February 15, I will give them in the writer's own words. Having previously forwarded to him by post a copy of my pamphlet on the Origin of Sunday Schools, he thus refers to it: "I have read the excellent tract which you have sent me with much interest and pleasure. It does you great honour. The origin and early history of Sunday Schools is a subject which your investigations have set at rest. I have also seen your useful communications in the Christian Reformer, and I think these publications will have the collateral effect of increasing the attention to, and of promoting the extension and improvement of Sunday Schools nerally. The intimation in your tract that there might be other instances of Sunday Schools in their early days, besides those which you have brought to light, instituted by private individuals, is very probable. I can mention one:-my father was a very religious, and at the same time an intelligent man; for years he had regular religious services, consisting of prayer, singing, and expounding the Scriptures practically, by himself, on Sunday evenings, to which the neighbours were invited to attend, and the room was always crowded. To these services he afterwards added a Sunday School; for he collected the children of the neighbourhood, and taught them to read the Bible, and catechised and instructed them, as he had done with his own children, in the intervals of public worship. This must have been about fifty-six years ago, as I was then at the academy of Daventry. My brothers, who were at home, remember it well. Sunday Schools at that time were not known in the town (Leicester) in which my father lived.” EDGBASTON, Near Birmingham, T. C. Jun. HYMN. THOU speakest in the thunder, Lord!- Thou speakest in the ocean's howl, Thou speakest in the lion's roar Thou speakest in the battle's crash Creation's grandest notes are thine, As manifold thy utterance, So manifold may be My sense's grasp, my spirit's power Y W. M. THE RECIPROCITY OF INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CULTURE; A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE CREDITON MECHANICS' INSTITUTE. BY WILLIAM MACCALL. THE object of all morality, of all religion, of all philosophy, is, or ought to be, the development of the individual. Every moral, or religious, or philosophical system, that does not keep the individual in view, and chiefly in view, bears on its forehead its own condemnation. Any theory, ethical or metaphysical, that does not recognize the value of the individual, needs no other proof of its falsehood. Much is said in the present age of society, of social progress, of personal renouncement for social improvement. The co-operation, the sacrifice for the advancement of the community, I shall always be the first to aid and to praise. The sublimest virtue must ever be traced by a succession of martyrdoms for humanity. But I apprehend that there is a gross mistake in most minds on this subject. What is humanity but one of the lofty idealisms which the individual endeavours to realize? When I place humanity before me, it is not this generation, or any other generation, or any number of generations, that occupies my thoughts; but out of my knowledge of human history, and my expectations of human destiny, I form an idea, and that to me is humanity. Where humanity has a meaning at all, it is as much an abstraction as poetry, or art, or science. And if it would be absurd to say that poetry is of more importance than Shakespeare, art of more importance than Michael Angelo, science of more importance than Watt, equally absurd would it be to say that humanity is of more importance than the individual. Society has claims upon us, strong and eternal, claims which it would be criminal to neglect. But the claims of society are, when properly analyzed, nothing but the claims of the individual. In the immediate circle of our everyday duties, what are the claims of society but the claims of certain persons whose wants appeal to our sympathy and justice? And in the more diffusive exertion of our activities for social melioration, though we work apparently only for a miscellaneous mass of men, yet it is still with the consciousness that that mass is composed of individuals. When we extend liberty it is with the wish that each may be freer; when we increase plenty, it is with the wish that each may have more food; when we disseminate information, it is with the wish that each may be more intelligent; when we communicate any social advantage, it is with the wish that each may more fully and perfectly unfold his individual nature. I deem it of no slight use to insist on this point, because the advocacy of human progression, like the advocacy of all bright and holy things, is apt to degenerate into cant. All the means that man has ever imagined for man's redemption, are sure to be turned into cant by the weak, and into quackery by the bad. And, perhaps, the best proof of being in the right path, which an earnest worker can have, next to his own conscience, is, that the dominant conception that pervades him should be clothed in cant by intellectual feebleness, and in quackery by moral corruption. One of the most notable things about evil is, that it cannot afford to be caricatured either morally or intellectually. To prove the assertion that humanity and human perfectibility are apt to become nothing but vague theories and meaningless words, much might be cited in the history both of nations and of persons. It is a fact which few who have read the records of our race will dispute, that those religious and political revolutions, in which abstract principles have played a prominent part, to the utter oblivion of the individual, have seldom been definite and durable in their effects, and that those men who have set out in life with transcendental chimeras respecting the career of society, have generally abandoned their early notions in disgust, and ended by being both practically and speculatively obstructives; whereas those religious and political revolutions in which abstract principles were subordinated to the importance of the individual, have been equally comprehensible in their bearings, and permanent and valu able in their results; and those men who have allowed their faith to be gradually evolved from their own hearts, and to be nurtured by a succession of tangible schemes for the benefit of their brethren, have alone remained the invincible ministers of truth. The French. Revolution was rational and sober as long as it sought simply to do justice to millions of individuals; but when it deified theory, it became madness, and was quenched in anarchy and despotism. Look at Howard; we do not hear that in his youth he indulged any extravagant enthusiasm in favour of social and political abstractions, yet he became the most distinguished philanthropist of his times, and died a martyr to his benevolence. Look at Oberlin, look at his single-minded devotedness to a number of poor peasants, to whom he was as an angel sent direct from God, and for whom his life was a ceaseless and heroic endeavour; but who more practical than this pure and noble being? Look at Williams the celebrated missionary: he probably had not a single principle of action which was not the creature of experience; yet how miraculous the results that he accomplished! Why have the English people far more accurate notions of liberty than the French? Why do they accomplish far more for the civilization of the world than the French? Because, with the English, system is the child of institutions, and with the French institutions are the offspring of systems. The political faith of the English flows from the political education of centuries; the political faith of the French is a fantastic fiction, spurning alike their national history, the history of the world, and the most obvious elements of human nature. I am willing to confess that the English character would be improved by a larger leaven of that tendency to generalize, whose excess is so striking an evil in the French. But to engraft generalization on our Saxon practicalness is a much easier task than to engraft practicalness on French generalization. However allied to abstractions the principles that a nation or an individual ultimately adopts, still they should always be preceded by principles founded exclusively on national and individual facts. The very loftiest theories that visionaries have ever dreamed of |