4

{left page:}

6

and ignorance that now overspread the minds of many honest peo-
ple dissipated; and themselves restored to that fold, from which they have strayed.

As to the trammels alluded to, these are not the subjects to
which I would now invite your notice. They are in the hands of a
commission of our own body, and will, no doubt, receive all the
considerations to which they are entitled.

My present purpose is to call your attention to the obligation
and duty, as well as high expediency, of attempting something
more than is now being done by us as a Church, to strengthen
our position and increase our capacity for usefulness in the dioceses
over which we preside, by the establishment of some system of ed-
ucational training, which shall provide for the instruction of the
male portion of our charge, as well in academical as theological
learning.

We are brought for the most part annually into contact with all
the families attached to the Church in our several dioceses, and we
are as often compelled to hear our people deplore the want of a
suitable seminary or seminaries, at which their children might, ob-
tain the advantages of a liberal education.

Institutions there are within the pale of all our dioceses, upon
a more or less enlarged scale, and of greater or less excellence.
They have been established either by State patronage, or founded
by one or other of the religious denominations surrounding us, and
are doing what they can—and in some instances with eminent and
honorable success—to supply a public necessity; but whatever
their degree of excellence may be, they do not meet the wants of
our people.

In the minds of many, they are not upon a scale sufficiently ex-
tended or full to offer advantages comparable to those to be held
abroad, or at the institutions of highest grade in the Northern
States of our Union; and for that reason are set aside, and our
children are expatriated or sent off to an inconvenient distance;
beyond the reach of our supervision or parental influence, exposed
to the rigors of an unfriendly climate, to say nothing of other in-
fluences not calculated, it is to be feared, to promote their happi-
ness or ours.

These are some of the reasons why most of the institutions now
existing among us or elsewhere, fail to meet the wants of our
Church people. But there is a still more influential one, which is,
that we have none, fairly within our reach, where our children,
when they pass from under the parental eye in the preparatory

{right page:}

7

school, are kept under the influence of those Christian principles
and that Church instruction, to which we pledged them in bap-
tism, which we have accepted and hold as of the essence of Christ’s
religion, which we would transmit in their vigor to them and
through them unmarred to our latest posterity.

This is a felt necessity. And one which every day grows more
imperative. But it is a necessity which we and those who belong
to the Church in our several dioceses, can alone meet, which it
is our duty to meet, and which we have the ability to meet, which it
is our duty to meet, and which we have the ability to meet, in
a manner so enlarged and liberal as to leave nothing to be desired
for the intellectual and religious culture of those for whom we
are called upon to provide.

Our dioceses are all comparatively new, some of them but of yester-
day. They must therefore be expected to be feeble—too feeble singly
to rear any such establishments as could occupy the commanding po-
sition, or offer such advantages as I have indicated. And indeed
if we had each the pecuniary ability. I should doubt the expedien-
cy, in view of the small number of our Church people, and the im-
perfect character of the primary education of our country gen-
erally, of employing that ability in establishing so many insti-
tutions of such a grade. But what we cannot do singly, we may
with great ease, do collectively. And there are facts and circum-
stances which, as I believe, indicate the present as the period at
which Providence seems to call us to rally to our mutual support
and relief. I believe now is the time at which we may found such
an institution as we need. An institution to be our common prop-
erty, under our joint control, of a clear and distinctively recognized
Church character, upon a scale of such breadth and comprehen-
siveness, as shall be equally in the liberality of it s provisions for in-
tellectual cultivation to those of the highest class at home or
abroad, and which shall fully meet the demands of those of our
people, who require for their children the highest educational ad-
vantages, under the supervision of the Church.

But there is another school needed of a different character to
which we, as Bishops of the Church, stand committed. Yet more fully;
the necessity for which none are so well able to appreciate as our-
selves. That is; one for training young men for the ministry. A
Theological Seminary.

In pressing the importance of founding such a seminary, no apol-
ogy is necessary to those of our brethren who in other dioceses
have established similar institutions, under the idea of securing at
the same time a claim on our co-operation and support. They have