_The Manchester Baptist College_ grew out of an old society, first called the Strict Baptist Society, and afterwards the Baptist Evangelical Society. This Society was formed in the year 1844. One of its principal objects was the education of young men for the ministry. All the denominational colleges in England at that time were practically Open Communion. Professedly, they were neutral on the Communion question; but, as a matter of fact, all their neutrality was on one side. All the professors and tutors were Open Communion, and so, with few exceptions, were the ministers sent out from them. If the young were Close Communion when they entered college, they, in most cases, became Open before they left. The Regular Baptists were therefore made to feel it incumbent upon them to establish an educational institution of their own: first, that they might protect their young men who devoted themselves to the work of the ministry from influences unfriendly to their stability in the faith in which they had been taught; and, secondly, that their churches might be relieved from the necessity of choosing either an uneducated man for their pastor, or a man whose views were not in harmony with their own. Hence the action they took in the formation of the Society just referred to. The plan adopted by this Society was that of placing students who had given satisfactory evidence that they possessed grace and gifts suitable for the ministry of the gospel, and for pastoral work, separately, or in twos or threes, for a period of two or three years, under the tuitional care and guidance of some able and experienced pastor. Joseph Harbottle, of Accrington, uncle of Dr. Joseph Angus, of Regent’s Park College, London; John Shearer, of Glasgow; Dr. John Stock, of Salendine Nook, Huddersfield; and, pre-eminently, Thomas Dawson, of Liverpool, were amongst the pastors chosen for this purpose. By their personal influence, and by their devoted labors, all these good men laid the students of the Baptist Evangelical Society, and the Society itself, and the Regular Baptist cause in England generally, under deep and lasting obligation.