concerned if it should so happen that others do not altogether like them, and even see a grievous departure from the Scripture vocabulary in such words as class-leader, love-feast, &c. This is the way that he has chosen for serving God, and nothing valuable is likely to be done without following some way earnestly. If denominational attachments should be strong, sectarian prejudices can not be too weak or too few; and I should rejoice to know that never a word is said in this or any other Methodist pulpit to excite or strengthen them. Our doctrines are none of them favorable to bigotry, and we are con amore bigots, if we are bigots at all. At peace with others, and in harmony with its own order and institutions, a church at liberty to engage fully in its proper work, its means of success will bear a very exact proportion to its piety. The machine is perfect, wanting nothing, when every member is both pure and active. The ideal of a Christian church militant is then fully satisfied. Then we truly live unto Christ. We eat and drink, we work and give, to his glory. We are the light of the world, and our influence will extend far, and be effective, according to the gauge of internal godliness and external manifestation.

X.

THE RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.—PROVERbs, xxii., 6.

THERE is not in the wide world a living thing more helpless and unpromising than man in his infancy. He is feeble and dependent beyond any other animal, and for a much longer period. He is utterly unable to perform any good offices for himself. He can not defend himself against the most insignificant enemy or the most inconsiderable danger. He

must inevitably perish, upon whatever spot his frail body may happen to repose, unless some careful hand feed, protect, and cherish him. Of the tact and skill which are to form the endowment of riper years, he does not now manifest the faintest trait. He is even less gifted than brutes of his own age with the instincts which, in the absence of a higher intelligence, guide every other living creature. He breathes, utters some inarticulate sounds, swallows the simple food that is put into his mouth, and makes some unmeaning muscular movements, and that is all he can do to announce to the spectator that this embryo immortal possesses even the lowest of the attributes of things that live.

Such is man physically, at his entrance upon a career in which he is appointed to act so important a part, and fulfill so unfathomable a destiny. Nor of the higher faculties which he is to develop and exercise in after life does the slightest glimmering now appear. He exhibits nothing like character, whether good or evil. He has no reason, no conscience, no moral or immoral habits, no religion, no opinions, no ideas. His mind is a blank. His heart is a mere organ for the performance of an animal function.

Yet is there something wonderful and even sublime in this embryo man. He may become a hero, a philosopher, or a saint-a scourge, or a benefactor of his race. He is likely to become an active and competent agent in human affairs, and to perform a part in the drama of the world; and he will assuredly become a partaker either of endless life or of eternal death. Great faculties lie concealed under such unpromising aspects. They are seen by the eyes of God; "yet being unperfect, in his book are they written; they are fashioned in continuance, when as yet there is none of them." They are not substances nor powers, but merely susceptibil

To develop these latent capacities-to bring them out for action and enjoyment-to transform this helpless, insignificant thing into a good and wise man, fitted to serve

God and his generation on earth, and to enjoy him forever in heaven, is the work of education. This is a task which it has pleased God to devolve upon parents, and to it they are bound by obligations as sacred as any that rest upon a moral being.

The duty of bestowing careful, timely culture upon infancy and childhood, is clearly indicated by their exceeding delicacy and susceptibility. Physical developments will indeed. proceed very well with only the slightest attention on the part of the parent, or with none at all. The nursery, the play-ground, the field, and the work-shop, invite the bodily organs into due action, and impart vigor, skill, and activity. The intellect, too, however neglected by the teacher, imbibes knowledge from a thousand sources. Each of the senses becomes an inlet for valuable ideas. Business, social converse, human example, even inanimate nature, the sky, the air, and the earth-the elements in all their changes and activities, the vegetable kingdom-in a word, the visible world, and all that is, or is transacted, in it, become sources of instruction, which freely tender their lessons to the opening mind in contact with them, and force their teachings upon it, in its most passive states, and even in spite of indifference or reluctance. From all this it occurs, that every human being who grows up in a civilized community attains a measure of intelligence sufficient for the common purposes of life of the intelligence that guides the race in the satisfaction of its most pressing wants, and which must, on that account, rank high in comparison with that class of acquisitions and accomplishments which we are wont to dignify with the name of education. Divine Providence has thus mercifully insured to the human being such degrees of physical and mental development as are indispensable in the performance of those functions which pertain to self-preservation, and on which society is dependent for its being and material prosperity. For the higher culture, which gives the mind

enlargement, and elevation, and refinement, and opens before it a career of worthy occupations and enjoyments, years of patient labor and assiduous teaching are requisite; and parents are unquestionably bound, by all the motives which duty and affection impose, to give to their offspring the best education which their providential positions and circumstances will allow.

Without stopping to enforce, by argument or inculcation, one of the plainest and least controverted of duties, we proceed to add, that the highest of the parent's obligations finds its sphere in the moral and religious training of his offspring. The superior importance of this department of education is sufficiently apparent, from the consideration that, while both the mind and the body, left to themselves, spontaneously acquire, from their own activity, and from the business and conflicts of the world, the discipline, as well as the knowledge and skill, most valuable in the pursuits of after life, the moral susceptibilities, if neglected by parent and teacher, are always perverted and corrupted. The most careful and unremitted culture is requisite to preserve them from irreclaimable deterioration. They come to no good by any spontaneous, unguided efforts or essays of their own-they will not remain in a state of embryo or torpor till genial influences and a plastic hand woo and guide them into kindly manifestations. To let the child alone is to insure both precocity and proficiency in evil. It affords demonstrative evidence of the constitutional depravity of man, as well as of its universality, that early childhood ever betrays a strong proclivity to wrong—that it never fails of growing up in sin, except under decided counteracting influences.

This susceptibility to both moral and to demoralizing influences exists to an extent and at an age little suspected by inattentive observers. We give no countenance to the extravagant speculations of those who teach us that the character of the man, both moral and mental, is fixed in infancy,

anterior to the dawn of reason; but we think it demonstrable that the bias which shapes our earthly and eternal destinies is usually received in early childhood. This is the obvious teaching of the Holy Scriptures; and all careful observation goes to confirm it. The mind, at that early period, is exquisitely susceptible to moral impressions. The delicate surfaces on which the daguerreotype so exactly portrays the human countenance, with no pencil or colors but reflected sunbeams, are not half so impressible as the unsophisticated spirit of childhood. The mind, at that tender age, is not only open to all influences, good and bad, but it spontaneously invites them to write upon its expanding capacities their own image and superscription. It longs for impressions, as the parched corn-field for genial showers. It spreads out its tender leaves to receive them, as the green plant to the dews of heaven. As some flowers follow the sun through all his circuit, and open their gay bosom full upon his glowing, rolling orb, all day long, from morn to noon, from noon to night, so are infancy and childhood irresistibly drawn within the sphere of incessantly active influences, which must go far to fashion their manhood, and impress upon them forms of moral dignity or degradation, which will endure, ineffaceable, through eternity.

This extreme susceptibility of opening life, and its active, urgent tendency to put on the attributes of a moral character, are what demand our most profound solicitude. So strong, especially, is the tendency to evil, that, could we isolate a child so completely as to exclude all external influences whatever, whether of circumstances or direct teaching, we might yet calculate, with all certainty, that his heart would become embittered, and his life deformed, by sinful feelings and vicious habits. His own unsatisfied desires would awaken discontent. The restraints imposed by the laws and conditions of his being would generate repining and resentment. Appetite would become wanton from licentious indulgence;