V.--MISSIONARY STUDENTS.


While discussing, amongst other matters, the expense of the
Society's Seminary at Highgate, the Special Committee suggested an
inquiry into the question of the training of the missionary students
generally. It was felt by them that the advanced position attained
by our Missions in all parts of the world, gives to the missionary
brethren, as a body, very great opportunities of usefulness. A large
number of them are called to be superintendents of several churches
and many native agents, to be counsellors of native pastors and
missionaries, and tutors in theological seminaries. All the brethren
in India and China may hold intercourse with Native scholars and
priests, and have to defend truth and assail error by argument,
spreading over a wide range of thought and knowledge. Several of them
have charge of educational institutions of a high order, and are
associated with Native ministers who are themselves men of superior
education and position.

It is an injustice to our missionary brethren themselves to place
them in such positions of weight and influence without giving them
the opportunity of acquiring a complete fitness for the important
duties which those positions involve. It is an injustice to the
Society that the training of its missionaries should be incomplete.
And it is an injustice to the Missions generally, should they be
placed in the hands of men who are unable, from defective education,
rightly to comprehend their claims, and to fulfil the important
duties which the charge of them now involves. In addition to
considerations such as these, the Directors observed that for some
years past their missionary students had been trained in a variety