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 a 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

the institutions and observances of religion as part of its organic life-the Sabbath worship, the daily prayers, and the sacred Lord's Day.

Christian ethics and evidences, it may well be expected, will continue to be taught, and perhaps with increasing fullness. Biblical study will naturally retain its place, but may we not hope?-will be invested with additional prominence, interest, and profit. If we may not attain the completeness of the German gymnasium, there would seem to be no difficulty in arranging for a far more adequate and systematic study of God's Word in its various aspects, partly in the original and largely in the translation. Such a system of study

great value but of great

might be made one not only of interest. For here are minds alert to receive; and here also are instructors apt to teach, and of course, in a Christian college, in hearty sympathy with the Christian religion. An exceedingly liberal religious journal recently put forth this manly utterance: “A Christian college has this characteristic, chief above all others, that it does not put into its faculty men who sneer at or even who disbelieve in the Christian religion. We would despise a college which limits its appointments by denominational lines; but any college is justified in making it a bar against the election of a professor of ethics, or history, or political economy, or Greek, or geology, that he is an atheist. If that is narrowness or bigotry, then make the most of it. More than this, a Christian college has more in view, in the selection of its teachers, than the negative aim of

getting men who are not hostile to the Christian faith. It should seek men who are decided in their faith and who love to teach it."

Thus we see how the Christian character of a Christian college can show itself in its instructors. They are set as guides of young men in the formative period of life. Genuine guides let them be, and magnify their office. The institution which, founded as Christian, has come nearest to eliminating Christianity has declared, at least through one of its leading officials, that the old notion of a "paternal relation" of the faculty is wholly exploded, and furthermore that the instructor's whole work and duty ends with the lecture or the recitation. Now it was an ancient inquiry, "Am I my brother's keeper?" To leave a great body of young men at the critical time of their whole history with no effort, beyond the lecture room, of friendly interest, no counsel from experience, no cautions against indolence or temptation, no care for their moral welfare, no personal effort to mold the man as well as to sharpen his intellect, will never commend itself to wise men as fulfilling the function of a true teacher. The heathen pedagogue was more than that. Too many priceless interests and incalculable hopes are bound up in those young men Maturity should in every practicable way be helpful to immaturity. Discipline will, so far as is possible, be forestalled by wise counsel and timely caution. And while the proved incorrigible should be summarily ejected, the instructor who knowingly leaves the laggard to his indolence, the weak to his temptations, his