miasma of the marsh, has been rendered noxious, and spread abroad disease, and pestilence, and death: or, from the force of combined influences, wrought up into the whirlwind, with hurricane violence, as a tornado, it has swept over town and country, leaving nothing but fragments and desolation in its track: or its breezes, in sweeping over the arid wastes of Africa, have become the death-dealing sirocco of the desert. The blessed and holy religion of the Bible, the salva. tion of God, sacred as its author, has been perverted to the worst of purposes. The political demagogue has made it subservient to his political influence and office-seeking: the vicious have made it a garb under which to perpetrate their villanies and crimes: and the Papist and the fanatic have made it a pretext for the horrors of the inquisi. tion, the fires of martyrdom, and the wars of persecution. The fact that good things may be abused does not depreciate their importance. Neither does the fact that the powerful influence of education has been seized upon by the wicked, and made to subserve their base purposes, lessen its value. On the contrary, the fact that this tremendous power may be laid hold of by bad men, and employed in the service of sin, and wielded against the cause of Christ, makes it, to the church, a subject of momentous concern. The question is simply this, Who shall possess and exert this power? Shall it be yielded up to the irreligious, to infidels, to Roman Catholics? Shall they employ it in the service of antichrist, and in the overthrow of Christianity? No, in the name of God, we say, No! It has too long been their artillery against the truth. It is high time that the armies of our Israel were rushing upon their well formed lines of battle, wresting from them the standard under which they have so long rallied, making conquest of this their heaviest ordnance, and turning it to the defeat of its former possessors. And we this afternoon summon the sacramental hosts of Methodism to the conflict, and, I adjure you, give not up the struggle until this mighty power is yours, until, in your hands, its bolts are dealing defeat and dismay through all the ranks of the enemy, and until a want of response to its thunders shall assure you that your foes are discomfited, and the spoils of victory securely yours. That this is not enthusiasm will appear if we farther consider edu. cation in its connections. If you please, look at its connection with civilization. The arts and sciences which are necessary to its very existence presuppose education. And just in proportion as education is encouraged and prevails, will the arts and sciences abound, and the refinements of civilization diffuse around their blessings and their blandishments. Would we then refine human society-would we purify the manners of men-would we promote the courtesies and civilities, and, by consequence, the happiness of civilized life-we shall find ourselves dependent upon education, mental, moral, and religious, as the means of effecting this desirable object. To expect to civilize men without educating them, would be as absurd as to calculate upon reaping a harvest without first sowing the seed. Schools are as essential to civilization as ships are to a navy, or as light is to vision. Consider education in its connection with the formation and development of human character. Real 'greatness is an attainment, not a gift. It is a good to be bought, not found. The only price for which : it can be bought, is the price which Jacob paid for his wives-years of faithful, unremitting toil, and care. Franklin was not born a philosopher. Newton was not a matter-of-course astronomer. Locke was not a necessitated logician. Wesley was not created a theologian. Fletcher was not spontaneously a polemic. Clarke was not, without study, a linguist. These men became great and powerful under the influence of education; and it required in each of them a life of close application to study, to develop their greatness and their ability for noble deeds. The dignity and usefulness of man are not trees of the forest they are found first in the nursery, and then in the garden, receiving, for years, the careful attentions of the horticulturist, and, under cultivation, becoming magnificent in form, and exuberant in fruitfulness. In his career of actions, in his mighty doings, man is not moved, like the sail at sea, by the capricious and external breeze; but, like the locomotive, he has the self-moving power within him: and when the engineer-Education-is present to regulate the machinery and apply the power, he moves off with majesty and speed, over hill and plain, over land and sea, in despite of wind or tide, bearing with him a tremendous train of influences and events, which an uneducated nation would be unable to move. Farther, examine its connection with human happiness. We do not deny that unlearned persons may be happy. Their happiness, however, must be low in kind, and limited in extent. Education opens to its possessors additional sources of enjoyment. It affords delightful employment for each and all the powers of the mind. It presents questions on which man's reasoning faculties may exert the utmost of their abilities. It furnishes subjects on which his contemplative powers may dwell until his soul is ravished with intellectual or moral beauties, and his mind filled with the most ecstatic delights. It spreads out before him extended fields of amaranthine flowers, through which his imagination may rove, and constantly inhale celestial fragrance. Indeed, as the poet has sung, a cultivated and well trained mind will find "Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, These sources of intellectual pleasure are pervading and unfailing. When once these fountains are unsealed, their streams, fresh and free, for ever flow. They wind their way along side the thorny path of life, across the sterile vale of poverty, through the narrow defiles between our mountains of difficulties, and fail not until they empty themselves into eternity's ocean. Wherever they pass along they fertilize the soil, vegetate the most delicious fruits, and afford the most refreshing draughts. These streams the scorching influences of adversity can never dry up, and the hoary frosts of age can never congeal. They are alike present and equally satisfactory in every condition and period of life. The preceding remarks lead me to observe, that education. elevates the character of our enjoyments. As before stated, the pleasures of the ignorant are of the lowest order. They are more sensual; more the enjoyments of the body than the mind; more the gratifications of the animal, than the pleasures of the man. To compare the enjoyments of the untutored and ignorant with the refined pleasures and high mental happiness of the cultivated mind, is to compare an animal to an angel, flesh and blood with spirit, the war-horse with the Washington. The intellectual pleasures of knowledge are as much superior to the coarse gratifications of the unthinking and sensual, as reason is superior to instinct, or as mind is superior to matter. Education, at the same time that it multiplies the sources of our happiness, and elevates the character of our pleasures, enlarges our capacities to enjoy. Even in religion, education enables its pious possessor to discern its higher beauties, to contemplate its sublimer glories, and consequently to enjoy its more powerful pleasures. The mind, expanded and strengthened by education, can grasp more of God in its knowledge, and enjoy more of God in its fruitions. If then we would render mankind happy, we must afford them the advantages of education, inasmuch as all men possess an appetite more or less keen, which can only be satisfied with " angels' food," and a thirst that can only be slaked by drinking, and drinking deep, at the pierian spring. Education is intimately connected with the character and efficiency of the Christian ministry. I know there are those who discard this sen. timent, and very positively deny that there is any necessary connection between the education and the success of the Christian minister. Το sustain their view of the question, they at once, with an air of antici pated triumph, refer us to the twelve illiterate apostles of our Lord. That these apostles were not educated in precisely the manner that ministers are and must be educated now, I readily admit; and let men now have the same teaching and the same training for the work of the ministry as they had, and I ask no more. Let them live in the family of the Saviour; let them listen to the lectures of him who spake as never man spake, "while he opened to them the Scriptures;" let them go with him to the mount of transfiguration, and see his glory, and hear him converse with Moses and Elias about his propitiatory death; let them witness his divine and useful miracles; let them see the perfections of his character, and the excellence of his life; let them behold him as he dies, and participate in the convulsive sympathies of the world, while the earth under them is quaking, the rocks around them rending, the graves before them opening, the sun above them benighted; let them go and look into his vacated sepulchre, and see where, buried, and wounded, and dead, their Lord lay in the cold sleep of death: let them live and commune with him forty days after his resurrection: then let them go with him to Olivet, and while his blessing is descending upon them, let them see him enter his chariot of cloud, and ascend to heaven: then let them return to Jerusalem, and await the day of pentecost, and when it is fully come, let them suddenly hear a sound as of a rushing mighty wind; let cloven tongues, like as of fire, sit upon them; let them be filled with the Holy Ghost, and let them receive the ability to speak in foreign tongues, the Spirit giving them .utterance and beyond all this, let them receive the gift of working miracles in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ:-and I will readily admit that they are as well qualified for the ministry as were the first apostles of the Saviour. It is an egregious error to represent the apostles of our Lord as ignorant and untutored ministers. Never was there a class of ministers so well educated and so thoroughly trained for the sacred office. Educated by Christ himself, trained by the great Captain of salvation's hosts, endued with plenary inspiration, the gift of tongues, and the gift of miracles, their equipment for their work was complete. Their attainments in theology were more extensive, and their endowments more imposing and empowering than any of their successors have ever possessed. In knowledge, in moral cour age, and in devotion to their work, they remain to this day pre-eminent. It is true, they were not educated in the schools of science and of philosophy. It is true, they were educated in a manner that none can be educated now; but that does not disprove the fact that they were educated, and well, and appropriately educated, for their high calling. The fact that they were educated for the ministry is apparent, and the fact that ministers now need an appropriate education for their sacred and awfully responsible vocation, is equally clear. For farther proof of this let it be remembered that the first individual put into the ministry, who had not enjoyed the special teachings and training of the Saviour, was one who had been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most profound scholars and mighty men of his age. But the objector urges another fact to overthrow our position, one drawn from our own history; and we are very gravely and positively informed that the unlearned ministers of the Methodist Church have been more successful than any others; and we are referred at once to the names of Nelson, and Bramwell, and Longden, in England; and to Ab. bot and Everett, in this country, as positive proofs of this position. I admit that these men, and those of a similar order, in the Methodist ministry, like the hammer of the clock, have made most of the noise of Methodism : I admit too, that like the hammer of the clock, they have an important use, they render an essential service. But what would be the use of the hammer of the clock, were it not for the wheels and weights that move and regulate it? And how much more minute and full is the information communicated by the less vociferous hands? And what, I ask, would have been accomplished by Nelson, and Bramwell, and Longden, and all others like them, and less than them, (blessed men! I esteem them very highly for their work's sake,) if there had been no Wesley, or Fletcher, or Coke, or Clarke, or Watson, or Bunting, to regulate and direct their movements in England? Or what would Abbot and Everett, and all of the same class, (men whose memories are sacred, and affectionately cherished,) have effected in this country, had we not been favoured with an Asbury, a M'Kendree, an Emory, a Fisk, a Soule, a Hedding; men of enlightened minds, and well balanced judgments, pre-eminently qualified themselves to perform the functions of the sacred office, and also to direct the labors of their less eminent brethren in the ministry, and to control the movements, and employ the energies of the church? It is not, as many imagine, to her uneducated ministry, almost exclusively, but to her well informed ministry, mainly, under the special blessing of God, that Methodism owes its signal prosperity, having, from its small beginnings, become, in a hundred years, one of the most powerful and wide spread influences of Christianity. I am not one of those who believe no man qualified to preach the gospel unless he is classically educated; neither do I deem it essential that ministers should all be alike in their endowments and acquirements: there may be various gifts and differ. ent attainments, without disadvantage. Neither do I advocate the popular theological drilling of the present day, as necessary to prepare ministers for their blessed work. The Saviour, in giving us an example on this subject, and in qualifying his first ministers to execute their high commission, took them to live and labor with him. They heard him preach, they saw him fulfil all the duties of the ministry ; they questioned him freely; he taught them familiarly; he from time to time employed them in such services as they were qualified to perform; and thus they were practically educated as ministers and pastors. I have never learned of any school for the education of ministers that so nearly resembled this as that of the itinerant ministry of the Methodist Church. In this school, an aged and experienced minister, the best possible representative of Christ, takes a young man to travel and labor with him as much as circumstances will allow, he directing his labors and studies, and watching over his piety, and improvement, and conduct, giving him frequent opportunities of observing his man. ner of exercising discipline in the church, and performing every kind of ministerial and pastoral duty. In this school ministers are practically, and therefore appropriately, educated for their divine calling. Among the alumni of this institution are such men as Clarke, and Watson, and Newton, and Asbury, and M'Kendree, and Summerfield, and Soule, ministers whose pre-eminent qualifications and success bespeak the surpassing excellence of the institution in which they were educated, and demonstrate its sufficiency for all the purposes of theological training. What these men acquired in this institution others may acquire. The equipments for their vocation which these men found in this sacred arsenal, it will furnish to all others who will seek them there; a panoply that will cover them from all dangers, and cause them "to triumph in every place." Perhaps if our young men could only be excited to a faithful improvement of the opportunities afforded them in this institution, and our fathers in the ministry be induced to pay a more careful attention to the improvement of their junior colleagues, we should never need, or have called for, any other theological institutions among us. But that our young men, before they graduate to this school of the ministry, need greater literary advantages than those now furnished by the church, is unquestionable. That there ought to be some special provision for giving them some literary advantages is equally clear. The prevalence of general edu. cation will indirectly promote this object. If our young men are generally educated, a ministry selected out of such a class of educated young men must necessarily be a ministry enjoying literary advantages. Probably this is the most direct bearing which education has upon the Methodist ministry. Educate all, and you must and will educate the ministry. Education has an important and necessary connection with our missionary work. It has been supposed, by many, that any pious person, with natural good sense, and ordinary gifts, and devoted spirit, was competent to be a missionary among the heathen. No doubt there are many missionary fields which such persons may reap. But in most cases missionaries need to be men of science and of general information. Who in his senses would think of sending an ignorant |