well be his delight to declare. While the highest revelation of God-GOD IN CHRIST-is enough to command all his admiration, and to inspire his tongue with an everlasting theme! He can never be at a loss for materials. All nature is full. Every letter inscribed on the pillars of the universe, and every turn of the wheels of Providence, the word of life, the cross in its glory and its shame,-what life is long enough to bring out these? -what tongue eloquent enough for themes like these?-what culture can be lofty enough to enable him to soar so high?

There are the voices of God, too, in a subordinate sense, in the good men of all ages. Holy men in every age have contributed their quota to the form of the church's thinking on gospel truth. We are indebted to St.

the Bible, in the Gospel, in the atonement, in the Trinity, of which an unconverted man can make absolutely nothing! And, I doubt not, you will find his convictions firmer than ever respecting the reality of a divine "call" to the ministry; that unless a man is inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take this office upon him. he has no right in the ministry at all; and that the true "ordination" is when the Holy Ghost says to a church, “Separate me . . . for the work," &c. But experience will have shewn him that a combination of qualities is needed to ensure complete success. That there must be-1. A thorough understanding of the work to be done. 2. A judgment to select the right materials, and then to use them. 3. Cultivation of mind and heart: light in the reason and love in the soul. 4. A spirit of self-sacrifice which will accept Col. i. 24, as an exact description of true ministerial life. 5. A very high standard of piety: much communion with God, to keep him perpetually as enthusiastic in his work as when the heat of youthful ardour was his.

He will have learnt, too, how small a matter may impair a minister's power; that in the pulpit he may preach like an angel, but if he is hasty in his temper, unpunctual in his pay

ments, overbearing in his administra-thinking as varied as possible, embrac tion in the church, what he builds up ing Logic, Psychology, Ethics, Natural with one hand he will pull down with Philosophy, Natural History, Phythe other!

siology, Botany, Chemistry, Geology, Astronomy, &c., that he may be preIII.—It is just possible that the past pared to shew the harmony between ten years may have done something the word and the world, and thus keep towards modifying our ideal student's abreast of the thinking of the age, as view of what PREPARATION for the well as of its evangelistic activities. ministry should include. Orderly thinking and close thinking 1. He once thought, perhaps, that if he will strive after, as condensers of he could but just preach Christ in some power. rural district and work on unobserved, 3. And there is no doubt that his that would be enough for him; but views of college life will be materially now, if he begins again, it will be with changed. If ever he thought for a the distinct aim at being all that God moment that a collegiate course might has made it possible for him to be. He be dispensed with, he never thinks will study his special failings and cor- so now. He would gladly push back rect them, his special aptitudes, and the wheels of time, begin again, and cultivate them. Nor will he let phy- spend eight years instead of five sical culture be lost sight of. He in preparing for his high and holy once thought far too little of it. He work. He can estimate better now wished to forget that he had a body. than once he could the advantages But he finds that even in cultivating of such a course, and at the same Inind and heart in order to get the hearts of others, if he forgets to attend to the body, the body will sooner or later give him a sharp reminder of its existence, and will threaten him with total suspension of work if he refuse to give due heed to its call. Moreover, he has come to feel that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and, for the sake of him who dwells therein, should be kept in good repair; being, moreover, the vehicle for the expression of religious sympathies, that expression will be seriously distorted if the body be incompetent to fulfil the behests of the soul. He will, too, pay far more attention than once he did to voice and manner, that in running his race he may lay aside every weight as well as every sin.

time he sees what once he could not see, that the prescribed curriculum is, and must be, that which is on the whole best for the majority of men. But if he is anxious to rise above mediocrity, and has a student's enthusiasm, he will, while at college, strike out for himself many lines of thought which cannot be touched there, many courses of study_which cannot be embraced there. He will assiduously cultivate his own peculiar mental habitudes and tastes in studies which are altogether over and above what is required in the course prescribed to him by others.

Besides this, however, he will deem moral and spiritual culture to be paramount in its claims. Nothing would compensate for deficiency here. He 2. His views of mental culture are would keep the balance even between changed too. As he has to do with work and prayer; and for the mental life in very many aspects, to be equally exhaustion of intellectual study he at home with the rich and the poor, would add the counterpoise of much and to be the connecting link between fellowship with God. All, all will be them; as he has to preach to some subsidiary to his great end and aim. engaged in scientific pursuits, or in the His main lines of study will be the learned professions, or in commercial gospel -man - the times and his affairs, he feels the importance of work-together with the influences touching life at all these different which are at work against him and for points, of being able to speak freely him; while all branch lines of thought and sensibly with every class of his will lead him on to the one grand hearers, that "by all means he may trunk line of gospel truth. He would save some. It will be in his view be what he exhorts others to be; and most undesirable for his thoughts to so delicately would he seek to adjust run in one "rut." He would have his mental work and spiritual rest, so

Candidates for the College.

13

symmetrically to form the character | Let us not hesitate to use the "earthen under the training of the Spirit of God, vessels." Let us, as Gideon's host, sanctifying him and sanctifying his take our earthen vessels to the field, studies, that he may be a vessel unto and though they are shivered and honour, meet for the Master's use, and PREPARED TO EVERY GOOD WORK!"

shattered there, yet even then the light shall blaze forth, and we shall shout, "THANKS BE TO GOD, WHO GIVETH US THE VICTORY !"

CANDIDATES FOR THE COLLEGE.
MR. EDITOR-

briefly, in this way:-The term of study being limited, the period of a young man's entry thereupon must not be considered apart from the period of his removal and subsequent position.

Further, unwisely, as I think, the greater part, if not the whole, of the duties of teaching and ruling in a modern church are laid upon one man -the pastor; and, wisely or unwisely, there is no recognised official position

Now, as we look at such a man, what shall we venture to predict concerning him? 'Tis not a venture. "Tis a certainty. God works in a sphere of means and ends: sometimes, indeed, doing more than we may expect, but never less. And with Dear Sir, Is it well to receive such a man starting on his work when young men in their teens as students college time expires we are sure (1) in our College? The question has that work will be easy, because it will lately forced itself upon my mind, be a delight. (2.) His work will be a power. Such a man must tell. He will be full of God. (3.) His work will be a growing power. He will not be weary when the first feeling of novelty has gone; but the more he gathers from God by personal communion, and of God by observation and thought, the richer will be his spiritual and mental furniture, the intenser his enthusiasm, the diviner his growth, the more potent his energy, and the more manifest the for a young man leaving college other tokens of a large success. God will delight to bless such a man. He will never preach in vain. The result may be hidden, but it will always be real. There will be some receptive hearts in whom the seed will abide and bring forth fruit. His work will give him greater power the longer he pursues it. It will bear a life-long pursuit, and will enrapture him more at the close of life than at its beginning; while the work will tell on the grand issue which God is bringing out, it may be one of the little tiny rills which finds its way to ocean's bed unseen; but the great Lord whom he serves watches every rill, and counts every drop, and his 66 drops" will not be lost!

There is no doubt that the putting forth of all the ardour of the soul in Christ's cause, and the action of spiritual sympathies will sooner or later consume the frame. The zeal of God's house will "eat us up." But that

matters not.

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not

breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives

than this of pastor. Such being the case, I cannot think that it is good to admit a youth to our Institution with the certainty that at twenty or twentytwo he will have either on the one hand to fill a post to which in ordinary cases he is wholly unequal, or, on the other hand, find himself unrecognised, and a nobody, either in the ministry of the church, or in the business of the world.

I do but give the opinion of valued personal friends in the ministry when I say that a few years spent in the field, the counting-house, or the shop, is the best preparation for the peculiar duties of the pastorate. If the consciousness of a higher calling in the mind of a youth be genuine, a plant of our Heavenly Father's planting, it will strengthen and develop itself in this soil, and will have become of some sorviceable stature when, in the discharge of the duties of office, the strain of disappointment, trial, and opposition is brought to bear upon it.

I would have all our candidates for the ministry to be men whose fortitude and valour have been tried somewhat Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." in the battle of life-who consecrate Spiritual successes are glorious com- to the service of Christ a manhood of pensations for physical exhaustion. conscious strength, not a feebleness

Sabbath Schools.

1 The efforts of the superintendent, at THE first of last January the superin-large number into the school, many of the beginning of the year, brought a tendent of a Sabbath school invited whom were young married people; and every one of the congregation to join the school. Among others, he asked now most of them have been hopefully an intelligent lawyer, who was a very bers of the church. converted, and many of them are memmoral, excellent man, to joiu. To the surprise of the superintendent, this. mao said he would join.