ÆT. 75.] PASTORAL VISITING. 565 unable to surmount, may often be secured, and quite as largely too, by the independent action of just and enlightened thought. God is often pleased to give His blessing to those who, instead of urging claims on His fully-occupied servants, are ready to supply their own wants and those of their friends to the very best of their power.-On principles like these, and in this noble spirit, Dr. Pye Smith's Church and Congregation went on with their honoured Pastor, in the exercise of mutual confidence and love. And they have the present satisfaction, and will always be entitled to the credit, arising out of one of the clearest of facts:-that whatever sacrifices they made of personal feeling, in order to fall in with and facilitate his labours for the public good, those labours promise to be attended with such enduring advantages as can scarcely fail to be prized by multitudes even to the end of time. If, indeed, where a man is seen to be evidently striving for "a corruptible crown," his best friends can contribute to his success by keeping the racecourse as free as possible from every kind of obstruction, with what far greater propriety, and with how much higher gain to all parties concerned, may the same principle be acted upon where the prize sought for is "incorruptible ?"-Not to hinder is, to some persons, and for many duties of the highest importance-the very best kind of help. CHAPTER XXX. FAREWELL CLOSING MINISTERIAL SERVICES-ADDRESS AT THE FOUNDING OF NEW ALTHOUGH DR. SMITH had now resigned the pastoral office, his Sermon Book contains an account of a few engagements which as a minister he undertook during the year 1850. These may be briefly noticed, for the sake of completing the history of that part of his duties. That they were not more numerous, arose from the fact that his strength was nearly exhausted. On Tuesday evening, January 29th, he delivered a discourse at the Rev. Josiah Viney's Chapel, Bethnal Green; on "The Truths concerning the Extent and Magnitude of the Created Universe, not adverse to the Truths of Religion." A day or two afterwards in a Note to Mr. Viney, he shows that his mind still retained its interest in the class of questions to which this discourse belongs. April 2nd and again August 6th, he delivered the Merchants' Lecture at the Poultry Chapel. At the latter date, which was his last service of the kind, the text was Psalm lxxi. 9; selected evidently for its great appropriateness to himself. One of his express motives for continuing an effort which seemed beyond his strength was, that it enabled him four times a year to contribute to the comfort of excellent but necessitous ministers, to ET. 76.] ADDRESS AT THE FOUNDING OF NEW COLLEGE. 567 whom he was in the habit of giving the remuneration which he received for his labours on these occasions. A service exceedingly suitable for the last of his long life as a Christian minister, was one which he discharged at the request of the Pastor and Members of the Church at the Gravel Pit Chapel :-he presided there at the Lord's Supper on September 1st. No record of this occurs in his Sermon Book; but the fact has been communicated, and the Notes of his address have been sent by a friend, who states that the closing words were "There will be the marriage supper of the Lamb;' the whole inconceivable multitude of the saints.-Let us charge ourselves that none of us be wanting." At the laying of the first stone of New College, at St. John's Wood, on the 11th of May, 1850, the address for the occasion was prepared by Dr. Pye Smith; but in consequence of his inability to make himself heard, he requested his learned coadjutor at Homerton, Dr. William Smith, to read it to the assembly. The address was afterwards printed, but as it contains passages which deserve to be placed with other memorials of the Author's life and opinions, some use of it with that view will now be made. The relation which he had long sustained to the oldest of the Colleges thus united in one, gave a seemliness to his position in the engagements of the day which was very widely felt at the time; and as the event proved this was the only visible link between himself and the new Institution. For another reason he was eminently in place here:-As in the two respects of piety and knowledge, he never seems to have thought of remaining stationary at any point which he had been permitted to attain, it was due alike to his principles and his success as a Theological Tutor, that at the close of his career he should be allowed publicly to testify his great readiness, not only to acquiesce in but also to help forward every new provision, which promised to give greater width and greater depth to the training of Students for the Christian ministry. The Address begins with a brief account of each of the three Colleges of Homerton, Coward, and Highbury; and of the gradual expansion of their respective methods of academical discipline during the present century. As a consequence of this latter circumstance, the plan of uniting them into one was first suggested, and then accomplished. The address then takes a wider range:-"All history shows us that from the beginning of human nature, its CREATOR, infinite in power and wisdom, holiness and love, has been carrying forward our race by what may be well called a system of Education." That system is then traced under various forms, and through different countries; the pre-eminence being given to the Records of Divine Revelation in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. From the latter, the transition is easy to the Christian Fathers, to the Schools and Colleges of the middle ages, to the learned lights of the Reformation, and then to the efforts made by the Puritans and Nonconformists to compensate as they best could for the exclusion of their Theological Students from the National Universities. A great and momentous defect is, however, discovered among their arrangments:"One might almost think that the learned and pious men of that day never considered the duty of ascertaining that their young sons had the first qualification for the ministry, laid down by Divine authority, the being 'faithful men, apt to teach, men of God, stewards of God,-examples to their flocks,-patterns of good works."" But this defect, serious as it was, can scarcely awaken surprise when it is remembered that those very Universities at which the Puritans would have sought had the law allowed, an education for their rising Ministers, never insisted upon real piety, as it is now understood, as a condition in the training of their own Clergy. Indeed, if such a condition is recognized in theory, its application in practice must be next to impossible in richly endowed or territorially established Churches. Only free communities can be really strict in their terms of admission; for endowments generate vested rights, which are proverbially hostile to any very close scrutiny of either creed or character. Besides, where such a truth has been long lost to the practice of the Church, it takes a considerable time to restore it even to its principles. Hence Dr. Smith says in his address:-" Two generations had to elapse before the great fault and danger of this proceeding were duly perceived." And the Nonconformists were the first to supply a remedy:-"It was not till the origination of the Institutions whose happy UNION is this day proclaimed, that the satisfactory evidences of conversion to GOD, in encouraging any young man to devote himself to the ministry, were ET. 76.] ADDRESS AT THE FOUNDING OF NEW COLLEGE. 569 thoroughly understood to be of imperative and absolute necessity. Upon this foundation, as the immoveable rock, in their separate form, and now in their union, it is our resolution and our trust in God, that our Colleges shall ever stand." This was Dr. Pye Smith's final testimony in favour of a principle, for which-as already noticed-he relinquished an attractive office at Wymondley College, at his outset in public life. His whole history shows how richly he was rewarded for his self-denial and courage on that memorable occasion: and now, at the close of life, he not only held and defended the same principle, but in the incorporation of Coward with the other Colleges, he saw it carried out in a way and to an extent which fell in exactly with his earliest convictions of duty and propriety in such cases. Could a more appropriate recompense have been thought of for such a mind?-And are not such recompenses in the present world adapted, probably designed, to strengthen our faith in the future more glorious rewards which, in the government of God, will be conferred upon integrity and virtue? How wide the contrast between the youthful Student-Tutor going away in the depth of winter from Wymondley House, because he could not be a party in preparing persons for the Christian ministry who were not required to give "satisfactory evidences of conversion to God:"-and that venerable and honoured man who now saw the principle for which he then pleaded laid, with the full concurrence of a host of the most approved witnesses, as the "foundation, the immoveable rock" of New College. Yet between that earliest and this nearly latest day of his long public career, there were sure links of inseparable connection, held by that Being "in whose hands our breath is, and whose are all our ways." The concluding portion of the Address brings out so many of the Author's sentiments, and in comparatively few words, that on that account, and because this was the last of his original appeals from the press, it will now be presented : "The desirableness and practicability of this union [of the Three Colleges] must appear to every thoughtful mind. The knowledge of God and the salvation of man include all truth and all happiness. The conviction and enjoyment of this, we desire to communicate to all men; and to do so, we wish to improve and enlarge our instruments, and at the same time to concentrate our strength. The cause and the time demand this. Never |