inducement strong against, and without any sufficient motive in favour of exertion."

This disposes of a large part of the argument against compulsory regulations, not only as respects studies, but conduct. We are quite ready to let the civil law take effect against its violators, and do what it may in preventing disorderly outbreaks among students. This, however, might do its utmost, and leave the whole life and manners of our colleges in a state so anarchical as to counter-work, if not utterly frustrate, the best efforts of the best professors and best students. Indecorum and disorder in public exercises, academical and religious, are destructive and ruinous to the full extent of their prevalence. They must be prevented by adequate regulations. Some order and decency of deportment must be insisted on at all times and places-especially the avoidance of whatever interferes with study during the hours of study, and with due attention to recitations and lectures while they are going on. Surely our academic groves must not be allowed to degenerate into menageries. To forego all rules and restraints in such matters is really to put the college, its teachers and meritorious students, at the mercy, or rather under the despotism, of the indolent, heedless, mischievous, and vicious members. This would be a deadly blow to education, and a great injustice to all parties. We would go all lengths with the reformers in reducing the number of rules and regulations to the fewest possible, consistent with the paramount end of order, which is the condition of all other good in a college. But this we would not forego at the bidding of any theorizers or reformers.

But the cry is for liberty as the condition of powerful, delighted, successful intellectual activity. There can be no inspiration without liberty. So be it-only let it not be supposed that liberty and law within due limits are incompatible. They are rather mutual complements and supports, in the family, the state, the church, the school, the college, in all sound intellectual and moral training and growth. Even liberty supposes a "law of liberty." Lawlessness is the negation of all genuine freedom-nowhere more than in a college, where the unrestrained licentiousness of the bad is a fatal tyranny over the good: nowhere more than in intellectual

growth, in which the tastes of the young, if unregulated, will run to wild self-indulgence, instead of that wholesome discipline which developes a strong, symmetrical, efficient intellect, that, from first mastering itself, is prepared to master whatever it is called to deal with.

In regard to college, as all other governments, we greatly crave for it the divine art of governing enough without governing too much, and of so governing the student that he shall seem to himself to act of his own choice or spontaneity, rather than under the pressure of an extrinsic authority; that the power without and that within shall be consentaneous, without conscious clashing, like the union of the centrifugal and centripetal forces in harmonious action. So order, and decorum, and diligence are secured, let there be the smallest burden possible of minute rules and irritating exactions.

But, we are told, professors should not be responsible for the morals of students beyond the legitimate sphere of their personal influence. This, like most of the specious utterances from this quarter, is a half-truth, all the more dangerous for want of its complementary counterpart. Professors are bound of course to exert whatever personal influence they can in favour of morality and religion among the students. But still further, the guardians of a college in their collective and authoritative capacity are bound to prohibit, and as far as possible repress, practices which are not only injurious to the offender, but contaminating to his associates, and demoralizing to the college: such as gambling, profaneness, drinking of intoxicating liquors, licentiousness, &c. Within certain limits, during this susceptible period of life, while the student, yet a youth, is withdrawn from parental inspection and domestic influence, the college faculty is in loco parentis, and certainly owe it to those who confide sons to their care to do what they can to check vice, exorcise contaminating influences, and put forth a positive and active Christian influence. We will not undertake to say, having no present means of knowledge, what may be the case of Harvard, with its large numbers of opulent youth, its nearness to a great city, and its "broad" religion. But we do say, in regard to the better class of Christian colleges within our acquaintance, that, with all their defects, they furnish the

most safe and hopeful places of resort for youth. The proofs of this, presented in a former article, we cannot now stop to repeat.*

Dr. Hedge even would sanction expulsion of dangerous students. This, of course, will apply to infamous crimes and vices which are both pestilent and incorrigible. Suppose, however, that the student has not reached this pass, but nevertheless shows an idleness, heedlessness, a drift towards vice and disorder which tend this way, threaten such a consummation, and withal are alike injurious to himself and his fellow-students; are no reprimands, penalties, or rewards, to be plied to prevent his sinking to ruin and incurring the brand of EXPULSION? This is the extreme penalty of college laws. It can inflict no civil or corporeal pains or punishments. All milder punishments, while, if ineffectual, they prepare the way to it, yet are designed to save from the need of it, and often with the happiest effect. They are of the nature of warnings, lowering of rank, suspension, informing parents-in short, reformatory and corrective, not destructive. Shall these be abolished? Believe it who will.

In closing this discussion we scarcely need remark, that we shall zealously espouse all real reforms and improvements in the organization and administration of our great institutions of liberal education. We think there is room for progress in all of which we have any knowledge, and that such as stubbornly set themselves against healthy advancement must inevitably be retrograde. Nothing of life can long be stationary, without suffering stagnation. But reformation is not destruction-the issue to which this new project of college reconstruction seems to invite us.

Before dropping our pen, we take occasion to say that the greatest requisite to advancement in our colleges is the increase of facilities and incentives to a more thorough preparation for entering them; and this for the present not so much in the extent of ground gone over, as the style and thoroughness of fitting; the honest bona fide mastery, by means of grammar and dictionary, of the books now required to be read for admis

* See Article on Religion and Colleges, January, 1859. VOL. XXXIX.-NO. I.

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sion to college. There is no lack of schemes for new colleges. He who should elevate those we now have, by founding and endowing a first class preparatory school, not far from each or any one of them, having the excellencies without the faults of the schools of England, would embrace an opportunity which is rarely offered, for doing an inestimable service to the church and country, to this generation and to posterity.

ART. III.-The Twenty-ninth Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. New York. 1866.

WE observe several references in this Report to the want of missionaries. The same want is felt by most missionary institutions. We have seen with regret, in the public press, that the oldest of our missionary Boards reports a diminished number of missionaries, and but one new labourer sent out last year to the foreign field. Clearly more men should be sent out, and in seeking these men the first duty of all is that of prayer to the Lord of the harvest, that he would send them forth. No missionaries of any worth will be obtained except in answer to the prayers of the church, yet this axiom does not preclude the use of suitable means of obtaining them, nor the consideration of those second causes which affect their number, qualifications, and usefulness.

The idea of giving the gospel to the heathen is from Heaven, inspired in the hearts of men by Divine grace. In its development, like most things that endure, this idea takes the form of growth; it is not like a house built, or a machine made, but a seed planted, which springs up and grows. As a growth, its progress will be varied and subject to modifying causes; so a plant is affected by soil, climate, and culture. The growth of the idea of missions differs in each denomination of Christians, but all Protestant churches agree in their view of the object of the missionary enterprise. Their differing means of promoting this object depend on their doctrinal belief, and their opinions

concerning church government and order, perhaps also on their national customs, yet this diversity is not such as to discredit the divine origin of their work, nor to take aught from the idea of growth, each after its kind. Passing all but the Presbyterian type of this idea, we recognize this as developed in beautiful accord with the general church system bearing this venerable name; and in this system no feature is more distinctive than that which relates to the training of the gospel ministry, nor any thing more important than what concerns the efficiency of this ministry in actual service. In both we make most of the Divine element, be it that of the Holy Spirit in his distinctive work, or that of inspired truth as set forth in Holy Scripture, or that of providential ordering which directs all things. But coupled with reverence for God in the whole provision of the ministry, we also recognize the duty of the church, within certain limits, to see that her ministers are well prepared for their work, and well employed in it. The church acts on this view in her educational and presbyterial systems, and in her supervision of her ministers. In all that relates to this subject at home, matters are, in a good degree, settled in the judgment of the church. As to her work abroad, which is of but recent date, and which is performed under such widely varying conditions, it is not surprising that somewhat differing opinions should obtain. Without attempting to describe these varying judgments, or to discuss many of them, we give a few pages to the subject of the training and the distribution of missionaries.

Rightly or wrongly, most of the Protestant churches rely on volunteers for missionaries, and this fact must be kept in view as preliminary to the consideration of their proper training, if not also of their best distribution. Even in the few instances in which training schools for missionaries have been instituted, the young men thus educated are only such as have offered themselves for the work. Certain advantages are no doubt secured on this volunteer system, with some drawbacks also, and with the loss of important qualifications that would be obtained on the plan of having missionaries directly called by the church to engage in this service. The day will come when this plan can be adopted; in the mean time, we take the case as it stands, and leave in abeyance the whole question of a call to