coin resembles sterling gold; they may have, it is true, certain points of resemblance with the others; they may be bright and shining they have perhaps the image and the superscription. but they ever want the true distinguishing pro perties; they want sterling value, purity, and weight. They may indeed pass current in the traffic of this world, but when brought to the touchstone, they will be found full of alloy when weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, that final trial which is to separate' the precious from the vile; they will not abide the day of his coming who is like a refiner's fire.' ward mischief, yet the malignity remains within; but when sanctified by Christianity, the imagination is a lion tamed; you have all the benefit of its strength and its activity, divested of its mischief. God never bestowed that noble but restless faculty, without intending it to be an instrument of his own glory; though it has been too often set up in rebellion against him; because, in its youthful stirrings, while all alive and full of action, it has not been seized upon to serve its rightful Sovereign, but was early en-they will be found wanting,' they will not stand listed with little opposition under the banners of the world, the flesh, and the devil! Religion is the only subject in which, under the guidance of a severe and sober-minded prudence, this discursive faculty can safely stretch its powers and expand its energies! But let it be remembered, that it must be a sound and genuine Christianity which can alone so chastise and regulate the imagination, as to restrain it from those errors and excesses into which a false, a mistaken, an irregular religion, has too often led its injudicious and ill-instructed professor. Some of the most fatal extremes into which a wild enthusiasm or a frightful superstition has plunged its unhappy votaries, have been owing to the want of a due direction, to the want of a strict and holy castigation of this ever-working faculty. To secure imagination, therefore, on the safe side, and, if I may change the metaphor, to put it under the direction of its true pilot, in the stormy voyage of life, is like engaging those potent elements, the wind and tide in your fa vour. In your communications with young people, take caro to convince them that as religion is not a business to be laid aside with the lesson, so neither is it a single branch of duty; some detached thing, which like the acquisition of an art or a language, is to be practised separately, and to have its distinct periods and modes of operation. But let them understand, that common acts, by the spirit in which they are to be performed, are to be made acts of religion. Let them perceive that Christianity may be considered as having something of that influence over the conduct, which external grace has over the manners; for as it is not the performance of some particular act which denominates any one to be graceful, grace being a spirit diffused through the whole system, which animates every sentiment, and informs every action; as she who has true personal grace has it uniformly, and is not sometimes awkward and sometimes elegant; does not sometimes lay it down and sometimes take it up; so religion is not an occasional act, but an indwelling principle, an inwrought habit, a pervading and informing spirit, from which indeed every act derives all its life, and energy, and beauty. Give them clear views of the broad discrimination between practical religion and worldly morality; in short, between the virtues of Christians and of Pagans. Show them that no good qualities are genuine, but such as flow from the re.igion of Christ. Let them learn that the virtues which the better sort of people, who are yet destitute of true Christianity, inculcate and practise, resemble those virtues which have the love of God for their motive, just as counterfeit One error into which even some good people are apt to fall, is that endeavouring to deceive young minds by temporising expedients. In order to allure them to become religious, they exhibit false, or faint, or inadequate views of Christianity; and while they represent it as it really is, as a life of superior happiness and advantage, they conceal its difficulties, and like the jesuitical Chinese missionaries, extenuate, or sink, or deny, such parts of it as are least alluring to human pride. In attempting to disguise its principles, they destroy its efficacy. They deny the cross instead of making it the badge of a Christian. But besides that, the project fails with them as it did with the Jesuits; all fraud is bad in itself; and a pious fraud is a contradiction in terms, which ought to be buried in the rubbish of papal desolation. Instead of representing to the young Chriz tian, that it may be possible by a prudent inge nuity at once to pursue, with equal ardour and success, worldly fame and eternal glory, would it not be more honest to tell him fairly and unambiguously that there are two distinct roads between which there is a broad boundary line? that there are two contending and irreconcilable interests? that he must forsake the one if he would cleave to the other? that 'there are two masters,' both of whom it is impossible to serve? that there are two sorts of characters at eternal variance? that he must renounce the one if he is in earnest for the other? that nothing short of absolute decision can make a confirmed Christian? Point out the different sorts of promises annexed to these different sorts of characters. Confess in the language of Christ how the man of the world often obtains (and it is the natural course of human things) the recompence he sedulously seeks. Verily I say unto you they have their reward.' Explain the beatitudes on the other hand, and unfold what kind of specific reward is there individually promised to its concomitant virtue. Show your pupil that to that poverty of spirit' to which the kingdom of heaven' is promised, it would be inconsistent to expect that the recompence of human commen. dation should be also attached; that to that 'purity of heart' to which the beatific vision is annexed, it would be unreasonable to suppose you can unite the praise of licentious wits, or the admiration of a catch-club. These will be bestowed on their appropriate and corresponding merit. Do not enlist them under false colours disappointment will produce a desertion. Dif. ferent sorts of rewards are attached to different sorts of services; and while you truly assert that Religion's ways are ways of pleasantness, and | to think that the Christian alone should obtain all her paths are peace,' take care that you do a triumph without a warfare? the highest prize not lead them to depend too exclusively on with the lowest exertion? an eternal crowr worldly happiness and earthly peace, for these without a present cross? and that heaven is the make no part of the covenant; they may be, only reward which the idle may reckon upon and they often are, superadded, but they were No: though salvation be the gift of God,' yet never stipulated in the contract. it must be worked out. Convince your young But if, in order to attract the young to a re- friends, however, that in this case the difficulty ligious course, you disingenuously conceal its of the battle bears no proportion to the prize of difficulties, while you are justly enlarging upon the victory. In one respect, indeed, the point its pleasures, you will tempt them to distrust of resemblance between worldly and Christian the truth of Scripture itself. For what will pursuits fails, and that most advantageously for they think, not only of a few detached texts, but the Christian; for while, even by the most proof the general cast and colour of the Gospel bable means, which are the union of talents when contrasted with your representation of it? with diligence, no human prosperity can be inWhen you are describing to them the insepara-sured to the worldly candidate; while the most ble human advantages which will follow a religious course, what notion will they conceive of the strait gate' and 'narrow way?' of the amputation of a right hand?' of the excision of a right eye?' of the other strong metaphors by which the Christian warfare is shadowed out? of crucifying the flesh?' of mortifying the old man?' of dying unto sin ?' of overcoming the world? Do you not think their meek and compassionate Saviour who died for your children, loved them as well as you love them? And if this were his language, ought it not to be yours? It is the language of true love; of that love with which a merciful God loved the world, when he spared not his own Son. Do not fear to tell your children what he told his disciples, that in the world they shall have tribulation; but teach them to rise superior to it, on his principle, by 'overcoming the world.' Do not then try to Beware at the same time of setting up any act conceal from them, that the life of a Christian of self-denial or mortification as the procuring is necessarily opposite to the life of the world; cause of salvation. This would be a presump and do not seek by a vain attempt at accommo-tuous project to purchase that eternal life which dation to reconcile that difference which Christ himself has pronounced to be irreconcilable. May it not be partly owing to the want of a due introduction to the knowledge of the real nature and spirit of religion, that so many young Christians, who set out in a fair and flourishing way, decline and wither when they come to perceive the requisitions of experimental christianity? requisitions which they had not suspected of making any part of the plan; and from which, when they afterwards discover them, they shrink back, as not prepared and hardened for the unexpected contest. successful adventurer may fail by the fault of another; while the best concerted project of the statesman may be crushed; the bravest hero lose the battle; the brightest genius fail of getting bread; and while moreover, the pleasure arising even from success in these may be no sooner tasted than it is poisoned by a more prosperous rival; the persevering Christian is safe and certain of obtaining his object; no misfortunes can defeat his hope; no competition can endanger his success; for though another gain, he will not lose; nay, the success of another, so far from diminishing his gain, is an addition to it; the more he diffuses, the richer he grows his blessings are enlarged by communication; and that mortal hour which cuts off for ever the hopes of worldly men, crowns and consummates his. is declared to be the free gift of God.' This would be to send your children, not to the Gospel to learn their christianity, but to the monks and ascetics of the middle ages; it would bo sending them to Peter the hermit, and the holy fathers of the desert, and not to Peter the apos tle and his Divine Master. Mortification is not the price; it is nothing more than the discipline of a soul of which sin is the disease, the diet prescribed by the great Physician. Without this guard the young devout Christian would be led to fancy that abstinence, pilgrimage and penance might be adopted as the cheap substitute for the subdued desire, the resisted temptation, the conquered corruption, and the obedient will, and would be almost in as much danger, on the one hand, of self-righteousness arising from austerities and mortification, as she would be, on the other, from self-gratification in the indulgences of the world. And while you carefully impress on her the necessity of living a life of strict obedience if she would please God, do not neglect to remind her also that a complete renunciation of her own performances as a groun of merit, purchasing the favour of God by thei: own intrinsic worth, is included in that obe People are no more to be cheated into religion than into learning. The same spirit which in fluences your oath in a court of justice should influence your discourse in that court of equity -your family. Your children should be told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the ath. It is unnecessary to add, that it must be domne gradually and discreetly. We know whose example we have for postponing that which the nind is not yet prepared to receive: 'I have many things yet to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now.' Accustom them to reason by analogy. Explain to them that great worldly attainments are never made without great sa-dience. crifices; that the merchant cannot become rich It is of the last importance in stamping or without industry; the statesman eminent without labour; the scholar learned without study; the hero renowned without danger: would it not then, on human principles, bo unreasonable young minds a true impression of the genius of christianity, to possess them with a conviction. that it is the purity of the motive which not only gives worth and beauty, but which, in a Chris tian sense gives life and soul to the best action; nay, that while a right intention will be acknowledged and accepted at the final judgment, even without the act, the act itself will be disowned which wanted the basis of a pure design. Thou didst well that it was in thy heart to build me a temple,' said the Almighty to that monarch, whom yet he permitted not to build it. How many splendid actions will be rejected in the great day of retribution, to which statues and monuments have been raised on earth, while their almost deified authors shall be as much confounded at their own unexpected reprobation, as at the Divine acceptance of those whose life the world counted madness.' It is worthy of remark, that Depart from me, I never knew you,' is not the malediction denounced on the sceptic, or the scoffer, or the profligate, and the libertine, but on the high professor, on the unfruitful worker of miracles,' on the unsanctified utterer of prophecies;' for even acts of piety wanting the purifying principle, however they may dazzle men, offend God. Cain sacrificed, Balaam prophesied, Rousseau wrote the most sublime panegyric on the Son of Mary, VOLTAIRE BUILT A CHURCH! nay, so superior was his affectation of sanctity, that he ostentatiously declared, that while others were raising churches to saints, there was one man at least who would erect his church to God :* that God whose altars he was overthrowing, whose name he was villify. ing, whose gospel he was exterminating, and the very name of whose Son he had solemnly pledged himself to blot from the face of the earth! Though it be impossible here to enumerate all those Christian virtues which should be impressed in the progress of a Christian education, yet in this connexion I cannot forbear mentioning one which more immediately grows out of the subject; and to remark that the principle which should be the invariable concomitant of all instruction, and especially of religious in. struction, is humility. As this temper is inculcated in every page of the Gospel, as it is deducible from every precept and every action of Christ; that is a sufficient intimation that it should be made to grow out of every study, that it should be grafted on every acquisition. It is the turning point, the leading principle in. dicative of the very genius, of the very being of Christianity. The chastising quality should therefore be constantly made in education to operate as the only counteraction of that know. ledge which puffeth up.'-Youth should be taught that as humility is the discriminating characteristic of our religion, therefore a proud Christian, a haughty disciple of a crucified Master, furnishes perhaps a stronger opposition in terms than the whole compass of language can exhibit. They should be taught that humility being the appropriate grace of Christianity, is precisely the thing which makes Christian and pagan virtues essentially different. The virtues of the Romans, for instance, were obviously founded in pride; as a proof of this, they had not even a word in their copious language to express humility, but what was used in a bad sense, and conveyed the idea of meanness or vile*Deo erexit Voltaire, is the inscription affixed by himself on his church at Ferney. | ness, of baseness and servility Christianity su stands on its own single ground, is so far from as similating itself to the spirit of other religions, that, unlike the Roman emperor, who, though he would not become, a Christian, yet ordered that the image of Christ should be set up in the pantheon with those of the heathen gods, and be wor shipped in common with them; Christianity not only rejects all such partnerships with other reli. gions, but it pulls down their images, defaces their temples, tramples on their honours, founds its own existence on the ruins of spurious religions and spurious virtues, and will be every thing when it is admitted to be any thing. Will it be going too much out of the way to observe, that Christian Britain retaliates upon pagan Rome? For if the former used humility in a bad sense, has not the latter learnt to use pride in a good one? May we without imperti. nence venture to remark, that in the deliberations of as honourable and upright political assemblies as ever adorned, or, under Providence upheld a country; in orations which leave us nothing to envy in Attic or Ronan eloquence in their best days; it were to be wished that we did not borrow from Rome an epithet which suited the genius of her religion as much as it militates against ours? The panegyrist of the battle of Marathon, of Platea, or of Zama, might with propriety speak of a proud day,' or a proud event,' or a ' proud success.' But surely the Christian encomiasts of the battle of the Nile, might, from their abundance, select an epithet better appropriated to such a victorya victory which, by preserving Europe, has per haps preserved that religion which sets its foo on the very neck of pride, and in which the conqueror himself, even in the first ardours of triumph, forgot not to ascribe the victory to ALMIGHTY GOD. Let us leave to the enemy both the terms and the thing; arrogant words being the only weapons in which we must ever vail to their decided superiority. As we must despair of the victory, let us disdain the contest. Above all things then you should beware that your pupils do not take up with a vague, gencral, and undefined religion, but look to it that their Christianity be really the religion of Christ. Instead of slurring over the doctrines of the Cross, us disreputable appendages to our religion, which are to be disguised or got over as well as we can, but which are never to be dwelt upon, take care to make these your grand fundamental articles. Do not dilute or explain away these doctrines, and by some elegant periphrasis hint at a Saviour instead of making him the foundation-stone of your system. Do not convey primary, and plain, and awful, and indispensable truths elliptically, I mean as something that is to be understood without being expressed; nor study fashionable circumlocutions to avoid names and things on which our salvation hangs, in order to prevent your discourse from being offensive. Persons who are thus instructed in religion with more good-breeding than seriousness and simplicity, imbibe a dis. taste for plain scriptural language: and the Scriptures themselves are so little in use with a certain fashionable class of readers, that wher the doctrines and language of the Bible occa other the model for their supplications. By this confused and indistinct beginning, they set out with a perplexity in their ideas which is not always completely disentangled in more ad. vanced life. sionally occur in other authors, or in conversa-, the one is the confession of their faith, and the tion, they present a sort of novelty and peculiarity which offend; and such readers as disuse the Bible, are apt from a supposed delicacy of taste, to call that precise and puritanical, which is in fact sound and scriptural. Nay, it has everal times happened to the author to hear persons of sense and learning ridicule insulated sentiments and expressions that have fallen in their way, which they would have treated with decent respect, had they known them to be, as they really were, texts of Scripture. This ob-nishes valuable materials for a distinct lecture. servation is hazarded with a view to enforce the importance of early communicating religious Knowledge, and of infusing an early taste for the venerable phraseology of Scripture. The persons in question thus possessing a kind of pagan Christianity, are apt to acquire a sort of a pagan expression also, which just enables them to speak with complacency of the 'Deity,' of a 'first cause,' and of conscience.' Nay, some may even go so far as to talk of the Founder of our religion,' of the Author of Christianity,' in the same general terms, as they would talk of the prophet of Arabia, or the lawgiver of China, of Athens, or of the Jews. But their refined ears revolt not a little at the un dorned name of Christ, and especially the naked and unqualified term of our Saviour, or Redeemer, carries with it a queerish, inelegant, not to say suspicious sound. They will express a serious disapprobation of what is wrong, under the moral term of vice, or the forensic term of crime; but they are apt to think that the Scripture term of sin has something fanatical in it and, while they discover a respect for moality, they do not much relish holiness, which is indeed the specific and only morality of a Christian.--They will speak readily of a man's reforming, or leaving off a vicious habit, or growing more correct in some individual practice; but the idea conveyed under any of the Scripture phrases signifying a total change of heart, they would stigmatize as the very shib. boleth of a sect, though it is the language of a Liturgy they affect to admire and of a Gospel which they profess to receive. CHAP. XIII. An intelligent mother will seize the first occa sion which the child's opening understanding shall allow, for making a little course of lec. tures on the Lord's Prayer, taking every divi. sion or short sentence separately; for each fur The child should be led gradually through every part of this divine composition; she should be taught to break it into all the regular divisions, into which indeed it so naturally resolves itself. She should be made to comprehend one by one each of its short but weighty sentences; to amplify and spread them out for the purpose of better understanding them, not in their most extensive and critical sense, but in their most simple and obvious meaning. For in those condensed and substantial expressions every word is an ingot and will bear beating out; so that the teacher's difficulty will not so much be what she shall say as what she shall suppress; so abundant is the expository matter which this succinct pattern suggests. When the child has a pretty good conception of the meaning of each division, she should then be made to observe the connexion, relation and dependance of the several parts of this prayer one upon another; for there is a great method and connexion in it.-We pray that the 'kingdom of God may come,' as the best means to 'hallow his name ;' and that by us, the obedient subjects of his kingdom, his will may be done.' A judicious interpreter will observe how logically and consequently one clause grows out of another, though she will use neither the word logical nor consequence; for all explanations should be made in the most plain and familiar terms, it being words, and not things, which commonly perplex children, if, as it sometimes happens, the teacher, though not wanting sense, wants perspicuity and simplicity.* The young person from being made a complete mistress of this short composition (which as it is to be her guide and model through life, too much pains cannot be bestowed on it) will have a clearer conception, not only of its indi. vidual contents, but of prayer in general, than Hints suggested for furnishing young persons many ever attain, though their memory has been with a scheme of prayer. THOSE who are aware of the inestimable value of prayer themselves, will naturally be anxious not only that this duty should be earnestly inculcated on their children, but that they should be taught it in the best manner; and such parents need little persuasion or counsel on the subject. Yet children of decent and orderly (I will not say of strictly religious) families are often so superficially instructed in this important business, that when they are asked what pray. ers they use, it is not unusual for them to answer, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed.' And even some who are better taught, are not always made to understand with sufficient clearness the specific distinction between the two; that perhaps loaded with long and unexplained forms, which they have been accustomed to swallow in the lump without scrutiny and without discrimination. Prayer should not be so swallowed. It is a regular prescription which should stand analysis and examination: it is not a charm, the successful operation of which depends on your blindly taking it, without knowing what is in it, and in which the good you receive is promoted by your ignorance of its contents. It might perhaps be a safe rule to establish for prayer in general, to suspect that any petition which cannot in some shape or other be accommodated to the spirit of some part of this prayer may not be right to be adopted. Here, temporal things are kept in their due subordina tion; they are asked for moderately, as an acknowledg ment of our dependance and of God's power for out heavenly Father knoweth that we have need of thes things." I would have it understood that by these little, comments, I do not mean that the child should be put to learn dry, and to her unintelligible expositions; but that the exposition is to be colloquial. And here I must remark in general, that the teacher is sometimes unreasonably apt to relieve herself at the child's expense, by loading the memory of a little creature on occasions in which far other faculties should be put in exercise. The child herself should be made to furnish a good part of this extemporaneous commentary by her answers; in which answers she will be much assisted by the judgment the teacher uses in her manner of questioning. And the youthful understanding, when its powers are properly set at work, will soon strengthen by exercise, so as to furnish reasonable if not very correct answers. Written forms of prayer are not only useful and proper, but indispensably necessary to begin with. But I will hazard the remark, that if children are thrown exclusively on the best forms, if they are made to commit them to memory like a copy of verses, and to repeat them in a dry, customary way, they will produce little ef fect on their minds. They will not understand what they repeat, if we do not early open to them the important scheme of prayer. Without such an clementary introduction to this duty, they will afterwards be either ignorant or enthusiasts, or both. We should give them knowledge before we can expect them to make much progress in piety, and as a due preparative to it: Christian instruction in this resembling the Sun, who, in the course of his communications, gives light before he gives heat. And to labour to excite a spirit of devotion without first infusing that knowledge out of which it is to grow, is practically reviving the popish maxim, that ignorance is the mother of devotion, and virtually adopting the popish rule of praying in an unknown tongue. self. And if they are first taught that important truth, that as needy creatures they want help which may be done by some easy analogy, they will easily be led to understand how naturally petition forms a most considerable branch of prayer: and divine grace being among the things for which they are to petition, this naturally suggests to the mind the doctrine of the influ ences of the Holy Spirit. And when to this is added the conviction which will be readily work ed into an ingenuous mind, that as offending creatures they want pardon, the necessity of confession will easily be made intelligible to them. But they should be brought to understand that it must not be such a general and vague confession as awakens no sense of personal humiliation, as excites no recollection of their own more peculiar and individual faults. But it must be confession founded on selfknowledge, which is itself to arise out of the practice of self-examination: for want of this sort of discriminating habit, a well-meaning but ill-instructed girl may be caught confessing the sins of some other person and omitting those which are more especially her own. On the gladness of heart natural to youth, it will be less difficult to impress the delightful duty of thanksgiving, which forms so considerable a branch of prayer. In this they should be habitua.ed to recapitulate not only their general, but to enumerate their peculiar, daily, and incidental mercies, in the same specific manner as they should have been taught to detail their individual and personal wants in the petitionary, and their faults in the confessional part. The same warmth of feeling which will more readily dispose them to express their gratitude to God in thanksgiving, will also lead them more gladly to express their love to their parents and friends, by adopting another indispensable, and, to an affectionate heart, pleasing part of prayer, which is inter cesssion. Children, let me again observe, will not attend When they had been made, by a plain and to their prayers if they do not understand them; perspicuous mode of instruction, fully to underand they will not understand them, if they are stand the different nature of all these; and not taught to analyze, to dissect them, to know when they clearly comprehend that adoration, their component parts, and to methodise them. self-dedication, confession, petition, thanksgiv It is not enough to teach them to considering, and intercession, are distinct heads, which prayer under the general idea that it is an ap. plication to God for what they want, and an acknowledgment to Him for what they have. This, though true in the gross, is not sufficiently precise and correct. They should learn to define and to arrange all the different parts of prayer. And as a preparative to prayer itself, they should be impressed with as clear an idea as their capacity and the nature of the subject will admit, of Him with whom they have to do.' fis omnipresence is perhaps, of all his attrihutes, that of which we may make the first practical use, Every head of prayer is founded on me great scriptural truths, which truths the little analysis here suggested will materially assist to fix in their minds. On the knowledge that God is,' that he is an Infinitely Holy Being, and that he is the rewarder of all them that diligently seek him,' will be grounded the first part of prayer, which adoration. The creature, devoting itself to une Creator, or self-dedication, ncxt presents itVOL. I. must not be involved in each other, you may exemplify the rules by pointing out to them these successivo branches in any well written form. And they will easily discern, that ascrip. tion of glory to that God to whom we owe so much, and on whom we so entirely depend, is the conclusion into which a Christian's prayer will naturally resolve itself. It is hardly need ful to remind the teacher that our truly Scriptural Liturgy invariably furnishes the example of presenting every request in the name of the great Mediator. For there is no access to the Throne of grace but by that new and living way. In the liturgy too they will meet with the best ex emplifications of prayers, exhibiting separate specimens of each of the distinct heads we have seen suggesting. But in order that the minds of young persons may, without labour or difficulty, be gradually brought into such a state of preparation as to be benefitted by such a little course of lectures as we have recommended they should, from |