with religious ceremonial, and guarded and blessed by Christian men. It will never degrade itself, intelligently or advisedly, into a mere school of science, or a place of instruction for immediate handicrafts. It will seek rather to accumulate new knowledges on the old, to expand its courses and make them more ample, to establish all sciences in familiar residence in its majestic and finished circle; to make itself an emporium of human thought. Not a monolith is the University, but a great imperial and pillared structure. It will build more widely and loftily its towers, till the cloister becomes a college; and the college a quadrangle; and the quadrangle a great, ever-spreading University; whose buildings speak of different epochs; whose walls have a power from past ages upon them; whose spirit expresses the Attainment of Civilization. While retaining the severity and precision of the mathematics, for their practical applications and their influence upon culture, it will add to them the expanding and enlightening researches of natural science. It will have a place for astronomy, for geology, for physics. It will delight to hang its walls with the pictured youth or the serene age of the wise of the Past. It will seek to draw around it the inestimable cincture of affluent libraries. The literature that breathes from the youth of the world, the literature still vivid with Phenician grace, or stately and regal with the Roman pride, will ever abide in the true University; to encircle and enrich the mind which it trains. It will cherish the taste, by a power from the scenes where Homer sang, and Plato taught. It will discipline the judgment, by accustoming it to collision with the arguments of old. It will kindle aspiration, through its great and splendid models. It will press upon the youth the life of its epochs, and give him the freedom of the historical ages. Yet philosophy, also, shall be added to this; the exposition of the problems of our nature and its relations. The literatures and acquisition of modern centuries will be accumulated upon these; instruction in ethics, in politics, and in art; the teaching of each branch of professional knowledge; the scientific interpretation of sculpture, painting, architecture, eloquence, as well as of the music that exalts and enthralls as a minister of God. Especially will history be taught in the university;— not that of which Bacon hath said that it doth rather set forth the pomp of business, than the true and inward resorts thereof,' but that which really unfolds the causes, expounds the direction, and prophecies the results of human action; that which gives an expression to the life of all Time, and is thus a treasury of principles, a record of Providence, a spring of impulse, a teacher of charity, a school of manhood. So fast as

resources shall be multiplied for it, all these related departments of knowledge will be welcomed and installed in the truly self-conscious and intelligent University.

Especially will it incorporate a thorough Christianity, among its moulding and formative powers. The relation of this Divine system to University education has been often overlooked, and oftener mistaken. She has been received as a servant, or as a dependent friend, where she should have been gladly and instantly enthroned, as the mistress and queen. For the relation of Christianity to every real believer, is but prophesied by that she has sustained to the race. Coming to publication when Roman order was dominant on earth, when the culture and art of Greece had realized its last and grandest trophies, and was fading like the sunset from the west which it had piled with chrysolite and gold, standing, a spirit of purity and of peace, amid the splendor and the power of these great civilizations, Christianity taught a truth higher than theirs. She made the stock of Hebrew theism to blossom as in a night, into discoveries of God, revelations of angels, a present Messiah, and victory over death. She must needs overcome the powers that opposed her. Yet she gathered and reconciled the forces that were in them, combining them by the mordant of a mightier principle, Benevolent Love. And so, on their wrecks, and over fresh continents, she is building a civilization more permanent and grand than theirs. In this civilization, when it is perfected, all learning shall be honored. Art shall have clear and generous development. Literary skill and accomplishment shall be welcomed; shall be consecrated, even, through devotion to the truth. All noble qualities of human nature shall be unfolded; all elements in it that are base be repressed; the atmosphere of society be warmed and irradiated by universal charity and piety; affectionateness, conscientiousness, tastefulness and heroism, be made the spirit of every household, be made the life of every heart.-For this consummation, prophets have waited, and martyrs died. Because she tends toward this result, Christianity was given by God to man, amid stupendous theophanies and miraculous attestations. Because she tends and works toward this, he makes inventions her ministering allies, and commerce her swift and far pathfinder. Because she has such forces and tendencies, she should be enthroned in every University. What she does for the race, she will do for the personal believer and student; she will do for the society of attentive youth. The more thoroughly she is recog nized in any University, and made to embosom the minds trained in it, interpenetrating with her Divine force all resources of

Science, the more will she make that, in no common-place sense but truly, royally, the cherished mother of its students. The disciplined minds that go from its walls, will be its jewels. From the track of their benignant life, or of their high and principled public service, will ray back a light to make it illustrious. It will worthily introduce them to the University of Life.

There, after all, is the larger arena for the attainment of the manhood which we have sketched. It is the virtue of life— is it not the secret of God's orderings concerning it?-that in it may be realized this completeness and mastery. How far it may have been in reference to this end, to train men to ascend to a difficult virtue, to discipline and invigorate them by exercise and resistance, and so to prepare them for great offices in the future-how far it may have been for this end that malign and perverting influences were admitted upon the earth, and left to mark and mar its annals-who shall declare? Certain it is, that he who now enters life aright, who grapples its problems, and masters its difficulties, and resists its temptations, and accepts its impulsions, and uses its helps-he who follows the definite line of duty through all the experiments and entanglements of the world, and who gathers upon his thought the instruction which they offer him-will reach a manhood Christian and noble, intrinsic and immortal. He shall judge angels. His stature shall be grander than if he had been nurtured in the garden; his destiny more eminent, than if his virtue had been cloistered. To train men for this, the arena of Life, that calmly, intelligently and successfully they may work in it, to train them for it, and to usher them into it, is the office of every Educator; the office, especially, of the Christian University. Its true grandeur is revealed, as we contemplate it here.

To seek and to realize the true Success of Human Life, as that has here been unfolded, is the privilege of every man ; especially of every young man. It ought evermore to be presented to them, thus; by the teacher, and the preacher; by the conductors of presses; by the officers in all seminaries. The addresses of Mr. Mann and Dr. Palmer, to which we adverted at the commencement of this article, both imply the substance of that which we have drawn out more at length, and therefore are to be valued. We are more and more impressed with the conviction that the best minds of the country should give themselves to the work of instructing the young in the true ENDS of Life. Amid the splendor and excess of our Corinthian times, the young are dazzled by the promises of wealth; commerce wins them swiftly and unceasingly to its pursuits;

political prizes attract their desire; and ease, dilettantism, and social distinction, lull and destroy, in their charmed embrace, too many rarely gifted and noble souls. Now then, more than ever, more clearly, continuously and authoritatively, should be expressed the true idea of human culture, its method and its fruits; the doric simplicity of it, shaming from luxury; the innate and self-demonstrated nobleness of it, awakening magnanimous and lofty desire. It is part of the mission of writers to show, and part of the mission of preachers to proclaimand proclaiming it, to exhibit it in their character and careerthat acquirement and study are to be subordinate to Development; that development itself, even at its perfection, is to be tributary to Action; and that action, to be worthy of the powers of man, must be devoted to permanent and great interests; must be harmonious with the action of God! More than any thing else, we of this age need to be taught to consecrate every power with the chrism of self-devotion; to act ideally, for spiritual ends, for our Maker, and for truth. To the emerald, of hope; and the sapphire, that symbolizes a lofty aspiration; and the amethyst, that keeps from intoxicating passion; to the ruby, that guards the happiness of the wearer; and the opal, that suggests a perfected accomplishment, we should add in its place, setting it central too in the Tiara, that "new white stone," the diamond of God, wherein is written the name of His Son. Then, though life close suddenly, it shall find the most noble consummation above. Then, though life tarry long, it shall be full to the end of the youth of hope, and high endeavor. And then, as the race passes onward to its goalthe blood of martyrs, the truth of confessors, the life of the virtuous, the deeds of the heroic, the miracles, the words, and the agony of the Lord, all coming to their result-our influence also shall live and act. It shall fall as the light, and distill as the dew. It shall run as the stream, perennial from the spring. It shall shake like Lebanon, in its majestic fruition.

ART. V.-THE CONGREGATIONAL CONVENTION.

Proceedings of the General Convention of Congregational Ministers and Delegates in the United States, held at Albany, N. Y., on the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th of October, 1852. With the Sermon by Rev. JOEL HAWES, D. D., and an Appendix containing the principal debates. New York: S. W. Benedict.

AN event like that of the recent Convention at Albany, we may be sure, has a history both foregone and forthgoing; and if we thoroughly apprehend it in its causes, we shall be better able to understand its true significance, and its probable results in the future. Some exposition of its antecedents seems even necessary to any just estimate of its meaning. And we propose to devote a little space to the consideration of the causes and influences which conspired to produce that remarkable Council, and which made it such as it was, and moulded its action. We shall thus be prepared to gather the import of its discussions and conclusions, and to forecast in some little measure its productiveness in the future.

As these causes arose almost wholly from the existence and circumstances of Congregationalism out of New England, it will be in place to throw what light we can upon the condition of our churches in the regions beyond. In their wants, struggles, and trials, was the occasion of this Convention, and some intimate knowledge of these will furnish the only light in which a just estimate of its proceedings can be formed.

Among the causes which prepared the way for the assembling of this Convention, such in number and spirit as it was, a large place should be assigned to a growing conviction, among all genuine Congregationalists, of the entire reliability of their system-not only of its conformity to scriptural precedent, and its acceptableness to the Head of the church, but also of its unabated power, its fitness to work in the future as it has wrought in the past, and especially of its applicability in new fields and in conditions hitherto untried. How extensively this increased confidence in the Congregational Way was felt among us, it may be difficult to show; but its existence had become very manifest. The causes, too, which inspired it are quite obvious. Singularly enough a spirit of hesitation and doubt seems to have come over the older and weightier body of our churches, whether their system had not exhausted itself in the production of a New England-whether its entire mission were not confined, either by necessity or by some profound propriety, to the