Cincinnati up the Ohio, in the steamer "Mayflower," there has been mapped out a newer "WEST" than that which its original corporate title intended, and what was then new has become old. Its constituency is largely another. Young communities, like young men, come to do the work of the world in good part before they possess much of the wealth of the world. But the broad, resourceful land which lies between Buffalo and the Mississippi, is no longer young, and much of it is already wealthy. The Northeast is also wealthier than ever,' and Dr. Stone's sentiment still holds, does it not? "Foundation work is congenial to the sons of New England. It runs in our blood to be pioneers of a spreading civilization." Besides, so many generous benefactors who are not Christians are now taking munificent care of the New-England colleges, after the pattern Christians of the grand old sort have set them, and Western Christians are so overtaxed, and so overtax themselves beyond all New England example, that we must still expect the good men of the East to give largely to our colleges, though not to give all. "The West must build them with the help of the East," said the Mentor of this enterprise, "and not the East, with the help of the West."

We have, then, three great sections of country to call upon for the institutions now on the list: (1), this central region lying along the great valley in which each college has its constituency; (2), an olden region on its eastern side, now nearly as rich and as well established in Christian institutions as New England; and (3), New England itself, a threefold cord of strength. Our Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together. It is a unity in this college-building work, and the more so that many of our laymen who are now creating Western institutions, once did their part for those of New England, before they emigrated, and the far greater cost of liberal education there is driving many young New Englanders to the

The whole loss in the great Boston fire, occurring while these pages are preparing for the press, is "less than the city's yearly increase in wealth," and about one tenth its annual income. The Boston of November, 1873, will be richer than the Boston of November, 1872, and better built.

* Massachusetts Election Sermon, 1865, by Rev. A. L. Stone, D. D.

3 Most striking illustrative facts are given in Rev. Dr. Bartlett's Sermon, before the A. H. M. S., 1871.

newer colleges of higher rank, and fewer ministers for the West are now drawn from the East, while the graduates of colleges and theological seminaries in both the nearer and remoter West, more and more largely fill even New-England pulpits, running with the footmen there, and are everywhere reaching the field of foreign missions as well; and the West furnishes fifty more than its quota of all our theological students, while the East furnishes less than its proportion, and one third of the annual theological graduates now come from part of the eighteen colleges fostered by this society," and the percentage is increasing." New England should still supply part of our need, for we are supplying part of hers. It is more and more a broad national unity in Christian work on which this society leans, as God in the text addressed the prophet as one person : If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how wilt thou contend with horses ?

4. But it is a just and conclusive inference from our argument, that this large and mournful disparity between the equipments and strength of the colleges of the two sections should no longer exist. I say this not alone because the facts and the logic oblige me to do so, but also in the interest of both sections. Any one of us whose lives have been divided between both, a quarter of a century or more passed in each, can deal with the problem more equitably, than if the whole life, with the amplest experiences, had been either an Eastern or a Western one. Strength and equipments should be proportioned to the taste. There is clearly no gospel warrant for attempting the impossible, for undertaking a race we cannot run, for building without ability to finish, without even counting the cost; for leading ten thousand against them that come with twenty thousand. I would not, if I could, have the college investments of the two sections change places, though our three and a half millions would be more sufficient for New England's three and a half millions of souls, highly educated in large measure already, and her eleven and a half millions would be nearer the wants of our fifteen millions of souls, would they not? but it is fair to say that all the best interests of our country and of the world would be safer to-day if our fifteen millions also had 1 Secretary Butterfield has collected the facts and figures.

eleven and a half millions invested in these eighteen colleges, The eight colleges would then have nearly three dollars and a half of college property to every individual of the population; the eighteen less than seventy-five cents. This is not the full inference I am authorized to draw, by any means. I hesitate, as a Western college officer, to draw that. Will those among you who are skilled in logic, who perhaps have taught it, tell me what it should rightfully be? It is a question in arithmetic. It is a sum in the Rule of Three. As three and a half millions of people are to eleven and a half millions of investments, so are fifteen millions of people to between forty-nine and fifty millions of investments! This would be the value of our Western college equipments if they were in equitable proportion with those of New England.

In place of any judgment on these figures, I quote the pertinent observations of Prof. Bartlett, in his sermon before the A. H. M. S. last year on "a grand practical mistake in the olden communities."

"The givers follow too much the beaten track. Within about six or seven years past, I find a recorded amount of at least seventeen millions given to the higher institutions of learning in this country. But where was it laid out? Fifteen seventeenths of it, so far as I can trace, hug the Atlantic coast. Doubtless there was a good use for fifteen millions there. Make it not a dollar less. But there was a far more vital need elsewhere."

To these just suggestions, I add only that THE NEXT FIFTEEN MILLIONS SHOULD COME WEST. Does the sum seem large? Why any larger for the larger region, than for the smaller? There are single individuals who could give it all this day, and have a snug competency of several millions left. And great objects attract great gifts. Half a million to a single college from a single benefactor, is now common eastward. But on our list we have only one whose infancy has been blest with so much as $50,000 from one source. The man who shall first bestow half a million on one of these eighteen will inaugurate a grander era of Christian beneficence, than has yet shone upon us, and I do not despair of living to do him honor as an exceptionally noble, broad-minded, and far-seeing philanthropist of the nineteenth century.

5. It is an inference no less irresistible and unquestionable, that such disparity as remains in quality between these two classes of Puritan institutions should cease. One college for a State, twenty-five colleges in twenty-five commonwealths within twenty-five years, is but part of our high and transcendent aim. These are Puritan colleges as well as those. Who cannot see what the honor of Puritan learning demands? They should be so endowed that no rivals the State can place beside them can overmatch them in strength, and so thorough and complete in their work that none can approach them in merit of any kind. And the equalization of national progress of all sorts now goes on so surely and evenly over our whole domain that the new colleges will doubly fail if they fall behind the older ones. "There will always be feeble churches," said Dr. Bacon in 1857, "for the reason that, 'the poor ye have always with you': but there will not always be poor colleges. A college, to be useful, must be strong." To the level of that truth and its application in these twelve States, at their present stage of advancement, we must now rise. Money is not in itself strength, though it may seem that it will yield us all that is. In text-books, in works of reference, in skill of instructors, in scientific illustration, in apparatus, the new colleges should start from the point to which the older ones have arrived. A half a million will secure libraries, cabinets, professors, of as great excellence, in Jacksonville as in New Haven, in Beloit as in Amherst, in Grinnell as in Cambridge. For minds of so much movement, we must do the very best promptly and at the outset. Some of these eighteen colleges do already what is equal to average New-England work, some what is superior to it, and with whatever presumptions against them, there is this one in their favor, that professors, even in smaller colleges, are more competent than tutors in larger ones; but we shall never come up to the exigency of the case till the argument for these young institutions, which the history of this society and their own show to be the needed ones, takes a long stride forward; till it is realized and assumed on all sides that they should be so superior in excellence and strength that no others, in any part of the land, can draw their students from them, or their professors. To this conclusion,

and to none that falls short of it, are we driven, in view of the past, the present, and the future, by a sober and candid view of the forces, destitutions, and perils of Western mind.

And now, this whole discussion discloses an undertaking how grave and arduous! We who share in the tasking and fortunes of it have some apprehension of it. Comprehension

is impossible. The later and better political economy places. common education at the head of the interests of the commonwealth. Christian economy thrones the higher Christian education in the highest place. Our churches are our Israel; but in these seats of learning are the very chariots of our Israel and the horsemen thereof. The theme contains in itself, beyond all our poor words, the elements of a mighty appeal. It fed the quiet, perennial enthusiasm, the humble, yet high purpose, the steady faith, the prayerful toil of that wise, patient, modest spirit who once bore among men the name of THERON BALDWIN. It compelled the president of one of our most promising colleges, in one of the noblest of our trans-Mississippian empires, to leave his post to another and become Dr. Baldwin's successor. It is worthy to suborn the services of minds of the grandest proportions. There are voices of fathers in our Israel, — trumpet-voices, that long since stirred. the young blood of some of us in New England with a longing to be Western men and Western missionaries, - that never rise into an eloquence so noble, rapt, and surpassing as when they touch it. There are prophecies in the best hearts among us of the splendors of the Christian civilization that is to be fostered by these colleges (if made what they should be), beyond aught that the eyes of men have seen. The gravity of our emergencies, the omens of our opportunities, the grandeur of our possibilities, call for such energy, such grasp, such foresight, such bounty, such prayer, and such trust in God as cannot be overstated. And as surely as we live in an age when brilliant men are striving to set some forms of secular education above Christianity and all beside, and as surely as on the platform of our cause the two stand in proper relations and proportions, each to each, so surely the cause itself will yet rise to a position in Christian beneficence above which there will be no other.