excels, in range, point, and truth, and application to every phase of human life, the Proverbs of Solomon? How low and shallow do the selected hymns of Egypt and Chaldea appear beside the Psalms of David! lyrics that the Church still sings with delight and will always sing. The thunderstorms of Thomson, of Virgil, and of Homer are far inferior to that of David (Psalm xviii) both in graphic power and in sublimity of use. "Indeed," says Professor Francis Bowen, "I know not anything in all Greek, Latin, or English poetry that matches the sublimity and grandeur, the magnificent sweep of this description of the providence of God as manifested in the phenomena of nature." In like manner the passionless Alexander von Humboldt could speak of "the splendor of lyric poetry in the Psalms of David," and express his astonishment to find a single psalm (the 104th) representing "with a few bold touches the heavens and the earth — the whole image of the Cosmos." So fastidious a critic as Goethe could pronounce the book of Ruth "the loveliest specimen of epic and idyllic poetry we possess"; and Carlyle, the deist, could find in the book of Job "one of the grandest things ever written with pen," adding, "there is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit." It is but the literal truth to say that some single paragraphs and even sentences in that volume contain more breadth and depth of moral meaning than the whole Offices of Cicero. Viewed merely on its intellectual side, what ethical discourse in all classic literature can be named

in the presence of the Sermon on the Mount? What exhibitions of genius-to speak it reverently-compare with those parables of Christ, ready for every occasion and sometimes bursting forth in whole harvests at once? What rejoinders approach the consummate wisdom and skill with which he enlightened the inquirer, met the caviler, or silenced the foe? And, in their original form, how matchless often in their vividness, terseness, brilliancy, and grace! "Let me," wrote John Ruskin to The Pall Mall Gazette, "let me tell your readers who care to know, in the fewest possible words, what the Bible is. It is the grandest group of writings existent in the rational world," put into two of the grandest languages of the rational world,1 “translated with beauty and felicity into every language of the Christian world, and the guide, since so translated, of all the arts and acts of that world which have been noble, fortunate, and happy." And it was no less a man than the gallant patriot Garibaldi who wrote to the Earl of Shaftesbury, while struggling for the deliverance of Italy from the Austrian and papal power: "The best of allies you can procure for us is the Bible, which will bring us the reality of freedom."

Holding thus in our hands a volume of such transcendent merit and such potent influence, so centrally related to history and literature, morals and civilization, how can we hesitate for one moment to place it, in a course of education, on the throne which it has

1 This clause is slightly varied from the original, which refers only to its early Latin and Syriac versions.

itself acquired? Any doubt or hesitation might be put to shame by a visit to the Mohammedan University at Cairo with its ten thousand students, having for their chief study that Koran of which the same John Ruskin has written, "I have read three or four pages of the translation of the Koran, and never want to read any more," and which Carlyle has characterized as “insupportable stupidity"; or to the Hindu College at Benares, with its learned lectures on the Sacred Books, of which their ardent editor, Max Müller, asserts that their "chief, in many cases the only, interest is historical." Or, to cite an example that no man can affect to despise, we might visit a German gymnasium, to find the study of Christianity extending through the whole nine years' course, two or three hours each week, including the study of the Bible itself in German, Greek, and Hebrew, and extending to its history, biography, poetry, prophecy, epistles, and doctrines, the life of Christ, and the missionary journeys of Paul, the growth of the Church, not only as recorded in the book of Acts, but through the first four centuries of its career, as well as the history of the Reformation and of modern missions. Is the most learned nation of the world wholly wrong in its judgment? What narrowness could be more signal than to exclude such a book from the horizon of the student? Judged by the severest intellectual tests, the Puritan was not far from right, and the agnostic is wholly wrong.

The case each year grows stronger because of the steadily growing prominence of God's Word. The light

cannot be hidden under bushel. It shines from the mountain top. A single society scatters it broadcast in two hundred and sixty-seven tongues and dialects. The press teems as never before with learned commentaries. Eastern explorations gather round and mutely point us to it. New revisions, English, German, and Chinese, awaken new discussions and world-wide attention. There are lessons for the international study of God's Word. A national school has been formed for the study of the Hebrew. And so long as the Greek tongue is the original depository of the New Testament, we need not fear that the noblest of languages will be forgotThe onset of Strauss on the life of Jesus evoked a host of mailed defenders like Neander, Lange, Ellicott, Farrar, Geikie, Edersheim, and Weiss. And, meanwhile, our gospels have stood not only like some gallant ironclad of war, where for every new missile shot has been furnished a thicker and more impenetrable plate of steel, but like some Gibraltar hurling down its own explosives on the wooden decks below

ten.

For such valid reasons as these do we claim a place of honor and of power for Christianity and its records in the college. The claim will meet a ready response in the sober convictions of the best and wisest men. Judicious parents will deem such an institution the safest place for their sons. The community will give it their sympathy and confidence. Good men will rally to its support. Its graduates will look back to it with respect and gratitude. The world will turn to it for the lead in what is right and a firm stand against the

wrong. It will make itself indispensable. And whatever may be the wealth or popularity of Christless institutions, the Christian college will have an unfailing function. It will be a tower of strength in the Commonwealth, a light of hope to the nation, and a joy to the world.

If it be asked in what mode shall this object be attained, I answer through the conjoined efforts of trustees, instructors, and students - largely of the students themselves.

It is as fortunate as it is noteworthy that our colleges have been founded and managed chiefly by Christian men and in the interests of Christianity. It is satisfactory to observe also that certain institutions. that were moving to eliminate the Christian element have been forced by a powerful public sentiment at least to pause and consider. Meanwhile, however, in many colleges, founded with a strong theological and almost semi-professional turn, the pendulum has swung quite far enough to the other side. But when religion goes out unbelief walks in. The non-Christian college will not fail to become unchristian in influence.

The observation of this downward movement and the aggressive arguments by which it is justified are naturally awakening fresh and earnest attention to the whole underlying question. And if the views to which our minds have now been turned are grounded in fact, that fresh attention can naturally lead to but one result, the arrest and reversal of the secularizing tendency. The Christian college will be constrained to cling to