Society are turning their attention to this point with anxious interest.

Some diminution in the number of students at Beloit Col. lege occurred during the last year; of which the President says, "it is due mainly to difficulties experienced by the students in obtaining accommodations on reasonable terms, and to exaggerated reports respecting the expensiveness of living here. The difficulty has been relieved, in part, by arrangements for boarding clubs, but something more is evidently necessary. There is a stern necessity for aid to students in the preparatory course."

The Trustees of Iowa College are engaged in an effort to raise $5,000 within that State, of which amount $2,000 are for the founding of four permanent Scholarships in the Preparatory Department of the Institution for the benefit of indigent young men, and so much of the remainder as may be necessary to meet their wants for the current year. A similar, and deeply felt, necessity exists at all the Institutions aided by the Society; and this is particularly true of those designed for the especial benefit of Germans and their descendants.

The President of Wittenberg College says: "There are thirty-four candidates for the ministry in the different Collegiate and Preparatory Classes. If we had only more beneficiary aid, this number would be greatly increased. A large proportion of our young men are the children of foreign Germans, who are generally poor; and although the Church desires it, and they themselves see the importance of a full Collegiate course, few will venture upon a course of preparation without some previous aid." Out of eleven Theological Students at the German Institution in Missouri, only two pay any part of their expenses. The others are "all beneficiaries, who being quite poor, have to receive board, clothing, books, &c."

METHOD OF INCREASING THE POWER OF COLLEGES.

The question, how we can bring the advantages of the Colleges aided within the reach of the greatest number of minds, is one of very deep interest.

In the settlement of this question, one of the very first suggestions to be made is, that we should avoid, as far as possible, the needless multiplication of Colleges. That wondrous revolution in respect to facilities of communication, already alluded to, not only brings Institutions at distant points into the same neighborhood, but, to no small extent, diminishes the necessity of multiplying their number; although it is idle to

suppose that any revolution can occur in this country which will concentrate all our students in a few Metropolitan Institutions. Were this possible, it would be against the interests of students in a pecuniary, moral, and religious, not to say literary sense, and not less against the true interests of the nation. It is one of the glories of American Colleges, that they are not concentrated into one vast University, but scattered far and wide among the people; each one filling its sphere, availing itself of local associations and local sympathies, and standing up there as the visible and ever present representative of liberal and Christian learning. Each one, with its Faculty, identifying themselves with public interests in Church and State, and throwing their influence into the various channels through which the public mind may be reached, and Christian society organized; with their Public Commencements, calling out multitudes from city and town, from forest, prairie, and grove, kindling a desire in the minds of young men for the advantages they offer; sending abroad on every hand, through their Alumni, an influence that is felt in all the high places of power, and, like stationary engines at the head of inclined planes, lifting society to their own exalted level.

No one, it is true, can rise at once to the fulness of its power. Each must have a beginning; and the simple fact that this is feeble, is no just ground for concluding that it is not needed, or that it will not, in due time, reach maturity and vastness of strength. But, after all, the demand for such Institutions in the nation is not unlimited, and it would be the height of folly to assume the contrary in regulating the supply. Feeble and starveling Colleges, dragging out an uncertain existence, with disheartened Trustees, with Instructors dispirited and operating languidly upon a handful of students, can never do the work demanded by the Church or the State.

The history of Colleges in this country, and every other, goes to show, as was stated in our last Report, "that it is of the essence of the higher instruction to be unpopular to the extent of being an unmarketable commodity." Provisions therefore must be made on a large scale in our Colleges, which will so reduce the expense of an education, that their advantages can be brought within the range of those whom society needs as educated men. If, then, two Colleges, or one, can really do the work of three, how much better for the Church, for the nation, and for the interests of Christian learning, that the funds expended in an attempt to establish the two should be concentrated upon the one, and, if not demanded in other

departments, put in the form of Scholarships for the benefit of young men. The number of students is thus increased because facilities are furnished; the field of usefulness for the College Instructors employed is so enlarged as to make them feel that it is worthy of their best energies; the supernumeraries, equal perhaps in capacity, are saved for other departments of labor, where educated mind is demanded, and society is every where a gainer.

On a given field, and within certain limits, the Society, year by year, has to do with this question of the multiplication of Institutions. On its files may be found a somewhat formidable list of rejected applications. The consideration of such cases has constituted one of the most delicate, and yet it is believed one of the most useful portions of its work.

As it respects the Institutions aided, had the field been clear-had the original question of their establishment, been submitted to the Directors, doubtless they would have reduced the number-but not a few of them had been established, and large outlays made for their benefit, and the question to be settled was whether it were better for the interests of Christian learning, that they should be abandoned to certain ruin or furnished with the means requisite to place them on a permanent basis, and give them renewed life and efficiency.

When the Society enters new fields the position of things is materially changed. But even here, it has neither the right nor the power to say whether a given Institution shall or shall not exist, but simply to decide whether any of the funds committed to its trust, shall go for the benefit of such Institution. This, however, is a sacred trust, and devolves most weighty responsibilities upon the Board. It is not to be expected that the tendency to the undue multiplication of Colleges, can be brought under complete control by any arrangements or argu ments, much less by authority.

Protestantism would not be Protestantism if we could thus economize its entire strength. In all great moving forces, there is apparently more or less waste of power. Still the means and energies in our possession, for the work of enlightenment and salvation, are too sacred to be blindly and recklessly expended.

PRIMARY OBJECT OF THE SOCIETY SECURED.

The first and especial work of the Society has ever been to aid in placing Institutions upon a permanent basis-with a corps of Instructors, and the requisite appliances for the business of

instruction, in other words-to secure the working power. Then the good accomplished, will be very much in proportion to the number of minds that can be brought within the range of this power. This first work has been achieved to an extent which has already stamped the Society as holding a prominent place among the agencies employed for the evangelization of this nation-and still higher achievements seem not only prac ticable but near at hand. And it is a question of the deepest interest, whether this primary object itself may not only be more successfully accomplished-but a vastly wider sweep given to the influence of the Society, by calling public attention to the importance of permanent provisions for the benefit of young men who need pecuniary aid. The leading object of all these Colleges that spring up on our great Home Missionary field, is to provide the Church with an educated and evangelical ministry, and the universal cry now heard for laborers, to enter the widening harvest of the world-brings motives of great power to bear on all who love the souls of perishing men, who regard the welfare of nations, and pray for the coming of the kingdom of Christ on earth-to do their utmost in furnishing facilities that may be made effectual in bringing into the field of action the requisite number of laborers.

A most important work in this direction would be accomplished by the Society, if the waste could be prevented that is consequent upon the establishment of a single unnecessary Institution, and those resources employed for increasing the number and character of students at the Colleges, whose existence is truly demanded. The proper presentation of this subject may be one effectual method of checking the tendency to the undue multiplication of Institutions. The leading object of these resources might have reference to the ministry-but they should take a wider scope.

The spheres in which educated and sanctified minds can serve the Church, and advance the great interests of truth and righteousness, are so various at the present day, that it becomes an object of intense interest to educate mind under Christian influence, and for service in all departments of effort. It is a most contracted view of influence which leads one to pronounce that pious and educated young man a failure, simply because he does not enter the ministry. He may be a failure in respect to some pledge given before his character was really formed, or his powers developed; but no failure as to the great ends which can be accomplished by cultivated and sanctified mind. And it seems high time that the Church every where should rise to this broad view of Christian education.

The Committee of Conference with the American Education Society, appointed at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Board, in their Report presented and adopted at the last Anniversary, use the following language:

"On the subject of the Endowment of Scholarships in connection with literary Institutions, your Committee would further report, that they are more and more convinced of its importance; and as a Committee of Conference with the American Education Society is likely to be appointed, for the purpose of forming some plan of union with said Society, in which this subject of endowment will of course come under review, they would recommend that the further consideration of this subject be referred to such committee, with a recommendation that it shall be regarded as an important element or feature in the plan for future operations in the education cause."

ECONOMY AND UTILITY OF SCHOLARSHIPS.

No doubt can exist as to the efficiency and economy of this method of securing endowments. A few ladies, for example, composing a sewing circle connected with the Second Presbyterian Church in Newark, N. J., by the efforts of a few years have nearly completed the founding of a permanent Scholarship in Lane Theological Seminary of $1,000, which at present rates of interest in Ohio, will produce $100 per annum. An individual lady connected with the same church, has also given to the same Institution $1,000 to found a similar scholarship. But it would be difficult to obtain from that whole church for any department of the Education cause, an annual collection of more than one half of what is here secured in perpetuity. The sixty or more permanent Scholarships now held by the American Education Society, were mostly obtained as the result of but a little more than a year's labor on the part of the indefatigable Cornelius.

The avails of Scholarships when in the gift of Institutions, may reach the students without any unpleasant publicityand then if they are granted, in a measure at least as a reward of merit, and thrown open to extensive if not general compe tition, one serious and standing evil in the work of education for the ministry would be so far forth avoided, viz.: inadequacy of mental furniture for the sacred office. It is believed also, that if the Church were to strike out with a bolder hand on the subject of Christian education, and bring her educational machinery to bear on a wider range of mind with less trust in pledges to enter the ministry, and more in God to sanctify mind