DIRECTORS. REV. S. H. COX, D. D., Brooklyn, N. Y. REV. THOMAS BRAINERD, D. D., Philadelphia. REV. JONATHAN F. STEARNS, D. D., Newark, N. J. REV. T. H. SKINNER, D. D., New-York City. 66 66 HON. T. W. WILLIAMS, New London, Conn. 66 REV. HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D., Hartford, REV. E. BEECHER, D. D., Boston, Mass. REV. EMERSON DAVIS, D. D., Westfield, Mass. 66 REV. GIDEON N. JUDĎ, D. D., Montgomery, N. Y REV. SAMUEL T. SPEAR, D. D., Brooklyn, N. Y. 66 REV. RUFUS W. CLARK, East Boston, Mass. CORRESPONDING SECRETARY. REV. THERON BALDWIN, New-York City. RECORDING SECRETARY. REV. ASA D. SMITH, D. D., New-York City. 66 TREASURER AND FINANCIAL AGENT. B. C. WEBSTER, Esq., New-York City. The Society then adjourned, and the new Board of Directors met. The Rev. Drs. S. H. Cox, A. D. Eddy, and A. D. Smith; Rev. R. S. Storrs, Jr., M. O. Halsted, and J. B. Pinneo, Esqrs., together with the Treasurer, were appointed the Consulting Committee of the Board for the ensuing year. The Board then adjourned to meet at the Union Church, in Worcester, Mass., on the last Tuesday in October, 1853, at four o'clock, P. M. CONSTITUTION OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF COLLEGIATE AND THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION AT THE WEST. ARTICLE I. This Association shall be denominated the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West. ART. II. The object of the Society shall be to afford assistance to Collegiate and Theological Institutions at the West, in such manner, and so long only, as, in the judgment of the Directors of the Society, the exigencies of the institutions may demand. ART. III. There shall be chosen annually by the Society, a President, Vice-Presidents, a Corresponding and a Recording Secretary, a Treasurer, and a Board of twenty-four Directors, which Board shall have power to fill its own vacancies, and also to fill, for the remainder of the year, any vacancies which may occur in the offices of the Board. The President, Vice-Presidents, and Recording Secretary, shall be ex-officio members of the Board of Directors. ART. IV. Any person may become a member of this Society by contributing annually to its funds; and thirty dollars, paid at one time, shall constitute a member for life. ART. V. There shall be an annual meeting of the Society at such time and place as the Board of Directors may appoint. ART. VI. Five Directors shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business, except for the appointment of a Secretary and the appropriation of moneys, when nine shall be present. ART. VII. It shall be the duty of the Board of Directors to employ all agencies for collecting funds; to investigate and decide upon the claims of the several institutions; to make the appropriations in the most advantageous manner (it being understood that contributions designated by the donors shall be appropriated according to the designations); to call special meetings of the Society, when they deem it necessary; and generally to do whatever may be deemed necessary to promote the object of the Society. ART. VIII. This Constitution may be altered or amended by a majority of two-thirds of the members present at an annual meeting of the Society, provided the alteration proposed shall have been specified and recommended by the Board of Directors. NINTH REPORT. On this ninth Anniversary of the Society, we are not only very forcibly reminded of the rapid flight of time, by the lapse of another year, but urged to renewed activity in our work by the decease of a devoted fellow-laborer, Marcus Wilbur, Esq. For a period of nearly seven years he had acted as Treasurer and Financial Agent of the Society, and was expected to make his annual pecuniary statement on the present occasion. But he is not here. On the 15th of August last, his Master called him to his final account, and to his eternal reward. Born into the kingdom at a most auspicious period, when the new age of benevolence was beginning to dawn on the Church, he engaged, in connection with kindred spirits, in doing what he could to give existence and efficiency to those benevolent organizations which are the glory of the present age. During the latter part of his life, he was especially identified with the cause of Christian education--not only in connection with this Society, but also with the Central American Education Society. In each of these positions he labored with unremitted fidelity to the last, and it will not be easy to repair the breach occasioned by his death. It is well for us, therefore, to linger for a moment and listen to the voice of this departed fellow-laborer, as he speaks to us from the borders of the grave. No better position could he occupy on earth for rightly estimating the importance of our work. A few days before his decease, he was inquired of whether he had any thing to say to those of us who would be left behind to toil in the cause. "Yes," he replied, summoning whatever of energy wasting disease had left, "go on-go on-it is a glorious cause-the Lord will prosper it." This language is the expression of a deep conviction that it is the cause of God-that to His favor are to be traced all wellgrounded hopes of success-and it is a declaration of unwavering confidence that He will grant prosperity to the enterprise. We cheerfully accept this as a declaration of our own faith in respect to the work in which the Society is engaged, and we would not only take to our own hearts the dying exhortation of our fellow-laborer, but press it upon all the friends and patrons of the cause. OBSTACLES OVERCOME. The Society has now at least a brief history, and this is a fitting occasion to advert to any grounds of encouragement which that history may afford. In previous reports, various obstacles with which the enterprise has had to contend, have been set forth. Upon these it is now unnecessary to dwellunless upon the principle that obstacles overcome may be regarded as among the highest grounds of encouragement. Some declarations made at a public meeting in behalf of the Society, held in this city some months since, were not too strong, viz., "The Society started into life in the midst of darkness that might almost be felt, and if the grandeur of a benevolent enterprise (as it had recently been well said) may be measured very much by the difficulties with which it has to contend,' and the overcoming of which constitutes its success-then no little of grandeur would attach to the enterprise in which this Society is engaged, and no mean success would be regarded as having crowned its efforts." The The very nature of the subject with which it has had to deal, has constituted a serious obstacle in respect to a large class of minds. Divested of those popular elements which move the sympathies and reach the springs of benevolent action, by a vivid array of immediate and obvious results-it has reference to objects which to a great extent lie out of the circle of common observation, and whose real importance can only be apprehended by an intellectual process which, to say the least, multitudes have never taken the trouble to follow out. inevitable consequence is, that the power of motive to present effort in behalf of the cause is weakened just in proportion to the dimness of their intellectual vision as a basis of faith. Through the thickest gloom of the American Revolution, far down into the future, the venerable John Adams could see bonfires and illuminations, and hear the ringing of bells, the booming of cannon, and the shouts of emancipated millions. This vision nerved his arm for the impending conflict, and led him joyfully, in connection with his compatriots, to pledge his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor to the cause of freedom. Just so with our ancestors in respect to education. Nothing is more interesting than to go back and notice the circle of great ideas among which the noble men moved who laid the foundations of this nation, and especially of our institutions of learning. They first ascended to the throne of God, and there linked human responsibility and human destiny; and for that very reason brought the remotest ages within the field. of their vision and within the range of their plans of benevolence. The "Collegiate Undertakers" of Yale College, at a meeting held at Saybrook, November 11, 1701, recited the reasons for embarking in that enterprise in the following language: "Whereas it was the glorious design of our now blessed fathers, in their remove from Europe into these parts of America, both to plant, and (under the Divine blessing) to propagate in this wilderness the blessed Reformed Protestant religion, in the purity of its order and worship; NOT ONLY TO POSTERITY, but also to the barbarous natives" "We, their unworthy posterity, lamenting our past neglect of this grand errand" -"being now met, do order and appoint that there shall be and hereby is erected and formed a Collegiate School, wherein shall be taught the liberal arts and languages, in such place or places in Connecticut as the said Trustees, with their associates and successors, do or shall from time to time see cause to order." As early as the year 1643, these "now blessed fathers" made use of the following language-" After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government-one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning, and PERPETUATE IT TO POSTERITY-dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the Churches, after our present ministry shall be in the dust." * A reviewer of the Fifth Annual Report, in one of our Quarterlies, holds the following language in reference to the Society: "It requires a heroism which not every man or body of men possesses, to undertake an achievement which cannot, in the nature of things, be justly appreciated and honored till its results shall have been developed in another and perhaps a distant age. It is not without good reasons, as we hope to show, that we rank the enterprise in which this Society is engaged, and all kindred enterprises, among the most heroic and useful ever undertaken by associated effort." * "Among the men of the present age who are doing something, trying to make themselves of use, there are confessedly few who have the patience and the courage to toil for results which cannot * * New Englander, vol. vii., No. 3. |