Thus led by the Spirit of God, the graces of the Spirit were abundantly manifested in him. His humility was conspicuous. A friend who knew him intimately says: "He was remarkably free from the love of applause. When any one spoke to him of the good he was doing he would sometimes reply, 'We have no time to talk about that,' and frequently I have known him to turn pale and retire from the company, and prostrate himself before God as a great and unworthy sinner."

His meekness was manifest to all who knew him. He bore afflictions of various kinds, the most from those who were enemies of Christ, and who were exasperated by the force and pungency of his preaching. For such he prayed earnestly, and not a few were brought hopefully to repentance and became his ardent friends. His great love for the cardinal doctrines of grace led him to take the deepest interest in this Seminary. Its establishment is largely owing to the seed sown by this man of God, in the country congregations of this State, and his intimate relations with faithful ministers for many years previous to its organization.

We cannot better close this imperfect sketch of the great evangelist, so honored of God in New England, and to whom this Institute is so much indebted, than by quoting his advice to a student of theology. Writing to a student he speaks of the theme he knew the best, and "tho' dead, he yet speaketh," and his words of wisdom may profit us all. "What is the best mode of dealing with anxious souls? Much may be said and written to profit, but after all we might as well ask and answer the question 'What is the best method of treating all manner of sicknesses, and all manner of diseases among the people?' We may talk about the best means of doing good, but after all, the greatest difficulty lies in doing it with a proper spirit. Speaking the truth in love. In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves. With the meekness and gentleness of Christ." In this spirit he lived and wrought, greatly honored of God. His work ended with his life, the 16th May, 1844. But his influence and power, wrought into other lives by the Spirit of God, still are felt in the churches

of Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia, where he helped to gather in the spiritual harvests.

In reviewing the life of this wonderful man of God, we have been impressed with the importance and results of his mission among the churches, in its relation to the great work of Foreign Missions. Under the Spirit of God, his work here for the production of a new type of Christian character seems to have been as essential for sustaining missions abroad, as the heroic consecration and extraordinary faith of the pioneers themselves.

We have traced, in a desultory way, his aptness for the work of educating and training young converts,-his deep and thorough knowledge of Biblical theology,- his connection with the beginnings of this Seminary, the proof of his wisdom and foresight, in the results seen to-day, of the speculations then advanced, as needed by the greater enlightenment of the age; his thorough conviction, at the end of life, of the truth of the principles he had maintained from the Word. In all this life-work, his personal bearing and grace fitly illustrated the true spirit of the Gospel-in his interest for, and friendly advice, to students, his charity and urbanity with opponents, his gifts and power for personal application of the truth to the individual conscience, as well as his supernatural power in the use of the Word upon public assemblies.

The battle for truth revealed, supernatural, and divine, is commencing again, on virtually the same old grounds of the past, but with a change in the disposition of the forces, and an advance of lines upon the very citadel of God, intimating the nearness of a great crisis! The progress of illumination to-day assails the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and practically reduces it to the judgment of the human will. A half-century since the human will only claimed power to regenerate itself. Now it sits in judgment on the Word of God. One lesson of this illustrious life is, that we must maintain the absolute authority of the objective revelation of God, through his Son, in the Holy Scriptures, and to that end, the plenary verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, in every

word and letter of the original text. Especially from the testimonies seen in this life, we are bound to maintain the full and efficacious office of the Holy Spirit now to reveal the definite provisions of the atonement of Christ, in their vicarious application to sinners as essential to any integrity, in the preaching of the Gospel. And unless sin is what God says it is, in its infinite guilt and demerit, and deserving of what He declares it deserves, in its unending purpose and final restraint, we have no use for any Bible, and this man, and all the ancient heroes of faith, as well as our Blessed Lord Himself, have lived and died in vain!

The Biblical Teaching of the Seminary, Its distinctive Feature.

It is not a new thing for a theological seminary to claim to be Biblical in its teaching. Indeed, it is to be hoped that it will be many a day before any institution of the kind will not claim to be Biblical. But it requires scarcely a single glance backward in history to discover that much instruction which was once called Biblical would not now be accepted as such. What we rejoice over on this glad occasion, is the fact that this institution, in its genesis and its exodus, as well as in its present land of promise, has rested, and does rest upon the Word of God. The Bible here is not so much a problem as a fact; or better still, perhaps, an aggregation of facts. The efforts of this Seminary are not mainly expended in discussing whether, on the whole, the Bible would better be accepted or not; or what eliminations the closing nineteenth century demands. While affording the fullest opportunity for clearing the atmosphere around such inquiries, it is no part of the purpose of this institution to take anything like the attitude of dictation regarding the divine revelation, or to sit in judgment upon the Word of God, as if that were incomplete without its approval. Hence the influence of the instruction here is not to impress the pupil that the Bible is beclouded with a mist of uncertainty, which it is his mission to explain away.

Trite as this may appear, is it not a point to be emphasized? Is it not a self-evident proposition that, given a Christian theological seminary, there is an accepted revelation from God as the reason for the existence of that institution? And yet it is something, is it not, for the Christian public to be assured beyond a doubt that a theological seminary holds, and impresses upon the minds of its students, strong convictions that the Bible Is?

What is meant, then, when we point to Biblical teaching as the distinctive feature of our beloved institution, may be found in three questions which indicate the character of study and research in each department, viz.: "Has God spoken to men? Has he so spoken that his utterances can be known with certainty?" And last, "What has he said?" Around these three questions the entire system of instruction here may be found, as the radii of a circle spring from its single center and touch the circumference in every direction, however distant. Just here, perhaps, lies one point of its distinction. The aim is not simply to give the student a seminary cast, but to so direct his study of the Bible that he shall receive his moulding influence from the Word of God.

In these halls it is not considered necessary to spend so large a portion of the student's time over the first question of this trio, or even the second; but it is the conviction of this Seminary that, without controversy, and with proof as manifest as it is manifold, God has spoken to man, and in such a way that we may know what his utterances are. Beginning with such a conviction, and holding it with unflinching steadfastness, the main purpose of the teaching of this institution may be said to be not so much to instruct young men in a slavish knowledge of what God has said; and so to send them forth to repeat, parrot-like, what they have already heard, for it is not intended that the graduate of this Seminary shall go out into the world merely to sprinkle in convenient places the few drops he may have received from a theological hydrant; but the grand intent, and we can conceive of no higher aim, is to teach the student how to find out for himself what the Word of God is. It is not to persuade him of what has been held or said on a few controversial points, not to take him over solitary passages which have been the historic battlefields of theology; but to so equip him that he can be at home in all parts of Scripture, and at every point. It is desired here, we may affirm, to send out the graduates into the warfare against error, and for truth, not bearing simply a single sword, but being in themselves well-furnished arsenals ready for the use of the Holy Spirit.