The effort was crowned with success in less than two years. The result of this effort was to turn the attention of many to the subject, who remembered the college in their wills. This fund was swelled from time to time by legacies thence arising. It is a noteworthy fact, that among the complex motives that determine legacies of this kind, the prospect of permanency and celebrity in the institutions on which they are bestowed, is powerful; and hence, that they are apt to come more abundantly to institutions already firmly established, than to those on a more frail and precarious footing. The foregoing, besides occasional subscriptions for buildings, &c., is not the only great effort made to replenish the funds of this venerable institution. A similar and successful effort was made a few years ago, which resulted in obtaining subscriptions to an amount exceeding $100,000, called the fund of 1854. One heavy bequest, at least, has been since made to the funds of the institution. We see, then, why Yale has received these benefactions. Similar efforts to raise various amounts have been made, with various success, for nearly all our important American colleges. We have understood that a subscription was in successful progress to raise $150,000 for Hamilton College, until impeded by the war. Various subscriptions have been made for Amherst, aside from the munificent endowments of her Williston and others. And to speak of no more, Union and Columbia have been reported to be richly endowed by the rise of urban and suburban property.

If we see why these benefactions have flowed to Yale and other institutions in larger measure than to Princeton, we also see the reason. Unlike other colleges, she has received no State bounty. As to other gifts, the means have not been persistently and systematically employed to obtain them, by setting forth their urgent necessity to the friends of the college and of high Christian education. Some little temporary effort has been occasionally made, and, to the best of our knowledge, generally, if not always, with a success which awakens regret that it was not continued persistently and systematically. The heart and (unless temporarily impaired by this civil war) the ability exists among the friends of the college, of learning, and religion, to meet, not only its present necessities, but its

permanent wants, or what is requisite to its highest stability, dignity, and efficiency, when these wants are duly understood.

If Presbyterian colleges decline, Presbyterian seminaries must suffer a consequent depression. And not only so, sound Christian education, the interests of learning, religion, the church, at least the Presbyterian branch of it, are involved in such a catastrophe-which may God give the stewards of his bounty the wise and seasonable liberality to avert. We are confident that, when they understand the emergency, they will meet it.

No American institutions have shown a greater tenacity of life than our leading Christian colleges. No benefactions have more enduring vitality and usefulness than gifts for their adequate endowment. Few charities are more effective for good than those devoted to the founding, furnishing, and endowing of first class Christian colleges and theological seminaries.

ART. V.-Christian Enterprise.

THAT it is the Most High who worketh his will among the inhabitants of earth, as well as in the hosts of heaven, is a truth which lies at the foundation of all right understanding of human life; but, though subordinate thereto, not less important in its place, is that other great principle whereby the will of God is, in human things, accomplished through the free action of man. There is a reliance upon God which consists in waiting, and sometimes it is our duty to stand still and keep silence; but in the main, that which is exacted of man is the reliance of an enterprising spirit-that trust in God which goes forward; which, in its best degrees, is fertile in resources, and deviseth its own way, while looking to the Lord to direct its steps.

He

This is the peculiarity of man's position on the earth. is made like God, in a degree; and though fallen from the holiness and dignity of that estate, he is still bound by the duties

which belong to it.

He is the free agent of this world, and its ruler, the will, the purpose, and the power, whereby its materials ought to be converted to the glory of the Creator. In order to do so, man has first to convert those materials to his own use. Holy men would have effected both ends in one; sinful men forget that there is any use to be considered other than their own; converted men, in coming to a sight of that error, frequently reject, with undue disparagement, the pushing enterprise whereby men of worldly business subdue the materials of earth to their command. The kingdom of Christ is not of this world; but its subjects are men, who are to be brought into it in the use of human effort; and the glory of God and the happiness of his people are connected, by his own ordination, with their intelligent labours. In times when the church enjoys peace, and her organization is permitted to work without interruption, there is a tendency to indulge sloth, and even in labour to become contented with routine. Such languor has always proved fatal to spirituality. By the order instituted of God, the healthy condition of the church is made to depend upon the energy and cordiality with which she puts forth effort to enlarge the number of those who shall be saved. We may say truly, that activity is not a fair measure of piety in a church; and yet, where there is no activity in pressing the conquests of the gospel, the state of religion will be found to lack in genial Christian warmth. No church can long survive in such a condition. It either sinks through descending grades of moderatism and rationalism into infidelity, or is roused to activity by some intervention of Divine Providence, merciful even if severe; as lands which have long refused their moisture to the sky receive no returns of refreshing rain, and either become a parched and barren wilderness, or are saved by a convulsion of nature in the tornado or the thunder-storm. As freely as we have received are we commanded freely to give; and the gift is one which, when given, becomes to the giver a richer possession than before. A primary duty resting upon every Christian, according to the talents given him, and the circumstances in which he is placed, is enterprise in the work of God.

As in every other subject involving human action, there is in

this a right and a wrong-a true and a false; and if "there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune," it is also true, that few discriminate the rise and direction of the tide, and that the multitude are moved in the management of their affairs more by blind likings and dislikings, and certain incidental superficial circumstances. Well for the world that such have been made by the Creator to serve largely the purpose of instructive guides in the choice of labour.

The intellectual and spiritual man is a structure raised upon an animal basis, and, where the former is neglected, the latter will still sustain the fundamental operations of life. Blind likings may be called only a higher kind of instinct. Enterprise is the action of intellect in rising superior to their leading. But to forsake the instinctive would evince little wisdom, could we not lay hold upon some higher guide. If the mariner now ventures out to sea far beyond the leadings of the coast, it is not because he is more reckless than those of ancient times, but because he has transferred his trust from earth to heaven, and found a safer and ubiquitous guide in the action of the magnet and revolution of the spheres. Blind risking is far less respectable than blind following of some well established authority. Experiments have not unfrequently to be made, but they should always be approached in the light of knowledge.

So large an amount of enterprise has been laid out in the pursuits of ambition and of pecuniary gain, that its own reputation has been injured by the contact. In this, we ought to bear in mind that it has only suffered the common calamity of all the faculties of fallen man. That element of our nature, which devises new effort, which boldly enters upon the unexplored, unfolds the hitherto concealed, or cultivates what lies beyond the ordinary routine, is surely not unworthy of a place among those studies pertaining to the work of God.

Intelligent enterprise is the power whereby events become human. The current of the divinely instituted operations of nature is ever flowing on, whether we touch it or not. Seasons run their never-ceasing round, vegetation goes regularly through its various stages, animal life steadily obeys the

laws of its nature. Good and evil, pain and pleasure, occur and succeed each other according to an order no less inflexible. Day and night, heat and cold, and the ten thousand conjunctions of all these things furnish the circumstances of human life, which lie beyond the power of human genius to create. But in the midst of all has God placed man, and enabled and invited him to take part with himself in ruling them. The external world consists of agencies put in motion and kept in motion by God. Man is called upon to avail himself thereof to accomplish the peculiar work to which he is assigned. If he takes hold of those agencies and directs them to the effecting of his designs, or lays his plans to meet and receive the effect of their action, then do they become in some degree his ministers, and their effects expressive of him. If he does not, they go on according to their own laws, and have nothing human about them. If man, instead of controlling and directing, merely follows them, they do not express him; he sinks down and loses himself in them.

Plants grow wild, and bear their fruit in the woods without culture. Savage men live upon that fruit where they find it, and lodge in caverns ready made by geological process. As far as they are concerned, earth receives no impress of human character. Man thus fails to adopt the lead of inanimate things, loses himself in nature, in the routine of vegetation, of vital and mechanical forces.

A cultivated farm, on the contrary, is not a mere expression of the process of nature. It speaks also of man. Though he has not created a single one of the laws operating in it, he has put his hand to them all, in the way of directing, or of preparing proper objects for their action. He can neither create a tree nor the fertile juices of the soil, but by fostering both, and addressing the action of the one to the other, he obtains a fruit as much superior to its native kind as if it were a new creation. That improved fruit is not only addressed to human wants, it also bears the impress of human ingenuity and labour. Nothing about the wild buffalo implies the existence of man. It is otherwise with the ox trained to the yoke, or fattened for the shambles. The natural landscape has nothing to tell of