6

sary. 'Stern punctuality in a family,' says our author, effected by force of statutes and penalties, indicates a low temperament of the affections. Let there be, as matter of convenience, the ringing of the bell at certain times, but the bell should not sound in the ears of children as a token of dismay the minute hand of the clock may be referred to, for guidance, but it should not, in the eyes of children, be invested with terrors, as if it were Old Time's iron sceptre.' (p. 75.)

We must not close our observations on our author's third chapter without quoting the following important passage:

'I cannot avoid a passing reference to the fact of the very happy influence of a due and fervent attendance upon religious exercises, public and private, in bringing the mind home to its resting and to its starting points, and in favouring its recovery of that clearness and freshness of perception, and of that well-poised self-control and easy appliancy, which are lost in a course of severe application. I am prepared to affirm that, to the studious especially, and whether younger or older, A SUNDAY WELL SPENT— spent in happy exercises of the heart, devotional and domestic; a Sunday given to the SOUL, is the best of all means of refreshment for the mere intellect: a Sunday so passed is a liquefaction of the entire nature-a dispersive process, dispelling mental cramps and stagnations, and enabling every single faculty to get its due in the general diffusion of the intellectual power.' (p. 77.)

Doubts have sometimes been felt what restraint should be imposed on children, while not of an age to devote the Lord's day, or the whole of it, to its

proper purposes. To debar children of such an age from amusing themselves can have no other effect than to convert the day, which should be a day of holy joy, into a day of gloom; and has an obvious tendency to give an early distaste for the day, and even for the services of religion. Nor can it be our Lord's will to require such abstinence from those who as yet are unable to profit by the sacred employments of the Sabbath, and to whom even reading is labour. But, at a very early age, the child may be made to understand that the day is set apart by God as a day of rest from worldly labour, as a day for reading his holy word and worshipping him at home and at church: and that the child, though at present unable to devote the day to religious duties, should as little as may be interfere with its being so employed by those about him. The child may be taught, on that day, to choose (from consideration for others) such amusements as will least disturb them; and, when thus instructed with kindness and affection, will soon abstain, on the Lord's day, from noisy play, and ere long put away on the Saturday night those toys which cannot be used without withdrawing others from the appropriate employments of the Sabbath. The child, as it grows older and can read with ease, will altogether lay aside toys and resort to books on the Sunday. Then should care be taken to supply the child's library with books; and happily the present age furnishes many books which, while they are calculated to interest the young mind, supply religious instruction and instil Christian principles. Not that it will be necessary, at an early age, rigidly to forbid the reading of other books-the child, seeing that others in the family select for Sunday reading

particular books, will soon inquire which of his own books are fit for the Lord's day, and will of his own accord read them, and not others, on that day.

(To be continued.)

ANTIQUITY OF THE CHURCH OF THE
VALLENSES.

THAT neither the Vallensic nor the Albigensic churches could have been founded by Peter, of Lyons, is fully established by the unanimous testimony to their high antiquity, which is borne even by the writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The first evidence is the official testimony of an inquisitor, (Reinerus Saccho, once himself a Vallensian, and afterwards an apostatic persecutor of his former brethren) now or lately preserved in the public library of the University of Cambridge. This person states, that when, in the thirteenth century, the Albigenses were driven, by the Crusaders, from the south of France, they fled to the valleys of the Alps. Here they joined themselves to a community, professing the same religious sentiments as their own, which community is described by the inquisitor, as having then existed in the Piedmontese valleys of the diocese of Turin, from a period far beyond the memory of man.-Extract from Faber's Sacred Calendar of Prophecy.

THE IDOL SELF.

WHY sits the prophet alone, without the gate? Nineveh, that great city,' rejoiceth still in her prosperity. Why then casts he anxious and foreboding eyes on the heavens and the earth? No fiery storm hath covered the face of the heavens; the sun shines forth in the midst of an eastern sky, such an one perhaps as that whose depth of light the Psalmist might have looked upon, when he uttered that glorious proverb, "Commit thy way unto the Lord.... And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noon-day." (Psalm xxxvii. 5, 6.) The earth, glad in its beauty, is covered with the rich luxuriance of an eastern landno fearful chasm has been rent in it-it opens not to swallow up the guilty city-no hostile army is encamped against the walls; without is security, within is peace. The pardon hath been decreed: "God saw their works, that they turned from their evil ways: and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not .... But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." (Jonah iii. 10; iv. 1.) What! would he rather that a vast city should perish in utter destruction, than that the words of his prophecy should fail? We stand appalled perhaps at the thought; but without seeking to look further into the prophet's heart, let us leave him with that merciful God, whose

reproof of gracious compassion was conveyed only in the withering of a gourd; and consider how far we also, to gratify the feelings, the honour, or the love of self, have not often been displeased with the purposes of his eternal wisdom, and 'very angry.'

Deep in the recesses of the human heart reigns the idol self; there, adorned with every ornament that vanity and delusion can furnish it with, and exalting itself alike above the love of God and the love of man, it is fed with all the daily incense that can be procured for it by the soul, which would sometimes, if possible, turn the world from its course, rather than that offering should cease, or the altars of its idol be thrown down; but when the heart is purified to become the temple of the Lord, the idol must be utterly removed and taken away. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart....Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.....On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." The spirit of love is incompatible with the spirit of selfishness.

We did not come into this world to please ourselves, nor have we any right to consider that our own happiness in it is to be the ultimate end of our endeavours. Our Saviour represents us as those whose talents are lent upon trust-as labourers in a vineyard not our own-as stewards of a master's property as servants performing their appointed tasks, and waiting for their rest until the coming of their Lord therefore, in the common events, in the everyday course of our lives, we should consider, not how we are to please ourselves, but how we are to please our God. "If any man will come after me," says our Saviour," let him deny himself, and take up his