growth is the only healthy growth-that which starts from the beginning of the nation's life and keeps steadily on into the indefinite future. So far as the possibilities of human vision go, therefore, we may predict for them-if their course is directed by wisdom-more safely than for any others, the realization of this high idea. Surely, every friend of theirs and every well-wisher of his country ought to desire for them this honorable future, for it will be a glory to the nation if its noblest and highest universities are, in all time, those which have grown with its growth and strengthened with its strength. But, if they are to attain this end, they cannot linger in the sphere of mere colleges. They cannot neglect the development of any of their parts, but must see that all the parts increase together in the unity and harmony of a common life. A grave responsibility will rest upon those who have the positions of authority in them in the coming years. It will be, however, as in all great works, a responsibility only commensurate with the good to be accomplished and the reward to be attained. We believe that the time is close at hand when the University idea must be taken as the true guiding thought of all the future-when the old notion of a college with minor schools attached to it inust be abandoned forever, and the several departments must be regarded as altogether coequal-when all portions of the institution must be pressed forward with the same energy, and watched over with the same minute and constant care-or the hope of the future will be lost. Other institutions of later origin and less noble past history will take the honor which is ready and waiting now for these.

We have spoken of Yale College because we are deeply interested in it. Much of what we have said would apply elsewhere, but our thoughts and those of our associates are naturally upon the future of our own University. We hope that future may be marked by wisdom as great as has characterized the past. Through the wisdom of the past, the institution has grown from its small beginnings, in the times of the early fathers, to the greatness of its present numbers and the wideness of its present fame. It has developed itself outward from its original center into new departments as they were needed, until now it is a complete University in its plan and form.

It needs only that continual growth, which is the necessity of all life, and that more perfect unity of all its parts which shall impart to it still greater strength and vigor for its future course, in order to make it all that its most ardent friends could desire it to become a complete University in the highest

sense.

And now is the time to move forward. To-day, in the advantages which it affords, Yale College is unsurpassed. In the plan by which it has determined the question between classical and scientific education most favorably to both, it has been wiser than any of its sister institutions. In the number of its students, it stands in the front rank. The incentives which come from past success, and those which arise from dangers in the future, all point to earnest action. We have attempted to show one of the lines in which such action is needed and the ways in which its energy may be directed. There are other lines which might be traced out there are other works which, as we think, ought to characterize the new era; but we have trespassed upon the patience of our readers in this article so long that we pass them by unnoticed.

ARTICLE VI.-—HOW THE REV. DR. STONE BETTERED HIS SITUATION.

The Invitation Heeded: Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity. By JAMES KENT STONE, late President of Kenyon College, Gambier; and of Hobart College, Geneva, New York; and S. T. D. Catholic Publication Society. 1870. 12mo. pp. 341.

WE remit to a future opportunity the exposure of the latest statistical vagaries of the Catholic World, beguiled from that duty by the attractions of the latest issue of the Catholic Publication Society. This is one of the most interesting specimens of a very interesting class of books-those written by converts to or from Romanism in vindication of their change of views; and when that good day comes when we all have time for every thing, we shall count it well worth while to criticize it in detail. At present, we undertake no more than rapidly to state the upshot of the Rev. Dr. Stone's religious change, as it appears to us, and to foot up the balance of spiritual advantage which he seems to have gained by it.

A year ago last October, the Rev. James Kent Stone, D. D., a minister of excellent standing in the Protestant Episcopal Church, received, in common with the rest of us, a copy of a letter from the pope of Rome, in which he was affectionately invited to 66 rescue himself from a state in which he could not be assured of his own salvation," by becoming a member of the Roman Catholic Church,-which teaches, by the way, that as soon as a man becomes "assured of his own salvation" it is a dead certainty that he will be damned.*

Accordingly, the Rev. Dr. Stone, deeply conscious how uncertain and perilous is the position of those who merely commit themselves in well doing, with simplicity and sincerity, to the keeping of the Lord Jesus Christ, according to his promi"hastens to rescue himself from that state, in which he

ses,

* Act. Conc. Trid., Sess. VI., Capp. IX., XII., XIII.

cannot be assured of his own salvation," and betters himself wonderfully, as follows:

I. His first step is to make sure of his regeneration and entrance into the true church by the door of the church, which is, according to his new teachers, not Christ, but baptism.* To be sure he has once been baptized, and the Council of Trent warns him not to dare affirm that baptism administered by a heretic (like his good old father) is not true baptism.† But as all his everlasting interests are now pending on a question which no mortal can answer, to wit, whether at the time of the baptism of little James, being then of tender age, the interior intention of old Doctor Stone corresponded with a certain doubtful and variously interpreted requirement of the Council of Trent-that he should "intend to do what the church does "+-it is well to make his "assurance of salvation" doubly sure, by a "hypothetical baptism" from the hands of a Roman Catholic priest, with some accompaniments which although "not of absolute necessity to his salvation, are of great importance"-such as a little salt in his mouth to excite "a relish for good works," a little of the priest's spittle smeared upon his ears and nostrils to "open him into an odor of sweetness," a little of the essential "oil of catechumens" on his breast and between his shoulders, and of the "oil of chrism" on the crown of his head, with a "white garment " on, outside of his coat and pantaloons, and a lighted candle in his hand in the daytime.§ If there is a way of meriting heaven by a process of mortification, we have little doubt that it must be for a respectable middle-aged gentleman who has learned, by being president of two colleges, the importance of preserving his personal dignity, to be operated upon in just this way. Nothing, we should imagine, could add to the poignancy of his distress, and consequent merit, unless it should be to have the members of the Sophomore class present while he was having his nose "opened into the odor of sweetness."

Concil. Florent., "vitae spiritualis janua.”

† Concil. Trid., Canon 4, De Bapt.

Conc. Trid., Sess. VII., Can. 11.

§ See the Roman Catechism.

Doubtless the object to be gained is amply worth the sacrifice, since it is to " rescue oneself from the state in which he cannot be assured of his own salvation," and avoid that "eternal misery and everlasting destruction," which, according to the authoritative catechism of the Roman Catholic church is the alternative of valid baptism. This second ceremony, be it remembered, is only a hypothetical one, calculated to hit him if he is unbaptized, but, in case it should appear in the judgment of the last day that old Dr. Stone had intended to "do what the church does (it being, at present, not infallibly settled what such an intention is) then this latter and merely hypothetical ceremonial to be held to have been no baptism at all, but null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever. But considering that the issues of eternity are pending on the insoluble question as to the validity of the first baptism, considering that a defect here can never be supplied to all eternity, whether by years of fidelity in other sacraments, or by æons of torture in purgatorial fire, since it is only by baptism that "the right of partaking of the other sacraments is acquired," it is nothing more than common prudence to adopt a course that diminishes by at least one-half the chances of a fatal defect. It must be admitted that there still remains a possibility of the defect of intention in the second act as well as in the first; such things having been known in ecclesiastical history as the purposed "withholding of the intention " in multitudes of sacramental acts on the part of an unfaithful priest. Still, it may be held, perhaps, by the Rev. Dr. Stone. that the hypothetical transaction makes the matter nearly enough certain for all his practical purposes (as the old arithmetics used to say) although it falls a good deal short of that 66 assurance of his own salvation" to which he was invited in the pope's letter.†

* Dens, De Bapt. Tractat.

It is very pleasant, from time to time, as one traverses the dreary waste of "commandments contained in ordinances" which make up the Romish system, to come upon some admission or proviso which fairly interpreted nullifies all the rest. The Council of Trent, for instance, declares that "without the washing of regeneration (meaning baptism) or the desire of it, there can be no justification," and teaches that an unbeliever brought to embrace Christianity, not having