fashion as you will, and you have yourselves to blame if they are not what you wish or what the Master demands. "Like priest, like people," is an old proverb that still holds true. The pulpit cannot evade the responsibility for the pew.

To sum up, therefore, the preaching for the present times, for all time, ought to be at once doctrinal and practical. Every sermon should have both these elements, well-balanced and aptly commingled. Above all, Christ is to be set forth in it as the grand idea and outcome of the whole. If the pulpit do not bring the pew to him, it is recreant to its highest trust and fails in its chief value. Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon this thought. It must be present every moment, and uppermost as well as deepest in the mind, heart, and words of the preacher, if he would be a faithful and successful servant of his Lord..

In conclusion, allow me to volunteer a piece of advice to my fellow laymen, on whose behalf I here venture to speak. It is our duty and privilege to stay up the hands and the heart of our pastor in the pulpit as well as elsewhere. Let us not be content with caring pecuniarily and socially for the support and comfort of himself and his family, but let us also give him the still higher joy of seeing that we appreciate and promote all his labors and efforts. Especially let us aid him in his preaching by our presence, our sympathy, our prayers, our attention, and, above all, by our abstinence from severe criticism, whether private or public. It is in our power to cripple or to strengthen him. Many a minister of moderate ability is made mighty by the co-operation of his people. If he have faults (and who has not?) do not aggravate them by censure. Think only of his excellences, overlooking deficiencies. For better or for worse, he is your preacher for the year at all events, and it is wise in you to make the most of him. That must be a poor sermon indeed in which there is not something good. Very few discourses, I am persuaded, in Methodist pulpits certainly, have not in them one glimpse of Christ, one saving truth, one pious impulse. Avail yourselves of that and you can afford to forget all the rest. If you do remember any thing else, it shows at least that he has not spoken in vain.

James Strong

ART. VI.-NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.

FEW movements in modern Christianity have in them greater significance than the idea of a National University; few are so affluent in prospective blessings to our revered Church; few are of richer promise for the Protestant faith; and none are more conducive to the integrity and perpetuity of the civil institutions of the Republic. Its far-reaching beneficence no man can measure. The idea is not new. It was a favorite purpose with Washington, who, at the beginning of the nation, recommended the establishment of such an institution to Congress. In his last message he used these significant words:

Such an institution would secure the assimilation of the principles, opinions, and manners of our countrymen by the common education of a portion of our youth from every quarter.... The more homogeneous our citizens can be made in these particulars the greater will be the prospect of a permanent union. . . . Its desirableness was so constantly increased with every new view I have taken of the subject that I cannot omit the opportunity of once for all recalling your attention to it.

In his last will it was found he had made provision for such an institution, showing how near to his heart lay the great enterprise. Presidents Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams recommended it, Madison twice pleading for its inauguration. The increasing years have only made stronger the conviction, until now, just one hundred years after the recommendation of Washington, our own honored Bishop Hurst begins the great undertaking. Nor has he begun an hour too soon; for the work so nobly done by the Church in educational fields demands the University for its completion. It will harmonize our previous action, giving coherence, form, and unity to the whole. Providing an outlet for thought, it will lead the youth from the primary school to the highest institution. Our intermediate schools are efficient but not succursal. Our colleges are doing excellent work, but they are not affiliated. Our educational system is simply chaotic. We are rich in lower forms, out of which the higher can be developed, for the university only begins where the college ends. It is only the evolution of the higher out of the lower; as the University of Paris, the

alma mater of the modern university, was but the federation of several colleges into one, and called a school of all sciences.

The confusion of our work will be resolved into order, and the suppression of abnormal developments add efficiency to the academy and seminary and college. The relation of our varied schools will adjust themselves to this new work, and the injury done to secondary education by its isolation will be remedied; the lower, containing as in a germ all that is latent in the highest, will find its completion in the University. The condition of the American college is provisional; it is above the gymnasium; it is below the university. It needs just such a foundation as the Church now proposes. The project will relieve our colleges that are now compelled to do university work; it will strengthen every existing foundation, taking its place, not as a rival, but as an inspirer of higher training, opening up the highest avenues of thought through faculties for post-graduate training and original research; thus creating in the minds of the thoughtful and studious an intellectual stimulus that will be felt all over our land. The peril of the student to rest content in a merely secondary training-to specialize too soon-to enter provinces of thought suited for a maturer training-will be removed by putting before him a curriculum that will arouse his noblest ambition and make him dissatisfied with an inferior equipment. The unity and completion of our educational work demand this new foundation, and the field is open. It is occupied by no Church, for even the Catholic university contemplates adding an academic department. Johns Hopkins, at Baltimore, is the only institution in the land that occupies the field. We have many colleges, some bearing the name of university, and partially doing its work; others bearing the name of university and yet doing only college work: but the university as such does not exist. The field is open, and the material is abundant in our Church to create it. If our educational work could be organized and concentrated in one great center we could accomplish by our peculiar polity for the youth of the land untold blessings. In the establishment of this new foundation there is the possibility of as great a blessing to the Church as has been received through our mission work, whose splendid organization is touching the ends of the earth.

We would not depreciate the work of the past; our schools

have done their best with their resources, and their influence upon the nation has been a great blessing, yielding for leadership more than any other Church. But the time has come when the college graduate must not be dismissed to higher seats inimical to our faith, but given within the Church the highest equipment: when we must crown the good work already done by the establishment of a university.

The intellectual advance of the age demands it. If the horizon of knowledge widens, our faith must soar higher; if new fields of thought be opened, the Church of Christ must enter and claim the new culture as the badge and grace of her children for all treasures of wisdom are but treasure-trove for the King whom we serve. The materialism of science must be transfigured into spiritual life, and the selfishness of culture be transformed into the service of humanity.

The Church must educate and train the highest manhood. Gladly accepting the "collier's faith" it must not deny the scholar's service, nor allow him to go alone into the deepest fields of research. The claim of Christ upon the Church is not satisfied when sin only is removed, but when ignorance also is banished. The content of the Gospel is not exhausted when men are converted; the intellectual gift must be improved and be paid back with usury in reverent service. The highest mental and spiritual growth must co-ordinate; for the Church that keeps its children in its fold until they go forth with their best equipment will deserve their highest service. The Church, the custodian of knowledge, must ever be the guardian of its youth, yielding not only the word of healing and ruling for professional life, but going in loving companionship with them into the deepest recesses of science and philosophy.

This University will give the highest intellectual training under Christian influence. Within its affiliated colleges will be trained men and women who will attain to leadership. Here will be gathered those who will go forth girded to redeem humanity from sin and renew men in holiness, and from out of its hallowed walls those who will mold, by a broad and tolerant faith, the coming generations of our land.

The University is a necessity of the Republic. If it were a want in Washington's time, how imperative the necessity at this hour! For the very perils foreseen by him are the most

dangerous influences that menace the Republic. Our political stability is threatened by want of assimilation in citizenship.

In the nation Church and State are separate. The former is neither subordinate nor supreme, but simply separate. The State, refusing the function of a teacher of Christianity, makes it more imperative upon the Churches of the land to build the University. That which the State denies the people must give. A greater burden is laid upon the Churches of this nation than on any other; but greater privileges come through this imposition. We do not deplore this state declination, nor regard it for one moment as a denial of the need of religious training. We simply accept the fact that the higher equipment should be given by the Church. We want not Italy, in which the Church is the school, repeated on our soil; nor France, in which the State is the school. In a republic we want no school as a governmental function, for in such case the university would only be, as it is in Russia, a department of State, or another name for a political instrument.

Neither do we call the nation godless because her training is only for civic virtue; but rejoice in the separation of the functions of Church and State, and gladly take up as Christians the withheld completions of the State.

The oldest foundation of the Anglo-Saxon family, Oxford, has as its motto, Dominus Illuminatio mea-The Lord is my Light; and modern culture finds no higher source of knowledge. The founders of the Republic in separating civic and religious instruction did not mean to neglect the latter. Knowing by sad experience the bitter fruit of the union of the Church and State, they wisely separated them, and thus increased the efficiency of both. They believed that the duty of the State ended when men were trained for civic duty. Its prerogative may be taken away, but the Church of Christ, viewing man in his relation to all the duties of life, sees in him not only a subject of the nation but also a citizen of the commonwealth of God, to be disciplined under the cross for lower civic duties as well as in holiness and knowledge for the service of God and humanity. The Protestant Church of the Republic has ever accepted this decision as the best for the people; and at the very beginning of the nation planted her colleges, which have been the fruitful source of her higher intellectual life, and has