VI. REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE Theology and Philosophy. Mansel's Philosophy of the Condi- tioned, 247; McCosh's Examination of Mill's Philosophy, 249; Miss Carpenter's "Last Days in England of the Rajah Ram- mohun Roy," 250. - Miscellaneous. Woodbury's Ninth Army Corps, 252; Channing's Prize Essays, 254; Napoleon's Julius Cæsar, 254; Staunton's Great Schools of England, 256; I. WESTERN CHARACTER AND WESTERN LIFE. - A. D. Mayo II. GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. - C. H. Brigham V. SOCIAL EMULATION AS A FEATURE OF AMERICAN LIFE VI. EARLY TRANSFORMATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. - E. E. Du Bois 342 VIII. REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE Theology. Castelli on Ecclesiastes, 371; Galletti's Rational- ism, 372; Brugsch, Aus dem Orient, 373. - Geography and Travels. Turks, Greeks, and Slavons, 378; New America, 380.- Poetry and Art. The Tent on the Beach, 382; Sam- son's Art Criticism, 384; Palgrave's Essays on Art, 385. Miscellaneous. Alger's Genius of Solitude, 389; Report THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. JANUARY, 1867. ART. I. -THE DESTINIES OF ECCLESIASTICAL A CONCIO AD CLERUM. BY FREDERIC H. HEDGE, D.D. THERE has been much lamenting of late about the want of recruits for the gospel ministry. The body of the Clerus is not re-enforced from year to year by men who can fill with acceptance the vacancies caused by retirement and death, or meet the demands of the new congregations which are yearly springing up, and which, however they may differ in other respects, are strikingly unanimous in asking that the preacher sent them be one of commanding ability. One would say that never was harvest so plenteous, and never surely were laborers so few. The youth of the universities are slow to enter a profession which ought to attract the best spirits and the richest talents to its service. The vigor and talent of this generation seek other channels, and leave the pulpit to be served hereafter with inferior ministrations, if served at all. Various causes have been assigned in explanation of this deficiency, and various methods proposed for replenishing the ranks, which are growing thinner in numbers, and, as VOL. LXXXII. -NEW SERIES, VOL. III. NO. 1. 1 some will have it, poorer in quality, from year to year. A portion opine that the difficulty lies in the meagre temporalities with which parishes second the spiritual service: others ascribe it to the ever-increasing opportunity and solicitation of industrial adventure; others still, to the fickleness of popular, parochial favor, on which the ease and stability of clerical fortunes so largely depend. I cannot think that either or all of these causes suffice to account for the evil in question. I impute it to moral and intellectual, rather than prudential, reasons. I impute it to certain prevailing influences, partly scientific and partly social, which have alienated the youthful mind from the old sanctities and ecclesiastical uses with which religion has been associated in time past. The fact is, the spirit of the age, or the speculative mind of the age, as in the decline of republican Rome, has broken with ecclesiasticism. I believe the rupture to be merely temporary. Society requires a Church, requires ecclesiastical organization for the use and maintenance of public worship, and, with varying method and symbol, will have them, until the New Jerusalem, descending from the heavens and organizing itself in human practice, shall realize the word of the seer, "I saw no temple therein." A Church there will be, ecclesiastical organizations there will be: science may modify, but cannot abolish them. The speculative mind of the age must accept them, and adjust itself with them, or else go down before them as one of the false prophets and spirits of antichrist, which from time to time, as we read, "have gone out into the world." Meanwhile, I respect the scruple which detains a young man from this ministry, who is conscious in himself of no internal vocation for the office. Without that vocation, the minister's function is the hardest and dreariest of all pursuits. Without that vocation, there will either be mechanical routine, oppressing and quenching the life of the spirit; or, with greater intellectual activity, there will be a retarding friction between thought and function, between the private conscience and the old traditional requirements; speculation will put the brake on devotion; there will be an insincerity |