arising 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 attaining 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; 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 selfdenial or mortification as the procuring cause of salva. tion. 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 Acetics 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 conquered temptation, and the obedient will; and would be almost in as much danger, on the one hand, of self-righteousness arising from austerities and mortifi cation, 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 impresssion of the genius of Christianity, to possess them with a conviction that it is the purity of the motive which not only give worth and beauty, but

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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 acceptance of those "whose life the world counted madness." "De"part from me, I never knew you," is not the malediction denounced on the sceptic or the scoffer, but 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 prophecied, Rosseau 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 villifying, 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 instruction, is hu mility. 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 Christianity. This chastising quality should therefore be constantly made in education to operate as the only counteraction of that "knowledge which puff. "eth 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 what 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. 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 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 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 encomiast of the battle of the Nile may, 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 ardors of triumphs, 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 weaponsi n which we must ever vail to their decided superiority.

Above all things then you should 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 got over as well as we can, 'but which are never to be dwelt upon, take care to make these your fundamental articles. Do not 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, they present a sort of novelty and peculiarity which offend; and such readers as disuse the Bible are apt 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 Scripture phraseology.、

The persons in question are apt to acquire a kind of Pagan Christianity, which just enables them to hear 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 general terms, as they would talk of the prophet of Arabia, or the law-giver of China, of Athens, or of the Jews. But their refined ears revolt not a little at the unadorned name of Christ; and even 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 morality of a Christian. They will speak readi ly of a man's reforming, or leaving off a vicious habit, or growing more correct in some individual practice; but the expression of a total change of heart, they would stigmatize 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.