ing every hill, and going down into every valley; exploring every island, and in almost every language proclaiming the wonderful works of God.

Whose heart does not beat with holier and happier emotion, when he remembers that America is rearing men to carry the gospel through every zone? And who would limit the efforts of any association that sought to fit heralds of salvation to go forth to benighted nations, and to tell of a dying Saviour in the snows of Siberia, and on the banks of the Senegal and the Ganges? Every American Christian must love his religion and his country more when he remembers, that even now the voice of the American is heard in the islands of the ocean, and that our country's blood, consecrated by piety and learning, flows amid all the people of the earth. We live with reference to future times, and distant men. We know how the voice of the American is heard abroad. We love our country more when we remember that the example and the eloquence, the learning and piety of the Mathers, and of Eliot, and Hooker, and Edwards, and Davies, and Brainerd, and Dwight, and Payson, strike across the waters, and shall be borne on to other ages and other men. It shows that we are not unmindful of our birthright, and that we remember that we are the descendants of the people honoured by the names of Baxter, and Owen, and Barrow, and Taylor. We love our country more when we remember, too, that Fisk, and Parsons, and Hall went from our shores, and have not been deemed unworthy coadjutors in the cause for which Martyn, and Swartz, and Vanderkemp toiled and died. To furnish more such men is the noblest object of the toils and prayers of American Christians.

There is an entire field of thought connected with this subject, into which we cannot now enter. We refer to the question, whether this object will not take care of itself; whether there is need to aid those who are coming forward; or whether

numbers sufficient would not of themselves seek a preparation for the holy ministry. We can only advert to the well-known facts,-1. That true worth is retiring and modest, and needs to be sought out, and urged onward. 2. That talent and piety are often found in humble life, and encompassed with poverty. 3. That there is an alarming want of ministers in this land, of those who are qualified for their work, and that the increase by no means keeps pace with that of our population. 4. That the way to prevent the land from being overrun with preachers of every character and qualification, except the right, is to raise the standard of the ministerial character, to diffuse knowledge, and make the people restless and dissatisfied under an ignorant or a bigoted ministry; to fit men for their office, and to furnish the churches with men of sense, and piety, and learning. Ministers enough of some order there will be. Every land is furnished with priests of religion; and the number of such priests is in exact ratio to the ignorance of the people, and the corruption of the form of religion. Infidelity has its priest in every man, who is sworn, by his talent and influence, to propagate the scheme. Paganism has its thousands of altars, and its array of priests to attend on every altar. In France, under the Romish Church, four hundred thousand, or one man in every sixty-two of the inhabitants, are ecclesiastics; in Spain, one hundred and eighty thousand, or one in every sixty-one of the population, are supported by the church; and so, under the same system, it will be in this country, unless Protestants betake themselves to their duty, and train up men well qualified for the ministry. Every man knows, also, that ignorant and unqualified preachers abound in all Christian denominations. The question is not, whether there will be ministers of religion. It is, whether they shall be qualified for their work; whether the Protestant churches of this land will train men for the holy office; or whether the disciples of fanaticism and of ignorance, the high-priests

of infidelity, and the vast array of secular clergy, and monks, and nuns, under the guidance of the Jesuit, shall take possession of the country, and prey like the locust on the avails of our toil, and abide in the dwelling-places of our wealth and our arts. The Christian world has but to take its choice. The churches have the great question before them. It is, whether this land shall submit to the teachings of ignorance, the ravings of fanaticism, the dogmatisms of infidelity, the guidance and support of numberless hordes of Jesuits; or to the instructions of a pious, educated, and sober ministry.

Our land has been blessed hitherto with the toils of holy men. They live in memory, and in the fruits of their deeds.

"We give in charge

Their names to the sweet lyre. The historic muse,
Proud of the treasure, marches with it down

To latest times."

We seek that other men may be reared to occupy the place of the illustrious and the pious dead; to spread the triumphs of the gospel through all the vales, and in all the hills of this. land, and throughout the world. No more deep-felt and everabiding desire dwells in our bosoms, than that revivals of religion may diffuse their rich and peaceful fruits in all the mansions, and schools, and towns of our republic. We have no more fervent prayer to offer for the land which gave us birth, and which has been rendered sacred by the blood shed by our fathers, and by the prayers which they offered, and by the descent of the Holy Ghost, than that it may be continually blessed with the ministrations of the gospel of peace, producing its appropriate, its immediate effect on the souls of In all our visions of the future glory of America; all

men.

our conceptions of the magnificence of our power; the monuments of our arts; the blessings of our liberty; we anticipate, as chiefest and brightest in the splendid prospect, the time when the gospel of peace shall be borne from the lips of every herald of salvation, with the directness and power which have crowned it in the days of our Edwardses, our Tennants, our Dwights, and our Paysons.

III.

REESE LIBRARY

UNIVERSITT

[CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR, 1832.J

CALIFORNI

The Works of Lord Bacon. Four vols. fol. London: 1730.

THE connection between philosophy and theology has been felt and acknowledged in all ages. Most Christians have deplored the influence of the former upon the latter; but even those who have been loudest in their complaints, and strongest in their expressions of grief on this account, have given often the most melancholy proofs of this very influence. In view of this long and intimate union, however, and of the fact that philosophy may take its complexion from religion, as well as religion from philosophy, it becomes a question of no ordinary interest, whether God did not intend that the one should be perpetually a check upon the other? Did he not design that the strange tendency in philosophic minds to perverseness, pride, and atheism, should be continually restrained by the overawing influence of the proofs of religion everywhere present? And did he not intend, also, that the vagaries of the human mind in religion, the romance and knighterrantry of theology-the tendency to fanaticism, and dogmatism, and mysticism, should be held in check by the influence of common sense, the knowledge of the true laws of mind, and the investigations of science from age to age? The relation of the sciences-the vinculum commune between them, was long ago remarked by Cicero. The mutual influence of modern sciences on each other, and of all on religion, is a much more important inquiry to a Christian.

We have neither the time nor ability to enter into a full investigation of this subject. Nor indeed do we conceive that