The Monitor., 1884-06-27

The story of his comparatively obscure child
hood, early conversion, godly mother, and
call to preach, are familiar to ALL He entered
the Pittsburg Annual Conference in the year
1888, and has filled the office of Bishop since
1852, a life of incessant toll for 32 years.
For the most of these years what a power
In the pulpit he has been! Who that ever
heard his burning eloquence can forget his
manner, or cease to cherish the memory of
his loving heart and fatherly counsels! With
the writer of these lines, how many hundreds
of those brought into most intimate relations
with him are constrained to declare he was
one of the nearest and dearest of earthly
friends and now that he has assembled ex-
claim, ''My Father. my Father, the Char
lots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof"
Aware that his grand life had rounded up
to its complete measure of usefulness, and
that his effective days were about ended. the
last General Conference honored itself in
passing one of the noblest tributes ever con-
ceived to eminent worth, and laid it as q
chaplet on his modest brow.
In the dark days of the country's peril, as
friend and councillor of President Lincoln,
he occupied post of prominence second to
no other, and his national character for pure
patriotism is as high as the unsullied reputa-
ton he leaves as a legacy to his beloved fam
| lily and the church.
What great thoughts were those, which,
while the lips were mute, thronged through
his mind as the lamp of life burned low? To
those who press this inquiry there is a
strangely thrilling answer. On Sabbath
there was an interval of lucid recollection,
and as if once more repeating the burning in
vocation he read in Association Hall, May 22,
his last ineligible utterances, may be found
in hymn SIS. Take up the book and see his
'ruling passion in the sentiments of those
stanzas. They possess a lustre for us now,
which they never had before. They reveal
the living and dying devotion for the church,
the ministry and the world of mankind which
characterized our beloved and now assembled
Bishop Simpson
From the Shore Gazette
ment week, when our academies, colleges and
universities turn out upon the world hundreds
of young men and women who are to enter
for the first time upon the real, hard practi-
cal duties of life.
Thousands of young men and women will
go out from our institutions of learning this
week with the grand idea that the world was
made for them to conquer, that the evils of
society are the evils that they are peculiarly
fitted to battle with, that the road to success
is the road upon which they have, individu-
ally, entered. But if they are to successfully
battle with the world, to cure its evils, sur
mount its difficulties and attain its best gifts
it must certainly be remembered that their
graduation is really commencement and
nothing more, that the world can teach them
great deal more than they can teach it, and
that, as general thing, they will receive few
crowns for which they do not fight hard.
Four years of village life with professors and
tutors ready to assist student in any real
difficulty, with common aim and home in
fuence, does not give young man an idea
of the hard, practical world he is to enter af-
ter going out from college walls.
The tendency in almost all our colleges in
attempting to teach in full the curriculum our
fathers studied, with all the additional light
that science has thrown upon the subjects in
cluded, and, in addition, almost numberless
new branches of study, has been to cram
the average student with smattering of
many things and graduate him with little real
knowledge of anything Very many students
come out of college with an inability to write
and speak good English and with no practical
business knowledge whatever. Our colleges
are endeavoring to remedy this state of affairs
and Princeton has been engaged during the
whole of the past year in remodelling her
course of study, making it more largely elect
ive 1t is impossible to run hundred men
through the same mold, and turn them out
like so many machines. DR.. McCosh, in his
address to the trustees of Princeton college,
on Tuesday, said in reference to the new
course: s'Certain branches fitted to educate
the mind are required of all, and others left
to the choice of the student, according to his
tastes or his intended life work. In this way
we suit our studies to the times by admitting
every new branch of learning, and also to the
varied professions of the students"