The Concordia Seminar is housed in a large, commodious building, effectively set upon high ground in the southern part of the city. It was erected and the institution is sustained by the contributions of the congregations. The interior, roomy, light, and commodious, is plain to barrenness, and has a certain monastic severity, which is matched by the discipline and the fare. In visiting it one takes a step backward into the atmosphere and theology of the sixteenth century. The ministers of the denomination are distinguished for learning and earnest simplicity. The president, a very able man, only thirty-five years of age, is at least two centuries old in his opinions, and wholly undisturbed by any of the doubts which have agitated the Christian world since the Reformation. He holds the faith “once for all” delivered to the saints. The Seminar has a hundred students. It is requisite to admission, said the president, that they be perfect Latin, Greek, and Hebrew scholars. A large proportion of the lectures are given in Latin, the remainder in German and English, and Latin is current in the institution, although German is the familiar speech. The course of study is exacting, the rules are rigid, and the discipline severe. Social intercourse with the other sex is discouraged. The pursuit of love and learning are considered incompatible at the same time; and if a student were inconsiderate enough to become engaged, he would be expelled. Each student from abroad may select or be selected by a family in the communion, at whose house he may visit once a week, which attends to his washing, and supplies to a certain extent the place of a home. The young men are trained in the highest scholarship and the strictest code of morals. I know of no other denomination which holds its members to such primitive theology and such strictness of life. Individual liberty and responsibility are stoutly asserted, without any latitude in belief. It repudiates Prohibition as an infringement of personal liberty, would make the use of wine or beer depend upon the individual conscience, but no member of the communion would be permitted to sell intoxicating liquors, or to go to a beer-garden or a theatre. In regard to the sacrament of communion, there is no authority for altering the plain directions in the Scripture, and communion without wine, or the substitution of any concoction for wine, would be a sin. No member would be permitted to join any labor union or secret society. The sacrament of communion is a mystery. It is neither transubstantiation nor consubstantiation. The president, whose use of English in subtle distinctions is limited, resorted to Latin and German in explanation of the mystery, but left the question of real and actual presence, of spirit and substance, still a matter of terms; one can only say that neither the ordinary Protestant nor the Catholic interpretation is accepted. Conversion is not by any act or ability of man; salvation is by faith alone.