lose their haughty bearing?

Must not poverty and

depression reject their wrongful suspicion? While the nation has been divided into so many factions and convulsed with so many dissensions, it is no small good, that the rising generation have been placed under a system which gives the most obvious contradiction to the brawl of the demagogue, the insinuation of the sceptic, and the scorn of the churl.

And this influence has a two-fold direction. The manners of the uneducated parent are softened as he discerns the gentle bearing of his offspring. He feels that the new-awakened sense of truth and right, now set before him, constrains him to caution and selfrestraint. A child's rebuke is a smiting thing. He cherishes a deeper interest and hope in his family, and if he speak foolishly of their attainments and their prospects, it is an ambition we have little heart to check. His happiness is now within his household. He provides for it and tends it. It is his charmed circle. It is his garnered store. He rises in the scale of humanity. He is from the moment of his first desire for the true welfare of his children, a useful citizen. He is another man. The State has in him a support; unseen, but important, as the foundation's most hidden stone. His influence is carried onward to an extent that omniscience only can define. From that purified fountain of domestic order and intelligence, a downward river, still purer than its source, goes to far distant times and generations.

The parental covenant shall assume a higher sacredness. All the domestic charities shall bloom into richer beauty. Each nation shall be a family, and each land shall be a home. And thus some humble individual may become an honoured founder, he may “become a great and mighty nation," giving laws to them and ruling them from his urn. The light may be thrown upon the remotest period, and be reflected from an unborn state! "One generation shall tell Thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts!"

It is, doubtless, an inferior view of Revelation,— but one not unworthy, one not inapposite,—that it is the perfect rule of all social obligations. It stands the impartial umpire between high and low, rich and poor. The condition of life cannot exist which it

does not arrange. Its deontology is most exactly measured. Were the argument to need it, we might remind any whom the community most slights or aggrieves, that this is their surest staff and broadest buckler. We address another class. Many place all civil virtue in subordination. Let them be assured that the Sacred Volume cannot offend them, save when their own terms are unjust and arbitrary. It teaches youth to rise up in honour before age. It inculcates submission to authority. It urges respect to dignities. It upholds the claim of masters. It inspires contentment under calamity. It awakens gratitude for kindness. Let the children of the poor be trained in its

counsels and precepts, and no real interest of society can remain unbenefited: order will find, in the operation of this system, its best security,-property, its safest bulwark,-and law, its truest reverence!

They who think of Revelation as only deserving a superficial perusal, will except to our statements. They can only wonder that we should place it as a theme worthy of continuous interest and research. But we know that it is exceeding broad."

66

Its

66 secrets of wisdom are double to that which is." We see in it immortal fruit. Here lies, we believe, the corner-stone of all those principles, the rudiment of all those discoveries, which shall beautify our eternal existence. The "sayings of this Book" are not forgotten in heaven. It is there that they are set in their brightest light, and that they are unfolded in their largest development, and that they are transcribed in their purest record. The child who is taught to read, and to understand its simpler portions now, carries in his hand the words of eternal life. He who has entered upon the true examination of it, cannot fail to perceive how its essential truths may enduringly engage the human mind, nor to acquire the taste which rejects any lower theme. It is the "beginning of wisdom;" but distant worlds shall be its ever-climbing steps, and eternal ages its ever-glorious waymarks.

Every other species of popular education will fail to promote the great ends of social improvement but

that which has its basis in Scripture, and its principle in benevolence. You have to gain the confidence of the poor, as well as to instruct them. The chains of Xerxes might as easily bind the rush of the Hellespont, as you can shackle the popular opinion and feeling. Go and win the nation's heart. Go with the Sacred Volume in your hand, with the tranquil atmosphere of the sacred day around you, your lips breathing prayer and distilling knowledge, leading your young catechumens into the Christian Temple,-and long arrears of vengeance shall be cancelled, and a thousand wrongs shall at once be redressed. Only can you thus mould your people. They are tractable to light and love. Such a people are worthy to be respected, to be venerated: never need they to be feared. This is the palladium of our national existence, the raying out of our national glory, the building up of our national strength. "Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times."*

* How little this system was understood, how unduly it was estimated, at first, may be seen in Winter Evenings or Lucubrations, by Vicesimus Knox, vol. i. 48, "On the Beneficial Effects of Sunday Schools." The Article is intended to be laudatory,— but it is "faint praise."

CHAPTER VII.

ON FOREIGN SYSTEMS AND MEANS OF EDUCATION.

IF any thing could bring to light the deep ignorance of France, the reputed nation of intellectual vivacity and refinement, it was her Revolution. Instead of being the result of the strong expansion of mind, it failed from the want of it. Knowledge would have preserved all its blessings and prevented all its calamities. Never had a people a juster ground of quarrel, even to the last appeal: liberty has not ceased to mourn its bitter discomfiture by the betrayal of their folly. They threw away the noblest chance ever given to a nation of striking down tyranny throughout the world. What must have been the mental debasement of a people where the poissarde and the chiffonnier were often the principal leaders, and the lowest fauxbourg sent forth their daily report of the national destinies ! It is in vain to blame the illuminati. Great as was their guilt, this was not their doing, nor any result of their influence.* There were, however,

* See Mounier, with the remarks of Lord Jeffrey on it in the first Number of the Edinburgh Review; as also those of Lord Brougham in the 3rd vol. of his Political Sketches.