moral and religious objects, which like attractions drawing towards the great lodestars of existence, shall ever keep the life right and stedfast?

Now these great lodestars of the moral and religious feelings it seems to us may be stated thus:

1st. Right action or virtue. 2nd. Knowledge. 3rd. High and noble characters, comprehending also the ideal of noble life. 4th. Christ. 5th. God. 6th. Immortality. If the feelings of love and approval, reverence and aspiration, were excited in the soul towards these venerable objects, we suppose most persons would allow a large amount of moral and religious training had been effected. The great problem, then, for the teacher is how to awaken these all-mastering attractions of the soul. And how is this to be done, but by unveiling the hidden nature of these great objects, and showing those high and interesting properties in them, which surround them, to the reverential mind with a halo of beauty and worth? And if we endeavour to perform this task by adapting our procedure to the laws of the soul, we shall soon discern a most important and overruling fact, namely, that there is an order in which these objects must be presented-that there are some which cannot be appreciated but by means of the very feeling which has been awakened towards others. Our moral culture must begin with endeavouring to awaken the love and approval of right actions, and of intelligence. For how shall the mind learn to love and reverence any great soul for its preference of the right until it has learnt to know the right by experience, and to feel that it is worthy to be preferred? And then will not a reverence for worth and intelligence in nobler humanity, be a fit preparation to raise the mind to veneration for the holy Christ, and worship for the perfect God?

Moral culture must then terminate, not commence, with religion. The first work of the moral and religious teacher is to present the actions of a true and noble life before the mind in such a character as to call forth towards them the love, approval, and aspiration. And this, it seems to us, can be done only by unveiling to the mind the real properties-the consequences and relations of these actions in human life-showing how they promote happiness and well-being-how they save exceeding pain and other evil,

both to those we love and others of our brethren around— how they build up and maintain the richness and beauty of our own souls, while the opposite actions go forth to work mischief around and return to cause deformity within. To begin at this point, with these moral pictures of life, is to appeal to realities in the soul. Pictures showing happiness or higher well-being rendered to others, especially to those we love-pictures showing them subject to suffering, or other evil that we can comprehend, awaken at once our pity, or sympathy, and, with regard to those to whom we are attached, our love. These feelings become, then, associated with the actions which satisfy them, and the actions are made beautiful, desirable, to us. But further, when the child is made to contrast these feelings of pity and love which moved him to the right actions, with the inferior ones which moved him to the opposite wrong actions, then approbation, the judgment of conscience, is called forth, and the actions are not only loved but approved, i. e., felt to be right and noble, because they proceed from nobler feelings.

The great difficulty the teacher would find, even with this method, in the perishing and dangerous classes, is that these very feelings of love and pity, which are the great powers with which he is to work, are not at first with them realities. He has to create them, that is, to awaken them, by becoming himself their centre. Here we feel the full force of Miss Carpenter's observations :

"Love must be the ruling sentiment of all who attempt to influence and guide these children."

And again:

"It is love only which is the fulfiling of the law.' Love to the teacher will make what belongs to him sacred to the child, who has hitherto thought all lawful booty."

But let the teacher by unwearied kindness towards these neglected creatures, awaken in them a love towards himself, this will soon expand into a capacity of sympathy with others, and he has then in the soul the first eternal realities of a moral consciousness, on which, with care and wisdom, he may erect the noblest moral life. We can only just indicate now that it is obvious, that this moral feeling, awakened

in the child, can be raised into reverence, by directing it upon high moral characters. These will now satisfy the soul by large performance of the actions, and manifestation of the feelings, it has learnt to love and approve. Thence the feeling may be raised, by similar steps, into veneration for Christ and worship for God.

We should be glad to find that some religious and experienced mind had worked out some such ideas as these, and shown in detail how the work of moral and religious culture is to be effected. Until this is done, and the materials for the work in some degree supplied, we have little faith in Reformatory Education, or indeed in any moral or religious Education at all. Without this, establishments like those Miss Carpenter recommends, however large and costly, however well arranged and provided in other particulars, will be only like huge well-constructed machines which may go on with powerful action and display, but which unfortunately can perform nothing because they have no contact with the object which is to be moved or wrought. If our moral and religious Education is still to mean what it has meant, the perpetual attempt to rear in the soul the apex of the moral pyramid-wanting any base upon which it can repose-to fill the memory with verbal formulæ, which depend for their interpretation upon non-existent feelings-then not only do we think we shall fail to awaken in society any large zeal for such an education, but even if we could succeed in this, the utter and certain failure of our educational labours would only tend to give society an excuse for worse apathy and neglect. It would cause Education also to be deemed, as many other things are deemed in which men have believed and hoped, a mere delusion and a lie.

Miss Carpenter has shown by her account of the reformatory institutions already existing, how utterly powerless is the education there given to save from crime. After describing the condition of the "perishing and dangerous classes" of children, the necessity of reformatory education, and the first principles by which it should be guided, she reviews the Schools which are in operation, "the Evening Ragged Schools, Free Day Schools, for those whose circumstances prevent them from receiving the benefit of the British and National Schools, and Industrial Feeding

Schools, as adapted to a class below that which the Free Day School can reach." She points out, that with all its advantages, the Evening Ragged School is utterly ineffective; that Free Day Schools, "though capable of producing a sensible and important effect," yet "must be conducted in many respects very differently from the ordinary existing ones;" that there must be "some special provision for their maintenance in a healthy and active condition;" and that Industrial Feeding Schools, to have their full operation on the classes for which they are intended, must have "attendance on them enforced by magisterial authority, on all children who subject themselves to police interference; and that legislative sanction must be obtained to make such enforcement." And she further argues, in order" that due support should be secured to such Schools, as well as that the burden of maintaining the children should fall where it ought, legal sanction should be obtained for requiring from the parochial funds the allowance to which each child in the School has a claim, or from the parents who have the means of maintaining it, a similar sum ;-in all such cases, security being afforded that the Schools are properly conducted."-P. 260.

In the remaining chapters of her work, Miss Carpenter considers "the condition of those who have already received the prison brand, and who, whether as yet young in crime, or fully experienced in it, are, as the law now stands, almost certain to end their career only by receiving its highest penalty." She shows the effects of our gaol discipline, aud reviews some of the Penal Reformatory Schools which have already been established.

Miss Carpenter has given us a valuable, and we sincerely hope influential, work. Its importance consists, to us, in the impression it leaves on the mind, of the absolute necessity of the education she recommends, of our terrible neglects, and often worse than useless labours hitherto : while the earnest tone of Christian love which pervades the book, must tend to subdue the mind of the reader to sympathy with its writer, and persuade him to become with her the friend and saviour of those "who are ready to perish."

ART. VIII.-OAKELEY'S RITUAL OF THE MASS.

The Order and Ceremonial of the Most Holy and Adorable Sacrifice of the Mass. By the Rev. Frederick Oakeley, M.A. London: James Burns, Portman Street. 1848. Pp. 209.

ACCORDING to the data on which we reason, the same things shall be solemn and trivial, respectable and contemptible, reasonable and absurd. "But one step between the sublime and the ridiculous," has its counterpart in, "but the difference of one premiss between the sacred and profane." Let us believe that the bread and wine upon the table is the Body and Blood of our Creator in sacrifice, and no reverence of approach, no solemnity of preparation, no minuteness of care in handling, can possibly be too great and circumspect for the occasion. Let us believe that God is a Spirit, and that the elements on the altar are and remain exactly of the same substance as the bread and wine of our daily food, and are only in any way sanctified, as the material and symbolic vehicles of holy thoughts and pensive recollections; and then the excessive homage and scrupulousness, just spoken of, becomes so much Fetishism-a degrading worship of a common material object, shaped and moulded by our own hands and passing into our own bodies.

Whether the Book before us, then, is a manual of devout thoughts, and reverential feelings, or a collection of egregious triflings and mock solemnities, is a question, the decision of which entirely depends upon the solution of the previous question, whether the doctrine of transubstantiation be true or not. If that doctrine be rue, the book before us is a religious and suitable book-if that doctrine be false, the book is an idolatrous and absurd one-we do not mean in the mind and feelings of him who writes or him who sympathizingly reads it, but in the presence of eternal Reason and Truth. It happily is not among the number of our duties to argue upon or disCHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 53.

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