It is true that Christian ministers, in this age of the world, are selected in different ways and different modes by different sects and denominations.  But there are, still, ministers of all sects and denominations.  Why should we shut our eyes to the whole history of Christianity?  Is it not the preaching of ministers of the Gospel that has evangelized the more civilized part of the world?  Why do we at this day enjoy the lights and benefits of Christianity ourselves?  Do we not owe it to the instrumentality of the Christian ministry?  The ministers of Christianity, departing from Asia Minor, traversing Asia, Africa, and Europe, to Iceland, Greenland, and the poles of the earth, suffering all things, enduring all things, hoping all things, raising men everywhere from the ignorance of idol worship to the knowledge of the true God, and everywhere bringing life and immortality to light through the Gospel, have only been acting in obedience to the Divine instruction; they were commanded to go forth, and they have gone forth, and they still go forth.  They have sought, and they still seek, to be able to preach the Gospel to every creature under the whole heaven.  And where was Christianity ever received, where were its truths ever poured into the human heart, where did its waters, springing up into everlasting life, ever burst forth, except in the track of a Christian ministry?  Did we ever hear of an instance, does history record an instance, of any part of the globe Christianized by lay preachers, or “lay teachers”?  And, descending from kingdoms and empires to cities and countries, to parishes and villages, do we not all know, that wherever Christianity has been carried, and wherever it has been taught, by human agency, that agency was the agency of ministers of the Gospel?  It is all idle, and a mockery, to pretend that any man has respect for the Christian religion who yet derides, reproaches, and stigmatizes all its ministers and teachers.  It is all idle, it is a mockery, and an insult to common sense, to maintain that a school for the instruction of youth, from which Christian instruction by Christian teachers is sedulously and rigorously shut out, is not deistical and infidel both in its purpose and in its tendency.  I insist, therefore, that this plan of education is, in this respect, derogatory to Christianity, in opposition to it, and calculated either to subvert or to supersede it.

In the next place, this scheme of education is derogatory to Christianity, because it proceeds upon the presumption that the Christian religion is not the only true foundation, or any necessary foundation, of morals.  The ground taken is, that religion is not necessary to morality, that benevolence may be insured by habit, and that all the virtues may nourish, and be safely left to the chance of flourishing, without touching the waters of the living spring of religious responsibility.  With him who thinks thus, what can be the value of the Christian revelation?  So the Christian world