less than 106 had been Band of Hope members, and only thirty-one who were not protected by the safeguard and influence of the Band of Hope.

I will not weary you with illustrations and facts from the other side of the question. Suffice it to say that a very large proportion of the criminal population have been Sunday scholars, and most of whom are free to confess that strong drink has been their ruin. Since then, the power and influence of the drink

traffic is so often greater than the Sunday school; and moreover, that Bands of Hope have been so signally instrumental in adding to the churches, let us, my brethren, give the utmost encouragement to the formation and sustentation of this movement; and may the day soon come when every Sunday school in the conference shall have a Band of Hope assisting it in its blessed work of leading children to Jesus.

REASON

SEVERAL letters have come to hand since the issue of our August number, endeavouring to account for the painful lack of students for the ministry of the Word of God amongst us; but there is such a marked agreement of opinion that it will only be necessary to give quotations from two or three of them to indicate the views which obtain in different parts of the denomination on this subject. One of the most outspoken, signing himself, "a Layman," writes:

"There are many young men who burn with a love for the work, but they are not taken by the hand, and encouraged by the pastors of the various churches to which they belong. I have been engaged for ten years or more preaching to the various churches just round this city, who are without ministers, but during the whole of that time, the question has never been put to me by the pastor or anyone else, as to whether I had any desire to enter the ministry. A friend of mine who is connected with another church here, has experienced the same coolness on this question. We have never been asked how the churches have received us, how the work was going on, or whether the various causes were making any progress. There has been, and is now, a manifested indifference and coolness in these matters which has been

keenly felt. There is a very large majority of the members of our churches who know nothing of the "lights and shades" of a lay preacher's life. But however this may be with them, it certainly ought not to be so with the pastors of those churches. I think, sir, a pastor having young men connected with his church whose souls burn with love for

WHY.

the souls of men, and exhibit not only a desire, but a special fitness for the great and important work of the ministry, should take them under his special care and tuition, do all he possibly can to assist them in their preliminary studies, secure opportunities for them of preaching, and so do something towards supplying the great and urgent need of our churches. If this was done by all our pastors right through the General Baptist denomination, with the determina-. tion to keep up our required staff of students, we should no longer hear of the 'paucity' of young men at our training institution."

A second, from that well-beloved friend of editors, "A Constant Reader," suggests "that it is the duty of our churches to look out young men and to give them every facility to prepare themselves for so noble a work: that churches should make it a subject of special prayer: and that the conditions of admission should be stated in the Magazine."* another quarter we learn that young men are to blame for their "over-eagerness to obtain wealth and their want of love to souls ;" whilst a fourth maintains "that the standard of admission has not been wisely framed; or if wisely framed has not been sagaciously used." The

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reason why" then, in the judgment of our correspondents, is manifold: and the same feature characterised the discussion of this subject in the Assembly at Nottingham.

*The Rev. Dr. Underwood, Chilwell College, Nottingham, or Rev. T. Goadby, B.A., Derby, will supply these conditions and any information needed about the preliminary examination most cheerfully to any applicant.

Of course, the ministers are to blame. I am eager to admit that. I always take it for granted that anything wrong in the church, or the institutions of the church, is due, somehow or other, directly or indirectly to the pastor. Sin of omission or commission is at his door. He is the sin-bearer for the whole church. It is best, I, at least, have found to accept this position and set about correcting the wrong with all the assiduity of a man who feels that the fault is wholly his. Brethren, I think it possible some of us are really guilty: but probably most of us would say we are not. Let us not quarrel about that, but look out young men, and guide them with all kindness and sympathy and wisdom to the work of winning souls by the preaching of Christ. There are two grand things to do in the world; one is to build up living, powerful men, as messengers of Christ; and the other is to build up houses of prayer in which these living men and their successors may work from generation to generation. Blessed is he who has part in both these glorious works!

But is there not some weight in the second charge? Have not our churches as churches failed to regard the work of increasing "the company of those that publish the word" as their work, their own work. They have established an "institution," and expected it to move regularly and perfectly as though it were a machine, merely providing oil for the wheels once a year in the shape of a collection and a few subscriptions. Prayer for the raising up of ministers-have you heard one since the last collection day? Solicitude for the future ministry-who feels it? Is there a single church amongst us, whose members feel that they are as much under obligation to develop students for the ministry as they are to find teachers for the Sabbath school, distributors of alms to the poor, and of tracts to the ignorant? Christ says to us still, "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers into His harvest."

The third "reason why" is more complicated than either of the two above. The gains of commerce are great: and the fascinating prospects of competence, ease, position, and wealth, after a few years of hard and strenuous toil, may possibly have induced some young men to stifle the utterances of conscience, and to misread the summons to the ministry God has given them in their abilities, in their usefulness, and in the audible voice within the sanctuary of the Spirit. soning with themselves they have said,

Rea

"I can be as useful in business as in the ministry. Does not the world need men who shall sanctify commerce, and make gain in trade for Christ and on Christian principles ?" altogether unconscious at the time, perhaps of any influence from the knowledge of the hardships of a minister's life, the certainty that he will have to contend with many difficulties, and the prospect of an old age in which he will be cast upon the pity and the plenty of God. Admitted that the "ministers of the New Testament" should be most unselfish, unworldly men, prepared to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ, resolved to stand fast to their work, through poverty and suffering: yet ought not the churches, and specially the deacons of our churches, to do all they can to weaken the pressure of these difficulties, and to diminish the force of this hindrance, by taking care that those in the ministry shall not have to chafe and fret about making both ends meet, and to close their eyes against the approach of age because the vision is so fraught with possible evil to himself and his family.

Young men thinking of the pastorate of our churches are not likely to be altogether unaffected by the temporal prospects before them; and the higher we go in the social scale in quest of men, the more shall we find these considerations operate. Greater fairness to the existing ministry would be one way of increasing the number of those waiting for admission into its ranks.

The way in which mistakes may be made in the admission of students to our colleges is this. Good men, who care more for quality than quantity, and think that the "ministerial market" is already overstocked with incapables who would be much better engaged in measuring silk, sawing wood, or selling tea, easily fall into the error of mistaking cultivation and polish for power, and of throwing away a diamond because of the roughness in which it is cased. So it may come to pass that the doors of our training institution are closed against some who are exactly the men we need. We ought not to ask for cultivated capacity only; but for capacity. We want the stuff out of which an able minister may be; the material, raw, if we cannot have it in any other state. Young men of real force of brain and heart and will, who may have had no early advantages, who have been cradled in poverty, and have made their way through the English grammar at meal-times, and stolen from sleep the hours in which they have acquired a knowledge of the history of their land and the geography of the world, and who

An incidental, though not accidental, (because it is a natural circumstance in the development of our civilization) cause of loss to us has been the social disintegration, if I may so term it, which attends the increased locomotion and intercourse of the present generation, compared with the one or two which have preceeded it. The stream of population which has set in from the country to the town, the rapid enlargement and increase of population in the latter, the greater freedom of intercourse, the stricter but quicker modes of doing business, the substitution of acquaintances for friendships, the sacrifice of secondary considerations in business to the primary one of profit, the ampler field of selection from which one may choose one's companions, all these circumstances tend to weaken and ultimately dissolve many of the ties of neighbourliness and business connection which, in a more sequestered state of society were correlative with and assisted to sustain denominational intimacies. John Clearhead and Thomas Broadheart lived in a village, and being members of the same church never thought of giving their custom to any but a General Baptist butcher, baker, grocer, &c. And, moving to London or Birmingham, fully expected to keep up the old shop relation along with their former friendship. But, to their surprise, though still good friends at heart as ever, they find themselves miles apart in their new home, and chapels and worthy Christians and excellent ministers in the next street. In two years time John and Thomas find, what neither of them would for a moment have listened to without indignation when at Barton, that one is a class leader among the Wesleyans, and the other a superintendent of a Particular Baptist Sunday school! Truly, Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur cum illis! The

obvious probability arising from this is that the denominations that had already the largest proportion of the population before, will increase most largely by these chance additions. The tendency of it is to make the large connexions grow larger and the small connexions smaller still.

Besides, in the close union of village church fellowship many members may naturally be supposed not to have been so congenial to Clearhead and Broadheart as is desirable: but being welded together by the pressure of sectarian obligation, they may not choose but be indifferent friendly. But now the string which bound them together in one society is removed, each flies apart in obedience to his spontaneous inclination,

and selects partners in religion and society whose personal qualities are more attractive to him. Though this must not be blamed with the harshness due to a vice which has not its excuse in nature, there can be no doubt that the result of its operation has been detrimental to the numerical growth of our body; and, perhaps, even more to the rise in quality, which is as important an element of strength as numbers. The more prolonged education enjoyed by the ministers of some other bodies during their college course, the leisure which wellconditioned people of good sense often improve by spending it in study, the greater refinement of manners, and the command of social privileges and amenities which prevail in wealthier communities of Christians, have no doubt to answer for not an inconsiderable number of defaulters from our membership, whose defection frequently dates from their removal from a smaller to a larger town. It is not creditable to set off as a make-weight against this the discontinuance of those specimens of the tempest in a tea-pot and petty offences between inhabitants of the same street who are at the same time members of the same church, which sometimes scandalize rural communities, who almost always betray a sympathy with mischief, and an appetite for slander, in the inverse ratio of their population.

But by far the most potent cause both of obstruction and aberration from a religion which endeavours to enlarge its boundaries only by use of the honest means of argument and example, is the existence in the midst of the community of an institution whose power of corruption and perversion is greater than that of any other force in society. We refer, of course, to the Established Church. Though our poet laureate boasts that we live in a land in which

"A man may think the thing he will," English society is permeated from base to summit, and from side to side, by an influence, the constant tendency of which is to warp the honest line of thought, to vitiate motives, and to weaken, corrupt, and deteriorate the whole tone of conviction on religious subjects throughout the country. To the abstract philosopher, or the simple patriot, the idea that the government of a country should select from its various forms of religious belief one which it patronizes, endows, guarantees, and places in invidious and tyrannical ascendancy over all the rest, is simply and inexpressibly monstrous. That this is so in England is not only true in bald

and naked fact, but that we are so comparatively unconscious of it, is merely owing to the completeness of its triumph, and the absolute acquiescence of society in the victory over conscience and truth it has attained. To the wounded piety and stifled convictions, which are the price of this general equanimity, the public at large is profoundly indifferent. Among the many considerations which render this enormity obnoxious to all sense of public honour, is the circumstance that its exceptional privileges are chiefly claimed by the classes who least need the assistance of the state, and who insult the honest members of the community by the blended offences of arrogance and dependency. It is the

rich, the learned, the titled, the aristocratic and the proud, who clutch, with insatiate grasp, the good things of "the poor man's church." The meanness of these people who, when they can get it, are content to have their religion provided for them by the parish, is indescribable in decent terms, and richly merits the most caustic contempt which a liberal and indignant literature can pour upon it and them. After having for generations, and even centuries, denied the blessings of learning to all but themselves, and used all the resources of ruthless power and priestly artifice to keep the people in benighted ignorance, it starts in alarm when it sees the day of enlightenment inevitable, and stealthily crouches, like an assassin, to poison the stream of education which it can no longer seal up at the fountain. It is in harmony with all the principles of depravity which infest human nature, and willingly accepts all the contributions which the most contradictory forms of vice so freely provide for it. It has evasions for the dishonest, pomp for the haughty, unlimited pretensions for the self-righteous, indulgences for the sensual, and a covering of ecclesiastical decorum for every sin which would wither in honest society and blush in open day. That an institution, however, which avowedly accepts fashion in the place of religion should occupy a favoured place in conventional estimation is perhaps not so very surprising. Besides being the congenial home of the openly irreligious, it becomes the ready resort of those whose principles are too superficial to bear adversity, or even exposure. But the strange phenomenon is that some, and not a few, even of those whose early instructions have revealed its corruptions to them are found in after life reposing within the baleful shadow of its pale. How is this?

There is an old proverb that, "a dissenter never drives his carriage for three generations." Literally translated, the meaning of the aphorism is, that the influences of seduction towards an erroneous and corrupt, though established, profession of faith, rise in power with the social position of those upon whom they are brought to bear; and the power of perversion is seldom resisted long enough to span the interval from a grandfather to his grand-child. So universal, so constant is the action of the corrupting agency, which forms our social atmosphere. There is a sentiment, call it a weakness, if you will, which is by no means the least powerful in natures of high and sensitive organization, which renders the profession, habits, and connexions of family a strong influence in the regulation of daily life and religious association. Now, when these have happened to be on the right side they are a great advantage to the facilities for honesty and uprightness. A man is expected to be as his ancestors. The blameless life, the unambitious virtue, the sturdy independence of his sires, when it re-appears in him, awakens no surprise; passes, without observation it may be, but also without opposition. So much gained, we naturally suppose, to the cause of virtue. We predict a more splendid meridian from the unclouded morn, a more brilliant victory from the unimpeded race. But when, in spite of the exemptions thus obtained in favour of a course of rectitude, we find

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a youth of study" and of promise consummated in a manhood of defection, we stand aghast at an example of turpitude which, out of mercy to the individual, we explain by referring to the superlative depravity of our common nature. Although it is vain to suppose that when the solemn obligations of religious consistency have ceased to retain the government of a character, the feebler impulses arising from personal affection and family tradition would restore the lost control, "still the wonder_grows" that in the same man we should meet with a temperament equally insensible to the disgrace which is the inevitable penalty of the apostate and the contempt due to a renegade. Such, however, while we scatter ashes upon our heads and wrap our limbs in the sack-cloth of humiliation, we must confess, is the ignominy which brands the descendants of a few of the most zealous and gifted of the early members of the General Baptist Denomination. "The gold has become dim, the fine gold is changed." The wail we now raise over their fall, if heard