的 дл from her converse, which would be more valuable than the cart-loads of learning by which you have been bewildered. It is not such a milk-and-water regimen, as you propose, which can rectify the erring judgment, and purify the corrupted nature, of unregenerate man. Were not our first parents brought up in an infant school, and one of which your lordship will scarcely venture to disparage the teacher? And yet, what was the result? Let the Bible answer. What have been the consequences? Let history tell. Does not the philosopher sigh over the ruin which has been made? Does he not involuntarily exclaim, alas! poor human nature. And yet, my lord, this is the remedy to which you would trust for reclaiming man from his depravity, after its proved inefficacy, even before he was perverted, for keeping him in the right way! Ah, my lord, little did we, or the public, suspect, before your publication of the present letter, that you had so little of the wisdom of the serpent, and so much of the simplicity of the dove! No; the true Christian must be well aware, that for his success in the warfare which he is called upon to wage, it is necessary that he should take unto himself the whole armour of righteousness. What that is none can be ignorant, who studies the subject as it deserves. Do we reject infant schools from amongst the means by which it is desirable to promote the improvement of the people? By no means. We consider them, in their proper place, most valuable; but then, we would keep them in their proper place. They are beyond all price as nurseries for the parochial schools, as these are beyond all price as preparing the rising generation to profit by parochial ministrations. It is only by a course of instruction commencing in infancy, and continued unintermittedly to advanced life, "that the man of God can be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works ;" and to stop short at any one stage, before the whole is complete, would be merely hatching wild eggs; it would be doing little more than "making clean the outside of the cup or the platter;" if, indeed, in many instances, it would not be realizing that awful condition illustrated by the scriptural similitude of the house that was swept and garnished, and thereby only rendered fitter for unhallowed occupancy than it was before. If, therefore, public tranquillity is to be restored; if the evil spirit is to be expelled from the hearts of our cruelly neglected population; if chartism, and anti-unionism, and radicalism, and incendiarism, and infidelity, are to be rooted out of the land, and righteousness and peace planted in, there is but one way in which all this can be effectually accomplished, and that is, by boldly looking our evils in the face, and resolving, henceforth, to exert ourselves sedulously in the discharge of our duty towards God and towards man, according to the whole extent of our Christian obligations. It is not by a crusade against negro slavery; it is not by sending missionaries to the east and to the west; it is not by interfering in the concerns of other states, for the promotion of constitutional freedom; it is not by any, or by all, of these projects of extended speculative philanthropy, that England can hope to avert the evil day that is rapidly approaching, when her sins may bring down upon her the avenging wrath of God. No. It is in vain that she has sent her sparkles of light to twinkle in the African desert, if she has been careless and negligent, while the enemy was sowing infidelity broadcast over her land. The question will be, what has she been doing at home? How has she provided supplies of the bread of life for her own perishing population? Alas! has she not been sowing the wind; and does she not, even already, begin to reap the whirlwind? May God, in his mercy, even now, at the eleventh hour, change her heart, and both teach her her duty, and enable her sincerely to do it. We But, the dissenting interest ;have never, in this publication, spoken in any other terms than those of respect of conscientious dissenters. The reasons are, however, both obvious and indisputable, which evince that they are precisely that body with which the go vernment should have nothing to do. They ought to be left entirely to themselves. Our rulers should neither meddle nor make with them. When they have free permission to profess their own doctrines, and observe their own usages and ceremonies, without molestation or interruption, they have all which they ought to desire, they have all which the very wisest and best of them ever professed to desire, and they have all which can possibly be conceded, without compromising the very principle upon which a church establishment is founded. We say, therefore, let them alone. The state does its duty when it " forbids them not." It would overstep its duty, if it said, in effect, to the people, "Go after them, and follow them." That would be to record its solemn judgment of the indifferency of all religious belief, and abandon its bounden duty of promoting, to the utmost of its power, "the truth as it is in Jesus." Shall we be asked Pilate's question, "What is truth ?" Doubtless, the nation has asked itself that question; and the answer has been, "Christianity, as expounded by the Church of England." At least, such an answer must be presumed to have been given to such a question, until the laws and usages by which the Church has been established, have been repealed, and some other form of Christianity substituted as the national standard. But, until then, the governing authorities of the country are bound to act as though it were "the truth;" and to take every fair means of enlarging its extent, and increasing its influence. Should it appear to be deficient in any of the great properties which, in such an institute, should be required, let the deficiency We cannot close this paper without reminding the Irish clergy of the debt of gratitude which they owe to the Dean of Ardagh, for that beautiful and interesting educational establishment which has lately made its appearance in our neighbourhood, the school for the sons of the Irish clergy. It is amazing what one good and zealous man can do, when he sets himself resolutely to the accomplishment of any important object. Witness the Deaf and Dumb Institution, which owed its existence to Charles Herbert Orpen, a gentleman who, we verily believe, would in no other country be suffered to take his departure, after having accomplished, almost single-handed, the endowment of an establishment which is an honour to the land, without bearing with him some solid token of the good will of his fellow-citizens. And in the present case, assuredly, Dean Murray has conferred a boon on the clergy, the most valuable, in their present circumstances, that could be bestowed, and by which, notwithstanding the blight upon their incomes, they may still be enabled to give to their children the education of gentlemen. The establishment at Lucan we have visited, and with its arrangements and management we were well pleased. If the Dean be only aided by the opulent in putting it upon a permanent foundation, much will be done to break the force of those measures of spoliation and oppression by which the clergy have been ground down, and in so many instances compelled either to sacrifice the life assurance by which their families were to be provided for after their death, or see them grown up without any suitable education. In this emergency it has pleased God to raise up for them one of their brethren, to whose Christian zeal and love it is owing, that the evil of their condition has been mitigated, and the bitterest pangs which could be caused by the oppression with which they have been visited, have passed away. We do, we confess, envy the good man the glow of delight which he must experience when he contemplates his finished work, and sees so many of the children of his friends and fellow-labourers in the vineyard of the Lord congregated in that happy asylum, where they enjoy so many advantages, and are undergoing a training and discipline by which every faculty which they possess must be cultivated to the utmost, and where they may "grow in wisdom as in stature, and in favour with God and with man." We believe that, to complete this institution, there is still a considerable deficiency of funds; and we have written the above chiefly in the hope that it may meet the eyes of those to whom, in pecuniary blessings, the Lord has been gracious, and who cannot surely employ this better than by assisting in the good work of which so promising a commencement has been already made. TO MARY. A boon from heaven my Mary seems, She lives, the angel of his dreams, Oh, lovely is that face of her's, Fair as the sunrise-tinted snows, Beneath my Mary's fairy tread The scattered violets love to spring; My Mary's smile is like that star, The first that meets your wandering eye, Through the dim portals of the sky. Like music in its softest flight O'er moonlit waves, come Mary's words ; And all her thoughts have wings of light, In Poetry's exhaustless mine She lays the richest treasures bare; I cannot sing her beauteous charms Oh! she is far above compare ; Seek through the world, you may not find New-York. Illumined by so clear a mind! PARK BENJAMIN. [We have much pleasure in giving insertion to these lines from our transatlantic friend.] |