important particulars are brought out in a strong light, not only fixes attention, but often carries a truth farthest into the soul.

Another rule is, Lay the chief stress on what is most important in religion. Do not conduct the child over the Gospels as over a dead level. Seize on the great points, the great ideas. Do not confound the essential and the unessential, or insist with the same earnestness on grand, comprehensive, lifegiving truths and on disputable articles of faith. Immense injury is done by teaching doubtful or secondary doctrines as if they were the weightiest matters of Christianity; for, as time rolls over the child, and his mind unfolds, he discovers that one and another dogma, which he was taught to regard as fundamental, is uncertain if not false, and his skepticism is apt to spread from this weak point over the whole Christian system. Make it your aim to fix in your pupils the grand principles in which the essence of Christianity consists, and which all time and experience serve to confirm; and, in doing this, you will open the mind to all truth as fast as it is presented in the course of Providence.

Another rule is, Carry a cheerful spirit into religious teaching. Do not merely speak of Christianity as the only fountain of happiness. Let your tones and words bear witness to its benignant, cheering influence. Youth is the age of joy and hope, and nothing repels it more than gloom. Do not array religion in terror. Do not make God a painful thought by speaking of him as present only to see and punish sin. Speak of his fatherly interest in the young with a warm heart and a beaming eye, and encourage their filial approach and prayers. On this part, however, you must beware of sacrificing truth to the desire of winning your pupil. Truth, truth in her severest as well as mildest forms, must be placed before the young. Do not, to attract them to duty, represent it as a smooth and flowery path. Do not tell them that they can become good, excellent, generous, holy, without effort and pain. Teach them that the sacrifice of self-will, of private interest and pleasure, to other's rights and happiness, to the dictates of conscience, to the will of God, is the very essence of piety and goodness. But at the same time teach them, that there is a pure, calm joy, an inward peace, in surrendering every thing to duty, which can be found in no selfish success. Help them to sympathize with the toils, pains, sacrifices of the philanthropist, the martyr, the patriot, and inspire contempt of fear and peril in adhering to truth and God.

I will add one more rule. Speak of duty, of religion, as something real, just as you speak of the interests of this life. Do not speak, as if you were repeating words received from tradition, but as if you were talking of things, which you have seen and known. Nothing attracts old and young more than a tone of reality, the natural tone of strong conviction. Speak to them of God as a real being, of heaven as a real state, of duty as a real obligation. Let them see, that you regard Christianity as intended to bear on real and common life, that you expect every principle which you teach to be acted out, to be made a rule in the concerns of every day. Show the application of Christianity to the familiar scenes and pursuits of life. Bring it out to them as the Great Reality. So teach, and you will not teach in vain.

In all

I have thus set before you the principles, on which Sunday schools should rest, and by which they should be guided. If they shall, in any degree, conform to these principles, and I trust they will, you cannot, my friends, cherish them with too much care. Their purpose cannot be spoken of too strongly. Their end is, the moral and religious education of the young, and this is the most pressing concern of our times. times, indeed, it has strong claims; but it was never, perhaps, so important as now, and never could its neglect induce such fearful consequences. The present is a season of great peril to the rising generation. It is distinguished by a remarkable developement of human power, activity, and freedom. The progress of science has given men a new control of nature, and in this way has opened new sources of wealth and multiplied the means of indulgence, and in an equal degree multiplied temptations to worldliness, cupidity, and crime. Our times are still more distinguished by the spirit of liberty and innovation. Old institutions and usages, the old restraints on the young, have been broken down. Men of all conditions and ages think, speak, write, act, with a freedom unknown before. Our times have their advantages. But we must not hide from ourselves our true position. This increase of power and freedom, of which I have spoken, tends, in the first instance, to unsettle moral principles, to give to men's minds a restlessness, a want of stability, a wildness of opinion, an extravagance of desire, a bold, rash, reckless spirit. These are times of great moral danger. Outward restraints are removed to an

unprecedented degree, and consequently there is a need of inward restraint, of the controlling power of a pure religion, beyond what was ever known before. The principles of the young are exposed to fearful assaults, and they need to be fortified with peculiar care. Temptations throng on the rising generation with new violence, and the power to withstand them must be proportionably increased. Society never needed such zealous efforts, such unslumbering watchfulness for its safety, as at this moment; and without faithfulness on the part of parents and good men, its bright prospects may be turned into gloom.

The

Sunday schools belong to this period of society. They grow naturally from the extension of knowledge, in consequence of which more are qualified to teach than in former times, and they are suited to prepare the young for the severe trials which await them in life. As such, let them be cherished. The great question for parents to ask is, how they may strengthen their children against temptation, how they can implant in them principles of duty, purposes of virtue, which will withstand all storms, and which will grow up into all that is generous, just, beautiful, and holy in feeling and action. question, how your children may prosper most in life, should be secondary. Give them force of character, and you give them more than a fortune. Give them pure and lofty principles, and you give them more than thrones. Instil into them Christian benevolence and the love of God, and you enrich them more than by laying worlds at their feet. Sunday schools are meant to aid you in the great work of forming your children to true excellence. I say they are meant to aid you, not to relieve you from the work, not to be your substitutes, not to diminish domestic watchfulness and teaching, but to concur with you, to give you fellow-laborers, to strengthen your influence over your children. Then give these schools your hearty support, without which they cannot prosper. Your children should be your first care. You indeed sustain interesting relations to society, but your great relation is to your children; and in truth you cannot discharge your obligations to society by any service so effectual, as by training up for it enlightened and worthy members in the bosom of the family and the church.

Like all schools, the Sunday school must owe its influence to its teachers. I would, therefore, close this discourse with VOL. XXII. 3D S. VOL. IV.

NO. I.

12

saying, that the most gifted in our congregation cannot find a worthier field of labor than the Sunday school. The noblest work on earth is to act with an elevating power on a human spirit. The greatest men of past times have not been politicians or warriors, who have influenced the outward policy or grandeur of kingdoms; but men, who, by their deep wisdom and generous sentiments, have given light and life to the minds. and hearts of their own age and left a legacy of truth and virtue to posterity. Whoever, in the humblest sphere, imparts God's truth to one human spirit, partakes their glory. He labors on an immortal nature. He is laying the foundation of imperishable excellence and happiness. His work, if he succeed, will outlive empires and the stars.

ART. VII. The Young Lady's Friend. Boston: American Stationers' Company. pp. 436.

By A LADY. 1836. 12mo.

EDUCATION, properly understood, is the preparation of the human being for the duties and cares of life; and wherever its meaning is limited to a part of that preparation without embracing the whole, the character formed by its influences will have something wanting. The interests of the mind are not the only ones to be regarded, the physical nature and the moral nature have equal claims to attention; and in our original constitution they are so intimately associated together that whoever gives all his care to one at the expense of the rest, will find it impossible to succeed with that one. Sooner or later our nature avenges its own wrongs. If the mind be cultivated while the body is neglected, such misplaced attention leads not to intellectual power and excellence, but to a wretched life and perhaps an early grave. And there are examples not a few, in which the moral nature or the religious affections have been forced into premature developement to such an excess, that, if God did not in his mercy remove the victim, he lived barren and useless; a burden to himself, and no blessing to mankind.

From our own observation, we are inclined to fear that what

is often called female education, at the present day, regards a part of our nature rather than the whole. We do not refer to instructers, who in general are employed for specified purposes, and, when these are accomplished, naturally consider their duty as done. We refer rather to the ambition of parents, who are apt to take pride in the attainments, rather than in the character, of their children. If they have the name, and in general it is nothing but the name, of knowing a sufficient variety of languages and sciences, the parents are delighted with their improvement, and feel as if there was nothing more to desire. In order to remove all obstacles from so brilliant a progress, the mother will submit to be a contented and patient drudge for her children, relieving them from all domestic cares, even from the care of themselves. And when their education, so called, is finished, and the joyous mother welcomes them home as so many lights and blessings to the household, she finds, to her surprise and indignation, that since she has performed their domestic duties so long, they prefer that she should perform them still; they do not know, and do not choose to learn them. When she expects them to follow her own good example of watching with the sick, visiting the poor, and doing those various offices of kindness which social life imposes, she finds that they are disgusted with the vulgar reality of suffering, and have patience with nothing but interesting and elegant distress. No wonder she is disappointed; but she should remember that these are cares and duties which the young do not learn of themselves; they need to be taught them; but she has placed them without the sphere of her own influence and example, and so far has done her part to unfit them for usefulness and social duty. Moreover she is disappointed in the prime object of her ambition; for the character must grow in fair proportions, or not at all: and while the moral powers are unexerted, the intellectual vigor can increase only to a certain point, beyond which it will not go.

It must be observed here, that we lament this prevailing ambition, because we think it implies a limited view, or rather no view at all, of the objects of education. Of excessive and

premature developements of the mind at the expense of the moral and physical nature, we have no sort of apprehension. For, as we have remarked, this danger seems to be provided for in the order of nature, which requires that the powers shall be carried forward in harmony or not at all. We do, indeed,