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 try to conceal from them, that the life of a Christian is necessarily opposite to the life of the world; and do not seek, by a vain attempt at accommodation, to reconcile that difference which Christ himself has pronounced to be irreconcileable.

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.

People are no more to be cheated into religion than into learning. The same spirit which influences 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 truth. It is unnecessary to add, that it must be done gradually and discreetly. We know whose example we have for postponing that which the mind 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 sacrifices; that the merchant cannot become rich without industry; the statesman eminent without labour; the scholar learned without study ; the hero renowned without danger: would it not then, on human principles, be unreasonable to think that the Christian alone should obtain a triumph without a warfare? the highest prize, with the lowest exertions? an eternal crown, without a present cross? and that heaven is the only reward which the idle may reckon upon? No: though salvation “be the gift of God," yet it must be "worked out." Convince your young friends, however, that in this case the difficulty of the battle bears no proportion to the prize of the victory. In one respect, indeed, the point of resemblance between worldly and Christian pursuits fails, and that most advantageously for the Christian: for while, even by the most probable means, which are the union of talents with diligence, no human prosperity can be insured to the worldly candidate; while the most 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.

Beware at the same time of setting up any act of self-denial or mortification as the procuring cause of salvation. This would be a presumptuous project to purchase that eternal life which 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 be sending them to Peter the hermit, and the holy fathers of the desert, and not to Peter the apostle 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 ground of merit, purchasing the favour of God by their own intrinsic worth, is included in that obedience.

It is of the last importance, in stamping on 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 Christian 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, on 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 caurch! 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 vilifying, whose gospel he was exterminating, and the *Deo, erexit Voltaire," To God, erected by Voltaire," is the inscription affixed by himself on his church at Ferney.

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 instruction, 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 indicative of the very genius, of the very being of Christianity. This chastising quality should therefore be constantly made in education to operate as the only counteraction of that "knowledge 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 vileness, of baseness and servility. Christianity so stands on its own single ground, is so far from assimilating 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 worshipped in common with them ; Christianity not only rejects all such partnerships with other religions, 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 everything when it is admitted to be anything.

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 impertinence 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 Roman 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 that of 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 victory-a victory which, by preserving Europe, has perhaps preserved that religion which sets its foot 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 term and the thing;

arrogant words being the only weapons in which we must ever vail to their decided superiority. As we most despair of the victory, let us disdain the contest.

Above all things, you must beware that your pupils do not take up with a vague, general, 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, as 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 distaste for plain scriptural language; and the scriptures themselves are so little in use with a certain fashionable class of readers, that when the doctrines and language of the Bible occasionally occur in other authors, or in conversation, 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 several 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 observation 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 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 unadorned name of Christ; and especially the naked and unqualified term of our Saviour, or Redeemer, carries with it a queerish, inelegant, not to say a 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 great respect for morality, 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 stigmatise as the very shibboleth of a sect, though it is the language of a liturgy they affect to admire, and of a gospel which they profess to receive.

CHAPTER XIII.

Hints suggested for furnishing young persons 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 prayers 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 the one is the confession of their faith, and the 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 advanced life.

An intelligent mother will seize the first occasion which the child's opening understanding shall allow, for making a little course of lectures on the Lord's prayer, taking every division or short sentence separately; for each furnishes valuable materials for a distinct lecture. 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 dependence of the several parts of this prayer one upon another; for there is 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

*It might, perhaps, be a false 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 subordination; they are asked for moderately, as an acknowledgment of our dependence and of God's power; "for our heavenly Father knoweth that we have need of these things."